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8,625 | Differential geometry | Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky. The simplest examples of smooth spaces are the plane and space curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, and the study of these shapes formed the basis for development of modern differential geometry during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Since the late 19th century, differential geometry has grown into a field concerned more generally with geometric structures on differentiable manifolds. A geometric structure is one which defines some notion of size, distance, shape, volume, or other rigidifying structure. For example, in Riemannian geometry distances and angles are specified, in symplectic geometry volumes may be computed, in conformal geometry only angles are specified, and in gauge theory certain fields are given over the space. Differential geometry is closely related to, and is sometimes taken to include, differential topology, which concerns itself with properties of differentiable manifolds that do not rely on any additional geometric structure (see that article for more discussion on the distinction between the two subjects). Differential geometry is also related to the geometric aspects of the theory of differential equations, otherwise known as geometric analysis.
Differential geometry finds applications throughout mathematics and the natural sciences. Most prominently the language of differential geometry was used by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity, and subsequently by physicists in the development of quantum field theory and the standard model of particle physics. Outside of physics, differential geometry finds applications in chemistry, economics, engineering, control theory, computer graphics and computer vision, and recently in machine learning.
The history and development of differential geometry as a subject begins at least as far back as classical antiquity. It is intimately linked to the development of geometry more generally, of the notion of space and shape, and of topology, especially the study of manifolds. In this section we focus primarily on the history of the application of infinitesimal methods to geometry, and later to the ideas of tangent spaces, and eventually the development of the modern formalism of the subject in terms of tensors and tensor fields.
The study of differential geometry, or at least the study of the geometry of smooth shapes, can be traced back at least to classical antiquity. In particular, much was known about the geometry of the Earth, a spherical geometry, in the time of the ancient Greek mathematicians. Famously, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth around 200 BC, and around 150 AD Ptolemy in his Geography introduced the stereographic projection for the purposes of mapping the shape of the Earth. Implicitly throughout this time principles that form the foundation of differential geometry and calculus were used in geodesy, although in a much simplified form. Namely, as far back as Euclid's Elements it was understood that a straight line could be defined by its property of providing the shortest distance between two points, and applying this same principle to the surface of the Earth leads to the conclusion that great circles, which are only locally similar to straight lines in a flat plane, provide the shortest path between two points on the Earth's surface. Indeed the measurements of distance along such geodesic paths by Eratosthenes and others can be considered a rudimentary measure of arclength of curves, a concept which did not see a rigorous definition in terms of calculus until the 1600s.
Around this time there were only minimal overt applications of the theory of infinitesimals to the study of geometry, a precursor to the modern calculus-based study of the subject. In Euclid's Elements the notion of tangency of a line to a circle is discussed, and Archimedes applied the method of exhaustion to compute the areas of smooth shapes such as the circle, and the volumes of smooth three-dimensional solids such as the sphere, cones, and cylinders.
There was little development in the theory of differential geometry between antiquity and the beginning of the Renaissance. Before the development of calculus by Newton and Leibniz, the most significant development in the understanding of differential geometry came from Gerardus Mercator's development of the Mercator projection as a way of mapping the Earth. Mercator had an understanding of the advantages and pitfalls of his map design, and in particular was aware of the conformal nature of his projection, as well as the difference between praga, the lines of shortest distance on the Earth, and the directio, the straight line paths on his map. Mercator noted that the praga were oblique curvatur in this projection. This fact reflects the lack of a metric-preserving map of the Earth's surface onto a flat plane, a consequence of the later Theorema Egregium of Gauss.
The first systematic or rigorous treatment of geometry using the theory of infinitesimals and notions from calculus began around the 1600s when calculus was first developed by Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton. At this time, the recent work of René Descartes introducing analytic coordinates to geometry allowed geometric shapes of increasing complexity to be described rigorously. In particular around this time Pierre de Fermat, Newton, and Leibniz began the study of plane curves and the investigation of concepts such as points of inflection and circles of osculation, which aid in the measurement of curvature. Indeed already in his first paper on the foundations of calculus, Leibniz notes that the infinitesimal condition d 2 y = 0 {\displaystyle d^{2}y=0} indicates the existence of an inflection point. Shortly after this time the Bernoulli brothers, Jacob and Johann made important early contributions to the use of infinitesimals to study geometry. In lectures by Johann Bernoulli at the time, later collated by L'Hopital into the first textbook on differential calculus, the tangents to plane curves of various types are computed using the condition d y = 0 {\displaystyle dy=0} , and similarly points of inflection are calculated. At this same time the orthogonality between the osculating circles of a plane curve and the tangent directions is realised, and the first analytical formula for the radius of an osculating circle, essentially the first analytical formula for the notion of curvature, is written down.
In the wake of the development of analytic geometry and plane curves, Alexis Clairaut began the study of space curves at just the age of 16. In his book Clairaut introduced the notion of tangent and subtangent directions to space curves in relation to the directions which lie along a surface on which the space curve lies. Thus Clairaut demonstrated an implicit understanding of the tangent space of a surface and studied this idea using calculus for the first time. Importantly Clairaut introduced the terminology of curvature and double curvature, essentially the notion of principal curvatures later studied by Gauss and others.
Around this same time, Leonhard Euler, originally a student of Johann Bernoulli, provided many significant contributions not just to the development of geometry, but to mathematics more broadly. In regards to differential geometry, Euler studied the notion of a geodesic on a surface deriving the first analytical geodesic equation, and later introduced the first set of intrinsic coordinate systems on a surface, beginning the theory of intrinsic geometry upon which modern geometric ideas are based. Around this time Euler's study of mechanics in the Mechanica lead to the realization that a mass traveling along a surface not under the effect of any force would traverse a geodesic path, an early precursor to the important foundational ideas of Einstein's general relativity, and also to the Euler–Lagrange equations and the first theory of the calculus of variations, which underpins in modern differential geometry many techniques in symplectic geometry and geometric analysis. This theory was used by Lagrange, a co-developer of the calculus of variations, to derive the first differential equation describing a minimal surface in terms of the Euler–Lagrange equation. In 1760 Euler proved a theorem expressing the curvature of a space curve on a surface in terms of the principal curvatures, known as Euler's theorem.
Later in the 1700s, the new French school led by Gaspard Monge began to make contributions to differential geometry. Monge made important contributions to the theory of plane curves, surfaces, and studied surfaces of revolution and envelopes of plane curves and space curves. Several students of Monge made contributions to this same theory, and for example Charles Dupin provided a new interpretation of Euler's theorem in terms of the principle curvatures, which is the modern form of the equation.
The field of differential geometry became an area of study considered in its own right, distinct from the more broad idea of analytic geometry, in the 1800s, primarily through the foundational work of Carl Friedrich Gauss and Bernhard Riemann, and also in the important contributions of Nikolai Lobachevsky on hyperbolic geometry and non-Euclidean geometry and throughout the same period the development of projective geometry.
Dubbed the single most important work in the history of differential geometry, in 1827 Gauss produced the Disquisitiones generales circa superficies curvas detailing the general theory of curved surfaces. In this work and his subsequent papers and unpublished notes on the theory of surfaces, Gauss has been dubbed the inventor of non-Euclidean geometry and the inventor of intrinsic differential geometry. In his fundamental paper Gauss introduced the Gauss map, Gaussian curvature, first and second fundamental forms, proved the Theorema Egregium showing the intrinsic nature of the Gaussian curvature, and studied geodesics, computing the area of a geodesic triangle in various non-Euclidean geometries on surfaces.
At this time Gauss was already of the opinion that the standard paradigm of Euclidean geometry should be discarded, and was in possession of private manuscripts on non-Euclidean geometry which informed his study of geodesic triangles. Around this same time János Bolyai and Lobachevsky independently discovered hyperbolic geometry and thus demonstrated the existence of consistent geometries outside Euclid's paradigm. Concrete models of hyperbolic geometry were produced by Eugenio Beltrami later in the 1860s, and Felix Klein coined the term non-Euclidean geometry in 1871, and through the Erlangen program put Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries on the same footing. Implicitly, the spherical geometry of the Earth that had been studied since antiquity was a non-Euclidean geometry, an elliptic geometry.
The development of intrinsic differential geometry in the language of Gauss was spurred on by his student, Bernhard Riemann in his Habilitationsschrift, On the hypotheses which lie at the foundation of geometry. In this work Riemann introduced the notion of a Riemannian metric and the Riemannian curvature tensor for the first time, and began the systematic study of differential geometry in higher dimensions. This intrinsic point of view in terms of the Riemannian metric, denoted by d s 2 {\displaystyle ds^{2}} by Riemann, was the development of an idea of Gauss' about the linear element d s {\displaystyle ds} of a surface. At this time Riemann began to introduce the systematic use of linear algebra and multilinear algebra into the subject, making great use of the theory of quadratic forms in his investigation of metrics and curvature. At this time Riemann did not yet develop the modern notion of a manifold, as even the notion of a topological space had not been encountered, but he did propose that it might be possible to investigate or measure the properties of the metric of spacetime through the analysis of masses within spacetime, linking with the earlier observation of Euler that masses under the effect of no forces would travel along geodesics on surfaces, and predicting Einstein's fundamental observation of the equivalence principle a full 60 years before it appeared in the scientific literature.
In the wake of Riemann's new description, the focus of techniques used to study differential geometry shifted from the ad hoc and extrinsic methods of the study of curves and surfaces to a more systematic approach in terms of tensor calculus and Klein's Erlangen program, and progress increased in the field. The notion of groups of transformations was developed by Sophus Lie and Jean Gaston Darboux, leading to important results in the theory of Lie groups and symplectic geometry. The notion of differential calculus on curved spaces was studied by Elwin Christoffel, who introduced the Christoffel symbols which describe the covariant derivative in 1868, and by others including Eugenio Beltrami who studied many analytic questions on manifolds. In 1899 Luigi Bianchi produced his Lectures on differential geometry which studied differential geometry from Riemann's perspective, and a year later Tullio Levi-Civita and Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro produced their textbook systematically developing the theory of absolute differential calculus and tensor calculus. It was in this language that differential geometry was used by Einstein in the development of general relativity and pseudo-Riemannian geometry.
The subject of modern differential geometry emerged out of the early 1900s in response to the foundational contributions of many mathematicians, including importantly the work of Henri Poincaré on the foundations of topology. At the start of the 1900s there was a major movement within mathematics to formalise the foundational aspects of the subject to avoid crises of rigour and accuracy, known as Hilbert's program. As part of this broader movement, the notion of a topological space was distilled in by Felix Hausdorff in 1914, and by 1942 there were many different notions of manifold of a combinatorial and differential-geometric nature.
Interest in the subject was also focused by the emergence of Einstein's theory of general relativity and the importance of the Einstein Field equations. Einstein's theory popularised the tensor calculus of Ricci and Levi-Civita and introduced the notation g {\displaystyle g} for a Riemannian metric, and Γ {\displaystyle \Gamma } for the Christoffel symbols, both coming from G in Gravitation. Élie Cartan helped reformulate the foundations of the differential geometry of smooth manifolds in terms of exterior calculus and the theory of moving frames, leading in the world of physics to Einstein–Cartan theory.
Following this early development, many mathematicians contributed to the development of the modern theory, including Jean-Louis Koszul who introduced connections on vector bundles, Shiing-Shen Chern who introduced characteristic classes to the subject and began the study of complex manifolds, Sir William Vallance Douglas Hodge and Georges de Rham who expanded understanding of differential forms, Charles Ehresmann who introduced the theory of fibre bundles and Ehresmann connections, and others. Of particular importance was Hermann Weyl who made important contributions to the foundations of general relativity, introduced the Weyl tensor providing insight into conformal geometry, and first defined the notion of a gauge leading to the development of gauge theory in physics and mathematics.
In the middle and late 20th century differential geometry as a subject expanded in scope and developed links to other areas of mathematics and physics. The development of gauge theory and Yang–Mills theory in physics brought bundles and connections into focus, leading to developments in gauge theory. Many analytical results were investigated including the proof of the Atiyah–Singer index theorem. The development of complex geometry was spurred on by parallel results in algebraic geometry, and results in the geometry and global analysis of complex manifolds were proven by Shing-Tung Yau and others. In the latter half of the 20th century new analytic techniques were developed in regards to curvature flows such as the Ricci flow, which culminated in Grigori Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture. During this same period primarily due to the influence of Michael Atiyah, new links between theoretical physics and differential geometry were formed. Techniques from the study of the Yang–Mills equations and gauge theory were used by mathematicians to develop new invariants of smooth manifolds. Physicists such as Edward Witten, the only physicist to be awarded a Fields medal, made new impacts in mathematics by using topological quantum field theory and string theory to make predictions and provide frameworks for new rigorous mathematics, which has resulted for example in the conjectural mirror symmetry and the Seiberg–Witten invariants.
Riemannian geometry studies Riemannian manifolds, smooth manifolds with a Riemannian metric. This is a concept of distance expressed by means of a smooth positive definite symmetric bilinear form defined on the tangent space at each point. Riemannian geometry generalizes Euclidean geometry to spaces that are not necessarily flat, though they still resemble Euclidean space at each point infinitesimally, i.e. in the first order of approximation. Various concepts based on length, such as the arc length of curves, area of plane regions, and volume of solids all possess natural analogues in Riemannian geometry. The notion of a directional derivative of a function from multivariable calculus is extended to the notion of a covariant derivative of a tensor. Many concepts of analysis and differential equations have been generalized to the setting of Riemannian manifolds.
A distance-preserving diffeomorphism between Riemannian manifolds is called an isometry. This notion can also be defined locally, i.e. for small neighborhoods of points. Any two regular curves are locally isometric. However, the Theorema Egregium of Carl Friedrich Gauss showed that for surfaces, the existence of a local isometry imposes that the Gaussian curvatures at the corresponding points must be the same. In higher dimensions, the Riemann curvature tensor is an important pointwise invariant associated with a Riemannian manifold that measures how close it is to being flat. An important class of Riemannian manifolds is the Riemannian symmetric spaces, whose curvature is not necessarily constant. These are the closest analogues to the "ordinary" plane and space considered in Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry.
Pseudo-Riemannian geometry generalizes Riemannian geometry to the case in which the metric tensor need not be positive-definite. A special case of this is a Lorentzian manifold, which is the mathematical basis of Einstein's general relativity theory of gravity.
Finsler geometry has Finsler manifolds as the main object of study. This is a differential manifold with a Finsler metric, that is, a Banach norm defined on each tangent space. Riemannian manifolds are special cases of the more general Finsler manifolds. A Finsler structure on a manifold M is a function F : TM → [0, ∞) such that:
Symplectic geometry is the study of symplectic manifolds. An almost symplectic manifold is a differentiable manifold equipped with a smoothly varying non-degenerate skew-symmetric bilinear form on each tangent space, i.e., a nondegenerate 2-form ω, called the symplectic form. A symplectic manifold is an almost symplectic manifold for which the symplectic form ω is closed: dω = 0.
A diffeomorphism between two symplectic manifolds which preserves the symplectic form is called a symplectomorphism. Non-degenerate skew-symmetric bilinear forms can only exist on even-dimensional vector spaces, so symplectic manifolds necessarily have even dimension. In dimension 2, a symplectic manifold is just a surface endowed with an area form and a symplectomorphism is an area-preserving diffeomorphism. The phase space of a mechanical system is a symplectic manifold and they made an implicit appearance already in the work of Joseph Louis Lagrange on analytical mechanics and later in Carl Gustav Jacobi's and William Rowan Hamilton's formulations of classical mechanics.
By contrast with Riemannian geometry, where the curvature provides a local invariant of Riemannian manifolds, Darboux's theorem states that all symplectic manifolds are locally isomorphic. The only invariants of a symplectic manifold are global in nature and topological aspects play a prominent role in symplectic geometry. The first result in symplectic topology is probably the Poincaré–Birkhoff theorem, conjectured by Henri Poincaré and then proved by G.D. Birkhoff in 1912. It claims that if an area preserving map of an annulus twists each boundary component in opposite directions, then the map has at least two fixed points.
Contact geometry deals with certain manifolds of odd dimension. It is close to symplectic geometry and like the latter, it originated in questions of classical mechanics. A contact structure on a (2n + 1)-dimensional manifold M is given by a smooth hyperplane field H in the tangent bundle that is as far as possible from being associated with the level sets of a differentiable function on M (the technical term is "completely nonintegrable tangent hyperplane distribution"). Near each point p, a hyperplane distribution is determined by a nowhere vanishing 1-form α {\displaystyle \alpha } , which is unique up to multiplication by a nowhere vanishing function:
A local 1-form on M is a contact form if the restriction of its exterior derivative to H is a non-degenerate two-form and thus induces a symplectic structure on Hp at each point. If the distribution H can be defined by a global one-form α {\displaystyle \alpha } then this form is contact if and only if the top-dimensional form
is a volume form on M, i.e. does not vanish anywhere. A contact analogue of the Darboux theorem holds: all contact structures on an odd-dimensional manifold are locally isomorphic and can be brought to a certain local normal form by a suitable choice of the coordinate system.
Complex differential geometry is the study of complex manifolds. An almost complex manifold is a real manifold M {\displaystyle M} , endowed with a tensor of type (1, 1), i.e. a vector bundle endomorphism (called an almost complex structure)
It follows from this definition that an almost complex manifold is even-dimensional.
An almost complex manifold is called complex if N J = 0 {\displaystyle N_{J}=0} , where N J {\displaystyle N_{J}} is a tensor of type (2, 1) related to J {\displaystyle J} , called the Nijenhuis tensor (or sometimes the torsion). An almost complex manifold is complex if and only if it admits a holomorphic coordinate atlas. An almost Hermitian structure is given by an almost complex structure J, along with a Riemannian metric g, satisfying the compatibility condition
An almost Hermitian structure defines naturally a differential two-form
The following two conditions are equivalent:
where ∇ {\displaystyle \nabla } is the Levi-Civita connection of g {\displaystyle g} . In this case, ( J , g ) {\displaystyle (J,g)} is called a Kähler structure, and a Kähler manifold is a manifold endowed with a Kähler structure. In particular, a Kähler manifold is both a complex and a symplectic manifold. A large class of Kähler manifolds (the class of Hodge manifolds) is given by all the smooth complex projective varieties.
CR geometry is the study of the intrinsic geometry of boundaries of domains in complex manifolds.
Conformal geometry is the study of the set of angle-preserving (conformal) transformations on a space.
Differential topology is the study of global geometric invariants without a metric or symplectic form.
Differential topology starts from the natural operations such as Lie derivative of natural vector bundles and de Rham differential of forms. Beside Lie algebroids, also Courant algebroids start playing a more important role.
A Lie group is a group in the category of smooth manifolds. Beside the algebraic properties this enjoys also differential geometric properties. The most obvious construction is that of a Lie algebra which is the tangent space at the unit endowed with the Lie bracket between left-invariant vector fields. Beside the structure theory there is also the wide field of representation theory.
Geometric analysis is a mathematical discipline where tools from differential equations, especially elliptic partial differential equations are used to establish new results in differential geometry and differential topology.
Gauge theory is the study of connections on vector bundles and principal bundles, and arises out of problems in mathematical physics and physical gauge theories which underpin the standard model of particle physics. Gauge theory is concerned with the study of differential equations for connections on bundles, and the resulting geometric moduli spaces of solutions to these equations as well as the invariants that may be derived from them. These equations often arise as the Euler–Lagrange equations describing the equations of motion of certain physical systems in quantum field theory, and so their study is of considerable interest in physics.
The apparatus of vector bundles, principal bundles, and connections on bundles plays an extraordinarily important role in modern differential geometry. A smooth manifold always carries a natural vector bundle, the tangent bundle. Loosely speaking, this structure by itself is sufficient only for developing analysis on the manifold, while doing geometry requires, in addition, some way to relate the tangent spaces at different points, i.e. a notion of parallel transport. An important example is provided by affine connections. For a surface in R, tangent planes at different points can be identified using a natural path-wise parallelism induced by the ambient Euclidean space, which has a well-known standard definition of metric and parallelism. In Riemannian geometry, the Levi-Civita connection serves a similar purpose. More generally, differential geometers consider spaces with a vector bundle and an arbitrary affine connection which is not defined in terms of a metric. In physics, the manifold may be spacetime and the bundles and connections are related to various physical fields.
From the beginning and through the middle of the 19th century, differential geometry was studied from the extrinsic point of view: curves and surfaces were considered as lying in a Euclidean space of higher dimension (for example a surface in an ambient space of three dimensions). The simplest results are those in the differential geometry of curves and differential geometry of surfaces. Starting with the work of Riemann, the intrinsic point of view was developed, in which one cannot speak of moving "outside" the geometric object because it is considered to be given in a free-standing way. The fundamental result here is Gauss's theorema egregium, to the effect that Gaussian curvature is an intrinsic invariant.
The intrinsic point of view is more flexible. For example, it is useful in relativity where space-time cannot naturally be taken as extrinsic. However, there is a price to pay in technical complexity: the intrinsic definitions of curvature and connections become much less visually intuitive.
These two points of view can be reconciled, i.e. the extrinsic geometry can be considered as a structure additional to the intrinsic one. (See the Nash embedding theorem.) In the formalism of geometric calculus both extrinsic and intrinsic geometry of a manifold can be characterized by a single bivector-valued one-form called the shape operator.
Below are some examples of how differential geometry is applied to other fields of science and mathematics. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky. The simplest examples of smooth spaces are the plane and space curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, and the study of these shapes formed the basis for development of modern differential geometry during the 18th and 19th centuries.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Since the late 19th century, differential geometry has grown into a field concerned more generally with geometric structures on differentiable manifolds. A geometric structure is one which defines some notion of size, distance, shape, volume, or other rigidifying structure. For example, in Riemannian geometry distances and angles are specified, in symplectic geometry volumes may be computed, in conformal geometry only angles are specified, and in gauge theory certain fields are given over the space. Differential geometry is closely related to, and is sometimes taken to include, differential topology, which concerns itself with properties of differentiable manifolds that do not rely on any additional geometric structure (see that article for more discussion on the distinction between the two subjects). Differential geometry is also related to the geometric aspects of the theory of differential equations, otherwise known as geometric analysis.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Differential geometry finds applications throughout mathematics and the natural sciences. Most prominently the language of differential geometry was used by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity, and subsequently by physicists in the development of quantum field theory and the standard model of particle physics. Outside of physics, differential geometry finds applications in chemistry, economics, engineering, control theory, computer graphics and computer vision, and recently in machine learning.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The history and development of differential geometry as a subject begins at least as far back as classical antiquity. It is intimately linked to the development of geometry more generally, of the notion of space and shape, and of topology, especially the study of manifolds. In this section we focus primarily on the history of the application of infinitesimal methods to geometry, and later to the ideas of tangent spaces, and eventually the development of the modern formalism of the subject in terms of tensors and tensor fields.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The study of differential geometry, or at least the study of the geometry of smooth shapes, can be traced back at least to classical antiquity. In particular, much was known about the geometry of the Earth, a spherical geometry, in the time of the ancient Greek mathematicians. Famously, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth around 200 BC, and around 150 AD Ptolemy in his Geography introduced the stereographic projection for the purposes of mapping the shape of the Earth. Implicitly throughout this time principles that form the foundation of differential geometry and calculus were used in geodesy, although in a much simplified form. Namely, as far back as Euclid's Elements it was understood that a straight line could be defined by its property of providing the shortest distance between two points, and applying this same principle to the surface of the Earth leads to the conclusion that great circles, which are only locally similar to straight lines in a flat plane, provide the shortest path between two points on the Earth's surface. Indeed the measurements of distance along such geodesic paths by Eratosthenes and others can be considered a rudimentary measure of arclength of curves, a concept which did not see a rigorous definition in terms of calculus until the 1600s.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Around this time there were only minimal overt applications of the theory of infinitesimals to the study of geometry, a precursor to the modern calculus-based study of the subject. In Euclid's Elements the notion of tangency of a line to a circle is discussed, and Archimedes applied the method of exhaustion to compute the areas of smooth shapes such as the circle, and the volumes of smooth three-dimensional solids such as the sphere, cones, and cylinders.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "There was little development in the theory of differential geometry between antiquity and the beginning of the Renaissance. Before the development of calculus by Newton and Leibniz, the most significant development in the understanding of differential geometry came from Gerardus Mercator's development of the Mercator projection as a way of mapping the Earth. Mercator had an understanding of the advantages and pitfalls of his map design, and in particular was aware of the conformal nature of his projection, as well as the difference between praga, the lines of shortest distance on the Earth, and the directio, the straight line paths on his map. Mercator noted that the praga were oblique curvatur in this projection. This fact reflects the lack of a metric-preserving map of the Earth's surface onto a flat plane, a consequence of the later Theorema Egregium of Gauss.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The first systematic or rigorous treatment of geometry using the theory of infinitesimals and notions from calculus began around the 1600s when calculus was first developed by Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton. At this time, the recent work of René Descartes introducing analytic coordinates to geometry allowed geometric shapes of increasing complexity to be described rigorously. In particular around this time Pierre de Fermat, Newton, and Leibniz began the study of plane curves and the investigation of concepts such as points of inflection and circles of osculation, which aid in the measurement of curvature. Indeed already in his first paper on the foundations of calculus, Leibniz notes that the infinitesimal condition d 2 y = 0 {\\displaystyle d^{2}y=0} indicates the existence of an inflection point. Shortly after this time the Bernoulli brothers, Jacob and Johann made important early contributions to the use of infinitesimals to study geometry. In lectures by Johann Bernoulli at the time, later collated by L'Hopital into the first textbook on differential calculus, the tangents to plane curves of various types are computed using the condition d y = 0 {\\displaystyle dy=0} , and similarly points of inflection are calculated. At this same time the orthogonality between the osculating circles of a plane curve and the tangent directions is realised, and the first analytical formula for the radius of an osculating circle, essentially the first analytical formula for the notion of curvature, is written down.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In the wake of the development of analytic geometry and plane curves, Alexis Clairaut began the study of space curves at just the age of 16. In his book Clairaut introduced the notion of tangent and subtangent directions to space curves in relation to the directions which lie along a surface on which the space curve lies. Thus Clairaut demonstrated an implicit understanding of the tangent space of a surface and studied this idea using calculus for the first time. Importantly Clairaut introduced the terminology of curvature and double curvature, essentially the notion of principal curvatures later studied by Gauss and others.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Around this same time, Leonhard Euler, originally a student of Johann Bernoulli, provided many significant contributions not just to the development of geometry, but to mathematics more broadly. In regards to differential geometry, Euler studied the notion of a geodesic on a surface deriving the first analytical geodesic equation, and later introduced the first set of intrinsic coordinate systems on a surface, beginning the theory of intrinsic geometry upon which modern geometric ideas are based. Around this time Euler's study of mechanics in the Mechanica lead to the realization that a mass traveling along a surface not under the effect of any force would traverse a geodesic path, an early precursor to the important foundational ideas of Einstein's general relativity, and also to the Euler–Lagrange equations and the first theory of the calculus of variations, which underpins in modern differential geometry many techniques in symplectic geometry and geometric analysis. This theory was used by Lagrange, a co-developer of the calculus of variations, to derive the first differential equation describing a minimal surface in terms of the Euler–Lagrange equation. In 1760 Euler proved a theorem expressing the curvature of a space curve on a surface in terms of the principal curvatures, known as Euler's theorem.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Later in the 1700s, the new French school led by Gaspard Monge began to make contributions to differential geometry. Monge made important contributions to the theory of plane curves, surfaces, and studied surfaces of revolution and envelopes of plane curves and space curves. Several students of Monge made contributions to this same theory, and for example Charles Dupin provided a new interpretation of Euler's theorem in terms of the principle curvatures, which is the modern form of the equation.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The field of differential geometry became an area of study considered in its own right, distinct from the more broad idea of analytic geometry, in the 1800s, primarily through the foundational work of Carl Friedrich Gauss and Bernhard Riemann, and also in the important contributions of Nikolai Lobachevsky on hyperbolic geometry and non-Euclidean geometry and throughout the same period the development of projective geometry.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Dubbed the single most important work in the history of differential geometry, in 1827 Gauss produced the Disquisitiones generales circa superficies curvas detailing the general theory of curved surfaces. In this work and his subsequent papers and unpublished notes on the theory of surfaces, Gauss has been dubbed the inventor of non-Euclidean geometry and the inventor of intrinsic differential geometry. In his fundamental paper Gauss introduced the Gauss map, Gaussian curvature, first and second fundamental forms, proved the Theorema Egregium showing the intrinsic nature of the Gaussian curvature, and studied geodesics, computing the area of a geodesic triangle in various non-Euclidean geometries on surfaces.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "At this time Gauss was already of the opinion that the standard paradigm of Euclidean geometry should be discarded, and was in possession of private manuscripts on non-Euclidean geometry which informed his study of geodesic triangles. Around this same time János Bolyai and Lobachevsky independently discovered hyperbolic geometry and thus demonstrated the existence of consistent geometries outside Euclid's paradigm. Concrete models of hyperbolic geometry were produced by Eugenio Beltrami later in the 1860s, and Felix Klein coined the term non-Euclidean geometry in 1871, and through the Erlangen program put Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries on the same footing. Implicitly, the spherical geometry of the Earth that had been studied since antiquity was a non-Euclidean geometry, an elliptic geometry.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The development of intrinsic differential geometry in the language of Gauss was spurred on by his student, Bernhard Riemann in his Habilitationsschrift, On the hypotheses which lie at the foundation of geometry. In this work Riemann introduced the notion of a Riemannian metric and the Riemannian curvature tensor for the first time, and began the systematic study of differential geometry in higher dimensions. This intrinsic point of view in terms of the Riemannian metric, denoted by d s 2 {\\displaystyle ds^{2}} by Riemann, was the development of an idea of Gauss' about the linear element d s {\\displaystyle ds} of a surface. At this time Riemann began to introduce the systematic use of linear algebra and multilinear algebra into the subject, making great use of the theory of quadratic forms in his investigation of metrics and curvature. At this time Riemann did not yet develop the modern notion of a manifold, as even the notion of a topological space had not been encountered, but he did propose that it might be possible to investigate or measure the properties of the metric of spacetime through the analysis of masses within spacetime, linking with the earlier observation of Euler that masses under the effect of no forces would travel along geodesics on surfaces, and predicting Einstein's fundamental observation of the equivalence principle a full 60 years before it appeared in the scientific literature.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In the wake of Riemann's new description, the focus of techniques used to study differential geometry shifted from the ad hoc and extrinsic methods of the study of curves and surfaces to a more systematic approach in terms of tensor calculus and Klein's Erlangen program, and progress increased in the field. The notion of groups of transformations was developed by Sophus Lie and Jean Gaston Darboux, leading to important results in the theory of Lie groups and symplectic geometry. The notion of differential calculus on curved spaces was studied by Elwin Christoffel, who introduced the Christoffel symbols which describe the covariant derivative in 1868, and by others including Eugenio Beltrami who studied many analytic questions on manifolds. In 1899 Luigi Bianchi produced his Lectures on differential geometry which studied differential geometry from Riemann's perspective, and a year later Tullio Levi-Civita and Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro produced their textbook systematically developing the theory of absolute differential calculus and tensor calculus. It was in this language that differential geometry was used by Einstein in the development of general relativity and pseudo-Riemannian geometry.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The subject of modern differential geometry emerged out of the early 1900s in response to the foundational contributions of many mathematicians, including importantly the work of Henri Poincaré on the foundations of topology. At the start of the 1900s there was a major movement within mathematics to formalise the foundational aspects of the subject to avoid crises of rigour and accuracy, known as Hilbert's program. As part of this broader movement, the notion of a topological space was distilled in by Felix Hausdorff in 1914, and by 1942 there were many different notions of manifold of a combinatorial and differential-geometric nature.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Interest in the subject was also focused by the emergence of Einstein's theory of general relativity and the importance of the Einstein Field equations. Einstein's theory popularised the tensor calculus of Ricci and Levi-Civita and introduced the notation g {\\displaystyle g} for a Riemannian metric, and Γ {\\displaystyle \\Gamma } for the Christoffel symbols, both coming from G in Gravitation. Élie Cartan helped reformulate the foundations of the differential geometry of smooth manifolds in terms of exterior calculus and the theory of moving frames, leading in the world of physics to Einstein–Cartan theory.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Following this early development, many mathematicians contributed to the development of the modern theory, including Jean-Louis Koszul who introduced connections on vector bundles, Shiing-Shen Chern who introduced characteristic classes to the subject and began the study of complex manifolds, Sir William Vallance Douglas Hodge and Georges de Rham who expanded understanding of differential forms, Charles Ehresmann who introduced the theory of fibre bundles and Ehresmann connections, and others. Of particular importance was Hermann Weyl who made important contributions to the foundations of general relativity, introduced the Weyl tensor providing insight into conformal geometry, and first defined the notion of a gauge leading to the development of gauge theory in physics and mathematics.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In the middle and late 20th century differential geometry as a subject expanded in scope and developed links to other areas of mathematics and physics. The development of gauge theory and Yang–Mills theory in physics brought bundles and connections into focus, leading to developments in gauge theory. Many analytical results were investigated including the proof of the Atiyah–Singer index theorem. The development of complex geometry was spurred on by parallel results in algebraic geometry, and results in the geometry and global analysis of complex manifolds were proven by Shing-Tung Yau and others. In the latter half of the 20th century new analytic techniques were developed in regards to curvature flows such as the Ricci flow, which culminated in Grigori Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture. During this same period primarily due to the influence of Michael Atiyah, new links between theoretical physics and differential geometry were formed. Techniques from the study of the Yang–Mills equations and gauge theory were used by mathematicians to develop new invariants of smooth manifolds. Physicists such as Edward Witten, the only physicist to be awarded a Fields medal, made new impacts in mathematics by using topological quantum field theory and string theory to make predictions and provide frameworks for new rigorous mathematics, which has resulted for example in the conjectural mirror symmetry and the Seiberg–Witten invariants.",
"title": "History and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Riemannian geometry studies Riemannian manifolds, smooth manifolds with a Riemannian metric. This is a concept of distance expressed by means of a smooth positive definite symmetric bilinear form defined on the tangent space at each point. Riemannian geometry generalizes Euclidean geometry to spaces that are not necessarily flat, though they still resemble Euclidean space at each point infinitesimally, i.e. in the first order of approximation. Various concepts based on length, such as the arc length of curves, area of plane regions, and volume of solids all possess natural analogues in Riemannian geometry. The notion of a directional derivative of a function from multivariable calculus is extended to the notion of a covariant derivative of a tensor. Many concepts of analysis and differential equations have been generalized to the setting of Riemannian manifolds.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A distance-preserving diffeomorphism between Riemannian manifolds is called an isometry. This notion can also be defined locally, i.e. for small neighborhoods of points. Any two regular curves are locally isometric. However, the Theorema Egregium of Carl Friedrich Gauss showed that for surfaces, the existence of a local isometry imposes that the Gaussian curvatures at the corresponding points must be the same. In higher dimensions, the Riemann curvature tensor is an important pointwise invariant associated with a Riemannian manifold that measures how close it is to being flat. An important class of Riemannian manifolds is the Riemannian symmetric spaces, whose curvature is not necessarily constant. These are the closest analogues to the \"ordinary\" plane and space considered in Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Pseudo-Riemannian geometry generalizes Riemannian geometry to the case in which the metric tensor need not be positive-definite. A special case of this is a Lorentzian manifold, which is the mathematical basis of Einstein's general relativity theory of gravity.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Finsler geometry has Finsler manifolds as the main object of study. This is a differential manifold with a Finsler metric, that is, a Banach norm defined on each tangent space. Riemannian manifolds are special cases of the more general Finsler manifolds. A Finsler structure on a manifold M is a function F : TM → [0, ∞) such that:",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Symplectic geometry is the study of symplectic manifolds. An almost symplectic manifold is a differentiable manifold equipped with a smoothly varying non-degenerate skew-symmetric bilinear form on each tangent space, i.e., a nondegenerate 2-form ω, called the symplectic form. A symplectic manifold is an almost symplectic manifold for which the symplectic form ω is closed: dω = 0.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "A diffeomorphism between two symplectic manifolds which preserves the symplectic form is called a symplectomorphism. Non-degenerate skew-symmetric bilinear forms can only exist on even-dimensional vector spaces, so symplectic manifolds necessarily have even dimension. In dimension 2, a symplectic manifold is just a surface endowed with an area form and a symplectomorphism is an area-preserving diffeomorphism. The phase space of a mechanical system is a symplectic manifold and they made an implicit appearance already in the work of Joseph Louis Lagrange on analytical mechanics and later in Carl Gustav Jacobi's and William Rowan Hamilton's formulations of classical mechanics.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "By contrast with Riemannian geometry, where the curvature provides a local invariant of Riemannian manifolds, Darboux's theorem states that all symplectic manifolds are locally isomorphic. The only invariants of a symplectic manifold are global in nature and topological aspects play a prominent role in symplectic geometry. The first result in symplectic topology is probably the Poincaré–Birkhoff theorem, conjectured by Henri Poincaré and then proved by G.D. Birkhoff in 1912. It claims that if an area preserving map of an annulus twists each boundary component in opposite directions, then the map has at least two fixed points.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Contact geometry deals with certain manifolds of odd dimension. It is close to symplectic geometry and like the latter, it originated in questions of classical mechanics. A contact structure on a (2n + 1)-dimensional manifold M is given by a smooth hyperplane field H in the tangent bundle that is as far as possible from being associated with the level sets of a differentiable function on M (the technical term is \"completely nonintegrable tangent hyperplane distribution\"). Near each point p, a hyperplane distribution is determined by a nowhere vanishing 1-form α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } , which is unique up to multiplication by a nowhere vanishing function:",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "A local 1-form on M is a contact form if the restriction of its exterior derivative to H is a non-degenerate two-form and thus induces a symplectic structure on Hp at each point. If the distribution H can be defined by a global one-form α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } then this form is contact if and only if the top-dimensional form",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "is a volume form on M, i.e. does not vanish anywhere. A contact analogue of the Darboux theorem holds: all contact structures on an odd-dimensional manifold are locally isomorphic and can be brought to a certain local normal form by a suitable choice of the coordinate system.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Complex differential geometry is the study of complex manifolds. An almost complex manifold is a real manifold M {\\displaystyle M} , endowed with a tensor of type (1, 1), i.e. a vector bundle endomorphism (called an almost complex structure)",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "It follows from this definition that an almost complex manifold is even-dimensional.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "An almost complex manifold is called complex if N J = 0 {\\displaystyle N_{J}=0} , where N J {\\displaystyle N_{J}} is a tensor of type (2, 1) related to J {\\displaystyle J} , called the Nijenhuis tensor (or sometimes the torsion). An almost complex manifold is complex if and only if it admits a holomorphic coordinate atlas. An almost Hermitian structure is given by an almost complex structure J, along with a Riemannian metric g, satisfying the compatibility condition",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "An almost Hermitian structure defines naturally a differential two-form",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The following two conditions are equivalent:",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "where ∇ {\\displaystyle \\nabla } is the Levi-Civita connection of g {\\displaystyle g} . In this case, ( J , g ) {\\displaystyle (J,g)} is called a Kähler structure, and a Kähler manifold is a manifold endowed with a Kähler structure. In particular, a Kähler manifold is both a complex and a symplectic manifold. A large class of Kähler manifolds (the class of Hodge manifolds) is given by all the smooth complex projective varieties.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "CR geometry is the study of the intrinsic geometry of boundaries of domains in complex manifolds.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Conformal geometry is the study of the set of angle-preserving (conformal) transformations on a space.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Differential topology is the study of global geometric invariants without a metric or symplectic form.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Differential topology starts from the natural operations such as Lie derivative of natural vector bundles and de Rham differential of forms. Beside Lie algebroids, also Courant algebroids start playing a more important role.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "A Lie group is a group in the category of smooth manifolds. Beside the algebraic properties this enjoys also differential geometric properties. The most obvious construction is that of a Lie algebra which is the tangent space at the unit endowed with the Lie bracket between left-invariant vector fields. Beside the structure theory there is also the wide field of representation theory.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Geometric analysis is a mathematical discipline where tools from differential equations, especially elliptic partial differential equations are used to establish new results in differential geometry and differential topology.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Gauge theory is the study of connections on vector bundles and principal bundles, and arises out of problems in mathematical physics and physical gauge theories which underpin the standard model of particle physics. Gauge theory is concerned with the study of differential equations for connections on bundles, and the resulting geometric moduli spaces of solutions to these equations as well as the invariants that may be derived from them. These equations often arise as the Euler–Lagrange equations describing the equations of motion of certain physical systems in quantum field theory, and so their study is of considerable interest in physics.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The apparatus of vector bundles, principal bundles, and connections on bundles plays an extraordinarily important role in modern differential geometry. A smooth manifold always carries a natural vector bundle, the tangent bundle. Loosely speaking, this structure by itself is sufficient only for developing analysis on the manifold, while doing geometry requires, in addition, some way to relate the tangent spaces at different points, i.e. a notion of parallel transport. An important example is provided by affine connections. For a surface in R, tangent planes at different points can be identified using a natural path-wise parallelism induced by the ambient Euclidean space, which has a well-known standard definition of metric and parallelism. In Riemannian geometry, the Levi-Civita connection serves a similar purpose. More generally, differential geometers consider spaces with a vector bundle and an arbitrary affine connection which is not defined in terms of a metric. In physics, the manifold may be spacetime and the bundles and connections are related to various physical fields.",
"title": "Bundles and connections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "From the beginning and through the middle of the 19th century, differential geometry was studied from the extrinsic point of view: curves and surfaces were considered as lying in a Euclidean space of higher dimension (for example a surface in an ambient space of three dimensions). The simplest results are those in the differential geometry of curves and differential geometry of surfaces. Starting with the work of Riemann, the intrinsic point of view was developed, in which one cannot speak of moving \"outside\" the geometric object because it is considered to be given in a free-standing way. The fundamental result here is Gauss's theorema egregium, to the effect that Gaussian curvature is an intrinsic invariant.",
"title": "Intrinsic versus extrinsic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The intrinsic point of view is more flexible. For example, it is useful in relativity where space-time cannot naturally be taken as extrinsic. However, there is a price to pay in technical complexity: the intrinsic definitions of curvature and connections become much less visually intuitive.",
"title": "Intrinsic versus extrinsic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "These two points of view can be reconciled, i.e. the extrinsic geometry can be considered as a structure additional to the intrinsic one. (See the Nash embedding theorem.) In the formalism of geometric calculus both extrinsic and intrinsic geometry of a manifold can be characterized by a single bivector-valued one-form called the shape operator.",
"title": "Intrinsic versus extrinsic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Below are some examples of how differential geometry is applied to other fields of science and mathematics.",
"title": "Applications"
}
]
| Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky. The simplest examples of smooth spaces are the plane and space curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, and the study of these shapes formed the basis for development of modern differential geometry during the 18th and 19th centuries. Since the late 19th century, differential geometry has grown into a field concerned more generally with geometric structures on differentiable manifolds. A geometric structure is one which defines some notion of size, distance, shape, volume, or other rigidifying structure. For example, in Riemannian geometry distances and angles are specified, in symplectic geometry volumes may be computed, in conformal geometry only angles are specified, and in gauge theory certain fields are given over the space. Differential geometry is closely related to, and is sometimes taken to include, differential topology, which concerns itself with properties of differentiable manifolds that do not rely on any additional geometric structure. Differential geometry is also related to the geometric aspects of the theory of differential equations, otherwise known as geometric analysis. Differential geometry finds applications throughout mathematics and the natural sciences. Most prominently the language of differential geometry was used by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity, and subsequently by physicists in the development of quantum field theory and the standard model of particle physics. Outside of physics, differential geometry finds applications in chemistry, economics, engineering, control theory, computer graphics and computer vision, and recently in machine learning. | 2001-11-08T02:59:25Z | 2023-09-24T20:02:16Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_geometry |
8,626 | Dhole | The dhole (/doʊl/ dohl; Cuon alpinus) is a canid native to Central, South, East and Southeast Asia. It is genetically close to species within the genus Canis, but distinct in several anatomical aspects: its skull is convex rather than concave in profile, it lacks a third lower molar and the upper molars possess only a single cusp as opposed to between two and four. During the Pleistocene, the dhole ranged throughout Asia, Europe and North America but became restricted to its historical range 12,000–18,000 years ago.
The dhole is a highly social animal, living in large clans without rigid dominance hierarchies and containing multiple breeding females. Such clans usually consist of about 12 individuals, but groups of over 40 are known. It is a diurnal pack hunter which preferentially targets large and medium-sized ungulates. In tropical forests, the dhole competes with the tiger (Panthera tigris) and the leopard (Panthera pardus), targeting somewhat different prey species, but still with substantial dietary overlap.
It is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as populations are decreasing and estimated to comprise fewer than 2,500 mature individuals. Factors contributing to this decline include habitat loss, loss of prey, competition with other species, persecution due to livestock predation, and disease transfer from domestic dogs.
The etymology of "dhole" is unclear. The possible earliest written use of the word in English occurred in 1808 by soldier Thomas Williamson, who encountered the animal in Ramghur district, India. He stated that dhole was a common local name for the species. In 1827, Charles Hamilton Smith claimed that it was derived from a language spoken in 'various parts of the East'.
Two years later, Smith connected this word with Turkish: deli 'mad, crazy', and erroneously compared the Turkish word with Old Saxon: dol and Dutch: dol (cfr. also English: dull; German: toll), which are in fact from the Proto-Germanic *dwalaz 'foolish, stupid'. Richard Lydekker wrote nearly 80 years later that the word was not used by the natives living within the species' range. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary theorises that it may have come from the Kannada: ತೋಳ, romanized: tōḷa, lit. 'wolf'.
Other English names for the species include Asian wild dog, Asiatic wild dog, Indian wild dog, whistling dog, red dog, red wolf, and mountain wolf.
Canis alpinus was the binomial name proposed by Peter Simon Pallas in 1811, who described its range as encompassing the upper levels of Udskoi Ostrog in Amurland, towards the eastern side and in the region of the upper Lena River, around the Yenisei River and occasionally crossing into China. This northern Russian range reported by Pallas during the 18th and 19th centuries is "considerably north" of where this species occurs today.
Canis primaevus was a name proposed by Brian Houghton Hodgson in 1833 who thought that the dhole was a primitive Canis form and the progenitor of the domestic dog. Hodgson later took note of the dhole's physical distinctiveness from the genus Canis and proposed the genus Cuon.
The first study on the origins of the species was conducted by paleontologist Erich Thenius, who concluded in 1955 that the dhole was a post-Pleistocene descendant of a golden jackal-like ancestor. The paleontologist Bjorn Kurten wrote in his 1968 book Pleistocene Mammals of Europe that the primitive dhole Canis majori Del Campana 1913 —the remains of which have been found in Villafranchian era Valdarno, Italy and in China—was almost indistinguishable from the genus Canis. In comparison, the modern species has greatly reduced molars and the cusps have developed into sharply trenchant points. During the Early Middle Pleistocene there arose both Canis majori stehlini that was the size of a large wolf, and the early dhole Canis alpinus Pallas 1811 which first appeared at Hundsheim and Mosbach in Germany. In the Late Pleistocene era the European dhole (C. a. europaeus) was modern-looking and the transformation of the lower molar into a single cusped, slicing tooth had been completed; however, its size was comparable with that of a wolf. This subspecies became extinct in Europe at the end of the late Würm period, but the species as a whole still inhabits a large area of Asia. The European dhole may have survived up until the early Holocene in the Iberian Peninsula. and what is believed to be dhole remains have been found at Riparo Fredian in northern Italy dated 10,800 years old.
The vast Pleistocene range of this species also included numerous islands in Asia that this species no longer inhabits, such as Sri Lanka, Borneo and possibly Palawan in the Philippines. Middle Pleistocene dhole fossils have also been found in the Matsukae Cave in northern Kyushu Island in western Japan and in the Lower Kuzuu fauna in Tochigi Prefecture in Honshu Island, east Japan. Dhole fossils from the Late Pleistocene dated to about 10,700 years before present are known from the Luobi Cave or Luobi-Dong cave in Hainan Island in south China where they no longer exist. Additionally, fossils of canidae possibly belonging to dhole have been excavated from Dajia River in Taichung County, Taiwan.
The fossil record indicates that the species also occurred in North America, with remains being found in Beringia and Mexico.
In 2021, the analyses of the mitochondrial genomes extracted from the fossil remains of two extinct European dhole specimens from the Jáchymka cave, Czech Republic dated 35,000–45,000 years old indicate that these were genetically basal to modern dholes and possessed much greater genetic diversity.
The dhole's distinctive morphology has been a source of much confusion in determining the species' systematic position among the Canidae. George Simpson placed the dhole in the subfamily Simocyoninae alongside the African wild dog and the bush dog, on account of all three species' similar dentition. Subsequent authors, including Juliet Clutton-Brock, noted greater morphological similarities to canids of the genera Canis, Dusicyon and Alopex than to either Speothos or Lycaon, with any resemblance to the latter two being due to convergent evolution.
Some authors consider the extinct Canis subgenus Xenocyon as ancestral to both the genus Lycaon and the genus Cuon. Subsequent studies on the canid genome revealed that the dhole and African wild dog are closely related to members of the genus Canis. This closeness to Canis may have been confirmed in a menagerie in Madras, where according to zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock there is a record of a dhole that interbred with a golden jackal.
In 2018, whole genome sequencing was used to compare all members (apart from the black-backed and side-striped jackals) of the genus Canis, along with the dhole and the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus). There was strong evidence of ancient genetic admixture between the dhole and the African wild dog. Today, their ranges are remote from each other; however, during the Pleistocene era the dhole could be found as far west as Europe. The study proposes that the dhole's distribution may have once included the Middle East, from where it may have admixed with the African wild dog in North Africa. However, there is no evidence of the dhole having existed in the Middle East nor North Africa.
Historically, up to ten subspecies of dholes have been recognised. As of 2005, seven subspecies are recognised.
However, studies on the dhole's mtDNA and microsatellite genotype showed no clear subspecific distinctions. Nevertheless, two major phylogeographic groupings were discovered in dholes of the Asian mainland, which likely diverged during a glaciation event. One population extends from South, Central and North India (south of the Ganges) into Myanmar, and the other extends from India north of the Ganges into northeastern India, Myanmar, Thailand and the Malaysian Peninsula. The origin of dholes in Sumatra and Java is, as of 2005, unclear, as they show greater relatedness to dholes in India, Myanmar and China rather than with those in nearby Malaysia. However, the Canid Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) states that further research is needed because all of the samples were from the southern part of this species' range and the Tien Shan subspecies has distinct morphology.
In the absence of further data, the researchers involved in the study speculated that Javan and Sumatran dholes could have been introduced to the islands by humans. Fossils of dhole from the early Middle Pleistocene have been found in Java.
The dhole's general tone of the fur is reddish, with the brightest hues occurring in winter. In the winter coat, the back is clothed in a saturated rusty-red to reddish colour with brownish highlights along the top of the head, neck and shoulders. The throat, chest, flanks, and belly and the upper parts of the limbs are less brightly coloured, and are more yellowish in tone. The lower parts of the limbs are whitish, with dark brownish bands on the anterior sides of the forelimbs. The muzzle and forehead are greyish-reddish. The tail is very luxuriant and fluffy, and is mainly of a reddish-ocherous colour, with a dark brown tip. The summer coat is shorter, coarser and darker. The dorsal and lateral guard hairs in adults measure 20–30 mm (0.79–1.18 in) in length. Dholes in the Moscow Zoo moult once a year from March to May. A melanistic individual was recorded in the northern Coimbatore Forest Division in Tamil Nadu.
The dhole has a wide and massive skull with a well-developed sagittal crest, and its masseter muscles are highly developed compared to other canid species, giving the face an almost hyena-like appearance. The rostrum is shorter than that of domestic dogs and most other canids. It has six rather than seven lower molars. The upper molars are weak, being one third to one half the size of those of wolves and have only one cusp as opposed to between two and four, as is usual in canids, an adaptation thought to improve shearing ability, thus allowing it to compete more successfully with kleptoparasites. Adult females can weigh 10–17 kg (22–37 lb), while the slightly larger male may weigh 15–21 kg (33–46 lb). The mean weight of adults from three small samples was 15.1 kg (33 lb).
In appearance, the dhole has been variously described as combining the physical characteristics of the gray wolf and the red fox, and as being "cat-like" on account of its long backbone and slender limbs.
The dhole can be found in Tibet and possibly also in North Korea and Pakistan. It once inhabited the alpine steppes extending into Kashmir to the Ladakh area. In Central Asia, the dhole primarily inhabits mountainous areas; in the western part of its range, it lives mostly in alpine meadows and high-montane steppes, while in the east, it mainly ranges in montane taigas, and is sometimes sighted along coastlines. In India, Myanmar, Indochina, Indonesia and China, it prefers forested areas in alpine zones and is occasionally sighted in plains regions.
In the Pamir Mountains of southern Kyrgyzstan, the presence of the dhole was confirmed in 2019.
The dhole might still be present in the Tunkinsky National Park in extreme southern Siberia near Lake Baikal. It possibly still lives in the Primorsky Krai province in far eastern Russia, where it was considered a rare and endangered species in 2004, with unconfirmed reports in the Pikthsa-Tigrovy Dom protected forest area; no sighting was reported in other areas since the late 1970s. Currently, no other recent reports are confirmed of dhole being present in Russia. However, the dhole might be present in the eastern Sayan Mountains and in the Transbaikal region; it has been sighted in Tofalaria in the Irkutsk Oblast, the Republic of Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai.
One pack was sighted in the Qilian Mountains in 2006. In 2011 to 2013, local government officials and herders reported the presence of several dhole packs at elevations of 2,000 to 3,500 m (6,600 to 11,500 ft) near Taxkorgan Nature Reserve in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Several packs and a female adult with pups were also recorded by camera traps at elevations of around 2,500 to 4,000 m (8,200 to 13,100 ft) in Yanchiwan National Nature Reserve in the northern Gansu Province in 2013–2014. Dholes have been also reported in the Altyn-Tagh Mountains.
In China's Yunnan Province, dholes were recorded in Baima Xueshan Nature Reserve in 2010–2011. Dhole samples were obtained in Jiangxi Province in 2013. Confirmed records by camera-trapping since 2008 have occurred in southern and western Gansu province, southern Shaanxi province, southern Qinghai province, southern and western Yunnan province, western Sichuan province, the southern Xinjiang Autonomous Region and in the Southeastern Tibet Autonomoous Region. There are also historical records of dhole dating to 1521–1935 in Hainan Island, but the species is no longer present and is estimated to have become extinct around 1942.
The dhole occurs in most of India south of the Ganges, particularly in the Central Indian Highlands and the Western and Eastern Ghats. It is also present in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya and West Bengal and in the Indo-Gangetic Plain's Terai region. Dhole populations in the Himalayas and northwest India are fragmented.
In 2011, dhole packs were recorded by camera traps in the Chitwan National Park. Its presence was confirmed in the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area in 2011 by camera traps. In February 2020, dholes were sighted in the Vansda National Park, with camera traps confirming the presence of two individuals in May of the same year. This was the first confirmed sighting of dholes in Gujarat since 1970.
In Bhutan, the dhole is present in Jigme Dorji National Park.
In Bangladesh, it inhabits forest reserves in the Sylhet area, as well the Chittagong Hill Tracts in the southeast. Recent camera trap photos in the Chittagong in 2016 showed the continued presence of the dhole. These regions probably do not harbour a viable population, as mostly small groups or solitary individuals were sighted.
In Myanmar, the dhole is present in several protected areas. In 2015, dholes and tigers were recorded by camera-traps for the first time in the hill forests of Karen State.
Its range is highly fragmented in the Malaysian Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Vietnam and Thailand. In 2014, camera trap videos in the montane tropical forests at 2,000 m (6,600 ft) in the Kerinci Seblat National Park in Sumatra revealed its continued presence. A camera trapping survey in the Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand from January 2008 to February 2010 documented one healthy dhole pack. In northern Laos, dholes were studied in Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area. Camera trap surveys from 2012 to 2017 recorded dholes in the same Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area.
In Vietnam, dholes were sighted only in Pu Mat National Park in 1999, in Yok Don National Park in 2003 and 2004; and in Ninh Thuan Province in 2014.
In 2019, scat samples collected in the Bek-Tosot Conservancy in Kyrgyzstan confirmed the continued presence of dholes in the area. This was the first record of dholes from the country in almost three decades.
A disjunct dhole population was reported in the area of Trabzon and Rize in northeastern Turkey near the border with Georgia in the 1990s. This report was not considered to be reliable. One single individual was claimed to have been shot in 2013 in the nearby Kabardino-Balkaria Republic in the central Caucasus; its remains were analysed in May 2015 by a biologist from the Kabardino-Balkarian State University, who concluded that the skull was indeed that of a dhole. In August 2015, researchers from the National Museum of Natural History and the Karadeniz Technical University started an expedition to track and document this possible Turkish population of dhole. In October 2015, they concluded that no real evidence exists of a living dhole population in Turkey or in the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, pending DNA analysis of samples from the original 1994 skins.
Dholes produce whistles resembling the calls of red foxes, sometimes rendered as coo-coo. How this sound is produced is unknown, though it is thought to help in coordinating the pack when travelling through thick brush. When attacking prey, they emit screaming KaKaKaKAA sounds. Other sounds include whines (food soliciting), growls (warning), screams, chatterings (both of which are alarm calls) and yapping cries. In contrast to wolves, dholes do not howl or bark.
Dholes have a complex body language. Friendly or submissive greetings are accompanied by horizontal lip retraction and the lowering of the tail, as well as licking. Playful dholes open their mouths with their lips retracted and their tails held in a vertical position whilst assuming a play bow. Aggressive or threatening dholes pucker their lips forward in a snarl and raise the hairs on their backs, as well as keep their tails horizontal or vertical. When afraid, they pull their lips back horizontally with their tails tucked and their ears flat against the skull.
Dholes are more social than gray wolves, and have less of a dominance hierarchy, as seasonal scarcity of food is not a serious concern for them. In this manner, they closely resemble African wild dogs in social structure. They live in clans rather than packs, as the latter term refers to a group of animals that always hunt together. In contrast, dhole clans frequently break into small packs of three to five animals, particularly during the spring season, as this is the optimal number for catching fawns. Dominant dholes are hard to identify, as they do not engage in dominance displays as wolves do, though other clan members will show submissive behaviour toward them. Intragroup fighting is rarely observed.
Dholes are far less territorial than wolves, with pups from one clan often joining another without trouble once they mature sexually. Clans typically number 5 to 12 individuals in India, though clans of 40 have been reported. In Thailand, clans rarely exceed three individuals. Unlike other canids, there is no evidence of dholes using urine to mark their territories or travel routes. When urinating, dholes, especially males, may raise one hind leg or both to result in a handstand. Handstand urination is also seen in bush dogs (Speothos venaticus). They may defecate in conspicuous places, though a territorial function is unlikely, as faeces are mostly deposited within the clan's territory rather than the periphery. Faeces are often deposited in what appear to be communal latrines. They do not scrape the earth with their feet, as other canids do, to mark their territories.
Four kinds of den have been described; simple earth dens with one entrance (usually remodeled striped hyena or porcupine dens); complex cavernous earth dens with more than one entrance; simple cavernous dens excavated under or between rocks; and complex cavernous dens with several other dens in the vicinity, some of which are interconnected. Dens are typically located under dense scrub or on the banks of dry rivers or creeks. The entrance to a dhole den can be almost vertical, with a sharp turn three to four feet down. The tunnel opens into an antechamber, from which extends more than one passage. Some dens may have up to six entrances leading up to thirty metres (100 ft) of interconnecting tunnels. These "cities" may be developed over many generations of dholes, and are shared by the clan females when raising young together. Like African wild dogs and dingoes, dholes will avoid killing prey close to their dens.
In India, the mating season occurs between mid-October and January, while captive dholes in the Moscow Zoo breed mostly in February. Unlike wolf packs, dhole clans may contain more than one breeding female. More than one female dhole may den and rear their litters together in the same den. During mating, the female assumes a crouched, cat-like position. There is no copulatory tie characteristic of other canids when the male dismounts. Instead, the pair lie on their sides facing each other in a semicircular formation. The gestation period lasts 60–63 days, with litter sizes averaging four to six pups. Their growth rate is much faster than that of wolves, being similar in rate to that of coyotes.
The hormone metabolites of five males and three females kept in Thai zoos was studied. The breeding males showed an increased level of testosterone from October to January. The oestrogen level of captive females increases for about two weeks in January, followed by an increase of progesterone. They displayed sexual behaviours during the oestrogen peak of the females.
Pups are suckled at least 58 days. During this time, the pack feeds the mother at the den site. Dholes do not use rendezvous sites to meet their pups as wolves do, though one or more adults will stay with the pups at the den while the rest of the pack hunts. Once weaning begins, the adults of the clan will regurgitate food for the pups until they are old enough to join in hunting. They remain at the den site for 70–80 days. By the age of six months, pups accompany the adults on hunts and will assist in killing large prey such as sambar by the age of eight months. Maximum longevity in captivity is 15–16 years.
Before embarking on a hunt, clans go through elaborate prehunt social rituals involving nuzzling, body rubbing and mounting. Dholes are primarily diurnal hunters, hunting in the early hours of the morning. They rarely hunt nocturnally, except on moonlit nights, indicating they greatly rely on sight when hunting. Although not as fast as jackals and foxes, they can chase their prey for many hours. During a pursuit, one or more dholes may take over chasing their prey, while the rest of the pack keeps up at a steadier pace behind, taking over once the other group tires. Most chases are short, lasting only 500 m (1,600 ft). When chasing fleet-footed prey, they run at a pace of 50 km/h (30 mph). Dholes frequently drive their prey into water bodies, where the targeted animal's movements are hindered.
Once large prey is caught, one dhole will grab the prey's nose, while the rest of the pack pulls the animal down by the flanks and hindquarters. They do not use a killing bite to the throat. They occasionally blind their prey by attacking the eyes. Serows are among the only ungulate species capable of effectively defending themselves against dhole attacks, due to their thick, protective coats and short, sharp horns capable of easily impaling dholes. They will tear open their prey's flanks and disembowel it, eating the heart, liver, lungs and some sections of the intestines. The stomach and rumen are usually left untouched. Prey weighing less than 50 kg (110 lb) is usually killed within two minutes, while large stags may take 15 minutes to die. Once prey is secured, dholes will tear off pieces of the carcass and eat in seclusion. Unlike wolf packs, in which the breeding pair monopolises food, dholes give access to the pups at a kill. They are generally tolerant of scavengers at their kills. Both mother and young are provided with regurgitated food by other pack members.
Prey animals in India include chital, sambar deer, muntjac, mouse deer, barasingha, wild boar, gaur, water buffaloes, banteng, cattle, nilgai, goats, Indian hares, Himalayan field rats and langurs. There is one record of a pack bringing down an Indian elephant calf in Assam, despite desperate defense of the mother, resulting in numerous losses to the pack. In Kashmir, they prey on markhor, and thamin in Myanmar, Malayan tapir, Sumatran serow in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula and Javan rusa in Java. In the Tian Shan and Tarbagatai Mountains, dholes prey on Siberian ibexes, arkhar, roe deer, Caspian red deer and wild boar. In the Altai and Sayan Mountains, they prey on musk deer and reindeer. In eastern Siberia, they prey on roe deer, Manchurian wapiti, wild pig, musk deer and reindeer, while in Primorye they feed on sika deer and goral. In Mongolia, they prey on argali and rarely Siberian ibex.
Like African wild dogs, but unlike wolves, dholes are not known to attack people. They are known to eat insects and lizards. Dholes eat fruit and vegetable matter more readily than other canids. In captivity, they eat various kinds of grasses, herbs and leaves, seemingly for pleasure rather than just when ill. In summertime in the Tian Shan Mountains, dholes eat large quantities of mountain rhubarb. Although opportunistic, dholes have a seeming aversion to hunting cattle and their calves. Livestock predation by dholes has been a problem in Bhutan since the late 1990s, as domestic animals are often left outside to graze in the forest, sometimes for weeks at a time. Livestock stall-fed at night and grazed near homes are never attacked. Oxen are killed more often than cows, probably because they are given less protection.
In some areas, dholes are sympatric to tigers and leopards. Competition between these species is mostly avoided through differences in prey selection, although there is still substantial dietary overlap. Along with leopards, dholes typically target animals in the 30–175 kg (66–386 lb) range (mean weights of 35.3 kg [78 lb] for dhole and 23.4 kg [52 lb] for leopard), while tigers selected for prey animals heavier than 176 kg (388 lb) (but their mean prey weight was 65.5 kg [144 lb]). Also, other characteristics of the prey, such as sex, arboreality and aggressiveness, may play a role in prey selection. For example, dholes preferentially select male chital, whereas leopards kill both sexes more evenly (and tigers prefer larger prey altogether), dholes and tigers kill langurs rarely compared to leopards due to the leopards' greater arboreality, while leopards kill wild boar infrequently due to the inability of this relatively light predator to tackle aggressive prey of comparable weight.
Tigers are dangerous opponents for dholes, as they have sufficient strength to kill a dhole with a single paw strike. Dhole packs are smaller in areas with higher tiger densities due to tigers directly killing dholes and stealing kills they made. The kleptoparasitism causes dholes to prefer hunting smaller animals because they can eat more of a smaller carcass before a tiger arrives to steal it. Direct predation can lead to lower reproductive and recruitment rates, lower hunting success rates and less food for the pups when a helper is killed, and potentially pack destabilization if one member of the breeding pair is killed.
Dhole packs may steal leopard kills, while leopards may kill dholes if they encounter them singly or in pairs. There are numerous records of leopards being treed by dholes. Dholes were once thought to be a major factor in reducing Asiatic cheetah populations, though this is doubtful, as cheetahs live in open areas as opposed to forested areas favoured by dholes. Since leopards are smaller than tigers and are more likely to hunt dholes, dhole packs tend to react more aggressively toward them than they do towards tigers.
Dhole packs occasionally attack Asiatic black bears, snow leopards and sloth bears. When attacking bears, dholes will attempt to prevent them from seeking refuge in caves and lacerate their hindquarters. Although usually antagonistic toward wolves, they may hunt and feed alongside one another.
The dhole is also sympatric with the Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes) in parts of its range. There is at least one record of a lone wolf associating with a pair of dholes in Debrigarh Wildlife Sanctuary, and two observations in Satpura Tiger Reserve. They infrequently associate in mixed groups with golden jackals. Domestic dogs may kill dholes, though they will feed alongside them on occasion.
Dholes are vulnerable to a number of different diseases, particularly in areas where they are sympatric with other canid species. Infectious pathogens such as Toxocara canis are present in their faeces. They may suffer from rabies, canine distemper, mange, trypanosomiasis, canine parvovirus and endoparasites such as cestodes and roundworms.
The dhole only rarely takes domestic livestock. Some ethnic groups like the Kuruba and Mon Khmer-speaking tribes will appropriate dhole kills; some Indian villagers welcome the dhole because of this appropriation of dhole kills. Dholes were persecuted throughout India for bounties until they were given protection by the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. Methods used for dhole hunting included poisoning, snaring, shooting and clubbing at den sites. Native Indian people killed dholes primarily to protect livestock, while British sporthunters during the British Raj did so under the conviction that dholes were responsible for drops in game populations. Persecution of dholes still occurs with varying degrees of intensity according to the region. Bounties paid for dholes used to be 25 rupees, though this was reduced to 20 in 1926 after the number of presented dhole carcasses became too numerous to maintain the established reward. In Indochina, dholes suffer heavily from nonselective hunting techniques such as snaring.
The fur trade does not pose a significant threat to dholes. The people of India do not eat dhole flesh and their fur is not considered overly valuable. Due to their rarity, dholes were never harvested for their skins in large numbers in the Soviet Union and were sometimes accepted as dog or wolf pelts (being labeled as "half wolf" for the latter). The winter fur was prized by the Chinese, who bought dhole pelts in Ussuriysk during the late 1860s for a few silver rubles. In the early 20th century, dhole pelts reached eight rubles in Manchuria. In Semirechye, fur coats made from dhole skin were considered the warmest, but were very costly.
A study in 2021 highlighted habitat loss anounting to 60% of their traditional range in India. The resulting fragmentation and isolation of dhol populations has resulted in inbreeding and the Allee effect which threaten their long term viability.
In India, the dhole is protected under Schedule 2 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. The creation of reserves under Project Tiger provided some protection for dhole populations sympatric with tigers. In 2014, the Indian government sanctioned its first dhole conservation breeding centre at the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park (IGZP) in Visakhapatnam. The dhole has been protected in Russia since 1974, though it is vulnerable to poison left out for wolves. In China, the animal is listed as a category II protected species under the Chinese wildlife protection act of 1988. In Cambodia, the dhole is protected from all hunting, while conservation laws in Vietnam limit extraction and utilisation.
In 2016, the Korean company Sooam Biotech was reported to be attempting to clone the dhole using dogs as surrogate mothers to help conserve the species.
Three dhole-like animals are featured on the coping stone of the Bharhut stupa dating from 100 BC. They are shown waiting by a tree, with a woman or spirit trapped up it, a scene reminiscent of dholes treeing tigers. The animal's fearsome reputation in India is reflected by the number of pejorative names it possesses in Hindi, which variously translate as "red devil", "devil dog", "jungle devil", or "hound of Kali".
Leopold von Schrenck had trouble obtaining dhole specimens during his exploration of Amurland, as the local Gilyaks greatly feared the species. This fear and superstition was not, however, shared by neighbouring Tungusic peoples. It was speculated that this differing attitude towards the dhole was due to the Tungusic people's more nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Dholes appear in Rudyard Kipling's Red Dog, where they are portrayed as aggressive and bloodthirsty animals which descend from the Deccan Plateau into the Seeonee Hills inhabited by Mowgli and his adopted wolf pack to cause carnage among the jungle's denizens. They are described as living in packs numbering hundreds of individuals, and that even Shere Khan and Hathi make way for them when they descend into the jungle. The dholes are despised by the wolves because of their destructiveness, their habit of not living in dens and the hair between their toes. With Mowgli and Kaa's help, the Seeonee wolf pack manages to wipe out the dholes by leading them through bee hives and torrential waters before finishing off the rest in battle.
Japanese author Uchida Roan wrote 犬物語 (Inu monogatari; A dog's tale) in 1901 as a nationalistic critique of the declining popularity of indigenous dog breeds, which he asserted were descended from the dhole.
A fictional version of the dhole, imbued with supernatural abilities, appears in the season 6 episode of TV series The X-Files, titled "Alpha".
In China, the dhole were widely known throughout history and mythology. One notable legendary creature is the Yazi (睚眦), which was believed to be a creature that was part-dhole part-dragon. In modern times, however, the Chinese word for dhole (豺; Chái) is often confused with 'jackal' or 'wolf', resulting in many confusions and mistranslations of dholes as jackals or wolves.
Dholes also appear as enemies in the video game Far Cry 4, alongside other predators such as the Bengal tiger, honey badger, snow leopard, clouded leopard, Tibetan wolf and Asian black bear. They can be found hunting the player and other NPCs across the map, but are easily killed, being one of the weakest enemies in the game. They once again appear in the video game Far Cry Primal, where they play similar roles as their counterparts in the previous game, but can now also be tamed and used in combat by Takkar, the main protagonist of the game.
Brian Houghton Hodgson kept captured dholes in captivity, and found, with the exception of one animal, they remained shy and vicious even after 10 months. According to Richard Lydekker, adult dholes are nearly impossible to tame, though pups are docile and can even be allowed to play with domestic dog pups until they reach early adulthood. A dhole may have been presented as a gift to Ibbi-Sin as tribute. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The dhole (/doʊl/ dohl; Cuon alpinus) is a canid native to Central, South, East and Southeast Asia. It is genetically close to species within the genus Canis, but distinct in several anatomical aspects: its skull is convex rather than concave in profile, it lacks a third lower molar and the upper molars possess only a single cusp as opposed to between two and four. During the Pleistocene, the dhole ranged throughout Asia, Europe and North America but became restricted to its historical range 12,000–18,000 years ago.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The dhole is a highly social animal, living in large clans without rigid dominance hierarchies and containing multiple breeding females. Such clans usually consist of about 12 individuals, but groups of over 40 are known. It is a diurnal pack hunter which preferentially targets large and medium-sized ungulates. In tropical forests, the dhole competes with the tiger (Panthera tigris) and the leopard (Panthera pardus), targeting somewhat different prey species, but still with substantial dietary overlap.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "It is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as populations are decreasing and estimated to comprise fewer than 2,500 mature individuals. Factors contributing to this decline include habitat loss, loss of prey, competition with other species, persecution due to livestock predation, and disease transfer from domestic dogs.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The etymology of \"dhole\" is unclear. The possible earliest written use of the word in English occurred in 1808 by soldier Thomas Williamson, who encountered the animal in Ramghur district, India. He stated that dhole was a common local name for the species. In 1827, Charles Hamilton Smith claimed that it was derived from a language spoken in 'various parts of the East'.",
"title": "Etymology and naming"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Two years later, Smith connected this word with Turkish: deli 'mad, crazy', and erroneously compared the Turkish word with Old Saxon: dol and Dutch: dol (cfr. also English: dull; German: toll), which are in fact from the Proto-Germanic *dwalaz 'foolish, stupid'. Richard Lydekker wrote nearly 80 years later that the word was not used by the natives living within the species' range. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary theorises that it may have come from the Kannada: ತೋಳ, romanized: tōḷa, lit. 'wolf'.",
"title": "Etymology and naming"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Other English names for the species include Asian wild dog, Asiatic wild dog, Indian wild dog, whistling dog, red dog, red wolf, and mountain wolf.",
"title": "Etymology and naming"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Canis alpinus was the binomial name proposed by Peter Simon Pallas in 1811, who described its range as encompassing the upper levels of Udskoi Ostrog in Amurland, towards the eastern side and in the region of the upper Lena River, around the Yenisei River and occasionally crossing into China. This northern Russian range reported by Pallas during the 18th and 19th centuries is \"considerably north\" of where this species occurs today.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Canis primaevus was a name proposed by Brian Houghton Hodgson in 1833 who thought that the dhole was a primitive Canis form and the progenitor of the domestic dog. Hodgson later took note of the dhole's physical distinctiveness from the genus Canis and proposed the genus Cuon.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The first study on the origins of the species was conducted by paleontologist Erich Thenius, who concluded in 1955 that the dhole was a post-Pleistocene descendant of a golden jackal-like ancestor. The paleontologist Bjorn Kurten wrote in his 1968 book Pleistocene Mammals of Europe that the primitive dhole Canis majori Del Campana 1913 —the remains of which have been found in Villafranchian era Valdarno, Italy and in China—was almost indistinguishable from the genus Canis. In comparison, the modern species has greatly reduced molars and the cusps have developed into sharply trenchant points. During the Early Middle Pleistocene there arose both Canis majori stehlini that was the size of a large wolf, and the early dhole Canis alpinus Pallas 1811 which first appeared at Hundsheim and Mosbach in Germany. In the Late Pleistocene era the European dhole (C. a. europaeus) was modern-looking and the transformation of the lower molar into a single cusped, slicing tooth had been completed; however, its size was comparable with that of a wolf. This subspecies became extinct in Europe at the end of the late Würm period, but the species as a whole still inhabits a large area of Asia. The European dhole may have survived up until the early Holocene in the Iberian Peninsula. and what is believed to be dhole remains have been found at Riparo Fredian in northern Italy dated 10,800 years old.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The vast Pleistocene range of this species also included numerous islands in Asia that this species no longer inhabits, such as Sri Lanka, Borneo and possibly Palawan in the Philippines. Middle Pleistocene dhole fossils have also been found in the Matsukae Cave in northern Kyushu Island in western Japan and in the Lower Kuzuu fauna in Tochigi Prefecture in Honshu Island, east Japan. Dhole fossils from the Late Pleistocene dated to about 10,700 years before present are known from the Luobi Cave or Luobi-Dong cave in Hainan Island in south China where they no longer exist. Additionally, fossils of canidae possibly belonging to dhole have been excavated from Dajia River in Taichung County, Taiwan.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The fossil record indicates that the species also occurred in North America, with remains being found in Beringia and Mexico.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 2021, the analyses of the mitochondrial genomes extracted from the fossil remains of two extinct European dhole specimens from the Jáchymka cave, Czech Republic dated 35,000–45,000 years old indicate that these were genetically basal to modern dholes and possessed much greater genetic diversity.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The dhole's distinctive morphology has been a source of much confusion in determining the species' systematic position among the Canidae. George Simpson placed the dhole in the subfamily Simocyoninae alongside the African wild dog and the bush dog, on account of all three species' similar dentition. Subsequent authors, including Juliet Clutton-Brock, noted greater morphological similarities to canids of the genera Canis, Dusicyon and Alopex than to either Speothos or Lycaon, with any resemblance to the latter two being due to convergent evolution.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Some authors consider the extinct Canis subgenus Xenocyon as ancestral to both the genus Lycaon and the genus Cuon. Subsequent studies on the canid genome revealed that the dhole and African wild dog are closely related to members of the genus Canis. This closeness to Canis may have been confirmed in a menagerie in Madras, where according to zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock there is a record of a dhole that interbred with a golden jackal.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 2018, whole genome sequencing was used to compare all members (apart from the black-backed and side-striped jackals) of the genus Canis, along with the dhole and the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus). There was strong evidence of ancient genetic admixture between the dhole and the African wild dog. Today, their ranges are remote from each other; however, during the Pleistocene era the dhole could be found as far west as Europe. The study proposes that the dhole's distribution may have once included the Middle East, from where it may have admixed with the African wild dog in North Africa. However, there is no evidence of the dhole having existed in the Middle East nor North Africa.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Historically, up to ten subspecies of dholes have been recognised. As of 2005, seven subspecies are recognised.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "However, studies on the dhole's mtDNA and microsatellite genotype showed no clear subspecific distinctions. Nevertheless, two major phylogeographic groupings were discovered in dholes of the Asian mainland, which likely diverged during a glaciation event. One population extends from South, Central and North India (south of the Ganges) into Myanmar, and the other extends from India north of the Ganges into northeastern India, Myanmar, Thailand and the Malaysian Peninsula. The origin of dholes in Sumatra and Java is, as of 2005, unclear, as they show greater relatedness to dholes in India, Myanmar and China rather than with those in nearby Malaysia. However, the Canid Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) states that further research is needed because all of the samples were from the southern part of this species' range and the Tien Shan subspecies has distinct morphology.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In the absence of further data, the researchers involved in the study speculated that Javan and Sumatran dholes could have been introduced to the islands by humans. Fossils of dhole from the early Middle Pleistocene have been found in Java.",
"title": "Taxonomy and evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The dhole's general tone of the fur is reddish, with the brightest hues occurring in winter. In the winter coat, the back is clothed in a saturated rusty-red to reddish colour with brownish highlights along the top of the head, neck and shoulders. The throat, chest, flanks, and belly and the upper parts of the limbs are less brightly coloured, and are more yellowish in tone. The lower parts of the limbs are whitish, with dark brownish bands on the anterior sides of the forelimbs. The muzzle and forehead are greyish-reddish. The tail is very luxuriant and fluffy, and is mainly of a reddish-ocherous colour, with a dark brown tip. The summer coat is shorter, coarser and darker. The dorsal and lateral guard hairs in adults measure 20–30 mm (0.79–1.18 in) in length. Dholes in the Moscow Zoo moult once a year from March to May. A melanistic individual was recorded in the northern Coimbatore Forest Division in Tamil Nadu.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The dhole has a wide and massive skull with a well-developed sagittal crest, and its masseter muscles are highly developed compared to other canid species, giving the face an almost hyena-like appearance. The rostrum is shorter than that of domestic dogs and most other canids. It has six rather than seven lower molars. The upper molars are weak, being one third to one half the size of those of wolves and have only one cusp as opposed to between two and four, as is usual in canids, an adaptation thought to improve shearing ability, thus allowing it to compete more successfully with kleptoparasites. Adult females can weigh 10–17 kg (22–37 lb), while the slightly larger male may weigh 15–21 kg (33–46 lb). The mean weight of adults from three small samples was 15.1 kg (33 lb).",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In appearance, the dhole has been variously described as combining the physical characteristics of the gray wolf and the red fox, and as being \"cat-like\" on account of its long backbone and slender limbs.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The dhole can be found in Tibet and possibly also in North Korea and Pakistan. It once inhabited the alpine steppes extending into Kashmir to the Ladakh area. In Central Asia, the dhole primarily inhabits mountainous areas; in the western part of its range, it lives mostly in alpine meadows and high-montane steppes, while in the east, it mainly ranges in montane taigas, and is sometimes sighted along coastlines. In India, Myanmar, Indochina, Indonesia and China, it prefers forested areas in alpine zones and is occasionally sighted in plains regions.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In the Pamir Mountains of southern Kyrgyzstan, the presence of the dhole was confirmed in 2019.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The dhole might still be present in the Tunkinsky National Park in extreme southern Siberia near Lake Baikal. It possibly still lives in the Primorsky Krai province in far eastern Russia, where it was considered a rare and endangered species in 2004, with unconfirmed reports in the Pikthsa-Tigrovy Dom protected forest area; no sighting was reported in other areas since the late 1970s. Currently, no other recent reports are confirmed of dhole being present in Russia. However, the dhole might be present in the eastern Sayan Mountains and in the Transbaikal region; it has been sighted in Tofalaria in the Irkutsk Oblast, the Republic of Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "One pack was sighted in the Qilian Mountains in 2006. In 2011 to 2013, local government officials and herders reported the presence of several dhole packs at elevations of 2,000 to 3,500 m (6,600 to 11,500 ft) near Taxkorgan Nature Reserve in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Several packs and a female adult with pups were also recorded by camera traps at elevations of around 2,500 to 4,000 m (8,200 to 13,100 ft) in Yanchiwan National Nature Reserve in the northern Gansu Province in 2013–2014. Dholes have been also reported in the Altyn-Tagh Mountains.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In China's Yunnan Province, dholes were recorded in Baima Xueshan Nature Reserve in 2010–2011. Dhole samples were obtained in Jiangxi Province in 2013. Confirmed records by camera-trapping since 2008 have occurred in southern and western Gansu province, southern Shaanxi province, southern Qinghai province, southern and western Yunnan province, western Sichuan province, the southern Xinjiang Autonomous Region and in the Southeastern Tibet Autonomoous Region. There are also historical records of dhole dating to 1521–1935 in Hainan Island, but the species is no longer present and is estimated to have become extinct around 1942.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The dhole occurs in most of India south of the Ganges, particularly in the Central Indian Highlands and the Western and Eastern Ghats. It is also present in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya and West Bengal and in the Indo-Gangetic Plain's Terai region. Dhole populations in the Himalayas and northwest India are fragmented.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 2011, dhole packs were recorded by camera traps in the Chitwan National Park. Its presence was confirmed in the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area in 2011 by camera traps. In February 2020, dholes were sighted in the Vansda National Park, with camera traps confirming the presence of two individuals in May of the same year. This was the first confirmed sighting of dholes in Gujarat since 1970.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In Bhutan, the dhole is present in Jigme Dorji National Park.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In Bangladesh, it inhabits forest reserves in the Sylhet area, as well the Chittagong Hill Tracts in the southeast. Recent camera trap photos in the Chittagong in 2016 showed the continued presence of the dhole. These regions probably do not harbour a viable population, as mostly small groups or solitary individuals were sighted.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In Myanmar, the dhole is present in several protected areas. In 2015, dholes and tigers were recorded by camera-traps for the first time in the hill forests of Karen State.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Its range is highly fragmented in the Malaysian Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Vietnam and Thailand. In 2014, camera trap videos in the montane tropical forests at 2,000 m (6,600 ft) in the Kerinci Seblat National Park in Sumatra revealed its continued presence. A camera trapping survey in the Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand from January 2008 to February 2010 documented one healthy dhole pack. In northern Laos, dholes were studied in Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area. Camera trap surveys from 2012 to 2017 recorded dholes in the same Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In Vietnam, dholes were sighted only in Pu Mat National Park in 1999, in Yok Don National Park in 2003 and 2004; and in Ninh Thuan Province in 2014.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 2019, scat samples collected in the Bek-Tosot Conservancy in Kyrgyzstan confirmed the continued presence of dholes in the area. This was the first record of dholes from the country in almost three decades.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "A disjunct dhole population was reported in the area of Trabzon and Rize in northeastern Turkey near the border with Georgia in the 1990s. This report was not considered to be reliable. One single individual was claimed to have been shot in 2013 in the nearby Kabardino-Balkaria Republic in the central Caucasus; its remains were analysed in May 2015 by a biologist from the Kabardino-Balkarian State University, who concluded that the skull was indeed that of a dhole. In August 2015, researchers from the National Museum of Natural History and the Karadeniz Technical University started an expedition to track and document this possible Turkish population of dhole. In October 2015, they concluded that no real evidence exists of a living dhole population in Turkey or in the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, pending DNA analysis of samples from the original 1994 skins.",
"title": "Distribution and habitat"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Dholes produce whistles resembling the calls of red foxes, sometimes rendered as coo-coo. How this sound is produced is unknown, though it is thought to help in coordinating the pack when travelling through thick brush. When attacking prey, they emit screaming KaKaKaKAA sounds. Other sounds include whines (food soliciting), growls (warning), screams, chatterings (both of which are alarm calls) and yapping cries. In contrast to wolves, dholes do not howl or bark.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Dholes have a complex body language. Friendly or submissive greetings are accompanied by horizontal lip retraction and the lowering of the tail, as well as licking. Playful dholes open their mouths with their lips retracted and their tails held in a vertical position whilst assuming a play bow. Aggressive or threatening dholes pucker their lips forward in a snarl and raise the hairs on their backs, as well as keep their tails horizontal or vertical. When afraid, they pull their lips back horizontally with their tails tucked and their ears flat against the skull.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Dholes are more social than gray wolves, and have less of a dominance hierarchy, as seasonal scarcity of food is not a serious concern for them. In this manner, they closely resemble African wild dogs in social structure. They live in clans rather than packs, as the latter term refers to a group of animals that always hunt together. In contrast, dhole clans frequently break into small packs of three to five animals, particularly during the spring season, as this is the optimal number for catching fawns. Dominant dholes are hard to identify, as they do not engage in dominance displays as wolves do, though other clan members will show submissive behaviour toward them. Intragroup fighting is rarely observed.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Dholes are far less territorial than wolves, with pups from one clan often joining another without trouble once they mature sexually. Clans typically number 5 to 12 individuals in India, though clans of 40 have been reported. In Thailand, clans rarely exceed three individuals. Unlike other canids, there is no evidence of dholes using urine to mark their territories or travel routes. When urinating, dholes, especially males, may raise one hind leg or both to result in a handstand. Handstand urination is also seen in bush dogs (Speothos venaticus). They may defecate in conspicuous places, though a territorial function is unlikely, as faeces are mostly deposited within the clan's territory rather than the periphery. Faeces are often deposited in what appear to be communal latrines. They do not scrape the earth with their feet, as other canids do, to mark their territories.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Four kinds of den have been described; simple earth dens with one entrance (usually remodeled striped hyena or porcupine dens); complex cavernous earth dens with more than one entrance; simple cavernous dens excavated under or between rocks; and complex cavernous dens with several other dens in the vicinity, some of which are interconnected. Dens are typically located under dense scrub or on the banks of dry rivers or creeks. The entrance to a dhole den can be almost vertical, with a sharp turn three to four feet down. The tunnel opens into an antechamber, from which extends more than one passage. Some dens may have up to six entrances leading up to thirty metres (100 ft) of interconnecting tunnels. These \"cities\" may be developed over many generations of dholes, and are shared by the clan females when raising young together. Like African wild dogs and dingoes, dholes will avoid killing prey close to their dens.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In India, the mating season occurs between mid-October and January, while captive dholes in the Moscow Zoo breed mostly in February. Unlike wolf packs, dhole clans may contain more than one breeding female. More than one female dhole may den and rear their litters together in the same den. During mating, the female assumes a crouched, cat-like position. There is no copulatory tie characteristic of other canids when the male dismounts. Instead, the pair lie on their sides facing each other in a semicircular formation. The gestation period lasts 60–63 days, with litter sizes averaging four to six pups. Their growth rate is much faster than that of wolves, being similar in rate to that of coyotes.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The hormone metabolites of five males and three females kept in Thai zoos was studied. The breeding males showed an increased level of testosterone from October to January. The oestrogen level of captive females increases for about two weeks in January, followed by an increase of progesterone. They displayed sexual behaviours during the oestrogen peak of the females.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Pups are suckled at least 58 days. During this time, the pack feeds the mother at the den site. Dholes do not use rendezvous sites to meet their pups as wolves do, though one or more adults will stay with the pups at the den while the rest of the pack hunts. Once weaning begins, the adults of the clan will regurgitate food for the pups until they are old enough to join in hunting. They remain at the den site for 70–80 days. By the age of six months, pups accompany the adults on hunts and will assist in killing large prey such as sambar by the age of eight months. Maximum longevity in captivity is 15–16 years.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Before embarking on a hunt, clans go through elaborate prehunt social rituals involving nuzzling, body rubbing and mounting. Dholes are primarily diurnal hunters, hunting in the early hours of the morning. They rarely hunt nocturnally, except on moonlit nights, indicating they greatly rely on sight when hunting. Although not as fast as jackals and foxes, they can chase their prey for many hours. During a pursuit, one or more dholes may take over chasing their prey, while the rest of the pack keeps up at a steadier pace behind, taking over once the other group tires. Most chases are short, lasting only 500 m (1,600 ft). When chasing fleet-footed prey, they run at a pace of 50 km/h (30 mph). Dholes frequently drive their prey into water bodies, where the targeted animal's movements are hindered.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Once large prey is caught, one dhole will grab the prey's nose, while the rest of the pack pulls the animal down by the flanks and hindquarters. They do not use a killing bite to the throat. They occasionally blind their prey by attacking the eyes. Serows are among the only ungulate species capable of effectively defending themselves against dhole attacks, due to their thick, protective coats and short, sharp horns capable of easily impaling dholes. They will tear open their prey's flanks and disembowel it, eating the heart, liver, lungs and some sections of the intestines. The stomach and rumen are usually left untouched. Prey weighing less than 50 kg (110 lb) is usually killed within two minutes, while large stags may take 15 minutes to die. Once prey is secured, dholes will tear off pieces of the carcass and eat in seclusion. Unlike wolf packs, in which the breeding pair monopolises food, dholes give access to the pups at a kill. They are generally tolerant of scavengers at their kills. Both mother and young are provided with regurgitated food by other pack members.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Prey animals in India include chital, sambar deer, muntjac, mouse deer, barasingha, wild boar, gaur, water buffaloes, banteng, cattle, nilgai, goats, Indian hares, Himalayan field rats and langurs. There is one record of a pack bringing down an Indian elephant calf in Assam, despite desperate defense of the mother, resulting in numerous losses to the pack. In Kashmir, they prey on markhor, and thamin in Myanmar, Malayan tapir, Sumatran serow in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula and Javan rusa in Java. In the Tian Shan and Tarbagatai Mountains, dholes prey on Siberian ibexes, arkhar, roe deer, Caspian red deer and wild boar. In the Altai and Sayan Mountains, they prey on musk deer and reindeer. In eastern Siberia, they prey on roe deer, Manchurian wapiti, wild pig, musk deer and reindeer, while in Primorye they feed on sika deer and goral. In Mongolia, they prey on argali and rarely Siberian ibex.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Like African wild dogs, but unlike wolves, dholes are not known to attack people. They are known to eat insects and lizards. Dholes eat fruit and vegetable matter more readily than other canids. In captivity, they eat various kinds of grasses, herbs and leaves, seemingly for pleasure rather than just when ill. In summertime in the Tian Shan Mountains, dholes eat large quantities of mountain rhubarb. Although opportunistic, dholes have a seeming aversion to hunting cattle and their calves. Livestock predation by dholes has been a problem in Bhutan since the late 1990s, as domestic animals are often left outside to graze in the forest, sometimes for weeks at a time. Livestock stall-fed at night and grazed near homes are never attacked. Oxen are killed more often than cows, probably because they are given less protection.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In some areas, dholes are sympatric to tigers and leopards. Competition between these species is mostly avoided through differences in prey selection, although there is still substantial dietary overlap. Along with leopards, dholes typically target animals in the 30–175 kg (66–386 lb) range (mean weights of 35.3 kg [78 lb] for dhole and 23.4 kg [52 lb] for leopard), while tigers selected for prey animals heavier than 176 kg (388 lb) (but their mean prey weight was 65.5 kg [144 lb]). Also, other characteristics of the prey, such as sex, arboreality and aggressiveness, may play a role in prey selection. For example, dholes preferentially select male chital, whereas leopards kill both sexes more evenly (and tigers prefer larger prey altogether), dholes and tigers kill langurs rarely compared to leopards due to the leopards' greater arboreality, while leopards kill wild boar infrequently due to the inability of this relatively light predator to tackle aggressive prey of comparable weight.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Tigers are dangerous opponents for dholes, as they have sufficient strength to kill a dhole with a single paw strike. Dhole packs are smaller in areas with higher tiger densities due to tigers directly killing dholes and stealing kills they made. The kleptoparasitism causes dholes to prefer hunting smaller animals because they can eat more of a smaller carcass before a tiger arrives to steal it. Direct predation can lead to lower reproductive and recruitment rates, lower hunting success rates and less food for the pups when a helper is killed, and potentially pack destabilization if one member of the breeding pair is killed.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Dhole packs may steal leopard kills, while leopards may kill dholes if they encounter them singly or in pairs. There are numerous records of leopards being treed by dholes. Dholes were once thought to be a major factor in reducing Asiatic cheetah populations, though this is doubtful, as cheetahs live in open areas as opposed to forested areas favoured by dholes. Since leopards are smaller than tigers and are more likely to hunt dholes, dhole packs tend to react more aggressively toward them than they do towards tigers.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Dhole packs occasionally attack Asiatic black bears, snow leopards and sloth bears. When attacking bears, dholes will attempt to prevent them from seeking refuge in caves and lacerate their hindquarters. Although usually antagonistic toward wolves, they may hunt and feed alongside one another.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The dhole is also sympatric with the Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes) in parts of its range. There is at least one record of a lone wolf associating with a pair of dholes in Debrigarh Wildlife Sanctuary, and two observations in Satpura Tiger Reserve. They infrequently associate in mixed groups with golden jackals. Domestic dogs may kill dholes, though they will feed alongside them on occasion.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Dholes are vulnerable to a number of different diseases, particularly in areas where they are sympatric with other canid species. Infectious pathogens such as Toxocara canis are present in their faeces. They may suffer from rabies, canine distemper, mange, trypanosomiasis, canine parvovirus and endoparasites such as cestodes and roundworms.",
"title": "Ecology and behaviour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The dhole only rarely takes domestic livestock. Some ethnic groups like the Kuruba and Mon Khmer-speaking tribes will appropriate dhole kills; some Indian villagers welcome the dhole because of this appropriation of dhole kills. Dholes were persecuted throughout India for bounties until they were given protection by the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. Methods used for dhole hunting included poisoning, snaring, shooting and clubbing at den sites. Native Indian people killed dholes primarily to protect livestock, while British sporthunters during the British Raj did so under the conviction that dholes were responsible for drops in game populations. Persecution of dholes still occurs with varying degrees of intensity according to the region. Bounties paid for dholes used to be 25 rupees, though this was reduced to 20 in 1926 after the number of presented dhole carcasses became too numerous to maintain the established reward. In Indochina, dholes suffer heavily from nonselective hunting techniques such as snaring.",
"title": "Threats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The fur trade does not pose a significant threat to dholes. The people of India do not eat dhole flesh and their fur is not considered overly valuable. Due to their rarity, dholes were never harvested for their skins in large numbers in the Soviet Union and were sometimes accepted as dog or wolf pelts (being labeled as \"half wolf\" for the latter). The winter fur was prized by the Chinese, who bought dhole pelts in Ussuriysk during the late 1860s for a few silver rubles. In the early 20th century, dhole pelts reached eight rubles in Manchuria. In Semirechye, fur coats made from dhole skin were considered the warmest, but were very costly.",
"title": "Threats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "A study in 2021 highlighted habitat loss anounting to 60% of their traditional range in India. The resulting fragmentation and isolation of dhol populations has resulted in inbreeding and the Allee effect which threaten their long term viability.",
"title": "Threats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In India, the dhole is protected under Schedule 2 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. The creation of reserves under Project Tiger provided some protection for dhole populations sympatric with tigers. In 2014, the Indian government sanctioned its first dhole conservation breeding centre at the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park (IGZP) in Visakhapatnam. The dhole has been protected in Russia since 1974, though it is vulnerable to poison left out for wolves. In China, the animal is listed as a category II protected species under the Chinese wildlife protection act of 1988. In Cambodia, the dhole is protected from all hunting, while conservation laws in Vietnam limit extraction and utilisation.",
"title": "Conservation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In 2016, the Korean company Sooam Biotech was reported to be attempting to clone the dhole using dogs as surrogate mothers to help conserve the species.",
"title": "Conservation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Three dhole-like animals are featured on the coping stone of the Bharhut stupa dating from 100 BC. They are shown waiting by a tree, with a woman or spirit trapped up it, a scene reminiscent of dholes treeing tigers. The animal's fearsome reputation in India is reflected by the number of pejorative names it possesses in Hindi, which variously translate as \"red devil\", \"devil dog\", \"jungle devil\", or \"hound of Kali\".",
"title": "In culture and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Leopold von Schrenck had trouble obtaining dhole specimens during his exploration of Amurland, as the local Gilyaks greatly feared the species. This fear and superstition was not, however, shared by neighbouring Tungusic peoples. It was speculated that this differing attitude towards the dhole was due to the Tungusic people's more nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle.",
"title": "In culture and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Dholes appear in Rudyard Kipling's Red Dog, where they are portrayed as aggressive and bloodthirsty animals which descend from the Deccan Plateau into the Seeonee Hills inhabited by Mowgli and his adopted wolf pack to cause carnage among the jungle's denizens. They are described as living in packs numbering hundreds of individuals, and that even Shere Khan and Hathi make way for them when they descend into the jungle. The dholes are despised by the wolves because of their destructiveness, their habit of not living in dens and the hair between their toes. With Mowgli and Kaa's help, the Seeonee wolf pack manages to wipe out the dholes by leading them through bee hives and torrential waters before finishing off the rest in battle.",
"title": "In culture and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Japanese author Uchida Roan wrote 犬物語 (Inu monogatari; A dog's tale) in 1901 as a nationalistic critique of the declining popularity of indigenous dog breeds, which he asserted were descended from the dhole.",
"title": "In culture and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "A fictional version of the dhole, imbued with supernatural abilities, appears in the season 6 episode of TV series The X-Files, titled \"Alpha\".",
"title": "In culture and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In China, the dhole were widely known throughout history and mythology. One notable legendary creature is the Yazi (睚眦), which was believed to be a creature that was part-dhole part-dragon. In modern times, however, the Chinese word for dhole (豺; Chái) is often confused with 'jackal' or 'wolf', resulting in many confusions and mistranslations of dholes as jackals or wolves.",
"title": "In culture and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Dholes also appear as enemies in the video game Far Cry 4, alongside other predators such as the Bengal tiger, honey badger, snow leopard, clouded leopard, Tibetan wolf and Asian black bear. They can be found hunting the player and other NPCs across the map, but are easily killed, being one of the weakest enemies in the game. They once again appear in the video game Far Cry Primal, where they play similar roles as their counterparts in the previous game, but can now also be tamed and used in combat by Takkar, the main protagonist of the game.",
"title": "In culture and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Brian Houghton Hodgson kept captured dholes in captivity, and found, with the exception of one animal, they remained shy and vicious even after 10 months. According to Richard Lydekker, adult dholes are nearly impossible to tame, though pups are docile and can even be allowed to play with domestic dog pups until they reach early adulthood. A dhole may have been presented as a gift to Ibbi-Sin as tribute.",
"title": "In culture and literature"
}
]
| The dhole is a canid native to Central, South, East and Southeast Asia. It is genetically close to species within the genus Canis, but distinct in several anatomical aspects: its skull is convex rather than concave in profile, it lacks a third lower molar and the upper molars possess only a single cusp as opposed to between two and four. During the Pleistocene, the dhole ranged throughout Asia, Europe and North America but became restricted to its historical range 12,000–18,000 years ago. The dhole is a highly social animal, living in large clans without rigid dominance hierarchies and containing multiple breeding females. Such clans usually consist of about 12 individuals, but groups of over 40 are known. It is a diurnal pack hunter which preferentially targets large and medium-sized ungulates. In tropical forests, the dhole competes with the tiger and the leopard, targeting somewhat different prey species, but still with substantial dietary overlap. It is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as populations are decreasing and estimated to comprise fewer than 2,500 mature individuals. Factors contributing to this decline include habitat loss, loss of prey, competition with other species, persecution due to livestock predation, and disease transfer from domestic dogs. | 2001-10-09T18:49:11Z | 2023-12-24T20:50:24Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhole |
8,629 | Donald Rumsfeld | Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He was both the youngest and the oldest secretary of defense. Additionally, Rumsfeld was a four-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois (1963–1969), director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1969–1970), counselor to the president (1969–1973), the U.S. Representative to NATO (1973–1974), and the White House Chief of Staff (1974–1975). Between his terms as secretary of defense, he served as the CEO and chairman of several companies.
Born in Illinois, Rumsfeld attended Princeton University, graduating in 1954 with a degree in political science. After serving in the Navy for three years, he mounted a campaign for Congress in Illinois's 13th Congressional District, winning in 1962 at the age of 30. Rumsfeld accepted an appointment by President Richard Nixon to head the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1969; appointed counsellor by Nixon and entitled to Cabinet-level status, he also headed up the Economic Stabilization Program before being appointed ambassador to NATO. Called back to Washington in August 1974, Rumsfeld was appointed chief of staff by President Ford. Rumsfeld recruited a young one-time staffer of his, Dick Cheney, to succeed him when Ford nominated him to be Secretary of Defense in 1975. When Ford lost the 1976 election, Rumsfeld returned to private business and financial life, and was named president and CEO of the pharmaceutical corporation G. D. Searle & Company. He was later named CEO of General Instrument from 1990 to 1993 and chairman of Gilead Sciences from 1997 to 2001.
Rumsfeld was appointed Secretary of Defense for a second time in January 2001 by President George W. Bush. As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld played a central role in the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. Before and during the Iraq War, he claimed that Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program; no stockpiles were ever found. A Pentagon Inspector General report found that Rumsfeld's top policy aide "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers". Rumsfeld's tenure was controversial for its use of torture and the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. Rumsfeld gradually lost political support and resigned in late 2006. In his retirement years, he published an autobiography, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, as well as Rumsfeld's Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life.
Donald Henry Rumsfeld was born at St. Lukes Hospital on July 9, 1932, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Jeannette Kearsley (née Husted) and George Donald Rumsfeld. His father came from a German family that had emigrated in the 1870s from Weyhe in Lower Saxony, but young Donald was sometimes ribbed about looking like a "tough Swiss." Growing up in Winnetka, Illinois, Rumsfeld became an Eagle Scout in 1949 and is the recipient of both the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America and its Silver Buffalo Award in 2006. Living in Winnetka, his family attended a Congregational church. From 1943 to 1945, Rumsfeld lived in Coronado, California, while his father was stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific in World War II. He was a ranger at Philmont Scout Ranch in 1949.
Rumsfeld attended Baker Demonstration School, and later graduated from New Trier High School where he excelled academically as well as in sports. In the band, the young Rumsfeld played drums and also excelled at saxophone. He attended Princeton University on academic and NROTC partial scholarships. He graduated in 1954 with an A.B. in politics after completing a senior thesis titled "The Steel Seizure Case of 1952 and Its Effects on Presidential Powers". During his time at Princeton, he was an accomplished amateur wrestler, becoming captain of the varsity wrestling team, and captain of the Lightweight Football team playing defensive back. While at Princeton he was friends with another future Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci.
Rumsfeld married Joyce P. Pierson on December 27, 1954. They had three children, six grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He attended Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the Georgetown University Law Center, but did not take a degree from either institution.
Rumsfeld served in the United States Navy from 1954 to 1957, as a naval aviator and flight instructor. His initial training was in the North American SNJ Texan basic trainer after which he transitioned to the T-28 advanced trainer. In 1957, he transferred to the Naval Reserve and continued his naval service in flying and administrative assignments as a drilling reservist. On July 1, 1958, he was assigned to Anti-submarine Squadron 662 at Naval Air Station Anacostia in Washington, D.C., as a selective reservist. Rumsfeld was designated aircraft commander of Anti-submarine Squadron 731 on October 1, 1960, at Naval Air Station Grosse Ile, Michigan, where he flew the S2F Tracker. He transferred to the Individual Ready Reserve when he became Secretary of Defense in 1975 and retired with the rank of captain in 1989.
In 1957, during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, Rumsfeld served as administrative assistant to David S. Dennison Jr., a Congressman representing the 11th district of Ohio. In 1959, he moved on to become a staff assistant to Congressman Robert P. Griffin of Michigan. Engaging in a two-year stint with an investment banking firm, A. G. Becker & Co., from 1960 to 1962, Rumsfeld then set his sights on becoming a member of Congress.
He was elected to the United States House of Representatives for Illinois's 13th congressional district in 1962, at the age of 30, and was re-elected by large majorities in 1964, 1966, and 1968. While in Congress, he served on the Joint Economic Committee, the Committee on Science and Aeronautics, and the Government Operations Committee, as well as on the Subcommittees on Military and Foreign Operations. He was also a co-founder of the Japanese-American Inter-Parliamentary Council in addition to being a leading cosponsor of the Freedom of Information Act.
In 1965, following the defeat of Barry Goldwater by Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 presidential election, which also led to the Republicans losing many seats in the House of Representatives, Rumsfeld proposed new leadership for the Republicans in the House, suggesting that representative Gerald Ford from Michigan's 5th congressional district was the most suited candidate to replace Charles A. Halleck as Republican leader. Rumsfeld, along with other members of the Republican caucus, then urged Ford to run for Republican leader. Ford eventually defeated Halleck and became House Minority Leader in 1965. The group of Republicans that encouraged Ford to run for the Republican leadership became known as the "Young Turks". Rumsfeld later served during Ford's presidency as his chief of staff in 1974, and was chosen by Ford to succeed James Schlesinger as United States Secretary of Defense in 1975.
During Rumsfeld's tenure as member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he voiced concerns about U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, saying that President Johnson and his national security team were overconfident about how the war was being conducted. On one occasion, Rumsfeld joined with other members of the House and traveled to Vietnam for a fact-finding mission to see for themselves how the war was going. The trip led to Rumsfeld believing that the South Vietnamese government was much too dependent on the United States. Rumsfeld was also unsatisfied when he received a briefing about war planning from the commander of the U.S. troops in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland. The trip led Rumsfeld to cosponsor a resolution to bring the conduct of the war to the House floor for further debate and discussion about U.S. mismanagement of the war. However, under constant pressure from the Johnson administration, the Democrats, who at that time held the majority at the House of Representatives, blocked the resolution from consideration.
As a young Congressman, Rumsfeld attended seminars at the University of Chicago, an experience he credits with introducing him to the idea of an all volunteer military, and to the economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. He later took part in Friedman's PBS series Free to Choose.
During his tenure in the House, Rumsfeld voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Rumsfeld resigned from Congress in 1969 – his fourth term – to serve in the Nixon administration in a variety of executive branch positions. Nixon appointed Rumsfeld director of the United States Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), a position with Cabinet rank. Rumsfeld had voted against the creation of OEO when he was in Congress, and, according to his 2011 memoirs, he initially rejected Nixon's offer, citing his own inherent belief that the OEO did more harm than good, and he felt that he was not the right person for the job. After much negotiation, he accepted the OEO appointment with Nixon's "assurances that he would be ... also an assistant to the President, with Cabinet-level status and an office in the White House," which "sweetened (the OEO position) with status and responsibility". As director, Rumsfeld sought to reorganize the Office to serve what he later described in his 2011 memoir as "a laboratory for experimental programs". Several beneficial anti-poverty programs were saved by allocating funds to them from other less-successful government programs. During this time, he hired Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney to serve under him.
He was the subject of one of writer Jack Anderson's columns, alleging that "anti-poverty czar" Rumsfeld had cut programs to aid the poor while spending thousands to redecorate his office. Rumsfeld dictated a four-page response to Anderson, labeling the accusations as falsehoods, and invited Anderson to tour his office. Despite the tour, Anderson did not retract his claims, and only much later admitted that his column was a mistake.
When Rumsfeld left OEO in December 1970, Nixon named him Counselor to the President, a general advisory position; in this role, he retained Cabinet status. He was given an office in the West Wing in 1969 and regularly interacted with the Nixon administration hierarchy. He was named director of the Economic Stabilization Program in 1970 as well, and later headed up the Cost of Living Council. In March 1971 Nixon was recorded saying about Rumsfeld "at least Rummy is tough enough" and "He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that."
In February 1973, Rumsfeld left Washington to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium. He served as the United States' Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council and the Defense Planning Committee, and the Nuclear Planning Group. In this capacity, he represented the United States in wide-ranging military and diplomatic matters, and was asked to help mediate a conflict on behalf of the United States between Cyprus and Turkey.
In August 1974, after Nixon resigned as president in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Rumsfeld was called back to Washington to serve as the transition chairman for the new president, Gerald Ford. He had been Ford's confidante since their days in the House, before Ford was House minority leader and was one of the members of the "Young Turks" who played a major role in bringing Ford to Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. As the new president became settled in, Ford appointed Rumsfeld White House Chief of Staff, following Ford's appointment of General Alexander Haig to be the new Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Rumsfeld served from 1974 to 1975.
In October 1975, Ford reshuffled his cabinet in the Halloween Massacre. Various newspaper and magazine articles at the time identified Rumsfeld as having orchestrated these events. Ford named Rumsfeld to succeed Schlesinger as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defense and George H. W. Bush to become Director of Central Intelligence. According to Bob Woodward's 2002 book Bush at War, a rivalry developed between the two men and "Bush senior was convinced that Rumsfeld was pushing him out to the CIA to end his political career."
Rumsfeld's confirmation hearing as Secretary of Defense began on November 12, 1975. During the hearing, Rumsfeld was mostly asked about the administration's defense policy on the Cold War. Rumsfeld stated that the Soviet Union was a "clear and present danger," especially following the end of the Vietnam War, which Rumsfeld described as the USSR's chance to build up its domination. On November 17, 1975, Rumsfeld was confirmed as Secretary of Defense by a vote of 97–2. At the age of 43, Rumsfeld became the youngest person to serve as United States Secretary of Defense as of 2023.
During his tenure as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld oversaw the transition to an all-volunteer military. He sought to reverse the gradual decline in the defense budget and to build up U.S. strategic and conventional forces, undermining Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the SALT talks. He asserted, along with Team B (which he helped to set up), that trends in comparative U.S.-Soviet military strength had not favored the United States for 15 to 20 years and that, if continued, they "would have the effect of injecting a fundamental instability in the world". For this reason, he oversaw the development of cruise missiles, the B-1 bomber, and a major naval shipbuilding program.
Rumsfeld, who previously was assigned to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, emphasized the importance of the next stage of the space program following the successful Moon landing in 1969. While serving as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld organized a joint-cooperation between the Department of Defense and NASA to develop Skylab. Another result of the cooperation was the Space Shuttle program.
During his tenure as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld worked to finish the SALT II Treaty. Rumsfeld, together with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George S. Brown drafted the treaty. However, an agreement was not made before the 1976 election. SALT II was finished and signed during the Carter administration.
In 1977, Rumsfeld was awarded the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Kissinger, his bureaucratic adversary, later paid him a different sort of compliment, pronouncing him "a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability, and substance fuse seamlessly".
Rumsfeld's first tenure as Secretary of Defense ended on January 20, 1977. He was succeeded by former Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown.
In early 1977 Rumsfeld briefly lectured at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. His sights instead turned to business, and from 1977 to 1985 Rumsfeld served as chief executive officer, president, and then chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, a worldwide pharmaceutical company based in Skokie, Illinois. During his tenure at Searle, Rumsfeld led the company's financial turnaround, thereby earning awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981). Journalist Andrew Cockburn of Harper's Magazine claimed that Rumsfeld suppressed news that Searle's key product, aspartame, was shown to have potentially dangerous effects by leveraging old government contacts at the Food and Drug Administration. In 1985, Searle was sold to the Monsanto Company.
Rumsfeld served as chairman and chief executive officer of General Instrument from 1990 to 1993. A leader in broadband transmission, distribution, and access control technologies for cable, satellite, and terrestrial broadcasting applications, the company pioneered the development of the first all-digital high-definition television (HDTV) technology. After taking the company public and returning it to profitability, Rumsfeld returned to private business in late 1993.
From January 1997 until being sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense in January 2001, Rumsfeld served as chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc. Gilead is the developer of Tamiflu (Oseltamivir), which is used in the treatment of bird flu as well as influenza A and influenza B in humans. As a result, Rumsfeld's holdings in the company grew significantly when avian flu became a subject of popular anxiety during his later term as Secretary of Defense. Following standard practice, Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead, and he directed the Pentagon's general counsel to issue instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.
During his business career, Rumsfeld continued part-time public service in various posts. In November 1983, Rumsfeld was appointed special envoy to the Middle East by President Ronald Reagan, at a turbulent time in modern Middle Eastern history when Iraq was fighting Iran in the Iran–Iraq War. The United States wished for Iraq to win the conflict, and Rumsfeld was sent to the Middle East to serve as a mediator on behalf of the president.
When Rumsfeld visited Baghdad on December 20, 1983, he met Saddam Hussein at Saddam's palace and engaged a 90-minute discussion with him. They largely agreed on opposing Syria's occupation of Lebanon; preventing Syrian and Iranian expansion; and preventing arms sales to Iran. Rumsfeld suggested that if U.S.-Iraq relations could improve the U.S. might support a new oil pipeline across Jordan, which Iraq had opposed but was now willing to reconsider. Rumsfeld also informed Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that "Our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us ... citing the use of chemical weapons."
Rumsfeld wrote in his memoir Known and Unknown that his meeting with Hussein "has been the subject of gossip, rumors, and crackpot conspiracy theories for more than a quarter of a century ... Supposedly I had been sent to see Saddam by President Reagan either to negotiate a secret oil deal, to help arm Iraq, or to make Iraq an American client state. The truth is that our encounter was more straightforward and less dramatic." The Washington Post reported that "Although former U.S. officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects of the Reagan administration's tilt toward Iraq—he was a private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy—the documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer U.S.–Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts."
In addition to taking the position of Middle East envoy, Rumsfeld served as a member of the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control (1982–1986); President Reagan's special envoy on the Law of the Sea Treaty (1982–1983); a senior adviser to President Reagan's Panel on Strategic Systems (1983–1984); a member of the Joint Advisory Commission on U.S./Japan Relations (1983–1984); a member of the National Commission on the Public Service (1987–1990); a member of the National Economic Commission (1988–1989); a member of the board of visitors of the National Defense University (1988–1992); a member of the FCC's High Definition Television Advisory Committee (1992–1993); a member of the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission (1999–2000); a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and chairman of the U.S. Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization (2000). Among his most noteworthy positions was chairman of the nine-member Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States from January to July 1998. In its findings, the commission concluded that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea could develop intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities in five to ten years and that U.S. intelligence would have little warning before such systems were deployed.
During the 1980s, Rumsfeld became a member of the National Academy of Public Administration, and was named a member of the boards of trustees of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the National Park Foundation. He was also a member of the U.S./Russia Business Forum and chairman of the Congressional Leadership's National Security Advisory Group. Rumsfeld was a member of the Project for the New American Century, a think-tank dedicated to maintaining U.S. primacy. In addition, he was asked to serve the U.S. State Department as a foreign policy consultant from 1990 to 1993. Though considered one of the Bush administration's staunchest hard-liners against North Korea, Rumsfeld sat on European engineering giant Asea Brown Boveri's board from 1990 to 2001, a company that sold two light-water nuclear reactors to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization for installation in North Korea, as part of the 1994 agreed framework reached under President Bill Clinton. Rumsfeld's office said that he did not "recall it being brought before the board at any time" though Fortune magazine reported that "board members were informed about this project". The Bush administration repeatedly criticized the 1994 agreement and the former Clinton presidency for its softness towards North Korea, regarding the country as a state sponsor of terrorism, and later designated North Korea as part of the Axis-of-Evil.
During the 1976 Republican National Convention, Rumsfeld received one vote for Vice President of the United States, although he did not seek the office, and the nomination was easily won by Ford's choice, Senator Bob Dole. During the 1980 Republican National Convention he again received one vote for vice president.
Rumsfeld briefly sought the presidential nomination in 1988, but withdrew from the race before primaries began. During the 1996 election season, he initially formed a presidential exploratory committee, but declined to formally enter the race. He was instead named national chairman for Republican nominee Bob Dole's campaign.
Rumsfeld was named Secretary of Defense soon after President George W. Bush took office in 2001 despite Rumsfeld's past rivalry with the previous President Bush. Bush's first choice, FedEx founder Fred Smith, was unavailable and Vice President-elect Cheney recommended Rumsfeld for the job. Rumsfeld's second tenure as Secretary of Defense cemented him as the most powerful Pentagon chief since Robert McNamara and one of the most influential Cabinet members in the Bush administration. His tenure proved to be a pivotal and rocky one that led the United States military into the 21st century. Following the September 11 attacks, Rumsfeld led the military planning and execution of the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq. He pushed hard to send as small a force as soon as possible to both conflicts, a concept codified as the Rumsfeld Doctrine.
Throughout his time as defense secretary, Rumsfeld was noted for his candor and quick wit when giving weekly press conferences or speaking with the press. U.S. News & World Report called him "a straight-talking Midwesterner" who "routinely has the press corps doubled over in fits of laughter". By the same token, his leadership was exposed to much criticism through books covering the Iraq conflict, like Bob Woodward's State of Denial, Thomas E. Ricks' Fiasco, and Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them in coordinated strikes into both towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and its target was likely a prominent building in Washington, D.C., most probably either the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House. Within three hours of the start of the first hijacking and two hours after American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld raised the defense condition signaling of the United States offensive readiness to DEFCON 3, the highest it had been since the Arab–Israeli war in 1973.
Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon, just eight hours after the attacks and stated, "It's an indication that the United States government is functioning in the face of this terrible act against our country. I should add that the briefing here is taking place in the Pentagon. The Pentagon's functioning. It will be in business tomorrow."
On the afternoon of September 11, Rumsfeld issued rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of possible Iraqi involvement in regard to what had just occurred, according to notes taken by senior policy official Stephen Cambone. "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." – meaning Saddam Hussein – "at same time. Not only UBL" (Osama bin Laden), Cambone's notes quoted Rumsfeld as saying. "Need to move swiftly – Near term target needs – go massive – sweep it all up. Things related and not."
In the first emergency meeting of the National Security Council on the day of the attacks, Rumsfeld asked, "Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?" with his deputy Paul Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a "brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily—it was doable," and, according to John Kampfner, "from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case." President George W. Bush reacted to Rumsfeld's suggestion, "Wait a minute, I didn't hear a word said about him (Saddam Hussein) being responsible for the attack" and the idea was initially rejected at the behest of Secretary of State Colin Powell, but, according to Kampfner, "Undeterred Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz held secret meetings about opening up a second front—against Saddam. Powell was excluded." In such meetings they created a policy that would later be dubbed the Bush Doctrine, centering on "pre-emption" and the war on Iraq, which the PNAC had advocated in their earlier letters.
Richard A. Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism coordinator at the time, has revealed details of another National Security Council meeting the day after the attacks, during which officials considered the U.S. response. Already, he said, they were certain al-Qa'ida was to blame and there was no hint of Iraqi involvement. "Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq," according to Clarke. Clarke then stated, "We all said, 'No, no, al-Qa'ida is in Afghanistan.'" Clarke also revealed that Rumsfeld complained in the meeting, "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq." Rumsfeld even suggested to attack other countries like Libya and Sudan, arguing that if this was to be a truly "global war on terror" then all state sponsors of terrorism should be dealt with.
Rumsfeld wrote in Known and Unknown, "Much has been written about the Bush administration's focus on Iraq after 9/11. Commentators have suggested that it was strange or obsessive for the President and his advisers to have raised questions about whether Saddam Hussein was somehow behind the attack. I have never understood the controversy. I had no idea if Iraq was or was not involved, but it would have been irresponsible for any administration not to have asked the question."
A memo written by Rumsfeld dated November 27, 2001, considers an Iraq war. One section of the memo questions "How start?", listing multiple possible justifications for a U.S.-Iraq War.
Rumsfeld directed the planning for the War in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks. On September 21, 2001, USCENTCOM Commander General Tommy Franks, briefed the President on a plan to destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and remove the Taliban government. General Franks, also initially proposed to Rumsfeld that the U.S. invade Afghanistan using a conventional force of 60,000 troops, preceded by six months of preparation. Rumsfeld, however feared that a conventional invasion of Afghanistan could bog down as had happened to the Soviets in the Soviet–Afghan War and the 1842 retreat from Kabul by the British. Rumsfeld rejected Franks's plan, saying "I want men on the ground now!" Franks returned the next day with a plan utilizing U.S. Special Forces. Despite air and missile attacks against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, USCENTCOM had no pre-existing plans for conducting ground operations there.
The September 21, 2001 plan emerged after extensive dialogue, but Secretary Rumsfeld also asked for broader plans that looked beyond Afghanistan.
On October 7, 2001, just hours after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was launched, Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon stating "While our raids today focus on the Taliban and the foreign terrorists in Afghanistan, our aim remains much broader. Our objective is to defeat those who use terrorism and those who house or support them. The world stands united in this effort".
Rumsfeld also stated "the only way to deal with these terrorist threats is to go at them where they exist. You cannot defend at every place at every time against every conceivable, imaginable, even unimaginable terrorist attack. And the only way to deal with it is to take the battle to where they are and to root them out and to starve them out by seeing that those countries and those organizations and those non-governmental organizations and those individuals that are supporting and harboring and facilitating these networks stop doing it and find that there's a penalty for doing it".
Rumsfeld in another press conference at the Pentagon on October 29, 2001, stated "As the first weeks of this effort proceed, it bears repeating that our goal is not to reduce or simply contain terrorist acts, but our goal is to deal with it comprehensively. And we do not intend to stop until we've rooted out terrorist networks and put them out of business, not just in the case of the Taliban and the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but other networks as well. And as I've mentioned, the Al Qaeda network crosses some 40, 50-plus countries."
Rumsfeld announced in November 2001, that he received "authoritative reports" that Al-Qaeda's number three Mohammed Atef, bin Laden's primary military chief and a planner of the September 11 attacks on America, was killed by a U.S. airstrike. "He was very, very senior," Rumsfeld said. "We obviously have been seeking [him] out."
In a press conference at the Pentagon on November 19, 2001, Rumsfeld described the role of U.S. ground forces in Afghanistan as firstly in the north, American troops are "embedded in Northern Alliance" elements, helping arrange food and medical supplies and pinpointing airstrikes and in the south, commandos and other troops are operating more independently, raiding compounds, monitoring roadblocks and searching vehicles in the hope of developing more information about al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. On December 16, 2001, Rumsfeld visited U.S. troops in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base.
On March 15, 2002, in another press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld commented on the mission of Operation Anaconda by stating "Operation Anaconda continues in the area south of Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The fighting is winding down as you know. Coalition forces are for the most part in an exploitation phase, doing the difficult work of searching caves and clearing areas where the battles and fighting has taken place. Our forces are finding weapons, ammunition, some intelligence information. In the top 25 al Qaeda, we know some are dead and we know some may be dead; we know some are captured and there are a larger number that we don't know. And roughly the same proportions with respect to Taliban".
On May 1, 2003, Rumsfeld during a visit to Afghanistan meeting with U.S. troops stationed in Kabul told the press "General Franks and I have been looking at the progress that's being made in this country and have concluded that we are at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction and activities." "I should underline however, that there are still dangers, there are still pockets of resistance in certain parts of the country and General McNeal and General Franks and their, the cooperation they have with the President Karzai's government and leadership and Marshall Fayheems assistance. We will be continuing as a country to work with the Afghan government and the new Afghan National Army to see that the any areas where there is resistance to this government and to the coalition forces will be dealt with promptly and efficiently."
There was also controversy between the Pentagon and the CIA over who had the authority to fire Hellfire missiles from Predator drones. Even though the drones were not ready for deployment until 2002, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have argued that "these quarrels kept the Predator from being used against al Qaeda ... One anonymous individual who was at the center of the action called this episode 'typical' and complained that 'Rumsfeld never missed an opportunity to fail to cooperate. The fact is, the Secretary of Defense is an obstacle. He has helped the terrorists.'
In 2009, three years after Rumsfeld's tenure as Defense secretary ended, the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations led an investigation into the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, during the early phase of the U.S-led coalition war in Afghanistan. They concluded that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and General Franks had not committed enough troops during the battle to secure the area around Tora Bora. They believed that Al-Qaeda's number one leader Osama bin Laden had likely been at Tora Bora and his escape prolonged the war in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld and Franks were apparently motivated by fear that a substantial American presence near Tora Bora could incite a rebellion by local Pashtuns, despite the latter's lack of organizational capability at the time and the fierce dissent voiced by many CIA analysts including Charles E. Allen (who warned Franks that "the back door [to Pakistan] was open") and Gary Berntsen (who called for army rangers to "kill this baby in the crib"). Instead of rangers or marines, the U.S. assault on Tora Bora relied on the CIA-backed Afghan militias of Hazrat Ali and Zahir Qadeer, supplemented with B-52 bombardment. The resulting influx of hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters into Pakistan destabilized the country and damaged Pakistan–United States relations. The follow-up Operation Anaconda "witnessed failures of planning and execution, the product of the fractured lines of command," as recounted by Steve Coll. In mid-2002, Rumsfeld announced that "The war is over in Afghanistan," to the disbelief of State Department, CIA, and military officials in the country. As a result, Rumsfeld downplayed the need for an Afghan army of even 70,000 troops, far fewer than the 250,000 envisaged by Karzai.
Before and during the Iraq War, Rumsfeld claimed that Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program; in particular during his famous phrase "there are known knowns" in a press conference at the Pentagon on February 12, 2002, no stockpiles were ever found. Bush administration officials also claimed that there was an operational relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. A Pentagon Inspector General report found that Rumsfeld's top policy aide, Douglas J. Feith, "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers".
The job of finding WMD and providing justification for the attack fell to the intelligence services, but, according to Kampfner, "Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed that, while the established security services had a role, they were too bureaucratic and too traditional in their thinking." As a result, "they set up what came to be known as the 'cabal', a cell of eight or nine analysts in a new Office of Special Plans (OSP) based in the U.S. Defense Department." According to an unnamed Pentagon source quoted by Hersh, the OSP "was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States".
On January 22, 2003, after the German and French governments voiced opposition to invading Iraq, Rumsfeld labeled these countries as part of "Old Europe", implying that countries that supported the war were part of a newer, modern Europe.
After the war in Afghanistan was launched, Rumsfeld participated in a meeting in regard to the review of the Department of Defense's Contingency Plan in the event of a war with Iraq. The plan, as it was then conceived, contemplated troop levels of up to 500,000, which Rumsfeld felt was far too many. Gordon and Trainor wrote:
As [General] Newbold outlined the plan ... it was clear that Rumsfeld was growing increasingly irritated. For Rumsfeld, the plan required too many troops and supplies and took far too long to execute. It was, Rumsfeld declared, the "product of old thinking and the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the military".
In a press conference at the Pentagon on February 27, 2003, Rumsfeld told reporters after being asked a question that Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki suggested it would take several hundred thousand troops on the ground to secure Iraq and provide stability. Is he wrong?. Rumsfeld replied "the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far from the mark. The reality is that we already have a number of countries that have offered to participate with their forces in stabilization activities, in the event force has to be used."
Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon on March 20, 2003, just hours after the launch of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, where he announced the first strike of the war to liberate Iraq and that "The days of the Saddam Hussein regime are numbered," and "We continue to feel there is no need for a broader conflict if the Iraqi leaders act to save themselves and act to prevent such a conflict."
Rumsfeld's role in directing the Iraq War included a plan that was the Shock and Awe campaign, which resulted in a lightning invasion with 145,000 soldiers on the ground that took Baghdad in well under a month with very few American casualties. Many government buildings, plus major museums, electrical generation infrastructure, and even oil equipment were looted and vandalized during the transition from the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime to the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority. A violent insurrection began shortly after the military operation started.
On March 30, 2003, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week program, Rumsfeld answered a question by Stephanopoulos about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Rumsfeld stated "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
On April 9, 2003, at a press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld addressed reporters during the Fall of Baghdad, and stated "The scenes of free Iraqis celebrating in the streets, riding American tanks, tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein in the center of Baghdad are breathtaking."
After the Iraq invasion, U.S. troops were criticized for not protecting the historical artifacts and treasures located at the National Museum of Iraq. On April 11, 2003, at a press conference at the Pentagon, when asked at the time why U.S. troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness, Rumsfeld replied, "Stuff happens ... and it's untidy and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here." He further commented that, "The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, "My goodness, were there that many vases?"
On July 24, 2003, at a press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld commented on the release of photographs of the deceased sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein. "It is not a practice that the United States engages in on a normal basis," Rumsfeld said. "I honestly believe that these two are particularly bad characters and that it's important for the Iraqi people to see them, to know they're gone, to know they're dead, and to know they're not coming back." Rumsfeld also said, "I feel it was the right decision, and I'm glad I made it."
In October 2003, Rumsfeld approved a secret Pentagon "roadmap" on public relations, calling for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home. The Roadmap advances a policy according to which as long as the U.S. government does not intentionally target the American public, it does not matter that psychological operations reach the American public.
On December 14, 2003, Rumsfeld in an interview with journalist Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes after U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein in Operation Red Dawn, stated, "Here was a man who was photographed hundreds of times shooting off rifles and showing how tough he was, and in fact, he wasn't very tough, he was cowering in a hole in the ground, and had a pistol and didn't use it, and certainly did not put up any fight at all. I think that ... he resulted in the death of an awful lot of Iraqi people, in the last analysis, he seemed not terribly brave."
As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld was deliberate in crafting the public message from the Department of Defense. People will "rally" to the word "sacrifice", Rumsfeld noted after a meeting. "They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory." In May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the war on terrorism as a fight against "worldwide insurgency". He advised aides "to test what the results could be" if the war on terrorism were renamed. Rumsfeld also ordered specific public Pentagon attacks on and responses to U.S. newspaper columns that reported the negative aspects of the war.
During Rumsfeld's tenure, he regularly visited U.S. troops stationed in Iraq.
The Australia Broadcasting Corporation reported that though Rumsfeld didn't specify a withdrawal date for troops in Iraq, "He says it would be unrealistic to wait for Iraq to be peaceful before removing U.S. led forces from the country, adding that Iraq had never been peaceful and perfect."
On August 2, 2006, at a press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld commented on the sectarian violence in Iraq where he stated "there's sectarian violence; people are being killed. Sunnis are killing Shi'a and Shi'a are killing Sunnis. Kurds seem not to be involved. It's unfortunate, and they need a reconciliation process."
On October 26, 2006, at a press conference at the Pentagon after the failure of Operation Together Forward in Iraq, Rumsfeld stated "Would defeat in Iraq be so bad?" Well, the answer is: Yes, it would be. Those who are fighting against the Iraqi government want to seize power so that they can establish a new sanctuary and a base of operations for terrorists and any idea that U.S. military leaders are rigidly refusing to make adjustments in their approaches is just flat wrong. The military is continuing to adapt and to adjust as required. Yes, there are difficulties and problems to be sure."
As a result, Rumsfeld stirred controversy as to whether the forces that did invade Iraq were enough in size. In 2006, Rumsfeld responded to a question by Brit Hume of Fox News as to whether he pressed General Tommy Franks to lower his request for 400,000 troops for the war:
Absolutely not. That's a mythology. This town [Washington, D.C.] is filled with this kind of nonsense. The people who decide the levels of forces on the ground are not the Secretary of Defense or the President. We hear recommendations, but the recommendations are made by the combatant commanders and by members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and there hasn't been a minute in the last six years when we have not had the number of troops that the combatant commanders have requested.
Rumsfeld told Hume that Franks ultimately decided against such a troop level.
Throughout his tenure, Rumsfeld sought to remind the American people of the 9/11 attacks and threats against Americans, noting at one time in a 2006 memo to "[m]ake the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists". According to a report by The Guardian, Rumsfeld was allegedly including biblical quotes in top secret briefing papers to appeal George W Bush, known for his devout religious beliefs, to invade Iraq as more like "holy war" or "a religious crusade" against Muslims.
In a September 2007 interview with The Daily Telegraph, General Mike Jackson, the head of the British army during the invasion, criticized Rumsfeld's plans for the invasion of Iraq as "intellectually bankrupt", adding that Rumsfeld is "one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq", and that he felt that "the US approach to combating global terrorism is 'inadequate' and too focused on military might rather than nation building and diplomacy."
In December 2004, Rumsfeld was heavily criticized for using a signing machine instead of personally signing over 1000 letters of condolence to the families of soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He promised to personally sign all letters in the future.
The Department of Defense's preliminary concerns for holding, housing, and interrogating captured prisoners on the battlefield were raised during the military build-up prior to the Iraq War. Because Saddam Hussein's military forces surrendered when faced with military action, many within the DOD, including Rumsfeld and United States Central Command General Tommy Franks, decided it was in the best interest of all to hand these prisoners over to their respective countries. Additionally, it was determined that maintaining a large holding facility was, at the time, unrealistic. Instead, the use of many facilities such as Abu Ghraib to house prisoners of interest prior to handing them over, and Rumsfeld defended the Bush administration's decision to detain enemy combatants. Because of this, critics, including members of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, held Rumsfeld responsible for the ensuing Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. Rumsfeld himself said: "These events occurred on my watch as Secretary of Defense. I am accountable for them." He offered his resignation to President Bush in the wake of the scandal, but it was not accepted.
In a memo read by Rumsfeld detailing how Guantanamo Bay detention camp interrogators induced stress in prisoners by forcing them to remain standing in one position for a maximum of four hours, Rumsfeld scrawled a handwritten note on the memo reading: "I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners] limited to 4 hours? D.R."
Various organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, called for investigations of Rumsfeld regarding his involvement in managing the Iraq War and his support of the Bush administration's policies of "enhanced interrogation techniques", which are widely regarded as torture.
Legal scholars have argued that Rumsfeld "might be held criminally responsible if [he] would be prosecuted by the ICC". In 2005 the ACLU and Human Rights First filed a lawsuit against Rumsfeld and other top government officials, "on behalf of eight men who they say were subjected to torture and abuse by U.S. forces under the command of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld".
In 2005, a suit was filed against Rumsfeld by several human rights organizations for allegedly violating U.S. and international law that prohibits "torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment". Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel filed suit against the U.S. government and Rumsfeld on similar grounds, alleging that they were tortured and their rights of habeas corpus were violated. In 2007, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that Rumsfeld could not "be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job". The ACLU tried to revive the case in 2011 with no success.
In 2004, German prosecutor Wolfgang Kaleck filed a criminal complaint charging Rumsfeld and 11 other U.S. officials as war criminals who either ordered the torture of prisoners or drafted laws that legitimated its use. The charges based on breaches of the UN Convention against Torture and the German Code of Crimes against International Law.
Eight U.S. and other NATO-member retired generals and admirals called for Rumsfeld to resign in early 2006 in what was called the "Generals Revolt", accusing him of "abysmal" military planning and lack of strategic competence.
Commentator Pat Buchanan reported at the time that Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who traveled often to Iraq and supported the war, said the generals "mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more". Rumsfeld rebuffed these criticisms, stating, "out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round." Bush defended Rumsfeld throughout and responded by stating that Rumsfeld is "exactly what is needed".
On November 1, 2006, Bush stated he would stand by Rumsfeld as defense secretary for the length of his term as president. Rumsfeld wrote a resignation letter dated November 6, 2006, and, per the stamp on the letter, Bush saw it on Election Day, November 7, 2006. In the elections, the House and the Senate shifted to Democratic control. After the elections on November 8, 2006, Bush announced Rumsfeld would resign his position as Secretary of Defense. Many Republicans were unhappy with the delay, believing they would have won more votes if voters had known Rumsfeld was resigning.
Bush nominated Robert Gates to succeed Rumsfeld. On December 15, 2006, a farewell ceremony, with an armed forces full honor review and a 19-gun salute, was held at the Pentagon Mall Terrace in honor of the departing Rumsfeld.
In the months after his resignation, Rumsfeld toured the New York City publishing houses in preparation for a potential memoir. After receiving what one industry source labeled "big bids", he reached an agreement with the Penguin Group to publish the book under its Sentinel HC imprint. Rumsfeld declined to accept an advance for the publication of his memoir, and said he was donating all proceeds from the work to veterans groups. His book, entitled Known and Unknown: A Memoir, was released on February 8, 2011.
In conjunction with the publication of Known and Unknown, Rumsfeld established "The Rumsfeld Papers", a website with documents "related to the endnotes" of the book and his service during the George W. Bush administration; during the months that followed the book's publication, the website was expanded to include over 4,000 documents from his archive. As of June 2011, the topics included his Congressional voting record, the Nixon administration, documents and memos of meetings while he was part of the Ford, Reagan, and George W. Bush administrations, private sector documents, and NATO documents, among other items.
In 2007, Rumsfeld established The Rumsfeld Foundation, which focuses on encouraging public service in the United States and supporting the growth of free political and free economic systems abroad. The educational foundation provides fellowships to talented individuals from the private sector who want to serve for some time in government. Rumsfeld personally financed the foundation. As of January 2014, the foundation had sponsored over 90 fellows from Central Asia, provided over million in tuition and stipend support for graduate students, awarded over million in microfinance grants, and donated over million to charities for veterans' affairs.
Rumsfeld was awarded the "Defender of the Constitution Award" at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 2011.
After his retirement from government, Rumsfeld criticized former fellow Cabinet member Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, in his memoir, asserting that she was basically unfit for office. In 2011, she responded, saying that Rumsfeld "doesn't know what he's talking about. The reader may imagine what can be correct about the conflicted matter."
In February 2011, Rumsfeld endorsed the repeal of the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, saying that allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve "is an idea whose time has come".
In March 2011, Rumsfeld spoke out on the 2011 military intervention in Libya, telling ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper that the Obama administration should "recognize the mission has to determine the coalition. The coalition ought not determine the mission." Rumsfeld also used the word "confusion" six times to describe the United Nations-backed military effort in Libya.
In October 2011, Rumsfeld conducted an interview with Al Jazeera's Washington, D.C., bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara. Foukara asked Rumsfeld whether, in hindsight, the Bush administration had sent enough troops into Iraq to secure the borders of the country, and whether that made the United States culpable in the death of innocent Iraqis. Foukara said people in the Pentagon told Rumsfeld the number of troops sent into Iraq was insufficient. Rumsfeld said, "You keep making assertions which are fundamentally false. No one in the Pentagon said they were not enough." Foukara pressed Rumsfeld repeatedly. Rumsfeld then asked, "Do you want to yell or do you want to have an interview?" Foukara then asked, "Do you think the numbers that you went to Iraq with did absolve you from the responsibility of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed by the Coalition and those criminals that you talked about?" Rumsfeld called the question "pejorative" and said Foukara was "not being respectful" (Foukara disagreed) and was "just talking over, and over, and over again".
Rumsfeld was the subject of the 2013 Errol Morris documentary The Unknown Known, the title a reference to his response to a question at a February 2002 press conference. In the film Rumsfeld "discusses his career in Washington D.C. from his days as a congressman in the early 1960s to planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003".
In January 2016, in partnership with the literary and creative agency Javelin, which handled design and development, Rumsfeld released a mobile app game of solitaire called Churchill Solitaire, emulating a variant of the card game as played by Winston Churchill. Rumsfeld and the Churchill family said that profits from the game would be donated to charity.
In June 2016, Rumsfeld announced that he would vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
On January 5, 2021, Rumsfeld was one of the ten living former Secretaries of Defense that sent a warning letter in order to warn President Trump not to involve the military in a 2020 presidential election dispute.
On June 29, 2021, Rumsfeld died from multiple myeloma at his home in Taos, New Mexico. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on August 24, 2021.
During the four elections during which he ran to represent Illinois's 13th congressional district, Rumsfeld received shares of the popular vote that ranged from 58% (in 1964) to 76% (in 1966). In 1975 and 2001, Rumsfeld was overwhelmingly confirmed by the U.S. Senate after presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, respectively, appointed him as U.S. Secretary of Defense.
Rumsfeld was awarded 11 honorary degrees. Following his years as CEO, president, and later chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, he was recognized as Outstanding CEO in the pharmaceutical industry by The Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981).
Some of his other awards included:
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger described Rumsfeld as "the most ruthless man" he knew. George Packer of The Atlantic named Rumsfeld "the worst secretary of defense in American history" who "lacked the wisdom to change his mind.” Bradley Graham, a Washington Post reporter and author of the book titled By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld released on June 23, 2009, stated "Rumsfeld left office as one of the most controversial Defense Secretaries since Robert McNamara and widely criticized for his management of the Iraq war and for his difficult relationships with Congress, administration colleagues, and military officers.” Neoconservative commentator Bill Kristol was also critical of Rumsfeld, stating he "breezily dodged responsibility" for planning mistakes made in the Iraq War, including insufficient troop levels.
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Documentary videos
Articles profiling Rumsfeld | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He was both the youngest and the oldest secretary of defense. Additionally, Rumsfeld was a four-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois (1963–1969), director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1969–1970), counselor to the president (1969–1973), the U.S. Representative to NATO (1973–1974), and the White House Chief of Staff (1974–1975). Between his terms as secretary of defense, he served as the CEO and chairman of several companies.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Born in Illinois, Rumsfeld attended Princeton University, graduating in 1954 with a degree in political science. After serving in the Navy for three years, he mounted a campaign for Congress in Illinois's 13th Congressional District, winning in 1962 at the age of 30. Rumsfeld accepted an appointment by President Richard Nixon to head the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1969; appointed counsellor by Nixon and entitled to Cabinet-level status, he also headed up the Economic Stabilization Program before being appointed ambassador to NATO. Called back to Washington in August 1974, Rumsfeld was appointed chief of staff by President Ford. Rumsfeld recruited a young one-time staffer of his, Dick Cheney, to succeed him when Ford nominated him to be Secretary of Defense in 1975. When Ford lost the 1976 election, Rumsfeld returned to private business and financial life, and was named president and CEO of the pharmaceutical corporation G. D. Searle & Company. He was later named CEO of General Instrument from 1990 to 1993 and chairman of Gilead Sciences from 1997 to 2001.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Rumsfeld was appointed Secretary of Defense for a second time in January 2001 by President George W. Bush. As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld played a central role in the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. Before and during the Iraq War, he claimed that Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program; no stockpiles were ever found. A Pentagon Inspector General report found that Rumsfeld's top policy aide \"developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers\". Rumsfeld's tenure was controversial for its use of torture and the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. Rumsfeld gradually lost political support and resigned in late 2006. In his retirement years, he published an autobiography, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, as well as Rumsfeld's Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Donald Henry Rumsfeld was born at St. Lukes Hospital on July 9, 1932, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Jeannette Kearsley (née Husted) and George Donald Rumsfeld. His father came from a German family that had emigrated in the 1870s from Weyhe in Lower Saxony, but young Donald was sometimes ribbed about looking like a \"tough Swiss.\" Growing up in Winnetka, Illinois, Rumsfeld became an Eagle Scout in 1949 and is the recipient of both the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America and its Silver Buffalo Award in 2006. Living in Winnetka, his family attended a Congregational church. From 1943 to 1945, Rumsfeld lived in Coronado, California, while his father was stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific in World War II. He was a ranger at Philmont Scout Ranch in 1949.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Rumsfeld attended Baker Demonstration School, and later graduated from New Trier High School where he excelled academically as well as in sports. In the band, the young Rumsfeld played drums and also excelled at saxophone. He attended Princeton University on academic and NROTC partial scholarships. He graduated in 1954 with an A.B. in politics after completing a senior thesis titled \"The Steel Seizure Case of 1952 and Its Effects on Presidential Powers\". During his time at Princeton, he was an accomplished amateur wrestler, becoming captain of the varsity wrestling team, and captain of the Lightweight Football team playing defensive back. While at Princeton he was friends with another future Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Rumsfeld married Joyce P. Pierson on December 27, 1954. They had three children, six grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He attended Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the Georgetown University Law Center, but did not take a degree from either institution.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Rumsfeld served in the United States Navy from 1954 to 1957, as a naval aviator and flight instructor. His initial training was in the North American SNJ Texan basic trainer after which he transitioned to the T-28 advanced trainer. In 1957, he transferred to the Naval Reserve and continued his naval service in flying and administrative assignments as a drilling reservist. On July 1, 1958, he was assigned to Anti-submarine Squadron 662 at Naval Air Station Anacostia in Washington, D.C., as a selective reservist. Rumsfeld was designated aircraft commander of Anti-submarine Squadron 731 on October 1, 1960, at Naval Air Station Grosse Ile, Michigan, where he flew the S2F Tracker. He transferred to the Individual Ready Reserve when he became Secretary of Defense in 1975 and retired with the rank of captain in 1989.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1957, during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, Rumsfeld served as administrative assistant to David S. Dennison Jr., a Congressman representing the 11th district of Ohio. In 1959, he moved on to become a staff assistant to Congressman Robert P. Griffin of Michigan. Engaging in a two-year stint with an investment banking firm, A. G. Becker & Co., from 1960 to 1962, Rumsfeld then set his sights on becoming a member of Congress.",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "He was elected to the United States House of Representatives for Illinois's 13th congressional district in 1962, at the age of 30, and was re-elected by large majorities in 1964, 1966, and 1968. While in Congress, he served on the Joint Economic Committee, the Committee on Science and Aeronautics, and the Government Operations Committee, as well as on the Subcommittees on Military and Foreign Operations. He was also a co-founder of the Japanese-American Inter-Parliamentary Council in addition to being a leading cosponsor of the Freedom of Information Act.",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1965, following the defeat of Barry Goldwater by Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 presidential election, which also led to the Republicans losing many seats in the House of Representatives, Rumsfeld proposed new leadership for the Republicans in the House, suggesting that representative Gerald Ford from Michigan's 5th congressional district was the most suited candidate to replace Charles A. Halleck as Republican leader. Rumsfeld, along with other members of the Republican caucus, then urged Ford to run for Republican leader. Ford eventually defeated Halleck and became House Minority Leader in 1965. The group of Republicans that encouraged Ford to run for the Republican leadership became known as the \"Young Turks\". Rumsfeld later served during Ford's presidency as his chief of staff in 1974, and was chosen by Ford to succeed James Schlesinger as United States Secretary of Defense in 1975.",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "During Rumsfeld's tenure as member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he voiced concerns about U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, saying that President Johnson and his national security team were overconfident about how the war was being conducted. On one occasion, Rumsfeld joined with other members of the House and traveled to Vietnam for a fact-finding mission to see for themselves how the war was going. The trip led to Rumsfeld believing that the South Vietnamese government was much too dependent on the United States. Rumsfeld was also unsatisfied when he received a briefing about war planning from the commander of the U.S. troops in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland. The trip led Rumsfeld to cosponsor a resolution to bring the conduct of the war to the House floor for further debate and discussion about U.S. mismanagement of the war. However, under constant pressure from the Johnson administration, the Democrats, who at that time held the majority at the House of Representatives, blocked the resolution from consideration.",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "As a young Congressman, Rumsfeld attended seminars at the University of Chicago, an experience he credits with introducing him to the idea of an all volunteer military, and to the economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. He later took part in Friedman's PBS series Free to Choose.",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "During his tenure in the House, Rumsfeld voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Rumsfeld resigned from Congress in 1969 – his fourth term – to serve in the Nixon administration in a variety of executive branch positions. Nixon appointed Rumsfeld director of the United States Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), a position with Cabinet rank. Rumsfeld had voted against the creation of OEO when he was in Congress, and, according to his 2011 memoirs, he initially rejected Nixon's offer, citing his own inherent belief that the OEO did more harm than good, and he felt that he was not the right person for the job. After much negotiation, he accepted the OEO appointment with Nixon's \"assurances that he would be ... also an assistant to the President, with Cabinet-level status and an office in the White House,\" which \"sweetened (the OEO position) with status and responsibility\". As director, Rumsfeld sought to reorganize the Office to serve what he later described in his 2011 memoir as \"a laboratory for experimental programs\". Several beneficial anti-poverty programs were saved by allocating funds to them from other less-successful government programs. During this time, he hired Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney to serve under him.",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "He was the subject of one of writer Jack Anderson's columns, alleging that \"anti-poverty czar\" Rumsfeld had cut programs to aid the poor while spending thousands to redecorate his office. Rumsfeld dictated a four-page response to Anderson, labeling the accusations as falsehoods, and invited Anderson to tour his office. Despite the tour, Anderson did not retract his claims, and only much later admitted that his column was a mistake.",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "When Rumsfeld left OEO in December 1970, Nixon named him Counselor to the President, a general advisory position; in this role, he retained Cabinet status. He was given an office in the West Wing in 1969 and regularly interacted with the Nixon administration hierarchy. He was named director of the Economic Stabilization Program in 1970 as well, and later headed up the Cost of Living Council. In March 1971 Nixon was recorded saying about Rumsfeld \"at least Rummy is tough enough\" and \"He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that.\"",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In February 1973, Rumsfeld left Washington to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium. He served as the United States' Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council and the Defense Planning Committee, and the Nuclear Planning Group. In this capacity, he represented the United States in wide-ranging military and diplomatic matters, and was asked to help mediate a conflict on behalf of the United States between Cyprus and Turkey.",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In August 1974, after Nixon resigned as president in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Rumsfeld was called back to Washington to serve as the transition chairman for the new president, Gerald Ford. He had been Ford's confidante since their days in the House, before Ford was House minority leader and was one of the members of the \"Young Turks\" who played a major role in bringing Ford to Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. As the new president became settled in, Ford appointed Rumsfeld White House Chief of Staff, following Ford's appointment of General Alexander Haig to be the new Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Rumsfeld served from 1974 to 1975.",
"title": "Career in government (1962–1975)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In October 1975, Ford reshuffled his cabinet in the Halloween Massacre. Various newspaper and magazine articles at the time identified Rumsfeld as having orchestrated these events. Ford named Rumsfeld to succeed Schlesinger as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defense and George H. W. Bush to become Director of Central Intelligence. According to Bob Woodward's 2002 book Bush at War, a rivalry developed between the two men and \"Bush senior was convinced that Rumsfeld was pushing him out to the CIA to end his political career.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (1975–1977)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Rumsfeld's confirmation hearing as Secretary of Defense began on November 12, 1975. During the hearing, Rumsfeld was mostly asked about the administration's defense policy on the Cold War. Rumsfeld stated that the Soviet Union was a \"clear and present danger,\" especially following the end of the Vietnam War, which Rumsfeld described as the USSR's chance to build up its domination. On November 17, 1975, Rumsfeld was confirmed as Secretary of Defense by a vote of 97–2. At the age of 43, Rumsfeld became the youngest person to serve as United States Secretary of Defense as of 2023.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (1975–1977)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "During his tenure as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld oversaw the transition to an all-volunteer military. He sought to reverse the gradual decline in the defense budget and to build up U.S. strategic and conventional forces, undermining Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the SALT talks. He asserted, along with Team B (which he helped to set up), that trends in comparative U.S.-Soviet military strength had not favored the United States for 15 to 20 years and that, if continued, they \"would have the effect of injecting a fundamental instability in the world\". For this reason, he oversaw the development of cruise missiles, the B-1 bomber, and a major naval shipbuilding program.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (1975–1977)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Rumsfeld, who previously was assigned to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, emphasized the importance of the next stage of the space program following the successful Moon landing in 1969. While serving as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld organized a joint-cooperation between the Department of Defense and NASA to develop Skylab. Another result of the cooperation was the Space Shuttle program.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (1975–1977)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "During his tenure as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld worked to finish the SALT II Treaty. Rumsfeld, together with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George S. Brown drafted the treaty. However, an agreement was not made before the 1976 election. SALT II was finished and signed during the Carter administration.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (1975–1977)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1977, Rumsfeld was awarded the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Kissinger, his bureaucratic adversary, later paid him a different sort of compliment, pronouncing him \"a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability, and substance fuse seamlessly\".",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (1975–1977)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Rumsfeld's first tenure as Secretary of Defense ended on January 20, 1977. He was succeeded by former Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (1975–1977)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In early 1977 Rumsfeld briefly lectured at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. His sights instead turned to business, and from 1977 to 1985 Rumsfeld served as chief executive officer, president, and then chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, a worldwide pharmaceutical company based in Skokie, Illinois. During his tenure at Searle, Rumsfeld led the company's financial turnaround, thereby earning awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981). Journalist Andrew Cockburn of Harper's Magazine claimed that Rumsfeld suppressed news that Searle's key product, aspartame, was shown to have potentially dangerous effects by leveraging old government contacts at the Food and Drug Administration. In 1985, Searle was sold to the Monsanto Company.",
"title": "Return to the private sector (1977–2000)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Rumsfeld served as chairman and chief executive officer of General Instrument from 1990 to 1993. A leader in broadband transmission, distribution, and access control technologies for cable, satellite, and terrestrial broadcasting applications, the company pioneered the development of the first all-digital high-definition television (HDTV) technology. After taking the company public and returning it to profitability, Rumsfeld returned to private business in late 1993.",
"title": "Return to the private sector (1977–2000)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "From January 1997 until being sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense in January 2001, Rumsfeld served as chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc. Gilead is the developer of Tamiflu (Oseltamivir), which is used in the treatment of bird flu as well as influenza A and influenza B in humans. As a result, Rumsfeld's holdings in the company grew significantly when avian flu became a subject of popular anxiety during his later term as Secretary of Defense. Following standard practice, Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead, and he directed the Pentagon's general counsel to issue instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.",
"title": "Return to the private sector (1977–2000)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "During his business career, Rumsfeld continued part-time public service in various posts. In November 1983, Rumsfeld was appointed special envoy to the Middle East by President Ronald Reagan, at a turbulent time in modern Middle Eastern history when Iraq was fighting Iran in the Iran–Iraq War. The United States wished for Iraq to win the conflict, and Rumsfeld was sent to the Middle East to serve as a mediator on behalf of the president.",
"title": "Return to the private sector (1977–2000)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "When Rumsfeld visited Baghdad on December 20, 1983, he met Saddam Hussein at Saddam's palace and engaged a 90-minute discussion with him. They largely agreed on opposing Syria's occupation of Lebanon; preventing Syrian and Iranian expansion; and preventing arms sales to Iran. Rumsfeld suggested that if U.S.-Iraq relations could improve the U.S. might support a new oil pipeline across Jordan, which Iraq had opposed but was now willing to reconsider. Rumsfeld also informed Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that \"Our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us ... citing the use of chemical weapons.\"",
"title": "Return to the private sector (1977–2000)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Rumsfeld wrote in his memoir Known and Unknown that his meeting with Hussein \"has been the subject of gossip, rumors, and crackpot conspiracy theories for more than a quarter of a century ... Supposedly I had been sent to see Saddam by President Reagan either to negotiate a secret oil deal, to help arm Iraq, or to make Iraq an American client state. The truth is that our encounter was more straightforward and less dramatic.\" The Washington Post reported that \"Although former U.S. officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects of the Reagan administration's tilt toward Iraq—he was a private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy—the documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer U.S.–Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts.\"",
"title": "Return to the private sector (1977–2000)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In addition to taking the position of Middle East envoy, Rumsfeld served as a member of the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control (1982–1986); President Reagan's special envoy on the Law of the Sea Treaty (1982–1983); a senior adviser to President Reagan's Panel on Strategic Systems (1983–1984); a member of the Joint Advisory Commission on U.S./Japan Relations (1983–1984); a member of the National Commission on the Public Service (1987–1990); a member of the National Economic Commission (1988–1989); a member of the board of visitors of the National Defense University (1988–1992); a member of the FCC's High Definition Television Advisory Committee (1992–1993); a member of the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission (1999–2000); a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and chairman of the U.S. Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization (2000). Among his most noteworthy positions was chairman of the nine-member Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States from January to July 1998. In its findings, the commission concluded that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea could develop intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities in five to ten years and that U.S. intelligence would have little warning before such systems were deployed.",
"title": "Return to the private sector (1977–2000)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "During the 1980s, Rumsfeld became a member of the National Academy of Public Administration, and was named a member of the boards of trustees of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the National Park Foundation. He was also a member of the U.S./Russia Business Forum and chairman of the Congressional Leadership's National Security Advisory Group. Rumsfeld was a member of the Project for the New American Century, a think-tank dedicated to maintaining U.S. primacy. In addition, he was asked to serve the U.S. State Department as a foreign policy consultant from 1990 to 1993. Though considered one of the Bush administration's staunchest hard-liners against North Korea, Rumsfeld sat on European engineering giant Asea Brown Boveri's board from 1990 to 2001, a company that sold two light-water nuclear reactors to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization for installation in North Korea, as part of the 1994 agreed framework reached under President Bill Clinton. Rumsfeld's office said that he did not \"recall it being brought before the board at any time\" though Fortune magazine reported that \"board members were informed about this project\". The Bush administration repeatedly criticized the 1994 agreement and the former Clinton presidency for its softness towards North Korea, regarding the country as a state sponsor of terrorism, and later designated North Korea as part of the Axis-of-Evil.",
"title": "Return to the private sector (1977–2000)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "During the 1976 Republican National Convention, Rumsfeld received one vote for Vice President of the United States, although he did not seek the office, and the nomination was easily won by Ford's choice, Senator Bob Dole. During the 1980 Republican National Convention he again received one vote for vice president.",
"title": "Return to the private sector (1977–2000)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Rumsfeld briefly sought the presidential nomination in 1988, but withdrew from the race before primaries began. During the 1996 election season, he initially formed a presidential exploratory committee, but declined to formally enter the race. He was instead named national chairman for Republican nominee Bob Dole's campaign.",
"title": "Return to the private sector (1977–2000)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Rumsfeld was named Secretary of Defense soon after President George W. Bush took office in 2001 despite Rumsfeld's past rivalry with the previous President Bush. Bush's first choice, FedEx founder Fred Smith, was unavailable and Vice President-elect Cheney recommended Rumsfeld for the job. Rumsfeld's second tenure as Secretary of Defense cemented him as the most powerful Pentagon chief since Robert McNamara and one of the most influential Cabinet members in the Bush administration. His tenure proved to be a pivotal and rocky one that led the United States military into the 21st century. Following the September 11 attacks, Rumsfeld led the military planning and execution of the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq. He pushed hard to send as small a force as soon as possible to both conflicts, a concept codified as the Rumsfeld Doctrine.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Throughout his time as defense secretary, Rumsfeld was noted for his candor and quick wit when giving weekly press conferences or speaking with the press. U.S. News & World Report called him \"a straight-talking Midwesterner\" who \"routinely has the press corps doubled over in fits of laughter\". By the same token, his leadership was exposed to much criticism through books covering the Iraq conflict, like Bob Woodward's State of Denial, Thomas E. Ricks' Fiasco, and Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them in coordinated strikes into both towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and its target was likely a prominent building in Washington, D.C., most probably either the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House. Within three hours of the start of the first hijacking and two hours after American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld raised the defense condition signaling of the United States offensive readiness to DEFCON 3, the highest it had been since the Arab–Israeli war in 1973.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon, just eight hours after the attacks and stated, \"It's an indication that the United States government is functioning in the face of this terrible act against our country. I should add that the briefing here is taking place in the Pentagon. The Pentagon's functioning. It will be in business tomorrow.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On the afternoon of September 11, Rumsfeld issued rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of possible Iraqi involvement in regard to what had just occurred, according to notes taken by senior policy official Stephen Cambone. \"Best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H.\" – meaning Saddam Hussein – \"at same time. Not only UBL\" (Osama bin Laden), Cambone's notes quoted Rumsfeld as saying. \"Need to move swiftly – Near term target needs – go massive – sweep it all up. Things related and not.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In the first emergency meeting of the National Security Council on the day of the attacks, Rumsfeld asked, \"Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?\" with his deputy Paul Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a \"brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily—it was doable,\" and, according to John Kampfner, \"from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case.\" President George W. Bush reacted to Rumsfeld's suggestion, \"Wait a minute, I didn't hear a word said about him (Saddam Hussein) being responsible for the attack\" and the idea was initially rejected at the behest of Secretary of State Colin Powell, but, according to Kampfner, \"Undeterred Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz held secret meetings about opening up a second front—against Saddam. Powell was excluded.\" In such meetings they created a policy that would later be dubbed the Bush Doctrine, centering on \"pre-emption\" and the war on Iraq, which the PNAC had advocated in their earlier letters.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Richard A. Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism coordinator at the time, has revealed details of another National Security Council meeting the day after the attacks, during which officials considered the U.S. response. Already, he said, they were certain al-Qa'ida was to blame and there was no hint of Iraqi involvement. \"Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq,\" according to Clarke. Clarke then stated, \"We all said, 'No, no, al-Qa'ida is in Afghanistan.'\" Clarke also revealed that Rumsfeld complained in the meeting, \"there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.\" Rumsfeld even suggested to attack other countries like Libya and Sudan, arguing that if this was to be a truly \"global war on terror\" then all state sponsors of terrorism should be dealt with.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Rumsfeld wrote in Known and Unknown, \"Much has been written about the Bush administration's focus on Iraq after 9/11. Commentators have suggested that it was strange or obsessive for the President and his advisers to have raised questions about whether Saddam Hussein was somehow behind the attack. I have never understood the controversy. I had no idea if Iraq was or was not involved, but it would have been irresponsible for any administration not to have asked the question.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "A memo written by Rumsfeld dated November 27, 2001, considers an Iraq war. One section of the memo questions \"How start?\", listing multiple possible justifications for a U.S.-Iraq War.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Rumsfeld directed the planning for the War in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks. On September 21, 2001, USCENTCOM Commander General Tommy Franks, briefed the President on a plan to destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and remove the Taliban government. General Franks, also initially proposed to Rumsfeld that the U.S. invade Afghanistan using a conventional force of 60,000 troops, preceded by six months of preparation. Rumsfeld, however feared that a conventional invasion of Afghanistan could bog down as had happened to the Soviets in the Soviet–Afghan War and the 1842 retreat from Kabul by the British. Rumsfeld rejected Franks's plan, saying \"I want men on the ground now!\" Franks returned the next day with a plan utilizing U.S. Special Forces. Despite air and missile attacks against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, USCENTCOM had no pre-existing plans for conducting ground operations there.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The September 21, 2001 plan emerged after extensive dialogue, but Secretary Rumsfeld also asked for broader plans that looked beyond Afghanistan.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "On October 7, 2001, just hours after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was launched, Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon stating \"While our raids today focus on the Taliban and the foreign terrorists in Afghanistan, our aim remains much broader. Our objective is to defeat those who use terrorism and those who house or support them. The world stands united in this effort\".",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Rumsfeld also stated \"the only way to deal with these terrorist threats is to go at them where they exist. You cannot defend at every place at every time against every conceivable, imaginable, even unimaginable terrorist attack. And the only way to deal with it is to take the battle to where they are and to root them out and to starve them out by seeing that those countries and those organizations and those non-governmental organizations and those individuals that are supporting and harboring and facilitating these networks stop doing it and find that there's a penalty for doing it\".",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Rumsfeld in another press conference at the Pentagon on October 29, 2001, stated \"As the first weeks of this effort proceed, it bears repeating that our goal is not to reduce or simply contain terrorist acts, but our goal is to deal with it comprehensively. And we do not intend to stop until we've rooted out terrorist networks and put them out of business, not just in the case of the Taliban and the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but other networks as well. And as I've mentioned, the Al Qaeda network crosses some 40, 50-plus countries.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Rumsfeld announced in November 2001, that he received \"authoritative reports\" that Al-Qaeda's number three Mohammed Atef, bin Laden's primary military chief and a planner of the September 11 attacks on America, was killed by a U.S. airstrike. \"He was very, very senior,\" Rumsfeld said. \"We obviously have been seeking [him] out.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In a press conference at the Pentagon on November 19, 2001, Rumsfeld described the role of U.S. ground forces in Afghanistan as firstly in the north, American troops are \"embedded in Northern Alliance\" elements, helping arrange food and medical supplies and pinpointing airstrikes and in the south, commandos and other troops are operating more independently, raiding compounds, monitoring roadblocks and searching vehicles in the hope of developing more information about al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. On December 16, 2001, Rumsfeld visited U.S. troops in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "On March 15, 2002, in another press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld commented on the mission of Operation Anaconda by stating \"Operation Anaconda continues in the area south of Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The fighting is winding down as you know. Coalition forces are for the most part in an exploitation phase, doing the difficult work of searching caves and clearing areas where the battles and fighting has taken place. Our forces are finding weapons, ammunition, some intelligence information. In the top 25 al Qaeda, we know some are dead and we know some may be dead; we know some are captured and there are a larger number that we don't know. And roughly the same proportions with respect to Taliban\".",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "On May 1, 2003, Rumsfeld during a visit to Afghanistan meeting with U.S. troops stationed in Kabul told the press \"General Franks and I have been looking at the progress that's being made in this country and have concluded that we are at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction and activities.\" \"I should underline however, that there are still dangers, there are still pockets of resistance in certain parts of the country and General McNeal and General Franks and their, the cooperation they have with the President Karzai's government and leadership and Marshall Fayheems assistance. We will be continuing as a country to work with the Afghan government and the new Afghan National Army to see that the any areas where there is resistance to this government and to the coalition forces will be dealt with promptly and efficiently.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "There was also controversy between the Pentagon and the CIA over who had the authority to fire Hellfire missiles from Predator drones. Even though the drones were not ready for deployment until 2002, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have argued that \"these quarrels kept the Predator from being used against al Qaeda ... One anonymous individual who was at the center of the action called this episode 'typical' and complained that 'Rumsfeld never missed an opportunity to fail to cooperate. The fact is, the Secretary of Defense is an obstacle. He has helped the terrorists.'",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 2009, three years after Rumsfeld's tenure as Defense secretary ended, the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations led an investigation into the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, during the early phase of the U.S-led coalition war in Afghanistan. They concluded that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and General Franks had not committed enough troops during the battle to secure the area around Tora Bora. They believed that Al-Qaeda's number one leader Osama bin Laden had likely been at Tora Bora and his escape prolonged the war in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld and Franks were apparently motivated by fear that a substantial American presence near Tora Bora could incite a rebellion by local Pashtuns, despite the latter's lack of organizational capability at the time and the fierce dissent voiced by many CIA analysts including Charles E. Allen (who warned Franks that \"the back door [to Pakistan] was open\") and Gary Berntsen (who called for army rangers to \"kill this baby in the crib\"). Instead of rangers or marines, the U.S. assault on Tora Bora relied on the CIA-backed Afghan militias of Hazrat Ali and Zahir Qadeer, supplemented with B-52 bombardment. The resulting influx of hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters into Pakistan destabilized the country and damaged Pakistan–United States relations. The follow-up Operation Anaconda \"witnessed failures of planning and execution, the product of the fractured lines of command,\" as recounted by Steve Coll. In mid-2002, Rumsfeld announced that \"The war is over in Afghanistan,\" to the disbelief of State Department, CIA, and military officials in the country. As a result, Rumsfeld downplayed the need for an Afghan army of even 70,000 troops, far fewer than the 250,000 envisaged by Karzai.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Before and during the Iraq War, Rumsfeld claimed that Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program; in particular during his famous phrase \"there are known knowns\" in a press conference at the Pentagon on February 12, 2002, no stockpiles were ever found. Bush administration officials also claimed that there was an operational relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. A Pentagon Inspector General report found that Rumsfeld's top policy aide, Douglas J. Feith, \"developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers\".",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The job of finding WMD and providing justification for the attack fell to the intelligence services, but, according to Kampfner, \"Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed that, while the established security services had a role, they were too bureaucratic and too traditional in their thinking.\" As a result, \"they set up what came to be known as the 'cabal', a cell of eight or nine analysts in a new Office of Special Plans (OSP) based in the U.S. Defense Department.\" According to an unnamed Pentagon source quoted by Hersh, the OSP \"was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States\".",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "On January 22, 2003, after the German and French governments voiced opposition to invading Iraq, Rumsfeld labeled these countries as part of \"Old Europe\", implying that countries that supported the war were part of a newer, modern Europe.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "After the war in Afghanistan was launched, Rumsfeld participated in a meeting in regard to the review of the Department of Defense's Contingency Plan in the event of a war with Iraq. The plan, as it was then conceived, contemplated troop levels of up to 500,000, which Rumsfeld felt was far too many. Gordon and Trainor wrote:",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "As [General] Newbold outlined the plan ... it was clear that Rumsfeld was growing increasingly irritated. For Rumsfeld, the plan required too many troops and supplies and took far too long to execute. It was, Rumsfeld declared, the \"product of old thinking and the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the military\".",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In a press conference at the Pentagon on February 27, 2003, Rumsfeld told reporters after being asked a question that Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki suggested it would take several hundred thousand troops on the ground to secure Iraq and provide stability. Is he wrong?. Rumsfeld replied \"the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far from the mark. The reality is that we already have a number of countries that have offered to participate with their forces in stabilization activities, in the event force has to be used.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon on March 20, 2003, just hours after the launch of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, where he announced the first strike of the war to liberate Iraq and that \"The days of the Saddam Hussein regime are numbered,\" and \"We continue to feel there is no need for a broader conflict if the Iraqi leaders act to save themselves and act to prevent such a conflict.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Rumsfeld's role in directing the Iraq War included a plan that was the Shock and Awe campaign, which resulted in a lightning invasion with 145,000 soldiers on the ground that took Baghdad in well under a month with very few American casualties. Many government buildings, plus major museums, electrical generation infrastructure, and even oil equipment were looted and vandalized during the transition from the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime to the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority. A violent insurrection began shortly after the military operation started.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "On March 30, 2003, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week program, Rumsfeld answered a question by Stephanopoulos about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Rumsfeld stated \"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "On April 9, 2003, at a press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld addressed reporters during the Fall of Baghdad, and stated \"The scenes of free Iraqis celebrating in the streets, riding American tanks, tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein in the center of Baghdad are breathtaking.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "After the Iraq invasion, U.S. troops were criticized for not protecting the historical artifacts and treasures located at the National Museum of Iraq. On April 11, 2003, at a press conference at the Pentagon, when asked at the time why U.S. troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness, Rumsfeld replied, \"Stuff happens ... and it's untidy and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.\" He further commented that, \"The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, \"My goodness, were there that many vases?\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "On July 24, 2003, at a press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld commented on the release of photographs of the deceased sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein. \"It is not a practice that the United States engages in on a normal basis,\" Rumsfeld said. \"I honestly believe that these two are particularly bad characters and that it's important for the Iraqi people to see them, to know they're gone, to know they're dead, and to know they're not coming back.\" Rumsfeld also said, \"I feel it was the right decision, and I'm glad I made it.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In October 2003, Rumsfeld approved a secret Pentagon \"roadmap\" on public relations, calling for \"boundaries\" between information operations abroad and the news media at home. The Roadmap advances a policy according to which as long as the U.S. government does not intentionally target the American public, it does not matter that psychological operations reach the American public.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "On December 14, 2003, Rumsfeld in an interview with journalist Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes after U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein in Operation Red Dawn, stated, \"Here was a man who was photographed hundreds of times shooting off rifles and showing how tough he was, and in fact, he wasn't very tough, he was cowering in a hole in the ground, and had a pistol and didn't use it, and certainly did not put up any fight at all. I think that ... he resulted in the death of an awful lot of Iraqi people, in the last analysis, he seemed not terribly brave.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld was deliberate in crafting the public message from the Department of Defense. People will \"rally\" to the word \"sacrifice\", Rumsfeld noted after a meeting. \"They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory.\" In May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the war on terrorism as a fight against \"worldwide insurgency\". He advised aides \"to test what the results could be\" if the war on terrorism were renamed. Rumsfeld also ordered specific public Pentagon attacks on and responses to U.S. newspaper columns that reported the negative aspects of the war.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "During Rumsfeld's tenure, he regularly visited U.S. troops stationed in Iraq.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Australia Broadcasting Corporation reported that though Rumsfeld didn't specify a withdrawal date for troops in Iraq, \"He says it would be unrealistic to wait for Iraq to be peaceful before removing U.S. led forces from the country, adding that Iraq had never been peaceful and perfect.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "On August 2, 2006, at a press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld commented on the sectarian violence in Iraq where he stated \"there's sectarian violence; people are being killed. Sunnis are killing Shi'a and Shi'a are killing Sunnis. Kurds seem not to be involved. It's unfortunate, and they need a reconciliation process.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "On October 26, 2006, at a press conference at the Pentagon after the failure of Operation Together Forward in Iraq, Rumsfeld stated \"Would defeat in Iraq be so bad?\" Well, the answer is: Yes, it would be. Those who are fighting against the Iraqi government want to seize power so that they can establish a new sanctuary and a base of operations for terrorists and any idea that U.S. military leaders are rigidly refusing to make adjustments in their approaches is just flat wrong. The military is continuing to adapt and to adjust as required. Yes, there are difficulties and problems to be sure.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "As a result, Rumsfeld stirred controversy as to whether the forces that did invade Iraq were enough in size. In 2006, Rumsfeld responded to a question by Brit Hume of Fox News as to whether he pressed General Tommy Franks to lower his request for 400,000 troops for the war:",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Absolutely not. That's a mythology. This town [Washington, D.C.] is filled with this kind of nonsense. The people who decide the levels of forces on the ground are not the Secretary of Defense or the President. We hear recommendations, but the recommendations are made by the combatant commanders and by members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and there hasn't been a minute in the last six years when we have not had the number of troops that the combatant commanders have requested.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Rumsfeld told Hume that Franks ultimately decided against such a troop level.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Throughout his tenure, Rumsfeld sought to remind the American people of the 9/11 attacks and threats against Americans, noting at one time in a 2006 memo to \"[m]ake the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists\". According to a report by The Guardian, Rumsfeld was allegedly including biblical quotes in top secret briefing papers to appeal George W Bush, known for his devout religious beliefs, to invade Iraq as more like \"holy war\" or \"a religious crusade\" against Muslims.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In a September 2007 interview with The Daily Telegraph, General Mike Jackson, the head of the British army during the invasion, criticized Rumsfeld's plans for the invasion of Iraq as \"intellectually bankrupt\", adding that Rumsfeld is \"one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq\", and that he felt that \"the US approach to combating global terrorism is 'inadequate' and too focused on military might rather than nation building and diplomacy.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In December 2004, Rumsfeld was heavily criticized for using a signing machine instead of personally signing over 1000 letters of condolence to the families of soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He promised to personally sign all letters in the future.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The Department of Defense's preliminary concerns for holding, housing, and interrogating captured prisoners on the battlefield were raised during the military build-up prior to the Iraq War. Because Saddam Hussein's military forces surrendered when faced with military action, many within the DOD, including Rumsfeld and United States Central Command General Tommy Franks, decided it was in the best interest of all to hand these prisoners over to their respective countries. Additionally, it was determined that maintaining a large holding facility was, at the time, unrealistic. Instead, the use of many facilities such as Abu Ghraib to house prisoners of interest prior to handing them over, and Rumsfeld defended the Bush administration's decision to detain enemy combatants. Because of this, critics, including members of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, held Rumsfeld responsible for the ensuing Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. Rumsfeld himself said: \"These events occurred on my watch as Secretary of Defense. I am accountable for them.\" He offered his resignation to President Bush in the wake of the scandal, but it was not accepted.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In a memo read by Rumsfeld detailing how Guantanamo Bay detention camp interrogators induced stress in prisoners by forcing them to remain standing in one position for a maximum of four hours, Rumsfeld scrawled a handwritten note on the memo reading: \"I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners] limited to 4 hours? D.R.\"",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Various organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, called for investigations of Rumsfeld regarding his involvement in managing the Iraq War and his support of the Bush administration's policies of \"enhanced interrogation techniques\", which are widely regarded as torture.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Legal scholars have argued that Rumsfeld \"might be held criminally responsible if [he] would be prosecuted by the ICC\". In 2005 the ACLU and Human Rights First filed a lawsuit against Rumsfeld and other top government officials, \"on behalf of eight men who they say were subjected to torture and abuse by U.S. forces under the command of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld\".",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In 2005, a suit was filed against Rumsfeld by several human rights organizations for allegedly violating U.S. and international law that prohibits \"torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment\". Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel filed suit against the U.S. government and Rumsfeld on similar grounds, alleging that they were tortured and their rights of habeas corpus were violated. In 2007, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that Rumsfeld could not \"be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job\". The ACLU tried to revive the case in 2011 with no success.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In 2004, German prosecutor Wolfgang Kaleck filed a criminal complaint charging Rumsfeld and 11 other U.S. officials as war criminals who either ordered the torture of prisoners or drafted laws that legitimated its use. The charges based on breaches of the UN Convention against Torture and the German Code of Crimes against International Law.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Eight U.S. and other NATO-member retired generals and admirals called for Rumsfeld to resign in early 2006 in what was called the \"Generals Revolt\", accusing him of \"abysmal\" military planning and lack of strategic competence.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Commentator Pat Buchanan reported at the time that Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who traveled often to Iraq and supported the war, said the generals \"mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more\". Rumsfeld rebuffed these criticisms, stating, \"out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round.\" Bush defended Rumsfeld throughout and responded by stating that Rumsfeld is \"exactly what is needed\".",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "On November 1, 2006, Bush stated he would stand by Rumsfeld as defense secretary for the length of his term as president. Rumsfeld wrote a resignation letter dated November 6, 2006, and, per the stamp on the letter, Bush saw it on Election Day, November 7, 2006. In the elections, the House and the Senate shifted to Democratic control. After the elections on November 8, 2006, Bush announced Rumsfeld would resign his position as Secretary of Defense. Many Republicans were unhappy with the delay, believing they would have won more votes if voters had known Rumsfeld was resigning.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Bush nominated Robert Gates to succeed Rumsfeld. On December 15, 2006, a farewell ceremony, with an armed forces full honor review and a 19-gun salute, was held at the Pentagon Mall Terrace in honor of the departing Rumsfeld.",
"title": "Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In the months after his resignation, Rumsfeld toured the New York City publishing houses in preparation for a potential memoir. After receiving what one industry source labeled \"big bids\", he reached an agreement with the Penguin Group to publish the book under its Sentinel HC imprint. Rumsfeld declined to accept an advance for the publication of his memoir, and said he was donating all proceeds from the work to veterans groups. His book, entitled Known and Unknown: A Memoir, was released on February 8, 2011.",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "In conjunction with the publication of Known and Unknown, Rumsfeld established \"The Rumsfeld Papers\", a website with documents \"related to the endnotes\" of the book and his service during the George W. Bush administration; during the months that followed the book's publication, the website was expanded to include over 4,000 documents from his archive. As of June 2011, the topics included his Congressional voting record, the Nixon administration, documents and memos of meetings while he was part of the Ford, Reagan, and George W. Bush administrations, private sector documents, and NATO documents, among other items.",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "In 2007, Rumsfeld established The Rumsfeld Foundation, which focuses on encouraging public service in the United States and supporting the growth of free political and free economic systems abroad. The educational foundation provides fellowships to talented individuals from the private sector who want to serve for some time in government. Rumsfeld personally financed the foundation. As of January 2014, the foundation had sponsored over 90 fellows from Central Asia, provided over million in tuition and stipend support for graduate students, awarded over million in microfinance grants, and donated over million to charities for veterans' affairs.",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Rumsfeld was awarded the \"Defender of the Constitution Award\" at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 2011.",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "After his retirement from government, Rumsfeld criticized former fellow Cabinet member Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, in his memoir, asserting that she was basically unfit for office. In 2011, she responded, saying that Rumsfeld \"doesn't know what he's talking about. The reader may imagine what can be correct about the conflicted matter.\"",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In February 2011, Rumsfeld endorsed the repeal of the military's \"Don't ask, don't tell\" policy, saying that allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve \"is an idea whose time has come\".",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "In March 2011, Rumsfeld spoke out on the 2011 military intervention in Libya, telling ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper that the Obama administration should \"recognize the mission has to determine the coalition. The coalition ought not determine the mission.\" Rumsfeld also used the word \"confusion\" six times to describe the United Nations-backed military effort in Libya.",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "In October 2011, Rumsfeld conducted an interview with Al Jazeera's Washington, D.C., bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara. Foukara asked Rumsfeld whether, in hindsight, the Bush administration had sent enough troops into Iraq to secure the borders of the country, and whether that made the United States culpable in the death of innocent Iraqis. Foukara said people in the Pentagon told Rumsfeld the number of troops sent into Iraq was insufficient. Rumsfeld said, \"You keep making assertions which are fundamentally false. No one in the Pentagon said they were not enough.\" Foukara pressed Rumsfeld repeatedly. Rumsfeld then asked, \"Do you want to yell or do you want to have an interview?\" Foukara then asked, \"Do you think the numbers that you went to Iraq with did absolve you from the responsibility of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed by the Coalition and those criminals that you talked about?\" Rumsfeld called the question \"pejorative\" and said Foukara was \"not being respectful\" (Foukara disagreed) and was \"just talking over, and over, and over again\".",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Rumsfeld was the subject of the 2013 Errol Morris documentary The Unknown Known, the title a reference to his response to a question at a February 2002 press conference. In the film Rumsfeld \"discusses his career in Washington D.C. from his days as a congressman in the early 1960s to planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003\".",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "In January 2016, in partnership with the literary and creative agency Javelin, which handled design and development, Rumsfeld released a mobile app game of solitaire called Churchill Solitaire, emulating a variant of the card game as played by Winston Churchill. Rumsfeld and the Churchill family said that profits from the game would be donated to charity.",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "In June 2016, Rumsfeld announced that he would vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "On January 5, 2021, Rumsfeld was one of the ten living former Secretaries of Defense that sent a warning letter in order to warn President Trump not to involve the military in a 2020 presidential election dispute.",
"title": "Retirement and later life (2006–2021)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "On June 29, 2021, Rumsfeld died from multiple myeloma at his home in Taos, New Mexico. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on August 24, 2021.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "During the four elections during which he ran to represent Illinois's 13th congressional district, Rumsfeld received shares of the popular vote that ranged from 58% (in 1964) to 76% (in 1966). In 1975 and 2001, Rumsfeld was overwhelmingly confirmed by the U.S. Senate after presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, respectively, appointed him as U.S. Secretary of Defense.",
"title": "Electoral history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Rumsfeld was awarded 11 honorary degrees. Following his years as CEO, president, and later chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, he was recognized as Outstanding CEO in the pharmaceutical industry by The Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981).",
"title": "Awards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Some of his other awards included:",
"title": "Awards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Secretary of State Henry Kissinger described Rumsfeld as \"the most ruthless man\" he knew. George Packer of The Atlantic named Rumsfeld \"the worst secretary of defense in American history\" who \"lacked the wisdom to change his mind.” Bradley Graham, a Washington Post reporter and author of the book titled By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld released on June 23, 2009, stated \"Rumsfeld left office as one of the most controversial Defense Secretaries since Robert McNamara and widely criticized for his management of the Iraq war and for his difficult relationships with Congress, administration colleagues, and military officers.” Neoconservative commentator Bill Kristol was also critical of Rumsfeld, stating he \"breezily dodged responsibility\" for planning mistakes made in the Iraq War, including insufficient troop levels.",
"title": "Legacy and reputation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Works",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Government service",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Documentary videos",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Articles profiling Rumsfeld",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Donald Henry Rumsfeld was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He was both the youngest and the oldest secretary of defense. Additionally, Rumsfeld was a four-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois (1963–1969), director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1969–1970), counselor to the president (1969–1973), the U.S. Representative to NATO (1973–1974), and the White House Chief of Staff (1974–1975). Between his terms as secretary of defense, he served as the CEO and chairman of several companies. Born in Illinois, Rumsfeld attended Princeton University, graduating in 1954 with a degree in political science. After serving in the Navy for three years, he mounted a campaign for Congress in Illinois's 13th Congressional District, winning in 1962 at the age of 30. Rumsfeld accepted an appointment by President Richard Nixon to head the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1969; appointed counsellor by Nixon and entitled to Cabinet-level status, he also headed up the Economic Stabilization Program before being appointed ambassador to NATO. Called back to Washington in August 1974, Rumsfeld was appointed chief of staff by President Ford. Rumsfeld recruited a young one-time staffer of his, Dick Cheney, to succeed him when Ford nominated him to be Secretary of Defense in 1975. When Ford lost the 1976 election, Rumsfeld returned to private business and financial life, and was named president and CEO of the pharmaceutical corporation G. D. Searle & Company. He was later named CEO of General Instrument from 1990 to 1993 and chairman of Gilead Sciences from 1997 to 2001. Rumsfeld was appointed Secretary of Defense for a second time in January 2001 by President George W. Bush. As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld played a central role in the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. Before and during the Iraq War, he claimed that Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program; no stockpiles were ever found. A Pentagon Inspector General report found that Rumsfeld's top policy aide "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers". Rumsfeld's tenure was controversial for its use of torture and the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. Rumsfeld gradually lost political support and resigned in late 2006. In his retirement years, he published an autobiography, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, as well as Rumsfeld's Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life. | 2001-10-09T20:14:50Z | 2023-12-26T21:50:09Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld |
8,630 | Diego Garcia | Diego Garcia is an island of the British Indian Ocean Territory, a disputed overseas territory of the United Kingdom also claimed by Mauritius. It is a militarised atoll just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, and the largest of the 60 small islands of the Chagos Archipelago. Portuguese sailors under Pedro Mascarenhas were the first Europeans to discover the island, finding it uninhabited in 1512. After a 1786 British colony failed, the French began using the island as a leper colony and, starting in 1793, coconut cultivation by enslaved labor. It was transferred to British rule after the Napoleonic Wars. It was one of the "Dependencies" of the British Colony of Mauritius until the Chagos Islands were detached for inclusion in the newly created British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) in 1965.
In 1966, the population of the island was 924. These people were employed as contract farm workers primarily on copra plantations owned by the Chagos-Agalega company. Although local plantation managers commonly allowed pensioners and the disabled to remain in the islands and continue to receive housing and rations in exchange for light work, children after the age of 12 were required to work. In 1964, only 3 of a population of 963 were unemployed. In April 1967, the BIOT Administration bought out Chagos-Agalega for £600,000, thus becoming the sole property owner in the BIOT. The Crown immediately leased back the properties to Chagos-Agalega but the company terminated the lease at the end of 1967.
Between 1968 and 1973, the Chagossian (Îlois) inhabitants were forcibly expelled from Diego Garcia by the UK Government so a joint US/UK military base could be established on the island. Many were deported to Mauritius and the Seychelles, following which the United States built the large Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, which has been in continuous operation since then. In 2019, this action and continued British administration of the archipelago were deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a ruling the United Nations General Assembly supported. However, the British dismissed this ruling as not legally binding. As of August 2018, Diego Garcia is the only inhabited island of the BIOT; the population is composed of military personnel and supporting contractors. It is one of two critical US bomber bases in the Indo-Pacific region, along with Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.
The atoll is located 3,535 km (2,197 mi) east of Tanzania's coast, 1,796 km (1,116 mi) south-southwest of the southern tip of India (at Kanyakumari), and 4,723 km (2,935 mi) west-northwest of the west coast of Australia (at Cape Range National Park, Western Australia). Diego Garcia lies at the southernmost tip of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge, a vast underwater mountain range with peaks consisting of coral reefs, atolls, and islands comprising Lakshadweep, the Maldives, and the Chagos Archipelago. Local time is UTC+6 year-round.
According to Southern Maldivian oral tradition, traders and fishermen were occasionally lost at sea and got stranded on one of the islands of the Chagos. Eventually, they were rescued and brought back home. However, the different atolls of the Chagos have no individual names in the Maldivian oral tradition.
Nothing is known of pre-European contact history of Diego Garcia. Speculations include visits during the Austronesian diaspora around AD 700, as some say the old Maldivian name for the islands originated from Malagasy. Arabs, who reached Lakshadweep and Maldives around AD 900, may have visited the Chagos.
The uninhabited islands were discovered by the Portuguese navigator, explorer, and diplomat Pedro Mascarenhas in 1512, first named as Dom Garcia, in honour of his patron, Dom Garcia de Noronha when he was detached from the Portuguese India Armadas during his voyage of 1512–1513. Another Portuguese expedition with a Spanish explorer of Andalusian origin, Diego García de Moguer, rediscovered the island in 1544 and named it after himself. Garcia de Moguer died the same year on the return trip to Portugal in the Indian Ocean, off the South African coast. The misnomer "Diego" could have been made unwittingly by the British ever since, as they copied the Portuguese maps. It is assumed that the island was named after one of its first two discoverers—the one by the name of Garcia, the other with name Diego. Also, a cacography of the saying Deo Gracias (lit. 'Thank God') is eligible for the attribution of the atoll. Although the Cantino planisphere (1504) and the Ruysch map (1507) clearly delineate the Maldive Islands, giving them the same names, they do not show any islands to the south which can be identified as the Chagos archipelago.
The Sebastian Cabot map (Antwerp 1544) shows a number of islands to the south which may be the Mascarene Islands. The first map which identifies and names "Los Chagos" (in about the right position) is that of Pierre Desceliers (Dieppe 1550), although Diego Garcia is not named. An island called "Don Garcia" appears on the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of Abraham Ortelius (Antwerp 1570), together with "Dos Compagnos", slightly to the north. It may be the case that "Don Garcia" was named after Garcia de Noronha, although no evidence exists to support this. The island is also labelled "Don Garcia" on Mercator's Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigatium Emendate (Duisburg 1569). However, on the Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticae Description of Jodocus Hondius (London 1589), "Don Garcia" mysteriously changes its name to "I. de Dio Gratia", while the "I. de Chagues" appears close by.
The first map to delineate the island under its present name, Diego Garcia, is the World Map of Edward Wright (London 1599), possibly as a result of misreading Dio (or simply "D.") as Diego, and Gratia as Garcia. The Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica of Hendrik Hondius II (Antwerp 1630) repeats Wright's use of the name, which is then proliferated on all subsequent Dutch maps of the period, and to the present day.
Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos islands were uninhabited until the late 18th century. In 1778, the French Governor of Mauritius granted Monsieur Dupuit de la Faye the island of Diego Garcia, and evidence exists of temporary French visits to collect coconuts and fish. Several Frenchmen living in "a dozen huts" abandoned Diego Garcia when the British East India Company attempted to establish a settlement there in April 1786. The supplies of the 275 settlers were overwhelmed by 250 survivors of the wreck of the British East Indian Ship Atlas in May, and the colony failed in October. Following the departure of the British, the French colony of Mauritius began marooning lepers on the island, and in 1793, the French established a coconut plantation using slave labour, which exported, too, cordage made from coir (coconut fibre), and sea cucumbers as a far-eastern delicacy.
Diego Garcia became a colony of the UK after the Napoleonic Wars as part of the Treaty of Paris (1814), and from 1814 to 1965 it was administered from Mauritius; the main plantations were at East Point, the main settlement, Minni Minni, 4.5 km (2.8 mi) north of East Point, and Pointe Marianne, on the western rim, all on the lagoon side of the atoll. The workers lived at each and at villages scattered around the atoll.
From 1881 until 1888, the atoll hosted two coaling stations for steamships crossing the Indian Ocean.
In 1882, the French-financed, Mauritian-based Société Huilière de Diego et de Peros (the "Oilmaking Company of Diego and Peros"), consolidated all the plantations in the Chagos under its control.
In 1914, the island was visited by the German light cruiser SMS Emden halfway through its commerce-raiding cruise during the early months of World War I.
In 1942, the British opened RAF Station Diego Garcia and established an advanced flying boat unit at the East Point Plantation, staffed and equipped by No. 205 and No. 240 Squadrons, then stationed on Ceylon. Both Catalina and Sunderland aircraft were flown during the course of World War II in search of Japanese and German submarines and surface raiders. At Cannon Point, two 6-inch naval guns were installed by a Royal Marines detachment. In February 1942, the mission was to protect the small Royal Navy base and Royal Air Force station located on the island from Japanese attack. Operation of the guns was later taken over by Mauritian and Indian Coastal Artillery troops. Following the conclusion of hostilities, the station was closed on 30 April 1946.
In 1962, the Chagos Agalega Company of the British colony of Seychelles purchased the Société Huilière de Diego et Peros and moved company headquarters to Seychelles.
In the early 1960s, the UK was withdrawing its military presence from the Indian Ocean, not including the airfield at RAF Gan to the north of Diego Garcia in the Maldives (which remained open until 1976), and agreed to permit the United States to establish a naval communication station on one of its island territories there. The United States requested an unpopulated island belonging to the UK to avoid political difficulties with newly independent countries, and ultimately the UK and United States agreed that Diego Garcia was a suitable location.
To accomplish the UK–US mutual defence strategy, in November 1965, the UK purchased the Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia, from the then self-governing colony of Mauritius for £3 million to create the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), with the intent of ultimately closing the plantations to provide the uninhabited British territory from which the United States would conduct its military activities in the region.
In April 1966, the British government bought the entire assets of the Chagos Agalega Company in the BIOT for £600,000 and administered them as a government enterprise and immediately leased the plantations back to Chagos Agalega while awaiting United States funding of the proposed facilities, with an interim objective of paying for the administrative expenses of the new territory. However, the plantations, both under their previous private ownership and under government administration, proved consistently unprofitable due to the introduction of new oils and lubricants in the international marketplace, and the establishment of vast coconut plantations in the East Indies and the Philippines and the company terminated the lease at the end of 1967.
On 30 December 1966, the United States and the UK executed an agreement through an Exchange of Notes which permitted the United States to use the BIOT for defence purposes for 50 years until December 2016, followed by a 20-year extension (to 2036) as long as neither party gave notice of termination in a two-year window (December 2014 – December 2016) and the UK may decide on what additional terms to extend the agreement. No monetary payment was made from the United States to the UK as part of this agreement or any subsequent amendment. Rather, the United Kingdom received a US$14-million discount from the United States on the acquisition of submarine-launched Polaris missiles per a now-declassified addendum to the 1966 agreement.
To the United States, Diego Garcia was a prime territory for setting up a foreign military base. According to Stuart Barber—a civilian working for the US Navy at the Pentagon—Diego Garcia was located far away from any potential threats, it was low in a native population and it was an island that was not sought after by other countries as it lacked economic interest. To Barber, Diego Garcia and other acquired islands would play a key role in maintaining US dominance. Here Barber designed the strategic island concept, where the US would obtain as many less populated islands as possible for military purposes. According to Barber, this was the only way to ensure security for a foreign base. Diego Garcia is often referred to as "Fantasy Island" for its seclusion.
The key component in obtaining Diego Garcia was the perceived lack of a native population on the island. Uninhabited until the late 18th century, Diego Garcia had no indigenous population. Its only inhabitants were European overseers who managed the coconut plantations for their absentee landowners and contract workers mostly of African, Indian, and Malay ancestry, known as Chagossians, who had lived and worked on the plantations for several generations. Prior to setting up a military base, the United States government was informed by the British government—which owned the island—that Diego Garcia had a population of hundreds. The eventual number of Chagossians numbered around 1,000.
Regardless of the size of the population, the Chagossians had to be removed from the island before the base could be constructed. In 1968, the first tactics were implemented to decrease the population of Diego Garcia. Those who left the island—either for vacation or medical purposes—were not allowed to return, and those who stayed could obtain only restricted food and medical supplies. This tactic was in hope that those that stayed would leave "willingly". One of the tactics used was that of killing Chagossian pets.
In March 1971, United States Naval construction battalions arrived on Diego Garcia to begin the construction of the communications station and an airfield. To satisfy the terms of an agreement between the UK and the United States for an uninhabited island, the plantation on Diego Garcia was closed in October of that year. The plantation workers and their families were relocated to the plantations on Peros Bahnos and Salomon atolls to the northwest. The by-then-independent Mauritian government refused to accept the islanders without payment, and in 1974, the UK gave the Mauritian government an additional £650,000 to resettle the islanders. Those who still remained on the island of Diego Garcia between 1971 and 1973 were forced onto cargo ships that were heading to Mauritius and the Seychelles.
By 1973, construction of the Naval Communications Station was completed. In the early 1970s, setbacks to United States military capabilities in the region including the fall of Saigon, victory of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the closure of the Peshawar Air Station listening post in Pakistan and Kagnew Station in Eritrea, the Mayaguez incident, and the build-up of Soviet naval presence in Aden and a Soviet airbase at Berbera, Somalia, caused the United States to request, and the UK to approve, permission to build a fleet anchorage and enlarged airfield on Diego Garcia, and the Seabees doubled the number of workers constructing these facilities.
Following the fall of the Shah of Iran and the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979–1980, the West became concerned with ensuring the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States received permission for a $400-million expansion of the military facilities on Diego Garcia consisting of two parallel 12,000-foot-long (3,700 m) runways, expansive parking aprons for heavy bombers, 20 new anchorages in the lagoon, a deep-water pier, port facilities for the largest naval vessels in the U.S. and British fleets, aircraft hangars, maintenance buildings and an air terminal, a 1,340,000 barrels (213,000 m) fuel storage area, and billeting and messing facilities for thousands of sailors and support personnel. The closure of the U.S. bases in the Philippines in the early 1990s brought many workers from Subic Bay and Clark Air Base to Diego Garcia.
On 23 June 2017, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted in favour of referring the territorial dispute between Mauritius and the UK to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in order to clarify the legal status of the Chagos Islands archipelago in the Indian Ocean. The motion was approved by a majority vote with 94 voting for and 15 against.
In February 2019, the ICJ in The Hague ruled that the United Kingdom must transfer the islands to Mauritius as they were not legally separated from the latter in 1965. The UK Foreign Office said the ruling is not legally binding. In May 2019, the United Nations General Assembly affirmed the decision of the International Court of Justice and demanded that the United Kingdom withdraw its colonial administration from the Islands and cooperate with Mauritius to facilitate the resettlement of Mauritian nationals in the archipelago. In a written statement, the U.S. government said that neither the Americans nor the British have any plans to discontinue use of the military base on Diego Garcia. The statement said in a footnote: "In 2016, there were discussions between the United Kingdom and the United States concerning the continuing importance of the joint base. Neither party gave notice to terminate and the agreement remains in force until 2036".
In June 2020, a Mauritian official offered to allow the United States to retain its military base on the island if Mauritius succeeded in regaining sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago.
On 1 April 2010, the Chagos Marine Protected Area (MPA) was declared to cover the waters around the Chagos Archipelago. However, Mauritius objected, stating this was contrary to its legal rights, and on 18 March 2015, in light of the Mauritius v. United Kingdom case, the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that the Chagos Marine Protected Area was illegal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as Mauritius had legally binding rights to fish in the waters surrounding the Chagos Archipelago, to an eventual return of the Chagos Archipelago, and to the preservation of any minerals or oil discovered in or near the Chagos Archipelago prior to its return.
Diego Garcia had no permanent inhabitants when discovered by the Spanish explorer Diego García de Moguer in the 16th century, then in the service of Portugal, and this remained the case until it was settled as a French colony in 1793.
Most inhabitants of Diego Garcia through the period 1793–1971 were plantation workers, but also included Franco-Mauritian managers, Indo-Mauritian administrators, Mauritian and Seychellois contract employees, and in the late 19th century, Chinese and Somali employees.
A distinct Creole culture called the Ilois, which means "islanders" in French Creole, evolved from these workers. The Ilois, now called Chagos Islanders or Chagossians since the late-1990s, were descended primarily from slaves brought to the island from Madagascar by the French between 1793 and 1810, and Malay slaves from the slave market on Pulo Nyas, an island off the northwest coast of Sumatra, from around 1820 until the slave trade ended following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. The Ilois also evolved a French-based Creole dialect now called Chagossian Creole.
Throughout their recorded history, the plantations of the Chagos Archipelago had a population of approximately 1,000 individuals, about two-thirds of whom lived on Diego Garcia. A peak population of 1,142 on all islands was recorded in 1953.
The primary industry throughout the island's colonial period consisted of coconut plantations producing copra and/or coconut oil, until closure of the plantations and forced relocation of the inhabitants in October 1971. For a brief period in the 1880s, it served as a coaling station for steamships transiting the Indian Ocean from the Suez Canal to Australia.
All the inhabitants of Diego Garcia were forcibly resettled to other islands in the Chagos Archipelago, Mauritius or Seychelles by 1971 to satisfy the requirements of a UK/United States Exchange of Notes signed in 1966 to depopulate the island when the United States constructed a base upon it. No current agreement exists on how many of the evacuees met the criteria to be an Ilois, and thus be an indigenous person at the time of their removal, but the UK and Mauritian governments agreed in 1972 that 426 families, numbering 1,151 individuals, were due compensation payments as exiled Ilois. The total number of people certified as Ilois by the Mauritian Government's Ilois Trust Fund Board in 1982 was 1,579.
Fifteen years after the last expulsion, the Chagossians received compensation from the British, totalling $6,000 per person; some Chagossians received nothing. The British expulsion action remains in litigation as of 2016. Today, Chagossians remain highly impoverished and are living as "marginalised" outsiders on the island of Mauritius and the Seychelles.
Between 1971 and 2001, the only residents on Diego Garcia were UK and US military personnel and civilian employees of those countries. These included contract employees from the Philippines and Mauritius, including some Ilois. During combat operations from the atoll against Afghanistan (2001–2006) and Iraq (2003–2006), a number of allied militaries were based on the island including Australian, Japanese, and the Republic of Korea. According to David Vine, "Today, at any given time, 3,000 to 5,000 US troops and civilian support staff live on the island." The inhabitants today do not rely on the island and the surrounding waters for sustenance. Although some recreational fishing for consumption is permitted, all other food is shipped in by sea or air.
In 2004, US Navy recruitment literature described Diego Garcia as being one of the world's best-kept secrets, boasting great recreational facilities, exquisite natural beauty, and outstanding living conditions.
Diego Garcia is the only inhabited island in the British Indian Ocean Territory, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, usually abbreviated as "BIOT". The Government of the BIOT consists of a commissioner appointed by King Charles III. The commissioner is based in London, resident in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and is assisted by an administrator and small staff.
Originally colonised by the French, Diego Garcia was ceded, along with the rest of the Chagos Archipelago, to the United Kingdom in the Treaty of Paris (1814) at the conclusion of a portion of the Napoleonic Wars. Diego Garcia and the Chagos Archipelago were administered by the colonial government on the island of Mauritius until 1965, when the UK purchased them from the self-governing colony of Mauritius for £3 million, and declared them to be a separate British Overseas Territory. The BIOT administration was moved to Seychelles following the independence of Mauritius in 1968 until the independence of Seychelles in 1976, and to a desk in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London since.
The UK represents the territory internationally. A local government as normally envisioned does not exist. Rather, the administration is represented in the territory by the officer commanding British Forces on Diego Garcia, the "Brit rep". Laws and regulations are promulgated by the commissioner and enforced in the BIOT by Brit rep.
Of major concern to the BIOT administration is the relationship with the United States military forces resident on Diego Garcia. An annual meeting called "The Pol-Mil Talks" (for "political-military") of all concerned is held at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London to resolve pertinent issues. These resolutions are formalised by an "Exchange of Letters".
Neither the US nor the UK recognises Diego Garcia as being subject to the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, which lists BIOT as covered by the treaty. It is not publicly known whether nuclear weapons have ever been stored on the island. Noam Chomsky and Peter Sand have observed and emphasised that the US and UK stance is blocking the implementation of the treaty.
There are two transnational political issues which affect Diego Garcia and the BIOT, through the British government.
On 3 November 2022, the British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly announced that the UK and Mauritius had decided to begin negotiations on sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, taking into account international legal proceedings. Both states had agreed to ensure the continued operation of the joint UK/US military base on Diego Garcia.
In 2015, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, said Diego Garcia was used by the CIA for "nefarious activities". He said that he had heard from three US intelligence sources that Diego Garcia was used as "a transit site where people were temporarily housed, let us say, and interrogated from time to time" and, "What I heard was more along the lines of using it as a transit location when perhaps other places were full or other places were deemed too dangerous or insecure, or unavailable at the moment".
In June 2004, the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw stated that United States authorities had repeatedly assured him that no detainees had passed in transit through Diego Garcia or were disembarked there.
Diego Garcia was rumoured to have been one of the locations of the CIA's black sites in 2005. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one of the "high-value detainees" suspected to have been held in Diego Garcia. In October 2007, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the British Parliament announced that it would launch an investigation of continued allegations of a prison camp on Diego Garcia, which it claimed were twice confirmed by comments made by retired U.S. Army general Barry McCaffrey. On 31 July 2008, an unnamed former White House official alleged that the United States had imprisoned and interrogated at least one suspect on Diego Garcia during 2002 and possibly 2003.
Manfred Nowak, one of five United Nations special rapporteurs on torture, said that credible evidence exists supporting allegations that ships serving as black sites have used Diego Garcia as a base. The human rights group Reprieve alleged that United States-operated ships moored outside the territorial waters of Diego Garcia were used to incarcerate and torture detainees.
Several groups claim that the military base on Diego Garcia has been used by the United States government for transport of prisoners involved in the controversial extraordinary rendition program, an allegation formally reported to the Council of Europe in June 2007. On 21 February 2008, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted that two United States extraordinary rendition flights refuelled on Diego Garcia in 2002, and was "very sorry" that earlier denials were having to be corrected.
According to leaked diplomatic cables, in a calculated move planned in 2009, the UK proposed that the BIOT become a "marine reserve" with the aim of preventing the former inhabitants from returning to the islands. A summary of the diplomatic cable is as follows:
HMG would like to establish a "marine park" or "reserve" providing comprehensive environmental protection to the reefs and waters of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official informed Polcouns on 12 May. The official insisted that the establishment of a marine park—the world's largest—would in no way impinge on USG use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes. He agreed that the UK and United States should carefully negotiate the details of the marine reserve to assure that United States interests were safeguarded and the strategic value of BIOT was upheld. He said that the BIOT's former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.
No species of plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles, molluscs, crustaceans, or mammals is endemic on Diego Garcia or in the surrounding waters. Several endemic fish and aquatic invertebrates are present, though. All plants, wildlife, and aquatic species are protected to one degree or another. In addition, much of the lagoon waters are protected wetlands as a designated Ramsar site, and large parts of the island are nature preserves.
In 2004, the UK applied for, and received, Ramsar site wetlands conservation status for the lagoon and other waters of Diego Garcia.
Diego Garcia is the largest land mass in the Chagos Archipelago (which includes Peros Banhos, the Salomon Islands, the Three Brothers, the Egmont Islands, and the Great Chagos Bank), being an atoll occupying approximately 174 square kilometres (67 sq mi), of which 27.19 square kilometres (10 sq mi) is dry land. The continuous portion of the atoll rim stretches 64 km (40 mi) from one end to the other, enclosing a lagoon 21 km (13 mi) long and up to 11 km (7 mi) wide, with a 6 km (4 mi) pass opening at the north. Three small islands are located in the pass.
The island consists of the largest continuous dryland rim of all atolls in the world. The dryland rim varies in width from a few hundred metres to 2.4 km. Typical of coral atolls, it has a maximum elevation on some dunes on the ocean side of the rim of 9 m (30 ft) above mean low water. The rim nearly encloses a lagoon about 19 km (12 mi) long and up to 8 km (5.0 mi) wide. The atoll forms a nearly complete rim of land around a lagoon, enclosing 90% of its perimeter, with an opening only in the north. The main island is the largest of about 60 islands which form the Chagos Archipelago. Besides the main island, three small islets are at the mouth of the lagoon: West Island (3.4 ha (8.4 acres)), Middle Island (6 ha (15 acres)) and East Island (11.75 ha (29.0 acres)). A fourth, Anniversary Island, 1 km (1,100 yards) southwest of Middle Island, appears as just a sand bar on satellite images. Both Middle Island and Anniversary Island are part of the Spur Reef complex.
The total area of the atoll is about 170 km (66 sq mi). The lagoon area is roughly 120 km (46 sq mi) with depths ranging down to about 25 m (82 ft). The total land area (excluding peripheral reefs) is around 30 km (12 sq mi). The coral reef surrounding the seaward side of the atoll is generally broad, flat, and shallow around 1 m (3.3 ft) below mean sea level in most locations and varying from 100 to 200 m (330 to 660 ft) in width. This fringing seaward reef shelf comprises an area around 35.2 km (14 sq mi). At the outer edge of the reef shelf, the bottom slopes very steeply into deep water, at some locations dropping to more than 450 m (1,500 ft) within 1 km (0.62 mi) of the shore.
In the lagoon, numerous coral heads present hazards to navigation. The shallow reef shelf surrounding the island on the ocean side offers no ocean-side anchorage. The channel and anchorage areas in the northern half of the lagoon are dredged, along with the pre-1971 ship turning basin. Significant saltwater wetlands called barachois exist in the southern half of the lagoon. These small lagoons off of the main lagoon are filled with seawater at high tide and dry at low tide. Scientific expeditions in 1996 and 2006 described the lagoon and surrounding waters of Diego Garcia, along with the rest of the Chagos Archipelago, as "exceptionally unpolluted" and "pristine".
Diego Garcia is frequently subject to earthquakes caused by tectonic plate movement along the Carlsberg Ridge located just to the west of the island. One was recorded in 1812; one measuring 7.6 on the Richter Scale hit on 30 November 1983, at 23:46 local time and lasted 72 seconds, resulting in minor damage including wave damage to a 50-m stretch of the southern end of the island, and another on 2 December 2002, an earthquake measuring 4.6 on the Richter scale struck the island at 12:21 am.
In December 2004, a tsunami generated near Indonesia caused minor shoreline erosion on Barton Point (the northeast point of the atoll of Diego Garcia).
Diego Garcia lies within the influence of the South Equatorial Current year-round. The surface currents of the Indian Ocean also have a monsoonal regimen associated with the Asian Monsoonal wind regimen. Sea surface temperatures are in the range of 80–84 °F (27–29 °C) year-round.
Diego Garcia is the above-water rim of a coral atoll composed of Holocene coral rubble and sand to the depth of about 36 m (118 ft), overlaying Pleistocene limestone deposited at the then-sea level on top of a seamount rising about 1,800 m (5,900 ft) from the floor of the Indian Ocean. The Holocene sediments are porous and completely saturated with sea water. Any rain falling on the above-water rim quickly percolates through the surface sand and encounters the salt water underneath. Diego Garcia is of sufficient width to minimise tidal fluctuations in the aquifer, and the rainfall (in excess of 102.5 inches/260 cm per year on average) is sufficient in amount and periodicity for the fresh water to form a series of convex, freshwater, Ghyben-Herzberg lenses floating on the heavier salt water in the saturated sediments.
The horizontal structure of each lens is influenced by variations in the type and porosity of the subsurface deposits, which on Diego Garcia are minor. At depth, the lens is globular; near the surface, it generally conforms to the shape of the island. When a Ghyben-Herzberg lens is fully formed, its floating nature will push a freshwater head above mean sea level, and if the island is wide enough, the depth of the lens below mean sea level will be 40 times the height of the water table above sea level. On Diego Garcia, this equates to a maximum depth of 20 m. However, the actual size and depth of each lens is dependent on the width and shape of the island at that point, the permeability of the aquifer, and the equilibrium between recharging rainfall and losses to evaporation to the atmosphere, transpiration by plants, tidal advection, and human use.
In the plantation period, shallow wells, supplemented by rainwater collected in cisterns, provided sufficient water for the pastoral lifestyle of the small population. On Diego Garcia today, the military base uses over 100 shallow "horizontal" wells to produce over 560,000 L per day from the "Cantonment" lens on the northwest arm of the island—sufficient water for western-style usage for a population of 3,500. This 3.7 km lens holds an estimated 19 million m of fresh water and has an average daily recharge from rainfall over 10,000 m, of which 40% remains in the lens and 60% is lost through evapotranspiration.
Extracting fresh water from a lens for human consumption requires careful calculation of the sustainable yield of the lens by season because each lens is susceptible to corruption by saltwater intrusion caused by overuse or drought. In addition, overwash by tsunamis and tropical storms has corrupted lenses in the Maldives and several Pacific islands. Vertical wells can cause salt upcoming into the lens, and overextraction will reduce freshwater pressure resulting in lateral intrusion by seawater. Because the porosity of the surface soil results in virtually zero runoff, lenses are easily polluted by fecal waste, burials, and chemical spills. Corruption of a lens can take years to "flush out" and reform, depending on the ratio of recharge to losses.
A few natural depressions on the atoll rim capture the abundant rainfall to form areas of freshwater wetlands. Two are of significance to island wildlife and to recharge their respective freshwater lenses. One of these is centred on the northwest point of the atoll; another is found near the Point Marianne Cemetery on the southeast end of the airfield. Other, smaller freshwater wetlands are found along the east side of the runway, and in the vicinity of the receiver antenna field on the northwest arm of the atoll.
Also, several man-made freshwater ponds resulted from excavations made during construction of the airfield and road on the western half of the atoll rim. These fill from rainfall and from extending into the Ghyben-Herzberg lenses found on this island.
Diego Garcia has an equatorial tropical rainforest climate (Köppen Af). The surrounding sea surface temperature is the primary climatic control, and temperatures are generally uniform throughout the year, with an average maximum of 30 °C (86 °F) by day during March and April, and 29 °C (84 °F) from July to September. Diurnal variation is roughly 3–4 °C (5.4–7.2 °F), falling to the low 27 °C (81 °F) by night. Humidity is high throughout the year. The almost constant breeze keeps conditions reasonably comfortable.
From December through March, winds are generally westerly around 6 knots (11 km/h). During April and May, winds are light and variable, ultimately backing to an east-southeasterly direction. From June through September, the influence of the Southeast trades is felt, with speeds of 10–15 knots. During October and November, winds again go through a period of light and variable conditions veering to a westerly direction with the onset of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.
All precipitation falls as rain, characterised by air mass-type showers. Annual rainfall averages 2,603.5 mm (102.50 in), with the heaviest precipitation from September to April. January is the wettest month with 353 mm (13.9 in) of mean monthly precipitation, and August the driest month, averaging 106.5 mm (4.19 in) of mean monthly precipitation.
Thunderstorm activity is generally noticed during the afternoon and evenings during the summer months (December through March), when the Intertropical Convergence Zone is in the vicinity of the island.
Diego Garcia is at minimum risk from tropical cyclones due to its proximity to the equator where the coriolis parameter required to organise circulation of the upper atmosphere is minimal. Low-intensity storms have hit the island, including one in 1901, which blew over 1,500 coconut trees; one on 16 September 1944, which caused the wreck of a Royal Air Force PBY Catalina; one in September 1990 which demolished the tent city then being constructed for United States Air Force bomber crews during Operation Desert Storm; and one on 22 July 2007, when winds exceeded 60 kn (110 km/h) and over 250 mm (9.8 in) of rain fell in 24 hours.
The island was somewhat affected by the tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Service personnel on the western arm of the island reported only a minor increase in wave activity. The island was protected to a large degree by its favourable ocean topography. About 80 km (50 mi) east of the atoll lies the 650-km-long (400-mile) Chagos Trench, an underwater canyon plunging more than 4,900 m (16,100 ft). The depth of the trench and its grade to the atoll's slope and shelf shore makes it more difficult for substantial tsunami waves to build before passing the atoll from the east. In addition, near-shore coral reefs and an algal platform may have dissipated much of the waves' impact. A biological survey conducted in early 2005 indicated erosional effects of the tsunami wave on Diego Garcia and other islands of the Chagos Archipelago. One 200-to-300 m (220-to-330 yd) stretch of shoreline was found to have been breached by the tsunami wave, representing about 10% of the eastern arm. A biological survey by the Chagos Conservation Trust reported that the resulting inundation additionally washed away shoreline shrubs and small to medium-sized coconut palms.
The first botanical observations of the island were made by Hume in 1883, when the coconut plantations had been in operation for a full century. Subsequent studies and collections during the plantation era were made in 1885, 1905, 1939, and 1967. Thus, very little of the nature of the precontact vegetation is known.
The 1967 survey, published by the Smithsonian is used as the most authoritative baseline for more recent research. These studies indicate the vegetation of the island may be changing rapidly. For example, J. M. W. Topp collected data annually between 1993 and 2003 and found that on the average three new plant species arrived each year, mainly on Diego Garcia. His research added fully a third more species to Stoddart. Topp and Martin Hamilton of Kew Gardens compiled the most recent checklist of vegetation in 2009.
In 1967, Stoddart described the land area of Diego Garcia as having a littoral hedge of Scaevola taccada, while inland, Cocos nucifera (coconut) was the most dominant tree, covering most of the island. The substory was either managed and park-like, with understory less than 0.5 m in height, or consisted of what he called "Cocos Bon-Dieu" – an intermediate story of juvenile trees and a luxuriant ground layer of self-sown seedlings – causing those areas to be relatively impenetrable.
Also, areas of remnant tropical hardwood forest are at the sites of the plantation-era villages, as well as Casuarina equisetifolia (iron wood pines) woodlands.
In 1997, the United States Navy contracted a vegetation survey that identified about 280 species of terrestrial vascular plants on Diego Garcia. None of these was endemic, and another survey in 2005 identified just 36 species as "native", meaning arriving without the assistance of humans, and found elsewhere in the world. No terrestrial plant species are of any conservation-related concern at present.
Of the 36 native vascular plants on Diego Garcia, 12 are trees, five are shrubs, seven are dicotyledon herbs, three are grasses, four are vines, and five are ferns.
The 12 tree species are: Barringtonia asiatica (fish-poison tree), Calophyllum inophyllum (Alexandrian laurel), Cocos nucifera, Cordia subcordata, Guettarda speciosa, Intsia bijuga, Hernandia sonora, Morinda citrifolia, Neisosperma oppositifolium, Pisonia grandis, Terminalia catappa, and Heliotropium foertherianum. Another three tree species are common, and may be native, but they may also have been introduced by humans: Casuarina equisetifolia, Hibiscus tiliaceus, and Pipturus argenteus.
The five native shrubs are: Caesalpinia bonduc, Pemphis acidula, Premna serratifolia, Scaevola taccada (often mispronounced "Scaveola"), and Suriana maritima.
Also, 134 species of plants are classified as "weedy" or "naturalised alien species", being those unintentionally introduced by man, or intentionally introduced as ornamentals or crop plants which have now "gone native", including 32 new species recorded since 1995, indicating a very rapid rate of introduction. The remainder of the species list consists of cultivated food or ornamental species, grown in restricted environments such as a planter's pot.
In 2004, 10 plant communities were recognised on the atoll rim:
All the terrestrial and aquatic fauna of Diego Garcia are protected, with the exception of certain game fish, rats, and cats; hefty fines are levied against violators.
The island is a haven for several types of crustacean; "warrior crabs" (Cardisoma carnifex) overrun the jungle at night. The extremely large 4-kilogram (8.8 lb) coconut crab or robber crab (Birgus latro) is found here in large numbers. Because of the protections provided the species on this atoll, and the isolation of the east rim of the atoll, the species is recorded in greater densities there than anywhere else in its range (339 crabs/ha).
No mammal species are native on Diego Garcia, with no record of bats. Other than rats (Rattus rattus), all "wild" mammal species are feral descendants of domesticated species. During the plantation era, Diego Garcia was home to large herds of Sicilian donkeys (Equus asinus), dozens of horses (Equus caballus), hundreds of dogs (Canis familiaris), and house cats (Felis catus). In 1971, the BIOT Commissioner ordered the extermination of feral dogs following the departure of the last plantation workers, and the program continued through 1975, when the last feral dog was observed and shot. Donkeys, which numbered over 400 in 1972, were down to just 20 individuals in 2005. The last horse was observed in 1995, and by 2005, just two cats were thought to have survived an island-wide eradication program.
The total bird list for the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, consists of 91 species, with large breeding populations of 16 species. Although no birds are endemic, internationally important seabird colonies exist. Diego Garcia's seabird community includes thriving populations of species which are rapidly declining in other parts of the Indian Ocean. Large nesting colonies of brown noddies, bridled terns, the lesser noddy, red-footed booby and lesser frigatebirds exist on Diego Garcia.
Other nesting native birds include red-tailed tropicbirds, wedge-tailed shearwaters, Audubon's shearwater, black-naped terns, white terns, striated herons, and white-breasted waterhens. The 680-hectare Barton Point Nature Reserve was identified as an Important Bird Area for its large breeding colony of red-footed boobies.
The island hosts introduced bird species from many regions, including cattle egrets (Bubulcus ibis), Indian barred ground dove, also called the zebra dove (Geopelia striata), turtle dove (Nesoenas picturata), Indian mynah (Acridotheres tristis), Madagascar fody (Foudia madagascariensis), and chickens (Gallus gallus).
Currently, three lizards and one toad are known to inhabit Diego Garcia, and possibly one snake. All are believed to have been introduced by human activity. The house gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus), the mourning gecko (Lepidodactylus lugubris), the garden lizard (an agamid) (Calotes versicolor), and the cane toad (Bufo marinus). A viable population of a type of blind snake from the family Typhlopidae may be present, probably the brahminy blind snake (Ramphotyphlops braminus). This snake feeds on the larvae, eggs, and pupae of ants and termites, and is about the size of a large earthworm.
Diego Garcia provides suitable foraging and nesting habitat for both the hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) and the green turtle (Chelonia mydas). Juvenile hawksbills are quite common in the lagoon and at Barachois Sylvane (also known as Turtle Cove) in the southern part of the lagoon. Adult hawksbills and greens are common in the surrounding seas and nest regularly on the ocean-side beaches of the atoll. Hawksbills have been observed nesting during June and July, and from November to March. Greens have been observed nesting in every month; the average female lays three clutches per season, each having an average clutch size of 113 eggs. Diurnal nesting is common in both species. An estimated 300–700 hawksbills and 400–800 greens nest in the Chagos.
Four reptiles and six cetaceans are endangered and may or may not be found on or around Diego Garcia: Hawksbill turtle (Eretmocheyls imbricata) – known; leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) – possible; green turtle (Chelonia mydas) – known; olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys oliveacea) – possible; sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) – possible; sei whale (Balaeonoptera borealis) – possible; finback whale (Balaeonoptera physalus) – possible; Bryde's whale (Balaeonoptera edeni) – possible; blue whale (Balaeonoptera musculus) – possible; humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) – possible; southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) – possible.
British Forces British Indian Ocean Territories (BFBIOT) is the official name for the British Armed Forces deployment at the Permanent Joint Operating Base (PJOB) on Diego Garcia, in the British Indian Ocean Territory. While the naval and airbase facilities on Diego Garcia are leased to the United States, in practice, it operates as a joint UK-US base, with the UK retaining full and continual access. Diego Garcia is strategically located, offering access to East Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The base serves as a staging area for the buildup or resupply of military forces prior to an operation. There are approximately 40–50 British military personnel posted on Diego Garcia, most of them from Naval Party 1002 (NP1002). NP1002 forms the island's civil administration.
During the Cold War era, following the British withdrawal from East of Suez, the United States was keen to establish a military base in the Indian Ocean to counter Soviet influence and establish American dominance in the region and protect its sea-lanes for oil transportation from the Middle East. The United States saw the atoll as the "Malta of the Indian Ocean" equidistant from all points. The value has been proven many times, with the island providing an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the United States during the Iranian revolution, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Operation Desert Fox, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the contemporary era, the atoll continues to play a key role in America's approach to the Indian Ocean as a flexible forward military hub that can facilitate a range of offensive activities.
The United States military facilities on Diego Garcia have been known informally as Camp Justice and, after renaming in July 2006, as Camp Thunder Cove. Formally, the base is known as Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia (the US activity) or Permanent Joint Operating Base (PJOB) Diego Garcia (the UK's term).
United States military activities in Diego Garcia have caused friction between India and the United States in the past. Political party CPI(m) in India has repeatedly called for the military base to be dismantled, as they saw the United States naval presence in Diego Garcia as a hindrance to peace in the Indian Ocean. In recent years, relations between India and the United States have improved dramatically. Diego Garcia was the site of several naval exercises between the United States and Indian navies held between 2001 and 2004.
Recent construction in support of US military activities on Diego Garcia has included Black Construction/Mace International JV building a 34-metre antenna facility (expected completed by April 2021) and two new 13-metre radomes (expected completed by February 2021); and SJC-BVIL moving underground the overhead power and telephone lines that run from the Navy ammunition area to the Air Force ammunition area along DG1 (expected completed by September 2022).
Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia provides Base Operating Services to tenant commands located on the island. The command's mission is "To provide logistic support to operational forces forward deployed to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf AORs in support of national policy objectives." KBR has run base operations support services at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia.
The atoll shelters the ships of the United States Marine Pre-positioning Squadron Two. These ships carry equipment and supplies to support a major armed force with tanks, armoured personnel carriers, munitions, fuel, spare parts and even a mobile field hospital. This equipment was used during the Persian Gulf War, when the squadron transported equipment to Saudi Arabia.
The ship composition of MPSRON TWO is dynamic. During August 2010 it was composed of the following:
Five of these vessels carry supplies for the US Marine Corps sufficient to support a Marine Air-Ground Task Force for 30 days: USNS Button, USNS Kocak, USNS Lopez, USNS Stockham, and USNS Fisher.
Prior to 2001, COMPSRON 2 consisted of up to 20 ships, including four Combat Force Ships which provided rapid-response delivery of equipment to ground troops in the United States Army. Three are lighter aboard ships (LASH) which carry barges called lighters that contain Army ammunition to be ferried ashore: MV American Cormorant, SS Green Harbour, (LASH), SS Green Valley, (LASH), MV Jeb Stuart, (LASH). There were logistics vessels to service the rapid delivery requirements of the United States Air Force, United States Navy and Defense Logistics Agency. These included container ships for Air Force munitions, missiles and spare parts; a 500-bed hospital ship, and floating storage and offloading units assigned to Military Sealift Command supporting the Defense Logistics Agency, and an offshore petroleum discharge system (OPDS) tanker. Examples of ships are MV Buffalo Soldier, MV Green Ridge, pre-position tanker USNS Henry J. Kaiser, and tanker USNS Potomac (T-AO-181).
The United States Air Force operates a High Frequency Global Communications System transceiver site located on the south end of the atoll near the GEODSS station. The transceiver is operated remotely from Andrews Air Force Base and Grand Forks Air Force Base and is locally maintained by NCTS FE personnel.
Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station Far East Detachment Diego Garcia operates a detachment in Diego Garcia. This detachment provides base telephone communications, base network services (Local Network Services Center), pier connectivity services, and an AN/GSC-39C SHF satellite terminal, operates the Hydroacoustic Data Acquisition System, and performs on-site maintenance for the remotely operated Air Force HF-GCS terminal. In July 2023, Reuters confirmed an underwater fiber-optic cable was constructed to Diego Garcia, finished in 2022.
Naval Security Group detachment Diego Garcia was disestablished on 30 September 2005. Remaining essential operations were transferred to a contractor. The large AN/AX-16 High Frequency Radio direction finding Circularly Disposed Antenna Array has been demolished, but the four satellite antenna radomes around the site remain as of 2010.
The island was designated as one of the emergency landing sites worldwide for the NASA Space Shuttle. None of these facilities were ever used throughout the life of the shuttle program.
All consumable food and equipment are brought to Diego Garcia by sea or air, and all non-biodegradable waste is shipped off the island as well. From 1971 to 1973, United States Navy LSTs provided this service. Beginning in 1973, civilian ships were contracted to provide these services. From 2004 to 2009, the US-flagged container ship MV Baffin Strait, often referred to as the "DGAR shuttle", delivered 250 containers every month from Singapore to Diego Garcia. The ship delivered "more than 200,000 tons of cargo to the island each year". On the return trip to Singapore, it carried recyclable metals.
In 2004, TransAtlantic Lines outbid Sealift Incorporated for the transport contract between Singapore and Diego Garcia. The route had previously been serviced by Sealift Inc.'s MV Sagamore, crewed by members of American Maritime Officers and Seafarers' International Union. TransAtlantic Lines reportedly won the contract by approximately 10 per cent, representing a price difference of about US$2.7 million. The Baffin Straits charter ran from 10 January 2005, to 30 September 2008, at a daily rate of US$12,550. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Diego Garcia is an island of the British Indian Ocean Territory, a disputed overseas territory of the United Kingdom also claimed by Mauritius. It is a militarised atoll just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, and the largest of the 60 small islands of the Chagos Archipelago. Portuguese sailors under Pedro Mascarenhas were the first Europeans to discover the island, finding it uninhabited in 1512. After a 1786 British colony failed, the French began using the island as a leper colony and, starting in 1793, coconut cultivation by enslaved labor. It was transferred to British rule after the Napoleonic Wars. It was one of the \"Dependencies\" of the British Colony of Mauritius until the Chagos Islands were detached for inclusion in the newly created British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) in 1965.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In 1966, the population of the island was 924. These people were employed as contract farm workers primarily on copra plantations owned by the Chagos-Agalega company. Although local plantation managers commonly allowed pensioners and the disabled to remain in the islands and continue to receive housing and rations in exchange for light work, children after the age of 12 were required to work. In 1964, only 3 of a population of 963 were unemployed. In April 1967, the BIOT Administration bought out Chagos-Agalega for £600,000, thus becoming the sole property owner in the BIOT. The Crown immediately leased back the properties to Chagos-Agalega but the company terminated the lease at the end of 1967.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Between 1968 and 1973, the Chagossian (Îlois) inhabitants were forcibly expelled from Diego Garcia by the UK Government so a joint US/UK military base could be established on the island. Many were deported to Mauritius and the Seychelles, following which the United States built the large Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, which has been in continuous operation since then. In 2019, this action and continued British administration of the archipelago were deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a ruling the United Nations General Assembly supported. However, the British dismissed this ruling as not legally binding. As of August 2018, Diego Garcia is the only inhabited island of the BIOT; the population is composed of military personnel and supporting contractors. It is one of two critical US bomber bases in the Indo-Pacific region, along with Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The atoll is located 3,535 km (2,197 mi) east of Tanzania's coast, 1,796 km (1,116 mi) south-southwest of the southern tip of India (at Kanyakumari), and 4,723 km (2,935 mi) west-northwest of the west coast of Australia (at Cape Range National Park, Western Australia). Diego Garcia lies at the southernmost tip of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge, a vast underwater mountain range with peaks consisting of coral reefs, atolls, and islands comprising Lakshadweep, the Maldives, and the Chagos Archipelago. Local time is UTC+6 year-round.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "According to Southern Maldivian oral tradition, traders and fishermen were occasionally lost at sea and got stranded on one of the islands of the Chagos. Eventually, they were rescued and brought back home. However, the different atolls of the Chagos have no individual names in the Maldivian oral tradition.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Nothing is known of pre-European contact history of Diego Garcia. Speculations include visits during the Austronesian diaspora around AD 700, as some say the old Maldivian name for the islands originated from Malagasy. Arabs, who reached Lakshadweep and Maldives around AD 900, may have visited the Chagos.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The uninhabited islands were discovered by the Portuguese navigator, explorer, and diplomat Pedro Mascarenhas in 1512, first named as Dom Garcia, in honour of his patron, Dom Garcia de Noronha when he was detached from the Portuguese India Armadas during his voyage of 1512–1513. Another Portuguese expedition with a Spanish explorer of Andalusian origin, Diego García de Moguer, rediscovered the island in 1544 and named it after himself. Garcia de Moguer died the same year on the return trip to Portugal in the Indian Ocean, off the South African coast. The misnomer \"Diego\" could have been made unwittingly by the British ever since, as they copied the Portuguese maps. It is assumed that the island was named after one of its first two discoverers—the one by the name of Garcia, the other with name Diego. Also, a cacography of the saying Deo Gracias (lit. 'Thank God') is eligible for the attribution of the atoll. Although the Cantino planisphere (1504) and the Ruysch map (1507) clearly delineate the Maldive Islands, giving them the same names, they do not show any islands to the south which can be identified as the Chagos archipelago.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Sebastian Cabot map (Antwerp 1544) shows a number of islands to the south which may be the Mascarene Islands. The first map which identifies and names \"Los Chagos\" (in about the right position) is that of Pierre Desceliers (Dieppe 1550), although Diego Garcia is not named. An island called \"Don Garcia\" appears on the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of Abraham Ortelius (Antwerp 1570), together with \"Dos Compagnos\", slightly to the north. It may be the case that \"Don Garcia\" was named after Garcia de Noronha, although no evidence exists to support this. The island is also labelled \"Don Garcia\" on Mercator's Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigatium Emendate (Duisburg 1569). However, on the Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticae Description of Jodocus Hondius (London 1589), \"Don Garcia\" mysteriously changes its name to \"I. de Dio Gratia\", while the \"I. de Chagues\" appears close by.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The first map to delineate the island under its present name, Diego Garcia, is the World Map of Edward Wright (London 1599), possibly as a result of misreading Dio (or simply \"D.\") as Diego, and Gratia as Garcia. The Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica of Hendrik Hondius II (Antwerp 1630) repeats Wright's use of the name, which is then proliferated on all subsequent Dutch maps of the period, and to the present day.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos islands were uninhabited until the late 18th century. In 1778, the French Governor of Mauritius granted Monsieur Dupuit de la Faye the island of Diego Garcia, and evidence exists of temporary French visits to collect coconuts and fish. Several Frenchmen living in \"a dozen huts\" abandoned Diego Garcia when the British East India Company attempted to establish a settlement there in April 1786. The supplies of the 275 settlers were overwhelmed by 250 survivors of the wreck of the British East Indian Ship Atlas in May, and the colony failed in October. Following the departure of the British, the French colony of Mauritius began marooning lepers on the island, and in 1793, the French established a coconut plantation using slave labour, which exported, too, cordage made from coir (coconut fibre), and sea cucumbers as a far-eastern delicacy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Diego Garcia became a colony of the UK after the Napoleonic Wars as part of the Treaty of Paris (1814), and from 1814 to 1965 it was administered from Mauritius; the main plantations were at East Point, the main settlement, Minni Minni, 4.5 km (2.8 mi) north of East Point, and Pointe Marianne, on the western rim, all on the lagoon side of the atoll. The workers lived at each and at villages scattered around the atoll.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "From 1881 until 1888, the atoll hosted two coaling stations for steamships crossing the Indian Ocean.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1882, the French-financed, Mauritian-based Société Huilière de Diego et de Peros (the \"Oilmaking Company of Diego and Peros\"), consolidated all the plantations in the Chagos under its control.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1914, the island was visited by the German light cruiser SMS Emden halfway through its commerce-raiding cruise during the early months of World War I.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1942, the British opened RAF Station Diego Garcia and established an advanced flying boat unit at the East Point Plantation, staffed and equipped by No. 205 and No. 240 Squadrons, then stationed on Ceylon. Both Catalina and Sunderland aircraft were flown during the course of World War II in search of Japanese and German submarines and surface raiders. At Cannon Point, two 6-inch naval guns were installed by a Royal Marines detachment. In February 1942, the mission was to protect the small Royal Navy base and Royal Air Force station located on the island from Japanese attack. Operation of the guns was later taken over by Mauritian and Indian Coastal Artillery troops. Following the conclusion of hostilities, the station was closed on 30 April 1946.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1962, the Chagos Agalega Company of the British colony of Seychelles purchased the Société Huilière de Diego et Peros and moved company headquarters to Seychelles.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In the early 1960s, the UK was withdrawing its military presence from the Indian Ocean, not including the airfield at RAF Gan to the north of Diego Garcia in the Maldives (which remained open until 1976), and agreed to permit the United States to establish a naval communication station on one of its island territories there. The United States requested an unpopulated island belonging to the UK to avoid political difficulties with newly independent countries, and ultimately the UK and United States agreed that Diego Garcia was a suitable location.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "To accomplish the UK–US mutual defence strategy, in November 1965, the UK purchased the Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia, from the then self-governing colony of Mauritius for £3 million to create the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), with the intent of ultimately closing the plantations to provide the uninhabited British territory from which the United States would conduct its military activities in the region.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In April 1966, the British government bought the entire assets of the Chagos Agalega Company in the BIOT for £600,000 and administered them as a government enterprise and immediately leased the plantations back to Chagos Agalega while awaiting United States funding of the proposed facilities, with an interim objective of paying for the administrative expenses of the new territory. However, the plantations, both under their previous private ownership and under government administration, proved consistently unprofitable due to the introduction of new oils and lubricants in the international marketplace, and the establishment of vast coconut plantations in the East Indies and the Philippines and the company terminated the lease at the end of 1967.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "On 30 December 1966, the United States and the UK executed an agreement through an Exchange of Notes which permitted the United States to use the BIOT for defence purposes for 50 years until December 2016, followed by a 20-year extension (to 2036) as long as neither party gave notice of termination in a two-year window (December 2014 – December 2016) and the UK may decide on what additional terms to extend the agreement. No monetary payment was made from the United States to the UK as part of this agreement or any subsequent amendment. Rather, the United Kingdom received a US$14-million discount from the United States on the acquisition of submarine-launched Polaris missiles per a now-declassified addendum to the 1966 agreement.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "To the United States, Diego Garcia was a prime territory for setting up a foreign military base. According to Stuart Barber—a civilian working for the US Navy at the Pentagon—Diego Garcia was located far away from any potential threats, it was low in a native population and it was an island that was not sought after by other countries as it lacked economic interest. To Barber, Diego Garcia and other acquired islands would play a key role in maintaining US dominance. Here Barber designed the strategic island concept, where the US would obtain as many less populated islands as possible for military purposes. According to Barber, this was the only way to ensure security for a foreign base. Diego Garcia is often referred to as \"Fantasy Island\" for its seclusion.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The key component in obtaining Diego Garcia was the perceived lack of a native population on the island. Uninhabited until the late 18th century, Diego Garcia had no indigenous population. Its only inhabitants were European overseers who managed the coconut plantations for their absentee landowners and contract workers mostly of African, Indian, and Malay ancestry, known as Chagossians, who had lived and worked on the plantations for several generations. Prior to setting up a military base, the United States government was informed by the British government—which owned the island—that Diego Garcia had a population of hundreds. The eventual number of Chagossians numbered around 1,000.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Regardless of the size of the population, the Chagossians had to be removed from the island before the base could be constructed. In 1968, the first tactics were implemented to decrease the population of Diego Garcia. Those who left the island—either for vacation or medical purposes—were not allowed to return, and those who stayed could obtain only restricted food and medical supplies. This tactic was in hope that those that stayed would leave \"willingly\". One of the tactics used was that of killing Chagossian pets.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In March 1971, United States Naval construction battalions arrived on Diego Garcia to begin the construction of the communications station and an airfield. To satisfy the terms of an agreement between the UK and the United States for an uninhabited island, the plantation on Diego Garcia was closed in October of that year. The plantation workers and their families were relocated to the plantations on Peros Bahnos and Salomon atolls to the northwest. The by-then-independent Mauritian government refused to accept the islanders without payment, and in 1974, the UK gave the Mauritian government an additional £650,000 to resettle the islanders. Those who still remained on the island of Diego Garcia between 1971 and 1973 were forced onto cargo ships that were heading to Mauritius and the Seychelles.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "By 1973, construction of the Naval Communications Station was completed. In the early 1970s, setbacks to United States military capabilities in the region including the fall of Saigon, victory of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the closure of the Peshawar Air Station listening post in Pakistan and Kagnew Station in Eritrea, the Mayaguez incident, and the build-up of Soviet naval presence in Aden and a Soviet airbase at Berbera, Somalia, caused the United States to request, and the UK to approve, permission to build a fleet anchorage and enlarged airfield on Diego Garcia, and the Seabees doubled the number of workers constructing these facilities.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Following the fall of the Shah of Iran and the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979–1980, the West became concerned with ensuring the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States received permission for a $400-million expansion of the military facilities on Diego Garcia consisting of two parallel 12,000-foot-long (3,700 m) runways, expansive parking aprons for heavy bombers, 20 new anchorages in the lagoon, a deep-water pier, port facilities for the largest naval vessels in the U.S. and British fleets, aircraft hangars, maintenance buildings and an air terminal, a 1,340,000 barrels (213,000 m) fuel storage area, and billeting and messing facilities for thousands of sailors and support personnel. The closure of the U.S. bases in the Philippines in the early 1990s brought many workers from Subic Bay and Clark Air Base to Diego Garcia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "On 23 June 2017, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted in favour of referring the territorial dispute between Mauritius and the UK to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in order to clarify the legal status of the Chagos Islands archipelago in the Indian Ocean. The motion was approved by a majority vote with 94 voting for and 15 against.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In February 2019, the ICJ in The Hague ruled that the United Kingdom must transfer the islands to Mauritius as they were not legally separated from the latter in 1965. The UK Foreign Office said the ruling is not legally binding. In May 2019, the United Nations General Assembly affirmed the decision of the International Court of Justice and demanded that the United Kingdom withdraw its colonial administration from the Islands and cooperate with Mauritius to facilitate the resettlement of Mauritian nationals in the archipelago. In a written statement, the U.S. government said that neither the Americans nor the British have any plans to discontinue use of the military base on Diego Garcia. The statement said in a footnote: \"In 2016, there were discussions between the United Kingdom and the United States concerning the continuing importance of the joint base. Neither party gave notice to terminate and the agreement remains in force until 2036\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In June 2020, a Mauritian official offered to allow the United States to retain its military base on the island if Mauritius succeeded in regaining sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "On 1 April 2010, the Chagos Marine Protected Area (MPA) was declared to cover the waters around the Chagos Archipelago. However, Mauritius objected, stating this was contrary to its legal rights, and on 18 March 2015, in light of the Mauritius v. United Kingdom case, the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that the Chagos Marine Protected Area was illegal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as Mauritius had legally binding rights to fish in the waters surrounding the Chagos Archipelago, to an eventual return of the Chagos Archipelago, and to the preservation of any minerals or oil discovered in or near the Chagos Archipelago prior to its return.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Diego Garcia had no permanent inhabitants when discovered by the Spanish explorer Diego García de Moguer in the 16th century, then in the service of Portugal, and this remained the case until it was settled as a French colony in 1793.",
"title": "Inhabitants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Most inhabitants of Diego Garcia through the period 1793–1971 were plantation workers, but also included Franco-Mauritian managers, Indo-Mauritian administrators, Mauritian and Seychellois contract employees, and in the late 19th century, Chinese and Somali employees.",
"title": "Inhabitants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "A distinct Creole culture called the Ilois, which means \"islanders\" in French Creole, evolved from these workers. The Ilois, now called Chagos Islanders or Chagossians since the late-1990s, were descended primarily from slaves brought to the island from Madagascar by the French between 1793 and 1810, and Malay slaves from the slave market on Pulo Nyas, an island off the northwest coast of Sumatra, from around 1820 until the slave trade ended following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. The Ilois also evolved a French-based Creole dialect now called Chagossian Creole.",
"title": "Inhabitants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Throughout their recorded history, the plantations of the Chagos Archipelago had a population of approximately 1,000 individuals, about two-thirds of whom lived on Diego Garcia. A peak population of 1,142 on all islands was recorded in 1953.",
"title": "Inhabitants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The primary industry throughout the island's colonial period consisted of coconut plantations producing copra and/or coconut oil, until closure of the plantations and forced relocation of the inhabitants in October 1971. For a brief period in the 1880s, it served as a coaling station for steamships transiting the Indian Ocean from the Suez Canal to Australia.",
"title": "Inhabitants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "All the inhabitants of Diego Garcia were forcibly resettled to other islands in the Chagos Archipelago, Mauritius or Seychelles by 1971 to satisfy the requirements of a UK/United States Exchange of Notes signed in 1966 to depopulate the island when the United States constructed a base upon it. No current agreement exists on how many of the evacuees met the criteria to be an Ilois, and thus be an indigenous person at the time of their removal, but the UK and Mauritian governments agreed in 1972 that 426 families, numbering 1,151 individuals, were due compensation payments as exiled Ilois. The total number of people certified as Ilois by the Mauritian Government's Ilois Trust Fund Board in 1982 was 1,579.",
"title": "Inhabitants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Fifteen years after the last expulsion, the Chagossians received compensation from the British, totalling $6,000 per person; some Chagossians received nothing. The British expulsion action remains in litigation as of 2016. Today, Chagossians remain highly impoverished and are living as \"marginalised\" outsiders on the island of Mauritius and the Seychelles.",
"title": "Inhabitants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Between 1971 and 2001, the only residents on Diego Garcia were UK and US military personnel and civilian employees of those countries. These included contract employees from the Philippines and Mauritius, including some Ilois. During combat operations from the atoll against Afghanistan (2001–2006) and Iraq (2003–2006), a number of allied militaries were based on the island including Australian, Japanese, and the Republic of Korea. According to David Vine, \"Today, at any given time, 3,000 to 5,000 US troops and civilian support staff live on the island.\" The inhabitants today do not rely on the island and the surrounding waters for sustenance. Although some recreational fishing for consumption is permitted, all other food is shipped in by sea or air.",
"title": "Inhabitants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 2004, US Navy recruitment literature described Diego Garcia as being one of the world's best-kept secrets, boasting great recreational facilities, exquisite natural beauty, and outstanding living conditions.",
"title": "Inhabitants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Diego Garcia is the only inhabited island in the British Indian Ocean Territory, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, usually abbreviated as \"BIOT\". The Government of the BIOT consists of a commissioner appointed by King Charles III. The commissioner is based in London, resident in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and is assisted by an administrator and small staff.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Originally colonised by the French, Diego Garcia was ceded, along with the rest of the Chagos Archipelago, to the United Kingdom in the Treaty of Paris (1814) at the conclusion of a portion of the Napoleonic Wars. Diego Garcia and the Chagos Archipelago were administered by the colonial government on the island of Mauritius until 1965, when the UK purchased them from the self-governing colony of Mauritius for £3 million, and declared them to be a separate British Overseas Territory. The BIOT administration was moved to Seychelles following the independence of Mauritius in 1968 until the independence of Seychelles in 1976, and to a desk in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London since.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The UK represents the territory internationally. A local government as normally envisioned does not exist. Rather, the administration is represented in the territory by the officer commanding British Forces on Diego Garcia, the \"Brit rep\". Laws and regulations are promulgated by the commissioner and enforced in the BIOT by Brit rep.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Of major concern to the BIOT administration is the relationship with the United States military forces resident on Diego Garcia. An annual meeting called \"The Pol-Mil Talks\" (for \"political-military\") of all concerned is held at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London to resolve pertinent issues. These resolutions are formalised by an \"Exchange of Letters\".",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Neither the US nor the UK recognises Diego Garcia as being subject to the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, which lists BIOT as covered by the treaty. It is not publicly known whether nuclear weapons have ever been stored on the island. Noam Chomsky and Peter Sand have observed and emphasised that the US and UK stance is blocking the implementation of the treaty.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "There are two transnational political issues which affect Diego Garcia and the BIOT, through the British government.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "On 3 November 2022, the British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly announced that the UK and Mauritius had decided to begin negotiations on sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, taking into account international legal proceedings. Both states had agreed to ensure the continued operation of the joint UK/US military base on Diego Garcia.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In 2015, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, said Diego Garcia was used by the CIA for \"nefarious activities\". He said that he had heard from three US intelligence sources that Diego Garcia was used as \"a transit site where people were temporarily housed, let us say, and interrogated from time to time\" and, \"What I heard was more along the lines of using it as a transit location when perhaps other places were full or other places were deemed too dangerous or insecure, or unavailable at the moment\".",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In June 2004, the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw stated that United States authorities had repeatedly assured him that no detainees had passed in transit through Diego Garcia or were disembarked there.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Diego Garcia was rumoured to have been one of the locations of the CIA's black sites in 2005. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one of the \"high-value detainees\" suspected to have been held in Diego Garcia. In October 2007, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the British Parliament announced that it would launch an investigation of continued allegations of a prison camp on Diego Garcia, which it claimed were twice confirmed by comments made by retired U.S. Army general Barry McCaffrey. On 31 July 2008, an unnamed former White House official alleged that the United States had imprisoned and interrogated at least one suspect on Diego Garcia during 2002 and possibly 2003.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Manfred Nowak, one of five United Nations special rapporteurs on torture, said that credible evidence exists supporting allegations that ships serving as black sites have used Diego Garcia as a base. The human rights group Reprieve alleged that United States-operated ships moored outside the territorial waters of Diego Garcia were used to incarcerate and torture detainees.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Several groups claim that the military base on Diego Garcia has been used by the United States government for transport of prisoners involved in the controversial extraordinary rendition program, an allegation formally reported to the Council of Europe in June 2007. On 21 February 2008, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted that two United States extraordinary rendition flights refuelled on Diego Garcia in 2002, and was \"very sorry\" that earlier denials were having to be corrected.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "According to leaked diplomatic cables, in a calculated move planned in 2009, the UK proposed that the BIOT become a \"marine reserve\" with the aim of preventing the former inhabitants from returning to the islands. A summary of the diplomatic cable is as follows:",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "HMG would like to establish a \"marine park\" or \"reserve\" providing comprehensive environmental protection to the reefs and waters of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official informed Polcouns on 12 May. The official insisted that the establishment of a marine park—the world's largest—would in no way impinge on USG use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes. He agreed that the UK and United States should carefully negotiate the details of the marine reserve to assure that United States interests were safeguarded and the strategic value of BIOT was upheld. He said that the BIOT's former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "No species of plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles, molluscs, crustaceans, or mammals is endemic on Diego Garcia or in the surrounding waters. Several endemic fish and aquatic invertebrates are present, though. All plants, wildlife, and aquatic species are protected to one degree or another. In addition, much of the lagoon waters are protected wetlands as a designated Ramsar site, and large parts of the island are nature preserves.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 2004, the UK applied for, and received, Ramsar site wetlands conservation status for the lagoon and other waters of Diego Garcia.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Diego Garcia is the largest land mass in the Chagos Archipelago (which includes Peros Banhos, the Salomon Islands, the Three Brothers, the Egmont Islands, and the Great Chagos Bank), being an atoll occupying approximately 174 square kilometres (67 sq mi), of which 27.19 square kilometres (10 sq mi) is dry land. The continuous portion of the atoll rim stretches 64 km (40 mi) from one end to the other, enclosing a lagoon 21 km (13 mi) long and up to 11 km (7 mi) wide, with a 6 km (4 mi) pass opening at the north. Three small islands are located in the pass.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The island consists of the largest continuous dryland rim of all atolls in the world. The dryland rim varies in width from a few hundred metres to 2.4 km. Typical of coral atolls, it has a maximum elevation on some dunes on the ocean side of the rim of 9 m (30 ft) above mean low water. The rim nearly encloses a lagoon about 19 km (12 mi) long and up to 8 km (5.0 mi) wide. The atoll forms a nearly complete rim of land around a lagoon, enclosing 90% of its perimeter, with an opening only in the north. The main island is the largest of about 60 islands which form the Chagos Archipelago. Besides the main island, three small islets are at the mouth of the lagoon: West Island (3.4 ha (8.4 acres)), Middle Island (6 ha (15 acres)) and East Island (11.75 ha (29.0 acres)). A fourth, Anniversary Island, 1 km (1,100 yards) southwest of Middle Island, appears as just a sand bar on satellite images. Both Middle Island and Anniversary Island are part of the Spur Reef complex.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The total area of the atoll is about 170 km (66 sq mi). The lagoon area is roughly 120 km (46 sq mi) with depths ranging down to about 25 m (82 ft). The total land area (excluding peripheral reefs) is around 30 km (12 sq mi). The coral reef surrounding the seaward side of the atoll is generally broad, flat, and shallow around 1 m (3.3 ft) below mean sea level in most locations and varying from 100 to 200 m (330 to 660 ft) in width. This fringing seaward reef shelf comprises an area around 35.2 km (14 sq mi). At the outer edge of the reef shelf, the bottom slopes very steeply into deep water, at some locations dropping to more than 450 m (1,500 ft) within 1 km (0.62 mi) of the shore.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In the lagoon, numerous coral heads present hazards to navigation. The shallow reef shelf surrounding the island on the ocean side offers no ocean-side anchorage. The channel and anchorage areas in the northern half of the lagoon are dredged, along with the pre-1971 ship turning basin. Significant saltwater wetlands called barachois exist in the southern half of the lagoon. These small lagoons off of the main lagoon are filled with seawater at high tide and dry at low tide. Scientific expeditions in 1996 and 2006 described the lagoon and surrounding waters of Diego Garcia, along with the rest of the Chagos Archipelago, as \"exceptionally unpolluted\" and \"pristine\".",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Diego Garcia is frequently subject to earthquakes caused by tectonic plate movement along the Carlsberg Ridge located just to the west of the island. One was recorded in 1812; one measuring 7.6 on the Richter Scale hit on 30 November 1983, at 23:46 local time and lasted 72 seconds, resulting in minor damage including wave damage to a 50-m stretch of the southern end of the island, and another on 2 December 2002, an earthquake measuring 4.6 on the Richter scale struck the island at 12:21 am.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In December 2004, a tsunami generated near Indonesia caused minor shoreline erosion on Barton Point (the northeast point of the atoll of Diego Garcia).",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Diego Garcia lies within the influence of the South Equatorial Current year-round. The surface currents of the Indian Ocean also have a monsoonal regimen associated with the Asian Monsoonal wind regimen. Sea surface temperatures are in the range of 80–84 °F (27–29 °C) year-round.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Diego Garcia is the above-water rim of a coral atoll composed of Holocene coral rubble and sand to the depth of about 36 m (118 ft), overlaying Pleistocene limestone deposited at the then-sea level on top of a seamount rising about 1,800 m (5,900 ft) from the floor of the Indian Ocean. The Holocene sediments are porous and completely saturated with sea water. Any rain falling on the above-water rim quickly percolates through the surface sand and encounters the salt water underneath. Diego Garcia is of sufficient width to minimise tidal fluctuations in the aquifer, and the rainfall (in excess of 102.5 inches/260 cm per year on average) is sufficient in amount and periodicity for the fresh water to form a series of convex, freshwater, Ghyben-Herzberg lenses floating on the heavier salt water in the saturated sediments.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The horizontal structure of each lens is influenced by variations in the type and porosity of the subsurface deposits, which on Diego Garcia are minor. At depth, the lens is globular; near the surface, it generally conforms to the shape of the island. When a Ghyben-Herzberg lens is fully formed, its floating nature will push a freshwater head above mean sea level, and if the island is wide enough, the depth of the lens below mean sea level will be 40 times the height of the water table above sea level. On Diego Garcia, this equates to a maximum depth of 20 m. However, the actual size and depth of each lens is dependent on the width and shape of the island at that point, the permeability of the aquifer, and the equilibrium between recharging rainfall and losses to evaporation to the atmosphere, transpiration by plants, tidal advection, and human use.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In the plantation period, shallow wells, supplemented by rainwater collected in cisterns, provided sufficient water for the pastoral lifestyle of the small population. On Diego Garcia today, the military base uses over 100 shallow \"horizontal\" wells to produce over 560,000 L per day from the \"Cantonment\" lens on the northwest arm of the island—sufficient water for western-style usage for a population of 3,500. This 3.7 km lens holds an estimated 19 million m of fresh water and has an average daily recharge from rainfall over 10,000 m, of which 40% remains in the lens and 60% is lost through evapotranspiration.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Extracting fresh water from a lens for human consumption requires careful calculation of the sustainable yield of the lens by season because each lens is susceptible to corruption by saltwater intrusion caused by overuse or drought. In addition, overwash by tsunamis and tropical storms has corrupted lenses in the Maldives and several Pacific islands. Vertical wells can cause salt upcoming into the lens, and overextraction will reduce freshwater pressure resulting in lateral intrusion by seawater. Because the porosity of the surface soil results in virtually zero runoff, lenses are easily polluted by fecal waste, burials, and chemical spills. Corruption of a lens can take years to \"flush out\" and reform, depending on the ratio of recharge to losses.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "A few natural depressions on the atoll rim capture the abundant rainfall to form areas of freshwater wetlands. Two are of significance to island wildlife and to recharge their respective freshwater lenses. One of these is centred on the northwest point of the atoll; another is found near the Point Marianne Cemetery on the southeast end of the airfield. Other, smaller freshwater wetlands are found along the east side of the runway, and in the vicinity of the receiver antenna field on the northwest arm of the atoll.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Also, several man-made freshwater ponds resulted from excavations made during construction of the airfield and road on the western half of the atoll rim. These fill from rainfall and from extending into the Ghyben-Herzberg lenses found on this island.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Diego Garcia has an equatorial tropical rainforest climate (Köppen Af). The surrounding sea surface temperature is the primary climatic control, and temperatures are generally uniform throughout the year, with an average maximum of 30 °C (86 °F) by day during March and April, and 29 °C (84 °F) from July to September. Diurnal variation is roughly 3–4 °C (5.4–7.2 °F), falling to the low 27 °C (81 °F) by night. Humidity is high throughout the year. The almost constant breeze keeps conditions reasonably comfortable.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "From December through March, winds are generally westerly around 6 knots (11 km/h). During April and May, winds are light and variable, ultimately backing to an east-southeasterly direction. From June through September, the influence of the Southeast trades is felt, with speeds of 10–15 knots. During October and November, winds again go through a period of light and variable conditions veering to a westerly direction with the onset of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "All precipitation falls as rain, characterised by air mass-type showers. Annual rainfall averages 2,603.5 mm (102.50 in), with the heaviest precipitation from September to April. January is the wettest month with 353 mm (13.9 in) of mean monthly precipitation, and August the driest month, averaging 106.5 mm (4.19 in) of mean monthly precipitation.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Thunderstorm activity is generally noticed during the afternoon and evenings during the summer months (December through March), when the Intertropical Convergence Zone is in the vicinity of the island.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Diego Garcia is at minimum risk from tropical cyclones due to its proximity to the equator where the coriolis parameter required to organise circulation of the upper atmosphere is minimal. Low-intensity storms have hit the island, including one in 1901, which blew over 1,500 coconut trees; one on 16 September 1944, which caused the wreck of a Royal Air Force PBY Catalina; one in September 1990 which demolished the tent city then being constructed for United States Air Force bomber crews during Operation Desert Storm; and one on 22 July 2007, when winds exceeded 60 kn (110 km/h) and over 250 mm (9.8 in) of rain fell in 24 hours.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The island was somewhat affected by the tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Service personnel on the western arm of the island reported only a minor increase in wave activity. The island was protected to a large degree by its favourable ocean topography. About 80 km (50 mi) east of the atoll lies the 650-km-long (400-mile) Chagos Trench, an underwater canyon plunging more than 4,900 m (16,100 ft). The depth of the trench and its grade to the atoll's slope and shelf shore makes it more difficult for substantial tsunami waves to build before passing the atoll from the east. In addition, near-shore coral reefs and an algal platform may have dissipated much of the waves' impact. A biological survey conducted in early 2005 indicated erosional effects of the tsunami wave on Diego Garcia and other islands of the Chagos Archipelago. One 200-to-300 m (220-to-330 yd) stretch of shoreline was found to have been breached by the tsunami wave, representing about 10% of the eastern arm. A biological survey by the Chagos Conservation Trust reported that the resulting inundation additionally washed away shoreline shrubs and small to medium-sized coconut palms.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The first botanical observations of the island were made by Hume in 1883, when the coconut plantations had been in operation for a full century. Subsequent studies and collections during the plantation era were made in 1885, 1905, 1939, and 1967. Thus, very little of the nature of the precontact vegetation is known.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The 1967 survey, published by the Smithsonian is used as the most authoritative baseline for more recent research. These studies indicate the vegetation of the island may be changing rapidly. For example, J. M. W. Topp collected data annually between 1993 and 2003 and found that on the average three new plant species arrived each year, mainly on Diego Garcia. His research added fully a third more species to Stoddart. Topp and Martin Hamilton of Kew Gardens compiled the most recent checklist of vegetation in 2009.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In 1967, Stoddart described the land area of Diego Garcia as having a littoral hedge of Scaevola taccada, while inland, Cocos nucifera (coconut) was the most dominant tree, covering most of the island. The substory was either managed and park-like, with understory less than 0.5 m in height, or consisted of what he called \"Cocos Bon-Dieu\" – an intermediate story of juvenile trees and a luxuriant ground layer of self-sown seedlings – causing those areas to be relatively impenetrable.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Also, areas of remnant tropical hardwood forest are at the sites of the plantation-era villages, as well as Casuarina equisetifolia (iron wood pines) woodlands.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In 1997, the United States Navy contracted a vegetation survey that identified about 280 species of terrestrial vascular plants on Diego Garcia. None of these was endemic, and another survey in 2005 identified just 36 species as \"native\", meaning arriving without the assistance of humans, and found elsewhere in the world. No terrestrial plant species are of any conservation-related concern at present.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Of the 36 native vascular plants on Diego Garcia, 12 are trees, five are shrubs, seven are dicotyledon herbs, three are grasses, four are vines, and five are ferns.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The 12 tree species are: Barringtonia asiatica (fish-poison tree), Calophyllum inophyllum (Alexandrian laurel), Cocos nucifera, Cordia subcordata, Guettarda speciosa, Intsia bijuga, Hernandia sonora, Morinda citrifolia, Neisosperma oppositifolium, Pisonia grandis, Terminalia catappa, and Heliotropium foertherianum. Another three tree species are common, and may be native, but they may also have been introduced by humans: Casuarina equisetifolia, Hibiscus tiliaceus, and Pipturus argenteus.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The five native shrubs are: Caesalpinia bonduc, Pemphis acidula, Premna serratifolia, Scaevola taccada (often mispronounced \"Scaveola\"), and Suriana maritima.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Also, 134 species of plants are classified as \"weedy\" or \"naturalised alien species\", being those unintentionally introduced by man, or intentionally introduced as ornamentals or crop plants which have now \"gone native\", including 32 new species recorded since 1995, indicating a very rapid rate of introduction. The remainder of the species list consists of cultivated food or ornamental species, grown in restricted environments such as a planter's pot.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In 2004, 10 plant communities were recognised on the atoll rim:",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "All the terrestrial and aquatic fauna of Diego Garcia are protected, with the exception of certain game fish, rats, and cats; hefty fines are levied against violators.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The island is a haven for several types of crustacean; \"warrior crabs\" (Cardisoma carnifex) overrun the jungle at night. The extremely large 4-kilogram (8.8 lb) coconut crab or robber crab (Birgus latro) is found here in large numbers. Because of the protections provided the species on this atoll, and the isolation of the east rim of the atoll, the species is recorded in greater densities there than anywhere else in its range (339 crabs/ha).",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "No mammal species are native on Diego Garcia, with no record of bats. Other than rats (Rattus rattus), all \"wild\" mammal species are feral descendants of domesticated species. During the plantation era, Diego Garcia was home to large herds of Sicilian donkeys (Equus asinus), dozens of horses (Equus caballus), hundreds of dogs (Canis familiaris), and house cats (Felis catus). In 1971, the BIOT Commissioner ordered the extermination of feral dogs following the departure of the last plantation workers, and the program continued through 1975, when the last feral dog was observed and shot. Donkeys, which numbered over 400 in 1972, were down to just 20 individuals in 2005. The last horse was observed in 1995, and by 2005, just two cats were thought to have survived an island-wide eradication program.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The total bird list for the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, consists of 91 species, with large breeding populations of 16 species. Although no birds are endemic, internationally important seabird colonies exist. Diego Garcia's seabird community includes thriving populations of species which are rapidly declining in other parts of the Indian Ocean. Large nesting colonies of brown noddies, bridled terns, the lesser noddy, red-footed booby and lesser frigatebirds exist on Diego Garcia.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Other nesting native birds include red-tailed tropicbirds, wedge-tailed shearwaters, Audubon's shearwater, black-naped terns, white terns, striated herons, and white-breasted waterhens. The 680-hectare Barton Point Nature Reserve was identified as an Important Bird Area for its large breeding colony of red-footed boobies.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The island hosts introduced bird species from many regions, including cattle egrets (Bubulcus ibis), Indian barred ground dove, also called the zebra dove (Geopelia striata), turtle dove (Nesoenas picturata), Indian mynah (Acridotheres tristis), Madagascar fody (Foudia madagascariensis), and chickens (Gallus gallus).",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Currently, three lizards and one toad are known to inhabit Diego Garcia, and possibly one snake. All are believed to have been introduced by human activity. The house gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus), the mourning gecko (Lepidodactylus lugubris), the garden lizard (an agamid) (Calotes versicolor), and the cane toad (Bufo marinus). A viable population of a type of blind snake from the family Typhlopidae may be present, probably the brahminy blind snake (Ramphotyphlops braminus). This snake feeds on the larvae, eggs, and pupae of ants and termites, and is about the size of a large earthworm.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Diego Garcia provides suitable foraging and nesting habitat for both the hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) and the green turtle (Chelonia mydas). Juvenile hawksbills are quite common in the lagoon and at Barachois Sylvane (also known as Turtle Cove) in the southern part of the lagoon. Adult hawksbills and greens are common in the surrounding seas and nest regularly on the ocean-side beaches of the atoll. Hawksbills have been observed nesting during June and July, and from November to March. Greens have been observed nesting in every month; the average female lays three clutches per season, each having an average clutch size of 113 eggs. Diurnal nesting is common in both species. An estimated 300–700 hawksbills and 400–800 greens nest in the Chagos.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Four reptiles and six cetaceans are endangered and may or may not be found on or around Diego Garcia: Hawksbill turtle (Eretmocheyls imbricata) – known; leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) – possible; green turtle (Chelonia mydas) – known; olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys oliveacea) – possible; sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) – possible; sei whale (Balaeonoptera borealis) – possible; finback whale (Balaeonoptera physalus) – possible; Bryde's whale (Balaeonoptera edeni) – possible; blue whale (Balaeonoptera musculus) – possible; humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) – possible; southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) – possible.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "British Forces British Indian Ocean Territories (BFBIOT) is the official name for the British Armed Forces deployment at the Permanent Joint Operating Base (PJOB) on Diego Garcia, in the British Indian Ocean Territory. While the naval and airbase facilities on Diego Garcia are leased to the United States, in practice, it operates as a joint UK-US base, with the UK retaining full and continual access. Diego Garcia is strategically located, offering access to East Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The base serves as a staging area for the buildup or resupply of military forces prior to an operation. There are approximately 40–50 British military personnel posted on Diego Garcia, most of them from Naval Party 1002 (NP1002). NP1002 forms the island's civil administration.",
"title": "United Kingdom military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "During the Cold War era, following the British withdrawal from East of Suez, the United States was keen to establish a military base in the Indian Ocean to counter Soviet influence and establish American dominance in the region and protect its sea-lanes for oil transportation from the Middle East. The United States saw the atoll as the \"Malta of the Indian Ocean\" equidistant from all points. The value has been proven many times, with the island providing an \"unsinkable aircraft carrier\" for the United States during the Iranian revolution, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Operation Desert Fox, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the contemporary era, the atoll continues to play a key role in America's approach to the Indian Ocean as a flexible forward military hub that can facilitate a range of offensive activities.",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The United States military facilities on Diego Garcia have been known informally as Camp Justice and, after renaming in July 2006, as Camp Thunder Cove. Formally, the base is known as Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia (the US activity) or Permanent Joint Operating Base (PJOB) Diego Garcia (the UK's term).",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "United States military activities in Diego Garcia have caused friction between India and the United States in the past. Political party CPI(m) in India has repeatedly called for the military base to be dismantled, as they saw the United States naval presence in Diego Garcia as a hindrance to peace in the Indian Ocean. In recent years, relations between India and the United States have improved dramatically. Diego Garcia was the site of several naval exercises between the United States and Indian navies held between 2001 and 2004.",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Recent construction in support of US military activities on Diego Garcia has included Black Construction/Mace International JV building a 34-metre antenna facility (expected completed by April 2021) and two new 13-metre radomes (expected completed by February 2021); and SJC-BVIL moving underground the overhead power and telephone lines that run from the Navy ammunition area to the Air Force ammunition area along DG1 (expected completed by September 2022).",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia provides Base Operating Services to tenant commands located on the island. The command's mission is \"To provide logistic support to operational forces forward deployed to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf AORs in support of national policy objectives.\" KBR has run base operations support services at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia.",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "The atoll shelters the ships of the United States Marine Pre-positioning Squadron Two. These ships carry equipment and supplies to support a major armed force with tanks, armoured personnel carriers, munitions, fuel, spare parts and even a mobile field hospital. This equipment was used during the Persian Gulf War, when the squadron transported equipment to Saudi Arabia.",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "The ship composition of MPSRON TWO is dynamic. During August 2010 it was composed of the following:",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Five of these vessels carry supplies for the US Marine Corps sufficient to support a Marine Air-Ground Task Force for 30 days: USNS Button, USNS Kocak, USNS Lopez, USNS Stockham, and USNS Fisher.",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Prior to 2001, COMPSRON 2 consisted of up to 20 ships, including four Combat Force Ships which provided rapid-response delivery of equipment to ground troops in the United States Army. Three are lighter aboard ships (LASH) which carry barges called lighters that contain Army ammunition to be ferried ashore: MV American Cormorant, SS Green Harbour, (LASH), SS Green Valley, (LASH), MV Jeb Stuart, (LASH). There were logistics vessels to service the rapid delivery requirements of the United States Air Force, United States Navy and Defense Logistics Agency. These included container ships for Air Force munitions, missiles and spare parts; a 500-bed hospital ship, and floating storage and offloading units assigned to Military Sealift Command supporting the Defense Logistics Agency, and an offshore petroleum discharge system (OPDS) tanker. Examples of ships are MV Buffalo Soldier, MV Green Ridge, pre-position tanker USNS Henry J. Kaiser, and tanker USNS Potomac (T-AO-181).",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "The United States Air Force operates a High Frequency Global Communications System transceiver site located on the south end of the atoll near the GEODSS station. The transceiver is operated remotely from Andrews Air Force Base and Grand Forks Air Force Base and is locally maintained by NCTS FE personnel.",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station Far East Detachment Diego Garcia operates a detachment in Diego Garcia. This detachment provides base telephone communications, base network services (Local Network Services Center), pier connectivity services, and an AN/GSC-39C SHF satellite terminal, operates the Hydroacoustic Data Acquisition System, and performs on-site maintenance for the remotely operated Air Force HF-GCS terminal. In July 2023, Reuters confirmed an underwater fiber-optic cable was constructed to Diego Garcia, finished in 2022.",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Naval Security Group detachment Diego Garcia was disestablished on 30 September 2005. Remaining essential operations were transferred to a contractor. The large AN/AX-16 High Frequency Radio direction finding Circularly Disposed Antenna Array has been demolished, but the four satellite antenna radomes around the site remain as of 2010.",
"title": "United States military activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The island was designated as one of the emergency landing sites worldwide for the NASA Space Shuttle. None of these facilities were ever used throughout the life of the shuttle program.",
"title": "Space Shuttle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "All consumable food and equipment are brought to Diego Garcia by sea or air, and all non-biodegradable waste is shipped off the island as well. From 1971 to 1973, United States Navy LSTs provided this service. Beginning in 1973, civilian ships were contracted to provide these services. From 2004 to 2009, the US-flagged container ship MV Baffin Strait, often referred to as the \"DGAR shuttle\", delivered 250 containers every month from Singapore to Diego Garcia. The ship delivered \"more than 200,000 tons of cargo to the island each year\". On the return trip to Singapore, it carried recyclable metals.",
"title": "Cargo service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "In 2004, TransAtlantic Lines outbid Sealift Incorporated for the transport contract between Singapore and Diego Garcia. The route had previously been serviced by Sealift Inc.'s MV Sagamore, crewed by members of American Maritime Officers and Seafarers' International Union. TransAtlantic Lines reportedly won the contract by approximately 10 per cent, representing a price difference of about US$2.7 million. The Baffin Straits charter ran from 10 January 2005, to 30 September 2008, at a daily rate of US$12,550.",
"title": "Cargo service"
}
]
| Diego Garcia is an island of the British Indian Ocean Territory, a disputed overseas territory of the United Kingdom also claimed by Mauritius. It is a militarised atoll just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, and the largest of the 60 small islands of the Chagos Archipelago. Portuguese sailors under Pedro Mascarenhas were the first Europeans to discover the island, finding it uninhabited in 1512. After a 1786 British colony failed, the French began using the island as a leper colony and, starting in 1793, coconut cultivation by enslaved labor. It was transferred to British rule after the Napoleonic Wars. It was one of the "Dependencies" of the British Colony of Mauritius until the Chagos Islands were detached for inclusion in the newly created British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) in 1965. In 1966, the population of the island was 924. These people were employed as contract farm workers primarily on copra plantations owned by the Chagos-Agalega company. Although local plantation managers commonly allowed pensioners and the disabled to remain in the islands and continue to receive housing and rations in exchange for light work, children after the age of 12 were required to work. In 1964, only 3 of a population of 963 were unemployed. In April 1967, the BIOT Administration bought out Chagos-Agalega for £600,000, thus becoming the sole property owner in the BIOT. The Crown immediately leased back the properties to Chagos-Agalega but the company terminated the lease at the end of 1967. Between 1968 and 1973, the Chagossian (Îlois) inhabitants were forcibly expelled from Diego Garcia by the UK Government so a joint US/UK military base could be established on the island. Many were deported to Mauritius and the Seychelles, following which the United States built the large Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, which has been in continuous operation since then. In 2019, this action and continued British administration of the archipelago were deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a ruling the United Nations General Assembly supported. However, the British dismissed this ruling as not legally binding. As of August 2018, Diego Garcia is the only inhabited island of the BIOT; the population is composed of military personnel and supporting contractors. It is one of two critical US bomber bases in the Indo-Pacific region, along with Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The atoll is located 3,535 km (2,197 mi) east of Tanzania's coast, 1,796 km (1,116 mi) south-southwest of the southern tip of India, and 4,723 km (2,935 mi) west-northwest of the west coast of Australia. Diego Garcia lies at the southernmost tip of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge, a vast underwater mountain range with peaks consisting of coral reefs, atolls, and islands comprising Lakshadweep, the Maldives, and the Chagos Archipelago. Local time is UTC+6 year-round. | 2001-10-09T22:10:51Z | 2023-12-26T17:47:04Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Garcia |
8,631 | Dimmu Borgir | Dimmu Borgir (/ˌdɪmuː ˈbɔːrɡɪər/) is a Norwegian symphonic black metal band from Jessheim, formed in 1993. The name is derived from Dimmuborgir, a volcanic formation in Iceland, the name of which means "dark cities" or "dark castles/fortresses" in Icelandic, Faroese and Old Norse. The band has been through numerous lineup changes over the years; vocalist Shagrath and rhythm guitarist Silenoz are the only original members who still remain, with lead guitarist Galder being a longstanding member.
Dimmu Borgir was founded in 1993 by Silenoz and Tjodalv. Shagrath, Brynjard Tristan, & Stian Aarstad later joined Dimmu Borgir, and then released an EP in 1994 entitled Inn i evighetens mørke ("Into the Darkness of Eternity"). This short EP sold out within weeks, and the band followed up with the 1994 full-length album For All Tid ("For All Time"). This album featured vocal contributions by Vicotnik of Ved Buens Ende and Dødheimsgard and Aldrahn of Dødheimsgard and Zyklon-B. The initial line-up consisted of Shagrath playing drums with Tjodalv on guitar and Silenoz contributing lead vocals. This line-up changed before the release of Stormblåst ("Stormblown") on Cacophonous Records in 1996, an album considered by many to be their finest. It is also the last album which features all lyrics written and sung in Norwegian.
After Stormblåst, keyboardist Stian Aarstad left the band due to his obligation to serve in the Norwegian army, thus being unable to participate in the 1996 recording of Devil's Path. That period was also marked by the departure of bassist Brynjard Tristan and the arrival of Nagash. Stian Aarstad returned for the recording of 1997's Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. He had trouble attending rehearsals and was unable to tour. He was then subsequently dismissed and replaced by Kimberly Goss for their 1997/1998 world tour. Enthrone Darkness Triumphant was a huge success for the band, and was their first release signed to Nuclear Blast, a German record label. The album was recorded in the Abyss Studios, owned by Hypocrisy's frontman Peter Tägtgren. After the release of Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, the band went on tour with In Flames, Dissection and other bands who were prominent in the scene at the time.
After the tour for Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, the band recruited new members Mustis on keyboards and Astennu on lead guitar. Dimmu Borgir's following full-length albums Spiritual Black Dimensions in 1999 and 2001's Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia, both met critical acclaim. However, another line-up change occurred between the two albums; Nagash quit and was replaced by new bassist/singer ICS Vortex, and Tjodalv left due to his family commitments, and to form the subsequent band Susperia, only to be replaced with Nicholas Barker of Cradle of Filth. Astennu was fired from his guitar duties as well due to creative differences, and was replaced by Galder.
Despite the regular video play on MTV2 and Fuse that their follow-up album would receive, the band stated that they were not "commercially-oriented", and instead, they "simply wished to spread their message to more people". In 2003, Dimmu Borgir recorded Death Cult Armageddon. Death Cult Armageddon was recorded with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Adam Klemens. All orchestrations were arranged by Gaute Storaas (who had previously worked with Dimmu Borgir on the album Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia). In 2004, Dimmu Borgir performed on the mainstage at Ozzfest.
In 2005, the band did a complete re-recording of the Stormblåst album, featuring Hellhammer of Mayhem fame as the session drummer. The album also featured a DVD with a live performance from the 2004 Ozzfest tour.
Dimmu Borgir's seventh studio album, In Sorte Diaboli, was released on 24 April 2007. A special edition version was released in a boxed case with a DVD, backward-printed lyrics, and a mirror. The album artwork was released on 14 February 2007 on a promotional webpage for the album. This album features once more the drumming of Hellhammer of Mayhem. Blomberg left the band in mid-tour in 2007 because of a neck injury that resulted in limited movement of his right arm. With the release of this album, Dimmu Borgir became the first black metal band with a number one album on the charts in their native country. In October 2008, they released their second live DVD set titled The Invaluable Darkness, which was based on several shows during the world tour supporting "In Sorte Diaboli".
In 2009, members ICS Vortex and Mustis independently announced their departure from Dimmu Borgir. Mustis released a statement claiming his disfavor with the band, stating that he was not properly credited for his writing contributions to the band's music, mentioning possibly taking legal action.
Dimmu Borgir soon after confirmed the pair's dismissal from the band, releasing a statement explaining why the two were fired. Shagrath, Silenoz and Galder wrote: "Funny then, how the new album is half-way finished written already by the rest of us without any of these guys' input, still having all those elements we're known for." Many fans were quite disappointed, however, without the composition of Mustis, and soaring signature voice of ICS Vortex.
Dimmu Borgir's eighth studio album, Abrahadabra, was released on 24 September 2010 in Germany, 27 September 2010 for the rest of Europe and 12 October 2010 in North America. Silenoz explained that the growing periods of time between albums was because the band had stopped writing music while touring, which was affecting the quality of the music. He described the new album as having an "eerie and haunting feel to it", adding that the material is "epic", "primal", atmospheric and ambient. A promotional image released with the statement showed Shagrath returning to the keyboards. The album features an ensemble orchestra, the Kringkastingsorkestret (the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra), as well as the Schola Cantorum choir, totaling more than 100 musicians and singers.
Gaute Storaas, composer of the orchestral arrangements, released a statement on his role in working on the album. "Their music is epic, thematic and symphonic already from the creation; they are clearly having an orchestral approach to composing. My role in this is sometimes just to transcribe their themes, sometimes to take their ideas, tear them apart and build them back up in ways that are true to the band's intentions. The music must also be both interesting and playable for the musicians, and hopefully, meet the quality standards of the orchestral world."
On 8 July the band confirmed that they had tapped Swedish multi-instrumentalist Snowy Shaw (Therion, Dream Evil) to replace bassist/clean vocalist ICS Vortex on their then-upcoming album, Abrahadabra, and world tour. On 25 August it was announced that Snowy Shaw had left Dimmu Borgir to rejoin Therion. On 17 September 2010 Dimmu Borgir released the song "Born Treacherous" from Abrahadabra on their official Myspace page. Then on 24 September the band announced they would stream Abrahadabra in its entirety until 7 p.m. EST that evening. The keyboards and bass are currently played by Gerlioz from Apoptygma Berzerk and Cyrus of Susperia respectively, and the clean vocals are sampled.
28 May 2011 saw Dimmu Borgir, for the first time in the band's career, perform live with a full symphony orchestra and choir in a one-off show with the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra and Schola Cantorum Choir (who collaborated on Abrahadabra the previous year) at the Oslo Spectrum entitled "Forces of the Northern Night". This was broadcast live on Norway's main national TV carrier NRK. The setlist for this show consisted of tracks from the band's recent transfiguration Abrahadabra, leading tracks "Vredysbyrd" and "Progenies of the Great Apocalypse" from Death Cult Armageddon, as well as newly updated versions of tracks from their standard back catalog; "The Serpentine Offering", "Kings of the Carnival Creation", and "Mourning Palace" which were re-orchestrated by Gaute Storaas. The band played a similar show the following year at the Wacken Open Air festival, having yet performed a second live show with a symphony orchestra and choir. This time, they were accompanied by the Czech National Orchestra with the same choir, being the second band in the festival's history to play with a live orchestra and choir (next to German power metal band Rage's 2007 performance). The show was broadcast live on Germany's Kultur TV arts channel. Silenoz has also said in several recent interviews that both live sets have been fully mixed and will be accompanied by a feature-length documentary and bonus material when released. In late 2011-2012 the band went on a special tour for fans in various European countries, including playing in some small, intimate venues celebrating their 1997 album Enthrone Darkness Triumphant by playing the album in its entirety, alongside an additional set of various fan favourite tracks, following a poll to fans directly, asking which of their first 3 albums would they want to see played in full on their next European tour.
The band originally announced in August 2013 that work had commenced on the band's next album. However, the production and release of the album has faced numerous delays. It will mark the longest-ever gap between each studio release. Following various delays, the Oslo and Wacken Orchestra performances, recorded between 2011 and 2012, were released on CD/DVD/Blu-ray format on 28 April 2017 worldwide as their third live video release titled Forces of the Northern Night. Silenoz recently revealed that the band is in the mixing stage of the follow-up to Abrahadabra. Ten songs will feature on the next album and they have said it has since been completed. On 18 December 2017 it was announced that the first single from the new album will be initially released on a 7-inch vinyl EP, and will be titled Interdimensional Summit, and was released on 23 February 2018. The new album was titled Eonian and was released on 4 May through Nuclear Blast, and marked the band's first new release of original material in almost eight years. A second song from the new album, "Council of Wolves and Snakes", was made available for streaming online on 30 March. On 28 May, it was announced that Victor Brandt (Entombed A.D., Firespawn) had officially joined as the band's new bassist.
According to updates on the band member's Instagram accounts in September 2020, the band are in the process of writing and pre-production for their tenth studio album. Silenoz has stated in a recent interview that the band would not take as long to release their next album.
A cover album was released on December 8th 2023, titled "Inspiratio Profanus". It contains all the covers the band has recorded up to Abrahadabra.
Dimmu Borgir's older releases (since 1994 to 1999) are, according to AllMusic journalist Bradley Torreano, strongly influenced by Darkthrone, Mayhem, Bathory, Emperor, Celtic Frost, Immortal, Venom, and Iron Maiden. The band became more progressive and symphonic through the years; many black metal purists consider the band's second album, Stormblåst, to be "the act's last true contribution to black metal". Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, Dimmu Borgir's third album, "distinguished itself in two important areas, firstly forgoing their native language for English and secondly for its dramatic increase in synthesizer content." Significant experimentation began with 1999's Spiritual Black Dimensions (due to the addition of Vortex's clean vocals, and the variety of musical ideas from then-new member Mustis), as well as Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia due to addition of influences from composers such as Antonín Dvořák, Enya, Richard Wagner, and Frédéric Chopin. As the music strongly differed from the older, rawer black metal style, Jon "Metalion" Kristiansen called Spiritual Black Dimensions "a fine case of melodic, over-produced symphonic metal. If you like this melodic style I can't really think of anyone doing it better [...]. No, I wouldn't call this black metal. Read the interview with Funeral Mist for the right definition of black metal."
It is also notable that Silenoz and Galder have worked with ESP Guitars to create the latest additions to the company's LTD Signature Series line: the LTD Okkultist and the LTD Shadow. | [
{
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"text": "Dimmu Borgir (/ˌdɪmuː ˈbɔːrɡɪər/) is a Norwegian symphonic black metal band from Jessheim, formed in 1993. The name is derived from Dimmuborgir, a volcanic formation in Iceland, the name of which means \"dark cities\" or \"dark castles/fortresses\" in Icelandic, Faroese and Old Norse. The band has been through numerous lineup changes over the years; vocalist Shagrath and rhythm guitarist Silenoz are the only original members who still remain, with lead guitarist Galder being a longstanding member.",
"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "Dimmu Borgir was founded in 1993 by Silenoz and Tjodalv. Shagrath, Brynjard Tristan, & Stian Aarstad later joined Dimmu Borgir, and then released an EP in 1994 entitled Inn i evighetens mørke (\"Into the Darkness of Eternity\"). This short EP sold out within weeks, and the band followed up with the 1994 full-length album For All Tid (\"For All Time\"). This album featured vocal contributions by Vicotnik of Ved Buens Ende and Dødheimsgard and Aldrahn of Dødheimsgard and Zyklon-B. The initial line-up consisted of Shagrath playing drums with Tjodalv on guitar and Silenoz contributing lead vocals. This line-up changed before the release of Stormblåst (\"Stormblown\") on Cacophonous Records in 1996, an album considered by many to be their finest. It is also the last album which features all lyrics written and sung in Norwegian.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "After Stormblåst, keyboardist Stian Aarstad left the band due to his obligation to serve in the Norwegian army, thus being unable to participate in the 1996 recording of Devil's Path. That period was also marked by the departure of bassist Brynjard Tristan and the arrival of Nagash. Stian Aarstad returned for the recording of 1997's Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. He had trouble attending rehearsals and was unable to tour. He was then subsequently dismissed and replaced by Kimberly Goss for their 1997/1998 world tour. Enthrone Darkness Triumphant was a huge success for the band, and was their first release signed to Nuclear Blast, a German record label. The album was recorded in the Abyss Studios, owned by Hypocrisy's frontman Peter Tägtgren. After the release of Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, the band went on tour with In Flames, Dissection and other bands who were prominent in the scene at the time.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "After the tour for Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, the band recruited new members Mustis on keyboards and Astennu on lead guitar. Dimmu Borgir's following full-length albums Spiritual Black Dimensions in 1999 and 2001's Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia, both met critical acclaim. However, another line-up change occurred between the two albums; Nagash quit and was replaced by new bassist/singer ICS Vortex, and Tjodalv left due to his family commitments, and to form the subsequent band Susperia, only to be replaced with Nicholas Barker of Cradle of Filth. Astennu was fired from his guitar duties as well due to creative differences, and was replaced by Galder.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Despite the regular video play on MTV2 and Fuse that their follow-up album would receive, the band stated that they were not \"commercially-oriented\", and instead, they \"simply wished to spread their message to more people\". In 2003, Dimmu Borgir recorded Death Cult Armageddon. Death Cult Armageddon was recorded with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Adam Klemens. All orchestrations were arranged by Gaute Storaas (who had previously worked with Dimmu Borgir on the album Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia). In 2004, Dimmu Borgir performed on the mainstage at Ozzfest.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 2005, the band did a complete re-recording of the Stormblåst album, featuring Hellhammer of Mayhem fame as the session drummer. The album also featured a DVD with a live performance from the 2004 Ozzfest tour.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Dimmu Borgir's seventh studio album, In Sorte Diaboli, was released on 24 April 2007. A special edition version was released in a boxed case with a DVD, backward-printed lyrics, and a mirror. The album artwork was released on 14 February 2007 on a promotional webpage for the album. This album features once more the drumming of Hellhammer of Mayhem. Blomberg left the band in mid-tour in 2007 because of a neck injury that resulted in limited movement of his right arm. With the release of this album, Dimmu Borgir became the first black metal band with a number one album on the charts in their native country. In October 2008, they released their second live DVD set titled The Invaluable Darkness, which was based on several shows during the world tour supporting \"In Sorte Diaboli\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 2009, members ICS Vortex and Mustis independently announced their departure from Dimmu Borgir. Mustis released a statement claiming his disfavor with the band, stating that he was not properly credited for his writing contributions to the band's music, mentioning possibly taking legal action.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Dimmu Borgir soon after confirmed the pair's dismissal from the band, releasing a statement explaining why the two were fired. Shagrath, Silenoz and Galder wrote: \"Funny then, how the new album is half-way finished written already by the rest of us without any of these guys' input, still having all those elements we're known for.\" Many fans were quite disappointed, however, without the composition of Mustis, and soaring signature voice of ICS Vortex.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Dimmu Borgir's eighth studio album, Abrahadabra, was released on 24 September 2010 in Germany, 27 September 2010 for the rest of Europe and 12 October 2010 in North America. Silenoz explained that the growing periods of time between albums was because the band had stopped writing music while touring, which was affecting the quality of the music. He described the new album as having an \"eerie and haunting feel to it\", adding that the material is \"epic\", \"primal\", atmospheric and ambient. A promotional image released with the statement showed Shagrath returning to the keyboards. The album features an ensemble orchestra, the Kringkastingsorkestret (the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra), as well as the Schola Cantorum choir, totaling more than 100 musicians and singers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Gaute Storaas, composer of the orchestral arrangements, released a statement on his role in working on the album. \"Their music is epic, thematic and symphonic already from the creation; they are clearly having an orchestral approach to composing. My role in this is sometimes just to transcribe their themes, sometimes to take their ideas, tear them apart and build them back up in ways that are true to the band's intentions. The music must also be both interesting and playable for the musicians, and hopefully, meet the quality standards of the orchestral world.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "On 8 July the band confirmed that they had tapped Swedish multi-instrumentalist Snowy Shaw (Therion, Dream Evil) to replace bassist/clean vocalist ICS Vortex on their then-upcoming album, Abrahadabra, and world tour. On 25 August it was announced that Snowy Shaw had left Dimmu Borgir to rejoin Therion. On 17 September 2010 Dimmu Borgir released the song \"Born Treacherous\" from Abrahadabra on their official Myspace page. Then on 24 September the band announced they would stream Abrahadabra in its entirety until 7 p.m. EST that evening. The keyboards and bass are currently played by Gerlioz from Apoptygma Berzerk and Cyrus of Susperia respectively, and the clean vocals are sampled.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "28 May 2011 saw Dimmu Borgir, for the first time in the band's career, perform live with a full symphony orchestra and choir in a one-off show with the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra and Schola Cantorum Choir (who collaborated on Abrahadabra the previous year) at the Oslo Spectrum entitled \"Forces of the Northern Night\". This was broadcast live on Norway's main national TV carrier NRK. The setlist for this show consisted of tracks from the band's recent transfiguration Abrahadabra, leading tracks \"Vredysbyrd\" and \"Progenies of the Great Apocalypse\" from Death Cult Armageddon, as well as newly updated versions of tracks from their standard back catalog; \"The Serpentine Offering\", \"Kings of the Carnival Creation\", and \"Mourning Palace\" which were re-orchestrated by Gaute Storaas. The band played a similar show the following year at the Wacken Open Air festival, having yet performed a second live show with a symphony orchestra and choir. This time, they were accompanied by the Czech National Orchestra with the same choir, being the second band in the festival's history to play with a live orchestra and choir (next to German power metal band Rage's 2007 performance). The show was broadcast live on Germany's Kultur TV arts channel. Silenoz has also said in several recent interviews that both live sets have been fully mixed and will be accompanied by a feature-length documentary and bonus material when released. In late 2011-2012 the band went on a special tour for fans in various European countries, including playing in some small, intimate venues celebrating their 1997 album Enthrone Darkness Triumphant by playing the album in its entirety, alongside an additional set of various fan favourite tracks, following a poll to fans directly, asking which of their first 3 albums would they want to see played in full on their next European tour.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The band originally announced in August 2013 that work had commenced on the band's next album. However, the production and release of the album has faced numerous delays. It will mark the longest-ever gap between each studio release. Following various delays, the Oslo and Wacken Orchestra performances, recorded between 2011 and 2012, were released on CD/DVD/Blu-ray format on 28 April 2017 worldwide as their third live video release titled Forces of the Northern Night. Silenoz recently revealed that the band is in the mixing stage of the follow-up to Abrahadabra. Ten songs will feature on the next album and they have said it has since been completed. On 18 December 2017 it was announced that the first single from the new album will be initially released on a 7-inch vinyl EP, and will be titled Interdimensional Summit, and was released on 23 February 2018. The new album was titled Eonian and was released on 4 May through Nuclear Blast, and marked the band's first new release of original material in almost eight years. A second song from the new album, \"Council of Wolves and Snakes\", was made available for streaming online on 30 March. On 28 May, it was announced that Victor Brandt (Entombed A.D., Firespawn) had officially joined as the band's new bassist.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "According to updates on the band member's Instagram accounts in September 2020, the band are in the process of writing and pre-production for their tenth studio album. Silenoz has stated in a recent interview that the band would not take as long to release their next album.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "A cover album was released on December 8th 2023, titled \"Inspiratio Profanus\". It contains all the covers the band has recorded up to Abrahadabra.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Dimmu Borgir's older releases (since 1994 to 1999) are, according to AllMusic journalist Bradley Torreano, strongly influenced by Darkthrone, Mayhem, Bathory, Emperor, Celtic Frost, Immortal, Venom, and Iron Maiden. The band became more progressive and symphonic through the years; many black metal purists consider the band's second album, Stormblåst, to be \"the act's last true contribution to black metal\". Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, Dimmu Borgir's third album, \"distinguished itself in two important areas, firstly forgoing their native language for English and secondly for its dramatic increase in synthesizer content.\" Significant experimentation began with 1999's Spiritual Black Dimensions (due to the addition of Vortex's clean vocals, and the variety of musical ideas from then-new member Mustis), as well as Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia due to addition of influences from composers such as Antonín Dvořák, Enya, Richard Wagner, and Frédéric Chopin. As the music strongly differed from the older, rawer black metal style, Jon \"Metalion\" Kristiansen called Spiritual Black Dimensions \"a fine case of melodic, over-produced symphonic metal. If you like this melodic style I can't really think of anyone doing it better [...]. No, I wouldn't call this black metal. Read the interview with Funeral Mist for the right definition of black metal.\"",
"title": "Musical style and influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "It is also notable that Silenoz and Galder have worked with ESP Guitars to create the latest additions to the company's LTD Signature Series line: the LTD Okkultist and the LTD Shadow.",
"title": "Musical style and influences"
}
]
| Dimmu Borgir is a Norwegian symphonic black metal band from Jessheim, formed in 1993. The name is derived from Dimmuborgir, a volcanic formation in Iceland, the name of which means "dark cities" or "dark castles/fortresses" in Icelandic, Faroese and Old Norse. The band has been through numerous lineup changes over the years; vocalist Shagrath and rhythm guitarist Silenoz are the only original members who still remain, with lead guitarist Galder being a longstanding member. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-09T04:46:12Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimmu_Borgir |
8,632 | Druze | The Druze (/ˈdruːz/ DROOZ; Arabic: دَرْزِيّ, darzī or دُرْزِيّ durzī, pl. دُرُوز, durūz), who call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn (lit. 'the monotheists' or 'the unitarians'), are an Arab and Arabic-speaking esoteric ethnoreligious group from Western Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, syncretic, and ethnic religion whose main tenets are the unity of God and the belief in reincarnation and the eternity of the soul. Most Druze religious practices are kept secret. The Druze do not permit outsiders to convert to their religion. Marriage outside the Druze faith is rare and strongly discouraged.
The Epistles of Wisdom is the foundational and central text of the Druze faith. The Druze faith incorporates elements of Isma'ili Shia, Christianity, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Pythagoreanism, and other philosophies and beliefs, creating a distinct and secretive theology based on an esoteric interpretation of scripture, which emphasizes the role of the mind and truthfulness. Druze believe in theophany and reincarnation. Druze believe that at the end of the cycle of rebirth, which is achieved through successive reincarnations, the soul is united with the Cosmic Mind (al-ʻaql al-kullī).
The Druze have a special reverence for Shuaib, who they believe is the same person as the biblical Jethro. The Druze believe that Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Imam Muhammad ibn Isma'il were prophets. Druze tradition also honors and reveres Salman the Persian, al-Khidr (whom they identify as Elijah, reborn as John the Baptist and Saint George), Job, Luke the Evangelist, and others as "mentors" and "prophets".
Even though the faith originally developed out of Isma'ilism, the Druze are not Muslims. The Druze faith is one of the major religious groups in the Levant, with between 800,000 and a million adherents. They are found primarily in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, with small communities in Jordan. They make up 5.5% of the population of Lebanon, 3% of Syria and 1.6% of Israel. The oldest and most densely-populated Druze communities exist in Mount Lebanon and in the south of Syria around Jabal al-Druze (literally the "Mountain of the Druze").
The Druze community played a critically important role in shaping the history of the Levant, where it continues to play a significant political role. As a religious minority in every country in which they are found, they have frequently experienced persecution by different Muslim regimes, including contemporary Islamic extremism.
The name Druze is derived from the name of Muhammad bin Ismail Nashtakin ad-Darazī (from Persian darzi, "seamster") who was an early preacher. Although the Druze consider ad-Darazī a heretic, the name has been used to identify them, possibly by their historical opponents as a way to attach their community with ad-Darazi's poor reputation.
Before becoming public, the movement was secretive and held closed meetings in what was known as Sessions of Wisdom. During this stage a dispute occurred between ad-Darazi and Hamza bin Ali mainly concerning ad-Darazi's ghuluww ("exaggeration"), which refers to the belief that God was incarnated in human beings to ad-Darazi naming himself "The Sword of the Faith", which led Hamza to write an epistle refuting the need for the sword to spread the faith and several epistles refuting the beliefs of the ghulat.
In 1016 ad-Darazi and his followers openly proclaimed their beliefs and called people to join them, causing riots in Cairo against the Unitarian movement including Hamza bin Ali and his followers. This led to the suspension of the movement for one year and the expulsion of ad-Darazi and his supporters.
Although the Druze religious books describe ad-Darazi as the "insolent one" and as the "calf" who is narrow-minded and hasty, the name "Druze" is still used for identification and for historical reasons. In 1018, ad-Darazi was assassinated for his teachings; some sources claim that he was executed by Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah.
Some authorities see in the name "Druze" a descriptive epithet, derived from Arabic dārisah ("she who studies"). Others have speculated that the word comes from the Persian word Darazo (درز "bliss") or from Shaykh Hussayn ad-Darazī, who was one of the early converts to the faith. In the early stages of the movement, the word "Druze" is rarely mentioned by historians, and in Druze religious texts only the word Muwaḥḥidūn ("Unitarian") appears. The only early Arab historian who mentions the Druze is the eleventh century Christian scholar Yahya of Antioch, who clearly refers to the heretical group created by ad-Darazī, rather than the followers of Hamza ibn 'Alī. As for Western sources, Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveler who passed through Lebanon in or around 1165, was one of the first European writers to refer to the Druze by name. The word Dogziyin ("Druzes") occurs in an early Hebrew edition of his travels, but it is clear that this is a scribal error. Be that as it may, he described the Druze as "mountain dwellers, monotheists, who believe in 'soul eternity' and reincarnation". He also stated that "they loved the Jews".
The number of Druze people worldwide is between 800,000 and one million, with the vast majority residing in the Levant. Druze people reside primarily in Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.
The Institute of Druze Studies estimates that in 1998 40–50% of Druze live in Syria, 30–40% in Lebanon, 6–7% in Israel, and 1–2% in Jordan. About 2% of the Druze population are also scattered within other countries in the Middle East, and according to The Institute of Druze Studies there were approximately 20,000 Druzes in the United States in 1998. According to scholar Colbert C. Held of University of Nebraska, Lincoln the number of Druze people worldwide is around one million, with about 45% to 50% live in Syria, 35% to 40% live in Lebanon, and less than 10% live in Israel, with recently there has been a growing Druze diaspora.
Large communities of Druze also live outside the Middle East, in Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America (mainly Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil), the United States, and West Africa. They are Arabs who speak the Arabic language and follow a social pattern very similar to those of the other peoples of the Levant (eastern Mediterranean). In 2021 the largest Druze communities outside the Middle East are in Venezuela (60,000) and in the United States (50,000). According to the Los Angeles Times in 2017 "there are about 30,000 in the United States, with the largest concentration in Southern California".
The story of the creation of the Druze faith in the days between 1017 and 1018 is dominated by three men and their struggle for influence.
Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad, an Ismaili mystic and scholar from Zozan, Khorasan, in the Samanid Empire. arrived in Fatimid Egypt in 1014 or 1016. He assembled a group of scholars that met regularly in the Raydan Mosque, near the Al-Hakim Mosque. In 1017, Hamza began to preach a Muwaḥḥidūn (Unitarian) doctrine.
Hamza gained the support of the Fātimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who issued a decree promoting religious freedom and eventually became a central figure in the Druze faith.
Little is known about the early life of al-Darazi. According to most sources, he was born in Bukhara. He is believed to have been of Persian origins and his title al-Darazi is Persian in origin, meaning "the tailor". He arrived in Cairo in 1015, or 1017, after which he joined the newly emerged Druze movement.
Al-Darazi was converted early to the Unitarian faith and became one of its early preachers. At that time, the movement enlisted a large number of adherents. As the number of his followers grew, he became obsessed with his leadership and gave himself the title "The Sword of the Faith". Al-Darazi argued that he should be the leader of the daʻwah rather than Hamza ibn Ali and gave himself the title "Lord of the Guides" because Caliph al-Hakim referred to Hamza as "Guide of the Consented". It is said that al-Darazi allowed wine, forbidden marriages and taught metempsychosis although this may be exaggeration by contemporary and later historians and polemicists.
This attitude led to disputes between Ad-Darazi and Hamza ibn Ali, who disliked his behavior and his arrogance. In the Epistles of Wisdom, Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad warns al-Darazi, saying, "Faith does not need a sword to aid it", but al-Darazi ignored Hamza's warnings and continued to challenge the Imam.
The divine call or unitarian call is the Druze period of time that was opened at sunset on Thursday, 30 May 1017 by Ad-Darazi. The call summoned people to a true unitarian belief that removed all attributes (wise, just, outside, inside, etc.) from God. It promoted absolute monotheism and the concepts of supporting your fellow man, true speech and pursuit of oneness with God. These concepts superseded all ritual, law and dogma and requirements for pilgrimage, fasting, holy days, prayer, charity, devotion, creed and particular worship of any prophet or person was downplayed. Sharia was opposed and Druze traditions started during the call continue today, such as meeting for reading, prayer and social gathering on a Thursday instead of a Friday at Khalwats instead of mosques. Such gatherings and traditions were not compulsory and people were encouraged to pursue a state of compliance with the real law of nature governing the universe. Epistle thirteen of the Epistles of Wisdom called it "A spiritual doctrine without any ritualistic imposition".
The time of the call was seen as a revolution of truth, with missionaries preaching its message all around the Middle East. These messengers were sent out with the Druze epistles and took written vows from believers, whose souls are thought to still exist in the Druze of today. The souls of those who took the vows during the call are believed to be continuously reincarnating in successive generations of Druze until the return of al-Hakim to proclaim a second Divine call and establish a Golden Age of justice and peace for all.
By 1018, al-Darazi had gathered around him partisans – "Darazites" – who believed that universal reason became incarnated in Adam at the beginning of the world, was then passed to the prophets, then into Ali, and then into his descendants, the Fatimid Caliphs. Al-Darazi wrote a book laying out this doctrine, but when he read from his book in the principal mosque in Cairo, it caused riots and protests against his claims and many of his followers were killed.
Hamza ibn Ali rejected al-Darazi's ideology, calling him "the insolent one and Satan". The controversy led Caliph al-Hakim to suspend the Druze daʻwah in 1018.
In an attempt to gain the support of al-Hakim, al-Darazi started preaching that al-Hakim and his ancestors were the incarnation of God. An inherently modest man, al-Hakim did not believe that he was God, and felt al-Darazi was trying to depict himself as a new prophet. In 1018 Al-Hakim had al-Darazi executed, leaving Hamza the sole leader of the new faith and al-Darazi considered to be a renegade.
Al-Hakim disappeared one night while on his evening ride – presumably assassinated, perhaps at the behest of his formidable elder sister Sitt al-Mulk. The Druze believe he went into Occultation with Hamza ibn Ali and three other prominent preachers, leaving the care of the "Unitarian missionary movement" to a new leader, al-Muqtana Baha'uddin.
The call was suspended briefly between 19 May 1018 and 9 May 1019 during the apostasy of al-Darazi and again between 1021 and 1026 during a period of persecution by Ali az-Zahir for those who had sworn the oath to accept the call.
Persecutions started forty days after the disappearance into Occultation of al-Hakim, who was thought to have been converting people to the Unitarian faith for over twenty years prior. Al-Hakim convinced some heretical followers such as al-Darazi of his soteriological divinity and officially declared the Divine call after issuing a decree promoting religious freedom.
Al-Hakim was replaced by his underage son, ʻAlī al-Zahir. The Unitarian/Druze movement acknowledged al-Zahir as the caliph, but continued to regard Hamzah as its Imam. The young caliph's regent, Sitt al-Mulk, ordered the army to destroy the movement in 1021. At the same time, Bahāʼ al-Dīn was assigned the leadership of the Unitarians by Hamza.
For the next seven years, the Druze faced extreme persecution by the new caliph, al-Zahir, who wanted to eradicate the faith. This was the result of a power struggle inside of the Fatimid empire in which the Druze were viewed with suspicion because of their refusal to recognize the new caliph as their Imam. Many spies, mainly the followers of al-Darazi, joined the Unitarian movement in order to infiltrate the Druze community. The spies set about agitating trouble and soiling the reputation of the Druze. This resulted in friction with the new caliph who clashed militarily with the Druze community. The clashes ranged from Antioch to Alexandria, where tens of thousands of Druze were slaughtered by the Fatimid army, "this mass persecution known by the Druze as the period of the mihna". The largest massacre was at Antioch, where 5000 prominent Druze were killed, followed by that of Aleppo. As a result, the faith went underground, in hope of survival, as those captured were either forced to renounce their faith or be killed. Druze survivors "were found principally in southern Lebanon and Syria".
In 1038, two years after the death of al-Zahir, the Druze movement was able to resume because the new leadership that replaced him had friendly political ties with at least one prominent Druze leader.
In 1043, Baha al-Din al-Muqtana declared that the sect would no longer accept new pledges, and since that time proselytism has been prohibited awaiting al-Hakim's return at the Last Judgment to usher in a new Golden Age.
Some Druze and non-Druze scholars like Samy Swayd and Sami Makarem state that this confusion is due to confusion about the role of the early preacher al-Darazi, whose teachings the Druze rejected as heretical. These sources assert that al-Hakim rejected al-Darazi's claims of divinity, and ordered the elimination of his movement while supporting that of Hamza ibn Ali.
Wadi al-Taym, in Lebanon, was one of the two most important centers of Druze missionary activity in the 11th century and was the first area where the Druze appeared in the historical record under the name "Druze". It is generally considered the birthplace of the Druze faith.
It was during the period of Crusader rule in Levant (1099–1291) that the Druze first emerged into the full light of history in the Gharb region of the Chouf Mountains. As powerful warriors serving the Muslim rulers of Damascus against the Crusades, the Druze were given the task of keeping watch over the crusaders in the seaport of Beirut, with the aim of preventing them from making any encroachments inland. Subsequently, the Druze chiefs of the Gharb placed their considerable military experience at the disposal of the Mamluk rulers of Egypt (1250–1516); first, to assist them in putting an end to what remained of Crusader rule in coastal Levant, and later to help them safeguard the Lebanese coast against Crusader retaliation by sea.
In the early period of the Crusader era, the Druze feudal power was in the hands of two families, the Tanukhs and the Arslans. From their fortresses in the Gharb area (now in Aley District of southern Mount Lebanon Governorate), the Tanukhs led their incursions into the Phoenician coast and finally succeeded in holding Beirut and the marine plain against the Franks. Because of their fierce battles with the Crusaders, the Druze earned the respect of the Sunni Muslim caliphs and thus gained important political powers. After the middle of the twelfth century, the Ma'an family superseded the Tanukhs in Druze leadership. The origin of the family goes back to a Prince Ma'an who made his appearance in the Lebanon in the days of the 'Abbasid caliph al-Mustarshid (1118–35 CE). The Ma'ans chose for their abode the Chouf District in south-western Lebanon (southern Mount Lebanon Governorate), overlooking the maritime plain between Beirut and Sidon, and made their headquarters in Baaqlin, which is still a leading Druze village. They were invested with feudal authority by Sultan Nur ad-Din and furnished respectable contingents to the Muslim ranks in their struggle against the Crusaders.
Ibn Taymiyyah believed that Druze had a high level of infidelity, besides being apostates. Thus, they were not trustworthy and should not be forgiven. He taught also that Muslims cannot accept Druze penitence nor keep them alive, and that Druze property should be confiscated and their women enslaved. Having cleared the holy land of the Franks, the Mamluk sultans of Egypt turned their attention to the schismatic Muslims of Syria. In 1305, after the issuing of a fatwa by the scholar Ibn Taymiyyah calling for jihad against all non-Sunni Muslims like the Druze, Alawites, Ismaili, and Twelver Shia Muslims, al-Malik al-Nasir inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Druze at Keserwan, and forced outward compliance on their part to Orthodox Sunni Islam. Later, under the Ottoman, they were severely attacked at Saoufar in the 1585 Ottoman expedition after the Ottomans claimed that they assaulted their caravans near Tripoli. As a result of the Ottoman experience with the rebellious Druze, the word Durzi in Turkish came, and continues, to mean someone who is the ultimate thug. One influential Islamic sage of that time labeled them infidels and argued that, even though they might behave like Muslims on the outside, this is no more than a pretense. He also declared that confiscation of Druze property and even the death sentence would comply with the laws of Islam.
Consequently, the 16th and 17th centuries witnessed a succession of armed Druze rebellions against the Ottomans, countered by repeated Ottoman punitive expeditions against the Chouf, in which the Druze population of the area was severely depleted and many villages destroyed. These military measures, severe as they were, did not succeed in reducing the local Druze to the required degree of subordination. This led the Ottoman government to agree to an arrangement whereby the different nahiyes (districts) of the Chouf would be granted in iltizam ("fiscal concession") to one of the region's amirs, or leading chiefs, leaving the maintenance of law and order and the collection of taxes in the area in the hands of the appointed amir. This arrangement was to provide the cornerstone for the privileged status ultimately enjoyed by the whole of Mount Lebanon, Druze and Christian areas alike.
With the advent of the Ottoman Turks and the conquest of Syria by Sultan Selim I in 1516, the Ma'ans were acknowledged by the new rulers as the feudal lords of southern Lebanon. Druze villages spread and prospered in that region, which under Ma'an leadership so flourished that it acquired the generic term of Jabal Bayt-Ma'an (the mountain home of the Ma'an) or Jabal al-Druze. The latter title has since been usurped by the Hawran region, which since the middle of the 19th century has proven a haven of refuge to Druze emigrants from Lebanon and has become the headquarters of Druze power.
Under Fakhr-al-Dīn II (Fakhreddin II), the Druze dominion increased until it included Lebanon-Phoenicia and almost all Syria, extending from the edge of the Antioch plain in the north to Safad in the south, with a part of the Syrian desert dominated by Fakhr-al-Din's castle at Tadmur (Palmyra), the ancient capital of Zenobia. The ruins of this castle still stand on a steep hill overlooking the town. Fakhr-al-Din became too strong for his Turkish sovereign in Constantinople. He went so far in 1608 as to sign a commercial treaty with Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany containing secret military clauses. The Sultan then sent a force against him, and he was compelled to flee the land and seek refuge in the courts of Tuscany and Naples in 1613 and 1615 respectively.
In 1618, political changes in the Ottoman sultanate had resulted in the removal of many enemies of Fakhr-al-Din from power, signaling the prince's triumphant return to Lebanon soon afterwards. Through a clever policy of bribery and warfare, he extended his domains to cover all of modern Lebanon, some of Syria and northern Galilee.
In 1632, Küçük Ahmed Pasha was named Lord of Damascus. Küçük Ahmed Pasha was a rival of Fakhr-al-Din and a friend of the sultan Murad IV, who ordered the pasha and the sultanate's navy to attack Lebanon and depose Fakhr-al-Din.
This time the prince decided to remain in Lebanon and resist the offensive, but the death of his son Ali in Wadi al-Taym was the beginning of his defeat. He later took refuge in Jezzine's grotto, closely followed by Küçük Ahmed Pasha who eventually caught up with him and his family.
Fakhr-al-Din was captured, taken to Istanbul, and imprisoned with two of his sons in the infamous Yedi Kule prison. The Sultan had Fakhr-al-Din and his sons killed on 13 April 1635 in Istanbul, bringing an end to an era in the history of Lebanon, which would not regain its current boundaries until it was proclaimed a mandate state and republic in 1920. One version recounts that the younger son was spared, raised in the harem and went on to become Ottoman Ambassador to India.
Fakhr-al-Din II was the first ruler in modern Lebanon to open the doors of his country to foreign Western influences. Under his auspices the French established a khān (hostel) in Sidon, the Florentines a consulate, and Christian missionaries were admitted into the country. Beirut and Sidon, which Fakhr-al-Din II beautified, still bear traces of his benign rule. See the new biography of this Prince, based on original sources, by TJ Gorton: Renaissance Emir: a Druze Warlord at the Court of the Medici (London, Quartet Books, 2013), for an updated view of his life.
Fakhr ad Din II was succeeded in 1635 by his nephew Mulhim Ma'n, who ruled through his death in 1658. (Fakhr ad Din's only surviving son, Husayn, lived the rest of his life as a court official in Constantinople.) Emir Mulhim exercised Iltizam taxation rights in the Shuf, Gharb, Jurd, Matn, and Kisrawan districts of Lebanon. Mulhim's forces battled and defeated those of Mustafa Pasha, Beylerbey of Damascus, in 1642, but he is reported by historians to have been otherwise loyal to Ottoman rule.
Following Mulhim's death, his sons Ahmad and Korkmaz entered into a power struggle with other Ottoman-backed Druze leaders. In 1660, the Ottoman Empire moved to reorganize the region, placing the sanjaks (districts) of Sidon-Beirut and Safed in a newly formed province of Sidon, a move seen by local Druze as an attempt to assert control. Contemporary historian Istifan al-Duwayhi reports that Korkmaz was killed in act of treachery by the Beylerbey of Damascus in 1662. Ahmad however emerged victorious in the power struggle among the Druze in 1667, but the Maʿnīs lost control of Safad and retreated to controlling the iltizam of the Shuf mountains and Kisrawan. Ahmad continued as local ruler through his death from natural causes, without heir, in 1697.
During the Ottoman–Habsburg War (1683–1699), Ahmad Ma'n collaborated in a rebellion against the Ottomans which extended beyond his death. Iltizam rights in Shuf and Kisrawan passed to the rising Shihab family through female-line inheritance.
As early as the days of Saladin, and while the Ma'ans were still in complete control over southern Lebanon, the Shihab tribe, originally Hijaz Arabs, but later settled in Ḥawran, advanced from Ḥawran, in 1172, and settled in Wadi al-Taym at the foot of mount Hermon. They soon made an alliance with the Ma'ans and were acknowledged as the Druze chiefs in Wadi al-Taym. At the end of the 17th century (1697) the Shihabs succeeded the Ma'ans in the feudal leadership of Druze southern Lebanon, although they reportedly professed Sunni Islam, they showed sympathy with Druzism, the religion of the majority of their subjects.
The Shihab leadership continued until the middle of the 19th century and culminated in the illustrious governorship of Amir Bashir Shihab II (1788–1840) who, after Fakhr-al-Din, was the most powerful feudal lord Lebanon produced. Though governor of the Druze Mountain, Bashir was a crypto-Christian, and it was he whose aid Napoleon solicited in 1799 during his campaign against Syria.
Having consolidated his conquests in Syria (1831–1838), Ibrahim Pasha, son of the viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, made the fatal mistake of trying to disarm the Christians and Druze of the Lebanon and to draft the latter into his army. This was contrary to the principles of the life of independence which these mountaineers had always lived, and resulted in a general uprising against Egyptian rule. The Druze of Wadi al-Taym and Ḥawran, under the leadership of Shibli al-Aryan, distinguished themselves in their stubborn resistance at their inaccessible headquarters, al-Laja, lying southeast of Damascus.
The conquest of Syria by the Muslim Arabs in the middle of the seventh century introduced into the land two political factions later called the Qaysites and the Yemenites. The Qaysite party represented the Bedouin Arabs who were regarded as inferior by the Yemenites who were earlier and more cultured emigrants into Syria from southern Arabia. Druze and Christians grouped in political, rather than religious, parties; the party lines in Lebanon obliterated ethnic and religious lines and the people grouped themselves into one or the other of these two parties regardless of their religious affiliations. The sanguinary feuds between these two factions depleted, in course of time, the manhood of the Lebanon and ended in the decisive battle of Ain Dara in 1711, which resulted in the utter defeat of the Yemenite party. Many Yemenite Druze thereupon migrated to the Hauran region, laying the foundation of Druze power there.
The relationship between the Druze and Christians has been characterized by harmony and coexistence, with amicable relations between the two groups prevailing throughout history, with the exception of some periods, including 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus. In 1840, social disturbance started between Druze and their Christian Maronite neighbors, who had previously been on friendly terms. This culminated in the civil war of 1860.
After the Shehab dynasty converted to Christianity, the Druze community and feudal leaders came under attack from the regime with the collaboration of the Maronite Catholic Church, and the Druze lost most of their political and feudal powers. Also, the Druze formed an alliance with Britain and allowed Protestant missionaries to enter Mount Lebanon, creating tension between them and the Catholic Maronites.
The Maronite-Druze conflict in 1840–60 was an outgrowth of the Maronite independence movement, directed against the Druze, Druze feudalism, and the Ottoman-Turks. The civil war was not therefore a religious war, except in Damascus, where it spread and where the vastly non-Druze population was anti-Christian. The movement culminated with the 1859–60 massacre and defeat of the Maronites by the Druze. The civil war of 1860 cost the Maronites some ten thousand lives in Damascus, Zahlé, Deir al-Qamar, Hasbaya, and other towns of Lebanon.
The European powers then determined to intervene, and authorized the landing in Beirut of a body of French troops under General Beaufort d'Hautpoul, whose inscription can still be seen on the historic rock at the mouth of Nahr al-Kalb. French intervention on behalf of the Maronites did not help the Maronite national movement, since France was restricted in 1860 by the British government, which did not want the Ottoman Empire dismembered. But European intervention pressured the Turks to treat the Maronites more justly. Following the recommendations of the powers, the Ottoman Porte granted Lebanon local autonomy, guaranteed by the powers, under a Maronite governor. This autonomy was maintained until World War I.
The Hauran rebellion was a violent Druze uprising against Ottoman authority in the Syrian province, which erupted in May 1909. The rebellion was led by al-Atrash family, originated in local disputes and Druze unwillingness to pay taxes and conscript into the Ottoman Army. The rebellion ended in brutal suppression of the Druze by General Sami Pasha al-Farouqi, significant depopulation of the Hauran region and execution of the Druze leaders in 1910. In the outcome of the revolt, 2,000 Druze were killed, a similar number wounded, and hundreds of Druze fighters imprisoned. Al-Farouqi also disarmed the population, extracted significant taxes, and launched a census of the region.
In Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Jordan, the Druzites have official recognition as a separate religious community with its own religious court system. Druzites are known for their loyalty to the countries they reside in, though they have a strong community feeling, in which they identify themselves as related even across borders of countries.
Although most Druze no longer consider themselves Muslim, Al Azhar of Egypt recognized them in 1959 as one of the Islamic sects in the Al-Azhar Shia Fatwa due to political reasons, as Gamal Abdel Nasser saw it as a tool to spread his appeal and influence across the entire Arab world.
Despite their practice of blending with dominant groups to avoid persecution, and because the Druze religion does not endorse separatist sentiments, but urges blending with the communities they reside in, the Druze have had a history of resistance to occupying powers, and they have at times enjoyed more freedom than most other groups living in the Levant.
In Syria, most Druzites live in the Jebel al-Druze, a rugged and mountainous region in the southwest of the country, which is more than 90 percent Druze inhabited; some 120 villages are exclusively so. Other notable communities live in the Harim Mountains, the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, and on the southeast slopes of Mount Hermon. A large Syrian Druze community historically lived in the Golan Heights, but following wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973, many of these Druze fled to other parts of Syria; most of those who remained live in a handful of villages in the disputed zone, while only a few live in the narrow remnant of Quneitra Governorate that is still under effective Syrian control.
The Druze always played a far more important role in Syrian politics than its comparatively small population would suggest. With a community of little more than 100,000 in 1949, or roughly three percent of the Syrian population, the Druze of Syria's southwestern mountains constituted a potent force in Syrian politics and played a leading role in the nationalist struggle against the French. Under the military leadership of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, the Druze provided much of the military force behind the Syrian Revolution of 1925–27. In 1945, Amir Hasan al-Atrash, the paramount political leader of the Jebel al-Druze, led the Druze military units in a successful revolt against the French, making the Jebel al-Druze the first and only region in Syria to liberate itself from French rule without British assistance. At independence the Druze, made confident by their successes, expected that Damascus would reward them for their many sacrifices on the battlefield. They demanded to keep their autonomous administration and many political privileges accorded them by the French and sought generous economic assistance from the newly independent government.
When a local paper in 1945 reported that President Shukri al-Quwatli (1943–49) had called the Druze a "dangerous minority", Sultan Pasha al-Atrash flew into a rage and demanded a public retraction. If it were not forthcoming, he announced, the Druze would indeed become "dangerous", and a force of 4,000 Druze warriors would "occupy the city of Damascus". Quwwatli could not dismiss Sultan Pasha's threat. The military balance of power in Syria was tilted in favor of the Druze, at least until the military build up during the 1948 War in Palestine. One advisor to the Syrian Defense Department warned in 1946 that the Syrian army was "useless", and that the Druze could "take Damascus and capture the present leaders in a breeze".
During the four years of Adib Shishakli's rule in Syria (December 1949 to February 1954) (on 25 August 1952: Adib al-Shishakli created the Arab Liberation Movement (ALM), a progressive party with pan-Arabist and socialist views), the Druze community was subjected to a heavy attack by the Syrian government. Shishakli believed that among his many opponents in Syria, the Druze were the most potentially dangerous, and he was determined to crush them. He frequently proclaimed: "My enemies are like a serpent: The head is the Jebel al-Druze, the stomach Homs, and the tail Aleppo. If I crush the head, the serpent will die." Shishakli dispatched 10,000 regular troops to occupy the Jebel al-Druze. Several towns were bombarded with heavy weapons, killing scores of civilians and destroying many houses. According to Druze accounts, Shishakli encouraged neighboring Bedouin tribes to plunder the defenseless population and allowed his own troops to run amok.
Shishakli launched a brutal campaign to defame the Druze for their religion and politics. He accused the entire community of treason, at times claiming they were in the employ of the British and Hashimites, at others that they were fighting for Israel against the Arabs. He even produced a cache of Israeli weapons allegedly discovered in the Jabal. Even more painful for the Druze community was his publication of "falsified Druze religious texts" and false testimonials ascribed to leading Druze sheikhs designed to stir up sectarian hatred. This propaganda also was broadcast in the Arab world, mainly Egypt. Shishakli was assassinated in Brazil on 27 September 1964 by a Druze seeking revenge for Shishakli's bombardment of the Jebel al-Druze.
He forcibly integrated minorities into the national Syrian social structure, his "Syrianization" of Alawite and Druze territories had to be accomplished in part using violence. To this end, al-Shishakli encouraged the stigmatization of minorities. He saw minority demands as tantamount to treason. His increasingly chauvinistic notions of Arab nationalism were predicated on the denial that "minorities" existed in Syria.
After the Shishakli's military campaign, the Druze community lost much of its political influence, but many Druze military officers played important roles in the Ba'ath government currently ruling Syria.
In 1967, a community of Druze in the Golan Heights came under Israeli control, today numbering 23,000 (in 2019).
The Qalb Loze massacre was a reported massacre of Syrian Druze on 10 June 2015 in the village of Qalb Loze in Syria's northwestern Idlib Governorate in which 20–24 Druze were killed. On 25 July 2018, a group of ISIS-affiliated attackers entered the Druze city of As-Suwayda and initiated a series of gunfights and suicide bombings on its streets, killing at least 258 people, the vast majority of them civilians.
The Druzite community in Lebanon played an important role in the formation of the modern state of Lebanon, and even though they are a minority they play an important role in the Lebanese political scene. Before and during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90), the Druze were in favor of Pan-Arabism and Palestinian resistance represented by the PLO. Most of the community supported the Progressive Socialist Party formed by their leader Kamal Jumblatt and they fought alongside other leftist and Palestinian parties against the Lebanese Front that was mainly constituted of Christians. After the assassination of Kamal Jumblatt on 16 March 1977, his son Walid Jumblatt took the leadership of the party and played an important role in preserving his father's legacy after winning the Mountain War and sustained the existence of the Druze community during the sectarian bloodshed that lasted until 1990.
In August 2001, Maronite Catholic Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir toured the predominantly Druze Chouf region of Mount Lebanon and visited Mukhtara, the ancestral stronghold of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. The tumultuous reception that Sfeir received not only signified a historic reconciliation between Maronites and Druze, who fought a bloody war in 1983–1984, but underscored the fact that the banner of Lebanese sovereignty had broad multi-confessional appeal and was a cornerstone for the Cedar Revolution in 2005. Jumblatt's post-2005 position diverged sharply from the tradition of his family. He also accused Damascus of being behind the 1977 assassination of his father, Kamal Jumblatt, expressing for the first time what many knew he privately suspected. The BBC describes Jumblatt as "the leader of Lebanon's most powerful Druze clan and heir to a leftist political dynasty". The second largest political party supported by Druze is the Lebanese Democratic Party led by Prince Talal Arslan, the son of Lebanese independence hero Emir Majid Arslan.
The Druzites form a religious minority in Israel of more than 100,000, mostly residing in the north of the country. In 2004, there were 102,000 Druze living in the country. In 2010, the population of Israeli Druze citizens grew to over 125,000. At the end of 2018, there were 143,000 in Israel and the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan Heights. Most Israeli Druze identify ethnically as Arabs. Today, thousands of Israeli Druze belong to "Druze Zionist" movements.
Some scholars maintain that Israel has tried to separate the Druze from other Arab communities, and that the effort has influenced the way Israel's Druze perceive their modern identity. In 1957, the Israeli government designated the Druze a distinct ethnic community at the request of its communal leaders. The Druze are Arabic-speaking citizens of Israel and serve in the Israel Defense Forces, just as most citizens do in Israel. Members of the community have attained top positions in Israeli politics and public service. The number of Druze parliament members usually exceeds their proportion in the Israeli population, and they are integrated within several political parties.
The Druzites form a religious minority in Jordan of around 32,000, mostly residing in the northwestern part of the country.
The Druze conception of the deity is declared by them to be one of strict and uncompromising unity. The main Druze doctrine states that God is both transcendent and immanent, in which he is above all attributes, but at the same time, he is present.
In their desire to maintain a rigid confession of unity, they stripped from God all attributes (tanzīh). In God, there are no attributes distinct from his essence. He is wise, mighty, and just, not by wisdom, might, and justice, but by his own essence. God is "the whole of existence", rather than "above existence" or on his throne, which would make him "limited". There is neither "how", "when", nor "where" about him; he is incomprehensible.
In this dogma, they are similar to the semi-philosophical, semi-religious body which flourished under Al-Ma'mun and was known by the name of Mu'tazila and the fraternal order of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Ṣafa).
Unlike the Mu'tazila, and similar to some branches of Sufism, the Druze believe in the concept of Tajalli (meaning "theophany"). Tajalli is often misunderstood by scholars and writers and is usually confused with the concept of incarnation.
[Incarnation] is the core spiritual beliefs in the Druze and some other intellectual and spiritual traditions ... In a mystical sense, it refers to the light of God experienced by certain mystics who have reached a high level of purity in their spiritual journey. Thus, God is perceived as the Lahut [the divine] who manifests His Light in the Station (Maqaam) of the Nasut [material realm] without the Nasut becoming Lahut. This is like one's image in the mirror: One is in the mirror, but does not become the mirror. The Druze manuscripts are emphatic and warn against the belief that the Nasut is God ... Neglecting this warning, individual seekers, scholars, and other spectators have considered al-Hakim and other figures divine. ... In the Druze scriptural view, Tajalli takes a central stage. One author comments that Tajalli occurs when the seeker's humanity is annihilated so that divine attributes and light are experienced by the person.
Druze sacred texts include the Quran and the Epistles of Wisdom. Other ancient Druze writings include the Rasa'il al-Hind (Epistles of India) and the previously lost (or hidden) manuscripts such as al-Munfarid bi-Dhatihi and al-Sharia al-Ruhaniyya as well as others including didactic and polemic treatises.
Reincarnation is a paramount principle in the Druze faith. Reincarnations occur instantly at one's death because there is an eternal duality of the body and the soul and it is impossible for the soul to exist without the body. A human soul will transfer only to a human body, in contrast to the Neoplatonic, Hindu and Buddhist belief systems, according to which souls can transfer to any living creature. Furthermore, a male Druze can be reincarnated only as another male Druze and a female Druze only as another female Druze. A Druze cannot be reincarnated in the body of a non-Druze. Additionally, souls cannot be divided and the number of souls existing in the universe is finite. The cycle of rebirth is continuous and the only way to escape is through successive reincarnations. When this occurs, the soul is united with the Cosmic Mind and achieves the ultimate happiness.
The Pact of Time Custodian (Mithāq Walī al-zamān) is considered the entrance to the Druze religion, and they believe that all Druze in their past lives have signed this Charter, and Druze believe that this Charter embodies with human souls after death.
I rely on our Moula Al-Hakim the lonely God, the individual, the eternal, who is out of couples and numbers, (someone) the son of (someone) has approved recognition enjoined on himself and on his soul, in a healthy of his mind and his body, permissibility aversive is obedient and not forced, to repudiate from all creeds, articles and all religions and beliefs on the differences varieties, and he does not know something except obedience of almighty Moulana Al-Hakim, and obedience is worship and that it does not engage in worship anyone ever attended or wait, and that he had handed his soul and his body and his money and all he owns to almighty Maulana Al-Hakim.
The Druze also use a similar formula, called al-'ahd, when one is initiated into the ʻUqqāl.
The prayer-houses of the Druze are called khalwa or khalwat. The primary sanctuary of the Druze is at Khalwat al-Bayada.
The Druze believe that many teachings given by prophets, religious leaders and holy books have esoteric meanings preserved for those of intellect, in which some teachings are symbolic and allegorical in nature, and divide the understanding of holy books and teachings into three layers.
These layers, according to the Druze, are as follows:
Druze do not believe that the esoteric meaning abrogates or necessarily abolishes the exoteric one. Hamza bin Ali refutes such claims by stating that if the esoteric interpretation of taharah (purity) is purity of the heart and soul, it doesn't mean that a person can discard his physical purity, as salat (prayer) is useless if a person is untruthful in his speech and that the esoteric and exoteric meanings complement each other.
The Druze follow seven moral precepts or duties that are considered the core of the faith. The Seven Druze precepts are:
Complicating their identity is the custom of taqiyya—concealing or disguising their beliefs when necessary—that they adopted from Ismailism and the esoteric nature of the faith, in which many teachings are kept secretive. This is done in order to keep the religion from those who are not yet prepared to accept the teachings and therefore could misunderstand it, as well as to protect the community when it is in danger. Some claim to be Muslim or Christian in order to avoid persecution; some do not. Druze in different states can have radically different lifestyles.
Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad is considered the founder of the Druze and the primary author of the Druze manuscripts. He proclaimed that God had become human and taken the form of man. Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah is an important figure in the Druze faith whose eponymous founder ad-Darazi proclaimed him as the incarnation of God in 1018.
Recognition of prophets in the Druze religion is divided into three sort-of subcategories, the prophet themselves (natiq), their disciples (asas), and witnesses to their message (hujjah).
The number 5 contains an unstated significance within the Druze faith; it is believed in this area that great prophets come in groups of five. In the time of the ancient Greeks, these five were represented by Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Parmenides, and Empedocles. In the first century, the five were represented by Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, Saint Matthew, Saint Mark, and Saint Luke. In the time of the faith's foundation, the five were Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad, Muḥammad ibn Wahb al-Qurashī, Abū'l-Khayr Salama ibn Abd al-Wahhab al-Samurri, Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad at-Tamīmī, and Al-Muqtana Baha'uddin.
Druze tradition honors and reveres Hamza ibn Ali Ahmad and Salman the Persian as "mentors" and "prophets", believed to be reincarnations of the monotheistic idea.
The Druze allow divorce, although it is discouraged, and circumcision is not necessary. Apostasy is forbidden, and they usually have religious services on Thursday evenings. Druze follow Sunni Hanafi law on issues which their own faith has no particular rulings about.
Formal Druze worship is confined to weekly meeting on Thursday evenings, during which all members of community gather together to discuss local issues before those not initiated into the secrets of the faith (the juhhāl, or the ignorant) are dismissed, and those who are "uqqāl" or "enlightened" (those few initiated in the Druze holy books) remain to read and study.
The Druze strictly avoid iconography, but use five colors ("Five Limits" خمس حدود khams ḥudūd) as a religious symbol: green, red, yellow, blue, and white. The five limits were listed by Ismail at-Tamimi (d. 1030) in the Epistle of the Candle (risalat ash-sham'a) as:
Each of the colors representing the five limits pertains to a metaphysical power called ḥadd, literally "a limit", as in the distinctions that separate humans from animals, or the powers that make humans the animalistic body. Each ḥadd is color-coded in the following manner:
The mind generates qualia and gives consciousness. The soul embodies the mind and is responsible for transmigration and the character of oneself. The word, which is the atom of language, communicates qualia between humans and represents the platonic forms in the sensible world. The Sābiq and Tālī is the ability to perceive and learn from the past and plan for the future and predict it.
The colors can be arranged in vertically descending stripes (as a flag), or a five-pointed star. The stripes are a diagrammatic cut of the spheres in neoplatonic philosophy, while the five-pointed star embodies the golden ratio, phi, as a symbol of temperance and a life of moderation.
Holy places of the Druze are archaeological sites important to the community and associated with religious holidays; the most notable example being Nabi Shu'ayb, dedicated to Jethro, who is a central figure of the Druze religion. Druze make pilgrimages to this site on the holiday of Ziyarat al-Nabi Shu'ayb.
One of the most important features of the Druze village having a central role in social life is the khalwat—a house of prayer, retreat and religious unity. The khalwat may be known as majlis in local languages.
The second type of religious shrine is one associated with the anniversary of a historic event or death of a prophet. If it is a mausoleum the Druze call it mazār and if it is a shrine they call it maqām. The holy places become more important to the community in times of adversity and calamity. The holy places and shrines of the Druze are scattered in various villages, in places where they are protected and cared for. They are found in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
The Druze do not recognize any religious hierarchy. As such, there is no "Druze clergy". Those few initiated in the Druze holy books are called ʿuqqāl, while the "ignorant", regular members of the group are called juhhāl.
Given the strict religious, intellectual and spiritual requirements, most of the Druze are not initiated and might be referred to as al-Juhhāl (جهال), literally "the Ignorant", but in practice referring to the non-initiated Druze. However, that term is seldom used by the Druze. Those Druze are not granted access to the Druze holy literature or allowed to attend the initiated religious meetings of the ʻuqqāl. The "juhhāl" are the vast majority of the Druze community. The cohesiveness and frequent inter-community social interaction, however, enables most Druze to have an idea about their broad ethical requirements and have some sense of what their theology consists of (albeit often flawed).
The initiated religious group, which includes both men and women (less than 10% of the population), is called al-ʻUqqāl (عقال "the Knowledgeable Initiates"). They might or might not dress differently, although most wear a costume that was characteristic of mountain people in previous centuries. Women can opt to wear al-mandīl, a loose white veil, especially in the presence of other people. They wear al-mandīl on their heads to cover their hair and wrap it around their mouths. They wear black shirts and long skirts covering their legs to their ankles. Male ʻuqqāl often grow mustaches, and wear dark Levantine-Turkish traditional dresses, called the shirwal, with white turbans that vary according to the seniority of the ʻuqqāl. Traditionally the Druze women have played an important role both socially and religiously inside the community.
Al-ʻuqqāl have equal rights to al-Juhhāl, but establish a hierarchy of respect based on religious service. The most influential of al-ʻuqqāl become Ajawīd, recognized religious leaders, and from this group the spiritual leaders of the Druze are assigned. While the Shaykh al-ʻAql, which is an official position in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, is elected by the local community and serves as the head of the Druze religious council, judges from the Druze religious courts are usually elected for this position. Unlike the spiritual leaders, the authority of the Shaykh al-ʻAql is limited to the country he is elected in, though in some instances spiritual leaders are elected to this position.
The Druze believe in the unity of God, and are often known as the "People of Monotheism" or simply "Monotheists". Their theology has a Neo-Platonic view about how God interacts with the world through emanations and is similar to some gnostic and other esoteric sects. Druze philosophy also shows Sufi influences.
Druze principles focus on honesty, loyalty, filial piety, altruism, patriotic sacrifice, and monotheism. They reject nicotine, alcohol, and other drugs and often, the consumption of pork (to the Uqqāl and not necessarily to the Juhhāl). Druze reject polygamy, believe in reincarnation, and are not obliged to observe most of the religious rituals. The Druze believe that rituals are symbolic and have an individualistic effect on the person, for which reason Druze are free to perform them, or not. The community does celebrate Eid al-Adha, however, considered their most significant holiday; though their form of observance is different compared to that of most Muslims.
The religious life of the average Druze ("juhhāl") revolves around a very small number of events – birth and circumcision, engagement and marriage, death and burial – and is devoid of special Druze prayers or worship.
Marriage outside the Druze faith is forbidden, and if a Druze marries a non-Druze, the Druze may be ostracized and marginalized by their community. Because a non-Druze partner cannot convert to Druze faith, the couple cannot have Druze children, because the Druze faith can only be passed on through birth to two Druze parents.
Circumcision is widely practiced by the Druze. The procedure is practiced as a cultural tradition, and has no religious significance in the Druze faith. There is no special date for this act in the Druze faith: male Druze infants are usually circumcised shortly after birth, however some remain uncircumcised until the age of ten or older. Some Druze do not circumcise their male children, and refuse to observe this "common Muslim practice".
The mother tongue of Druze in Syria, Lebanon and Israel is Levantine Arabic, except those born and living in the Druze diaspora such as Venezuela, where Arabic was not taught or spoken at home. The Druze Arabic dialect, especially in the rural areas, is often different from the other regional Arabic dialects. Druze Arabic dialect is distinguished from others by retention of the phoneme /q/, the use of which by Druze is particularly prominent in the mountains and less so in urban areas.
The Druze citizens of Israel are Arabic in language and culture, and linguistically speaking, the majority of them are fluently bilingual, speaking both a Central Northern Levantine Arabic dialect and Hebrew. In Druze Arab homes and towns in Israel, the primary language spoken is Arabic, while some Hebrew words have entered the colloquial Arabic dialect. They often use Hebrew characters to write their Arabic dialect online.
Druze cuisine is similar to other Levantine cuisines and is rich in grains, meat, potato, cheese, bread, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, fresh fish and tomatoes. Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Druze and Levantine cuisine is meze including tabbouleh, hummus and baba ghanoush. Kibbeh nayyeh is also a popular mezze among Druzes. Other famous foods among Druzes include falafel, sfiha, shawarma, dolma, kibbeh, kusa mahshi, shishbarak, muhammara, and mujaddara. Druze pita is a Druze-styled pita filled with labneh (thick yoghurt) and topped with olive oil and za’atar, and a very popular bread in Israel. Al-Meleh a popular dish among Druze in Hauran region (As-Suwayda Governorate), cooked in a pressure cooker and served on huge special plates at weddings, holidays, and other special occasions. And consists of bulgur wheat immersed in ghee with lamb and yogurt, and served hot with fried kibbeh and vegetables.
For reasons that remain unclear, the Mulukhiyah dish was banned by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah sometime during his reign (996–1021). While the ban was eventually lifted after the end of his reign, the Druze, who hold Al-Hakim in high regard and give him quasi-divine authority, continue to respect the ban, and do not eat Mulukhiyah of any kind to this day.
Mate (in Levantine Arabic, متة /mæte/) is a popular drink consumed by the Druze brought to the Levant by Syrian migrants from Argentina in the 19th century. Mate is made by steeping dried leaves of the South American plant yerba mate in hot water and is served with a metal straw (بمبيجة bambīja or مصاصة maṣṣāṣah) from a gourd (فنجان finjān or قَرْعَة qarʻah). Mate is often the first item served when entering a Druze home. It is a social drink and can be shared between multiple participants. After each drinker, the metal straw is cleaned with lemon rind. Traditional snacks eaten with mate include raisins, nuts, dried figs, biscuits, and chips.
The Druze faith is often classified as a branch of Isma'ili; although according to various scholars Druze faith "diverge substantially from Islam, both Sunni and Shia". Even though the faith originally developed out of Ismaili Islam, most Druze do not identify as Muslims, and they do not accept the five pillars of Islam. Historian David R. W. Bryer defines the Druzes as ghulat of Isma'ilism, since they exaggerated the cult of the caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah and considered him divine; he also defines the Druzes as a religion that deviated from Islam. He also added that as a result of this deviation, the Druze faith "seems as different from Islam as Islam is from Christianity or Christianity is from Judaism".
Historically the relationship between the Druze and Muslims has been characterized by intense persecution. The Druze have frequently experienced persecution by different Muslim regimes such as the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, Mamluk, Sunni Ottoman Empire, and Egypt Eyalet. The persecution of the Druze included massacres, demolishing Druze prayer houses and holy places, and forced conversion to Islam. Those acts of persecution were meant to eradicate the whole community according to the Druze narrative. Most recently, the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, saw persecution of the Druze at the hands of Islamic extremists.
Since Druze emerged from Islam and share certain beliefs with Islam, its position of whether it is a separate religion or a sect of Islam is sometimes controversial among Muslim scholars. Druze are not considered Muslims by those belonging to orthodox Islamic schools of thought. Ibn Taymiyya, a prominent Muslim scholar muhaddith, dismissed the Druze as non-Muslims, and his fatwa cited that Druze: "Are not at the level of ′Ahl al-Kitāb (People of the Book) nor mushrikin (polytheists). Rather, they are from the most deviant kuffār (Infidel) ... Their women can be taken as slaves and their property can be seized ... they are to be killed whenever they are found and cursed as they described ... It is obligatory to kill their scholars and religious figures so that they do not misguide others", which in that setting would have legitimized violence against them as apostates. The Ottoman Empire often relied on Ibn Taymiyya’s religious ruling to justify their persecution of Druze. In contrast, according to Ibn Abidin, whose work Radd al-Muhtar 'ala al-Durr al-Mukhtar is still considered the authoritative text of Hanafi fiqh today, the Druze are neither Muslims nor apostates.
In 1959, in an ecumenical move driven by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser's effort to broaden his political appeal after the establishment of the United Arab Republic between Egypt and Syria in 1958, the Islamic scholar Mahmud Shaltut at Al Azhar University in Cairo classified the Druze as Muslims, even though most Druze no longer consider themselves Muslim. The fatwa declares that the Druze are Muslims because they recite the twofold Shahada, and believe in the Qur'an and monotheism and do not oppose Islam in word or deed. This fatwa was not accepted by all in the Islamic world, many dissenting scholars have argued the Druze recite the Shahada as a form of taqiya; a precautionary dissimulation or denial of religious belief and practice in the face of persecution. Some sects of Islam, including all Shia denominations, don't recognize the religious authority of Al Azhar University, those that do sometimes challenge the religious legitimacy of Shaltut's fatwa because it was issued for political reasons, as Gamal Abdel Nasser saw it as a tool to spread his appeal and influence across the entire Arab world. In 2012, due to a drift towards Salafism in Al-Azhar, and the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood into Egyptian political leadership, the dean of the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Al-Azhar issued a fatwa strongly opposed to the 1959 fatwa.
Both religions venerate Shuaib and Muhammad: Shuaib (Jethro) is revered as the chief prophet in the Druze religion, and in Islam he is considered a prophet of God. Muslims regard Muhammad as the final and paramount prophet sent by God, to the Druze, Muhammad is exalted as one of the seven prophets sent by God in different periods of history.
In terms of religious comparison, Islamic schools and branches do not believe in reincarnation, a paramount tenet of the Druze faith. Islam teaches dawah, whereas the Druze do not accept converts to their faith. Marriage outside the Druze faith is rare and is strongly discouraged. Islamic schools and branches allow for divorce and permit men to be married to multiple women, contrary to the views of the Druze in monogamous marriage and not allowing divorce. Differences between Islamic schools and branches and Druze include their belief in the theophany, Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad is considered the founder of the Druze and the primary author of the Druze manuscripts; he proclaimed that God had become human and taken the form of man, Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. Within Islam, however, such a concept of theophany is a denial of monotheism.
The Druze faith incorporates some elements of Islam, and other religious beliefs. Druze Sacred texts include the Qur'an and the Epistles of Wisdom (rasail al-hikma رسائل الحكمة) The Druze community does celebrate Eid al-Adha as their most significant holiday; though their form of observance is different compared to that of most Muslims. The Druze faith does not follow Sharia nor any of the Five Pillars of Islam save reciting the Shahada. Scholars argue that Druze recite the Shahada in order to protect their religion and their own safety, and to avoid persecution by Muslims.
Christianity and Druze are Abrahamic religions that share a historical traditional connection with some major theological differences. The two faiths share a common place of origin in the Middle East and consider themselves to be monotheistic. The relationship between Druze and Christians has been characterized largely by harmony and peaceful coexistence. Amicable relations between the two groups prevailed throughout most of history, though a few exceptions exist, including the 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus. Conversion of Druze to Christianity used to be common practice in the Levant region. Over the centuries, a number of Druze embraced Christianity, such as some of Shihab dynasty members, as well as the Abi-Lamma clan.
Contact between Christian communities (members of the Maronites, Eastern Orthodox, Melkite, and other churches) and the Unitarian Druze led to the presence of mixed villages and towns in Mount Lebanon, Chouf, Jabal al-Druze, the Galilee region, Mount Carmel, and Golan Heights. The Maronite Catholic and the Druze founded modern Lebanon in the early Eighteenth Century, through a governing and social system known as the "Maronite-Druze dualism" in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate.
Druze doctrine teaches that Christianity is to be "esteemed and praised" as the Gospel writers are regarded as "carriers of wisdom". The Druze faith incorporates some elements of Christianity, in addition to adoption of Christian elements on the Epistles of Wisdom. The full Druze canon or Druze scripture (Epistles of Wisdom) includes the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran and philosophical works by Plato and those influenced by Socrates among works from other religions and philosophers. The Druze faith shows influence of Christian monasticism, among other religious practices.
In terms of religious comparison, mainstream Christian denominations do not believe in reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul, unlike the Druze. Evangelism is widely seen as central to the Christian faith, unlike the Druze who do not accept converts. Marriage outside the Druze faith is rare and is strongly discouraged. Similarities between the Druze and Christians include commonalities in their view of monogamous marriage, as well as the forbidding of divorce and remarriage, in addition to the belief in the oneness of God and theophany.
Both mainstream Christian denominations and Druze does not require male circumcision, even though male circumcision is commonly practiced in many predominantly Christian countries and many Christian communities, and in Coptic Christianity and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church as a rite of passage. Male circumcision is also widely practiced by the Druze, but as a cultural tradition, since circumcision has no religious significance in the Druze faith.
Both faiths give a prominent place to Jesus: In Christianity, Jesus is the central figure, seen as the messiah. To the Druze, Jesus is an important prophet of God, being among the seven prophets (including Muhammad) who appeared in different periods of history. The Druze revere Jesus "the son of Joseph and Mary" and his four disciples, who wrote the Gospels. According to the Druze manuscripts Jesus is the Greatest Imam and the incarnation of Ultimate Reason (Akl) on earth and the first cosmic principle (Hadd), and regards Jesus and Hamza ibn Ali as the incarnations of one of the five great celestial powers, who form part of their system. In the Druze tradition, Jesus is known under three titles: the True Messiah (al-Masih al-Haq), the Messiah of all Nations (Masih al-Umam), and the Messiah of Sinners. This is due, respectively, to the belief that Jesus delivered the true Gospel message, the belief that he was the Saviour of all nations, and the belief that he offers forgiveness.
Both religions venerate John the Baptist, Saint George, Elijah, Luke the Evangelist, Job and other common figures. Figures in the Old Testament such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jethro are considered important prophets of God in the Druze faith, being among the seven prophets who appeared in different periods of history.
The relationship between the Druze and Jews has been controversial, Antisemitic material is contained in the Druze literature such as the Epistles of Wisdom; for example in an epistle ascribed to one of the founders of Druzism, Baha al-Din al-Muqtana, probably written sometime between AD 1027 and AD 1042, accused the Jews of crucifying Jesus. On the other hand, Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveler from the 12th century, pointed out that the Druze maintained good commercial relations with the Jews nearby, and according to him this was because the Druze liked the Jewish people. Yet, the Jews and Druze lived isolated from each other, except in few mixed towns such as Deir al-Qamar and Peki'in. The Deir el Qamar Synagogue was built in 1638, during the Ottoman era in Lebanon, to serve the local Jewish population, some of whom were part of the immediate entourage of the Druze Emir Fakhr-al-Din II.
The conflict between Druze and Jews occurs during the Druze power struggle in Mount Lebanon, Jewish settlements of Galilee such as Safad and Tiberias were destroyed by the Druze in 1660. During the Druze revolt against the rule of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, the Jewish community in Safad was attacked by Druze rebels in early July 1838, the violence against the Jews included plundering their homes and desecrating their synagogues.
During the British Mandate for Palestine, the Druze did not embrace the rising Arab nationalism of the time or participate in violent confrontations with Jewish immigrants. In 1948, many Druze volunteered for the Israeli army and no Druze villages were destroyed or permanently abandoned. Since the establishment of the state of Israel, the Druze have demonstrated solidarity with Israel and distanced themselves from Arab and Islamic radicalism. Israeli Druze citizens serve in the Israel Defense Forces. The Jewish-Druze partnership was often referred as "a covenant of blood" (Hebrew: ברית דמים, brit damim) in recognition of the common military yoke carried by the two peoples for the security of the country. From 1957, the Israeli government formally recognized the Druze as a separate religious community, and are defined as a distinct ethnic group in the Israeli Ministry of Interior's census registration. Israeli Druze do not consider themselves Muslim, and see their faith as a separate and independent religion. While compared to other Israeli Christians and Muslims, Druze place less emphasis on Arab identity and self-identify more as Israeli. However, they were less ready for personal relationships with Jews compared to Israeli Muslims and Christians.
In terms of religious comparison, scholars consider Judaism and the Druze faith as ethnoreligious groups, both practicing endogamy, and both typically do not proselytize. Belief in reincarnation (Gilgul) exist in some strands of Judaism influenced by the Kabbalah, such as Hasidic Judaism, but is rejected by mainstream Jewish denominations (Reformed Judaism, Conservative Judaism and Orthodox Judaism). Figures in the Hebrew Bible such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses are considered important prophets of God in the Druze faith, being among the seven prophets who appeared in different periods of history. Both religions venerate Elijah, Job and other common figures. In the Hebrew Bible, Jethro was Moses' father-in-law, a Kenite shepherd and priest of Midian. Jethro of Midian is considered an ancestor of the Druze who revere him as their spiritual founder and chief prophet.
The Druze faith extended to many areas in the Middle East, but most of the modern Druze can trace their origin to the Wadi al-Taym in Southern Lebanon, which is named after an Arab tribe Taym Allah (or Taym Allat) which, according to Islamic historian al-Tabari, first came from the Arabian Peninsula into the valley of the Euphrates where they had been Christianized prior to their migration into Lebanon. Many of the Druze feudal families, whose genealogies have been preserved by the two modern Syrian chroniclers Haydar al-Shihabi and Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, seem also to point in the direction of this origin. Arabian tribes emigrated via the Persian Gulf and stopped in Iraq on their route that would later to lead them to Syria. The first feudal Druze family, the Tanukhids, which made for itself a name in fighting the Crusaders was, according to Haydar al-Shihabi, an Arab tribe from Mesopotamia where it occupied the position of a ruling family and apparently was Christianized.
Travelers like Niebuhr, and scholars like Max von Oppenheim, undoubtedly echoing the popular Druze belief regarding their own origin, have classified them as Arabs.
The 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica states that the Druze are "a mixture of refugee stocks, in which the Arab largely predominates, grafted on to an original mountain population of Aramaic blood".
According to Jewish contemporary literature, the Druze, who were visited and described in 1165 by Benjamin of Tudela, were pictured as descendants of the Itureans, an Ismaelite Arab tribe, which used to reside in the northern parts of the Golan plateau through Hellenistic and Roman periods. The word Druzes, in an early Hebrew edition of his travels, occurs as Dogziyin, but it is clear that this is a scribal error.
Archaeological assessments of the Druze region have also proposed the possibility of Druze descending from Itureans, who had inhabited Mount Lebanon and Golan Heights in late classic antiquity, but their traces fade in the Middle Ages.
Lebanese Christians and Druze became a genetic isolate in the predominantly Islamic world.
In a 2005 study of ASPM gene variants, Mekel-Bobrov et al. found that the Israeli Druze people of the Mount Carmel region have among the highest rate of the newly evolved ASPM- Haplogroup D, at 52.2% occurrence of the approximately 6,000-year-old allele. While it is not yet known exactly what selective advantage is provided by this gene variant, the Haplogroup D allele is thought to be positively selected in populations and to confer some substantial advantage that has caused its frequency to rapidly increase.
A 2004 DNA study has shown that Israeli Druze are remarkable for the high frequency (35%) of males who carry the Y-chromosomal haplogroup L, which is otherwise uncommon in the Middle East (Shen et al. 2004). This haplogroup originates from prehistoric South Asia and has spread from Pakistan into southern Iran. A 2008 study done on larger samples showed that L-M20 averages 27% in Mount Carmel Druze, 2% in Galilee Druze, 8% in Lebanese Druze, and it was not found in a sample of 59 Syrian Druze (Slush et al. 2008).
Cruciani, in 2007, found E1b1b1a2 (E-V13) [a subclade of E1b1b1a (E-M78)] in high levels (>10% of the male population) in Cypriot and Druze lineages. Recent genetic clustering analyses of ethnic groups are consistent with the close ancestral relationship between the Druze and Cypriots, and also identified similarity to the general Syrian and Lebanese populations, as well as the major Jewish divisions (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Iraqi, and Moroccan Jews) (Behar et al. 2010).
Also, a new study concluded that the Druze harbor a remarkable diversity of mitochondrial DNA lineages that appear to have separated from each other thousands of years ago. But instead of dispersing throughout the world after their separation, the full range of lineages can still be found within the Druze population.
The researchers noted that the Druze villages contained a striking range of high frequency and high diversity of the X haplogroup, suggesting that this population provides a glimpse into the past genetic landscape of the Near East at a time when the X haplogroup was more prevalent.
These findings are consistent with the Druze oral tradition that claims that the adherents of the faith came from diverse ancestral lineages stretching back tens of thousands of years. The Shroud of Turin analysis shows significant traces of mitochondrial DNA unique to the Druze community.
A 2008 study published on the genetic background of Druze communities in Israel showed highly heterogeneous parental origins. A total of 311 Israeli Druze were sampled: 37 from the Golan Heights, 183 from the Galilee, and 35 from Mount Carmel, as well as 27 Druze immigrants from Syria and 29 from Lebanon (Slush et al. 2008). The researchers found the following frequencies of Y-chromosomal and MtDNA haplogroups:
According to a 2015 study, Druze have a largely similar genome with Middle Eastern Arabs, but they have not married outside of their clans in 1000 years and Druze families from different regions share a similarity with each other that distinguishes them from other Middle Eastern populations.
A 2016 study based on testing samples of Druze in the historic region of Syria, in comparison with ancient humans (including Anatolian and Armenian), and on Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool by converting genetic distances into geographic distances, concluded that Druze might hail from the Zagros Mountains and the surroundings of Lake Van in eastern Anatolia, then they later migrated south to settle in the mountainous regions in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
A 2020 study on remains from Canaanaite (Bronze Age southern Levantine) populations suggests a significant degree of genetic continuity in currently Arabic-speaking Levantine populations (including the Druze, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians), as well as in most Jewish groups (including Sephardi Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and Maghrebi Jews) from the populations of the Bronze Age Levant, suggesting that the aforementioned groups all derive more than half of their overall ancestry (atDNA) from Canaanite / Bronze Age Levantine populations, albeit with varying sources and degrees of admixture from differing host or invading populations depending on each group.
In a principal component analysis of a 2014 study, Druze were located between Lebanese people and Mizrahi Jews. In a PCA in a 2021 study, Druze were close to Lebanese people and a part of the larger Levant-Iraq cluster. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Druze (/ˈdruːz/ DROOZ; Arabic: دَرْزِيّ, darzī or دُرْزِيّ durzī, pl. دُرُوز, durūz), who call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn (lit. 'the monotheists' or 'the unitarians'), are an Arab and Arabic-speaking esoteric ethnoreligious group from Western Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, syncretic, and ethnic religion whose main tenets are the unity of God and the belief in reincarnation and the eternity of the soul. Most Druze religious practices are kept secret. The Druze do not permit outsiders to convert to their religion. Marriage outside the Druze faith is rare and strongly discouraged.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Epistles of Wisdom is the foundational and central text of the Druze faith. The Druze faith incorporates elements of Isma'ili Shia, Christianity, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Pythagoreanism, and other philosophies and beliefs, creating a distinct and secretive theology based on an esoteric interpretation of scripture, which emphasizes the role of the mind and truthfulness. Druze believe in theophany and reincarnation. Druze believe that at the end of the cycle of rebirth, which is achieved through successive reincarnations, the soul is united with the Cosmic Mind (al-ʻaql al-kullī).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Druze have a special reverence for Shuaib, who they believe is the same person as the biblical Jethro. The Druze believe that Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Imam Muhammad ibn Isma'il were prophets. Druze tradition also honors and reveres Salman the Persian, al-Khidr (whom they identify as Elijah, reborn as John the Baptist and Saint George), Job, Luke the Evangelist, and others as \"mentors\" and \"prophets\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Even though the faith originally developed out of Isma'ilism, the Druze are not Muslims. The Druze faith is one of the major religious groups in the Levant, with between 800,000 and a million adherents. They are found primarily in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, with small communities in Jordan. They make up 5.5% of the population of Lebanon, 3% of Syria and 1.6% of Israel. The oldest and most densely-populated Druze communities exist in Mount Lebanon and in the south of Syria around Jabal al-Druze (literally the \"Mountain of the Druze\").",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Druze community played a critically important role in shaping the history of the Levant, where it continues to play a significant political role. As a religious minority in every country in which they are found, they have frequently experienced persecution by different Muslim regimes, including contemporary Islamic extremism.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The name Druze is derived from the name of Muhammad bin Ismail Nashtakin ad-Darazī (from Persian darzi, \"seamster\") who was an early preacher. Although the Druze consider ad-Darazī a heretic, the name has been used to identify them, possibly by their historical opponents as a way to attach their community with ad-Darazi's poor reputation.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Before becoming public, the movement was secretive and held closed meetings in what was known as Sessions of Wisdom. During this stage a dispute occurred between ad-Darazi and Hamza bin Ali mainly concerning ad-Darazi's ghuluww (\"exaggeration\"), which refers to the belief that God was incarnated in human beings to ad-Darazi naming himself \"The Sword of the Faith\", which led Hamza to write an epistle refuting the need for the sword to spread the faith and several epistles refuting the beliefs of the ghulat.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1016 ad-Darazi and his followers openly proclaimed their beliefs and called people to join them, causing riots in Cairo against the Unitarian movement including Hamza bin Ali and his followers. This led to the suspension of the movement for one year and the expulsion of ad-Darazi and his supporters.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Although the Druze religious books describe ad-Darazi as the \"insolent one\" and as the \"calf\" who is narrow-minded and hasty, the name \"Druze\" is still used for identification and for historical reasons. In 1018, ad-Darazi was assassinated for his teachings; some sources claim that he was executed by Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Some authorities see in the name \"Druze\" a descriptive epithet, derived from Arabic dārisah (\"she who studies\"). Others have speculated that the word comes from the Persian word Darazo (درز \"bliss\") or from Shaykh Hussayn ad-Darazī, who was one of the early converts to the faith. In the early stages of the movement, the word \"Druze\" is rarely mentioned by historians, and in Druze religious texts only the word Muwaḥḥidūn (\"Unitarian\") appears. The only early Arab historian who mentions the Druze is the eleventh century Christian scholar Yahya of Antioch, who clearly refers to the heretical group created by ad-Darazī, rather than the followers of Hamza ibn 'Alī. As for Western sources, Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveler who passed through Lebanon in or around 1165, was one of the first European writers to refer to the Druze by name. The word Dogziyin (\"Druzes\") occurs in an early Hebrew edition of his travels, but it is clear that this is a scribal error. Be that as it may, he described the Druze as \"mountain dwellers, monotheists, who believe in 'soul eternity' and reincarnation\". He also stated that \"they loved the Jews\".",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The number of Druze people worldwide is between 800,000 and one million, with the vast majority residing in the Levant. Druze people reside primarily in Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.",
"title": "Location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Institute of Druze Studies estimates that in 1998 40–50% of Druze live in Syria, 30–40% in Lebanon, 6–7% in Israel, and 1–2% in Jordan. About 2% of the Druze population are also scattered within other countries in the Middle East, and according to The Institute of Druze Studies there were approximately 20,000 Druzes in the United States in 1998. According to scholar Colbert C. Held of University of Nebraska, Lincoln the number of Druze people worldwide is around one million, with about 45% to 50% live in Syria, 35% to 40% live in Lebanon, and less than 10% live in Israel, with recently there has been a growing Druze diaspora.",
"title": "Location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Large communities of Druze also live outside the Middle East, in Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America (mainly Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil), the United States, and West Africa. They are Arabs who speak the Arabic language and follow a social pattern very similar to those of the other peoples of the Levant (eastern Mediterranean). In 2021 the largest Druze communities outside the Middle East are in Venezuela (60,000) and in the United States (50,000). According to the Los Angeles Times in 2017 \"there are about 30,000 in the United States, with the largest concentration in Southern California\".",
"title": "Location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The story of the creation of the Druze faith in the days between 1017 and 1018 is dominated by three men and their struggle for influence.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad, an Ismaili mystic and scholar from Zozan, Khorasan, in the Samanid Empire. arrived in Fatimid Egypt in 1014 or 1016. He assembled a group of scholars that met regularly in the Raydan Mosque, near the Al-Hakim Mosque. In 1017, Hamza began to preach a Muwaḥḥidūn (Unitarian) doctrine.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Hamza gained the support of the Fātimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who issued a decree promoting religious freedom and eventually became a central figure in the Druze faith.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Little is known about the early life of al-Darazi. According to most sources, he was born in Bukhara. He is believed to have been of Persian origins and his title al-Darazi is Persian in origin, meaning \"the tailor\". He arrived in Cairo in 1015, or 1017, after which he joined the newly emerged Druze movement.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Al-Darazi was converted early to the Unitarian faith and became one of its early preachers. At that time, the movement enlisted a large number of adherents. As the number of his followers grew, he became obsessed with his leadership and gave himself the title \"The Sword of the Faith\". Al-Darazi argued that he should be the leader of the daʻwah rather than Hamza ibn Ali and gave himself the title \"Lord of the Guides\" because Caliph al-Hakim referred to Hamza as \"Guide of the Consented\". It is said that al-Darazi allowed wine, forbidden marriages and taught metempsychosis although this may be exaggeration by contemporary and later historians and polemicists.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "This attitude led to disputes between Ad-Darazi and Hamza ibn Ali, who disliked his behavior and his arrogance. In the Epistles of Wisdom, Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad warns al-Darazi, saying, \"Faith does not need a sword to aid it\", but al-Darazi ignored Hamza's warnings and continued to challenge the Imam.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The divine call or unitarian call is the Druze period of time that was opened at sunset on Thursday, 30 May 1017 by Ad-Darazi. The call summoned people to a true unitarian belief that removed all attributes (wise, just, outside, inside, etc.) from God. It promoted absolute monotheism and the concepts of supporting your fellow man, true speech and pursuit of oneness with God. These concepts superseded all ritual, law and dogma and requirements for pilgrimage, fasting, holy days, prayer, charity, devotion, creed and particular worship of any prophet or person was downplayed. Sharia was opposed and Druze traditions started during the call continue today, such as meeting for reading, prayer and social gathering on a Thursday instead of a Friday at Khalwats instead of mosques. Such gatherings and traditions were not compulsory and people were encouraged to pursue a state of compliance with the real law of nature governing the universe. Epistle thirteen of the Epistles of Wisdom called it \"A spiritual doctrine without any ritualistic imposition\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The time of the call was seen as a revolution of truth, with missionaries preaching its message all around the Middle East. These messengers were sent out with the Druze epistles and took written vows from believers, whose souls are thought to still exist in the Druze of today. The souls of those who took the vows during the call are believed to be continuously reincarnating in successive generations of Druze until the return of al-Hakim to proclaim a second Divine call and establish a Golden Age of justice and peace for all.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "By 1018, al-Darazi had gathered around him partisans – \"Darazites\" – who believed that universal reason became incarnated in Adam at the beginning of the world, was then passed to the prophets, then into Ali, and then into his descendants, the Fatimid Caliphs. Al-Darazi wrote a book laying out this doctrine, but when he read from his book in the principal mosque in Cairo, it caused riots and protests against his claims and many of his followers were killed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Hamza ibn Ali rejected al-Darazi's ideology, calling him \"the insolent one and Satan\". The controversy led Caliph al-Hakim to suspend the Druze daʻwah in 1018.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In an attempt to gain the support of al-Hakim, al-Darazi started preaching that al-Hakim and his ancestors were the incarnation of God. An inherently modest man, al-Hakim did not believe that he was God, and felt al-Darazi was trying to depict himself as a new prophet. In 1018 Al-Hakim had al-Darazi executed, leaving Hamza the sole leader of the new faith and al-Darazi considered to be a renegade.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Al-Hakim disappeared one night while on his evening ride – presumably assassinated, perhaps at the behest of his formidable elder sister Sitt al-Mulk. The Druze believe he went into Occultation with Hamza ibn Ali and three other prominent preachers, leaving the care of the \"Unitarian missionary movement\" to a new leader, al-Muqtana Baha'uddin.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The call was suspended briefly between 19 May 1018 and 9 May 1019 during the apostasy of al-Darazi and again between 1021 and 1026 during a period of persecution by Ali az-Zahir for those who had sworn the oath to accept the call.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Persecutions started forty days after the disappearance into Occultation of al-Hakim, who was thought to have been converting people to the Unitarian faith for over twenty years prior. Al-Hakim convinced some heretical followers such as al-Darazi of his soteriological divinity and officially declared the Divine call after issuing a decree promoting religious freedom.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Al-Hakim was replaced by his underage son, ʻAlī al-Zahir. The Unitarian/Druze movement acknowledged al-Zahir as the caliph, but continued to regard Hamzah as its Imam. The young caliph's regent, Sitt al-Mulk, ordered the army to destroy the movement in 1021. At the same time, Bahāʼ al-Dīn was assigned the leadership of the Unitarians by Hamza.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "For the next seven years, the Druze faced extreme persecution by the new caliph, al-Zahir, who wanted to eradicate the faith. This was the result of a power struggle inside of the Fatimid empire in which the Druze were viewed with suspicion because of their refusal to recognize the new caliph as their Imam. Many spies, mainly the followers of al-Darazi, joined the Unitarian movement in order to infiltrate the Druze community. The spies set about agitating trouble and soiling the reputation of the Druze. This resulted in friction with the new caliph who clashed militarily with the Druze community. The clashes ranged from Antioch to Alexandria, where tens of thousands of Druze were slaughtered by the Fatimid army, \"this mass persecution known by the Druze as the period of the mihna\". The largest massacre was at Antioch, where 5000 prominent Druze were killed, followed by that of Aleppo. As a result, the faith went underground, in hope of survival, as those captured were either forced to renounce their faith or be killed. Druze survivors \"were found principally in southern Lebanon and Syria\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 1038, two years after the death of al-Zahir, the Druze movement was able to resume because the new leadership that replaced him had friendly political ties with at least one prominent Druze leader.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 1043, Baha al-Din al-Muqtana declared that the sect would no longer accept new pledges, and since that time proselytism has been prohibited awaiting al-Hakim's return at the Last Judgment to usher in a new Golden Age.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Some Druze and non-Druze scholars like Samy Swayd and Sami Makarem state that this confusion is due to confusion about the role of the early preacher al-Darazi, whose teachings the Druze rejected as heretical. These sources assert that al-Hakim rejected al-Darazi's claims of divinity, and ordered the elimination of his movement while supporting that of Hamza ibn Ali.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Wadi al-Taym, in Lebanon, was one of the two most important centers of Druze missionary activity in the 11th century and was the first area where the Druze appeared in the historical record under the name \"Druze\". It is generally considered the birthplace of the Druze faith.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "It was during the period of Crusader rule in Levant (1099–1291) that the Druze first emerged into the full light of history in the Gharb region of the Chouf Mountains. As powerful warriors serving the Muslim rulers of Damascus against the Crusades, the Druze were given the task of keeping watch over the crusaders in the seaport of Beirut, with the aim of preventing them from making any encroachments inland. Subsequently, the Druze chiefs of the Gharb placed their considerable military experience at the disposal of the Mamluk rulers of Egypt (1250–1516); first, to assist them in putting an end to what remained of Crusader rule in coastal Levant, and later to help them safeguard the Lebanese coast against Crusader retaliation by sea.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In the early period of the Crusader era, the Druze feudal power was in the hands of two families, the Tanukhs and the Arslans. From their fortresses in the Gharb area (now in Aley District of southern Mount Lebanon Governorate), the Tanukhs led their incursions into the Phoenician coast and finally succeeded in holding Beirut and the marine plain against the Franks. Because of their fierce battles with the Crusaders, the Druze earned the respect of the Sunni Muslim caliphs and thus gained important political powers. After the middle of the twelfth century, the Ma'an family superseded the Tanukhs in Druze leadership. The origin of the family goes back to a Prince Ma'an who made his appearance in the Lebanon in the days of the 'Abbasid caliph al-Mustarshid (1118–35 CE). The Ma'ans chose for their abode the Chouf District in south-western Lebanon (southern Mount Lebanon Governorate), overlooking the maritime plain between Beirut and Sidon, and made their headquarters in Baaqlin, which is still a leading Druze village. They were invested with feudal authority by Sultan Nur ad-Din and furnished respectable contingents to the Muslim ranks in their struggle against the Crusaders.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Ibn Taymiyyah believed that Druze had a high level of infidelity, besides being apostates. Thus, they were not trustworthy and should not be forgiven. He taught also that Muslims cannot accept Druze penitence nor keep them alive, and that Druze property should be confiscated and their women enslaved. Having cleared the holy land of the Franks, the Mamluk sultans of Egypt turned their attention to the schismatic Muslims of Syria. In 1305, after the issuing of a fatwa by the scholar Ibn Taymiyyah calling for jihad against all non-Sunni Muslims like the Druze, Alawites, Ismaili, and Twelver Shia Muslims, al-Malik al-Nasir inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Druze at Keserwan, and forced outward compliance on their part to Orthodox Sunni Islam. Later, under the Ottoman, they were severely attacked at Saoufar in the 1585 Ottoman expedition after the Ottomans claimed that they assaulted their caravans near Tripoli. As a result of the Ottoman experience with the rebellious Druze, the word Durzi in Turkish came, and continues, to mean someone who is the ultimate thug. One influential Islamic sage of that time labeled them infidels and argued that, even though they might behave like Muslims on the outside, this is no more than a pretense. He also declared that confiscation of Druze property and even the death sentence would comply with the laws of Islam.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Consequently, the 16th and 17th centuries witnessed a succession of armed Druze rebellions against the Ottomans, countered by repeated Ottoman punitive expeditions against the Chouf, in which the Druze population of the area was severely depleted and many villages destroyed. These military measures, severe as they were, did not succeed in reducing the local Druze to the required degree of subordination. This led the Ottoman government to agree to an arrangement whereby the different nahiyes (districts) of the Chouf would be granted in iltizam (\"fiscal concession\") to one of the region's amirs, or leading chiefs, leaving the maintenance of law and order and the collection of taxes in the area in the hands of the appointed amir. This arrangement was to provide the cornerstone for the privileged status ultimately enjoyed by the whole of Mount Lebanon, Druze and Christian areas alike.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "With the advent of the Ottoman Turks and the conquest of Syria by Sultan Selim I in 1516, the Ma'ans were acknowledged by the new rulers as the feudal lords of southern Lebanon. Druze villages spread and prospered in that region, which under Ma'an leadership so flourished that it acquired the generic term of Jabal Bayt-Ma'an (the mountain home of the Ma'an) or Jabal al-Druze. The latter title has since been usurped by the Hawran region, which since the middle of the 19th century has proven a haven of refuge to Druze emigrants from Lebanon and has become the headquarters of Druze power.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Under Fakhr-al-Dīn II (Fakhreddin II), the Druze dominion increased until it included Lebanon-Phoenicia and almost all Syria, extending from the edge of the Antioch plain in the north to Safad in the south, with a part of the Syrian desert dominated by Fakhr-al-Din's castle at Tadmur (Palmyra), the ancient capital of Zenobia. The ruins of this castle still stand on a steep hill overlooking the town. Fakhr-al-Din became too strong for his Turkish sovereign in Constantinople. He went so far in 1608 as to sign a commercial treaty with Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany containing secret military clauses. The Sultan then sent a force against him, and he was compelled to flee the land and seek refuge in the courts of Tuscany and Naples in 1613 and 1615 respectively.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In 1618, political changes in the Ottoman sultanate had resulted in the removal of many enemies of Fakhr-al-Din from power, signaling the prince's triumphant return to Lebanon soon afterwards. Through a clever policy of bribery and warfare, he extended his domains to cover all of modern Lebanon, some of Syria and northern Galilee.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 1632, Küçük Ahmed Pasha was named Lord of Damascus. Küçük Ahmed Pasha was a rival of Fakhr-al-Din and a friend of the sultan Murad IV, who ordered the pasha and the sultanate's navy to attack Lebanon and depose Fakhr-al-Din.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "This time the prince decided to remain in Lebanon and resist the offensive, but the death of his son Ali in Wadi al-Taym was the beginning of his defeat. He later took refuge in Jezzine's grotto, closely followed by Küçük Ahmed Pasha who eventually caught up with him and his family.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Fakhr-al-Din was captured, taken to Istanbul, and imprisoned with two of his sons in the infamous Yedi Kule prison. The Sultan had Fakhr-al-Din and his sons killed on 13 April 1635 in Istanbul, bringing an end to an era in the history of Lebanon, which would not regain its current boundaries until it was proclaimed a mandate state and republic in 1920. One version recounts that the younger son was spared, raised in the harem and went on to become Ottoman Ambassador to India.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Fakhr-al-Din II was the first ruler in modern Lebanon to open the doors of his country to foreign Western influences. Under his auspices the French established a khān (hostel) in Sidon, the Florentines a consulate, and Christian missionaries were admitted into the country. Beirut and Sidon, which Fakhr-al-Din II beautified, still bear traces of his benign rule. See the new biography of this Prince, based on original sources, by TJ Gorton: Renaissance Emir: a Druze Warlord at the Court of the Medici (London, Quartet Books, 2013), for an updated view of his life.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Fakhr ad Din II was succeeded in 1635 by his nephew Mulhim Ma'n, who ruled through his death in 1658. (Fakhr ad Din's only surviving son, Husayn, lived the rest of his life as a court official in Constantinople.) Emir Mulhim exercised Iltizam taxation rights in the Shuf, Gharb, Jurd, Matn, and Kisrawan districts of Lebanon. Mulhim's forces battled and defeated those of Mustafa Pasha, Beylerbey of Damascus, in 1642, but he is reported by historians to have been otherwise loyal to Ottoman rule.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Following Mulhim's death, his sons Ahmad and Korkmaz entered into a power struggle with other Ottoman-backed Druze leaders. In 1660, the Ottoman Empire moved to reorganize the region, placing the sanjaks (districts) of Sidon-Beirut and Safed in a newly formed province of Sidon, a move seen by local Druze as an attempt to assert control. Contemporary historian Istifan al-Duwayhi reports that Korkmaz was killed in act of treachery by the Beylerbey of Damascus in 1662. Ahmad however emerged victorious in the power struggle among the Druze in 1667, but the Maʿnīs lost control of Safad and retreated to controlling the iltizam of the Shuf mountains and Kisrawan. Ahmad continued as local ruler through his death from natural causes, without heir, in 1697.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "During the Ottoman–Habsburg War (1683–1699), Ahmad Ma'n collaborated in a rebellion against the Ottomans which extended beyond his death. Iltizam rights in Shuf and Kisrawan passed to the rising Shihab family through female-line inheritance.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "As early as the days of Saladin, and while the Ma'ans were still in complete control over southern Lebanon, the Shihab tribe, originally Hijaz Arabs, but later settled in Ḥawran, advanced from Ḥawran, in 1172, and settled in Wadi al-Taym at the foot of mount Hermon. They soon made an alliance with the Ma'ans and were acknowledged as the Druze chiefs in Wadi al-Taym. At the end of the 17th century (1697) the Shihabs succeeded the Ma'ans in the feudal leadership of Druze southern Lebanon, although they reportedly professed Sunni Islam, they showed sympathy with Druzism, the religion of the majority of their subjects.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The Shihab leadership continued until the middle of the 19th century and culminated in the illustrious governorship of Amir Bashir Shihab II (1788–1840) who, after Fakhr-al-Din, was the most powerful feudal lord Lebanon produced. Though governor of the Druze Mountain, Bashir was a crypto-Christian, and it was he whose aid Napoleon solicited in 1799 during his campaign against Syria.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Having consolidated his conquests in Syria (1831–1838), Ibrahim Pasha, son of the viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, made the fatal mistake of trying to disarm the Christians and Druze of the Lebanon and to draft the latter into his army. This was contrary to the principles of the life of independence which these mountaineers had always lived, and resulted in a general uprising against Egyptian rule. The Druze of Wadi al-Taym and Ḥawran, under the leadership of Shibli al-Aryan, distinguished themselves in their stubborn resistance at their inaccessible headquarters, al-Laja, lying southeast of Damascus.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The conquest of Syria by the Muslim Arabs in the middle of the seventh century introduced into the land two political factions later called the Qaysites and the Yemenites. The Qaysite party represented the Bedouin Arabs who were regarded as inferior by the Yemenites who were earlier and more cultured emigrants into Syria from southern Arabia. Druze and Christians grouped in political, rather than religious, parties; the party lines in Lebanon obliterated ethnic and religious lines and the people grouped themselves into one or the other of these two parties regardless of their religious affiliations. The sanguinary feuds between these two factions depleted, in course of time, the manhood of the Lebanon and ended in the decisive battle of Ain Dara in 1711, which resulted in the utter defeat of the Yemenite party. Many Yemenite Druze thereupon migrated to the Hauran region, laying the foundation of Druze power there.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The relationship between the Druze and Christians has been characterized by harmony and coexistence, with amicable relations between the two groups prevailing throughout history, with the exception of some periods, including 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus. In 1840, social disturbance started between Druze and their Christian Maronite neighbors, who had previously been on friendly terms. This culminated in the civil war of 1860.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "After the Shehab dynasty converted to Christianity, the Druze community and feudal leaders came under attack from the regime with the collaboration of the Maronite Catholic Church, and the Druze lost most of their political and feudal powers. Also, the Druze formed an alliance with Britain and allowed Protestant missionaries to enter Mount Lebanon, creating tension between them and the Catholic Maronites.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Maronite-Druze conflict in 1840–60 was an outgrowth of the Maronite independence movement, directed against the Druze, Druze feudalism, and the Ottoman-Turks. The civil war was not therefore a religious war, except in Damascus, where it spread and where the vastly non-Druze population was anti-Christian. The movement culminated with the 1859–60 massacre and defeat of the Maronites by the Druze. The civil war of 1860 cost the Maronites some ten thousand lives in Damascus, Zahlé, Deir al-Qamar, Hasbaya, and other towns of Lebanon.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The European powers then determined to intervene, and authorized the landing in Beirut of a body of French troops under General Beaufort d'Hautpoul, whose inscription can still be seen on the historic rock at the mouth of Nahr al-Kalb. French intervention on behalf of the Maronites did not help the Maronite national movement, since France was restricted in 1860 by the British government, which did not want the Ottoman Empire dismembered. But European intervention pressured the Turks to treat the Maronites more justly. Following the recommendations of the powers, the Ottoman Porte granted Lebanon local autonomy, guaranteed by the powers, under a Maronite governor. This autonomy was maintained until World War I.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The Hauran rebellion was a violent Druze uprising against Ottoman authority in the Syrian province, which erupted in May 1909. The rebellion was led by al-Atrash family, originated in local disputes and Druze unwillingness to pay taxes and conscript into the Ottoman Army. The rebellion ended in brutal suppression of the Druze by General Sami Pasha al-Farouqi, significant depopulation of the Hauran region and execution of the Druze leaders in 1910. In the outcome of the revolt, 2,000 Druze were killed, a similar number wounded, and hundreds of Druze fighters imprisoned. Al-Farouqi also disarmed the population, extracted significant taxes, and launched a census of the region.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Jordan, the Druzites have official recognition as a separate religious community with its own religious court system. Druzites are known for their loyalty to the countries they reside in, though they have a strong community feeling, in which they identify themselves as related even across borders of countries.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Although most Druze no longer consider themselves Muslim, Al Azhar of Egypt recognized them in 1959 as one of the Islamic sects in the Al-Azhar Shia Fatwa due to political reasons, as Gamal Abdel Nasser saw it as a tool to spread his appeal and influence across the entire Arab world.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Despite their practice of blending with dominant groups to avoid persecution, and because the Druze religion does not endorse separatist sentiments, but urges blending with the communities they reside in, the Druze have had a history of resistance to occupying powers, and they have at times enjoyed more freedom than most other groups living in the Levant.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In Syria, most Druzites live in the Jebel al-Druze, a rugged and mountainous region in the southwest of the country, which is more than 90 percent Druze inhabited; some 120 villages are exclusively so. Other notable communities live in the Harim Mountains, the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, and on the southeast slopes of Mount Hermon. A large Syrian Druze community historically lived in the Golan Heights, but following wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973, many of these Druze fled to other parts of Syria; most of those who remained live in a handful of villages in the disputed zone, while only a few live in the narrow remnant of Quneitra Governorate that is still under effective Syrian control.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The Druze always played a far more important role in Syrian politics than its comparatively small population would suggest. With a community of little more than 100,000 in 1949, or roughly three percent of the Syrian population, the Druze of Syria's southwestern mountains constituted a potent force in Syrian politics and played a leading role in the nationalist struggle against the French. Under the military leadership of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, the Druze provided much of the military force behind the Syrian Revolution of 1925–27. In 1945, Amir Hasan al-Atrash, the paramount political leader of the Jebel al-Druze, led the Druze military units in a successful revolt against the French, making the Jebel al-Druze the first and only region in Syria to liberate itself from French rule without British assistance. At independence the Druze, made confident by their successes, expected that Damascus would reward them for their many sacrifices on the battlefield. They demanded to keep their autonomous administration and many political privileges accorded them by the French and sought generous economic assistance from the newly independent government.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "When a local paper in 1945 reported that President Shukri al-Quwatli (1943–49) had called the Druze a \"dangerous minority\", Sultan Pasha al-Atrash flew into a rage and demanded a public retraction. If it were not forthcoming, he announced, the Druze would indeed become \"dangerous\", and a force of 4,000 Druze warriors would \"occupy the city of Damascus\". Quwwatli could not dismiss Sultan Pasha's threat. The military balance of power in Syria was tilted in favor of the Druze, at least until the military build up during the 1948 War in Palestine. One advisor to the Syrian Defense Department warned in 1946 that the Syrian army was \"useless\", and that the Druze could \"take Damascus and capture the present leaders in a breeze\".",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "During the four years of Adib Shishakli's rule in Syria (December 1949 to February 1954) (on 25 August 1952: Adib al-Shishakli created the Arab Liberation Movement (ALM), a progressive party with pan-Arabist and socialist views), the Druze community was subjected to a heavy attack by the Syrian government. Shishakli believed that among his many opponents in Syria, the Druze were the most potentially dangerous, and he was determined to crush them. He frequently proclaimed: \"My enemies are like a serpent: The head is the Jebel al-Druze, the stomach Homs, and the tail Aleppo. If I crush the head, the serpent will die.\" Shishakli dispatched 10,000 regular troops to occupy the Jebel al-Druze. Several towns were bombarded with heavy weapons, killing scores of civilians and destroying many houses. According to Druze accounts, Shishakli encouraged neighboring Bedouin tribes to plunder the defenseless population and allowed his own troops to run amok.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Shishakli launched a brutal campaign to defame the Druze for their religion and politics. He accused the entire community of treason, at times claiming they were in the employ of the British and Hashimites, at others that they were fighting for Israel against the Arabs. He even produced a cache of Israeli weapons allegedly discovered in the Jabal. Even more painful for the Druze community was his publication of \"falsified Druze religious texts\" and false testimonials ascribed to leading Druze sheikhs designed to stir up sectarian hatred. This propaganda also was broadcast in the Arab world, mainly Egypt. Shishakli was assassinated in Brazil on 27 September 1964 by a Druze seeking revenge for Shishakli's bombardment of the Jebel al-Druze.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "He forcibly integrated minorities into the national Syrian social structure, his \"Syrianization\" of Alawite and Druze territories had to be accomplished in part using violence. To this end, al-Shishakli encouraged the stigmatization of minorities. He saw minority demands as tantamount to treason. His increasingly chauvinistic notions of Arab nationalism were predicated on the denial that \"minorities\" existed in Syria.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "After the Shishakli's military campaign, the Druze community lost much of its political influence, but many Druze military officers played important roles in the Ba'ath government currently ruling Syria.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In 1967, a community of Druze in the Golan Heights came under Israeli control, today numbering 23,000 (in 2019).",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The Qalb Loze massacre was a reported massacre of Syrian Druze on 10 June 2015 in the village of Qalb Loze in Syria's northwestern Idlib Governorate in which 20–24 Druze were killed. On 25 July 2018, a group of ISIS-affiliated attackers entered the Druze city of As-Suwayda and initiated a series of gunfights and suicide bombings on its streets, killing at least 258 people, the vast majority of them civilians.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The Druzite community in Lebanon played an important role in the formation of the modern state of Lebanon, and even though they are a minority they play an important role in the Lebanese political scene. Before and during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90), the Druze were in favor of Pan-Arabism and Palestinian resistance represented by the PLO. Most of the community supported the Progressive Socialist Party formed by their leader Kamal Jumblatt and they fought alongside other leftist and Palestinian parties against the Lebanese Front that was mainly constituted of Christians. After the assassination of Kamal Jumblatt on 16 March 1977, his son Walid Jumblatt took the leadership of the party and played an important role in preserving his father's legacy after winning the Mountain War and sustained the existence of the Druze community during the sectarian bloodshed that lasted until 1990.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In August 2001, Maronite Catholic Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir toured the predominantly Druze Chouf region of Mount Lebanon and visited Mukhtara, the ancestral stronghold of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. The tumultuous reception that Sfeir received not only signified a historic reconciliation between Maronites and Druze, who fought a bloody war in 1983–1984, but underscored the fact that the banner of Lebanese sovereignty had broad multi-confessional appeal and was a cornerstone for the Cedar Revolution in 2005. Jumblatt's post-2005 position diverged sharply from the tradition of his family. He also accused Damascus of being behind the 1977 assassination of his father, Kamal Jumblatt, expressing for the first time what many knew he privately suspected. The BBC describes Jumblatt as \"the leader of Lebanon's most powerful Druze clan and heir to a leftist political dynasty\". The second largest political party supported by Druze is the Lebanese Democratic Party led by Prince Talal Arslan, the son of Lebanese independence hero Emir Majid Arslan.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The Druzites form a religious minority in Israel of more than 100,000, mostly residing in the north of the country. In 2004, there were 102,000 Druze living in the country. In 2010, the population of Israeli Druze citizens grew to over 125,000. At the end of 2018, there were 143,000 in Israel and the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan Heights. Most Israeli Druze identify ethnically as Arabs. Today, thousands of Israeli Druze belong to \"Druze Zionist\" movements.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Some scholars maintain that Israel has tried to separate the Druze from other Arab communities, and that the effort has influenced the way Israel's Druze perceive their modern identity. In 1957, the Israeli government designated the Druze a distinct ethnic community at the request of its communal leaders. The Druze are Arabic-speaking citizens of Israel and serve in the Israel Defense Forces, just as most citizens do in Israel. Members of the community have attained top positions in Israeli politics and public service. The number of Druze parliament members usually exceeds their proportion in the Israeli population, and they are integrated within several political parties.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The Druzites form a religious minority in Jordan of around 32,000, mostly residing in the northwestern part of the country.",
"title": "Modern history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Druze conception of the deity is declared by them to be one of strict and uncompromising unity. The main Druze doctrine states that God is both transcendent and immanent, in which he is above all attributes, but at the same time, he is present.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In their desire to maintain a rigid confession of unity, they stripped from God all attributes (tanzīh). In God, there are no attributes distinct from his essence. He is wise, mighty, and just, not by wisdom, might, and justice, but by his own essence. God is \"the whole of existence\", rather than \"above existence\" or on his throne, which would make him \"limited\". There is neither \"how\", \"when\", nor \"where\" about him; he is incomprehensible.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In this dogma, they are similar to the semi-philosophical, semi-religious body which flourished under Al-Ma'mun and was known by the name of Mu'tazila and the fraternal order of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Ṣafa).",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Unlike the Mu'tazila, and similar to some branches of Sufism, the Druze believe in the concept of Tajalli (meaning \"theophany\"). Tajalli is often misunderstood by scholars and writers and is usually confused with the concept of incarnation.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "[Incarnation] is the core spiritual beliefs in the Druze and some other intellectual and spiritual traditions ... In a mystical sense, it refers to the light of God experienced by certain mystics who have reached a high level of purity in their spiritual journey. Thus, God is perceived as the Lahut [the divine] who manifests His Light in the Station (Maqaam) of the Nasut [material realm] without the Nasut becoming Lahut. This is like one's image in the mirror: One is in the mirror, but does not become the mirror. The Druze manuscripts are emphatic and warn against the belief that the Nasut is God ... Neglecting this warning, individual seekers, scholars, and other spectators have considered al-Hakim and other figures divine. ... In the Druze scriptural view, Tajalli takes a central stage. One author comments that Tajalli occurs when the seeker's humanity is annihilated so that divine attributes and light are experienced by the person.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Druze sacred texts include the Quran and the Epistles of Wisdom. Other ancient Druze writings include the Rasa'il al-Hind (Epistles of India) and the previously lost (or hidden) manuscripts such as al-Munfarid bi-Dhatihi and al-Sharia al-Ruhaniyya as well as others including didactic and polemic treatises.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Reincarnation is a paramount principle in the Druze faith. Reincarnations occur instantly at one's death because there is an eternal duality of the body and the soul and it is impossible for the soul to exist without the body. A human soul will transfer only to a human body, in contrast to the Neoplatonic, Hindu and Buddhist belief systems, according to which souls can transfer to any living creature. Furthermore, a male Druze can be reincarnated only as another male Druze and a female Druze only as another female Druze. A Druze cannot be reincarnated in the body of a non-Druze. Additionally, souls cannot be divided and the number of souls existing in the universe is finite. The cycle of rebirth is continuous and the only way to escape is through successive reincarnations. When this occurs, the soul is united with the Cosmic Mind and achieves the ultimate happiness.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The Pact of Time Custodian (Mithāq Walī al-zamān) is considered the entrance to the Druze religion, and they believe that all Druze in their past lives have signed this Charter, and Druze believe that this Charter embodies with human souls after death.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "I rely on our Moula Al-Hakim the lonely God, the individual, the eternal, who is out of couples and numbers, (someone) the son of (someone) has approved recognition enjoined on himself and on his soul, in a healthy of his mind and his body, permissibility aversive is obedient and not forced, to repudiate from all creeds, articles and all religions and beliefs on the differences varieties, and he does not know something except obedience of almighty Moulana Al-Hakim, and obedience is worship and that it does not engage in worship anyone ever attended or wait, and that he had handed his soul and his body and his money and all he owns to almighty Maulana Al-Hakim.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The Druze also use a similar formula, called al-'ahd, when one is initiated into the ʻUqqāl.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The prayer-houses of the Druze are called khalwa or khalwat. The primary sanctuary of the Druze is at Khalwat al-Bayada.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The Druze believe that many teachings given by prophets, religious leaders and holy books have esoteric meanings preserved for those of intellect, in which some teachings are symbolic and allegorical in nature, and divide the understanding of holy books and teachings into three layers.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "These layers, according to the Druze, are as follows:",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Druze do not believe that the esoteric meaning abrogates or necessarily abolishes the exoteric one. Hamza bin Ali refutes such claims by stating that if the esoteric interpretation of taharah (purity) is purity of the heart and soul, it doesn't mean that a person can discard his physical purity, as salat (prayer) is useless if a person is untruthful in his speech and that the esoteric and exoteric meanings complement each other.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The Druze follow seven moral precepts or duties that are considered the core of the faith. The Seven Druze precepts are:",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Complicating their identity is the custom of taqiyya—concealing or disguising their beliefs when necessary—that they adopted from Ismailism and the esoteric nature of the faith, in which many teachings are kept secretive. This is done in order to keep the religion from those who are not yet prepared to accept the teachings and therefore could misunderstand it, as well as to protect the community when it is in danger. Some claim to be Muslim or Christian in order to avoid persecution; some do not. Druze in different states can have radically different lifestyles.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad is considered the founder of the Druze and the primary author of the Druze manuscripts. He proclaimed that God had become human and taken the form of man. Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah is an important figure in the Druze faith whose eponymous founder ad-Darazi proclaimed him as the incarnation of God in 1018.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Recognition of prophets in the Druze religion is divided into three sort-of subcategories, the prophet themselves (natiq), their disciples (asas), and witnesses to their message (hujjah).",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The number 5 contains an unstated significance within the Druze faith; it is believed in this area that great prophets come in groups of five. In the time of the ancient Greeks, these five were represented by Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Parmenides, and Empedocles. In the first century, the five were represented by Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, Saint Matthew, Saint Mark, and Saint Luke. In the time of the faith's foundation, the five were Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad, Muḥammad ibn Wahb al-Qurashī, Abū'l-Khayr Salama ibn Abd al-Wahhab al-Samurri, Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad at-Tamīmī, and Al-Muqtana Baha'uddin.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Druze tradition honors and reveres Hamza ibn Ali Ahmad and Salman the Persian as \"mentors\" and \"prophets\", believed to be reincarnations of the monotheistic idea.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The Druze allow divorce, although it is discouraged, and circumcision is not necessary. Apostasy is forbidden, and they usually have religious services on Thursday evenings. Druze follow Sunni Hanafi law on issues which their own faith has no particular rulings about.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Formal Druze worship is confined to weekly meeting on Thursday evenings, during which all members of community gather together to discuss local issues before those not initiated into the secrets of the faith (the juhhāl, or the ignorant) are dismissed, and those who are \"uqqāl\" or \"enlightened\" (those few initiated in the Druze holy books) remain to read and study.",
"title": "Beliefs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The Druze strictly avoid iconography, but use five colors (\"Five Limits\" خمس حدود khams ḥudūd) as a religious symbol: green, red, yellow, blue, and white. The five limits were listed by Ismail at-Tamimi (d. 1030) in the Epistle of the Candle (risalat ash-sham'a) as:",
"title": "Religious symbol "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Each of the colors representing the five limits pertains to a metaphysical power called ḥadd, literally \"a limit\", as in the distinctions that separate humans from animals, or the powers that make humans the animalistic body. Each ḥadd is color-coded in the following manner:",
"title": "Religious symbol "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The mind generates qualia and gives consciousness. The soul embodies the mind and is responsible for transmigration and the character of oneself. The word, which is the atom of language, communicates qualia between humans and represents the platonic forms in the sensible world. The Sābiq and Tālī is the ability to perceive and learn from the past and plan for the future and predict it.",
"title": "Religious symbol "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "The colors can be arranged in vertically descending stripes (as a flag), or a five-pointed star. The stripes are a diagrammatic cut of the spheres in neoplatonic philosophy, while the five-pointed star embodies the golden ratio, phi, as a symbol of temperance and a life of moderation.",
"title": "Religious symbol "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Holy places of the Druze are archaeological sites important to the community and associated with religious holidays; the most notable example being Nabi Shu'ayb, dedicated to Jethro, who is a central figure of the Druze religion. Druze make pilgrimages to this site on the holiday of Ziyarat al-Nabi Shu'ayb.",
"title": "Prayer houses and holy places"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "One of the most important features of the Druze village having a central role in social life is the khalwat—a house of prayer, retreat and religious unity. The khalwat may be known as majlis in local languages.",
"title": "Prayer houses and holy places"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The second type of religious shrine is one associated with the anniversary of a historic event or death of a prophet. If it is a mausoleum the Druze call it mazār and if it is a shrine they call it maqām. The holy places become more important to the community in times of adversity and calamity. The holy places and shrines of the Druze are scattered in various villages, in places where they are protected and cared for. They are found in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.",
"title": "Prayer houses and holy places"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The Druze do not recognize any religious hierarchy. As such, there is no \"Druze clergy\". Those few initiated in the Druze holy books are called ʿuqqāl, while the \"ignorant\", regular members of the group are called juhhāl.",
"title": "Initiates and \"ignorant\" members"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Given the strict religious, intellectual and spiritual requirements, most of the Druze are not initiated and might be referred to as al-Juhhāl (جهال), literally \"the Ignorant\", but in practice referring to the non-initiated Druze. However, that term is seldom used by the Druze. Those Druze are not granted access to the Druze holy literature or allowed to attend the initiated religious meetings of the ʻuqqāl. The \"juhhāl\" are the vast majority of the Druze community. The cohesiveness and frequent inter-community social interaction, however, enables most Druze to have an idea about their broad ethical requirements and have some sense of what their theology consists of (albeit often flawed).",
"title": "Initiates and \"ignorant\" members"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "The initiated religious group, which includes both men and women (less than 10% of the population), is called al-ʻUqqāl (عقال \"the Knowledgeable Initiates\"). They might or might not dress differently, although most wear a costume that was characteristic of mountain people in previous centuries. Women can opt to wear al-mandīl, a loose white veil, especially in the presence of other people. They wear al-mandīl on their heads to cover their hair and wrap it around their mouths. They wear black shirts and long skirts covering their legs to their ankles. Male ʻuqqāl often grow mustaches, and wear dark Levantine-Turkish traditional dresses, called the shirwal, with white turbans that vary according to the seniority of the ʻuqqāl. Traditionally the Druze women have played an important role both socially and religiously inside the community.",
"title": "Initiates and \"ignorant\" members"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Al-ʻuqqāl have equal rights to al-Juhhāl, but establish a hierarchy of respect based on religious service. The most influential of al-ʻuqqāl become Ajawīd, recognized religious leaders, and from this group the spiritual leaders of the Druze are assigned. While the Shaykh al-ʻAql, which is an official position in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, is elected by the local community and serves as the head of the Druze religious council, judges from the Druze religious courts are usually elected for this position. Unlike the spiritual leaders, the authority of the Shaykh al-ʻAql is limited to the country he is elected in, though in some instances spiritual leaders are elected to this position.",
"title": "Initiates and \"ignorant\" members"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The Druze believe in the unity of God, and are often known as the \"People of Monotheism\" or simply \"Monotheists\". Their theology has a Neo-Platonic view about how God interacts with the world through emanations and is similar to some gnostic and other esoteric sects. Druze philosophy also shows Sufi influences.",
"title": "Initiates and \"ignorant\" members"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Druze principles focus on honesty, loyalty, filial piety, altruism, patriotic sacrifice, and monotheism. They reject nicotine, alcohol, and other drugs and often, the consumption of pork (to the Uqqāl and not necessarily to the Juhhāl). Druze reject polygamy, believe in reincarnation, and are not obliged to observe most of the religious rituals. The Druze believe that rituals are symbolic and have an individualistic effect on the person, for which reason Druze are free to perform them, or not. The community does celebrate Eid al-Adha, however, considered their most significant holiday; though their form of observance is different compared to that of most Muslims.",
"title": "Initiates and \"ignorant\" members"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The religious life of the average Druze (\"juhhāl\") revolves around a very small number of events – birth and circumcision, engagement and marriage, death and burial – and is devoid of special Druze prayers or worship.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Marriage outside the Druze faith is forbidden, and if a Druze marries a non-Druze, the Druze may be ostracized and marginalized by their community. Because a non-Druze partner cannot convert to Druze faith, the couple cannot have Druze children, because the Druze faith can only be passed on through birth to two Druze parents.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Circumcision is widely practiced by the Druze. The procedure is practiced as a cultural tradition, and has no religious significance in the Druze faith. There is no special date for this act in the Druze faith: male Druze infants are usually circumcised shortly after birth, however some remain uncircumcised until the age of ten or older. Some Druze do not circumcise their male children, and refuse to observe this \"common Muslim practice\".",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "The mother tongue of Druze in Syria, Lebanon and Israel is Levantine Arabic, except those born and living in the Druze diaspora such as Venezuela, where Arabic was not taught or spoken at home. The Druze Arabic dialect, especially in the rural areas, is often different from the other regional Arabic dialects. Druze Arabic dialect is distinguished from others by retention of the phoneme /q/, the use of which by Druze is particularly prominent in the mountains and less so in urban areas.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "The Druze citizens of Israel are Arabic in language and culture, and linguistically speaking, the majority of them are fluently bilingual, speaking both a Central Northern Levantine Arabic dialect and Hebrew. In Druze Arab homes and towns in Israel, the primary language spoken is Arabic, while some Hebrew words have entered the colloquial Arabic dialect. They often use Hebrew characters to write their Arabic dialect online.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Druze cuisine is similar to other Levantine cuisines and is rich in grains, meat, potato, cheese, bread, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, fresh fish and tomatoes. Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Druze and Levantine cuisine is meze including tabbouleh, hummus and baba ghanoush. Kibbeh nayyeh is also a popular mezze among Druzes. Other famous foods among Druzes include falafel, sfiha, shawarma, dolma, kibbeh, kusa mahshi, shishbarak, muhammara, and mujaddara. Druze pita is a Druze-styled pita filled with labneh (thick yoghurt) and topped with olive oil and za’atar, and a very popular bread in Israel. Al-Meleh a popular dish among Druze in Hauran region (As-Suwayda Governorate), cooked in a pressure cooker and served on huge special plates at weddings, holidays, and other special occasions. And consists of bulgur wheat immersed in ghee with lamb and yogurt, and served hot with fried kibbeh and vegetables.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "For reasons that remain unclear, the Mulukhiyah dish was banned by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah sometime during his reign (996–1021). While the ban was eventually lifted after the end of his reign, the Druze, who hold Al-Hakim in high regard and give him quasi-divine authority, continue to respect the ban, and do not eat Mulukhiyah of any kind to this day.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Mate (in Levantine Arabic, متة /mæte/) is a popular drink consumed by the Druze brought to the Levant by Syrian migrants from Argentina in the 19th century. Mate is made by steeping dried leaves of the South American plant yerba mate in hot water and is served with a metal straw (بمبيجة bambīja or مصاصة maṣṣāṣah) from a gourd (فنجان finjān or قَرْعَة qarʻah). Mate is often the first item served when entering a Druze home. It is a social drink and can be shared between multiple participants. After each drinker, the metal straw is cleaned with lemon rind. Traditional snacks eaten with mate include raisins, nuts, dried figs, biscuits, and chips.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "The Druze faith is often classified as a branch of Isma'ili; although according to various scholars Druze faith \"diverge substantially from Islam, both Sunni and Shia\". Even though the faith originally developed out of Ismaili Islam, most Druze do not identify as Muslims, and they do not accept the five pillars of Islam. Historian David R. W. Bryer defines the Druzes as ghulat of Isma'ilism, since they exaggerated the cult of the caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah and considered him divine; he also defines the Druzes as a religion that deviated from Islam. He also added that as a result of this deviation, the Druze faith \"seems as different from Islam as Islam is from Christianity or Christianity is from Judaism\".",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Historically the relationship between the Druze and Muslims has been characterized by intense persecution. The Druze have frequently experienced persecution by different Muslim regimes such as the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, Mamluk, Sunni Ottoman Empire, and Egypt Eyalet. The persecution of the Druze included massacres, demolishing Druze prayer houses and holy places, and forced conversion to Islam. Those acts of persecution were meant to eradicate the whole community according to the Druze narrative. Most recently, the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, saw persecution of the Druze at the hands of Islamic extremists.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Since Druze emerged from Islam and share certain beliefs with Islam, its position of whether it is a separate religion or a sect of Islam is sometimes controversial among Muslim scholars. Druze are not considered Muslims by those belonging to orthodox Islamic schools of thought. Ibn Taymiyya, a prominent Muslim scholar muhaddith, dismissed the Druze as non-Muslims, and his fatwa cited that Druze: \"Are not at the level of ′Ahl al-Kitāb (People of the Book) nor mushrikin (polytheists). Rather, they are from the most deviant kuffār (Infidel) ... Their women can be taken as slaves and their property can be seized ... they are to be killed whenever they are found and cursed as they described ... It is obligatory to kill their scholars and religious figures so that they do not misguide others\", which in that setting would have legitimized violence against them as apostates. The Ottoman Empire often relied on Ibn Taymiyya’s religious ruling to justify their persecution of Druze. In contrast, according to Ibn Abidin, whose work Radd al-Muhtar 'ala al-Durr al-Mukhtar is still considered the authoritative text of Hanafi fiqh today, the Druze are neither Muslims nor apostates.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "In 1959, in an ecumenical move driven by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser's effort to broaden his political appeal after the establishment of the United Arab Republic between Egypt and Syria in 1958, the Islamic scholar Mahmud Shaltut at Al Azhar University in Cairo classified the Druze as Muslims, even though most Druze no longer consider themselves Muslim. The fatwa declares that the Druze are Muslims because they recite the twofold Shahada, and believe in the Qur'an and monotheism and do not oppose Islam in word or deed. This fatwa was not accepted by all in the Islamic world, many dissenting scholars have argued the Druze recite the Shahada as a form of taqiya; a precautionary dissimulation or denial of religious belief and practice in the face of persecution. Some sects of Islam, including all Shia denominations, don't recognize the religious authority of Al Azhar University, those that do sometimes challenge the religious legitimacy of Shaltut's fatwa because it was issued for political reasons, as Gamal Abdel Nasser saw it as a tool to spread his appeal and influence across the entire Arab world. In 2012, due to a drift towards Salafism in Al-Azhar, and the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood into Egyptian political leadership, the dean of the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Al-Azhar issued a fatwa strongly opposed to the 1959 fatwa.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Both religions venerate Shuaib and Muhammad: Shuaib (Jethro) is revered as the chief prophet in the Druze religion, and in Islam he is considered a prophet of God. Muslims regard Muhammad as the final and paramount prophet sent by God, to the Druze, Muhammad is exalted as one of the seven prophets sent by God in different periods of history.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "In terms of religious comparison, Islamic schools and branches do not believe in reincarnation, a paramount tenet of the Druze faith. Islam teaches dawah, whereas the Druze do not accept converts to their faith. Marriage outside the Druze faith is rare and is strongly discouraged. Islamic schools and branches allow for divorce and permit men to be married to multiple women, contrary to the views of the Druze in monogamous marriage and not allowing divorce. Differences between Islamic schools and branches and Druze include their belief in the theophany, Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad is considered the founder of the Druze and the primary author of the Druze manuscripts; he proclaimed that God had become human and taken the form of man, Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. Within Islam, however, such a concept of theophany is a denial of monotheism.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "The Druze faith incorporates some elements of Islam, and other religious beliefs. Druze Sacred texts include the Qur'an and the Epistles of Wisdom (rasail al-hikma رسائل الحكمة) The Druze community does celebrate Eid al-Adha as their most significant holiday; though their form of observance is different compared to that of most Muslims. The Druze faith does not follow Sharia nor any of the Five Pillars of Islam save reciting the Shahada. Scholars argue that Druze recite the Shahada in order to protect their religion and their own safety, and to avoid persecution by Muslims.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "Christianity and Druze are Abrahamic religions that share a historical traditional connection with some major theological differences. The two faiths share a common place of origin in the Middle East and consider themselves to be monotheistic. The relationship between Druze and Christians has been characterized largely by harmony and peaceful coexistence. Amicable relations between the two groups prevailed throughout most of history, though a few exceptions exist, including the 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus. Conversion of Druze to Christianity used to be common practice in the Levant region. Over the centuries, a number of Druze embraced Christianity, such as some of Shihab dynasty members, as well as the Abi-Lamma clan.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Contact between Christian communities (members of the Maronites, Eastern Orthodox, Melkite, and other churches) and the Unitarian Druze led to the presence of mixed villages and towns in Mount Lebanon, Chouf, Jabal al-Druze, the Galilee region, Mount Carmel, and Golan Heights. The Maronite Catholic and the Druze founded modern Lebanon in the early Eighteenth Century, through a governing and social system known as the \"Maronite-Druze dualism\" in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Druze doctrine teaches that Christianity is to be \"esteemed and praised\" as the Gospel writers are regarded as \"carriers of wisdom\". The Druze faith incorporates some elements of Christianity, in addition to adoption of Christian elements on the Epistles of Wisdom. The full Druze canon or Druze scripture (Epistles of Wisdom) includes the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran and philosophical works by Plato and those influenced by Socrates among works from other religions and philosophers. The Druze faith shows influence of Christian monasticism, among other religious practices.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "In terms of religious comparison, mainstream Christian denominations do not believe in reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul, unlike the Druze. Evangelism is widely seen as central to the Christian faith, unlike the Druze who do not accept converts. Marriage outside the Druze faith is rare and is strongly discouraged. Similarities between the Druze and Christians include commonalities in their view of monogamous marriage, as well as the forbidding of divorce and remarriage, in addition to the belief in the oneness of God and theophany.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Both mainstream Christian denominations and Druze does not require male circumcision, even though male circumcision is commonly practiced in many predominantly Christian countries and many Christian communities, and in Coptic Christianity and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church as a rite of passage. Male circumcision is also widely practiced by the Druze, but as a cultural tradition, since circumcision has no religious significance in the Druze faith.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "Both faiths give a prominent place to Jesus: In Christianity, Jesus is the central figure, seen as the messiah. To the Druze, Jesus is an important prophet of God, being among the seven prophets (including Muhammad) who appeared in different periods of history. The Druze revere Jesus \"the son of Joseph and Mary\" and his four disciples, who wrote the Gospels. According to the Druze manuscripts Jesus is the Greatest Imam and the incarnation of Ultimate Reason (Akl) on earth and the first cosmic principle (Hadd), and regards Jesus and Hamza ibn Ali as the incarnations of one of the five great celestial powers, who form part of their system. In the Druze tradition, Jesus is known under three titles: the True Messiah (al-Masih al-Haq), the Messiah of all Nations (Masih al-Umam), and the Messiah of Sinners. This is due, respectively, to the belief that Jesus delivered the true Gospel message, the belief that he was the Saviour of all nations, and the belief that he offers forgiveness.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "Both religions venerate John the Baptist, Saint George, Elijah, Luke the Evangelist, Job and other common figures. Figures in the Old Testament such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jethro are considered important prophets of God in the Druze faith, being among the seven prophets who appeared in different periods of history.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "The relationship between the Druze and Jews has been controversial, Antisemitic material is contained in the Druze literature such as the Epistles of Wisdom; for example in an epistle ascribed to one of the founders of Druzism, Baha al-Din al-Muqtana, probably written sometime between AD 1027 and AD 1042, accused the Jews of crucifying Jesus. On the other hand, Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveler from the 12th century, pointed out that the Druze maintained good commercial relations with the Jews nearby, and according to him this was because the Druze liked the Jewish people. Yet, the Jews and Druze lived isolated from each other, except in few mixed towns such as Deir al-Qamar and Peki'in. The Deir el Qamar Synagogue was built in 1638, during the Ottoman era in Lebanon, to serve the local Jewish population, some of whom were part of the immediate entourage of the Druze Emir Fakhr-al-Din II.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "The conflict between Druze and Jews occurs during the Druze power struggle in Mount Lebanon, Jewish settlements of Galilee such as Safad and Tiberias were destroyed by the Druze in 1660. During the Druze revolt against the rule of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, the Jewish community in Safad was attacked by Druze rebels in early July 1838, the violence against the Jews included plundering their homes and desecrating their synagogues.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "During the British Mandate for Palestine, the Druze did not embrace the rising Arab nationalism of the time or participate in violent confrontations with Jewish immigrants. In 1948, many Druze volunteered for the Israeli army and no Druze villages were destroyed or permanently abandoned. Since the establishment of the state of Israel, the Druze have demonstrated solidarity with Israel and distanced themselves from Arab and Islamic radicalism. Israeli Druze citizens serve in the Israel Defense Forces. The Jewish-Druze partnership was often referred as \"a covenant of blood\" (Hebrew: ברית דמים, brit damim) in recognition of the common military yoke carried by the two peoples for the security of the country. From 1957, the Israeli government formally recognized the Druze as a separate religious community, and are defined as a distinct ethnic group in the Israeli Ministry of Interior's census registration. Israeli Druze do not consider themselves Muslim, and see their faith as a separate and independent religion. While compared to other Israeli Christians and Muslims, Druze place less emphasis on Arab identity and self-identify more as Israeli. However, they were less ready for personal relationships with Jews compared to Israeli Muslims and Christians.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "In terms of religious comparison, scholars consider Judaism and the Druze faith as ethnoreligious groups, both practicing endogamy, and both typically do not proselytize. Belief in reincarnation (Gilgul) exist in some strands of Judaism influenced by the Kabbalah, such as Hasidic Judaism, but is rejected by mainstream Jewish denominations (Reformed Judaism, Conservative Judaism and Orthodox Judaism). Figures in the Hebrew Bible such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses are considered important prophets of God in the Druze faith, being among the seven prophets who appeared in different periods of history. Both religions venerate Elijah, Job and other common figures. In the Hebrew Bible, Jethro was Moses' father-in-law, a Kenite shepherd and priest of Midian. Jethro of Midian is considered an ancestor of the Druze who revere him as their spiritual founder and chief prophet.",
"title": "Druze and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "The Druze faith extended to many areas in the Middle East, but most of the modern Druze can trace their origin to the Wadi al-Taym in Southern Lebanon, which is named after an Arab tribe Taym Allah (or Taym Allat) which, according to Islamic historian al-Tabari, first came from the Arabian Peninsula into the valley of the Euphrates where they had been Christianized prior to their migration into Lebanon. Many of the Druze feudal families, whose genealogies have been preserved by the two modern Syrian chroniclers Haydar al-Shihabi and Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, seem also to point in the direction of this origin. Arabian tribes emigrated via the Persian Gulf and stopped in Iraq on their route that would later to lead them to Syria. The first feudal Druze family, the Tanukhids, which made for itself a name in fighting the Crusaders was, according to Haydar al-Shihabi, an Arab tribe from Mesopotamia where it occupied the position of a ruling family and apparently was Christianized.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Travelers like Niebuhr, and scholars like Max von Oppenheim, undoubtedly echoing the popular Druze belief regarding their own origin, have classified them as Arabs.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "The 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica states that the Druze are \"a mixture of refugee stocks, in which the Arab largely predominates, grafted on to an original mountain population of Aramaic blood\".",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "According to Jewish contemporary literature, the Druze, who were visited and described in 1165 by Benjamin of Tudela, were pictured as descendants of the Itureans, an Ismaelite Arab tribe, which used to reside in the northern parts of the Golan plateau through Hellenistic and Roman periods. The word Druzes, in an early Hebrew edition of his travels, occurs as Dogziyin, but it is clear that this is a scribal error.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "Archaeological assessments of the Druze region have also proposed the possibility of Druze descending from Itureans, who had inhabited Mount Lebanon and Golan Heights in late classic antiquity, but their traces fade in the Middle Ages.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "Lebanese Christians and Druze became a genetic isolate in the predominantly Islamic world.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "In a 2005 study of ASPM gene variants, Mekel-Bobrov et al. found that the Israeli Druze people of the Mount Carmel region have among the highest rate of the newly evolved ASPM- Haplogroup D, at 52.2% occurrence of the approximately 6,000-year-old allele. While it is not yet known exactly what selective advantage is provided by this gene variant, the Haplogroup D allele is thought to be positively selected in populations and to confer some substantial advantage that has caused its frequency to rapidly increase.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "A 2004 DNA study has shown that Israeli Druze are remarkable for the high frequency (35%) of males who carry the Y-chromosomal haplogroup L, which is otherwise uncommon in the Middle East (Shen et al. 2004). This haplogroup originates from prehistoric South Asia and has spread from Pakistan into southern Iran. A 2008 study done on larger samples showed that L-M20 averages 27% in Mount Carmel Druze, 2% in Galilee Druze, 8% in Lebanese Druze, and it was not found in a sample of 59 Syrian Druze (Slush et al. 2008).",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "Cruciani, in 2007, found E1b1b1a2 (E-V13) [a subclade of E1b1b1a (E-M78)] in high levels (>10% of the male population) in Cypriot and Druze lineages. Recent genetic clustering analyses of ethnic groups are consistent with the close ancestral relationship between the Druze and Cypriots, and also identified similarity to the general Syrian and Lebanese populations, as well as the major Jewish divisions (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Iraqi, and Moroccan Jews) (Behar et al. 2010).",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Also, a new study concluded that the Druze harbor a remarkable diversity of mitochondrial DNA lineages that appear to have separated from each other thousands of years ago. But instead of dispersing throughout the world after their separation, the full range of lineages can still be found within the Druze population.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "The researchers noted that the Druze villages contained a striking range of high frequency and high diversity of the X haplogroup, suggesting that this population provides a glimpse into the past genetic landscape of the Near East at a time when the X haplogroup was more prevalent.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "These findings are consistent with the Druze oral tradition that claims that the adherents of the faith came from diverse ancestral lineages stretching back tens of thousands of years. The Shroud of Turin analysis shows significant traces of mitochondrial DNA unique to the Druze community.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "A 2008 study published on the genetic background of Druze communities in Israel showed highly heterogeneous parental origins. A total of 311 Israeli Druze were sampled: 37 from the Golan Heights, 183 from the Galilee, and 35 from Mount Carmel, as well as 27 Druze immigrants from Syria and 29 from Lebanon (Slush et al. 2008). The researchers found the following frequencies of Y-chromosomal and MtDNA haplogroups:",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "According to a 2015 study, Druze have a largely similar genome with Middle Eastern Arabs, but they have not married outside of their clans in 1000 years and Druze families from different regions share a similarity with each other that distinguishes them from other Middle Eastern populations.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "A 2016 study based on testing samples of Druze in the historic region of Syria, in comparison with ancient humans (including Anatolian and Armenian), and on Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool by converting genetic distances into geographic distances, concluded that Druze might hail from the Zagros Mountains and the surroundings of Lake Van in eastern Anatolia, then they later migrated south to settle in the mountainous regions in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "A 2020 study on remains from Canaanaite (Bronze Age southern Levantine) populations suggests a significant degree of genetic continuity in currently Arabic-speaking Levantine populations (including the Druze, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians), as well as in most Jewish groups (including Sephardi Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and Maghrebi Jews) from the populations of the Bronze Age Levant, suggesting that the aforementioned groups all derive more than half of their overall ancestry (atDNA) from Canaanite / Bronze Age Levantine populations, albeit with varying sources and degrees of admixture from differing host or invading populations depending on each group.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "In a principal component analysis of a 2014 study, Druze were located between Lebanese people and Mizrahi Jews. In a PCA in a 2021 study, Druze were close to Lebanese people and a part of the larger Levant-Iraq cluster.",
"title": "Origins"
}
]
| The Druze, who call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn, are an Arab and Arabic-speaking esoteric ethnoreligious group from Western Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, syncretic, and ethnic religion whose main tenets are the unity of God and the belief in reincarnation and the eternity of the soul. Most Druze religious practices are kept secret. The Druze do not permit outsiders to convert to their religion. Marriage outside the Druze faith is rare and strongly discouraged. The Epistles of Wisdom is the foundational and central text of the Druze faith. The Druze faith incorporates elements of Isma'ili Shia, Christianity, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Pythagoreanism, and other philosophies and beliefs, creating a distinct and secretive theology based on an esoteric interpretation of scripture, which emphasizes the role of the mind and truthfulness. Druze believe in theophany and reincarnation. Druze believe that at the end of the cycle of rebirth, which is achieved through successive reincarnations, the soul is united with the Cosmic Mind. The Druze have a special reverence for Shuaib, who they believe is the same person as the biblical Jethro. The Druze believe that Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Imam Muhammad ibn Isma'il were prophets. Druze tradition also honors and reveres Salman the Persian, al-Khidr, Job, Luke the Evangelist, and others as "mentors" and "prophets". Even though the faith originally developed out of Isma'ilism, the Druze are not Muslims. The Druze faith is one of the major religious groups in the Levant, with between 800,000 and a million adherents. They are found primarily in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, with small communities in Jordan. They make up 5.5% of the population of Lebanon, 3% of Syria and 1.6% of Israel. The oldest and most densely-populated Druze communities exist in Mount Lebanon and in the south of Syria around Jabal al-Druze. The Druze community played a critically important role in shaping the history of the Levant, where it continues to play a significant political role. As a religious minority in every country in which they are found, they have frequently experienced persecution by different Muslim regimes, including contemporary Islamic extremism. | 2001-10-10T04:01:02Z | 2023-12-29T18:18:01Z | [
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8,633 | December 12 | December 12 is the 346th day of the year (347th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 19 days remain until the end of the year. | [
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| December 12 is the 346th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 19 days remain until the end of the year. | 2001-10-15T15:18:30Z | 2023-12-27T14:51:39Z | [
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8,637 | Door | A door is a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into and egress (exit) from an enclosure. The created opening in the wall is a doorway or portal. A door's essential and primary purpose is to provide security by controlling access to the doorway (portal). Conventionally, it is a panel that fits into the doorway of a building, room, or vehicle. Doors are generally made of a material suited to the door's task. They are commonly attached by hinges, but can move by other means, such as slides or counterbalancing.
The door may be able to move in various ways (at angles away from the doorway/portal, by sliding on a plane parallel to the frame, by folding in angles on a parallel plane, or by spinning along an axis at the center of the frame) to allow or prevent ingress or egress. In most cases, a door's interior matches its exterior side. But in other cases (e.g., a vehicle door) the two sides are radically different.
Many doors incorporate locking mechanisms to ensure that only some people can open them (such as with a key). Doors may have devices such as knockers or doorbells by which people outside announce their presence. (In some countries, such as Brazil, it is customary to clap from the sidewalk to announce one's presence.) Apart from providing access into and out of a space, doors may have the secondary functions of ensuring privacy by preventing unwanted attention from outsiders, of separating areas with different functions, of allowing light to pass into and out of a space, of controlling ventilation or air drafts so that interiors may be more effectively heated or cooled, of dampening noise, and of blocking the spread of fire.
Doors can have aesthetic, symbolic, ritualistic purposes. Receiving the key to a door can signify a change in status from outsider to insider. Doors and doorways frequently appear in literature and the arts with metaphorical or allegorical import as a portent of change.
The earliest recorded doors appear in the paintings of Egyptian tombs, which show them as single or double doors, each of a single piece of wood. People may have believed these were doors to the afterlife, and some include designs of the afterlife. In Egypt, where the climate is intensely dry, doors were not framed against warping, but in other countries required framed doors—which, according to Vitruvius (iv. 6.) was done with stiles (sea/si) and rails (see: Frame and panel), the enclosed panels filled with tympana set in grooves in the stiles and rails. The stiles were the vertical boards, one of which, tenoned or hinged, is known as the hanging stile, the other as the middle or meeting stile. The horizontal cross pieces are the top rail, bottom rail, and middle or intermediate rails.
The most ancient doors were made of timber, such as those referred to in the Biblical depiction of King Solomon's temple being in olive wood (I Kings vi. 31–35), which were carved and overlaid with gold. The doors that Homer mentions appear to have been cased in silver or brass. Besides olive wood, elm, cedar, oak and cypress were used. Two doors over 5,000 years old have been found by archaeologists near Zürich, Switzerland.
Ancient doors were hung by pintles at the top and bottom of the hanging stile, which worked in sockets in the lintel and sill, the latter in some hard stone such as basalt or granite. Those Hilprecht found at Nippur, dating from 2000 BC, were in dolerite. The tenons of the gates at Balawat were sheathed with bronze (now in the British Museum). These doors or gates were hung in two leaves, each about 2.54 m (100 in) wide and 8.2 m (27 ft) high; they were encased with bronze bands or strips, 25.4 cm (10.0 in) high, covered with repoussé decoration of figures. The wood doors would seem to have been about 7.62 cm (3.00 in) thick, but the hanging stile was over 360 millimetres (14 in) diameter. Other sheathings of various sizes in bronze show this was a universal method adopted to protect the wood pivots. In the Hauran in Syria where timber is scarce, the doors were made of stone, and one measuring 1.63 by 0.79 m (64 by 31 in) is in the British Museum; the band on the meeting stile shows that it was one of the leaves of a double door. At Kuffeir near Bostra in Syria, Burckhardt found stone doors, 2.74 to 3.048 m (8.99 to 10.00 ft) high, being the entrance doors of the town. In Etruria many stone doors are referred to by Dennis.
Ancient Greek and Roman doors were either single doors, double doors, triple doors, sliding doors or folding doors, in the last case the leaves were hinged and folded back. In the tomb of Theron at Agrigentum there is a single four-panel door carved in stone. In the Blundell collection is a bas-relief of a temple with double doors, each leaf with five panels. Among existing examples, the bronze doors in the church of SS. Cosmas and Damiano, in Rome, are important examples of Roman metal work of the best period; they are in two leaves, each with two panels, and are framed in bronze. Those of the Pantheon are similar in design, with narrow horizontal panels in addition, at the top, bottom and middle. Two other bronze doors of the Roman period are in the Lateran Basilica.
The Greek scholar Heron of Alexandria created the earliest known automatic door in the first century AD during the era of Roman Egypt. The first foot-sensor-activated automatic door was made in China during the reign of Emperor Yang of Sui (r. 604–618), who had one installed for his royal library. Gates powered by water featured in illustrations of the automatons of the Arab inventor Al-Jazari.
Copper and its alloys were integral in medieval architecture. The doors of the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem (6th century) are covered with plates of bronze, cut out in patterns. Those of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople, of the eighth and ninth century, are wrought in bronze, and the west doors of the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle (9th century), of similar manufacture, were probably brought from Constantinople, as also some of those in St. Marks, Venice. The bronze doors on the Aachen Cathedral in Germany date back to about 800 AD. Bronze baptistery doors at the Cathedral of Florence were completed in 1423 by Ghiberti. (For more information, see: Copper in architecture).
Of the 11th and 12th centuries there are numerous examples of bronze doors, the earliest being one at Hildesheim, Germany (1015). The Hildesheim design affected the concept of Gniezno door in Poland. Of others in South Italy and Sicily, the following are the finest: in Sant'Andrea, Amalfi (1060); Salerno (1099); Canosa di Puglia (1111); Troia, two doors (1119 and 1124); Ravello (1179), by Barisano of Trani, who also made doors for Trani cathedral; and in Monreale and Pisa cathedrals, by Bonano of Pisa. In all these cases the hanging stile had pivots at the top and bottom. The exact period when the builder moved to the hinge is unknown, but the change apparently brought about another method of strengthening and decorating doors—wrought-iron bands of various designs. As a rule, three bands with ornamental work constitute the hinges, with rings outside the hanging stiles that fit on vertical tenons set into the masonry or wooden frame. There is an early example of the 12th century in Lincoln. In France, the metalwork of the doors of Notre Dame at Paris is a beautiful example, but many others exist throughout France and England.
In Italy, celebrated doors include those of the Battistero di San Giovanni (Florence), which are all in bronze—including the door frames. The modeling of the figures, birds and foliage of the south doorway, by Andrea Pisano (1330), and of the east doorway by Ghiberti (1425–1452), are of great beauty. In the north door (1402–1424), Ghiberti adopted the same scheme of design for the paneling and figure subjects as Andrea Pisano, but in the east door, the rectangular panels are all filled, with bas-reliefs that illustrate Scripture subjects and innumerable figures. These may the gates of Paradise of which Michelangelo speaks.
Doors of the mosques in Cairo were of two kinds: those externally cased with sheets of bronze or iron, cut in decorative patterns, and incised or inlaid, with bosses in relief; and those of wood-framed with interlaced square and diamond designs. The latter design is Coptic in origin. The doors of the palace at Palermo, which were made by Saracenic workmen for the Normans, are fine examples in good preservation. A somewhat similar decorative class of door is found in Verona, where the edges of the stiles and rails are beveled and notched.
In the Renaissance period, Italian doors are quite simple, their architects trusting more to the doorways for effect; but in France and Germany the contrary is the case, the doors being elaborately carved, especially in the Louis XIV and Louis XV periods, and sometimes with architectural features such as columns and entablatures with pediment and niches, the doorway being in plain masonry. While in Italy the tendency was to give scale by increasing the number of panels, in France the contrary seems to have been the rule; and one of the great doors at Fontainebleau, which is in two leaves, is entirely carried out as if consisting of one great panel only.
The earliest Renaissance doors in France are those of the cathedral of St. Sauveur at Aix (1503). In the lower panels there are figures 3 ft (0.91 m). high in Gothic niches, and in the upper panels a double range of niches with figures about 2 ft (0.61 m). high with canopies over them, all carved in cedar. The south door of Beauvais Cathedral is in some respects the finest in France; the upper panels are carved in high relief with figure subjects and canopies over them. The doors of the church at Gisors (1575) are carved with figures in niches subdivided by classic pilasters superimposed. In St. Maclou at Rouen are three magnificently carved doors; those by Jean Goujon have figures in niches on each side, and others in a group of great beauty in the center. The other doors, probably about forty to fifty years later, are enriched with bas-reliefs, landscapes, figures and elaborate interlaced borders.
NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center contains the four largest doors. The Vehicle Assembly Building was originally built for the assembly of the Apollo missions' Saturn vehicles and was then used to support Space Shuttle operations. Each of the four doors are 139 meters (456 feet) high.
The oldest door in England can be found in Westminster Abbey and dates from 1050. In England in the 17th century the door panels were raised with bolection or projecting moldings, sometimes richly carved, around them; in the 18th century the moldings worked on the stiles and rails were carved with the egg-and-dart ornament.
There are many kinds of doors, with different purposes. The most common type is the single-leaf door, which consists of a single rigid panel that fills the doorway. There are many variations on this basic design, such as the double-leaf door or double door and French windows, which have two adjacent independent panels hinged on each side of the doorway.
Most doors are hinged along one side to allow the door to pivot away from the doorway in one direction, but not the other. The axis of rotation is usually vertical. In some cases, such as hinged garage doors, the axis may be horizontal, above the door opening.
Doors can be hinged so that the axis of rotation is not in the plane of the door to reduce the space required on the side to which the door opens. This requires a mechanism so that the axis of rotation is on the side other than that in which the door opens. This is sometimes the case in trains or airplanes, such as for the door to the toilet, which opens inward.
A swing door has special single-action hinges that allow it to open either outward or inward, and is usually sprung to keep it closed.
French doors are derived from the French design called the casement door. It is a door with lites where all or some panels would be in a casement door. A French door traditionally has a moulded panel at the bottom of the door. It is called a French window when used in a pair as double-leaved doors with large glass panels in each door leaf, and in which the doors may swing out (typically) as well as in.
A double-acting door, patented in 1880 by the Dutch-American engineer Lorenz Bommer, swings both ways. They are often used in areas where many people are likely to pass through, such as restaurant kitchens.
A Dutch door or stable door consists of two halves. The top half operates independently from the bottom half. A variant exists in which opening the top part separately is possible, but because the lower part has a lip on the inside, closing the top part, while leaving the lower part open, is not.
A garden door resembles a French window (with lites), but is more secure because only one door is operable. The hinge of the operating door is next to the adjacent fixed door and the latch is located at the wall opening jamb rather than between the two doors or with the use of an espagnolette bolt.
It is often useful to have doors which slide along tracks, often for space or aesthetic considerations.
A bypass door is a door unit that has two or more sections. The doors can slide in either direction along one axis on parallel overhead tracks, sliding past each other. They are most commonly used in closets to provide access one side of the closet at a time. Doors in a bypass unit overlap slightly when viewed from the front so they do not have a visible gap when closed.
Doors which slide inside a wall cavity are called pocket doors. This type of door is used in tight spaces where privacy is also required. The door slab is mounted to roller and a track at the top of the door and slides inside a wall.
Sliding glass doors are common in many houses, particularly as an entrance to the backyard. Such doors are also popular for use for the entrances to commercial structures, although they are not counted as fire exit doors. The door that moves is called the "active leaf", while the door that remains fixed is called the "inactive leaf".
A revolving door has several wings or leaves, generally four, radiating from a central shaft, forming compartments that rotate about a vertical axis. A revolving door allows people to pass in both directions without colliding, and forms an airlock maintaining a seal between inside and out.
A pivot door, instead of hinges, is supported on a bearing some distance away from the edge, so that there is more or less of a gap on the pivot side as well as the opening side. In some cases the pivot is central, creating two equal openings.
A high-speed door is a very fast door some with opening speeds of up to 4 m/s, mainly used in the industrial sector where the speed of a door has an effect on production logistics, temperature and pressure control. High-speed cleanroom doors, usually consisting of a transparent material on a stainless steel frame, are used in pharmaceutical industries to allow passage between work areas while admitting minimal contaminants. The powerful high-speed doors have a smooth surface structure and no protruding edges, allowing minimal particle retention and easy cleaning.
High-speed doors are made to handle a high number of openings, generally more than 200,000 a year. They must be built with heavy-duty parts and counterbalance systems for speed enhancement and emergency opening function. The door curtain was originally made of PVC, but was later also developed in aluminium and acrylic glass sections. High-speed refrigeration and cold-room doors with excellent insulation values have also been introduced for green and energy-saving requirements.
In North America, the Door and Access Systems Manufacturing Association (DASMA) defines high-performance doors as non-residential powered doors characterized by rolling, folding, sliding or swinging action, that are either high-cycle (minimum 100 cycles/day) or high-speed (minimum 20 inches (508 mm)/second), and two out of three of the following: made-to-order for exact size and custom features, able to withstand equipment impact (break-away if accidentally hit by vehicle), or able to sustain heavy use with minimal maintenance.
Automatically opening doors are powered open and closed either by electricity, spring, or both. There are several methods by which an automatically opening door is activated:
In addition to activation sensors, automatically opening doors are generally fitted with safety sensors. These are usually an infrared curtain or beam, but can be a pressure mat fitted on the swing side of the door. The safety sensor prevents the door from colliding with an object by stopping or slowing its motion. A mechanism in modern automatic doors ensures that the door can open in a power failure.
Up-and-over or overhead doors are often used in garages. Instead of hinges, it has a mechanism, often counterbalanced or sprung, so it can lift and rest horizontally above the opening. A roller shutter or sectional overhead door is one variant of this type.
A tambour door or roller door is an up-and-over door made of narrow horizontal slats that rolls up and down by sliding along vertical tracks; it is typically found in entertainment centres and cabinets.
Rebated doors, a term chiefly used in Britain, are double doors with a lip or overlap (i.e. a rabbet) on the vertical edge(s) where they meet. Fire-rating can be achieved with an applied edge-guard or astragal molding on the meeting stile, in accordance with the American fire door.
Evolution Door is a trackless door that moves in the same closure level as a sliding door. Invented by Austrian artist Klemens Torggler, is a further development of the Drehplattentür that normally consists of two rotatable, connected panels which move to each other when opening.
Architectural doors have numerous general and specialized uses. Doors are generally used to separate interior spaces (closets, rooms, etc.) for convenience, privacy, safety, and security reasons. Doors are also used to secure passages into a building from the exterior, for reasons of climate control and safety.
Doors also are applied in more specialized cases:
Panel doors, also called stile and rail doors, are built with frame and panel construction. EN 12519 is describing the terms which are officially used in European Member States. The main parts are listed below:
Also known as ledges and braced, board and batten doors are an older design consisting primarily of vertical slats:
As board and Batten doors.
Impact-resistant doors have rounded stile edges to dissipate energy and minimize edge chipping, scratching and denting. The formed edges are often made of an engineered material. Impact-resistant doors excel in high traffic areas such as hospitals, schools, hotels and coastal areas.
This type consists of a solid timber frame, filled on one face, face with tongue and groove boards. Quite often used externally with the boards on the weather face.
Flushing of a door means the door is flush with the face of the wall on either side.
Generally, door swings, or handing, are determined while standing on the outside or less secure side of the door while facing the door (i.e., standing on the side requiring a key to open, going from outside to inside, or from public to private).
It is important to get the hand and swing correct on exterior doors, as the transom is usually sloped and sealed to resist water entry, and properly drain. In some custom millwork (or with some master carpenters), the manufacture or installer bevels the leading edge (the first edge to meet the jamb as the door closes) so that the door fits tight without binding. Specifying an incorrect hand or swing can make the door bind, not close properly, or leak. Fixing this error is expensive or time-consuming. In North America, many doors now come with factory-installed hinges, pre-hung on the jamb and sills.
While facing the door from the outside or less secure side, if the hinge is on the right side of the door, the door is "right handed"; or if the hinge is on the left, it is "left handed". If the door swings toward you, it is "reverse swing"; or if the door swings away from you, it is "normal swing".
In other words:
New exterior doors are largely defined by the type of materials they are made from: wood, steel, fiberglass, UPVC/vinyl, aluminum, composite, glass (patio doors), etc.
Wooden doors – including solid wood doors – are a top choice for many homeowners, largely because of the aesthetic qualities of wood. Many wood doors are custom-made, but they have several downsides: their price, their maintenance requirements (regular painting and staining) and their limited insulating value (R-5 to R-6, not including the effects of the glass elements of the doors). Wood doors often have an overhang requirement to maintain a warranty. An overhang is a roof, porch area or awning that helps to protect the door and its finish from UV rays.
Steel doors are another major type of residential front doors; most of them come with a polyurethane or other type of foam insulation core – a critical factor in a building's overall comfort and efficiency. Steel doors mostly in default comes along with frame and lock system, which is a high cost efficiency factor compared to wooden doors.
Most modern exterior walls provide thermal insulation and energy efficiency, which can be indicated by the Energy Star label or the Passive House standards. Premium composite (including steel doors with a thick core of polyurethane or other foam), fiberglass and vinyl doors benefit from the materials they are made from, from a thermal perspective.
But there are very few door models with an R-value close to 10 (the R-value measures how well a barrier resists the conductive flow of heat). This is far less than the R-40 walls or the R-50 ceilings of super-insulated buildings – Passive Solar and Zero Energy Buildings. Typical doors are not thick enough to provide very high levels of energy efficiency.
Many doors may have good R-values at their center, but their overall energy efficiency is reduced because of the presence of glass and reinforcing elements, or because of poor weatherstripping and the way the door is manufactured.
Door weatherstripping is particularly important for energy efficiency. German-made passive house doors use multiple weatherstrips, including magnetic strips, to meet higher standards. These weatherstrips reduce energy losses due to air leakage.
Standard door sizes in the US run along 2" increments. Customary sizes have a height of 78 or 80 in (2,000 or 2,000 mm) and a width of 18, 24, 26, 28, 30 or 36 in (460, 610, 660, 710, 760 or 910 mm). Most residential passage (room to room) doors are 30 in × 80 in (760 mm × 2,030 mm).
A standard US residential (exterior) door size is 36 in × 80 in (910 mm × 2,030 mm). Interior doors for wheelchair access must also have a minimum width of 36 in (910 mm). Residential interior doors, as well as the doors of many small stores, offices, and other light commercial buildings, are often somewhat smaller than the doors of larger commercial buildings, public buildings, and grand homes. Older buildings often have smaller doors.
Thickness: Most pre-fabricated doors are 1 3/8" thick (for interior doors) or 1 3/4" (exterior).
Closets: small spaces such as closets, dressing rooms, half-baths, storage rooms, cellars, etc. often are accessed through doors smaller than passage doors in one or both dimensions but similar in design.
Garages: Garage doors are generally 84" (7 feet; 2134 mm) or 96" (8 feet; 2438 mm) wide for a single-car opening. Two car garage doors (sometimes called double car doors) are a single door 192" (16 feet; 4877 mm). Because of size and weight these doors are usually sectional. That is split into four or five horizontal sections so that they can be raised more easily and do not require a lot of additional space above the door when opening and closing. Single piece double garage doors are common in some older homes.
Standard DIN doors are defined in DIN 18101 (published 1955–07, 1985–01, 2014–08). Door sizes are also given in the construction standard for wooden door panels (DIN 68706–1). The DIN commission created the harmonized European standard DIN EN 14351-1 for exterior doors and DIN EN 14351-2 for interior doors (published 2006–07, 2010–08), which define requirements for the CE marking and provide standard sizes by examples in the appendix.
The DIN 18101 standard has a normative size (Nennmaß) slightly larger than the panel size (Türblatt) as the standard derives the panel sizes from the normative size being different single door vs double door and molded vs unmolded doors. DIN 18101/1985 defines interior single molded doors to have a common panel height of 1985 mm (normativ height 2010 mm) at panel widths of 610 mm, 735 mm, 860 mm, 985 mm, 1110 mm, plus a larger door panel size of 1110 mm x 2110 mm. The newer DIN 18101/2014 drops the definition of just five standard door sizes in favor of a basic raster running along 125 mm increments where the height and width are independent. Panel width may be in the range 485 mm to 1360 mmm, and the height may be in the range of 1610 mm to 2735 mm. The most common interior door is 860 mm × 1,985 mm (33.9 in × 78.1 in).
When framed in wood for snug fitting of a door, the doorway consists of two vertical jambs on either side, a lintel or head jamb at the top, and perhaps a threshold at the bottom. When a door has more than one movable section, one of the sections may be called a leaf. See door furniture for a discussion of attachments to doors such as door handles, doorknobs, and door knockers.
Door furniture or hardware refers to any of the items that are attached to a door or a drawer to enhance its functionality or appearance. This includes items such as hinges, handles, door stops, etc.
Door safety relates to prevention of door-related accidents. Such accidents take place in various forms, and in a number of locations; ranging from car doors to garage doors. Accidents vary in severity and frequency. According to the National Safety Council in the United States, around 300,000 door-related injuries occur every year.
The types of accidents vary from relatively minor cases where doors cause damage to other objects, such as walls, to serious cases resulting in human injury, particularly to fingers, hands, and feet. A closing door can exert up to 40 tons per square inch of pressure between the hinges. Because of the number of accidents taking place, there has been a surge in the number of lawsuits. Thus organisations may be at risk when car doors or doors within buildings are unprotected.
According to the US General Services Administration, discussing child care centres:
...It is essential that children's fingers be protected from being crushed or otherwise injured in the hinge space of a swinging door or gate. There are simple devices available to attach to the hinge side, ensuring that this type of injury does not occur. As the door closes, the hand is pushed out of the opening, away from harm. In addition, young children are vulnerable to injury when they fall against the other (hinged) side of doors and gates, striking projected hinges. Piano hinges are not recommended to alleviate this problem as they tend to sag over time with heavy use. Instead, an inexpensive device fitting over hinges is available on the market and should be used to ensure safety...
Whenever a door is opened outward, there is a risk that it could strike another person. In many cases this can be avoided by architectural design which favors doors which open inward to rooms (from the perspective of a common area such as a corridor, the door opens outward). In cases where this is infeasible, it may be possible to avoid an accident by placing vision panels in the door.
Inward-hinged doors can also escalate an accident by preventing people from escaping the building: people inside the building may press against the doors, and thus prevent the doors from opening. Related accidents include:
Today, the exterior doors of most large (especially public) buildings open outward, while interior doors such as doors to individual rooms, offices, suites, etc. open inward, as do many exterior doors of houses, particularly in North America.
Doorstops are simple devices that prevent a door from contacting and possibly damaging another object (typically a wall). They may either absorb the force of a moving door, or hold the door against unintended motion.
Door guards (hinge guards, anti-finger trapping devices, or finger guards) help prevent finger trapping accidents, as doors pose a risk to children, especially when closing. Door guards protect fingers in door hinges by covering the hinge-side gap of an open door, typically with a piece of rubber or plastic that wraps from the door frame to the door. Other door safety products eject the fingers from the push side of the door as it closes.
There are various levels of door protection. Anti-finger trapping devices in front may leave the rear hinge pin side of doors unprotected. Full door protection uses front and rear anti-finger trapping devices and ensures the hinge side of a door is fully isolated. A risk assessment of the door determines the appropriate level of protection.
There is also handle-side door protection, which prevents the door from slamming shut on the frame, which can cause injury to fingers/hands.
Glass doors pose the risk of unintentional collision if a person is unaware there is a door, or thinks it is open when it is not. This risk is greater with sliding glass doors because they often have large single panes that are hard to see. Stickers or other types of warnings on the glass surface make it more visible and help prevent injury. In the UK, Regulation 14 of the Workplace (Health and Safety Regulations) 1992 requires that builders mark windows and glass doors to make them conspicuous. Australian Standards: AS1288 and AS2208 require that glass doors be made of laminated, tempered, or toughened glass.
Buildings often have special purpose doors that automatically close to prevent the spread of fire and smoke. Fire doors that are improperly installed or tampered with can increase risk during a fire. Sometimes, door closer mechanisms ensure fire doors remain closed.
An additional fire risk is that doors may prevent access to emergency services personnel coming to fight the fire and rescue occupants, etc. Fire fighters must use door breaching techniques in these situations to gain access.
Doors in public buildings often have panic bars, which open the door in response to anyone pressing against the bar from the inside in the event of a fire or other emergency.
Vehicle doors present an increased risk of trapping hands or fingers due to the proximity of occupants.
Bicyclists cycling on public roads risk dooring: collision with an abruptly opened vehicle door. Because cyclists often ride near parked cars alongside the road, they are particularly vulnerable.
In aircraft, doors from pressurized sections to un-pressurized compartments or the exterior can pose risk if they open during flight. Air may rush out of the fuselage with sufficient velocity to eject unsecured occupants, cargo, and other items, and drastic pressure differences between compartments may make aircraft floors or other interior partitions fail. These concerns are typically mitigated with plug doors, which open in toward the pressurized compartment and are forced into their door frames by the difference in air pressure. Most cabin doors are of this type, but cargo doors typically open outward to maximise interior space, and require hefty locking mechanisms to overcome internal pressure and prevent explosive decompression.
A number of aircraft accidents have involved outward-opening door failures, including: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A door is a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into and egress (exit) from an enclosure. The created opening in the wall is a doorway or portal. A door's essential and primary purpose is to provide security by controlling access to the doorway (portal). Conventionally, it is a panel that fits into the doorway of a building, room, or vehicle. Doors are generally made of a material suited to the door's task. They are commonly attached by hinges, but can move by other means, such as slides or counterbalancing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The door may be able to move in various ways (at angles away from the doorway/portal, by sliding on a plane parallel to the frame, by folding in angles on a parallel plane, or by spinning along an axis at the center of the frame) to allow or prevent ingress or egress. In most cases, a door's interior matches its exterior side. But in other cases (e.g., a vehicle door) the two sides are radically different.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Many doors incorporate locking mechanisms to ensure that only some people can open them (such as with a key). Doors may have devices such as knockers or doorbells by which people outside announce their presence. (In some countries, such as Brazil, it is customary to clap from the sidewalk to announce one's presence.) Apart from providing access into and out of a space, doors may have the secondary functions of ensuring privacy by preventing unwanted attention from outsiders, of separating areas with different functions, of allowing light to pass into and out of a space, of controlling ventilation or air drafts so that interiors may be more effectively heated or cooled, of dampening noise, and of blocking the spread of fire.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Doors can have aesthetic, symbolic, ritualistic purposes. Receiving the key to a door can signify a change in status from outsider to insider. Doors and doorways frequently appear in literature and the arts with metaphorical or allegorical import as a portent of change.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The earliest recorded doors appear in the paintings of Egyptian tombs, which show them as single or double doors, each of a single piece of wood. People may have believed these were doors to the afterlife, and some include designs of the afterlife. In Egypt, where the climate is intensely dry, doors were not framed against warping, but in other countries required framed doors—which, according to Vitruvius (iv. 6.) was done with stiles (sea/si) and rails (see: Frame and panel), the enclosed panels filled with tympana set in grooves in the stiles and rails. The stiles were the vertical boards, one of which, tenoned or hinged, is known as the hanging stile, the other as the middle or meeting stile. The horizontal cross pieces are the top rail, bottom rail, and middle or intermediate rails.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The most ancient doors were made of timber, such as those referred to in the Biblical depiction of King Solomon's temple being in olive wood (I Kings vi. 31–35), which were carved and overlaid with gold. The doors that Homer mentions appear to have been cased in silver or brass. Besides olive wood, elm, cedar, oak and cypress were used. Two doors over 5,000 years old have been found by archaeologists near Zürich, Switzerland.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Ancient doors were hung by pintles at the top and bottom of the hanging stile, which worked in sockets in the lintel and sill, the latter in some hard stone such as basalt or granite. Those Hilprecht found at Nippur, dating from 2000 BC, were in dolerite. The tenons of the gates at Balawat were sheathed with bronze (now in the British Museum). These doors or gates were hung in two leaves, each about 2.54 m (100 in) wide and 8.2 m (27 ft) high; they were encased with bronze bands or strips, 25.4 cm (10.0 in) high, covered with repoussé decoration of figures. The wood doors would seem to have been about 7.62 cm (3.00 in) thick, but the hanging stile was over 360 millimetres (14 in) diameter. Other sheathings of various sizes in bronze show this was a universal method adopted to protect the wood pivots. In the Hauran in Syria where timber is scarce, the doors were made of stone, and one measuring 1.63 by 0.79 m (64 by 31 in) is in the British Museum; the band on the meeting stile shows that it was one of the leaves of a double door. At Kuffeir near Bostra in Syria, Burckhardt found stone doors, 2.74 to 3.048 m (8.99 to 10.00 ft) high, being the entrance doors of the town. In Etruria many stone doors are referred to by Dennis.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Ancient Greek and Roman doors were either single doors, double doors, triple doors, sliding doors or folding doors, in the last case the leaves were hinged and folded back. In the tomb of Theron at Agrigentum there is a single four-panel door carved in stone. In the Blundell collection is a bas-relief of a temple with double doors, each leaf with five panels. Among existing examples, the bronze doors in the church of SS. Cosmas and Damiano, in Rome, are important examples of Roman metal work of the best period; they are in two leaves, each with two panels, and are framed in bronze. Those of the Pantheon are similar in design, with narrow horizontal panels in addition, at the top, bottom and middle. Two other bronze doors of the Roman period are in the Lateran Basilica.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Greek scholar Heron of Alexandria created the earliest known automatic door in the first century AD during the era of Roman Egypt. The first foot-sensor-activated automatic door was made in China during the reign of Emperor Yang of Sui (r. 604–618), who had one installed for his royal library. Gates powered by water featured in illustrations of the automatons of the Arab inventor Al-Jazari.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Copper and its alloys were integral in medieval architecture. The doors of the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem (6th century) are covered with plates of bronze, cut out in patterns. Those of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople, of the eighth and ninth century, are wrought in bronze, and the west doors of the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle (9th century), of similar manufacture, were probably brought from Constantinople, as also some of those in St. Marks, Venice. The bronze doors on the Aachen Cathedral in Germany date back to about 800 AD. Bronze baptistery doors at the Cathedral of Florence were completed in 1423 by Ghiberti. (For more information, see: Copper in architecture).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Of the 11th and 12th centuries there are numerous examples of bronze doors, the earliest being one at Hildesheim, Germany (1015). The Hildesheim design affected the concept of Gniezno door in Poland. Of others in South Italy and Sicily, the following are the finest: in Sant'Andrea, Amalfi (1060); Salerno (1099); Canosa di Puglia (1111); Troia, two doors (1119 and 1124); Ravello (1179), by Barisano of Trani, who also made doors for Trani cathedral; and in Monreale and Pisa cathedrals, by Bonano of Pisa. In all these cases the hanging stile had pivots at the top and bottom. The exact period when the builder moved to the hinge is unknown, but the change apparently brought about another method of strengthening and decorating doors—wrought-iron bands of various designs. As a rule, three bands with ornamental work constitute the hinges, with rings outside the hanging stiles that fit on vertical tenons set into the masonry or wooden frame. There is an early example of the 12th century in Lincoln. In France, the metalwork of the doors of Notre Dame at Paris is a beautiful example, but many others exist throughout France and England.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In Italy, celebrated doors include those of the Battistero di San Giovanni (Florence), which are all in bronze—including the door frames. The modeling of the figures, birds and foliage of the south doorway, by Andrea Pisano (1330), and of the east doorway by Ghiberti (1425–1452), are of great beauty. In the north door (1402–1424), Ghiberti adopted the same scheme of design for the paneling and figure subjects as Andrea Pisano, but in the east door, the rectangular panels are all filled, with bas-reliefs that illustrate Scripture subjects and innumerable figures. These may the gates of Paradise of which Michelangelo speaks.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Doors of the mosques in Cairo were of two kinds: those externally cased with sheets of bronze or iron, cut in decorative patterns, and incised or inlaid, with bosses in relief; and those of wood-framed with interlaced square and diamond designs. The latter design is Coptic in origin. The doors of the palace at Palermo, which were made by Saracenic workmen for the Normans, are fine examples in good preservation. A somewhat similar decorative class of door is found in Verona, where the edges of the stiles and rails are beveled and notched.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In the Renaissance period, Italian doors are quite simple, their architects trusting more to the doorways for effect; but in France and Germany the contrary is the case, the doors being elaborately carved, especially in the Louis XIV and Louis XV periods, and sometimes with architectural features such as columns and entablatures with pediment and niches, the doorway being in plain masonry. While in Italy the tendency was to give scale by increasing the number of panels, in France the contrary seems to have been the rule; and one of the great doors at Fontainebleau, which is in two leaves, is entirely carried out as if consisting of one great panel only.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The earliest Renaissance doors in France are those of the cathedral of St. Sauveur at Aix (1503). In the lower panels there are figures 3 ft (0.91 m). high in Gothic niches, and in the upper panels a double range of niches with figures about 2 ft (0.61 m). high with canopies over them, all carved in cedar. The south door of Beauvais Cathedral is in some respects the finest in France; the upper panels are carved in high relief with figure subjects and canopies over them. The doors of the church at Gisors (1575) are carved with figures in niches subdivided by classic pilasters superimposed. In St. Maclou at Rouen are three magnificently carved doors; those by Jean Goujon have figures in niches on each side, and others in a group of great beauty in the center. The other doors, probably about forty to fifty years later, are enriched with bas-reliefs, landscapes, figures and elaborate interlaced borders.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center contains the four largest doors. The Vehicle Assembly Building was originally built for the assembly of the Apollo missions' Saturn vehicles and was then used to support Space Shuttle operations. Each of the four doors are 139 meters (456 feet) high.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The oldest door in England can be found in Westminster Abbey and dates from 1050. In England in the 17th century the door panels were raised with bolection or projecting moldings, sometimes richly carved, around them; in the 18th century the moldings worked on the stiles and rails were carved with the egg-and-dart ornament.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There are many kinds of doors, with different purposes. The most common type is the single-leaf door, which consists of a single rigid panel that fills the doorway. There are many variations on this basic design, such as the double-leaf door or double door and French windows, which have two adjacent independent panels hinged on each side of the doorway.",
"title": "Design and styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "",
"title": "Design and styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Most doors are hinged along one side to allow the door to pivot away from the doorway in one direction, but not the other. The axis of rotation is usually vertical. In some cases, such as hinged garage doors, the axis may be horizontal, above the door opening.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Doors can be hinged so that the axis of rotation is not in the plane of the door to reduce the space required on the side to which the door opens. This requires a mechanism so that the axis of rotation is on the side other than that in which the door opens. This is sometimes the case in trains or airplanes, such as for the door to the toilet, which opens inward.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A swing door has special single-action hinges that allow it to open either outward or inward, and is usually sprung to keep it closed.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "French doors are derived from the French design called the casement door. It is a door with lites where all or some panels would be in a casement door. A French door traditionally has a moulded panel at the bottom of the door. It is called a French window when used in a pair as double-leaved doors with large glass panels in each door leaf, and in which the doors may swing out (typically) as well as in.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "A double-acting door, patented in 1880 by the Dutch-American engineer Lorenz Bommer, swings both ways. They are often used in areas where many people are likely to pass through, such as restaurant kitchens.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "A Dutch door or stable door consists of two halves. The top half operates independently from the bottom half. A variant exists in which opening the top part separately is possible, but because the lower part has a lip on the inside, closing the top part, while leaving the lower part open, is not.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "A garden door resembles a French window (with lites), but is more secure because only one door is operable. The hinge of the operating door is next to the adjacent fixed door and the latch is located at the wall opening jamb rather than between the two doors or with the use of an espagnolette bolt.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "It is often useful to have doors which slide along tracks, often for space or aesthetic considerations.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "A bypass door is a door unit that has two or more sections. The doors can slide in either direction along one axis on parallel overhead tracks, sliding past each other. They are most commonly used in closets to provide access one side of the closet at a time. Doors in a bypass unit overlap slightly when viewed from the front so they do not have a visible gap when closed.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Doors which slide inside a wall cavity are called pocket doors. This type of door is used in tight spaces where privacy is also required. The door slab is mounted to roller and a track at the top of the door and slides inside a wall.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Sliding glass doors are common in many houses, particularly as an entrance to the backyard. Such doors are also popular for use for the entrances to commercial structures, although they are not counted as fire exit doors. The door that moves is called the \"active leaf\", while the door that remains fixed is called the \"inactive leaf\".",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "A revolving door has several wings or leaves, generally four, radiating from a central shaft, forming compartments that rotate about a vertical axis. A revolving door allows people to pass in both directions without colliding, and forms an airlock maintaining a seal between inside and out.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "A pivot door, instead of hinges, is supported on a bearing some distance away from the edge, so that there is more or less of a gap on the pivot side as well as the opening side. In some cases the pivot is central, creating two equal openings.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "A high-speed door is a very fast door some with opening speeds of up to 4 m/s, mainly used in the industrial sector where the speed of a door has an effect on production logistics, temperature and pressure control. High-speed cleanroom doors, usually consisting of a transparent material on a stainless steel frame, are used in pharmaceutical industries to allow passage between work areas while admitting minimal contaminants. The powerful high-speed doors have a smooth surface structure and no protruding edges, allowing minimal particle retention and easy cleaning.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "High-speed doors are made to handle a high number of openings, generally more than 200,000 a year. They must be built with heavy-duty parts and counterbalance systems for speed enhancement and emergency opening function. The door curtain was originally made of PVC, but was later also developed in aluminium and acrylic glass sections. High-speed refrigeration and cold-room doors with excellent insulation values have also been introduced for green and energy-saving requirements.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In North America, the Door and Access Systems Manufacturing Association (DASMA) defines high-performance doors as non-residential powered doors characterized by rolling, folding, sliding or swinging action, that are either high-cycle (minimum 100 cycles/day) or high-speed (minimum 20 inches (508 mm)/second), and two out of three of the following: made-to-order for exact size and custom features, able to withstand equipment impact (break-away if accidentally hit by vehicle), or able to sustain heavy use with minimal maintenance.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Automatically opening doors are powered open and closed either by electricity, spring, or both. There are several methods by which an automatically opening door is activated:",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In addition to activation sensors, automatically opening doors are generally fitted with safety sensors. These are usually an infrared curtain or beam, but can be a pressure mat fitted on the swing side of the door. The safety sensor prevents the door from colliding with an object by stopping or slowing its motion. A mechanism in modern automatic doors ensures that the door can open in a power failure.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Up-and-over or overhead doors are often used in garages. Instead of hinges, it has a mechanism, often counterbalanced or sprung, so it can lift and rest horizontally above the opening. A roller shutter or sectional overhead door is one variant of this type.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "A tambour door or roller door is an up-and-over door made of narrow horizontal slats that rolls up and down by sliding along vertical tracks; it is typically found in entertainment centres and cabinets.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Rebated doors, a term chiefly used in Britain, are double doors with a lip or overlap (i.e. a rabbet) on the vertical edge(s) where they meet. Fire-rating can be achieved with an applied edge-guard or astragal molding on the meeting stile, in accordance with the American fire door.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Evolution Door is a trackless door that moves in the same closure level as a sliding door. Invented by Austrian artist Klemens Torggler, is a further development of the Drehplattentür that normally consists of two rotatable, connected panels which move to each other when opening.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Architectural doors have numerous general and specialized uses. Doors are generally used to separate interior spaces (closets, rooms, etc.) for convenience, privacy, safety, and security reasons. Doors are also used to secure passages into a building from the exterior, for reasons of climate control and safety.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Doors also are applied in more specialized cases:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Panel doors, also called stile and rail doors, are built with frame and panel construction. EN 12519 is describing the terms which are officially used in European Member States. The main parts are listed below:",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Also known as ledges and braced, board and batten doors are an older design consisting primarily of vertical slats:",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "As board and Batten doors.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Impact-resistant doors have rounded stile edges to dissipate energy and minimize edge chipping, scratching and denting. The formed edges are often made of an engineered material. Impact-resistant doors excel in high traffic areas such as hospitals, schools, hotels and coastal areas.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "This type consists of a solid timber frame, filled on one face, face with tongue and groove boards. Quite often used externally with the boards on the weather face.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Flushing of a door means the door is flush with the face of the wall on either side.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Generally, door swings, or handing, are determined while standing on the outside or less secure side of the door while facing the door (i.e., standing on the side requiring a key to open, going from outside to inside, or from public to private).",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "It is important to get the hand and swing correct on exterior doors, as the transom is usually sloped and sealed to resist water entry, and properly drain. In some custom millwork (or with some master carpenters), the manufacture or installer bevels the leading edge (the first edge to meet the jamb as the door closes) so that the door fits tight without binding. Specifying an incorrect hand or swing can make the door bind, not close properly, or leak. Fixing this error is expensive or time-consuming. In North America, many doors now come with factory-installed hinges, pre-hung on the jamb and sills.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "While facing the door from the outside or less secure side, if the hinge is on the right side of the door, the door is \"right handed\"; or if the hinge is on the left, it is \"left handed\". If the door swings toward you, it is \"reverse swing\"; or if the door swings away from you, it is \"normal swing\".",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In other words:",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "New exterior doors are largely defined by the type of materials they are made from: wood, steel, fiberglass, UPVC/vinyl, aluminum, composite, glass (patio doors), etc.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Wooden doors – including solid wood doors – are a top choice for many homeowners, largely because of the aesthetic qualities of wood. Many wood doors are custom-made, but they have several downsides: their price, their maintenance requirements (regular painting and staining) and their limited insulating value (R-5 to R-6, not including the effects of the glass elements of the doors). Wood doors often have an overhang requirement to maintain a warranty. An overhang is a roof, porch area or awning that helps to protect the door and its finish from UV rays.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Steel doors are another major type of residential front doors; most of them come with a polyurethane or other type of foam insulation core – a critical factor in a building's overall comfort and efficiency. Steel doors mostly in default comes along with frame and lock system, which is a high cost efficiency factor compared to wooden doors.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Most modern exterior walls provide thermal insulation and energy efficiency, which can be indicated by the Energy Star label or the Passive House standards. Premium composite (including steel doors with a thick core of polyurethane or other foam), fiberglass and vinyl doors benefit from the materials they are made from, from a thermal perspective.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "But there are very few door models with an R-value close to 10 (the R-value measures how well a barrier resists the conductive flow of heat). This is far less than the R-40 walls or the R-50 ceilings of super-insulated buildings – Passive Solar and Zero Energy Buildings. Typical doors are not thick enough to provide very high levels of energy efficiency.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Many doors may have good R-values at their center, but their overall energy efficiency is reduced because of the presence of glass and reinforcing elements, or because of poor weatherstripping and the way the door is manufactured.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Door weatherstripping is particularly important for energy efficiency. German-made passive house doors use multiple weatherstrips, including magnetic strips, to meet higher standards. These weatherstrips reduce energy losses due to air leakage.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Standard door sizes in the US run along 2\" increments. Customary sizes have a height of 78 or 80 in (2,000 or 2,000 mm) and a width of 18, 24, 26, 28, 30 or 36 in (460, 610, 660, 710, 760 or 910 mm). Most residential passage (room to room) doors are 30 in × 80 in (760 mm × 2,030 mm).",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "A standard US residential (exterior) door size is 36 in × 80 in (910 mm × 2,030 mm). Interior doors for wheelchair access must also have a minimum width of 36 in (910 mm). Residential interior doors, as well as the doors of many small stores, offices, and other light commercial buildings, are often somewhat smaller than the doors of larger commercial buildings, public buildings, and grand homes. Older buildings often have smaller doors.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Thickness: Most pre-fabricated doors are 1 3/8\" thick (for interior doors) or 1 3/4\" (exterior).",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Closets: small spaces such as closets, dressing rooms, half-baths, storage rooms, cellars, etc. often are accessed through doors smaller than passage doors in one or both dimensions but similar in design.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Garages: Garage doors are generally 84\" (7 feet; 2134 mm) or 96\" (8 feet; 2438 mm) wide for a single-car opening. Two car garage doors (sometimes called double car doors) are a single door 192\" (16 feet; 4877 mm). Because of size and weight these doors are usually sectional. That is split into four or five horizontal sections so that they can be raised more easily and do not require a lot of additional space above the door when opening and closing. Single piece double garage doors are common in some older homes.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Standard DIN doors are defined in DIN 18101 (published 1955–07, 1985–01, 2014–08). Door sizes are also given in the construction standard for wooden door panels (DIN 68706–1). The DIN commission created the harmonized European standard DIN EN 14351-1 for exterior doors and DIN EN 14351-2 for interior doors (published 2006–07, 2010–08), which define requirements for the CE marking and provide standard sizes by examples in the appendix.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The DIN 18101 standard has a normative size (Nennmaß) slightly larger than the panel size (Türblatt) as the standard derives the panel sizes from the normative size being different single door vs double door and molded vs unmolded doors. DIN 18101/1985 defines interior single molded doors to have a common panel height of 1985 mm (normativ height 2010 mm) at panel widths of 610 mm, 735 mm, 860 mm, 985 mm, 1110 mm, plus a larger door panel size of 1110 mm x 2110 mm. The newer DIN 18101/2014 drops the definition of just five standard door sizes in favor of a basic raster running along 125 mm increments where the height and width are independent. Panel width may be in the range 485 mm to 1360 mmm, and the height may be in the range of 1610 mm to 2735 mm. The most common interior door is 860 mm × 1,985 mm (33.9 in × 78.1 in).",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "When framed in wood for snug fitting of a door, the doorway consists of two vertical jambs on either side, a lintel or head jamb at the top, and perhaps a threshold at the bottom. When a door has more than one movable section, one of the sections may be called a leaf. See door furniture for a discussion of attachments to doors such as door handles, doorknobs, and door knockers.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Door furniture or hardware refers to any of the items that are attached to a door or a drawer to enhance its functionality or appearance. This includes items such as hinges, handles, door stops, etc.",
"title": "Construction and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Door safety relates to prevention of door-related accidents. Such accidents take place in various forms, and in a number of locations; ranging from car doors to garage doors. Accidents vary in severity and frequency. According to the National Safety Council in the United States, around 300,000 door-related injuries occur every year.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The types of accidents vary from relatively minor cases where doors cause damage to other objects, such as walls, to serious cases resulting in human injury, particularly to fingers, hands, and feet. A closing door can exert up to 40 tons per square inch of pressure between the hinges. Because of the number of accidents taking place, there has been a surge in the number of lawsuits. Thus organisations may be at risk when car doors or doors within buildings are unprotected.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "According to the US General Services Administration, discussing child care centres:",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "...It is essential that children's fingers be protected from being crushed or otherwise injured in the hinge space of a swinging door or gate. There are simple devices available to attach to the hinge side, ensuring that this type of injury does not occur. As the door closes, the hand is pushed out of the opening, away from harm. In addition, young children are vulnerable to injury when they fall against the other (hinged) side of doors and gates, striking projected hinges. Piano hinges are not recommended to alleviate this problem as they tend to sag over time with heavy use. Instead, an inexpensive device fitting over hinges is available on the market and should be used to ensure safety...",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Whenever a door is opened outward, there is a risk that it could strike another person. In many cases this can be avoided by architectural design which favors doors which open inward to rooms (from the perspective of a common area such as a corridor, the door opens outward). In cases where this is infeasible, it may be possible to avoid an accident by placing vision panels in the door.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Inward-hinged doors can also escalate an accident by preventing people from escaping the building: people inside the building may press against the doors, and thus prevent the doors from opening. Related accidents include:",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Today, the exterior doors of most large (especially public) buildings open outward, while interior doors such as doors to individual rooms, offices, suites, etc. open inward, as do many exterior doors of houses, particularly in North America.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Doorstops are simple devices that prevent a door from contacting and possibly damaging another object (typically a wall). They may either absorb the force of a moving door, or hold the door against unintended motion.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Door guards (hinge guards, anti-finger trapping devices, or finger guards) help prevent finger trapping accidents, as doors pose a risk to children, especially when closing. Door guards protect fingers in door hinges by covering the hinge-side gap of an open door, typically with a piece of rubber or plastic that wraps from the door frame to the door. Other door safety products eject the fingers from the push side of the door as it closes.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "There are various levels of door protection. Anti-finger trapping devices in front may leave the rear hinge pin side of doors unprotected. Full door protection uses front and rear anti-finger trapping devices and ensures the hinge side of a door is fully isolated. A risk assessment of the door determines the appropriate level of protection.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "There is also handle-side door protection, which prevents the door from slamming shut on the frame, which can cause injury to fingers/hands.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Glass doors pose the risk of unintentional collision if a person is unaware there is a door, or thinks it is open when it is not. This risk is greater with sliding glass doors because they often have large single panes that are hard to see. Stickers or other types of warnings on the glass surface make it more visible and help prevent injury. In the UK, Regulation 14 of the Workplace (Health and Safety Regulations) 1992 requires that builders mark windows and glass doors to make them conspicuous. Australian Standards: AS1288 and AS2208 require that glass doors be made of laminated, tempered, or toughened glass.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Buildings often have special purpose doors that automatically close to prevent the spread of fire and smoke. Fire doors that are improperly installed or tampered with can increase risk during a fire. Sometimes, door closer mechanisms ensure fire doors remain closed.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "An additional fire risk is that doors may prevent access to emergency services personnel coming to fight the fire and rescue occupants, etc. Fire fighters must use door breaching techniques in these situations to gain access.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Doors in public buildings often have panic bars, which open the door in response to anyone pressing against the bar from the inside in the event of a fire or other emergency.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Vehicle doors present an increased risk of trapping hands or fingers due to the proximity of occupants.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Bicyclists cycling on public roads risk dooring: collision with an abruptly opened vehicle door. Because cyclists often ride near parked cars alongside the road, they are particularly vulnerable.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "In aircraft, doors from pressurized sections to un-pressurized compartments or the exterior can pose risk if they open during flight. Air may rush out of the fuselage with sufficient velocity to eject unsecured occupants, cargo, and other items, and drastic pressure differences between compartments may make aircraft floors or other interior partitions fail. These concerns are typically mitigated with plug doors, which open in toward the pressurized compartment and are forced into their door frames by the difference in air pressure. Most cabin doors are of this type, but cargo doors typically open outward to maximise interior space, and require hefty locking mechanisms to overcome internal pressure and prevent explosive decompression.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "A number of aircraft accidents have involved outward-opening door failures, including:",
"title": "Safety"
}
]
| A door is a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into and egress (exit) from an enclosure. The created opening in the wall is a doorway or portal. A door's essential and primary purpose is to provide security by controlling access to the doorway (portal). Conventionally, it is a panel that fits into the doorway of a building, room, or vehicle. Doors are generally made of a material suited to the door's task. They are commonly attached by hinges, but can move by other means, such as slides or counterbalancing. The door may be able to move in various ways to allow or prevent ingress or egress. In most cases, a door's interior matches its exterior side. But in other cases the two sides are radically different. Many doors incorporate locking mechanisms to ensure that only some people can open them. Doors may have devices such as knockers or doorbells by which people outside announce their presence. Apart from providing access into and out of a space, doors may have the secondary functions of ensuring privacy by preventing unwanted attention from outsiders, of separating areas with different functions, of allowing light to pass into and out of a space, of controlling ventilation or air drafts so that interiors may be more effectively heated or cooled, of dampening noise, and of blocking the spread of fire. Doors can have aesthetic, symbolic, ritualistic purposes. Receiving the key to a door can signify a change in status from outsider to insider. Doors and doorways frequently appear in literature and the arts with metaphorical or allegorical import as a portent of change. | 2001-10-11T14:30:14Z | 2023-12-29T19:06:58Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door |
8,640 | Database normalization | Database normalization or database normalisation (see spelling differences) is the process of structuring a relational database in accordance with a series of so-called normal forms in order to reduce data redundancy and improve data integrity. It was first proposed by British computer scientist Edgar F. Codd as part of his relational model.
Normalization entails organizing the columns (attributes) and tables (relations) of a database to ensure that their dependencies are properly enforced by database integrity constraints. It is accomplished by applying some formal rules either by a process of synthesis (creating a new database design) or decomposition (improving an existing database design).
A basic objective of the first normal form defined by Codd in 1970 was to permit data to be queried and manipulated using a "universal data sub-language" grounded in first-order logic. An example of such a language is SQL, though it is one that Codd regarded as seriously flawed.
The objectives of normalisation beyond 1NF (first normal form) were stated by Codd as:
When an attempt is made to modify (update, insert into, or delete from) a relation, the following undesirable side effects may arise in relations that have not been sufficiently normalized:
A fully normalized database allows its structure to be extended to accommodate new types of data without changing existing structure too much. As a result, applications interacting with the database are minimally affected.
Normalized relations, and the relationship between one normalized relation and another, mirror real-world concepts and their interrelationships.
Codd introduced the concept of normalization and what is now known as the first normal form (1NF) in 1970. Codd went on to define the second normal form (2NF) and third normal form (3NF) in 1971, and Codd and Raymond F. Boyce defined the Boyce–Codd normal form (BCNF) in 1974.
Informally, a relational database relation is often described as "normalized" if it meets third normal form. Most 3NF relations are free of insertion, updation, and deletion anomalies.
The normal forms (from least normalized to most normalized) are:
Normalization is a database design technique, which is used to design a relational database table up to higher normal form. The process is progressive, and a higher level of database normalization cannot be achieved unless the previous levels have been satisfied.
That means that, having data in unnormalized form (the least normalized) and aiming to achieve the highest level of normalization, the first step would be to ensure compliance to first normal form, the second step would be to ensure second normal form is satisfied, and so forth in order mentioned above, until the data conform to sixth normal form.
However, it is worth noting that normal forms beyond 4NF are mainly of academic interest, as the problems they exist to solve rarely appear in practice.
The data in the following example were intentionally designed to contradict most of the normal forms. In practice it is often possible to skip some of the normalization steps because the data is already normalized to some extent. Fixing a violation of one normal form also often fixes a violation of a higher normal form. In the example, one table has been chosen for normalization at each step, meaning that at the end, some tables might not be sufficiently normalized.
Let a database table exist with the following structure:
For this example it is assumed that each book has only one author.
A table that conforms to the relational model has a primary key which uniquely identifies a row. Two books could have the same title, but an ISBN uniquely identifies a book, so it can be used as the primary key:
In the first normal form each field contains a single value. A field may not contain a set of values or a nested record.
Subject contains a set of subject values, meaning it does not comply.
To solve the problem, the subjects are extracted into a separate Subject table:
In Subject, ISBN is a foreign key: It refers to the primary key in Book, and makes the relationship between these two tables explicit.
Instead of one table in unnormalized form, there are now two tables conforming to the 1NF.
The Book table below has a composite key of {Title, Format} (indicated by the underlining), which will not satisfy 2NF if some subset of that key is a determinant. At this point in our design the key is not finalised as the primary key, so it is called a candidate key. Consider the following table:
All of the attributes that are not part of the candidate key depend on Title, but only Price also depends on Format. To conform to 2NF and remove duplicates, every non-candidate-key attribute must depend on the whole candidate key, not just part of it.
To normalize this table, make {Title} a (simple) candidate key (the primary key) so that every non-candidate-key attribute depends on the whole candidate key, and remove Price into a separate table so that its dependency on Format can be preserved: | [
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"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "Normalization entails organizing the columns (attributes) and tables (relations) of a database to ensure that their dependencies are properly enforced by database integrity constraints. It is accomplished by applying some formal rules either by a process of synthesis (creating a new database design) or decomposition (improving an existing database design).",
"title": ""
},
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"title": "Objectives"
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"text": "The objectives of normalisation beyond 1NF (first normal form) were stated by Codd as:",
"title": "Objectives"
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"text": "When an attempt is made to modify (update, insert into, or delete from) a relation, the following undesirable side effects may arise in relations that have not been sufficiently normalized:",
"title": "Objectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "A fully normalized database allows its structure to be extended to accommodate new types of data without changing existing structure too much. As a result, applications interacting with the database are minimally affected.",
"title": "Objectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Normalized relations, and the relationship between one normalized relation and another, mirror real-world concepts and their interrelationships.",
"title": "Objectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Codd introduced the concept of normalization and what is now known as the first normal form (1NF) in 1970. Codd went on to define the second normal form (2NF) and third normal form (3NF) in 1971, and Codd and Raymond F. Boyce defined the Boyce–Codd normal form (BCNF) in 1974.",
"title": "Normal forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Informally, a relational database relation is often described as \"normalized\" if it meets third normal form. Most 3NF relations are free of insertion, updation, and deletion anomalies.",
"title": "Normal forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The normal forms (from least normalized to most normalized) are:",
"title": "Normal forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Normalization is a database design technique, which is used to design a relational database table up to higher normal form. The process is progressive, and a higher level of database normalization cannot be achieved unless the previous levels have been satisfied.",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "That means that, having data in unnormalized form (the least normalized) and aiming to achieve the highest level of normalization, the first step would be to ensure compliance to first normal form, the second step would be to ensure second normal form is satisfied, and so forth in order mentioned above, until the data conform to sixth normal form.",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "However, it is worth noting that normal forms beyond 4NF are mainly of academic interest, as the problems they exist to solve rarely appear in practice.",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The data in the following example were intentionally designed to contradict most of the normal forms. In practice it is often possible to skip some of the normalization steps because the data is already normalized to some extent. Fixing a violation of one normal form also often fixes a violation of a higher normal form. In the example, one table has been chosen for normalization at each step, meaning that at the end, some tables might not be sufficiently normalized.",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Let a database table exist with the following structure:",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "For this example it is assumed that each book has only one author.",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A table that conforms to the relational model has a primary key which uniquely identifies a row. Two books could have the same title, but an ISBN uniquely identifies a book, so it can be used as the primary key:",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In the first normal form each field contains a single value. A field may not contain a set of values or a nested record.",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Subject contains a set of subject values, meaning it does not comply.",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "To solve the problem, the subjects are extracted into a separate Subject table:",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In Subject, ISBN is a foreign key: It refers to the primary key in Book, and makes the relationship between these two tables explicit.",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Instead of one table in unnormalized form, there are now two tables conforming to the 1NF.",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Book table below has a composite key of {Title, Format} (indicated by the underlining), which will not satisfy 2NF if some subset of that key is a determinant. At this point in our design the key is not finalised as the primary key, so it is called a candidate key. Consider the following table:",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "All of the attributes that are not part of the candidate key depend on Title, but only Price also depends on Format. To conform to 2NF and remove duplicates, every non-candidate-key attribute must depend on the whole candidate key, not just part of it.",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "To normalize this table, make {Title} a (simple) candidate key (the primary key) so that every non-candidate-key attribute depends on the whole candidate key, and remove Price into a separate table so that its dependency on Format can be preserved:",
"title": "Example of a step-by-step normalization"
}
]
| Database normalization or database normalisation is the process of structuring a relational database in accordance with a series of so-called normal forms in order to reduce data redundancy and improve data integrity. It was first proposed by British computer scientist Edgar F. Codd as part of his relational model. Normalization entails organizing the columns (attributes) and tables (relations) of a database to ensure that their dependencies are properly enforced by database integrity constraints. It is accomplished by applying some formal rules either by a process of synthesis or decomposition. | 2001-10-12T16:34:43Z | 2023-11-08T08:16:31Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization |
8,641 | Desmothoracid | Order Desmothoracida, the desmothoracids, are a group of heliozoan protists, usually sessile and found in freshwater environments. The adult is a spherical cell around 10-20 μm in diameter surrounded by a perforated organic lorica, or shell, with many radial pseudopods projecting through the holes to capture food. These are supported by small bundles of microtubules that arise near a point on the nuclear membrane. Unlike other heliozoans, the microtubules are not in any regular geometric array, there does not appear to be a microtubule organizing center, and there is no distinction between the outer and inner cytoplasm.
Reproduction takes place by the budding-off of small motile cells, usually with two flagella. Later these are lost, and the pseudopods and lorica are formed. Typically, a single lengthened pseudopod will secrete a hollow stalk that attaches the cell to the substrate. The form of the flagella, the tubular cristae within the mitochondria, and other characters have led to the suggestion that the desmothoracids belong among what is now the Cercozoa. This was later confirmed by genetic studies.
As of the year 2000, the order Desmothoracida contained five genera with a total of 10 species. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Order Desmothoracida, the desmothoracids, are a group of heliozoan protists, usually sessile and found in freshwater environments. The adult is a spherical cell around 10-20 μm in diameter surrounded by a perforated organic lorica, or shell, with many radial pseudopods projecting through the holes to capture food. These are supported by small bundles of microtubules that arise near a point on the nuclear membrane. Unlike other heliozoans, the microtubules are not in any regular geometric array, there does not appear to be a microtubule organizing center, and there is no distinction between the outer and inner cytoplasm.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Reproduction takes place by the budding-off of small motile cells, usually with two flagella. Later these are lost, and the pseudopods and lorica are formed. Typically, a single lengthened pseudopod will secrete a hollow stalk that attaches the cell to the substrate. The form of the flagella, the tubular cristae within the mitochondria, and other characters have led to the suggestion that the desmothoracids belong among what is now the Cercozoa. This was later confirmed by genetic studies.",
"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "As of the year 2000, the order Desmothoracida contained five genera with a total of 10 species.",
"title": ""
}
]
| Order Desmothoracida, the desmothoracids, are a group of heliozoan protists, usually sessile and found in freshwater environments. The adult is a spherical cell around 10-20 μm in diameter surrounded by a perforated organic lorica, or shell, with many radial pseudopods projecting through the holes to capture food. These are supported by small bundles of microtubules that arise near a point on the nuclear membrane. Unlike other heliozoans, the microtubules are not in any regular geometric array, there does not appear to be a microtubule organizing center, and there is no distinction between the outer and inner cytoplasm. Reproduction takes place by the budding-off of small motile cells, usually with two flagella. Later these are lost, and the pseudopods and lorica are formed. Typically, a single lengthened pseudopod will secrete a hollow stalk that attaches the cell to the substrate. The form of the flagella, the tubular cristae within the mitochondria, and other characters have led to the suggestion that the desmothoracids belong among what is now the Cercozoa. This was later confirmed by genetic studies. As of the year 2000, the order Desmothoracida contained five genera with a total of 10 species. Order Desmothoracida Hartwig & Lesser 1874 emend. Honigberg et al. 1964
Family Clathrulinidae Claus 1874
Genus Clathrulina Cienkowski 1867 [Podosphaera Archer 1868 non Kunze 1823; Elaster Grimm 1872; Eleaster (sic) Schmidt 1913; Orbulinella Entz 1877]
Species Clathrulina elegans Cienkowski 1867 [Clathrulina ovalis (von Daday 1885) Deflandre, 1926; Clathrulina cienkowskii ovalis von Daday 1885; Clathrulina cienkowskii Mereschkowsky 1879; Clathrulina stuhlmanni Schaudinn 1897; Podosphaera haeckeliana Archer 1868; Elaster greeffi Grimm 1872]
Species Clathrulina smaragdea (Entz 1877) Mikrjukov 2000 [Orbulinella smaragdea Entz 1877; Orbulinella salina Labbe 1924]
Genus Hedriocystis Hertwig & Lesser 1874
Species Hedriocystis pellucida Hertwig & Lesser 1874
Species Hedriocystis minor Siemensma 1991
Species Hedriocystis zhadani Mikrjukov 2000
Genus Penardiophrys Mikrjukov 2000
Species Penardiophrys reticulata (Penard 1904) Mikrjukov 2000 [Hedriocystis reticulata Penard 1904]
Species Penardiophrys spinifera (Brown 1918) Mikrjukov 2000 [Hedriocystis spinifera Brown 1918]
Genus Cienkowskya Schaudinn 1896 non Regel & Rach 1859 non Solms 1867 [Cienkowskia Weldon & Hickson 1909 non Rostafinski 1873 non Schweinfurth 1867 non Solms 1867; Wagneria Cienkowsky 1881 non Robineau-Desvoidy 1830 non Gistl 1848 non Alenitzin 1873 non Lemaire 1857 non Hesse 1912 non Heilprin 1887 non McCook 1895 non Jedlicka 1935 non Denier 1933 non Meladze 1967; Monomastigocystis de Saedeleer 1930]
Species Cienkowskya mereschkovckii (Cienkowsky 1881) Schaudinn 1896 [Wagneria mereschkowskyi Cienkowsky 1881]
Species Cienkowskya brachypous (De Saedeleer 1930) Mikrjukov 2000 [Monomastigocystis brachypous de Saedeleer 1930; Hedriocystis brachypous (De Saedeleer 1930) Siemensma 1991]
Genus Actinosphaeridium Zacharias 1893 [Actinopshaeridium (sic)]
Species Actinosphaeridium pedatus Zacharias 1893 [Nuclearia caulescens Penard 1903] | 2021-10-22T00:46:24Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmothoracid |
|
8,642 | Dalhousie University | Dalhousie University (commonly known as Dal) is a large public research university in Nova Scotia, Canada, with three campuses in Halifax, a fourth in Bible Hill, and a second medical school campus in Saint John, New Brunswick. Dalhousie offers more than 4,000 courses, and over 200 degree programs in 13 undergraduate, graduate, and professional faculties. The university is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.
The institution was established as Dalhousie College, a nonsectarian institution established in 1818 by the eponymous Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, with education reformer, Thomas McCulloch, as its first principal. However, the college did not hold its first class until 1838, with operations remaining sporadic due to financial difficulties. The college was reorganized in 1863 and renamed The Governors of Dalhousie College and University. The university formally changed its name to Dalhousie University in 1997 through the same provincial legislation that merged the institution with the Technical University of Nova Scotia.
There are two student unions that represent student interests at the university: the Dalhousie Student Union and the Dalhousie Association for Graduate Students. Dalhousie's varsity teams, the Tigers, compete in the Atlantic University Sport conference of Canadian Interuniversity Sport. Dalhousie's Faculty of Agriculture varsity teams are called the Dalhousie Rams, and compete in the ACAA and CCAA. Dalhousie is a coeducational university with more than 20,000 students and 150,000 alumni around the world. The university's notable alumni include a Nobel Prize winner, 93 Rhodes Scholars, and a range of senior government officials, academics, and business leaders.
Dalhousie was founded, as the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, desired a non-denominational college in Halifax. Financing largely came from customs duties collected by a previous Lieutenant Governor, John Coape Sherbrooke, during the War of 1812 occupation of Castine, Maine; Sherbrooke invested £7,000 as an initial endowment and reserved £3,000 for the physical construction of the college. The college was established in 1818 though it faltered shortly after, as Ramsay left Halifax to serve as the Governor General of British North America. The school was structured upon the principles of the University of Edinburgh, located near Ramsay's home in Scotland, where lectures were open to male students, regardless of Christian religion or nationality.
In 1821, Dalhousie College was officially incorporated by the Nova Scotia House of Assembly under the 1821 Act of Incorporation. The college did not hold its first class until 1838; operation of the college was intermittent and no degrees were awarded. In 1841, an Act of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly conferred university powers on Dalhousie.
Dalhousie's first principal, Thomas McCulloch (1838 –1843), turned the school into an operating educational institution, and by doing so he was able to set important foundations for the university's non-sectarian outlook and positioning, not only within the communities of Halifax and Nova Scotia, but also as a government-funded and sanctioned institution within the British colonies. He fought with the government in Halifax for more equitable and non-sectarian education in Nova Scotia.
McCulloch, a Presbyterian minister and naturalist, was the founder of Nova Scotia's second degree-granting institution (after King's College, now University of King's College), Pictou Academy in Pictou, Nova Scotia, which attracted students from PEI, Cape Breton, as well as the Caribbean due of McCulloch's views and the school's ecumenical stance. On the founding of Pictou Academy in 1808, McCulloch writes,
Our view in establishing this institution is the instruction of youth. We do not merely design to advance them in learning; we propose that much care be taken in forming their minds, by correcting the natural propensities of the heart and instilling into them the principles of virtue, that education may not merely make them great but good men and good members of society. In doing so we intend to furnish them with the means of an extensive and liberal education; and this we hope, in connection with the former, will tend to make them ornaments to human nature and an honor to their country.
These beliefs set him apart in Nova Scotia as a radical education reformer.
In 1838, the board of Dalhousie College was able to convince McCulloch leave Pictou Academy and take on the floundering Dalhousie. With a reputation as an anti-papal pamphleteer and firmly against the Church of England's hold on higher education in Nova Scotia (through King's College), McCulloch carried with him from Pictou his education theory and pedagogy, “If Dalhousie College acquires usefulness and eminence, it will be not by an imitation of Oxford, but as an institution of science, and practical intelligence.” His approach to education was radical: he firmly believed that all schools "ought first to be ascertained, how far it is calculated to improve the community; and, if its general utility appear, it is, in proportion to its value and to the extent of the public funds, unquestionably entitled to the protection of Government, whether it belong to churchmen or [Presbyterian] dissenters, protestants or catholics, ought to be entirely disregarded!" He was responsible for creating a chair of natural history at Dalhousie to teach "geology, mineralogy, botany, and zoology."
Following McCulloch's death, the college fell into decline once again and was reorganized as a high school in 1848. In 1863, the college opened for a third time and was reorganized by another legislative act, which added "University" to the school's name: "The Governors of Dalhousie College and University". Dalhousie reopened with six professors and one tutor. When it awarded its first degrees in 1866, the student body consisted of 28 male students working toward degrees and 28 occasional students.
Despite the reorganization and an increase in students, money continued to be a problem for the institution. In 1879, amid talks of closure due to the university's dire financial situation, George Munro, a wealthy New York publisher with Nova Scotian roots, began to donate to the university; Munro was brother-in-law to Dalhousie's Board of Governors member John Forrest. As such, Munro is credited with rescuing Dalhousie from closure. In honour of his contributions, Dalhousie observes a university holiday called George Munro Day on the first Friday of each February. The first female graduate was Margaret Florence Newcombe from Grafton, Nova Scotia, who earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1885.
Originally located at the space now occupied by Halifax City Hall, the college moved in 1886 to Carleton Campus and spread gradually to Studley Campus. Dalhousie grew steadily during the 20th century. From 1889 to 1962 the Halifax Conservatory was affiliated with and awarded degrees through Dalhousie. In 1920, several buildings were destroyed by fire on the campus of the University of King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Through a grant from the Carnegie Foundation, King's College relocated to Halifax and entered into a partnership with Dalhousie that continues to this day.
Dalhousie expanded on 1 April,1997 when provincial legislation mandated an amalgamation with the nearby Technical University of Nova Scotia. This merger saw reorganization of faculties and departments to create the Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Computer Science and the Faculty of Architecture and Planning. From 1997 to 2000, the Technical University of Nova Scotia operated as a constituent college of Dalhousie called Dalhousie Polytechnic of Nova Scotia (DalTech) until the collegiate system was dissolved. The legislation that merged the two schools also formally changed the name of the institution to its present form, Dalhousie University. On 1 September 2012, the Nova Scotia Agricultural College merged into Dalhousie to form a new Faculty of Agriculture, located in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia.
Dalhousie has three campuses within the Halifax Peninsula and a fourth, the Agricultural Campus, in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia.
Studley Campus in Halifax serves as the primary campus; it houses the majority of the university's academic buildings such as faculties, athletic facilities, and the university's Student Union Building. The campus is largely surrounded by residential neighbourhoods.
Robie Street divides it from the adjacent Carleton Campus, which houses the faculties of dentistry, medicine, and other health profession departments. The campus is adjacent to two large teaching hospitals affiliated with the school: the IWK Health Centre and the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre.
Sexton Campus in Downtown Halifax hosts the engineering, architecture and planning faculties. Sexton Campus served as the campus of the Technical University of Nova Scotia prior to amalgamation. The Agricultural Campus in Bible Hill, a suburban community of Truro, served as the campus for the Nova Scotia Agricultural College prior to its merger with Dalhousie in 2011. The university presently operates the largest academic library system in Atlantic Canada, and hosts the headquarters for the Ocean Tracking Network.
The buildings at Dalhousie vary in age from Hart House, which was completed in 1864, to the Collaborative Health Education Building, completed in 2015. The original building of Dalhousie University was completed in 1824 on Halifax's Grand Parade. It was demolished in 1885 when the university outgrew the premises, and the City of Halifax sought possession of the entire Grand Parade. Halifax City Hall presently occupies the site of the original Dalhousie College.
The university has five libraries. The largest, Killam Memorial Library, opened in 1971. It is the largest academic library in Atlantic Canada with over one million books and 40,000 journals.
The library's collection largely serves the faculties of arts and social sciences, sciences, management, and computer science. The W. K. Kellogg Health Science Library provides services largely for the faculties of dentistry, medicine, and other health professions. The Sexton Design & Technology Library is located within Sexton Campus. Its collection largely serves those in the faculties of engineering, architecture and planning, and houses the university's rare books collection. The Sir James Dunn Law Library holds the university's collection of common law materials, legal periodicals, as well as books on international law, health law, and environmental law. MacRae Library is located at the university's Agricultural Campus, and has the largest collection of agricultural resource material in Atlantic Canada. The Dalhousie University Archives houses official records of, or relating to, or people/activities connected with Dalhousie University and its founding institutions. The archives also houses material related to theatre, business and labour in Nova Scotia. The collection consists of manuscripts, texts, photographs, audio-visual material, microfilm, music, and artifacts. The university's first library, Macdonald Memorial Library, was built after alumni raised funds on the death of professor Charles Macdonald, who had left the university $2,000 to buy books in English literature on his death in 1901.
The biology department operates the Thomas McCulloch Museum in Pictou, Nova Scotia. The most notable of the museum's exhibits include its preserved birds collection. Other collections include its Lorenzen ceramic mushrooms, its coral and shell collection, and its butterfly and insect collection. The museum's namesake Thomas McCulloch was a Scottish Presbyterian minister who served as Dalhousie's first president and created the Audubon mounted bird collection which is now housed at the museum.
The Dalhousie Art Gallery is both a public gallery and an academic support unit housed since 1971 on the lowest level of the Dalhousie Arts Centre. Admission is free of charge. It is host to a permanent collection of over 1000 works. Some of the outdoor sculptures around the campus are part of this collection, such as the distinctive Marine Venus which has sat in the median of University Avenue since 1969. A notable exhibition from the Dalhousie Art Gallery includes "Archives of the Future" (March – April 2016) exploring the relationship between art creation and commerce with work by artists Zachary Gough, Dawn Georg, Sharlene Bamboat, Katie Vida and Dana Claxton.
The university has ten student residences throughout its Halifax campuses: Gerard Hall, Howe Hall, LeMarchant Place, Mini Rez, O'Brien Hall, Residence Houses, Risley Hall, Shirreff Hall, Glengary Apartments, and Graduate House. The largest, Howe Hall in Studley Campus, houses 716 students during the academic year. Howe Hall's most recent addition to the residence is called Fountain. It is the only residence in Howe Hall to have a sink in every room. The university also operates three residences in its Agricultural Campus: Chapman House, Fraser House, and Truman House. The largest residence in the Agricultural Campus is Chapman House, housing 125 students during the academic year. The residences are represented by a Residence Council responsible for resident concerns, providing entertainment services, organizing events, and upholding rules and regulations.
The Student Union Building serves as the main student activity centre. Completed in 1968, it is located in the Studley Campus. The Student Union building hosts a number of student societies and organization offices, most notably the Dalhousie Student Union. The building houses five restaurants, both independently owned and international franchises such as Tim Hortons.
Dalhousie University is actively involved in sustainability issues and has received a number of sustainability awards and recognition for academic programs, university operations, and research. In 2022, Dalhousie received a GOLD rating from AASHE STARS (Version 2.2) In 2009, the university signed the University and College Presidents' Climate Change Statement of Action for Canada to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Dalhousie is also a signatory of UNEP's International Declaration on Cleaner Production. In 1999, the university signed the Talloires Declaration, which committed Dalhousie and other higher education institutions to developing, creating, supporting, and maintaining sustainability.
In 2008, the College of Sustainability, the Office of Sustainability, and the Dalhousie Student Union Sustainability Office were formed. During 2008, the President's Advisory Council on Sustainability was also created. The council meets quarterly to discuss pan-university sustainability issues. Dalhousie's College of Sustainability offers an undergraduate Major in Environment, Sustainability and Society (ESS) integrating with seven bachelor's degrees and 40 subjects across five faculties.
University governance is conducted through the Board of Governors and the Senate, both of which were given much of their present power in the Unofficial Consolidation of an Act for the Regulation and Support of Dalhousie College in Chapter 24 of the Acts of 1863. This statute replaced ones from 1820, 1823, 1838, 1841 and 1848, and has since been supplemented 11 times, most recently in 1995. The Board is responsible for conduct, management, and control of the university and of its property, revenues, business, and affairs. Board members, known as Governors of the Board, include the university's chancellor, president, and 25 other members. Members include people from within the university community such as four approved representatives from Dalhousie Student Union, and those in the surrounding community, such as the Mayor of Halifax. The Senate is responsible for the university's academics, including standards for admission and qualifications for degrees, diplomas, and certificates. The Senate consists of 73 positions granted to the various faculty representatives, academic administrators, and student representatives.
The president acts as the chief executive officer and is responsible to the Board of Governors and to the Senate for the supervision of administrative and academic works. Kim Brooks is the 13th president of the university, and has served since August 2023. Thomas McCulloch served as the first president when the office was created in 1838. John Forrest was the longest-serving president, holding the office from 1885 to 1911.
University of King's College is a post-secondary institution in Halifax affiliated with Dalhousie. The institution's campus is located adjacent to Dalhousie's Studley campus. Established in 1789, it was the first post-secondary institution in English Canada and the oldest English-speaking Commonwealth university outside the United Kingdom. The University of King's College was formerly an independent institution located in Windsor, Nova Scotia, until 1920, when a fire ravaged its campus. To continue operation, the University of King's College accepted a generous grant from the Carnegie Foundation, although the terms of the grant required that it move to Halifax and enter into association with Dalhousie. Under the agreement, King's agreed to pay the salaries of a number of Dalhousie professors, who in turn were to help in the management and academic life of the college.
Students at King's have access to all of the amenities at Dalhousie, and academic programs at King's would fold into the College of Arts and Sciences at Dalhousie according to the agreement. Presently, students of both institutions are allowed to switch between the two throughout their enrolment. In spite of the shared academic programs and facilities, the University of King's College maintains its own scholarships, bursaries, athletics programs, and student residences.
The university completed the 2017–18 year with revenues of $697.354 million and expenses of $664.274 million, yielding a surplus of $33.08 million. The largest source of revenue for the university was provincial operational grants, followed by tuition fees. The total endowment revenue reported in fiscal 2017–2018 was $481.372 million.
The university has attempted to increase the representation of under-represented groups at Dalhousie through inclusive recruitment strategies.
Dalhousie is a publicly funded research university, and a member of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, as well as the U15. As of 2022, there were 20,970 students enrolled at the university. Dalhousie offers more than 4,000 courses and over 200 degree programs in 13 undergraduate, graduate, and professional faculties. The requirements for admission differ between students from Nova Scotia, students from other provinces in Canada, and international students due to lack of uniformity in marking schemes. The requirements for admission also differ depending on the program. In 2011, the secondary school average for incoming first-year undergraduate students was 85 percent.
Canadian students may apply for financial aid such as the Nova Scotia Student Assistance Program and Canada Student Loans and Grants through the federal and provincial governments. Financial aid may also be provided in the form of loans, grants, bursaries, scholarships, fellowships, debt reduction, interest relief, and work programs. The university's registrar provides scholarships for its students in order to provide financial assistance, or to reward academic merits or performances in another fields, such as community involvement and leadership. The value of the scholarships ranges C$380 to $30,400. The university also provides bursaries valued between $152 to $456 for students in need of financial assistance. Dalhousie University offers $3 to $6 million in bursary funding for both domestic and international undergraduate students.
The 2022 Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked Dalhousie University 301–400 in the world and 13–17 in Canada. The 2023 QS World University Rankings ranked the university 308th in the world, and twelfth in Canada. The 2023 Times Higher Education World University Rankings placed Dalhousie 301–350 in the world. In the 2022–23 U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking, the university placed 314th in the world, and 11th in Canada. In terms of national rankings, Maclean's ranked Dalhousie seventh in their 2023 Medical-Doctoral university rankings. Dalhousie was ranked in spite of having opted out – along with several other universities in Canada – of participating in Maclean's graduate survey since 2006.
Dalhousie also placed in a number of rankings that evaluated the employment prospects of its graduates. In the Times Higher Education's 2022 global employability ranking, Dalhousie placed 186th in the world, and eighth in Canada. In QS's 2020 graduate employability ranking, the university ranked 301–500 in the world, and 10–16 in Canada.
In 2018, Research Infosource ranked Dalhousie as 15th on their list for top 50 research universities in Canada, with a sponsored research income (external sources of funding) of $150.038 million in 2017. In the same year, Dalhousie's faculty averaged a sponsored research income of $130,000, while its graduate students averaged a sponsored research income of $44,600. In 2003 and 2004, The Scientist placed Dalhousie among the top five places in the world outside the United States for postdoctoral work and conducting scientific research. In 2007 Dalhousie topped the list of The Scientist's "Best Places to Work in Academia". The annual list divides research and academic institutions into American and international lists; Dalhousie University ranked first in the international category. According to a survey conducted by The Scientist, Dalhousie was the best non-commercial scientific institute in which to work in Canada.
Dalhousie's research performance has been noted in several bibliometric university rankings, which use citation analysis to evaluate the impact a university has on academic publications. In 2019, the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities ranked Dalhousie 301st in the world, tied for 12th in Canada with the University of Manitoba; whereas the University Ranking by Academic Performance 2018–19 rankings placed the university 302nd in the world, and 13th in Canada.
Marine research at Dalhousie has become a large focus of the university, with many of the university's faculty members involved in some form of marine research. Notably, Dalhousie is the headquarters of the Ocean Tracking Network, a research effort using implanted acoustic transmitters to study fish migration patterns. Dalhousie houses a number of marine research pools, a wet laboratory, and a benthic flume, which are collectively known as the Aquatron laboratory. Dalhousie is one of the founding members of the Halifax Marine Research Institute, founded on 2 June 2011. The institute, which is a partnership between a number of private industries, government, and post-secondary institutions, was designed to help increase the scale, quality, internationalization and impact of marine research in the region. In 2011, the university, along with WWF-Canada, created the Conservation Legacy For Oceans, which aimed at providing scholarships, funding, curriculum development, and work placements for students and academics dedicated to marine research, law, management, and policy making. In 2016, Dalhousie partnered with Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Prince Edward Island to form a collaborative research organization known as The Ocean Frontier Institute.
Many of Dalhousie's faculties and departments focus on marine research. The Faculty of Engineering operates the Ocean Research Centre Atlantic, which is dedicated to research and tests in naval and off-shore engineering. Schulich School of Law also operates the Marine & Environmental Law Institute, which carries out research and conducts consultancy activities for governmental and non-governmental organizations. The school's Department of Political Science similarly operates the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, which is primarily concerned with the fields of Canadian and American foreign, security, and defence policy, including maritime security policy.
The student body of Dalhousie is currently represented by two student unions; the Dalhousie Student Union, which represents the general student population, and the Dalhousie Association for Graduate Students, which represents the interests of graduate students specifically. Dalhousie Student Union began as the Dalhousie Student Government in 1863, and was renamed the University Student Council before taking its present name. The student union recognizes more than 100 student organizations and societies. The organizations and clubs accredited at Dalhousie cover a wide range of interests including academics, culture, religion, social issues, and recreation. Accredited extracurricular organizations at the university fall under the jurisdiction of the Dalhousie Student Union, and must conform to its by-laws. As of 2011, there were three sororities (Omega Pi, Iota Beta Chi, and Alpha Gamma Delta) and three fraternities (Phi Delta Theta, Sigma Chi, and Phi Kappa Pi). They operate as non-accredited organizations and are not recognized by the Dalhousie Student Union.
The university's student population operates a number of media outlets. The main student newspaper, The Dalhousie Gazette, claims to be the oldest student-run newspaper in North America. It is published Thursdays and is distributed to over 100 locations around the Halifax area. The newspaper's offices are in the Student Union building. Dalhousie's student population runs a radio station which began as a radio club in 1964 and began to broadcast and operate as CKDU in 1975; it began FM broadcasting in 1985. CKDU acquired its present frequency 88.1 in 2006 alongside an upgrading of its transmitting power.
In 2021 and 2022, Dalhousie had issues with unsanctioned student gatherings, specifically 'homecoming' in early October while administering near prohibitions on alcohol consumption on campus. Halifax Police have urged the university to play a more active role in the issue.
In addition to the efforts made by the Dalhousie Student Union (DSU) Council, Dalhousie students have created and participated in over 320 clubs/societies. The Management Society, for example, is a group of students in the Faculty of Management who group together to enhance the experience of students in that faculty by hosting events, providing assistance and giving back. Until 25 July 2016, Dalhousie offered a website named "Tiger Society" which listed all current clubs and societies that were available for students to join. Through this website, students could request to join a society. Dalhousie also holds a Society Fair at the beginning of each fall and winter semester, in which all societies are given the opportunity to display their purpose/efforts and recruit new members. Student societies partake in a range of activities from simple gatherings, study groups, bake sales, intramural sports teams, to organizing larger scale fundraising events.
Dalhousie's sports teams are called the Tigers. The Tigers varsity teams participate primarily in the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) of U Sports. There are teams for basketball, hockey, soccer, swimming, track and field, cross country running, and volleyball. The Tigers garnered a number of championships in the first decade of the 20th century, winning 63 AUS championships and two U Sports championships. More than 2,500 students participate in competitive clubs, intramural sport leagues, and tournaments. Opportunities are offered at multiple skill levels across a variety of sports. Dalhousie has six competitive sports clubs and 17 recreational clubs. Dalhousie's Agricultural Campus operates its own varsity team, called the Dalhousie Rams. The Rams varsity team participates in the Atlantic Collegiate Athletic Association, a member of the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association. The Rams varsity teams include badminton, basketball, rugby, soccer, volleyball, and woodsmen.
Dalhousie has a number of athletic facilities open to varsity teams and students. Dalplex is the largest main fitness and recreational facility. It houses a large fieldhouse, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, an indoor running track, weight rooms, courts and other facilities. Wickwire Field, with a seating capacity of up to 1,200, is the university's main outdoor field and is host to the varsity football, soccer, field hockey, lacrosse and rugby teams. Other sporting facilities include the Studley Gymnasium, and the Sexton Gymnasium and field. The Memorial Arena, home to the varsity hockey team, was demolished in 2012. The school is working to build a new arena jointly with nearby Saint Mary's University, whose facility is also aging. The Agricultural Campus has one athletic facility, the Langille Athletic Centre.
As of 2010, through the efforts of alumni and devoted volunteers, the Dalhousie Football Club was reinstated. Playing in the Atlantic Football League (AFL), the team operates on donations from alumni. The team plays its home games at Wickwire Field.
The Dalhousie seal is based on the heraldic achievement of the Clan Ramsay of Scotland, of which founder George Ramsay was clan head. The heraldic achievement consists of five parts: shield, coronet, crest, supporters, and motto. One major difference between the Ramsay coat of arms and the university seal is that the Ramsay seal features a griffin and greyhound, and the Dalhousie seal has two dragons supporting the eagle-adorned shield. Initially, the Ramsay coat of arms was used to identify Dalhousie, but the seal has evolved with the amalgamations the university has undergone. The seal was originally silver-coloured, but in 1950, the university's Board of Governors changed it to gold to match the university's colours, gold and black. These colours were adopted in 1887, after the rugby team led the debate about college colours for football jerseys. The shield and eagle of Dalhousie's seal have been used as the logo since 1987, with the present incarnation in use since 2003, which includes the tagline "inspiring minds".
The university motto Ora et Labora translates from Latin as "pray and work"; it adopted in 1870 from the Earl of Dalhousie's motto to replace the university's original one, which the administration believed did not convey confidence. The original motto was Forsan, which translates as Perhaps, and first appeared in the first Dalhousie Gazette of 1869. It was from Virgil's epic poem Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit, which translates as "Perhaps the time may come when these difficulties will be sweet to remember". In 2020, a notable movement was started among the student government to restore the original motto. Students and staff representatives sought to remove to inherently religious tone of the current motto.
A number of songs are commonly played and sung at various events such as commencement, convocation, and athletic contests, including "Carmina Dalhousiana", written in Halifax in 1882. The Dalhousie University songbook was compiled by Charles B. Weikel in 1904.
Dalhousie graduates have found success in a variety of fields, serving as heads of a diverse array of public and private institutions. Dalhousie University has over 130,000 alumni. Throughout Dalhousie's history, faculty, alumni, and former students have played prominent roles in many fields, and include 91 Rhodes Scholars.
Dalhousie has also educated Nobel laureates. Astrophysicist and Dalhousie alumni Arthur B. McDonald (BSc 1964, MSc 1965) received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for identifying neutrino change identities and mass. McDonald was also previously awarded the Herzberg Prize and the Benjamin Franklin Prize in physics. Other notable graduates of Dalhousie includes Donald O. Hebb, who helped advance the field of neuropsychology, Kathryn D. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space and Jeff Dahn, one of the world's foremost researchers in lithium battery chemistry and aging. E. Elizabeth Patton , elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2021) and Personal Chair in Melanoma Genetics and Drug Discovery, MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh.
Notable politicians who have attended Dalhousie include three Prime Ministers of Canada, R. B. Bennett, Joe Clark, and Brian Mulroney. Eight graduates have served as Lieutenant Governors: John Crosbie, Myra Freeman, Clarence Gosse, John Keiller MacKay, Henry Poole MacKeen, John Robert Nicholson, Fabian O'Dea, and Albert Walsh. Twelve graduates have served as provincial premiers: Allan Blakeney, John Buchanan, Alex Campbell, Amor De Cosmos, Darrell Dexter, Joe Ghiz, John Hamm, Angus Lewis Macdonald, Russell MacLellan, Gerald Regan, Robert Stanfield, Clyde Wells, and Danny Williams. The first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, Bertha Wilson, was a graduate from Dalhousie Law School.
Other notable alumni from the Dalhousie include Lucy Maud Montgomery, an author that wrote a series of novels, including Anne of Green Gables. Prominent business leaders who studied at Dalhousie include Jamie Baillie, former CEO of Credit Union Atlantic, Graham Day, former CEO of British Shipbuilders, Sean Durfy, former CEO of WestJet, and Charles Peter McColough, former president and CEO of Xerox.
Bibliography | [
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"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Dalhousie University (commonly known as Dal) is a large public research university in Nova Scotia, Canada, with three campuses in Halifax, a fourth in Bible Hill, and a second medical school campus in Saint John, New Brunswick. Dalhousie offers more than 4,000 courses, and over 200 degree programs in 13 undergraduate, graduate, and professional faculties. The university is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.",
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"text": "The institution was established as Dalhousie College, a nonsectarian institution established in 1818 by the eponymous Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, with education reformer, Thomas McCulloch, as its first principal. However, the college did not hold its first class until 1838, with operations remaining sporadic due to financial difficulties. The college was reorganized in 1863 and renamed The Governors of Dalhousie College and University. The university formally changed its name to Dalhousie University in 1997 through the same provincial legislation that merged the institution with the Technical University of Nova Scotia.",
"title": ""
},
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"text": "There are two student unions that represent student interests at the university: the Dalhousie Student Union and the Dalhousie Association for Graduate Students. Dalhousie's varsity teams, the Tigers, compete in the Atlantic University Sport conference of Canadian Interuniversity Sport. Dalhousie's Faculty of Agriculture varsity teams are called the Dalhousie Rams, and compete in the ACAA and CCAA. Dalhousie is a coeducational university with more than 20,000 students and 150,000 alumni around the world. The university's notable alumni include a Nobel Prize winner, 93 Rhodes Scholars, and a range of senior government officials, academics, and business leaders.",
"title": ""
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"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Dalhousie was founded, as the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, desired a non-denominational college in Halifax. Financing largely came from customs duties collected by a previous Lieutenant Governor, John Coape Sherbrooke, during the War of 1812 occupation of Castine, Maine; Sherbrooke invested £7,000 as an initial endowment and reserved £3,000 for the physical construction of the college. The college was established in 1818 though it faltered shortly after, as Ramsay left Halifax to serve as the Governor General of British North America. The school was structured upon the principles of the University of Edinburgh, located near Ramsay's home in Scotland, where lectures were open to male students, regardless of Christian religion or nationality.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1821, Dalhousie College was officially incorporated by the Nova Scotia House of Assembly under the 1821 Act of Incorporation. The college did not hold its first class until 1838; operation of the college was intermittent and no degrees were awarded. In 1841, an Act of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly conferred university powers on Dalhousie.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Dalhousie's first principal, Thomas McCulloch (1838 –1843), turned the school into an operating educational institution, and by doing so he was able to set important foundations for the university's non-sectarian outlook and positioning, not only within the communities of Halifax and Nova Scotia, but also as a government-funded and sanctioned institution within the British colonies. He fought with the government in Halifax for more equitable and non-sectarian education in Nova Scotia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "McCulloch, a Presbyterian minister and naturalist, was the founder of Nova Scotia's second degree-granting institution (after King's College, now University of King's College), Pictou Academy in Pictou, Nova Scotia, which attracted students from PEI, Cape Breton, as well as the Caribbean due of McCulloch's views and the school's ecumenical stance. On the founding of Pictou Academy in 1808, McCulloch writes,",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Our view in establishing this institution is the instruction of youth. We do not merely design to advance them in learning; we propose that much care be taken in forming their minds, by correcting the natural propensities of the heart and instilling into them the principles of virtue, that education may not merely make them great but good men and good members of society. In doing so we intend to furnish them with the means of an extensive and liberal education; and this we hope, in connection with the former, will tend to make them ornaments to human nature and an honor to their country.",
"title": "History"
},
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"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "These beliefs set him apart in Nova Scotia as a radical education reformer.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1838, the board of Dalhousie College was able to convince McCulloch leave Pictou Academy and take on the floundering Dalhousie. With a reputation as an anti-papal pamphleteer and firmly against the Church of England's hold on higher education in Nova Scotia (through King's College), McCulloch carried with him from Pictou his education theory and pedagogy, “If Dalhousie College acquires usefulness and eminence, it will be not by an imitation of Oxford, but as an institution of science, and practical intelligence.” His approach to education was radical: he firmly believed that all schools \"ought first to be ascertained, how far it is calculated to improve the community; and, if its general utility appear, it is, in proportion to its value and to the extent of the public funds, unquestionably entitled to the protection of Government, whether it belong to churchmen or [Presbyterian] dissenters, protestants or catholics, ought to be entirely disregarded!\" He was responsible for creating a chair of natural history at Dalhousie to teach \"geology, mineralogy, botany, and zoology.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Following McCulloch's death, the college fell into decline once again and was reorganized as a high school in 1848. In 1863, the college opened for a third time and was reorganized by another legislative act, which added \"University\" to the school's name: \"The Governors of Dalhousie College and University\". Dalhousie reopened with six professors and one tutor. When it awarded its first degrees in 1866, the student body consisted of 28 male students working toward degrees and 28 occasional students.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Despite the reorganization and an increase in students, money continued to be a problem for the institution. In 1879, amid talks of closure due to the university's dire financial situation, George Munro, a wealthy New York publisher with Nova Scotian roots, began to donate to the university; Munro was brother-in-law to Dalhousie's Board of Governors member John Forrest. As such, Munro is credited with rescuing Dalhousie from closure. In honour of his contributions, Dalhousie observes a university holiday called George Munro Day on the first Friday of each February. The first female graduate was Margaret Florence Newcombe from Grafton, Nova Scotia, who earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1885.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Originally located at the space now occupied by Halifax City Hall, the college moved in 1886 to Carleton Campus and spread gradually to Studley Campus. Dalhousie grew steadily during the 20th century. From 1889 to 1962 the Halifax Conservatory was affiliated with and awarded degrees through Dalhousie. In 1920, several buildings were destroyed by fire on the campus of the University of King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Through a grant from the Carnegie Foundation, King's College relocated to Halifax and entered into a partnership with Dalhousie that continues to this day.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Dalhousie expanded on 1 April,1997 when provincial legislation mandated an amalgamation with the nearby Technical University of Nova Scotia. This merger saw reorganization of faculties and departments to create the Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Computer Science and the Faculty of Architecture and Planning. From 1997 to 2000, the Technical University of Nova Scotia operated as a constituent college of Dalhousie called Dalhousie Polytechnic of Nova Scotia (DalTech) until the collegiate system was dissolved. The legislation that merged the two schools also formally changed the name of the institution to its present form, Dalhousie University. On 1 September 2012, the Nova Scotia Agricultural College merged into Dalhousie to form a new Faculty of Agriculture, located in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Dalhousie has three campuses within the Halifax Peninsula and a fourth, the Agricultural Campus, in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Studley Campus in Halifax serves as the primary campus; it houses the majority of the university's academic buildings such as faculties, athletic facilities, and the university's Student Union Building. The campus is largely surrounded by residential neighbourhoods.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Robie Street divides it from the adjacent Carleton Campus, which houses the faculties of dentistry, medicine, and other health profession departments. The campus is adjacent to two large teaching hospitals affiliated with the school: the IWK Health Centre and the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Sexton Campus in Downtown Halifax hosts the engineering, architecture and planning faculties. Sexton Campus served as the campus of the Technical University of Nova Scotia prior to amalgamation. The Agricultural Campus in Bible Hill, a suburban community of Truro, served as the campus for the Nova Scotia Agricultural College prior to its merger with Dalhousie in 2011. The university presently operates the largest academic library system in Atlantic Canada, and hosts the headquarters for the Ocean Tracking Network.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The buildings at Dalhousie vary in age from Hart House, which was completed in 1864, to the Collaborative Health Education Building, completed in 2015. The original building of Dalhousie University was completed in 1824 on Halifax's Grand Parade. It was demolished in 1885 when the university outgrew the premises, and the City of Halifax sought possession of the entire Grand Parade. Halifax City Hall presently occupies the site of the original Dalhousie College.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The university has five libraries. The largest, Killam Memorial Library, opened in 1971. It is the largest academic library in Atlantic Canada with over one million books and 40,000 journals.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The library's collection largely serves the faculties of arts and social sciences, sciences, management, and computer science. The W. K. Kellogg Health Science Library provides services largely for the faculties of dentistry, medicine, and other health professions. The Sexton Design & Technology Library is located within Sexton Campus. Its collection largely serves those in the faculties of engineering, architecture and planning, and houses the university's rare books collection. The Sir James Dunn Law Library holds the university's collection of common law materials, legal periodicals, as well as books on international law, health law, and environmental law. MacRae Library is located at the university's Agricultural Campus, and has the largest collection of agricultural resource material in Atlantic Canada. The Dalhousie University Archives houses official records of, or relating to, or people/activities connected with Dalhousie University and its founding institutions. The archives also houses material related to theatre, business and labour in Nova Scotia. The collection consists of manuscripts, texts, photographs, audio-visual material, microfilm, music, and artifacts. The university's first library, Macdonald Memorial Library, was built after alumni raised funds on the death of professor Charles Macdonald, who had left the university $2,000 to buy books in English literature on his death in 1901.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The biology department operates the Thomas McCulloch Museum in Pictou, Nova Scotia. The most notable of the museum's exhibits include its preserved birds collection. Other collections include its Lorenzen ceramic mushrooms, its coral and shell collection, and its butterfly and insect collection. The museum's namesake Thomas McCulloch was a Scottish Presbyterian minister who served as Dalhousie's first president and created the Audubon mounted bird collection which is now housed at the museum.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Dalhousie Art Gallery is both a public gallery and an academic support unit housed since 1971 on the lowest level of the Dalhousie Arts Centre. Admission is free of charge. It is host to a permanent collection of over 1000 works. Some of the outdoor sculptures around the campus are part of this collection, such as the distinctive Marine Venus which has sat in the median of University Avenue since 1969. A notable exhibition from the Dalhousie Art Gallery includes \"Archives of the Future\" (March – April 2016) exploring the relationship between art creation and commerce with work by artists Zachary Gough, Dawn Georg, Sharlene Bamboat, Katie Vida and Dana Claxton.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The university has ten student residences throughout its Halifax campuses: Gerard Hall, Howe Hall, LeMarchant Place, Mini Rez, O'Brien Hall, Residence Houses, Risley Hall, Shirreff Hall, Glengary Apartments, and Graduate House. The largest, Howe Hall in Studley Campus, houses 716 students during the academic year. Howe Hall's most recent addition to the residence is called Fountain. It is the only residence in Howe Hall to have a sink in every room. The university also operates three residences in its Agricultural Campus: Chapman House, Fraser House, and Truman House. The largest residence in the Agricultural Campus is Chapman House, housing 125 students during the academic year. The residences are represented by a Residence Council responsible for resident concerns, providing entertainment services, organizing events, and upholding rules and regulations.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Student Union Building serves as the main student activity centre. Completed in 1968, it is located in the Studley Campus. The Student Union building hosts a number of student societies and organization offices, most notably the Dalhousie Student Union. The building houses five restaurants, both independently owned and international franchises such as Tim Hortons.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Dalhousie University is actively involved in sustainability issues and has received a number of sustainability awards and recognition for academic programs, university operations, and research. In 2022, Dalhousie received a GOLD rating from AASHE STARS (Version 2.2) In 2009, the university signed the University and College Presidents' Climate Change Statement of Action for Canada to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Dalhousie is also a signatory of UNEP's International Declaration on Cleaner Production. In 1999, the university signed the Talloires Declaration, which committed Dalhousie and other higher education institutions to developing, creating, supporting, and maintaining sustainability.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 2008, the College of Sustainability, the Office of Sustainability, and the Dalhousie Student Union Sustainability Office were formed. During 2008, the President's Advisory Council on Sustainability was also created. The council meets quarterly to discuss pan-university sustainability issues. Dalhousie's College of Sustainability offers an undergraduate Major in Environment, Sustainability and Society (ESS) integrating with seven bachelor's degrees and 40 subjects across five faculties.",
"title": "Campuses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "University governance is conducted through the Board of Governors and the Senate, both of which were given much of their present power in the Unofficial Consolidation of an Act for the Regulation and Support of Dalhousie College in Chapter 24 of the Acts of 1863. This statute replaced ones from 1820, 1823, 1838, 1841 and 1848, and has since been supplemented 11 times, most recently in 1995. The Board is responsible for conduct, management, and control of the university and of its property, revenues, business, and affairs. Board members, known as Governors of the Board, include the university's chancellor, president, and 25 other members. Members include people from within the university community such as four approved representatives from Dalhousie Student Union, and those in the surrounding community, such as the Mayor of Halifax. The Senate is responsible for the university's academics, including standards for admission and qualifications for degrees, diplomas, and certificates. The Senate consists of 73 positions granted to the various faculty representatives, academic administrators, and student representatives.",
"title": "Administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The president acts as the chief executive officer and is responsible to the Board of Governors and to the Senate for the supervision of administrative and academic works. Kim Brooks is the 13th president of the university, and has served since August 2023. Thomas McCulloch served as the first president when the office was created in 1838. John Forrest was the longest-serving president, holding the office from 1885 to 1911.",
"title": "Administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "University of King's College is a post-secondary institution in Halifax affiliated with Dalhousie. The institution's campus is located adjacent to Dalhousie's Studley campus. Established in 1789, it was the first post-secondary institution in English Canada and the oldest English-speaking Commonwealth university outside the United Kingdom. The University of King's College was formerly an independent institution located in Windsor, Nova Scotia, until 1920, when a fire ravaged its campus. To continue operation, the University of King's College accepted a generous grant from the Carnegie Foundation, although the terms of the grant required that it move to Halifax and enter into association with Dalhousie. Under the agreement, King's agreed to pay the salaries of a number of Dalhousie professors, who in turn were to help in the management and academic life of the college.",
"title": "Administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Students at King's have access to all of the amenities at Dalhousie, and academic programs at King's would fold into the College of Arts and Sciences at Dalhousie according to the agreement. Presently, students of both institutions are allowed to switch between the two throughout their enrolment. In spite of the shared academic programs and facilities, the University of King's College maintains its own scholarships, bursaries, athletics programs, and student residences.",
"title": "Administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The university completed the 2017–18 year with revenues of $697.354 million and expenses of $664.274 million, yielding a surplus of $33.08 million. The largest source of revenue for the university was provincial operational grants, followed by tuition fees. The total endowment revenue reported in fiscal 2017–2018 was $481.372 million.",
"title": "Administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The university has attempted to increase the representation of under-represented groups at Dalhousie through inclusive recruitment strategies.",
"title": "Administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Dalhousie is a publicly funded research university, and a member of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, as well as the U15. As of 2022, there were 20,970 students enrolled at the university. Dalhousie offers more than 4,000 courses and over 200 degree programs in 13 undergraduate, graduate, and professional faculties. The requirements for admission differ between students from Nova Scotia, students from other provinces in Canada, and international students due to lack of uniformity in marking schemes. The requirements for admission also differ depending on the program. In 2011, the secondary school average for incoming first-year undergraduate students was 85 percent.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Canadian students may apply for financial aid such as the Nova Scotia Student Assistance Program and Canada Student Loans and Grants through the federal and provincial governments. Financial aid may also be provided in the form of loans, grants, bursaries, scholarships, fellowships, debt reduction, interest relief, and work programs. The university's registrar provides scholarships for its students in order to provide financial assistance, or to reward academic merits or performances in another fields, such as community involvement and leadership. The value of the scholarships ranges C$380 to $30,400. The university also provides bursaries valued between $152 to $456 for students in need of financial assistance. Dalhousie University offers $3 to $6 million in bursary funding for both domestic and international undergraduate students.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The 2022 Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked Dalhousie University 301–400 in the world and 13–17 in Canada. The 2023 QS World University Rankings ranked the university 308th in the world, and twelfth in Canada. The 2023 Times Higher Education World University Rankings placed Dalhousie 301–350 in the world. In the 2022–23 U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking, the university placed 314th in the world, and 11th in Canada. In terms of national rankings, Maclean's ranked Dalhousie seventh in their 2023 Medical-Doctoral university rankings. Dalhousie was ranked in spite of having opted out – along with several other universities in Canada – of participating in Maclean's graduate survey since 2006.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Dalhousie also placed in a number of rankings that evaluated the employment prospects of its graduates. In the Times Higher Education's 2022 global employability ranking, Dalhousie placed 186th in the world, and eighth in Canada. In QS's 2020 graduate employability ranking, the university ranked 301–500 in the world, and 10–16 in Canada.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 2018, Research Infosource ranked Dalhousie as 15th on their list for top 50 research universities in Canada, with a sponsored research income (external sources of funding) of $150.038 million in 2017. In the same year, Dalhousie's faculty averaged a sponsored research income of $130,000, while its graduate students averaged a sponsored research income of $44,600. In 2003 and 2004, The Scientist placed Dalhousie among the top five places in the world outside the United States for postdoctoral work and conducting scientific research. In 2007 Dalhousie topped the list of The Scientist's \"Best Places to Work in Academia\". The annual list divides research and academic institutions into American and international lists; Dalhousie University ranked first in the international category. According to a survey conducted by The Scientist, Dalhousie was the best non-commercial scientific institute in which to work in Canada.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Dalhousie's research performance has been noted in several bibliometric university rankings, which use citation analysis to evaluate the impact a university has on academic publications. In 2019, the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities ranked Dalhousie 301st in the world, tied for 12th in Canada with the University of Manitoba; whereas the University Ranking by Academic Performance 2018–19 rankings placed the university 302nd in the world, and 13th in Canada.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Marine research at Dalhousie has become a large focus of the university, with many of the university's faculty members involved in some form of marine research. Notably, Dalhousie is the headquarters of the Ocean Tracking Network, a research effort using implanted acoustic transmitters to study fish migration patterns. Dalhousie houses a number of marine research pools, a wet laboratory, and a benthic flume, which are collectively known as the Aquatron laboratory. Dalhousie is one of the founding members of the Halifax Marine Research Institute, founded on 2 June 2011. The institute, which is a partnership between a number of private industries, government, and post-secondary institutions, was designed to help increase the scale, quality, internationalization and impact of marine research in the region. In 2011, the university, along with WWF-Canada, created the Conservation Legacy For Oceans, which aimed at providing scholarships, funding, curriculum development, and work placements for students and academics dedicated to marine research, law, management, and policy making. In 2016, Dalhousie partnered with Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Prince Edward Island to form a collaborative research organization known as The Ocean Frontier Institute.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Many of Dalhousie's faculties and departments focus on marine research. The Faculty of Engineering operates the Ocean Research Centre Atlantic, which is dedicated to research and tests in naval and off-shore engineering. Schulich School of Law also operates the Marine & Environmental Law Institute, which carries out research and conducts consultancy activities for governmental and non-governmental organizations. The school's Department of Political Science similarly operates the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, which is primarily concerned with the fields of Canadian and American foreign, security, and defence policy, including maritime security policy.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The student body of Dalhousie is currently represented by two student unions; the Dalhousie Student Union, which represents the general student population, and the Dalhousie Association for Graduate Students, which represents the interests of graduate students specifically. Dalhousie Student Union began as the Dalhousie Student Government in 1863, and was renamed the University Student Council before taking its present name. The student union recognizes more than 100 student organizations and societies. The organizations and clubs accredited at Dalhousie cover a wide range of interests including academics, culture, religion, social issues, and recreation. Accredited extracurricular organizations at the university fall under the jurisdiction of the Dalhousie Student Union, and must conform to its by-laws. As of 2011, there were three sororities (Omega Pi, Iota Beta Chi, and Alpha Gamma Delta) and three fraternities (Phi Delta Theta, Sigma Chi, and Phi Kappa Pi). They operate as non-accredited organizations and are not recognized by the Dalhousie Student Union.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The university's student population operates a number of media outlets. The main student newspaper, The Dalhousie Gazette, claims to be the oldest student-run newspaper in North America. It is published Thursdays and is distributed to over 100 locations around the Halifax area. The newspaper's offices are in the Student Union building. Dalhousie's student population runs a radio station which began as a radio club in 1964 and began to broadcast and operate as CKDU in 1975; it began FM broadcasting in 1985. CKDU acquired its present frequency 88.1 in 2006 alongside an upgrading of its transmitting power.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 2021 and 2022, Dalhousie had issues with unsanctioned student gatherings, specifically 'homecoming' in early October while administering near prohibitions on alcohol consumption on campus. Halifax Police have urged the university to play a more active role in the issue.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In addition to the efforts made by the Dalhousie Student Union (DSU) Council, Dalhousie students have created and participated in over 320 clubs/societies. The Management Society, for example, is a group of students in the Faculty of Management who group together to enhance the experience of students in that faculty by hosting events, providing assistance and giving back. Until 25 July 2016, Dalhousie offered a website named \"Tiger Society\" which listed all current clubs and societies that were available for students to join. Through this website, students could request to join a society. Dalhousie also holds a Society Fair at the beginning of each fall and winter semester, in which all societies are given the opportunity to display their purpose/efforts and recruit new members. Student societies partake in a range of activities from simple gatherings, study groups, bake sales, intramural sports teams, to organizing larger scale fundraising events.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Dalhousie's sports teams are called the Tigers. The Tigers varsity teams participate primarily in the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) of U Sports. There are teams for basketball, hockey, soccer, swimming, track and field, cross country running, and volleyball. The Tigers garnered a number of championships in the first decade of the 20th century, winning 63 AUS championships and two U Sports championships. More than 2,500 students participate in competitive clubs, intramural sport leagues, and tournaments. Opportunities are offered at multiple skill levels across a variety of sports. Dalhousie has six competitive sports clubs and 17 recreational clubs. Dalhousie's Agricultural Campus operates its own varsity team, called the Dalhousie Rams. The Rams varsity team participates in the Atlantic Collegiate Athletic Association, a member of the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association. The Rams varsity teams include badminton, basketball, rugby, soccer, volleyball, and woodsmen.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Dalhousie has a number of athletic facilities open to varsity teams and students. Dalplex is the largest main fitness and recreational facility. It houses a large fieldhouse, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, an indoor running track, weight rooms, courts and other facilities. Wickwire Field, with a seating capacity of up to 1,200, is the university's main outdoor field and is host to the varsity football, soccer, field hockey, lacrosse and rugby teams. Other sporting facilities include the Studley Gymnasium, and the Sexton Gymnasium and field. The Memorial Arena, home to the varsity hockey team, was demolished in 2012. The school is working to build a new arena jointly with nearby Saint Mary's University, whose facility is also aging. The Agricultural Campus has one athletic facility, the Langille Athletic Centre.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "As of 2010, through the efforts of alumni and devoted volunteers, the Dalhousie Football Club was reinstated. Playing in the Atlantic Football League (AFL), the team operates on donations from alumni. The team plays its home games at Wickwire Field.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The Dalhousie seal is based on the heraldic achievement of the Clan Ramsay of Scotland, of which founder George Ramsay was clan head. The heraldic achievement consists of five parts: shield, coronet, crest, supporters, and motto. One major difference between the Ramsay coat of arms and the university seal is that the Ramsay seal features a griffin and greyhound, and the Dalhousie seal has two dragons supporting the eagle-adorned shield. Initially, the Ramsay coat of arms was used to identify Dalhousie, but the seal has evolved with the amalgamations the university has undergone. The seal was originally silver-coloured, but in 1950, the university's Board of Governors changed it to gold to match the university's colours, gold and black. These colours were adopted in 1887, after the rugby team led the debate about college colours for football jerseys. The shield and eagle of Dalhousie's seal have been used as the logo since 1987, with the present incarnation in use since 2003, which includes the tagline \"inspiring minds\".",
"title": "Insignia and other representations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The university motto Ora et Labora translates from Latin as \"pray and work\"; it adopted in 1870 from the Earl of Dalhousie's motto to replace the university's original one, which the administration believed did not convey confidence. The original motto was Forsan, which translates as Perhaps, and first appeared in the first Dalhousie Gazette of 1869. It was from Virgil's epic poem Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit, which translates as \"Perhaps the time may come when these difficulties will be sweet to remember\". In 2020, a notable movement was started among the student government to restore the original motto. Students and staff representatives sought to remove to inherently religious tone of the current motto.",
"title": "Insignia and other representations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "A number of songs are commonly played and sung at various events such as commencement, convocation, and athletic contests, including \"Carmina Dalhousiana\", written in Halifax in 1882. The Dalhousie University songbook was compiled by Charles B. Weikel in 1904.",
"title": "Insignia and other representations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Dalhousie graduates have found success in a variety of fields, serving as heads of a diverse array of public and private institutions. Dalhousie University has over 130,000 alumni. Throughout Dalhousie's history, faculty, alumni, and former students have played prominent roles in many fields, and include 91 Rhodes Scholars.",
"title": "Notable alumni"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Dalhousie has also educated Nobel laureates. Astrophysicist and Dalhousie alumni Arthur B. McDonald (BSc 1964, MSc 1965) received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for identifying neutrino change identities and mass. McDonald was also previously awarded the Herzberg Prize and the Benjamin Franklin Prize in physics. Other notable graduates of Dalhousie includes Donald O. Hebb, who helped advance the field of neuropsychology, Kathryn D. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space and Jeff Dahn, one of the world's foremost researchers in lithium battery chemistry and aging. E. Elizabeth Patton , elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2021) and Personal Chair in Melanoma Genetics and Drug Discovery, MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh.",
"title": "Notable alumni"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Notable politicians who have attended Dalhousie include three Prime Ministers of Canada, R. B. Bennett, Joe Clark, and Brian Mulroney. Eight graduates have served as Lieutenant Governors: John Crosbie, Myra Freeman, Clarence Gosse, John Keiller MacKay, Henry Poole MacKeen, John Robert Nicholson, Fabian O'Dea, and Albert Walsh. Twelve graduates have served as provincial premiers: Allan Blakeney, John Buchanan, Alex Campbell, Amor De Cosmos, Darrell Dexter, Joe Ghiz, John Hamm, Angus Lewis Macdonald, Russell MacLellan, Gerald Regan, Robert Stanfield, Clyde Wells, and Danny Williams. The first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, Bertha Wilson, was a graduate from Dalhousie Law School.",
"title": "Notable alumni"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Other notable alumni from the Dalhousie include Lucy Maud Montgomery, an author that wrote a series of novels, including Anne of Green Gables. Prominent business leaders who studied at Dalhousie include Jamie Baillie, former CEO of Credit Union Atlantic, Graham Day, former CEO of British Shipbuilders, Sean Durfy, former CEO of WestJet, and Charles Peter McColough, former president and CEO of Xerox.",
"title": "Notable alumni"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Bibliography",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Dalhousie University is a large public research university in Nova Scotia, Canada, with three campuses in Halifax, a fourth in Bible Hill, and a second medical school campus in Saint John, New Brunswick. Dalhousie offers more than 4,000 courses, and over 200 degree programs in 13 undergraduate, graduate, and professional faculties. The university is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada. The institution was established as Dalhousie College, a nonsectarian institution established in 1818 by the eponymous Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, with education reformer, Thomas McCulloch, as its first principal. However, the college did not hold its first class until 1838, with operations remaining sporadic due to financial difficulties. The college was reorganized in 1863 and renamed The Governors of Dalhousie College and University. The university formally changed its name to Dalhousie University in 1997 through the same provincial legislation that merged the institution with the Technical University of Nova Scotia. There are two student unions that represent student interests at the university: the Dalhousie Student Union and the Dalhousie Association for Graduate Students. Dalhousie's varsity teams, the Tigers, compete in the Atlantic University Sport conference of Canadian Interuniversity Sport. Dalhousie's Faculty of Agriculture varsity teams are called the Dalhousie Rams, and compete in the ACAA and CCAA. Dalhousie is a coeducational university with more than 20,000 students and 150,000 alumni around the world. The university's notable alumni include a Nobel Prize winner, 93 Rhodes Scholars, and a range of senior government officials, academics, and business leaders. | 2001-10-13T18:19:36Z | 2023-12-16T01:26:34Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalhousie_University |
8,643 | Molecular diffusion | Molecular diffusion, often simply called diffusion, is the thermal motion of all (liquid or gas) particles at temperatures above absolute zero. The rate of this movement is a function of temperature, viscosity of the fluid and the size (mass) of the particles. Diffusion explains the net flux of molecules from a region of higher concentration to one of lower concentration. Once the concentrations are equal the molecules continue to move, but since there is no concentration gradient the process of molecular diffusion has ceased and is instead governed by the process of self-diffusion, originating from the random motion of the molecules. The result of diffusion is a gradual mixing of material such that the distribution of molecules is uniform. Since the molecules are still in motion, but an equilibrium has been established, the result of molecular diffusion is called a "dynamic equilibrium". In a phase with uniform temperature, absent external net forces acting on the particles, the diffusion process will eventually result in complete mixing.
Consider two systems; S1 and S2 at the same temperature and capable of exchanging particles. If there is a change in the potential energy of a system; for example μ1>μ2 (μ is Chemical potential) an energy flow will occur from S1 to S2, because nature always prefers low energy and maximum entropy.
Molecular diffusion is typically described mathematically using Fick's laws of diffusion.
Diffusion is of fundamental importance in many disciplines of physics, chemistry, and biology. Some example applications of diffusion:
Diffusion is part of the transport phenomena. Of mass transport mechanisms, molecular diffusion is known as a slower one.
In cell biology, diffusion is a main form of transport for necessary materials such as amino acids within cells. Diffusion of solvents, such as water, through a semipermeable membrane is classified as osmosis.
Metabolism and respiration rely in part upon diffusion in addition to bulk or active processes. For example, in the alveoli of mammalian lungs, due to differences in partial pressures across the alveolar-capillary membrane, oxygen diffuses into the blood and carbon dioxide diffuses out. Lungs contain a large surface area to facilitate this gas exchange process.
Fundamentally, two types of diffusion are distinguished:
The diffusion coefficients for these two types of diffusion are generally different because the diffusion coefficient for chemical diffusion is binary and it includes the effects due to the correlation of the movement of the different diffusing species.
Because chemical diffusion is a net transport process, the system in which it takes place is not an equilibrium system (i.e. it is not at rest yet). Many results in classical thermodynamics are not easily applied to non-equilibrium systems. However, there sometimes occur so-called quasi-steady states, where the diffusion process does not change in time, where classical results may locally apply. As the name suggests, this process is a not a true equilibrium since the system is still evolving.
Non-equilibrium fluid systems can be successfully modeled with Landau-Lifshitz fluctuating hydrodynamics. In this theoretical framework, diffusion is due to fluctuations whose dimensions range from the molecular scale to the macroscopic scale.
Chemical diffusion increases the entropy of a system, i.e. diffusion is a spontaneous and irreversible process. Particles can spread out by diffusion, but will not spontaneously re-order themselves (absent changes to the system, assuming no creation of new chemical bonds, and absent external forces acting on the particle).
Collective diffusion is the diffusion of a large number of particles, most often within a solvent.
Contrary to brownian motion, which is the diffusion of a single particle, interactions between particles may have to be considered, unless the particles form an ideal mix with their solvent (ideal mix conditions correspond to the case where the interactions between the solvent and particles are identical to the interactions between particles and the interactions between solvent molecules; in this case, the particles do not interact when inside the solvent).
In case of an ideal mix, the particle diffusion equation holds true and the diffusion coefficient D the speed of diffusion in the particle diffusion equation is independent of particle concentration. In other cases, resulting interactions between particles within the solvent will account for the following effects:
Transport of material in stagnant fluid or across streamlines of a fluid in a laminar flow occurs by molecular diffusion. Two adjacent compartments separated by a partition, containing pure gases A or B may be envisaged. Random movement of all molecules occurs so that after a period molecules are found remote from their original positions. If the partition is removed, some molecules of A move towards the region occupied by B, their number depends on the number of molecules at the region considered. Concurrently, molecules of B diffuse toward regimens formerly occupied by pure A. Finally, complete mixing occurs. Before this point in time, a gradual variation in the concentration of A occurs along an axis, designated x, which joins the original compartments. This variation, expressed mathematically as -dCA/dx, where CA is the concentration of A. The negative sign arises because the concentration of A decreases as the distance x increases. Similarly, the variation in the concentration of gas B is -dCB/dx. The rate of diffusion of A, NA, depend on concentration gradient and the average velocity with which the molecules of A moves in the x direction. This relationship is expressed by Fick's Law
where D is the diffusivity of A through B, proportional to the average molecular velocity and, therefore dependent on the temperature and pressure of gases. The rate of diffusion NA, is usually expressed as the number of moles diffusing across unit area in unit time. As with the basic equation of heat transfer, this indicates that the rate of force is directly proportional to the driving force, which is the concentration gradient.
This basic equation applies to a number of situations. Restricting discussion exclusively to steady state conditions, in which neither dCA/dx or dCB/dx change with time, equimolecular counterdiffusion is considered first.
If no bulk flow occurs in an element of length dx, the rates of diffusion of two ideal gases (of similar molar volume) A and B must be equal and opposite, that is N A = − N B {\displaystyle N_{A}=-N_{B}} .
The partial pressure of A changes by dPA over the distance dx. Similarly, the partial pressure of B changes dPB. As there is no difference in total pressure across the element (no bulk flow), we have
For an ideal gas the partial pressure is related to the molar concentration by the relation
where nA is the number of moles of gas A in a volume V. As the molar concentration CA is equal to nA/ V therefore
Consequently, for gas A,
where DAB is the diffusivity of A in B. Similarly,
Considering that dPA/dx=-dPB/dx, it therefore proves that DAB=DBA=D. If the partial pressure of A at x1 is PA1 and x2 is PA2, integration of above equation,
A similar equation may be derived for the counterdiffusion of gas B. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Molecular diffusion, often simply called diffusion, is the thermal motion of all (liquid or gas) particles at temperatures above absolute zero. The rate of this movement is a function of temperature, viscosity of the fluid and the size (mass) of the particles. Diffusion explains the net flux of molecules from a region of higher concentration to one of lower concentration. Once the concentrations are equal the molecules continue to move, but since there is no concentration gradient the process of molecular diffusion has ceased and is instead governed by the process of self-diffusion, originating from the random motion of the molecules. The result of diffusion is a gradual mixing of material such that the distribution of molecules is uniform. Since the molecules are still in motion, but an equilibrium has been established, the result of molecular diffusion is called a \"dynamic equilibrium\". In a phase with uniform temperature, absent external net forces acting on the particles, the diffusion process will eventually result in complete mixing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Consider two systems; S1 and S2 at the same temperature and capable of exchanging particles. If there is a change in the potential energy of a system; for example μ1>μ2 (μ is Chemical potential) an energy flow will occur from S1 to S2, because nature always prefers low energy and maximum entropy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Molecular diffusion is typically described mathematically using Fick's laws of diffusion.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Diffusion is of fundamental importance in many disciplines of physics, chemistry, and biology. Some example applications of diffusion:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Diffusion is part of the transport phenomena. Of mass transport mechanisms, molecular diffusion is known as a slower one.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In cell biology, diffusion is a main form of transport for necessary materials such as amino acids within cells. Diffusion of solvents, such as water, through a semipermeable membrane is classified as osmosis.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Metabolism and respiration rely in part upon diffusion in addition to bulk or active processes. For example, in the alveoli of mammalian lungs, due to differences in partial pressures across the alveolar-capillary membrane, oxygen diffuses into the blood and carbon dioxide diffuses out. Lungs contain a large surface area to facilitate this gas exchange process.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Fundamentally, two types of diffusion are distinguished:",
"title": "Tracer, self- and chemical diffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The diffusion coefficients for these two types of diffusion are generally different because the diffusion coefficient for chemical diffusion is binary and it includes the effects due to the correlation of the movement of the different diffusing species.",
"title": "Tracer, self- and chemical diffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Because chemical diffusion is a net transport process, the system in which it takes place is not an equilibrium system (i.e. it is not at rest yet). Many results in classical thermodynamics are not easily applied to non-equilibrium systems. However, there sometimes occur so-called quasi-steady states, where the diffusion process does not change in time, where classical results may locally apply. As the name suggests, this process is a not a true equilibrium since the system is still evolving.",
"title": "Non-equilibrium system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Non-equilibrium fluid systems can be successfully modeled with Landau-Lifshitz fluctuating hydrodynamics. In this theoretical framework, diffusion is due to fluctuations whose dimensions range from the molecular scale to the macroscopic scale.",
"title": "Non-equilibrium system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Chemical diffusion increases the entropy of a system, i.e. diffusion is a spontaneous and irreversible process. Particles can spread out by diffusion, but will not spontaneously re-order themselves (absent changes to the system, assuming no creation of new chemical bonds, and absent external forces acting on the particle).",
"title": "Non-equilibrium system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Collective diffusion is the diffusion of a large number of particles, most often within a solvent.",
"title": "Concentration dependent \"collective\" diffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Contrary to brownian motion, which is the diffusion of a single particle, interactions between particles may have to be considered, unless the particles form an ideal mix with their solvent (ideal mix conditions correspond to the case where the interactions between the solvent and particles are identical to the interactions between particles and the interactions between solvent molecules; in this case, the particles do not interact when inside the solvent).",
"title": "Concentration dependent \"collective\" diffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In case of an ideal mix, the particle diffusion equation holds true and the diffusion coefficient D the speed of diffusion in the particle diffusion equation is independent of particle concentration. In other cases, resulting interactions between particles within the solvent will account for the following effects:",
"title": "Concentration dependent \"collective\" diffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Transport of material in stagnant fluid or across streamlines of a fluid in a laminar flow occurs by molecular diffusion. Two adjacent compartments separated by a partition, containing pure gases A or B may be envisaged. Random movement of all molecules occurs so that after a period molecules are found remote from their original positions. If the partition is removed, some molecules of A move towards the region occupied by B, their number depends on the number of molecules at the region considered. Concurrently, molecules of B diffuse toward regimens formerly occupied by pure A. Finally, complete mixing occurs. Before this point in time, a gradual variation in the concentration of A occurs along an axis, designated x, which joins the original compartments. This variation, expressed mathematically as -dCA/dx, where CA is the concentration of A. The negative sign arises because the concentration of A decreases as the distance x increases. Similarly, the variation in the concentration of gas B is -dCB/dx. The rate of diffusion of A, NA, depend on concentration gradient and the average velocity with which the molecules of A moves in the x direction. This relationship is expressed by Fick's Law",
"title": "Molecular diffusion of gases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "where D is the diffusivity of A through B, proportional to the average molecular velocity and, therefore dependent on the temperature and pressure of gases. The rate of diffusion NA, is usually expressed as the number of moles diffusing across unit area in unit time. As with the basic equation of heat transfer, this indicates that the rate of force is directly proportional to the driving force, which is the concentration gradient.",
"title": "Molecular diffusion of gases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "This basic equation applies to a number of situations. Restricting discussion exclusively to steady state conditions, in which neither dCA/dx or dCB/dx change with time, equimolecular counterdiffusion is considered first.",
"title": "Molecular diffusion of gases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "If no bulk flow occurs in an element of length dx, the rates of diffusion of two ideal gases (of similar molar volume) A and B must be equal and opposite, that is N A = − N B {\\displaystyle N_{A}=-N_{B}} .",
"title": "Equimolecular counterdiffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The partial pressure of A changes by dPA over the distance dx. Similarly, the partial pressure of B changes dPB. As there is no difference in total pressure across the element (no bulk flow), we have",
"title": "Equimolecular counterdiffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "For an ideal gas the partial pressure is related to the molar concentration by the relation",
"title": "Equimolecular counterdiffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "where nA is the number of moles of gas A in a volume V. As the molar concentration CA is equal to nA/ V therefore",
"title": "Equimolecular counterdiffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Consequently, for gas A,",
"title": "Equimolecular counterdiffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "where DAB is the diffusivity of A in B. Similarly,",
"title": "Equimolecular counterdiffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Considering that dPA/dx=-dPB/dx, it therefore proves that DAB=DBA=D. If the partial pressure of A at x1 is PA1 and x2 is PA2, integration of above equation,",
"title": "Equimolecular counterdiffusion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "A similar equation may be derived for the counterdiffusion of gas B.",
"title": "Equimolecular counterdiffusion"
}
]
| Molecular diffusion, often simply called diffusion, is the thermal motion of all (liquid or gas) particles at temperatures above absolute zero. The rate of this movement is a function of temperature, viscosity of the fluid and the size (mass) of the particles. Diffusion explains the net flux of molecules from a region of higher concentration to one of lower concentration. Once the concentrations are equal the molecules continue to move, but since there is no concentration gradient the process of molecular diffusion has ceased and is instead governed by the process of self-diffusion, originating from the random motion of the molecules. The result of diffusion is a gradual mixing of material such that the distribution of molecules is uniform. Since the molecules are still in motion, but an equilibrium has been established, the result of molecular diffusion is called a "dynamic equilibrium". In a phase with uniform temperature, absent external net forces acting on the particles, the diffusion process will eventually result in complete mixing. Consider two systems; S1 and S2 at the same temperature and capable of exchanging particles. If there is a change in the potential energy of a system; for example μ1>μ2 (μ is Chemical potential) an energy flow will occur from S1 to S2, because nature always prefers low energy and maximum entropy. Molecular diffusion is typically described mathematically using Fick's laws of diffusion. | 2001-10-14T17:03:39Z | 2023-11-09T02:34:36Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_diffusion |
8,645 | Declension | In linguistics, declension (verb: to decline) is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and articles to indicate number (e.g. singular, dual, plural), case (e.g. nominative case, accusative case, genitive case, dative case), gender (e.g. masculine, neuter, feminine), and a number of other grammatical categories. Meanwhile, the inflectional change of verbs is called conjugation.
Declension occurs in many of the world's languages. It is an important aspect of language families like Quechuan (i.e., languages native to the Andes), Indo-European (e.g. German, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Latvian, Slavic, Sanskrit, Latin, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Albanian, Classical Armenian and Modern Armenian and Kurdish), Bantu (e.g. Zulu, Kikuyu), Semitic (e.g. Modern Standard Arabic), Finno-Ugric (e.g. Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian), and Turkic (e.g. Turkish).
Old English was an inflectional language, but largely abandoned inflectional changes as it evolved into Modern English. Though traditionally classified as synthetic, Modern English has moved towards a mostly analytic language.
Unlike English, many languages use suffixes to specify subjects and objects and word cases in general. Inflected languages have a freer word order than modern English, an analytic language in which word order identifies the subject and object. As an example, even though both of the following sentences consist of the same words, the meaning is different:
Hypothetically speaking, suppose English were a language with a more complex declension system in which cases were formed by adding the suffixes:
The above sentence could be formed with any of the following word orders and would have the same meaning:
As a more complex example, the sentence:
becomes nonsensical in English if the words are rearranged (because there are no cases):
But if English were a highly inflected language, like Latin or some Slavic languages such as Croatian, both sentences could mean the same thing. They would both contain five nouns in five different cases: mum – vocative (hey!), dog – nominative (who?), boy – genitive (of whom?), cat – accusative (whom?), street – locative (where?); the adjective little would be in the same case as the noun it modifies (boy), and the case of the determiner our would agree with the case of the noun it determines (street).
Using the case suffixes invented for this example, the original sentence would read:
And like other inflected languages, the sentence rearranged in the following ways would mean virtually the same thing, but with different expressiveness:
Instead of the locative, the instrumental form of "down our street" could also be used:
Different word orders preserving the original meaning are possible in an inflected language, while modern English relies on word order for meaning, with a little flexibility. This is one of the advantages of an inflected language. The English sentences above, when read without the made-up case suffixes, are confusing.
These contrived examples are relatively simple, whereas actual inflected languages have a far more complicated set of declensions, where the suffixes (or prefixes, or infixes) change depending on the gender of the noun, the quantity of the noun, and other possible factors. This complexity and the possible lengthening of words is one of the disadvantages of inflected languages. Notably, many of these languages lack articles. There may also be irregular nouns where the declensions are unique for each word (like irregular verbs with conjugation). In inflected languages, other parts of speech such as numerals, demonstratives, adjectives, and articles are also declined.
It is agreed that Ancient Greeks had a "vague" idea of the forms of a noun in their language. A fragment of Anacreon seems to confirm this idea. Nevertheless, it cannot be concluded that the Ancient Greeks actually knew what the cases were. The Stoics developed many basic notions that today are the rudiments of linguistics. The idea of grammatical cases is also traced back to the Stoics, but it is still not completely clear what the Stoics exactly meant with their notion of cases.
In Modern English, the system of declensions is so simple compared to some other languages that the term declension is rarely used.
Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending -s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic -'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe.
Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl. Most speakers pronounce all forms other than the singular plain form (girl) exactly the same.
By contrast, a few irregular nouns (like man/men) are slightly more complex in their forms. In this example, all four forms are pronounced distinctly.
For nouns, in general, gender is not declined in Modern English. There are isolated situations where certain nouns may be modified to reflect gender, though not in a systematic fashion. Loan words from other languages, particularly Latin and the Romance languages, often preserve their gender-specific forms in English, e.g. alumnus (masculine singular) and alumna (feminine singular). Similarly, names borrowed from other languages show comparable distinctions: Andrew and Andrea, Paul and Paula, etc. Additionally, suffixes such as -ess, -ette, and -er are sometimes applied to create overtly gendered versions of nouns, with marking for feminine being much more common than marking for masculine. Many nouns can actually function as members of two genders or even all three, and the gender classes of English nouns are usually determined by their agreement with pronouns, rather than marking on the nouns themselves.
There can be other derivations from nouns that are not considered declensions. For example, the proper noun Britain has the associated descriptive adjective British and the demonym Briton. Though these words are clearly related, and are generally considered cognates, they are not specifically treated as forms of the same word, and thus are not declensions.
Pronouns in English have more complex declensions. For example, the first person "I":
Whereas nouns do not distinguish between the subjective (nominative) and objective (oblique) cases, some pronouns do; that is, they decline to reflect their relationship to a verb or preposition, or case. Consider the difference between he (subjective) and him (objective), as in "He saw it" and "It saw him"; similarly, consider who, which is subjective, and the objective whom (although it is increasingly common to use who for both).
The one situation where gender is still clearly part of the English language is in the pronouns for the third person singular. Consider the following:
The distinguishing of neuter for persons and non-persons is peculiar to English. This has existed since the 14th century. However, the use of singular they is often restricted to specific contexts, depending on the dialect or the speaker. It is most typically used to refer to a single person of unknown gender (e.g. "someone left their jacket behind") or a hypothetical person where gender is insignificant (e.g. "If someone wants to, then they should"). Its use has expanded in recent years due to increasing social recognition of persons who do not identify themselves as male or female. (see gender-nonbinary) The singular they still uses plural verb forms, reflecting its origins.
Some English adjectives and adverbs are declined for degree of comparison. The unmarked form is the positive form, such as quick. Comparative forms are formed with the ending -er (quicker), while superlative forms are formed with -est (quickest). Some are uncomparable; the remainder are usually periphrastic constructions with more (more beautiful) and most (most modestly). See degree of comparison for more.
Adjectives are not declined for case in Modern English (though they were in Old English), nor number nor gender.
The demonstrative determiners this and that are declined for number, as these and those.
The article is never regarded as declined in Modern English, although formally, the words that and possibly she correspond to forms of the predecessor of the (sē m., þæt n., sēo f.) as it was declined in Old English.
Just as verbs in Latin are conjugated to indicate grammatical information, Latin nouns and adjectives that modify them are declined to signal their roles in sentences. There are five important cases for Latin nouns: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative. Since the vocative case usually takes the same form as the nominative, it is seldom spelt out in grammar books. Yet another case, the locative, is limited to a small number of words.
The usual basic functions of these cases are as follows:
The genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative also have important functions to indicate the object of a preposition.
Given below is the declension paradigm of Latin puer 'boy' and puella 'girl':
From the provided examples we can see how cases work:
liber
book
puerī
boy.GEN
liber puerī
book boy.GEN
the book of the boy
puer
boy.NOM
puellae
girl.DAT
rosam
rose.ACC
dat
give.3SG.PRES
puer puellae rosam dat
boy.NOM girl.DAT rose.ACC give.3SG.PRES
the boy gives the girl a rose
Sanskrit, another Indo-European language, has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, locative and instrumental. Some do not count vocative as a separate case, despite it having a distinctive ending in the singular, but consider it as a different use of the nominative.
Sanskrit grammatical cases have been analyzed extensively. The grammarian Pāṇini identified six semantic roles or karaka, which correspond closely to the eight cases:
For example, consider the following sentence:
vṛkṣ-āt
from the tree
parṇ-aṁ
a leaf
bhūm-āu
to the ground
patati
falls
vṛkṣ-āt parṇ-aṁ bhūm-āu patati
{from the tree} {a leaf} {to the ground} falls
"a leaf falls from the tree to the ground"
Here leaf is the agent, tree is the source, and ground is the locus. The endings -aṁ, -at, -āu mark the cases associated with these meanings. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In linguistics, declension (verb: to decline) is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and articles to indicate number (e.g. singular, dual, plural), case (e.g. nominative case, accusative case, genitive case, dative case), gender (e.g. masculine, neuter, feminine), and a number of other grammatical categories. Meanwhile, the inflectional change of verbs is called conjugation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Declension occurs in many of the world's languages. It is an important aspect of language families like Quechuan (i.e., languages native to the Andes), Indo-European (e.g. German, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Latvian, Slavic, Sanskrit, Latin, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Albanian, Classical Armenian and Modern Armenian and Kurdish), Bantu (e.g. Zulu, Kikuyu), Semitic (e.g. Modern Standard Arabic), Finno-Ugric (e.g. Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian), and Turkic (e.g. Turkish).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Old English was an inflectional language, but largely abandoned inflectional changes as it evolved into Modern English. Though traditionally classified as synthetic, Modern English has moved towards a mostly analytic language.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Unlike English, many languages use suffixes to specify subjects and objects and word cases in general. Inflected languages have a freer word order than modern English, an analytic language in which word order identifies the subject and object. As an example, even though both of the following sentences consist of the same words, the meaning is different:",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Hypothetically speaking, suppose English were a language with a more complex declension system in which cases were formed by adding the suffixes:",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The above sentence could be formed with any of the following word orders and would have the same meaning:",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "As a more complex example, the sentence:",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "becomes nonsensical in English if the words are rearranged (because there are no cases):",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "But if English were a highly inflected language, like Latin or some Slavic languages such as Croatian, both sentences could mean the same thing. They would both contain five nouns in five different cases: mum – vocative (hey!), dog – nominative (who?), boy – genitive (of whom?), cat – accusative (whom?), street – locative (where?); the adjective little would be in the same case as the noun it modifies (boy), and the case of the determiner our would agree with the case of the noun it determines (street).",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Using the case suffixes invented for this example, the original sentence would read:",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "And like other inflected languages, the sentence rearranged in the following ways would mean virtually the same thing, but with different expressiveness:",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Instead of the locative, the instrumental form of \"down our street\" could also be used:",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Different word orders preserving the original meaning are possible in an inflected language, while modern English relies on word order for meaning, with a little flexibility. This is one of the advantages of an inflected language. The English sentences above, when read without the made-up case suffixes, are confusing.",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "These contrived examples are relatively simple, whereas actual inflected languages have a far more complicated set of declensions, where the suffixes (or prefixes, or infixes) change depending on the gender of the noun, the quantity of the noun, and other possible factors. This complexity and the possible lengthening of words is one of the disadvantages of inflected languages. Notably, many of these languages lack articles. There may also be irregular nouns where the declensions are unique for each word (like irregular verbs with conjugation). In inflected languages, other parts of speech such as numerals, demonstratives, adjectives, and articles are also declined.",
"title": "English-speaking perspective"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "It is agreed that Ancient Greeks had a \"vague\" idea of the forms of a noun in their language. A fragment of Anacreon seems to confirm this idea. Nevertheless, it cannot be concluded that the Ancient Greeks actually knew what the cases were. The Stoics developed many basic notions that today are the rudiments of linguistics. The idea of grammatical cases is also traced back to the Stoics, but it is still not completely clear what the Stoics exactly meant with their notion of cases.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In Modern English, the system of declensions is so simple compared to some other languages that the term declension is rarely used.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending -s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic -'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl. Most speakers pronounce all forms other than the singular plain form (girl) exactly the same.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "By contrast, a few irregular nouns (like man/men) are slightly more complex in their forms. In this example, all four forms are pronounced distinctly.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "For nouns, in general, gender is not declined in Modern English. There are isolated situations where certain nouns may be modified to reflect gender, though not in a systematic fashion. Loan words from other languages, particularly Latin and the Romance languages, often preserve their gender-specific forms in English, e.g. alumnus (masculine singular) and alumna (feminine singular). Similarly, names borrowed from other languages show comparable distinctions: Andrew and Andrea, Paul and Paula, etc. Additionally, suffixes such as -ess, -ette, and -er are sometimes applied to create overtly gendered versions of nouns, with marking for feminine being much more common than marking for masculine. Many nouns can actually function as members of two genders or even all three, and the gender classes of English nouns are usually determined by their agreement with pronouns, rather than marking on the nouns themselves.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "There can be other derivations from nouns that are not considered declensions. For example, the proper noun Britain has the associated descriptive adjective British and the demonym Briton. Though these words are clearly related, and are generally considered cognates, they are not specifically treated as forms of the same word, and thus are not declensions.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Pronouns in English have more complex declensions. For example, the first person \"I\":",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Whereas nouns do not distinguish between the subjective (nominative) and objective (oblique) cases, some pronouns do; that is, they decline to reflect their relationship to a verb or preposition, or case. Consider the difference between he (subjective) and him (objective), as in \"He saw it\" and \"It saw him\"; similarly, consider who, which is subjective, and the objective whom (although it is increasingly common to use who for both).",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The one situation where gender is still clearly part of the English language is in the pronouns for the third person singular. Consider the following:",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The distinguishing of neuter for persons and non-persons is peculiar to English. This has existed since the 14th century. However, the use of singular they is often restricted to specific contexts, depending on the dialect or the speaker. It is most typically used to refer to a single person of unknown gender (e.g. \"someone left their jacket behind\") or a hypothetical person where gender is insignificant (e.g. \"If someone wants to, then they should\"). Its use has expanded in recent years due to increasing social recognition of persons who do not identify themselves as male or female. (see gender-nonbinary) The singular they still uses plural verb forms, reflecting its origins.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Some English adjectives and adverbs are declined for degree of comparison. The unmarked form is the positive form, such as quick. Comparative forms are formed with the ending -er (quicker), while superlative forms are formed with -est (quickest). Some are uncomparable; the remainder are usually periphrastic constructions with more (more beautiful) and most (most modestly). See degree of comparison for more.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Adjectives are not declined for case in Modern English (though they were in Old English), nor number nor gender.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The demonstrative determiners this and that are declined for number, as these and those.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The article is never regarded as declined in Modern English, although formally, the words that and possibly she correspond to forms of the predecessor of the (sē m., þæt n., sēo f.) as it was declined in Old English.",
"title": "Modern English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Just as verbs in Latin are conjugated to indicate grammatical information, Latin nouns and adjectives that modify them are declined to signal their roles in sentences. There are five important cases for Latin nouns: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative. Since the vocative case usually takes the same form as the nominative, it is seldom spelt out in grammar books. Yet another case, the locative, is limited to a small number of words.",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The usual basic functions of these cases are as follows:",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative also have important functions to indicate the object of a preposition.",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Given below is the declension paradigm of Latin puer 'boy' and puella 'girl':",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "From the provided examples we can see how cases work:",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "liber",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "book",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "puerī",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "boy.GEN",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "liber puerī",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "book boy.GEN",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "the book of the boy",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "puer",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "boy.NOM",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "puellae",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "girl.DAT",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "rosam",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "rose.ACC",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "dat",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "give.3SG.PRES",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "puer puellae rosam dat",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "boy.NOM girl.DAT rose.ACC give.3SG.PRES",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "the boy gives the girl a rose",
"title": "Latin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Sanskrit, another Indo-European language, has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, locative and instrumental. Some do not count vocative as a separate case, despite it having a distinctive ending in the singular, but consider it as a different use of the nominative.",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Sanskrit grammatical cases have been analyzed extensively. The grammarian Pāṇini identified six semantic roles or karaka, which correspond closely to the eight cases:",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "For example, consider the following sentence:",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "vṛkṣ-āt",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "from the tree",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "parṇ-aṁ",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "a leaf",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "bhūm-āu",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "to the ground",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "patati",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "falls",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "vṛkṣ-āt parṇ-aṁ bhūm-āu patati",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "{from the tree} {a leaf} {to the ground} falls",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "\"a leaf falls from the tree to the ground\"",
"title": "Sanskrit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Here leaf is the agent, tree is the source, and ground is the locus. The endings -aṁ, -at, -āu mark the cases associated with these meanings.",
"title": "Sanskrit"
}
]
| In linguistics, declension is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and articles to indicate number, case, gender, and a number of other grammatical categories. Meanwhile, the inflectional change of verbs is called conjugation. Declension occurs in many of the world's languages. It is an important aspect of language families like Quechuan, Indo-European, Bantu, Semitic, Finno-Ugric, and Turkic. Old English was an inflectional language, but largely abandoned inflectional changes as it evolved into Modern English. Though traditionally classified as synthetic, Modern English has moved towards a mostly analytic language. | 2001-10-14T19:29:47Z | 2023-12-19T22:41:18Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declension |
8,648 | Daffynition | A daffynition (a portmanteau blend of daffy and definition) is a form of pun involving the reinterpretation of an existing word, on the basis that it sounds like another word (or group of words). Presented in the form of dictionary definitions, they are similar to transpositional puns, but often much less complex and easier to create..
Under the name Uxbridge English Dictionary, making up daffynitions is a popular game on the BBC Radio 4 comedy quiz show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
A lesser-known subclass of daffynition is the goofinition, which relies strictly on literal associations and correct spellings, such as "lobster = a weak tennis player". This play on words is similar to Cockney rhyming slang. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A daffynition (a portmanteau blend of daffy and definition) is a form of pun involving the reinterpretation of an existing word, on the basis that it sounds like another word (or group of words). Presented in the form of dictionary definitions, they are similar to transpositional puns, but often much less complex and easier to create..",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Under the name Uxbridge English Dictionary, making up daffynitions is a popular game on the BBC Radio 4 comedy quiz show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A lesser-known subclass of daffynition is the goofinition, which relies strictly on literal associations and correct spellings, such as \"lobster = a weak tennis player\". This play on words is similar to Cockney rhyming slang.",
"title": ""
}
]
| A daffynition is a form of pun involving the reinterpretation of an existing word, on the basis that it sounds like another word. Presented in the form of dictionary definitions, they are similar to transpositional puns, but often much less complex and easier to create.. Under the name Uxbridge English Dictionary, making up daffynitions is a popular game on the BBC Radio 4 comedy quiz show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. A lesser-known subclass of daffynition is the goofinition, which relies strictly on literal associations and correct spellings, such as "lobster = a weak tennis player". This play on words is similar to Cockney rhyming slang. | 2001-10-15T10:43:37Z | 2023-10-01T07:20:22Z | [
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Ref improve",
"Template:Wiktionary"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daffynition |
8,649 | List of football clubs in the Netherlands | The Dutch Football League is organized by the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB, Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond).The most successful teams are Ajax (36), PSV (24) and Feyenoord (16). Important teams of the past are HVV (10 titles), Sparta Rotterdam (6 titles) and Willem II (3 titles).
The annual match that marks the beginning of the season is called the Johan Cruijff Schaal (Johan Cruyff Shield). Contenders are the champions and the cup winners of the previous season. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Dutch Football League is organized by the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB, Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond).The most successful teams are Ajax (36), PSV (24) and Feyenoord (16). Important teams of the past are HVV (10 titles), Sparta Rotterdam (6 titles) and Willem II (3 titles).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The annual match that marks the beginning of the season is called the Johan Cruijff Schaal (Johan Cruyff Shield). Contenders are the champions and the cup winners of the previous season.",
"title": ""
}
]
| The Dutch Football League is organized by the Royal Dutch Football Association.The most successful teams are Ajax (36), PSV (24) and Feyenoord (16). Important teams of the past are HVV, Sparta Rotterdam and Willem II. The annual match that marks the beginning of the season is called the Johan Cruijff Schaal. Contenders are the champions and the cup winners of the previous season. | 2023-06-12T12:48:26Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_football_clubs_in_the_Netherlands |
|
8,650 | Dragon 32/64 | The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are home computers that were built in the 1980s. The Dragons are very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer, and were produced for the European market by Dragon Data, Ltd., initially in Swansea, Wales before moving to Port Talbot, Wales (until 1984) and by Eurohard S.A. in Casar de Cáceres, Spain (from 1984 to 1987), and for the US market by Tano Corporation of New Orleans, Louisiana. The model numbers reflect the primary difference between the two machines, which have 32 and 64 kilobytes of RAM, respectively.
Dragon Data introduced the Dragon 32 microcomputer in August 1982, followed by the Dragon 64 a year later. Despite initial success, the Dragon faced technical limitations in graphics capabilities and hardware-supported text modes, which restricted its appeal in the gaming and educational markets. Dragon Data collapsed in 1984 and was acquired by Spanish company Eurohard S.A. However, Eurohard filed for bankruptcy in 1987.
The Dragon computers were built around the Motorola MC6809E processor and featured a composite monitor port, allowing connection to modern TVs. They used analog joysticks and had a range of peripherals and add-ons available. The Dragon had several high-resolution display modes, but limited graphics capabilities compared to other home computers of the time.
The Dragon came with a Microsoft BASIC interpreter in ROM, which allowed instant system start-up. The Dragon 32/64 was capable of running multiple disk operating systems, and a range of popular games were ported to the system.
Overall, the Dragon computers were initially well-received but faced limitations that hindered their long-term success.
Aside from the amount of RAM, the Dragon 64 also has a functional RS-232 serial port which was not included on the Dragon 32. A minor difference between the two Dragon models is the outer case colour; the Dragon 32 is beige and the Dragon 64 is light grey. Besides the case, branding and the Dragon 64's serial port, the two machines look the same. The Dragon 32 is upgradable to Dragon 64. In some cases, buyers of the Dragon 32 found that they actually received a Dragon 64 unit.
Dragon Data entered the market in August 1982 with the Dragon 32. The Dragon 64 followed a year later. The computers sold well initially and attracted the interest of independent software developers including Microdeal. A companion magazine, Dragon User, began publication shortly after the microcomputer's launch.
Despite this initial success, there were two technical impediments to the Dragon's acceptance. The graphics capabilities trailed behind other computers such as the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro. This was significant for the games market. Additionally, as a cost-cutting measure, the hardware-supported text modes only included upper case characters. This restricted system's appeal to the educational market.
Dragon Data collapsed in June 1984. It was acquired by the Spanish company Eurohard S.A., which moved the factory from Wales to Cáceres and released the Dragon 200 (a Dragon 64 with a new case that allowed a monitor to be placed on top) and the Dragon 200-E (an enhanced Dragon 200 with both upper and lower case characters and a Spanish keyboard), but ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1987. The remaining stock from Eurohard was purchased by a Spanish electronics hobbyist magazine and given away to those who paid for a three-year subscription, until 1992.
In the United States it was possible to purchase the Tano Dragon new in box until early 2017 from California Digital, a retailer that purchased the remaining stock.
BYTE wrote in January 1983 that the Dragon 32 "offers more feature for the money than most of its competitors", but "there's nothing exceptional about it". The review described it as a redesigned, less-expensive Color Computer with 32K RAM and better keyboard.
The Dragon is built around the Motorola MC6809E processor running at 0.89 MHz. It was an advanced 8-bit CPU design, with limited 16-bit capabilities.
It was possible to increase the speed of the computer by using POKE 65495,0 which accelerated the ROM-resident BASIC interpreter, but temporarily disabled proper functioning of the cassette/printer ports. Manufacturing variances mean that not all Dragons were able to function at this higher speed, and use of this POKE could cause some units to crash or be unstable, though with no permanent damage. POKE 65494,0 returned the speed to normal. POKE 65497,0 pushed the speed yet higher but the display was lost until a slower speed was restored.
The Dragon used the SN74LS783/MC6883 Synchronous Address Multiplexer (SAM) and the MC6847 Video Display Generator (VDG). I/O was provided by two MC6821 Peripheral Interface Adapters (PIAs). Many Dragon 32s were upgraded by their owners to 64 KB of memory. A few were further expanded to 128 KB, 256 KB, or 512 KB with home-built memory controllers/memory management units (MMUs).
A broad range of peripherals exist for the Dragon 32/64, and there are add-ons such as the Dragon's Claw which give the Dragons a port that is hardware-compatible with the BBC Micro's user port, though separate software drivers for connected devices must be developed. Although neither machine has a built-in disk operating system (Compact Cassettes being the standard storage mechanism commonly used for machines of the time), DragonDOS was supplied as part of the disk controller interface from Dragon Data Ltd. The versatile external ports, including the standard RS-232 on the 64, also allows hobbyists to attach a diverse range of equipment.
The computer featured a composite monitor port as an alternative to the TV RF output which can be used to connect the Dragon 32 to most modern TVs to deliver a much better picture.
The Dragon used analogue joysticks, unlike most systems of the time which used simpler and cheaper digital systems. Other uses for the joystick ports included light pens.
Tony Clarke and Richard Wadman established the specifications for the Dragon.
The units had a robust motherboard in a spacious case, reminiscent of the BBC Micro, and so were more tolerant of aftermarket modification than some of their contemporaries, which often had their components crammed into the smallest possible space.
The Dragon's main display mode is 'black on green' text (the black was, in actuality, a deeper, muddier green). The only graphics possible in this mode are quarter-tile block based.
It also has a selection of five high-resolution modes, named PMODEs 0–4, which alternate monochrome and four-colour in successively higher resolutions, culminating in the black-and-white 256×192 PMODE 4. Each mode has two possible colour palettes – these are rather garish and cause the system to fare poorly in visual comparisons with other home computers of the time. It is also impossible to use standard printing commands to print text in the graphical modes, causing software development difficulties.
Full-colour, scanline-based 64×192 semi-graphics modes are also possible, though their imbalanced resolution and programming difficulty (not being accessible via BASIC) meant they were not often utilised.
First to market was a complete disk operating system produced by Premier Microsystems, located near Croydon. The system was sold as the "Delta" disk operating system; there was a proposal for Dragon to market this as an addon. Dragon did not enter into such an agreement and instead produced the DragonDOS system. The two systems were incompatible.
Delta's lead in availability ensured that software was released in the format, whilst Dragon's "official" status ensured that it, too, gained software published in its format. This led to confusion and frustration, with customers finding they had either purchased a version incompatible with their setup, or that the software was only available for the competing standard.
The Dragon comes with a Microsoft BASIC interpreter in 16 KB of ROM. The BASIC appears to be nearly identical to Tandy Color Computer's Extended Basic with a few changes necessary to interact with the Dragon system.
In common with home computers of the time, the entire operating software was included on a ROM chip; therefore, the system starts instantly when powered up.
Some software providers also produced compilers for BASIC and other languages to produce binary (or "machine") code which would run many times faster and make better use of the small system RAM. Towards the end of its life, Dragon Data produced an assembler/disassembler/editor suite called Dream.
In addition to the DragonDOS disk operating system, the Dragon 32/64 is capable of running several others, including FLEX, and even OS-9 which brought UNIX-like multitasking to the platform. Memory-expanded and MMU-equipped Dragons are able to run OS-9 Level 2.
Initially, the Dragon was reasonably well supported by the major UK software companies, with versions of popular games from other systems being ported to the Dragon. Top-selling games available for the Dragon include Arcadia (Imagine), Chuckie Egg (A&F), Manic Miner and sequel Jet Set Willy (Software Projects), Hunchback (Ocean) and Football Manager (Addictive). There were also companies that concentrated on the Dragon, such as Microdeal. Their character Cuthbert appeared in several games, with Cuthbert Goes Walkabout also being converted for Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 systems.
Due to the limited graphics modes of the Dragon, converted games had a distinctive appearance, with colour games being usually played on a green or white background (rather than the more common black on other systems) or games with high-definition graphics having to run in black and white.
When the system was discontinued, support from software companies also effectively ended. However, Microdeal continued supporting the Dragon until January 1988. Some of their final games developed for the Dragon in 1987 such as Tanglewood and Airball were also converted for 16-bit machines such as the Atari ST and Amiga.
Both the Dragon and the TRS-80 Color Computer are based on a Motorola data sheet design for the MC6883 SAM (MMU) chip for memory management and peripheral control.
The systems are sufficiently similar that a significant fraction of the compiled software produced for one machine will run on the other. Software running via the built-in Basic interpreters also has a high level of compatibility, but only after they are re-tokenized, which can be achieved fairly easily by transferring via cassette tape with appropriate options.
It is possible to permanently convert a Color Computer into a Dragon by swapping the original Color Computer ROM and rewiring the keyboard cable.
The Dragon has additional circuitry to make the MC6847 VDG compatible with European 625-line television standards, rather than the US 525-line NTSC standard, and a Centronics parallel printer port not present on the TRS-80. Some models were manufactured with NTSC video for the US and Canadian markets. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are home computers that were built in the 1980s. The Dragons are very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer, and were produced for the European market by Dragon Data, Ltd., initially in Swansea, Wales before moving to Port Talbot, Wales (until 1984) and by Eurohard S.A. in Casar de Cáceres, Spain (from 1984 to 1987), and for the US market by Tano Corporation of New Orleans, Louisiana. The model numbers reflect the primary difference between the two machines, which have 32 and 64 kilobytes of RAM, respectively.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Dragon Data introduced the Dragon 32 microcomputer in August 1982, followed by the Dragon 64 a year later. Despite initial success, the Dragon faced technical limitations in graphics capabilities and hardware-supported text modes, which restricted its appeal in the gaming and educational markets. Dragon Data collapsed in 1984 and was acquired by Spanish company Eurohard S.A. However, Eurohard filed for bankruptcy in 1987.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Dragon computers were built around the Motorola MC6809E processor and featured a composite monitor port, allowing connection to modern TVs. They used analog joysticks and had a range of peripherals and add-ons available. The Dragon had several high-resolution display modes, but limited graphics capabilities compared to other home computers of the time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Dragon came with a Microsoft BASIC interpreter in ROM, which allowed instant system start-up. The Dragon 32/64 was capable of running multiple disk operating systems, and a range of popular games were ported to the system.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Overall, the Dragon computers were initially well-received but faced limitations that hindered their long-term success.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Aside from the amount of RAM, the Dragon 64 also has a functional RS-232 serial port which was not included on the Dragon 32. A minor difference between the two Dragon models is the outer case colour; the Dragon 32 is beige and the Dragon 64 is light grey. Besides the case, branding and the Dragon 64's serial port, the two machines look the same. The Dragon 32 is upgradable to Dragon 64. In some cases, buyers of the Dragon 32 found that they actually received a Dragon 64 unit.",
"title": "Dragon 32 vs. Dragon 64"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Dragon Data entered the market in August 1982 with the Dragon 32. The Dragon 64 followed a year later. The computers sold well initially and attracted the interest of independent software developers including Microdeal. A companion magazine, Dragon User, began publication shortly after the microcomputer's launch.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Despite this initial success, there were two technical impediments to the Dragon's acceptance. The graphics capabilities trailed behind other computers such as the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro. This was significant for the games market. Additionally, as a cost-cutting measure, the hardware-supported text modes only included upper case characters. This restricted system's appeal to the educational market.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Dragon Data collapsed in June 1984. It was acquired by the Spanish company Eurohard S.A., which moved the factory from Wales to Cáceres and released the Dragon 200 (a Dragon 64 with a new case that allowed a monitor to be placed on top) and the Dragon 200-E (an enhanced Dragon 200 with both upper and lower case characters and a Spanish keyboard), but ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1987. The remaining stock from Eurohard was purchased by a Spanish electronics hobbyist magazine and given away to those who paid for a three-year subscription, until 1992.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the United States it was possible to purchase the Tano Dragon new in box until early 2017 from California Digital, a retailer that purchased the remaining stock.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "BYTE wrote in January 1983 that the Dragon 32 \"offers more feature for the money than most of its competitors\", but \"there's nothing exceptional about it\". The review described it as a redesigned, less-expensive Color Computer with 32K RAM and better keyboard.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Dragon is built around the Motorola MC6809E processor running at 0.89 MHz. It was an advanced 8-bit CPU design, with limited 16-bit capabilities.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "It was possible to increase the speed of the computer by using POKE 65495,0 which accelerated the ROM-resident BASIC interpreter, but temporarily disabled proper functioning of the cassette/printer ports. Manufacturing variances mean that not all Dragons were able to function at this higher speed, and use of this POKE could cause some units to crash or be unstable, though with no permanent damage. POKE 65494,0 returned the speed to normal. POKE 65497,0 pushed the speed yet higher but the display was lost until a slower speed was restored.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Dragon used the SN74LS783/MC6883 Synchronous Address Multiplexer (SAM) and the MC6847 Video Display Generator (VDG). I/O was provided by two MC6821 Peripheral Interface Adapters (PIAs). Many Dragon 32s were upgraded by their owners to 64 KB of memory. A few were further expanded to 128 KB, 256 KB, or 512 KB with home-built memory controllers/memory management units (MMUs).",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "A broad range of peripherals exist for the Dragon 32/64, and there are add-ons such as the Dragon's Claw which give the Dragons a port that is hardware-compatible with the BBC Micro's user port, though separate software drivers for connected devices must be developed. Although neither machine has a built-in disk operating system (Compact Cassettes being the standard storage mechanism commonly used for machines of the time), DragonDOS was supplied as part of the disk controller interface from Dragon Data Ltd. The versatile external ports, including the standard RS-232 on the 64, also allows hobbyists to attach a diverse range of equipment.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The computer featured a composite monitor port as an alternative to the TV RF output which can be used to connect the Dragon 32 to most modern TVs to deliver a much better picture.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Dragon used analogue joysticks, unlike most systems of the time which used simpler and cheaper digital systems. Other uses for the joystick ports included light pens.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Tony Clarke and Richard Wadman established the specifications for the Dragon.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The units had a robust motherboard in a spacious case, reminiscent of the BBC Micro, and so were more tolerant of aftermarket modification than some of their contemporaries, which often had their components crammed into the smallest possible space.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Dragon's main display mode is 'black on green' text (the black was, in actuality, a deeper, muddier green). The only graphics possible in this mode are quarter-tile block based.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "It also has a selection of five high-resolution modes, named PMODEs 0–4, which alternate monochrome and four-colour in successively higher resolutions, culminating in the black-and-white 256×192 PMODE 4. Each mode has two possible colour palettes – these are rather garish and cause the system to fare poorly in visual comparisons with other home computers of the time. It is also impossible to use standard printing commands to print text in the graphical modes, causing software development difficulties.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Full-colour, scanline-based 64×192 semi-graphics modes are also possible, though their imbalanced resolution and programming difficulty (not being accessible via BASIC) meant they were not often utilised.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "First to market was a complete disk operating system produced by Premier Microsystems, located near Croydon. The system was sold as the \"Delta\" disk operating system; there was a proposal for Dragon to market this as an addon. Dragon did not enter into such an agreement and instead produced the DragonDOS system. The two systems were incompatible.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Delta's lead in availability ensured that software was released in the format, whilst Dragon's \"official\" status ensured that it, too, gained software published in its format. This led to confusion and frustration, with customers finding they had either purchased a version incompatible with their setup, or that the software was only available for the competing standard.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Dragon comes with a Microsoft BASIC interpreter in 16 KB of ROM. The BASIC appears to be nearly identical to Tandy Color Computer's Extended Basic with a few changes necessary to interact with the Dragon system.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In common with home computers of the time, the entire operating software was included on a ROM chip; therefore, the system starts instantly when powered up.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Some software providers also produced compilers for BASIC and other languages to produce binary (or \"machine\") code which would run many times faster and make better use of the small system RAM. Towards the end of its life, Dragon Data produced an assembler/disassembler/editor suite called Dream.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In addition to the DragonDOS disk operating system, the Dragon 32/64 is capable of running several others, including FLEX, and even OS-9 which brought UNIX-like multitasking to the platform. Memory-expanded and MMU-equipped Dragons are able to run OS-9 Level 2.",
"title": "Technical notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Initially, the Dragon was reasonably well supported by the major UK software companies, with versions of popular games from other systems being ported to the Dragon. Top-selling games available for the Dragon include Arcadia (Imagine), Chuckie Egg (A&F), Manic Miner and sequel Jet Set Willy (Software Projects), Hunchback (Ocean) and Football Manager (Addictive). There were also companies that concentrated on the Dragon, such as Microdeal. Their character Cuthbert appeared in several games, with Cuthbert Goes Walkabout also being converted for Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 systems.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Due to the limited graphics modes of the Dragon, converted games had a distinctive appearance, with colour games being usually played on a green or white background (rather than the more common black on other systems) or games with high-definition graphics having to run in black and white.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "When the system was discontinued, support from software companies also effectively ended. However, Microdeal continued supporting the Dragon until January 1988. Some of their final games developed for the Dragon in 1987 such as Tanglewood and Airball were also converted for 16-bit machines such as the Atari ST and Amiga.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Both the Dragon and the TRS-80 Color Computer are based on a Motorola data sheet design for the MC6883 SAM (MMU) chip for memory management and peripheral control.",
"title": "Differences from the TRS-80 Color Computer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The systems are sufficiently similar that a significant fraction of the compiled software produced for one machine will run on the other. Software running via the built-in Basic interpreters also has a high level of compatibility, but only after they are re-tokenized, which can be achieved fairly easily by transferring via cassette tape with appropriate options.",
"title": "Differences from the TRS-80 Color Computer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "It is possible to permanently convert a Color Computer into a Dragon by swapping the original Color Computer ROM and rewiring the keyboard cable.",
"title": "Differences from the TRS-80 Color Computer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The Dragon has additional circuitry to make the MC6847 VDG compatible with European 625-line television standards, rather than the US 525-line NTSC standard, and a Centronics parallel printer port not present on the TRS-80. Some models were manufactured with NTSC video for the US and Canadian markets.",
"title": "Differences from the TRS-80 Color Computer"
}
]
| The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are home computers that were built in the 1980s. The Dragons are very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer, and were produced for the European market by Dragon Data, Ltd., initially in Swansea, Wales before moving to Port Talbot, Wales and by Eurohard S.A. in Casar de Cáceres, Spain, and for the US market by Tano Corporation of New Orleans, Louisiana. The model numbers reflect the primary difference between the two machines, which have 32 and 64 kilobytes of RAM, respectively. Dragon Data introduced the Dragon 32 microcomputer in August 1982, followed by the Dragon 64 a year later. Despite initial success, the Dragon faced technical limitations in graphics capabilities and hardware-supported text modes, which restricted its appeal in the gaming and educational markets. Dragon Data collapsed in 1984 and was acquired by Spanish company Eurohard S.A. However, Eurohard filed for bankruptcy in 1987. The Dragon computers were built around the Motorola MC6809E processor and featured a composite monitor port, allowing connection to modern TVs. They used analog joysticks and had a range of peripherals and add-ons available. The Dragon had several high-resolution display modes, but limited graphics capabilities compared to other home computers of the time. The Dragon came with a Microsoft BASIC interpreter in ROM, which allowed instant system start-up. The Dragon 32/64 was capable of running multiple disk operating systems, and a range of popular games were ported to the system. Overall, the Dragon computers were initially well-received but faced limitations that hindered their long-term success. | 2001-10-18T09:08:49Z | 2023-12-27T22:25:06Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_32/64 |
8,651 | Dark matter | What is dark matter? How was it generated?
In astronomy, dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that appears not to interact with light or the electromagnetic field. Dark matter is implied by gravitational effects which cannot be explained by general relativity unless more matter is present than can be seen. Such effects occur in the context of formation and evolution of galaxies, gravitational lensing, the observable universe's current structure, mass position in galactic collisions, the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters, and cosmic microwave background anisotropies.
In the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, the mass–energy content of the universe is 5% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter, and 68.2% a form of energy known as dark energy. Thus, dark matter constitutes 85% of the total mass, while dark energy and dark matter constitute 95% of the total mass–energy content.
Dark matter is not known to interact with ordinary baryonic matter and radiation except through gravity, making it difficult to detect in the laboratory. The leading explanation is that dark matter is some as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particle, such as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) or axions. The other main possibility is that dark matter is composed of primordial black holes.
Dark matter is classified as "cold", "warm", or "hot" according to its velocity (more precisely, its free streaming length). Recent models have favored a cold dark matter scenario, in which structures emerge by the gradual accumulation of particles, but after a half century of fruitless dark matter particle searches, more recent gravitational wave and James Webb Space Telescope observations have considerably strengthened the case for primordial and direct collapse black holes.
Although the astrophysics community generally accepts dark matter's existence, a minority of astrophysicists, intrigued by specific observations that are not well-explained by ordinary dark matter, argue for various modifications of the standard laws of general relativity. These include modified Newtonian dynamics, tensor–vector–scalar gravity, or entropic gravity. So far none of the proposed modified gravity theories can successfully describe every piece of observational evidence at the same time, suggesting that even if gravity has to be modified, some form of dark matter will still be required.
The hypothesis of dark matter has an elaborate history. In the appendices of the book Baltimore lectures on molecular dynamics and the wave theory of light where the main text was based on a series of lectures given in 1884, Lord Kelvin discussed the potential number of stars around the Sun from the observed velocity dispersion of the stars near the Sun, assuming that the Sun was 20 to 100 million years old. He posed what would happen if there were a thousand million stars within 1 kilo-parsec of the Sun (at which distance their parallax would be 1 milli-arcsec). Lord Kelvin concluded "Many of our supposed thousand million stars, perhaps a great majority of them, may be dark bodies". In 1906, Henri Poincaré in "The Milky Way and Theory of Gases" used the French term matière obscure ("dark matter") in discussing Kelvin's work. He found that the amount of dark matter would need to be less than that of visible matter.
The second to suggest the existence of dark matter using stellar velocities was Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn in 1922. A publication from 1930 points to Swedish Knut Lundmark being the first to realise that the universe must contain much more mass than can be observed. Dutchman and radio astronomy pioneer Jan Oort also hypothesized the existence of dark matter in 1932. Oort was studying stellar motions in the local galactic neighborhood and found the mass in the galactic plane must be greater than what was observed, but this measurement was later determined to be erroneous.
In 1933, Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky, who studied galaxy clusters while working at the California Institute of Technology, made a similar inference. Zwicky applied the virial theorem to the Coma Cluster and obtained evidence of unseen mass he called dunkle Materie ('dark matter'). Zwicky estimated its mass based on the motions of galaxies near its edge and compared that to an estimate based on its brightness and number of galaxies. He estimated the cluster had about 400 times more mass than was visually observable. The gravity effect of the visible galaxies was far too small for such fast orbits, thus mass must be hidden from view. Based on these conclusions, Zwicky inferred some unseen matter provided the mass and associated gravitation attraction to hold the cluster together. Zwicky's estimates were off by more than an order of magnitude, mainly due to an obsolete value of the Hubble constant; the same calculation today shows a smaller fraction, using greater values for luminous mass. Nonetheless, Zwicky did correctly conclude from his calculation that the bulk of the matter was dark.
Further indications of mass-to-light ratio anomalies came from measurements of galaxy rotation curves. In 1939, Horace W. Babcock reported the rotation curve for the Andromeda nebula (known now as the Andromeda Galaxy), which suggested the mass-to-luminosity ratio increases radially. He attributed it to either light absorption within the galaxy or modified dynamics in the outer portions of the spiral and not to the missing matter he had uncovered. Following Babcock's 1939 report of unexpectedly rapid rotation in the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy and a mass-to-light ratio of 50; in 1940 Jan Oort discovered and wrote about the large non-visible halo of NGC 3115.
Early radio astronomy observations, performed by Seth Shostak, later SETI Institute Senior Astronomer, showed a half-dozen galaxies spun too fast in their outer regions, pointing to the existence of dark matter as a means of creating the gravitational pull needed to keep the stars in their orbits.
Vera Rubin, Kent Ford, and Ken Freeman's work in the 1960s and 1970s provided further strong evidence, also using galaxy rotation curves. Rubin and Ford worked with a new spectrograph to measure the velocity curve of edge-on spiral galaxies with greater accuracy. This result was confirmed in 1978. An influential paper presented Rubin and Ford's results in 1980. They showed most galaxies must contain about six times as much dark as visible mass; thus, by around 1980 the apparent need for dark matter was widely recognized as a major unsolved problem in astronomy.
At the same time Rubin and Ford were exploring optical rotation curves, radio astronomers were making use of new radio telescopes to map the 21 cm line of atomic hydrogen in nearby galaxies. The radial distribution of interstellar atomic hydrogen (H) often extends to much greater galactic distances than can be observed as collective starlight, expanding the sampled distances for rotation curves – and thus of the total mass distribution – to a new dynamical regime. Early mapping of Andromeda with the 300 foot telescope at Green Bank and the 250 foot dish at Jodrell Bank already showed the H rotation curve did not trace the expected Keplerian decline. As more sensitive receivers became available, Roberts & Whitehurst (1975) were able to trace the rotational velocity of Andromeda to 30 kpc, much beyond the optical measurements. Illustrating the advantage of tracing the gas disk at large radii; that paper's Figure 16 combines the optical data (the cluster of points at radii of less than 15 kpc with a single point further out) with the H data between 20 and 30 kpc, exhibiting the flatness of the outer galaxy rotation curve; the solid curve peaking at the center is the optical surface density, while the other curve shows the cumulative mass, still rising linearly at the outermost measurement. In parallel, the use of interferometric arrays for extragalactic H spectroscopy was being developed. Rogstad & Shostak (1972) published H rotation curves of five spirals mapped with the Owens Valley interferometer; the rotation curves of all five were very flat, suggesting very large values of mass-to-light ratio in the outer parts of their extended H disks.
A stream of observations in the 1980s supported the presence of dark matter, including gravitational lensing of background objects by galaxy clusters, the temperature distribution of hot gas in galaxies and clusters, and the pattern of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. According to consensus among cosmologists, dark matter is composed primarily of a not yet characterized type of subatomic particle. The search for this particle, by a variety of means, is one of the major efforts in particle physics.
While primordial black holes were long considered possibly important if not nearly exclusive components of dark matter, the latter perspective was strengthened by both LIGO/Virgo interferometer gravitational wave and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations. Early constraints on PBHs as dark matter usually assumed most black holes would have similar or identical ("monochromatic") mass, which was disproven by LIGO/Virgo results, and further suggestions that the actual black hole mass distribution is broadly platykurtic were evident from JWST observations of early large galaxies.
In standard cosmologic calculations, "matter" means any constituent of the universe whose energy density scales with the inverse cube of the scale factor, i.e., ρ ∝ a . This is in contrast to "radiation", which scales as the inverse fourth power of the scale factor ρ ∝ a , and a cosmological constant, which does not change with respect to a . The different scaling factors for matter and radiation are a consequence of radiation redshift: For example, after gradually doubling the diameter of the observable Universe via cosmic expansion of General Relativity, the scale, a, has doubled. The energy of the cosmic background radiation has been halved (because the wavelength of each photon has doubled); the energy of ultra-relativistic particles, such as early-era standard-model neutrinos, is similarly halved. The cosmological constant, as an intrinsic property of space, has a constant energy density regardless of the volume under consideration.
In principle, "dark matter" means all components of the universe which are not visible but still obey ρ ∝ a . In practice, the term "dark matter" is often used to mean only the non-baryonic component of dark matter, i.e., excluding "missing baryons". Context will usually indicate which meaning is intended.
The arms of spiral galaxies rotate around the galactic center. The luminous mass density of a spiral galaxy decreases as one goes from the center to the outskirts. If luminous mass were all the matter, then we can model the galaxy as a point mass in the centre and test masses orbiting around it, similar to the Solar System. From Kepler's Third Law, it is expected that the rotation velocities will decrease with distance from the center, similar to the Solar System. This is not observed. Instead, the galaxy rotation curve remains flat as distance from the center increases.
If Kepler's laws are correct, then the obvious way to resolve this discrepancy is to conclude the mass distribution in spiral galaxies is not similar to that of the Solar System. In particular, there is a lot of non-luminous matter (dark matter) in the outskirts of the galaxy.
Stars in bound systems must obey the virial theorem. The theorem, together with the measured velocity distribution, can be used to measure the mass distribution in a bound system, such as elliptical galaxies or globular clusters. With some exceptions, velocity dispersion estimates of elliptical galaxies do not match the predicted velocity dispersion from the observed mass distribution, even assuming complicated distributions of stellar orbits.
As with galaxy rotation curves, the obvious way to resolve the discrepancy is to postulate the existence of non-luminous matter.
Galaxy clusters are particularly important for dark matter studies since their masses can be estimated in three independent ways:
Generally, these three methods are in reasonable agreement that dark matter outweighs visible matter by approximately 5 to 1.
One of the consequences of general relativity is massive objects (such as a cluster of galaxies) lying between a more distant source (such as a quasar) and an observer should act as a lens to bend light from this source. The more massive an object, the more lensing is observed.
Strong lensing is the observed distortion of background galaxies into arcs when their light passes through such a gravitational lens. It has been observed around many distant clusters including Abell 1689. By measuring the distortion geometry, the mass of the intervening cluster can be obtained. In the dozens of cases where this has been done, the mass-to-light ratios obtained correspond to the dynamical dark matter measurements of clusters. Lensing can lead to multiple copies of an image. By analyzing the distribution of multiple image copies, scientists have been able to deduce and map the distribution of dark matter around the MACS J0416.1-2403 galaxy cluster.
Weak gravitational lensing investigates minute distortions of galaxies, using statistical analyses from vast galaxy surveys. By examining the apparent shear deformation of the adjacent background galaxies, the mean distribution of dark matter can be characterized. The mass-to-light ratios correspond to dark matter densities predicted by other large-scale structure measurements. Dark matter does not bend light itself; mass (in this case the mass of the dark matter) bends spacetime. Light follows the curvature of spacetime, resulting in the lensing effect.
In May 2021, a new detailed dark matter map was revealed by the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration. In addition, the map revealed previously undiscovered filamentary structures connecting galaxies, by using a machine learning method.
An April 2023 study in Nature Astronomy examined the inferred distribution of the dark matter responsible for the lensing of the elliptical galaxy HS 0810+2554, and found tentative evidence of interference patterns within the dark matter. The observation of interference patterns is incompatible with WIMPs, but would be compatible with simulations involving 10 eV axions. While acknowledging the need to corroborate the findings by examining other astrophysical lenses, the authors argued that "The ability of (axion-based dark matter) to resolve lensing anomalies even in demanding cases such as HS 0810+2554, together with its success in reproducing other astrophysical observations, tilt the balance toward new physics invoking axions."
Although both dark matter and ordinary matter are matter, they do not behave in the same way. In particular, in the early universe, ordinary matter was ionized and interacted strongly with radiation via Thomson scattering. Dark matter does not interact directly with radiation, but it does affect the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by its gravitational potential (mainly on large scales) and by its effects on the density and velocity of ordinary matter. Ordinary and dark matter perturbations, therefore, evolve differently with time and leave different imprints on the CMB.
The cosmic microwave background is very close to a perfect blackbody but contains very small temperature anisotropies of a few parts in 100,000. A sky map of anisotropies can be decomposed into an angular power spectrum, which is observed to contain a series of acoustic peaks at near-equal spacing but different heights. The series of peaks can be predicted for any assumed set of cosmological parameters by modern computer codes such as CMBFAST and CAMB, and matching theory to data, therefore, constrains cosmological parameters. The first peak mostly shows the density of baryonic matter, while the third peak relates mostly to the density of dark matter, measuring the density of matter and the density of atoms.
The CMB anisotropy was first discovered by COBE in 1992, though this had too coarse resolution to detect the acoustic peaks. After the discovery of the first acoustic peak by the balloon-borne BOOMERanG experiment in 2000, the power spectrum was precisely observed by WMAP in 2003–2012, and even more precisely by the Planck spacecraft in 2013–2015. The results support the Lambda-CDM model.
The observed CMB angular power spectrum provides powerful evidence in support of dark matter, as its precise structure is well fitted by the Lambda-CDM model, but difficult to reproduce with any competing model such as modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND).
Structure formation refers to the period after the Big Bang when density perturbations collapsed to form stars, galaxies, and clusters. Prior to structure formation, the Friedmann solutions to general relativity describe a homogeneous universe. Later, small anisotropies gradually grew and condensed the homogeneous universe into stars, galaxies and larger structures. Ordinary matter is affected by radiation, which is the dominant element of the universe at very early times. As a result, its density perturbations are washed out and unable to condense into structure. If there were only ordinary matter in the universe, there would not have been enough time for density perturbations to grow into the galaxies and clusters currently seen.
Dark matter provides a solution to this problem because it is unaffected by radiation. Therefore, its density perturbations can grow first. The resulting gravitational potential acts as an attractive potential well for ordinary matter collapsing later, speeding up the structure formation process.
If dark matter does not exist, then the next most likely explanation must be that general relativity – the prevailing theory of gravity – is incorrect and should be modified. The Bullet Cluster, the result of a recent collision of two galaxy clusters, provides a challenge for modified gravity theories because its apparent center of mass is far displaced from the baryonic center of mass. Standard dark matter models can easily explain this observation, but modified gravity has a much harder time, especially since the observational evidence is model-independent.
Type Ia supernovae can be used as standard candles to measure extragalactic distances, which can in turn be used to measure how fast the universe has expanded in the past. Data indicates the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, the cause of which is usually ascribed to dark energy. Since observations indicate the universe is almost flat, it is expected the total energy density of everything in the universe should sum to 1 (Ωtot ≈ 1). The measured dark energy density is ΩΛ ≈ 0.690; the observed ordinary (baryonic) matter energy density is Ωb ≈ 0.0482 and the energy density of radiation is negligible. This leaves a missing Ωdm ≈ 0.258 which nonetheless behaves like matter (see technical definition section above) – dark matter.
Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) are fluctuations in the density of the visible baryonic matter (normal matter) of the universe on large scales. These are predicted to arise in the Lambda-CDM model due to acoustic oscillations in the photon–baryon fluid of the early universe, and can be observed in the cosmic microwave background angular power spectrum. BAOs set up a preferred length scale for baryons. As the dark matter and baryons clumped together after recombination, the effect is much weaker in the galaxy distribution in the nearby universe, but is detectable as a subtle (≈1 percent) preference for pairs of galaxies to be separated by 147 Mpc, compared to those separated by 130–160 Mpc. This feature was predicted theoretically in the 1990s and then discovered in 2005, in two large galaxy redshift surveys, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. Combining the CMB observations with BAO measurements from galaxy redshift surveys provides a precise estimate of the Hubble constant and the average matter density in the Universe. The results support the Lambda-CDM model.
Large galaxy redshift surveys may be used to make a three-dimensional map of the galaxy distribution. These maps are slightly distorted because distances are estimated from observed redshifts; the redshift contains a contribution from the galaxy's so-called peculiar velocity in addition to the dominant Hubble expansion term. On average, superclusters are expanding more slowly than the cosmic mean due to their gravity, while voids are expanding faster than average. In a redshift map, galaxies in front of a supercluster have excess radial velocities towards it and have redshifts slightly higher than their distance would imply, while galaxies behind the supercluster have redshifts slightly low for their distance. This effect causes superclusters to appear squashed in the radial direction, and likewise voids are stretched. Their angular positions are unaffected. This effect is not detectable for any one structure since the true shape is not known, but can be measured by averaging over many structures. It was predicted quantitatively by Nick Kaiser in 1987, and first decisively measured in 2001 by the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. Results are in agreement with the Lambda-CDM model.
In astronomical spectroscopy, the Lyman-alpha forest is the sum of the absorption lines arising from the Lyman-alpha transition of neutral hydrogen in the spectra of distant galaxies and quasars. Lyman-alpha forest observations can also constrain cosmological models. These constraints agree with those obtained from WMAP data.
The exact identity of dark matter is unknown, but there are many hypotheses about what dark matter could consist of, as set out in the table below.
Dark matter can refer to any substance which interacts predominantly via gravity with visible matter (e.g., stars and planets). Hence in principle it need not be composed of a new type of fundamental particle but could, at least in part, be made up of standard baryonic matter, such as protons or neutrons. Most of the ordinary matter familiar to astronomers, including planets, brown dwarfs, red dwarfs, visible stars, white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, fall into this category. Solitary black holes, neutron stars, burnt-out dwarfs, and other massive objects that that are hard to detect are collectively known as MACHOs; some scientists initially hoped that baryonic MACHOs could account for and explain all the dark matter.
However, multiple lines of evidence suggest the majority of dark matter is not baryonic:
There are two main candidates for non-baryonic dark matter: hypothetical particles such as axions, sterile neutrinos, weakly interacting massive particle (WIMPs), supersymmetric particles, or geons; and primordial black holes. Once a black hole ingests either kind of matter, baryonic or not, the distinction is lost.
Unlike baryonic matter, nonbaryonic particles do not contribute to the formation of the elements in the early universe (Big Bang nucleosynthesis) and so its presence is revealed only via its gravitational effects, or weak lensing. In addition, if the particles of which it is composed are supersymmetric, they can undergo annihilation interactions with themselves, possibly resulting in observable by-products such as gamma rays and neutrinos (indirect detection).
In 2015, the idea that dense dark matter was composed of primordial black holes made a comeback following results of gravitational wave measurements which detected the merger of intermediate-mass black holes. Black holes with about 30 solar masses are not predicted to form by either stellar collapse (typically less than 15 solar masses) or by the merger of black holes in galactic centers (millions or billions of solar masses). It was proposed that the intermediate-mass black holes causing the detected merger formed in the hot dense early phase of the universe due to denser regions collapsing. A later survey of about a thousand supernovae detected no gravitational lensing events, when about eight would be expected if intermediate-mass primordial black holes above a certain mass range accounted for over 60% of dark matter. However, that study assumed a monochromatic distribution to represent the LIGO/Virgo mass range, which is inapplicable to the broadly platykurtic mass distribution suggested by subsequent James Webb Space Telescope observations.
The possibility that atom-sized primordial black holes account for a significant fraction of dark matter was ruled out by measurements of positron and electron fluxes outside the Sun's heliosphere by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Tiny black holes are theorized to emit Hawking radiation. However the detected fluxes were too low and did not have the expected energy spectrum, suggesting that tiny primordial black holes are not widespread enough to account for dark matter. Nonetheless, research and theories proposing dense dark matter accounts for dark matter continue as of 2018, including approaches to dark matter cooling, and the question remains unsettled. In 2019, the lack of microlensing effects in the observation of Andromeda suggests that tiny black holes do not exist.
However, there still exists a largely unconstrained mass range smaller than that which can be limited by optical microlensing observations, where primordial black holes may account for all dark matter.
Dark matter can be divided into cold, warm, and hot categories. These categories refer to velocity rather than an actual temperature, indicating how far corresponding objects moved due to random motions in the early universe, before they slowed due to cosmic expansion – this is an important distance called the free streaming length (FSL). Primordial density fluctuations smaller than this length get washed out as particles spread from overdense to underdense regions, while larger fluctuations are unaffected; therefore this length sets a minimum scale for later structure formation.
The categories are set with respect to the size of a protogalaxy (an object that later evolves into a dwarf galaxy): Dark matter particles are classified as cold, warm, or hot according to their FSL; much smaller (cold), similar to (warm), or much larger (hot) than a protogalaxy. Mixtures of the above are also possible: a theory of mixed dark matter was popular in the mid-1990s, but was rejected following the discovery of dark energy.
Cold dark matter leads to a bottom-up formation of structure with galaxies forming first and galaxy clusters at a latter stage, while hot dark matter would result in a top-down formation scenario with large matter aggregations forming early, later fragmenting into separate galaxies; the latter is excluded by high-redshift galaxy observations.
These categories also correspond to fluctuation spectrum effects and the interval following the Big Bang at which each type became non-relativistic. Davis et al. wrote in 1985:
Candidate particles can be grouped into three categories on the basis of their effect on the fluctuation spectrum (Bond et al. 1983). If the dark matter is composed of abundant light particles which remain relativistic until shortly before recombination, then it may be termed "hot". The best candidate for hot dark matter is a neutrino ... A second possibility is for the dark matter particles to interact more weakly than neutrinos, to be less abundant, and to have a mass of order 1 keV. Such particles are termed "warm dark matter", because they have lower thermal velocities than massive neutrinos ... there are at present few candidate particles which fit this description. Gravitinos and photinos have been suggested (Pagels and Primack 1982; Bond, Szalay and Turner 1982) ... Any particles which became nonrelativistic very early, and so were able to diffuse a negligible distance, are termed "cold" dark matter (CDM). There are many candidates for CDM including supersymmetric particles.
Another approximate dividing line is warm dark matter became non-relativistic when the universe was approximately 1 year old and 1 millionth of its present size and in the radiation-dominated era (photons and neutrinos), with a photon temperature 2.7 million Kelvins. Standard physical cosmology gives the particle horizon size as 2 c t (speed of light multiplied by time) in the radiation-dominated era, thus 2 light-years. A region of this size would expand to 2 million light-years today (absent structure formation). The actual FSL is approximately 5 times the above length, since it continues to grow slowly as particle velocities decrease inversely with the scale factor after they become non-relativistic. In this example the FSL would correspond to 10 million light-years, or 3 megaparsecs, today, around the size containing an average large galaxy.
The 2.7 million K photon temperature gives a typical photon energy of 250 electronvolts, thereby setting a typical mass scale for warm dark matter: particles much more massive than this, such as GeV–TeV mass WIMPs, would become non-relativistic much earlier than one year after the Big Bang and thus have FSLs much smaller than a protogalaxy, making them cold. Conversely, much lighter particles, such as neutrinos with masses of only a few eV, have FSLs much larger than a protogalaxy, thus qualifying them as hot.
Cold dark matter offers the simplest explanation for most cosmological observations. It is dark matter composed of constituents with an FSL much smaller than a protogalaxy. This is the focus for dark matter research, as hot dark matter does not seem capable of supporting galaxy or galaxy cluster formation, and most particle candidates slowed early.
The constituents of cold dark matter are unknown. Possibilities range from large objects like MACHOs (such as black holes and Preon stars) or RAMBOs (such as clusters of brown dwarfs), to new particles such as WIMPs and axions.
The 1997 DAMA/NaI experiment and its successor DAMA/LIBRA in 2013, claimed to directly detect dark matter particles passing through the Earth, but many researchers remain skeptical, as negative results from similar experiments seem incompatible with the DAMA results.
Many supersymmetric models offer dark matter candidates in the form of the WIMPy Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (LSP). Separately, heavy sterile neutrinos exist in non-supersymmetric extensions to the standard model which explain the small neutrino mass through the seesaw mechanism.
Warm dark matter comprises particles with an FSL comparable to the size of a protogalaxy. Predictions based on warm dark matter are similar to those for cold dark matter on large scales, but with less small-scale density perturbations. This reduces the predicted abundance of dwarf galaxies and may lead to lower density of dark matter in the central parts of large galaxies. Some researchers consider this a better fit to observations. A challenge for this model is the lack of particle candidates with the required mass ≈ 300 eV to 3000 eV.
No known particles can be categorized as warm dark matter. A postulated candidate is the sterile neutrino: A heavier, slower form of neutrino that does not interact through the weak force, unlike other neutrinos. Some modified gravity theories, such as scalar–tensor–vector gravity, require "warm" dark matter to make their equations work.
Hot dark matter consists of particles whose FSL is much larger than the size of a protogalaxy. The neutrino qualifies as such a particle. They were discovered independently, long before the hunt for dark matter: they were postulated in 1930, and detected in 1956. Neutrinos' mass is less than 10 that of an electron. Neutrinos interact with normal matter only via gravity and the weak force, making them difficult to detect (the weak force only works over a small distance, thus a neutrino triggers a weak force event only if it hits a nucleus head-on). This makes them "weakly interacting slender particles" (WISPs), as opposed to WIMPs.
The three known flavours of neutrinos are the electron, muon, and tau. Their masses are slightly different. Neutrinos oscillate among the flavours as they move. It is hard to determine an exact upper bound on the collective average mass of the three neutrinos (or for any of the three individually). For example, if the average neutrino mass were over 50 eV/c (less than 10 of the mass of an electron), the universe would collapse. CMB data and other methods indicate that their average mass probably does not exceed 0.3 eV/c. Thus, observed neutrinos cannot explain dark matter.
Because galaxy-size density fluctuations get washed out by free-streaming, hot dark matter implies the first objects that can form are huge supercluster-size pancakes, which then fragment into galaxies. Deep-field observations show instead that galaxies formed first, followed by clusters and superclusters as galaxies clump together.
If dark matter is composed of weakly-interacting particles, then an obvious question is whether it can form objects equivalent to planets, stars, or black holes. Historically, the answer has been it cannot, because of two factors:
If dark matter is made up of subatomic particles, then millions, possibly billions, of such particles must pass through every square centimeter of the Earth each second. Many experiments aim to test this hypothesis. Although WIMPs have been the main search candidates, axions have drawn renewed attention, with the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX) searches for axions and many more planned in the future. Another candidate is heavy hidden sector particles which only interact with ordinary matter via gravity.
These experiments can be divided into two classes: direct detection experiments, which search for the scattering of dark matter particles off atomic nuclei within a detector; and indirect detection, which look for the products of dark matter particle annihilations or decays.
Direct detection experiments aim to observe low-energy recoils (typically a few keVs) of nuclei induced by interactions with particles of dark matter, which (in theory) are passing through the Earth. After such a recoil the nucleus will emit energy in the form of scintillation light or phonons, as they pass through sensitive detection apparatus. To do so effectively, it is crucial to maintain an extremely low background, which is the reason why such experiments typically operate deep underground, where interference from cosmic rays is minimized. Examples of underground laboratories with direct detection experiments include the Stawell mine, the Soudan mine, the SNOLAB underground laboratory at Sudbury, the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, the Canfranc Underground Laboratory, the Boulby Underground Laboratory, the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory and the China Jinping Underground Laboratory.
These experiments mostly use either cryogenic or noble liquid detector technologies. Cryogenic detectors operating at temperatures below 100 mK, detect the heat produced when a particle hits an atom in a crystal absorber such as germanium. Noble liquid detectors detect scintillation produced by a particle collision in liquid xenon or argon. Cryogenic detector experiments include: CDMS, CRESST, EDELWEISS, EURECA. Noble liquid experiments include LZ, XENON, DEAP, ArDM, WARP, DarkSide, PandaX, and LUX, the Large Underground Xenon experiment. Both of these techniques focus strongly on their ability to distinguish background particles (which predominantly scatter off electrons) from dark matter particles (that scatter off nuclei). Other experiments include SIMPLE and PICASSO.
Currently there has been no well-established claim of dark matter detection from a direct detection experiment, leading instead to strong upper limits on the mass and interaction cross section with nucleons of such dark matter particles. The DAMA/NaI and more recent DAMA/LIBRA experimental collaborations have detected an annual modulation in the rate of events in their detectors, which they claim is due to dark matter. This results from the expectation that as the Earth orbits the Sun, the velocity of the detector relative to the dark matter halo will vary by a small amount. This claim is so far unconfirmed and in contradiction with negative results from other experiments such as LUX, SuperCDMS and XENON100.
A special case of direct detection experiments covers those with directional sensitivity. This is a search strategy based on the motion of the Solar System around the Galactic Center. A low-pressure time projection chamber makes it possible to access information on recoiling tracks and constrain WIMP-nucleus kinematics. WIMPs coming from the direction in which the Sun travels (approximately towards Cygnus) may then be separated from background, which should be isotropic. Directional dark matter experiments include DMTPC, DRIFT, Newage and MIMAC.
Indirect detection experiments search for the products of the self-annihilation or decay of dark matter particles in outer space. For example, in regions of high dark matter density (e.g., the centre of our galaxy) two dark matter particles could annihilate to produce gamma rays or Standard Model particle–antiparticle pairs. Alternatively, if a dark matter particle is unstable, it could decay into Standard Model (or other) particles. These processes could be detected indirectly through an excess of gamma rays, antiprotons or positrons emanating from high density regions in our galaxy or others. A major difficulty inherent in such searches is that various astrophysical sources can mimic the signal expected from dark matter, and so multiple signals are likely required for a conclusive discovery.
A few of the dark matter particles passing through the Sun or Earth may scatter off atoms and lose energy. Thus dark matter may accumulate at the center of these bodies, increasing the chance of collision/annihilation. This could produce a distinctive signal in the form of high-energy neutrinos. Such a signal would be strong indirect proof of WIMP dark matter. High-energy neutrino telescopes such as AMANDA, IceCube and ANTARES are searching for this signal. The detection by LIGO in September 2015 of gravitational waves opens the possibility of observing dark matter in a new way, particularly if it is in the form of primordial black holes.
Many experimental searches have been undertaken to look for such emission from dark matter annihilation or decay, examples of which follow.
The Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope observed more gamma rays in 2008 than expected from the Milky Way, but scientists concluded this was most likely due to incorrect estimation of the telescope's sensitivity.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is searching for similar gamma rays. In 2009, an as yet unexplained surplus of gamma rays from the Milky Way's galactic center was found in Fermi data. This Galactic Center GeV excess might be due to dark matter annihilation or to a population of pulsars. In April 2012, an analysis of previously available data from Fermi's Large Area Telescope instrument produced statistical evidence of a 130 GeV signal in the gamma radiation coming from the center of the Milky Way. WIMP annihilation was seen as the most probable explanation.
At higher energies, ground-based gamma-ray telescopes have set limits on the annihilation of dark matter in dwarf spheroidal galaxies and in clusters of galaxies.
The PAMELA experiment (launched in 2006) detected excess positrons. They could be from dark matter annihilation or from pulsars. No excess antiprotons were observed.
In 2013 results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station indicated excess high-energy cosmic rays which could be due to dark matter annihilation.
An alternative approach to the detection of dark matter particles in nature is to produce them in a laboratory. Experiments with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may be able to detect dark matter particles produced in collisions of the LHC proton beams. Because a dark matter particle should have negligible interactions with normal visible matter, it may be detected indirectly as (large amounts of) missing energy and momentum that escape the detectors, provided other (non-negligible) collision products are detected. Constraints on dark matter also exist from the LEP experiment using a similar principle, but probing the interaction of dark matter particles with electrons rather than quarks. Any discovery from collider searches must be corroborated by discoveries in the indirect or direct detection sectors to prove that the particle discovered is, in fact, dark matter.
Because dark matter has not yet been identified, many other hypotheses have emerged aiming to explain the same observational phenomena without introducing a new unknown type of matter. The most common method is to modify general relativity. General relativity is well-tested on solar system scales, but its validity on galactic or cosmological scales has not been well proven. A suitable modification to general relativity can in principle conceivably eliminate the need for dark matter. The best-known theories of this class are MOND and its relativistic generalization tensor–vector–scalar gravity (TeVeS), f(R) gravity, negative mass, dark fluid, and entropic gravity. Alternative theories abound.
A problem with alternative hypotheses is that observational evidence for dark matter comes from so many independent approaches (see the "observational evidence" section above). Explaining any individual observation is possible but explaining all of them in the absence of dark matter is very difficult. Nonetheless, there have been some scattered successes for alternative hypotheses, such as a 2016 test of gravitational lensing in entropic gravity and a 2020 measurement of a unique MOND effect.
The prevailing opinion among most astrophysicists is that while modifications to general relativity can conceivably explain part of the observational evidence, there is probably enough data to conclude there must be some form of dark matter present in the Universe.
Dark matter regularly appears as a topic in hybrid periodicals that cover both factual scientific topics and science fiction, and dark matter itself has been referred to as "the stuff of science fiction".
Mention of dark matter is made in works of fiction. In such cases, it is usually attributed extraordinary physical or magical properties, thus becoming inconsistent with the hypothesized properties of dark matter in physics and cosmology. For example:
More broadly, the phrase "dark matter" is used metaphorically in fiction to evoke the unseen or invisible. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "What is dark matter? How was it generated?",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In astronomy, dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that appears not to interact with light or the electromagnetic field. Dark matter is implied by gravitational effects which cannot be explained by general relativity unless more matter is present than can be seen. Such effects occur in the context of formation and evolution of galaxies, gravitational lensing, the observable universe's current structure, mass position in galactic collisions, the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters, and cosmic microwave background anisotropies.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, the mass–energy content of the universe is 5% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter, and 68.2% a form of energy known as dark energy. Thus, dark matter constitutes 85% of the total mass, while dark energy and dark matter constitute 95% of the total mass–energy content.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Dark matter is not known to interact with ordinary baryonic matter and radiation except through gravity, making it difficult to detect in the laboratory. The leading explanation is that dark matter is some as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particle, such as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) or axions. The other main possibility is that dark matter is composed of primordial black holes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Dark matter is classified as \"cold\", \"warm\", or \"hot\" according to its velocity (more precisely, its free streaming length). Recent models have favored a cold dark matter scenario, in which structures emerge by the gradual accumulation of particles, but after a half century of fruitless dark matter particle searches, more recent gravitational wave and James Webb Space Telescope observations have considerably strengthened the case for primordial and direct collapse black holes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Although the astrophysics community generally accepts dark matter's existence, a minority of astrophysicists, intrigued by specific observations that are not well-explained by ordinary dark matter, argue for various modifications of the standard laws of general relativity. These include modified Newtonian dynamics, tensor–vector–scalar gravity, or entropic gravity. So far none of the proposed modified gravity theories can successfully describe every piece of observational evidence at the same time, suggesting that even if gravity has to be modified, some form of dark matter will still be required.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The hypothesis of dark matter has an elaborate history. In the appendices of the book Baltimore lectures on molecular dynamics and the wave theory of light where the main text was based on a series of lectures given in 1884, Lord Kelvin discussed the potential number of stars around the Sun from the observed velocity dispersion of the stars near the Sun, assuming that the Sun was 20 to 100 million years old. He posed what would happen if there were a thousand million stars within 1 kilo-parsec of the Sun (at which distance their parallax would be 1 milli-arcsec). Lord Kelvin concluded \"Many of our supposed thousand million stars, perhaps a great majority of them, may be dark bodies\". In 1906, Henri Poincaré in \"The Milky Way and Theory of Gases\" used the French term matière obscure (\"dark matter\") in discussing Kelvin's work. He found that the amount of dark matter would need to be less than that of visible matter.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The second to suggest the existence of dark matter using stellar velocities was Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn in 1922. A publication from 1930 points to Swedish Knut Lundmark being the first to realise that the universe must contain much more mass than can be observed. Dutchman and radio astronomy pioneer Jan Oort also hypothesized the existence of dark matter in 1932. Oort was studying stellar motions in the local galactic neighborhood and found the mass in the galactic plane must be greater than what was observed, but this measurement was later determined to be erroneous.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1933, Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky, who studied galaxy clusters while working at the California Institute of Technology, made a similar inference. Zwicky applied the virial theorem to the Coma Cluster and obtained evidence of unseen mass he called dunkle Materie ('dark matter'). Zwicky estimated its mass based on the motions of galaxies near its edge and compared that to an estimate based on its brightness and number of galaxies. He estimated the cluster had about 400 times more mass than was visually observable. The gravity effect of the visible galaxies was far too small for such fast orbits, thus mass must be hidden from view. Based on these conclusions, Zwicky inferred some unseen matter provided the mass and associated gravitation attraction to hold the cluster together. Zwicky's estimates were off by more than an order of magnitude, mainly due to an obsolete value of the Hubble constant; the same calculation today shows a smaller fraction, using greater values for luminous mass. Nonetheless, Zwicky did correctly conclude from his calculation that the bulk of the matter was dark.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Further indications of mass-to-light ratio anomalies came from measurements of galaxy rotation curves. In 1939, Horace W. Babcock reported the rotation curve for the Andromeda nebula (known now as the Andromeda Galaxy), which suggested the mass-to-luminosity ratio increases radially. He attributed it to either light absorption within the galaxy or modified dynamics in the outer portions of the spiral and not to the missing matter he had uncovered. Following Babcock's 1939 report of unexpectedly rapid rotation in the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy and a mass-to-light ratio of 50; in 1940 Jan Oort discovered and wrote about the large non-visible halo of NGC 3115.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Early radio astronomy observations, performed by Seth Shostak, later SETI Institute Senior Astronomer, showed a half-dozen galaxies spun too fast in their outer regions, pointing to the existence of dark matter as a means of creating the gravitational pull needed to keep the stars in their orbits.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Vera Rubin, Kent Ford, and Ken Freeman's work in the 1960s and 1970s provided further strong evidence, also using galaxy rotation curves. Rubin and Ford worked with a new spectrograph to measure the velocity curve of edge-on spiral galaxies with greater accuracy. This result was confirmed in 1978. An influential paper presented Rubin and Ford's results in 1980. They showed most galaxies must contain about six times as much dark as visible mass; thus, by around 1980 the apparent need for dark matter was widely recognized as a major unsolved problem in astronomy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "At the same time Rubin and Ford were exploring optical rotation curves, radio astronomers were making use of new radio telescopes to map the 21 cm line of atomic hydrogen in nearby galaxies. The radial distribution of interstellar atomic hydrogen (H) often extends to much greater galactic distances than can be observed as collective starlight, expanding the sampled distances for rotation curves – and thus of the total mass distribution – to a new dynamical regime. Early mapping of Andromeda with the 300 foot telescope at Green Bank and the 250 foot dish at Jodrell Bank already showed the H rotation curve did not trace the expected Keplerian decline. As more sensitive receivers became available, Roberts & Whitehurst (1975) were able to trace the rotational velocity of Andromeda to 30 kpc, much beyond the optical measurements. Illustrating the advantage of tracing the gas disk at large radii; that paper's Figure 16 combines the optical data (the cluster of points at radii of less than 15 kpc with a single point further out) with the H data between 20 and 30 kpc, exhibiting the flatness of the outer galaxy rotation curve; the solid curve peaking at the center is the optical surface density, while the other curve shows the cumulative mass, still rising linearly at the outermost measurement. In parallel, the use of interferometric arrays for extragalactic H spectroscopy was being developed. Rogstad & Shostak (1972) published H rotation curves of five spirals mapped with the Owens Valley interferometer; the rotation curves of all five were very flat, suggesting very large values of mass-to-light ratio in the outer parts of their extended H disks.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A stream of observations in the 1980s supported the presence of dark matter, including gravitational lensing of background objects by galaxy clusters, the temperature distribution of hot gas in galaxies and clusters, and the pattern of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. According to consensus among cosmologists, dark matter is composed primarily of a not yet characterized type of subatomic particle. The search for this particle, by a variety of means, is one of the major efforts in particle physics.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "While primordial black holes were long considered possibly important if not nearly exclusive components of dark matter, the latter perspective was strengthened by both LIGO/Virgo interferometer gravitational wave and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations. Early constraints on PBHs as dark matter usually assumed most black holes would have similar or identical (\"monochromatic\") mass, which was disproven by LIGO/Virgo results, and further suggestions that the actual black hole mass distribution is broadly platykurtic were evident from JWST observations of early large galaxies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In standard cosmologic calculations, \"matter\" means any constituent of the universe whose energy density scales with the inverse cube of the scale factor, i.e., ρ ∝ a . This is in contrast to \"radiation\", which scales as the inverse fourth power of the scale factor ρ ∝ a , and a cosmological constant, which does not change with respect to a . The different scaling factors for matter and radiation are a consequence of radiation redshift: For example, after gradually doubling the diameter of the observable Universe via cosmic expansion of General Relativity, the scale, a, has doubled. The energy of the cosmic background radiation has been halved (because the wavelength of each photon has doubled); the energy of ultra-relativistic particles, such as early-era standard-model neutrinos, is similarly halved. The cosmological constant, as an intrinsic property of space, has a constant energy density regardless of the volume under consideration.",
"title": "Technical definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In principle, \"dark matter\" means all components of the universe which are not visible but still obey ρ ∝ a . In practice, the term \"dark matter\" is often used to mean only the non-baryonic component of dark matter, i.e., excluding \"missing baryons\". Context will usually indicate which meaning is intended.",
"title": "Technical definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The arms of spiral galaxies rotate around the galactic center. The luminous mass density of a spiral galaxy decreases as one goes from the center to the outskirts. If luminous mass were all the matter, then we can model the galaxy as a point mass in the centre and test masses orbiting around it, similar to the Solar System. From Kepler's Third Law, it is expected that the rotation velocities will decrease with distance from the center, similar to the Solar System. This is not observed. Instead, the galaxy rotation curve remains flat as distance from the center increases.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "If Kepler's laws are correct, then the obvious way to resolve this discrepancy is to conclude the mass distribution in spiral galaxies is not similar to that of the Solar System. In particular, there is a lot of non-luminous matter (dark matter) in the outskirts of the galaxy.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Stars in bound systems must obey the virial theorem. The theorem, together with the measured velocity distribution, can be used to measure the mass distribution in a bound system, such as elliptical galaxies or globular clusters. With some exceptions, velocity dispersion estimates of elliptical galaxies do not match the predicted velocity dispersion from the observed mass distribution, even assuming complicated distributions of stellar orbits.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "As with galaxy rotation curves, the obvious way to resolve the discrepancy is to postulate the existence of non-luminous matter.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Galaxy clusters are particularly important for dark matter studies since their masses can be estimated in three independent ways:",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Generally, these three methods are in reasonable agreement that dark matter outweighs visible matter by approximately 5 to 1.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "One of the consequences of general relativity is massive objects (such as a cluster of galaxies) lying between a more distant source (such as a quasar) and an observer should act as a lens to bend light from this source. The more massive an object, the more lensing is observed.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Strong lensing is the observed distortion of background galaxies into arcs when their light passes through such a gravitational lens. It has been observed around many distant clusters including Abell 1689. By measuring the distortion geometry, the mass of the intervening cluster can be obtained. In the dozens of cases where this has been done, the mass-to-light ratios obtained correspond to the dynamical dark matter measurements of clusters. Lensing can lead to multiple copies of an image. By analyzing the distribution of multiple image copies, scientists have been able to deduce and map the distribution of dark matter around the MACS J0416.1-2403 galaxy cluster.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Weak gravitational lensing investigates minute distortions of galaxies, using statistical analyses from vast galaxy surveys. By examining the apparent shear deformation of the adjacent background galaxies, the mean distribution of dark matter can be characterized. The mass-to-light ratios correspond to dark matter densities predicted by other large-scale structure measurements. Dark matter does not bend light itself; mass (in this case the mass of the dark matter) bends spacetime. Light follows the curvature of spacetime, resulting in the lensing effect.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In May 2021, a new detailed dark matter map was revealed by the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration. In addition, the map revealed previously undiscovered filamentary structures connecting galaxies, by using a machine learning method.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "An April 2023 study in Nature Astronomy examined the inferred distribution of the dark matter responsible for the lensing of the elliptical galaxy HS 0810+2554, and found tentative evidence of interference patterns within the dark matter. The observation of interference patterns is incompatible with WIMPs, but would be compatible with simulations involving 10 eV axions. While acknowledging the need to corroborate the findings by examining other astrophysical lenses, the authors argued that \"The ability of (axion-based dark matter) to resolve lensing anomalies even in demanding cases such as HS 0810+2554, together with its success in reproducing other astrophysical observations, tilt the balance toward new physics invoking axions.\"",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Although both dark matter and ordinary matter are matter, they do not behave in the same way. In particular, in the early universe, ordinary matter was ionized and interacted strongly with radiation via Thomson scattering. Dark matter does not interact directly with radiation, but it does affect the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by its gravitational potential (mainly on large scales) and by its effects on the density and velocity of ordinary matter. Ordinary and dark matter perturbations, therefore, evolve differently with time and leave different imprints on the CMB.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The cosmic microwave background is very close to a perfect blackbody but contains very small temperature anisotropies of a few parts in 100,000. A sky map of anisotropies can be decomposed into an angular power spectrum, which is observed to contain a series of acoustic peaks at near-equal spacing but different heights. The series of peaks can be predicted for any assumed set of cosmological parameters by modern computer codes such as CMBFAST and CAMB, and matching theory to data, therefore, constrains cosmological parameters. The first peak mostly shows the density of baryonic matter, while the third peak relates mostly to the density of dark matter, measuring the density of matter and the density of atoms.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The CMB anisotropy was first discovered by COBE in 1992, though this had too coarse resolution to detect the acoustic peaks. After the discovery of the first acoustic peak by the balloon-borne BOOMERanG experiment in 2000, the power spectrum was precisely observed by WMAP in 2003–2012, and even more precisely by the Planck spacecraft in 2013–2015. The results support the Lambda-CDM model.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The observed CMB angular power spectrum provides powerful evidence in support of dark matter, as its precise structure is well fitted by the Lambda-CDM model, but difficult to reproduce with any competing model such as modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND).",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Structure formation refers to the period after the Big Bang when density perturbations collapsed to form stars, galaxies, and clusters. Prior to structure formation, the Friedmann solutions to general relativity describe a homogeneous universe. Later, small anisotropies gradually grew and condensed the homogeneous universe into stars, galaxies and larger structures. Ordinary matter is affected by radiation, which is the dominant element of the universe at very early times. As a result, its density perturbations are washed out and unable to condense into structure. If there were only ordinary matter in the universe, there would not have been enough time for density perturbations to grow into the galaxies and clusters currently seen.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Dark matter provides a solution to this problem because it is unaffected by radiation. Therefore, its density perturbations can grow first. The resulting gravitational potential acts as an attractive potential well for ordinary matter collapsing later, speeding up the structure formation process.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "If dark matter does not exist, then the next most likely explanation must be that general relativity – the prevailing theory of gravity – is incorrect and should be modified. The Bullet Cluster, the result of a recent collision of two galaxy clusters, provides a challenge for modified gravity theories because its apparent center of mass is far displaced from the baryonic center of mass. Standard dark matter models can easily explain this observation, but modified gravity has a much harder time, especially since the observational evidence is model-independent.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Type Ia supernovae can be used as standard candles to measure extragalactic distances, which can in turn be used to measure how fast the universe has expanded in the past. Data indicates the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, the cause of which is usually ascribed to dark energy. Since observations indicate the universe is almost flat, it is expected the total energy density of everything in the universe should sum to 1 (Ωtot ≈ 1). The measured dark energy density is ΩΛ ≈ 0.690; the observed ordinary (baryonic) matter energy density is Ωb ≈ 0.0482 and the energy density of radiation is negligible. This leaves a missing Ωdm ≈ 0.258 which nonetheless behaves like matter (see technical definition section above) – dark matter.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) are fluctuations in the density of the visible baryonic matter (normal matter) of the universe on large scales. These are predicted to arise in the Lambda-CDM model due to acoustic oscillations in the photon–baryon fluid of the early universe, and can be observed in the cosmic microwave background angular power spectrum. BAOs set up a preferred length scale for baryons. As the dark matter and baryons clumped together after recombination, the effect is much weaker in the galaxy distribution in the nearby universe, but is detectable as a subtle (≈1 percent) preference for pairs of galaxies to be separated by 147 Mpc, compared to those separated by 130–160 Mpc. This feature was predicted theoretically in the 1990s and then discovered in 2005, in two large galaxy redshift surveys, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. Combining the CMB observations with BAO measurements from galaxy redshift surveys provides a precise estimate of the Hubble constant and the average matter density in the Universe. The results support the Lambda-CDM model.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Large galaxy redshift surveys may be used to make a three-dimensional map of the galaxy distribution. These maps are slightly distorted because distances are estimated from observed redshifts; the redshift contains a contribution from the galaxy's so-called peculiar velocity in addition to the dominant Hubble expansion term. On average, superclusters are expanding more slowly than the cosmic mean due to their gravity, while voids are expanding faster than average. In a redshift map, galaxies in front of a supercluster have excess radial velocities towards it and have redshifts slightly higher than their distance would imply, while galaxies behind the supercluster have redshifts slightly low for their distance. This effect causes superclusters to appear squashed in the radial direction, and likewise voids are stretched. Their angular positions are unaffected. This effect is not detectable for any one structure since the true shape is not known, but can be measured by averaging over many structures. It was predicted quantitatively by Nick Kaiser in 1987, and first decisively measured in 2001 by the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. Results are in agreement with the Lambda-CDM model.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In astronomical spectroscopy, the Lyman-alpha forest is the sum of the absorption lines arising from the Lyman-alpha transition of neutral hydrogen in the spectra of distant galaxies and quasars. Lyman-alpha forest observations can also constrain cosmological models. These constraints agree with those obtained from WMAP data.",
"title": "Observational evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The exact identity of dark matter is unknown, but there are many hypotheses about what dark matter could consist of, as set out in the table below.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Dark matter can refer to any substance which interacts predominantly via gravity with visible matter (e.g., stars and planets). Hence in principle it need not be composed of a new type of fundamental particle but could, at least in part, be made up of standard baryonic matter, such as protons or neutrons. Most of the ordinary matter familiar to astronomers, including planets, brown dwarfs, red dwarfs, visible stars, white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, fall into this category. Solitary black holes, neutron stars, burnt-out dwarfs, and other massive objects that that are hard to detect are collectively known as MACHOs; some scientists initially hoped that baryonic MACHOs could account for and explain all the dark matter.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "However, multiple lines of evidence suggest the majority of dark matter is not baryonic:",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "There are two main candidates for non-baryonic dark matter: hypothetical particles such as axions, sterile neutrinos, weakly interacting massive particle (WIMPs), supersymmetric particles, or geons; and primordial black holes. Once a black hole ingests either kind of matter, baryonic or not, the distinction is lost.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Unlike baryonic matter, nonbaryonic particles do not contribute to the formation of the elements in the early universe (Big Bang nucleosynthesis) and so its presence is revealed only via its gravitational effects, or weak lensing. In addition, if the particles of which it is composed are supersymmetric, they can undergo annihilation interactions with themselves, possibly resulting in observable by-products such as gamma rays and neutrinos (indirect detection).",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In 2015, the idea that dense dark matter was composed of primordial black holes made a comeback following results of gravitational wave measurements which detected the merger of intermediate-mass black holes. Black holes with about 30 solar masses are not predicted to form by either stellar collapse (typically less than 15 solar masses) or by the merger of black holes in galactic centers (millions or billions of solar masses). It was proposed that the intermediate-mass black holes causing the detected merger formed in the hot dense early phase of the universe due to denser regions collapsing. A later survey of about a thousand supernovae detected no gravitational lensing events, when about eight would be expected if intermediate-mass primordial black holes above a certain mass range accounted for over 60% of dark matter. However, that study assumed a monochromatic distribution to represent the LIGO/Virgo mass range, which is inapplicable to the broadly platykurtic mass distribution suggested by subsequent James Webb Space Telescope observations.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The possibility that atom-sized primordial black holes account for a significant fraction of dark matter was ruled out by measurements of positron and electron fluxes outside the Sun's heliosphere by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Tiny black holes are theorized to emit Hawking radiation. However the detected fluxes were too low and did not have the expected energy spectrum, suggesting that tiny primordial black holes are not widespread enough to account for dark matter. Nonetheless, research and theories proposing dense dark matter accounts for dark matter continue as of 2018, including approaches to dark matter cooling, and the question remains unsettled. In 2019, the lack of microlensing effects in the observation of Andromeda suggests that tiny black holes do not exist.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "However, there still exists a largely unconstrained mass range smaller than that which can be limited by optical microlensing observations, where primordial black holes may account for all dark matter.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Dark matter can be divided into cold, warm, and hot categories. These categories refer to velocity rather than an actual temperature, indicating how far corresponding objects moved due to random motions in the early universe, before they slowed due to cosmic expansion – this is an important distance called the free streaming length (FSL). Primordial density fluctuations smaller than this length get washed out as particles spread from overdense to underdense regions, while larger fluctuations are unaffected; therefore this length sets a minimum scale for later structure formation.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The categories are set with respect to the size of a protogalaxy (an object that later evolves into a dwarf galaxy): Dark matter particles are classified as cold, warm, or hot according to their FSL; much smaller (cold), similar to (warm), or much larger (hot) than a protogalaxy. Mixtures of the above are also possible: a theory of mixed dark matter was popular in the mid-1990s, but was rejected following the discovery of dark energy.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Cold dark matter leads to a bottom-up formation of structure with galaxies forming first and galaxy clusters at a latter stage, while hot dark matter would result in a top-down formation scenario with large matter aggregations forming early, later fragmenting into separate galaxies; the latter is excluded by high-redshift galaxy observations.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "These categories also correspond to fluctuation spectrum effects and the interval following the Big Bang at which each type became non-relativistic. Davis et al. wrote in 1985:",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Candidate particles can be grouped into three categories on the basis of their effect on the fluctuation spectrum (Bond et al. 1983). If the dark matter is composed of abundant light particles which remain relativistic until shortly before recombination, then it may be termed \"hot\". The best candidate for hot dark matter is a neutrino ... A second possibility is for the dark matter particles to interact more weakly than neutrinos, to be less abundant, and to have a mass of order 1 keV. Such particles are termed \"warm dark matter\", because they have lower thermal velocities than massive neutrinos ... there are at present few candidate particles which fit this description. Gravitinos and photinos have been suggested (Pagels and Primack 1982; Bond, Szalay and Turner 1982) ... Any particles which became nonrelativistic very early, and so were able to diffuse a negligible distance, are termed \"cold\" dark matter (CDM). There are many candidates for CDM including supersymmetric particles.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Another approximate dividing line is warm dark matter became non-relativistic when the universe was approximately 1 year old and 1 millionth of its present size and in the radiation-dominated era (photons and neutrinos), with a photon temperature 2.7 million Kelvins. Standard physical cosmology gives the particle horizon size as 2 c t (speed of light multiplied by time) in the radiation-dominated era, thus 2 light-years. A region of this size would expand to 2 million light-years today (absent structure formation). The actual FSL is approximately 5 times the above length, since it continues to grow slowly as particle velocities decrease inversely with the scale factor after they become non-relativistic. In this example the FSL would correspond to 10 million light-years, or 3 megaparsecs, today, around the size containing an average large galaxy.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The 2.7 million K photon temperature gives a typical photon energy of 250 electronvolts, thereby setting a typical mass scale for warm dark matter: particles much more massive than this, such as GeV–TeV mass WIMPs, would become non-relativistic much earlier than one year after the Big Bang and thus have FSLs much smaller than a protogalaxy, making them cold. Conversely, much lighter particles, such as neutrinos with masses of only a few eV, have FSLs much larger than a protogalaxy, thus qualifying them as hot.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Cold dark matter offers the simplest explanation for most cosmological observations. It is dark matter composed of constituents with an FSL much smaller than a protogalaxy. This is the focus for dark matter research, as hot dark matter does not seem capable of supporting galaxy or galaxy cluster formation, and most particle candidates slowed early.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The constituents of cold dark matter are unknown. Possibilities range from large objects like MACHOs (such as black holes and Preon stars) or RAMBOs (such as clusters of brown dwarfs), to new particles such as WIMPs and axions.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The 1997 DAMA/NaI experiment and its successor DAMA/LIBRA in 2013, claimed to directly detect dark matter particles passing through the Earth, but many researchers remain skeptical, as negative results from similar experiments seem incompatible with the DAMA results.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Many supersymmetric models offer dark matter candidates in the form of the WIMPy Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (LSP). Separately, heavy sterile neutrinos exist in non-supersymmetric extensions to the standard model which explain the small neutrino mass through the seesaw mechanism.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Warm dark matter comprises particles with an FSL comparable to the size of a protogalaxy. Predictions based on warm dark matter are similar to those for cold dark matter on large scales, but with less small-scale density perturbations. This reduces the predicted abundance of dwarf galaxies and may lead to lower density of dark matter in the central parts of large galaxies. Some researchers consider this a better fit to observations. A challenge for this model is the lack of particle candidates with the required mass ≈ 300 eV to 3000 eV.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "No known particles can be categorized as warm dark matter. A postulated candidate is the sterile neutrino: A heavier, slower form of neutrino that does not interact through the weak force, unlike other neutrinos. Some modified gravity theories, such as scalar–tensor–vector gravity, require \"warm\" dark matter to make their equations work.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Hot dark matter consists of particles whose FSL is much larger than the size of a protogalaxy. The neutrino qualifies as such a particle. They were discovered independently, long before the hunt for dark matter: they were postulated in 1930, and detected in 1956. Neutrinos' mass is less than 10 that of an electron. Neutrinos interact with normal matter only via gravity and the weak force, making them difficult to detect (the weak force only works over a small distance, thus a neutrino triggers a weak force event only if it hits a nucleus head-on). This makes them \"weakly interacting slender particles\" (WISPs), as opposed to WIMPs.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The three known flavours of neutrinos are the electron, muon, and tau. Their masses are slightly different. Neutrinos oscillate among the flavours as they move. It is hard to determine an exact upper bound on the collective average mass of the three neutrinos (or for any of the three individually). For example, if the average neutrino mass were over 50 eV/c (less than 10 of the mass of an electron), the universe would collapse. CMB data and other methods indicate that their average mass probably does not exceed 0.3 eV/c. Thus, observed neutrinos cannot explain dark matter.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Because galaxy-size density fluctuations get washed out by free-streaming, hot dark matter implies the first objects that can form are huge supercluster-size pancakes, which then fragment into galaxies. Deep-field observations show instead that galaxies formed first, followed by clusters and superclusters as galaxies clump together.",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "If dark matter is composed of weakly-interacting particles, then an obvious question is whether it can form objects equivalent to planets, stars, or black holes. Historically, the answer has been it cannot, because of two factors:",
"title": "Theoretical classifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "If dark matter is made up of subatomic particles, then millions, possibly billions, of such particles must pass through every square centimeter of the Earth each second. Many experiments aim to test this hypothesis. Although WIMPs have been the main search candidates, axions have drawn renewed attention, with the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX) searches for axions and many more planned in the future. Another candidate is heavy hidden sector particles which only interact with ordinary matter via gravity.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "These experiments can be divided into two classes: direct detection experiments, which search for the scattering of dark matter particles off atomic nuclei within a detector; and indirect detection, which look for the products of dark matter particle annihilations or decays.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Direct detection experiments aim to observe low-energy recoils (typically a few keVs) of nuclei induced by interactions with particles of dark matter, which (in theory) are passing through the Earth. After such a recoil the nucleus will emit energy in the form of scintillation light or phonons, as they pass through sensitive detection apparatus. To do so effectively, it is crucial to maintain an extremely low background, which is the reason why such experiments typically operate deep underground, where interference from cosmic rays is minimized. Examples of underground laboratories with direct detection experiments include the Stawell mine, the Soudan mine, the SNOLAB underground laboratory at Sudbury, the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, the Canfranc Underground Laboratory, the Boulby Underground Laboratory, the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory and the China Jinping Underground Laboratory.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "These experiments mostly use either cryogenic or noble liquid detector technologies. Cryogenic detectors operating at temperatures below 100 mK, detect the heat produced when a particle hits an atom in a crystal absorber such as germanium. Noble liquid detectors detect scintillation produced by a particle collision in liquid xenon or argon. Cryogenic detector experiments include: CDMS, CRESST, EDELWEISS, EURECA. Noble liquid experiments include LZ, XENON, DEAP, ArDM, WARP, DarkSide, PandaX, and LUX, the Large Underground Xenon experiment. Both of these techniques focus strongly on their ability to distinguish background particles (which predominantly scatter off electrons) from dark matter particles (that scatter off nuclei). Other experiments include SIMPLE and PICASSO.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Currently there has been no well-established claim of dark matter detection from a direct detection experiment, leading instead to strong upper limits on the mass and interaction cross section with nucleons of such dark matter particles. The DAMA/NaI and more recent DAMA/LIBRA experimental collaborations have detected an annual modulation in the rate of events in their detectors, which they claim is due to dark matter. This results from the expectation that as the Earth orbits the Sun, the velocity of the detector relative to the dark matter halo will vary by a small amount. This claim is so far unconfirmed and in contradiction with negative results from other experiments such as LUX, SuperCDMS and XENON100.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "A special case of direct detection experiments covers those with directional sensitivity. This is a search strategy based on the motion of the Solar System around the Galactic Center. A low-pressure time projection chamber makes it possible to access information on recoiling tracks and constrain WIMP-nucleus kinematics. WIMPs coming from the direction in which the Sun travels (approximately towards Cygnus) may then be separated from background, which should be isotropic. Directional dark matter experiments include DMTPC, DRIFT, Newage and MIMAC.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Indirect detection experiments search for the products of the self-annihilation or decay of dark matter particles in outer space. For example, in regions of high dark matter density (e.g., the centre of our galaxy) two dark matter particles could annihilate to produce gamma rays or Standard Model particle–antiparticle pairs. Alternatively, if a dark matter particle is unstable, it could decay into Standard Model (or other) particles. These processes could be detected indirectly through an excess of gamma rays, antiprotons or positrons emanating from high density regions in our galaxy or others. A major difficulty inherent in such searches is that various astrophysical sources can mimic the signal expected from dark matter, and so multiple signals are likely required for a conclusive discovery.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "A few of the dark matter particles passing through the Sun or Earth may scatter off atoms and lose energy. Thus dark matter may accumulate at the center of these bodies, increasing the chance of collision/annihilation. This could produce a distinctive signal in the form of high-energy neutrinos. Such a signal would be strong indirect proof of WIMP dark matter. High-energy neutrino telescopes such as AMANDA, IceCube and ANTARES are searching for this signal. The detection by LIGO in September 2015 of gravitational waves opens the possibility of observing dark matter in a new way, particularly if it is in the form of primordial black holes.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Many experimental searches have been undertaken to look for such emission from dark matter annihilation or decay, examples of which follow.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope observed more gamma rays in 2008 than expected from the Milky Way, but scientists concluded this was most likely due to incorrect estimation of the telescope's sensitivity.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is searching for similar gamma rays. In 2009, an as yet unexplained surplus of gamma rays from the Milky Way's galactic center was found in Fermi data. This Galactic Center GeV excess might be due to dark matter annihilation or to a population of pulsars. In April 2012, an analysis of previously available data from Fermi's Large Area Telescope instrument produced statistical evidence of a 130 GeV signal in the gamma radiation coming from the center of the Milky Way. WIMP annihilation was seen as the most probable explanation.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "At higher energies, ground-based gamma-ray telescopes have set limits on the annihilation of dark matter in dwarf spheroidal galaxies and in clusters of galaxies.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The PAMELA experiment (launched in 2006) detected excess positrons. They could be from dark matter annihilation or from pulsars. No excess antiprotons were observed.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "In 2013 results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station indicated excess high-energy cosmic rays which could be due to dark matter annihilation.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "An alternative approach to the detection of dark matter particles in nature is to produce them in a laboratory. Experiments with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may be able to detect dark matter particles produced in collisions of the LHC proton beams. Because a dark matter particle should have negligible interactions with normal visible matter, it may be detected indirectly as (large amounts of) missing energy and momentum that escape the detectors, provided other (non-negligible) collision products are detected. Constraints on dark matter also exist from the LEP experiment using a similar principle, but probing the interaction of dark matter particles with electrons rather than quarks. Any discovery from collider searches must be corroborated by discoveries in the indirect or direct detection sectors to prove that the particle discovered is, in fact, dark matter.",
"title": "Detection of dark matter particles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Because dark matter has not yet been identified, many other hypotheses have emerged aiming to explain the same observational phenomena without introducing a new unknown type of matter. The most common method is to modify general relativity. General relativity is well-tested on solar system scales, but its validity on galactic or cosmological scales has not been well proven. A suitable modification to general relativity can in principle conceivably eliminate the need for dark matter. The best-known theories of this class are MOND and its relativistic generalization tensor–vector–scalar gravity (TeVeS), f(R) gravity, negative mass, dark fluid, and entropic gravity. Alternative theories abound.",
"title": "Alternative hypotheses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "A problem with alternative hypotheses is that observational evidence for dark matter comes from so many independent approaches (see the \"observational evidence\" section above). Explaining any individual observation is possible but explaining all of them in the absence of dark matter is very difficult. Nonetheless, there have been some scattered successes for alternative hypotheses, such as a 2016 test of gravitational lensing in entropic gravity and a 2020 measurement of a unique MOND effect.",
"title": "Alternative hypotheses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The prevailing opinion among most astrophysicists is that while modifications to general relativity can conceivably explain part of the observational evidence, there is probably enough data to conclude there must be some form of dark matter present in the Universe.",
"title": "Alternative hypotheses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Dark matter regularly appears as a topic in hybrid periodicals that cover both factual scientific topics and science fiction, and dark matter itself has been referred to as \"the stuff of science fiction\".",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Mention of dark matter is made in works of fiction. In such cases, it is usually attributed extraordinary physical or magical properties, thus becoming inconsistent with the hypothesized properties of dark matter in physics and cosmology. For example:",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "More broadly, the phrase \"dark matter\" is used metaphorically in fiction to evoke the unseen or invisible.",
"title": "In popular culture"
}
]
| In astronomy, dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that appears not to interact with light or the electromagnetic field. Dark matter is implied by gravitational effects which cannot be explained by general relativity unless more matter is present than can be seen. Such effects occur in the context of formation and evolution of galaxies, gravitational lensing, the observable universe's current structure, mass position in galactic collisions, the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters, and cosmic microwave background anisotropies. In the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, the mass–energy content of the universe is 5% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter, and 68.2% a form of energy known as dark energy. Thus, dark matter constitutes 85% of the total mass, while dark energy and dark matter constitute 95% of the total mass–energy content. Dark matter is not known to interact with ordinary baryonic matter and radiation except through gravity, making it difficult to detect in the laboratory. The leading explanation is that dark matter is some as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particle, such as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) or axions. The other main possibility is that dark matter is composed of primordial black holes. Dark matter is classified as "cold", "warm", or "hot" according to its velocity. Recent models have favored a cold dark matter scenario, in which structures emerge by the gradual accumulation of particles, but after a half century of fruitless dark matter particle searches, more recent gravitational wave and James Webb Space Telescope observations have considerably strengthened the case for primordial and direct collapse black holes. Although the astrophysics community generally accepts dark matter's existence, a minority of astrophysicists, intrigued by specific observations that are not well-explained by ordinary dark matter, argue for various modifications of the standard laws of general relativity. These include modified Newtonian dynamics, tensor–vector–scalar gravity, or entropic gravity. So far none of the proposed modified gravity theories can successfully describe every piece of observational evidence at the same time, suggesting that even if gravity has to be modified, some form of dark matter will still be required. | 2001-11-18T18:01:13Z | 2023-12-22T15:49:20Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter |
8,653 | Ducati | Ducati (Italian pronunciation: [duˈkaːti]) is an Italian motorcycle manufacturing company headquartered in Bologna, Italy. The company is directly owned by Italian automotive manufacturer Lamborghini, whose German parent company is Audi, itself owned by the Volkswagen Group.
In 1926 Antonio Cavalieri Ducati and his three sons, Adriano, Marcello, and Bruno, founded Società Scientifica Radiobrevetti Ducati (SSR Ducati) in Bologna to produce vacuum tubes, condensers and other radio components. In 1935 they had become successful enough to enable construction of a new factory in the Borgo Panigale area of the city. Production was maintained during World War II, despite the Ducati factory being a repeated target of Allied bombing. It was finally destroyed by around 40 Consolidated B-24 Liberators on 12 October 1944 as part of the United States Army Air Forces's Operation Pancake, which involved some 700 aircraft flying from airfields in the Province of Foggia.
Nonetheless it maintained production.
Meanwhile, at the small Turinese firm SIATA (Società Italiana per Applicazioni Tecniche Auto-Aviatorie), Aldo Farinelli began developing a small pushrod engine for mounting on bicycles. Barely a month after the official liberation of Italy in 1944, SIATA announced its intention to sell this engine, called the "Cucciolo" (Italian for "puppy," in reference to the distinctive exhaust sound) to the public. The first Cucciolos were available alone, to be mounted on standard bicycles, by the buyer; however, businessmen soon bought the little engines in quantity, and offered complete motorized-bicycle units for sale.
In 1950, after more than 200,000 Cucciolos had been sold, in collaboration with SIATA, the Ducati firm finally offered its own Cucciolo-based motorcycle. This first Ducati motorcycle was a 48 cc bike weighing 98 lb (44 kg), with a top speed of 40 mph (64 km/h), and had a 15 mm carburetor (0.59 in) giving just under 200 mpg‑US (1.2 L/100 km; 240 mpg‑imp). Ducati soon dropped the Cucciolo name in favor of "55M" and "65TL".
When the market moved toward larger motorcycles, Ducati management decided to respond, making an impression at an early-1952 Milan show, introducing their 65TS cycle and Cruiser (a four-stroke motor scooter). Despite being described as the most interesting new machine at the 1952 show, the Cruiser was not a great success, and only a few thousand were made over a two-year period before the model ceased production.
In 1953, management split the company into two separate entities, Ducati Meccanica SpA and Ducati Elettronica, in acknowledgment of its diverging motorcycle and electronics product lines. Dr. Giuseppe Montano took over as head of Ducati Meccanica SpA and the Borgo Panigale factory was modernized with government assistance. By 1954, Ducati Meccanica SpA had increased production to 120 bikes a day.
In the 1960s, Ducati earned its place in motorcycling history by producing the fastest 250 cc road bike then available, the Mach 1. In the 1970s Ducati began producing motorcycles with large-displacement V-twin engines, which Ducati branded as "L-twin" for their 90° angle, and in 1973, introduced their trademarked desmodromic valve design. In 1985, Cagiva bought Ducati and planned to rebadge Ducati motorcycles with the "Cagiva" name. By the time the purchase was completed, Cagiva kept the "Ducati" name on its motorcycles. Eleven years later, in 1996, Cagiva accepted the offer from Texas Pacific Group and sold a 51% stake in the company for US$325 million; then, in 1998, Texas Pacific Group bought most of the remaining 49% to become the sole owner of Ducati. In 1999, TPG issued an initial public offering of Ducati stock and renamed the company "Ducati Motor Holding SpA". TPG sold over 65% of its shares in Ducati, leaving TPG the majority shareholder. In December 2005, Ducati returned to Italian ownership with the sale of Texas Pacific's stake (minus one share) to Investindustrial Holdings, the investment fund of Carlo and Andrea Bonomi.
In April 2012, Volkswagen Group's Audi subsidiary announced its intention to buy Ducati for €860 million (US$1.2 billion). Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch, a motorcycle enthusiast, had long coveted Ducati, and had regretted that he passed up an opportunity to buy the company from the Italian government in 1984. Analysts doubted a tiny motorcycle maker would have a meaningful effect on a company the size of Volkswagen, commenting that the acquisition has "a trophy feel to it," and, "is driven by VW's passion for nameplates rather than industrial or financial logic". Italian luxury car brand Lamborghini was strengthened under VW ownership. AUDI AG's Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. subsidiary acquired 100 percent of the shares of Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A. on 19 July 2012 for €747 million (US$909 million).
Since 1926, Ducati has been owned by a number of groups and companies.
From the 1960s to the 1990s, the Spanish company MotoTrans licensed Ducati engines and produced motorcycles that, although they incorporated subtle differences, were clearly Ducati-derived. MotoTrans's most notable machine was the 250 cc 24 Horas (Spanish for "24 hours").
Ducati is best known for high-performance motorcycles characterized by large-capacity four-stroke, 90° V-twin engines, with a desmodromic valve design. Ducati branded his configuration as L-twin because one cylinder is vertical while the other is horizontal, making it look like a letter "L". Ducati's desmodromic valve design is nearing its 50th year of use. Desmodromic valves are closed with a separate, dedicated cam lobe and lifter instead of the conventional valve springs used in most internal combustion engines in consumer vehicles. This allows the cams to have a more radical profile, thus opening and closing the valves more quickly without the risk of valve-float, which causes a loss of power that is likely when using a "passive" closing mechanism under the same conditions.
While most other manufacturers use wet clutches (with the spinning parts bathed in oil) Ducati previously used multiplate dry clutches in many of their motorcycles. The dry clutch eliminates the power loss from oil viscosity drag on the engine, even though the engagement may not be as smooth as the oil-bath versions, but the clutch plates can wear more rapidly. Ducati has converted to wet clutches across their current product lines.
Ducati also extensively uses a trellis frame, although Ducati's MotoGP project broke with this tradition by introducing a revolutionary carbon fibre frame for the Ducati Desmosedici GP9.
The chief designer of most Ducati motorcycles in the 1950s was Fabio Taglioni (1920–2001). His designs ranged from the small single-cylinder machines that were successful in the Italian 'street races' to the large-capacity twins of the 1980s. Ducati introduced the Pantah in 1979; its engine was updated in the 1990s in the Ducati SuperSport (SS) series. All modern Ducati engines are derivatives of the Pantah, which uses a toothed belt to actuate the engine's valves. Taglioni used the Cavallino Rampante (identified with the Ferrari brand) on his Ducati motorbikes. Taglioni chose this emblem of courage and daring as a sign of respect and admiration for Francesco Baracca, a World War I fighter pilot who died during an air raid in 1918.
In addition to manufacturing two-wheelers, Ducati also assembled Triumph Heralds for sale in the Italian market in their Borgo Panigale plant beginning in early 1963.
In 1973, Ducati commemorated its 1972 win at the Imola 200 with the production model green frame Ducati 750 SuperSport.
Ducati also targeted the offroad market with the two-stroke Regolarità 125, building 3,486 models from 1975 to 1979, but the bike was not successful.
In 1975, the company introduced the 860 GT, designed by noted car stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro. Its angular lines were unique, but raised handlebars made for an uncomfortable seating position at high speeds and also caused steering issues. The 860GT's angular styling was a sales disaster, and it was hurriedly re-designed for the 1976 season with a more rounded fuel tank.
In 1975 Ducati offered hand-built production racers, the 'square case' 750SS and later 900SS models, built in limited numbers. Sales of the 900SS proved so strong, and sales of the 860GT/GTE/GTS so weak, that production of the 900SS was ramped up, and it became Ducati's #1 selling model.
Ducati's liquid-cooled, multi-valve 90° V-twins, made from 1985 on, are known as Desmoquattro ("desmodromic valve four"). These include the 851, 916 and 996, 999 and a few predecessors and derivatives.
The Ducati Paso was introduced in 1986 with the Paso 750, followed in 1989 with the Paso 906. The final version came in 1991 with the 907IE (Iniezione Elettronica), now without the name "Paso". The design was from the hand of Massimo Tamburini, who also designed the Ducati 916 and MV Agusta F4. The Paso was a typical "you love it, you hate it" bike. However, at that time it looked like that all-enclosed bodywork would be the future for all motorcycles. The Paso design was copied for the Moto Morini Dart 400 and Cagiva Freccia 125. Together with Tamburini's Bimota DB1, they were enormously influential in terms of styling.
In 1993, Miguel Angel Galluzzi introduced the Ducati Monster, a naked bike with exposed trellis and engine. Today the Monster accounts for almost half of the company's worldwide sales. The Monster has undergone the most changes of any motorcycle that Ducati has ever produced.
In 1993, Pierre Terblanche, Massimo Bordi and Claudio Domenicali designed the Ducati Supermono. A 550 cc single-cylinder lightweight "Catalog Racer". Only 67 were built between 1993 and 1997.
In 1994, the company introduced the Ducati 916 model designed by Massimo Tamburini, a water-cooled version that allowed for higher output levels and a striking new bodywork that had aggressive lines, an underseat exhaust, and a single-sided swingarm. Ducati has since ceased production of the 916, supplanting it (and its progeny, the 748, 996 and 998) with the 749 and 999.
In 2006, the retro-styled Ducati PaulSmart 1000 LE was released, which shared styling cues with the 1973 750 SuperSport (itself a production replica of Paul Smart's 1972 race winning 750 Imola Desmo), as one of a SportClassic series representing the 750 GT, 750 Sport, and 750 SuperSport Ducati motorcycles.
Ducati has produced several styles of motorcycle engines, including varying the number of cylinders, type of valve actuation and fuel delivery. Ducati is best known for its 90° V-twin engine, used on nearly all Ducatis since the 1970s. Ducati brands its engine as "L-twin", emphasizing the 90° V angle, to create product differentiation from competing V-twin motorcycles. Ducati has also made other engine types, mostly before the 1970s, with one, two, three, or four cylinders; operated by pull rod valves and push rod valves; single, double and triple overhead camshafts; two-stroke and even at one stage manufactured small diesel engines, many of which were used to power boats, generators, garden machinery and emergency pumps (for example, for fire fighting). The engines were the IS series from 7 to 22 hp (5.2 to 16.4 kW) air-cooled and the larger twin DM series water- and air-cooled. The engines have been found in all parts of the globe. Wisconsin Diesel even assembled and "badge engineered" the engines in the USA. They have also produced outboard motors for marine use. Currently, Ducati makes no other engines except for its motorcycles.
On current Ducati motors, except for the Desmosedici and 1199 Panigale, the valves are actuated by a standard valve cam shaft which is rotated by a timing belt driven by the motor directly. The teeth on the belt keep the camshaft drive pulleys indexed. On older Ducati motors, prior to 1986, drive was by solid shaft that transferred to the camshaft through bevel-cut gears. This method of valve actuation was used on many of Ducati's older single-cylinder motorcycles — the shaft tube is visible on the outside of the cylinder.
Ducati is also famous for using the desmodromic valve system championed by engineer and designer Fabio Taglioni, though the firm has also used engines that use valve springs to close their valves. In the early days, Ducati reserved the desmodromic valve heads for its higher performance bikes and its race bikes. These valves do not suffer from valve float at high engine speeds, thus a desmodromic engine is capable of far higher revolutions than a similarly configured engine with traditional spring-valve heads.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Ducati produced a wide range of small two-stroke bikes, mainly sub-100 cc capacities. Large quantities of some models were exported to the United States.
Ducati has produced the following motorcycle engine types:
A key part of Ducati's marketing strategy since the 1990s has been fostering a distinct community identity in connection with branding efforts including online communities and local, regional and national Ducati enthusiast clubs. There are more than 400 Ducati clubs worldwide and 20,000 registered users of the Ducati Owners Club web site and 17,000 subscribers to the racing web site. Enthusiasts and riders are informally referred to in the motorcycling community as Ducatista (singular) or Ducatisti (plural).
In North America there are several Ducati enthusiasts organizations with varying degrees of factory sponsorship, such as the Bay Area Desmo Owners Club (BADOC) located in and around the city of San Francisco, CA. Ducati Riders of Illinois (DRILL) located in Chicago, IL. DESMO, the Ducati Enthusiast Sport Motorcycle Organization, is a North American group affiliated with the factory Desmo Owners Club. Some groups are focused on vintage Ducatis while several are based primarily or entirely on email discussion lists or web forums.
Ducati has a wide range of accessories, lifestyle products and co-branded merchandise bearing their logos and designs. The company has a licensing agreement with Tumi Inc., launching a collection of eight co-branded luggage pieces in 2006, sold through both of the brands' retail outlets.
Ducati's history with motorsport began with speed records on Cucciolo motorized bicycle factory racers in 1951, followed in 1954 with bringing in Fabio Taglioni to found a road-racing program with the 100 Gran Sport. As of 2009, Ducati was still pursuing the "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" business model and spending 10% of company revenues, €40 million, on its racing business.
Ducati rejoined Grand Prix motorcycle racing in 2003, after a 30-year absence. On 23 September 2007, Casey Stoner clinched his and Ducati's first Grand Prix World Championship.
When Ducati re-joined MotoGP in 2003, MotoGP had changed its rules to allow four-stroke 990 cc engines to race. At the time Ducati was the fastest bike. In 2007, MotoGP reduced the engine size to 800 cc (49 cu in), and Ducati continued to be the fastest with a bike that was markedly quicker than its rivals as was displayed by Casey Stoner on tracks with long straights.
For 2009, Ducati Marlboro Team campaigned their Desmosedici GP9 with former World Champions Casey Stoner and Nicky Hayden. Ducati also supplied customer bikes to Pramac Racing, with Mika Kallio and Niccolò Canepa riding for the team in 2009.
Nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi rode for Ducati Corse for the 2011 and 2012 seasons. Rossi returned to the Yamaha team for the 2013 season.
For 2013, Ducati Team raced with Nicky Hayden and the Italian rider Andrea Dovizioso. In 2014 Cal Crutchlow teamed up with Dovizioso for the season, and he left at the end of the year.
In 2015, Ducati Team, under the control of the new race team director Gigi Dall'Igna and the new Desmosedici GP15, raced with two Italian riders: Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone. Dovizioso and Iannone returned for another season in 2016 with Michele Pirro as official tester. As well as this, Casey Stoner also tested Ducati machinery during the season. In 2017 and 2018, Ducati Team rider Andrea Dovizioso raced with his new teammate Jorge Lorenzo, who joined the Ducati team from Yamaha Factory Racing with a two seasons contract. In 2019, Danilo Petrucci joined Dovizioso at the factory team.
In 2022, Despite suffering five DNF's, four of which were individual errors throughout the 2022 season, Bagnaia became the newest MotoGP world champion today in Valencia. The Ducati rider also became the Italian manufacturer's second-ever MotoGP champion after Casey Stoner, and first in 15 years.
The company has won 16 riders world championships and 19 manufacturers world championships, competing since the series' inception in 1988. At the end of 2015, Ducati has amassed 318 wins, more than any other manufacturer involved in the championship.
Ducati has also won the manufacturers' championship for years 2008–2009, 2011 and 2016.
Ducati has won the British Superbike Championship twelve times.
In the AMA Superbike Championship, Ducati has had its share of success, with Doug Polen winning the title in 1993 and Troy Corser the following year in 1994. Ducati has entered a bike in every AMA Superbike season since 1986, but withdrew from the series after the 2006 season.
Ducati had an important place in early Superbike racing history in the United States and vice versa: In 1977, Cycle magazine editors Cook Neilson and Phil Schilling took a Ducati 750SS to first place at Daytona in the second-ever season of AMA Superbike racing. "Neilson retired from racing at the end of the year, but the bike he and Schilling built — nicknamed Old Blue for its blue livery — became a legend," says Richard Backus from Motorcycle Classics: "How big a legend? Big enough for Ducati to team with Italian specialty builder NCR to craft a limited-edition update, New Blue, based on the 2007 Sport 1000S, and big enough to inspire the crew at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum (see Barber Motorsports Park), arguably one of the most important motorcycle museums in the world, to commission Ducati specialist Rich Lambrechts to craft a bolt-by-bolt replica for its collection. The finished bike's name? Deja Blue."
Ducati's first ever world title was the 1978 TT Formula 1 World Championship, achieved thanks to Mike Hailwood's victory at the Isle of Man TT. Between 1981 and 1984 Tony Rutter won four TT Formula 2 World Championships riding Ducati bikes.
44°31′03″N 11°16′03″E / 44.51750°N 11.26750°E / 44.51750; 11.26750 | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Ducati (Italian pronunciation: [duˈkaːti]) is an Italian motorcycle manufacturing company headquartered in Bologna, Italy. The company is directly owned by Italian automotive manufacturer Lamborghini, whose German parent company is Audi, itself owned by the Volkswagen Group.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In 1926 Antonio Cavalieri Ducati and his three sons, Adriano, Marcello, and Bruno, founded Società Scientifica Radiobrevetti Ducati (SSR Ducati) in Bologna to produce vacuum tubes, condensers and other radio components. In 1935 they had become successful enough to enable construction of a new factory in the Borgo Panigale area of the city. Production was maintained during World War II, despite the Ducati factory being a repeated target of Allied bombing. It was finally destroyed by around 40 Consolidated B-24 Liberators on 12 October 1944 as part of the United States Army Air Forces's Operation Pancake, which involved some 700 aircraft flying from airfields in the Province of Foggia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Nonetheless it maintained production.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Meanwhile, at the small Turinese firm SIATA (Società Italiana per Applicazioni Tecniche Auto-Aviatorie), Aldo Farinelli began developing a small pushrod engine for mounting on bicycles. Barely a month after the official liberation of Italy in 1944, SIATA announced its intention to sell this engine, called the \"Cucciolo\" (Italian for \"puppy,\" in reference to the distinctive exhaust sound) to the public. The first Cucciolos were available alone, to be mounted on standard bicycles, by the buyer; however, businessmen soon bought the little engines in quantity, and offered complete motorized-bicycle units for sale.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1950, after more than 200,000 Cucciolos had been sold, in collaboration with SIATA, the Ducati firm finally offered its own Cucciolo-based motorcycle. This first Ducati motorcycle was a 48 cc bike weighing 98 lb (44 kg), with a top speed of 40 mph (64 km/h), and had a 15 mm carburetor (0.59 in) giving just under 200 mpg‑US (1.2 L/100 km; 240 mpg‑imp). Ducati soon dropped the Cucciolo name in favor of \"55M\" and \"65TL\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "When the market moved toward larger motorcycles, Ducati management decided to respond, making an impression at an early-1952 Milan show, introducing their 65TS cycle and Cruiser (a four-stroke motor scooter). Despite being described as the most interesting new machine at the 1952 show, the Cruiser was not a great success, and only a few thousand were made over a two-year period before the model ceased production.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1953, management split the company into two separate entities, Ducati Meccanica SpA and Ducati Elettronica, in acknowledgment of its diverging motorcycle and electronics product lines. Dr. Giuseppe Montano took over as head of Ducati Meccanica SpA and the Borgo Panigale factory was modernized with government assistance. By 1954, Ducati Meccanica SpA had increased production to 120 bikes a day.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the 1960s, Ducati earned its place in motorcycling history by producing the fastest 250 cc road bike then available, the Mach 1. In the 1970s Ducati began producing motorcycles with large-displacement V-twin engines, which Ducati branded as \"L-twin\" for their 90° angle, and in 1973, introduced their trademarked desmodromic valve design. In 1985, Cagiva bought Ducati and planned to rebadge Ducati motorcycles with the \"Cagiva\" name. By the time the purchase was completed, Cagiva kept the \"Ducati\" name on its motorcycles. Eleven years later, in 1996, Cagiva accepted the offer from Texas Pacific Group and sold a 51% stake in the company for US$325 million; then, in 1998, Texas Pacific Group bought most of the remaining 49% to become the sole owner of Ducati. In 1999, TPG issued an initial public offering of Ducati stock and renamed the company \"Ducati Motor Holding SpA\". TPG sold over 65% of its shares in Ducati, leaving TPG the majority shareholder. In December 2005, Ducati returned to Italian ownership with the sale of Texas Pacific's stake (minus one share) to Investindustrial Holdings, the investment fund of Carlo and Andrea Bonomi.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In April 2012, Volkswagen Group's Audi subsidiary announced its intention to buy Ducati for €860 million (US$1.2 billion). Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch, a motorcycle enthusiast, had long coveted Ducati, and had regretted that he passed up an opportunity to buy the company from the Italian government in 1984. Analysts doubted a tiny motorcycle maker would have a meaningful effect on a company the size of Volkswagen, commenting that the acquisition has \"a trophy feel to it,\" and, \"is driven by VW's passion for nameplates rather than industrial or financial logic\". Italian luxury car brand Lamborghini was strengthened under VW ownership. AUDI AG's Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. subsidiary acquired 100 percent of the shares of Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A. on 19 July 2012 for €747 million (US$909 million).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Since 1926, Ducati has been owned by a number of groups and companies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "From the 1960s to the 1990s, the Spanish company MotoTrans licensed Ducati engines and produced motorcycles that, although they incorporated subtle differences, were clearly Ducati-derived. MotoTrans's most notable machine was the 250 cc 24 Horas (Spanish for \"24 hours\").",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Ducati is best known for high-performance motorcycles characterized by large-capacity four-stroke, 90° V-twin engines, with a desmodromic valve design. Ducati branded his configuration as L-twin because one cylinder is vertical while the other is horizontal, making it look like a letter \"L\". Ducati's desmodromic valve design is nearing its 50th year of use. Desmodromic valves are closed with a separate, dedicated cam lobe and lifter instead of the conventional valve springs used in most internal combustion engines in consumer vehicles. This allows the cams to have a more radical profile, thus opening and closing the valves more quickly without the risk of valve-float, which causes a loss of power that is likely when using a \"passive\" closing mechanism under the same conditions.",
"title": "Motorcycle designs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "While most other manufacturers use wet clutches (with the spinning parts bathed in oil) Ducati previously used multiplate dry clutches in many of their motorcycles. The dry clutch eliminates the power loss from oil viscosity drag on the engine, even though the engagement may not be as smooth as the oil-bath versions, but the clutch plates can wear more rapidly. Ducati has converted to wet clutches across their current product lines.",
"title": "Motorcycle designs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Ducati also extensively uses a trellis frame, although Ducati's MotoGP project broke with this tradition by introducing a revolutionary carbon fibre frame for the Ducati Desmosedici GP9.",
"title": "Motorcycle designs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The chief designer of most Ducati motorcycles in the 1950s was Fabio Taglioni (1920–2001). His designs ranged from the small single-cylinder machines that were successful in the Italian 'street races' to the large-capacity twins of the 1980s. Ducati introduced the Pantah in 1979; its engine was updated in the 1990s in the Ducati SuperSport (SS) series. All modern Ducati engines are derivatives of the Pantah, which uses a toothed belt to actuate the engine's valves. Taglioni used the Cavallino Rampante (identified with the Ferrari brand) on his Ducati motorbikes. Taglioni chose this emblem of courage and daring as a sign of respect and admiration for Francesco Baracca, a World War I fighter pilot who died during an air raid in 1918.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In addition to manufacturing two-wheelers, Ducati also assembled Triumph Heralds for sale in the Italian market in their Borgo Panigale plant beginning in early 1963.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1973, Ducati commemorated its 1972 win at the Imola 200 with the production model green frame Ducati 750 SuperSport.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Ducati also targeted the offroad market with the two-stroke Regolarità 125, building 3,486 models from 1975 to 1979, but the bike was not successful.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1975, the company introduced the 860 GT, designed by noted car stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro. Its angular lines were unique, but raised handlebars made for an uncomfortable seating position at high speeds and also caused steering issues. The 860GT's angular styling was a sales disaster, and it was hurriedly re-designed for the 1976 season with a more rounded fuel tank.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1975 Ducati offered hand-built production racers, the 'square case' 750SS and later 900SS models, built in limited numbers. Sales of the 900SS proved so strong, and sales of the 860GT/GTE/GTS so weak, that production of the 900SS was ramped up, and it became Ducati's #1 selling model.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Ducati's liquid-cooled, multi-valve 90° V-twins, made from 1985 on, are known as Desmoquattro (\"desmodromic valve four\"). These include the 851, 916 and 996, 999 and a few predecessors and derivatives.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Ducati Paso was introduced in 1986 with the Paso 750, followed in 1989 with the Paso 906. The final version came in 1991 with the 907IE (Iniezione Elettronica), now without the name \"Paso\". The design was from the hand of Massimo Tamburini, who also designed the Ducati 916 and MV Agusta F4. The Paso was a typical \"you love it, you hate it\" bike. However, at that time it looked like that all-enclosed bodywork would be the future for all motorcycles. The Paso design was copied for the Moto Morini Dart 400 and Cagiva Freccia 125. Together with Tamburini's Bimota DB1, they were enormously influential in terms of styling.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1993, Miguel Angel Galluzzi introduced the Ducati Monster, a naked bike with exposed trellis and engine. Today the Monster accounts for almost half of the company's worldwide sales. The Monster has undergone the most changes of any motorcycle that Ducati has ever produced.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1993, Pierre Terblanche, Massimo Bordi and Claudio Domenicali designed the Ducati Supermono. A 550 cc single-cylinder lightweight \"Catalog Racer\". Only 67 were built between 1993 and 1997.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1994, the company introduced the Ducati 916 model designed by Massimo Tamburini, a water-cooled version that allowed for higher output levels and a striking new bodywork that had aggressive lines, an underseat exhaust, and a single-sided swingarm. Ducati has since ceased production of the 916, supplanting it (and its progeny, the 748, 996 and 998) with the 749 and 999.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 2006, the retro-styled Ducati PaulSmart 1000 LE was released, which shared styling cues with the 1973 750 SuperSport (itself a production replica of Paul Smart's 1972 race winning 750 Imola Desmo), as one of a SportClassic series representing the 750 GT, 750 Sport, and 750 SuperSport Ducati motorcycles.",
"title": "Product history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Ducati has produced several styles of motorcycle engines, including varying the number of cylinders, type of valve actuation and fuel delivery. Ducati is best known for its 90° V-twin engine, used on nearly all Ducatis since the 1970s. Ducati brands its engine as \"L-twin\", emphasizing the 90° V angle, to create product differentiation from competing V-twin motorcycles. Ducati has also made other engine types, mostly before the 1970s, with one, two, three, or four cylinders; operated by pull rod valves and push rod valves; single, double and triple overhead camshafts; two-stroke and even at one stage manufactured small diesel engines, many of which were used to power boats, generators, garden machinery and emergency pumps (for example, for fire fighting). The engines were the IS series from 7 to 22 hp (5.2 to 16.4 kW) air-cooled and the larger twin DM series water- and air-cooled. The engines have been found in all parts of the globe. Wisconsin Diesel even assembled and \"badge engineered\" the engines in the USA. They have also produced outboard motors for marine use. Currently, Ducati makes no other engines except for its motorcycles.",
"title": "Motorcycle design history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On current Ducati motors, except for the Desmosedici and 1199 Panigale, the valves are actuated by a standard valve cam shaft which is rotated by a timing belt driven by the motor directly. The teeth on the belt keep the camshaft drive pulleys indexed. On older Ducati motors, prior to 1986, drive was by solid shaft that transferred to the camshaft through bevel-cut gears. This method of valve actuation was used on many of Ducati's older single-cylinder motorcycles — the shaft tube is visible on the outside of the cylinder.",
"title": "Motorcycle design history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Ducati is also famous for using the desmodromic valve system championed by engineer and designer Fabio Taglioni, though the firm has also used engines that use valve springs to close their valves. In the early days, Ducati reserved the desmodromic valve heads for its higher performance bikes and its race bikes. These valves do not suffer from valve float at high engine speeds, thus a desmodromic engine is capable of far higher revolutions than a similarly configured engine with traditional spring-valve heads.",
"title": "Motorcycle design history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In the 1960s and 1970s, Ducati produced a wide range of small two-stroke bikes, mainly sub-100 cc capacities. Large quantities of some models were exported to the United States.",
"title": "Motorcycle design history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Ducati has produced the following motorcycle engine types:",
"title": "Motorcycle design history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "A key part of Ducati's marketing strategy since the 1990s has been fostering a distinct community identity in connection with branding efforts including online communities and local, regional and national Ducati enthusiast clubs. There are more than 400 Ducati clubs worldwide and 20,000 registered users of the Ducati Owners Club web site and 17,000 subscribers to the racing web site. Enthusiasts and riders are informally referred to in the motorcycling community as Ducatista (singular) or Ducatisti (plural).",
"title": "Enthusiasts groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In North America there are several Ducati enthusiasts organizations with varying degrees of factory sponsorship, such as the Bay Area Desmo Owners Club (BADOC) located in and around the city of San Francisco, CA. Ducati Riders of Illinois (DRILL) located in Chicago, IL. DESMO, the Ducati Enthusiast Sport Motorcycle Organization, is a North American group affiliated with the factory Desmo Owners Club. Some groups are focused on vintage Ducatis while several are based primarily or entirely on email discussion lists or web forums.",
"title": "Enthusiasts groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Ducati has a wide range of accessories, lifestyle products and co-branded merchandise bearing their logos and designs. The company has a licensing agreement with Tumi Inc., launching a collection of eight co-branded luggage pieces in 2006, sold through both of the brands' retail outlets.",
"title": "Merchandising"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Ducati's history with motorsport began with speed records on Cucciolo motorized bicycle factory racers in 1951, followed in 1954 with bringing in Fabio Taglioni to found a road-racing program with the 100 Gran Sport. As of 2009, Ducati was still pursuing the \"win on Sunday, sell on Monday\" business model and spending 10% of company revenues, €40 million, on its racing business.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Ducati rejoined Grand Prix motorcycle racing in 2003, after a 30-year absence. On 23 September 2007, Casey Stoner clinched his and Ducati's first Grand Prix World Championship.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "When Ducati re-joined MotoGP in 2003, MotoGP had changed its rules to allow four-stroke 990 cc engines to race. At the time Ducati was the fastest bike. In 2007, MotoGP reduced the engine size to 800 cc (49 cu in), and Ducati continued to be the fastest with a bike that was markedly quicker than its rivals as was displayed by Casey Stoner on tracks with long straights.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "For 2009, Ducati Marlboro Team campaigned their Desmosedici GP9 with former World Champions Casey Stoner and Nicky Hayden. Ducati also supplied customer bikes to Pramac Racing, with Mika Kallio and Niccolò Canepa riding for the team in 2009.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi rode for Ducati Corse for the 2011 and 2012 seasons. Rossi returned to the Yamaha team for the 2013 season.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "For 2013, Ducati Team raced with Nicky Hayden and the Italian rider Andrea Dovizioso. In 2014 Cal Crutchlow teamed up with Dovizioso for the season, and he left at the end of the year.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 2015, Ducati Team, under the control of the new race team director Gigi Dall'Igna and the new Desmosedici GP15, raced with two Italian riders: Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone. Dovizioso and Iannone returned for another season in 2016 with Michele Pirro as official tester. As well as this, Casey Stoner also tested Ducati machinery during the season. In 2017 and 2018, Ducati Team rider Andrea Dovizioso raced with his new teammate Jorge Lorenzo, who joined the Ducati team from Yamaha Factory Racing with a two seasons contract. In 2019, Danilo Petrucci joined Dovizioso at the factory team.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 2022, Despite suffering five DNF's, four of which were individual errors throughout the 2022 season, Bagnaia became the newest MotoGP world champion today in Valencia. The Ducati rider also became the Italian manufacturer's second-ever MotoGP champion after Casey Stoner, and first in 15 years.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The company has won 16 riders world championships and 19 manufacturers world championships, competing since the series' inception in 1988. At the end of 2015, Ducati has amassed 318 wins, more than any other manufacturer involved in the championship.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Ducati has also won the manufacturers' championship for years 2008–2009, 2011 and 2016.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Ducati has won the British Superbike Championship twelve times.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In the AMA Superbike Championship, Ducati has had its share of success, with Doug Polen winning the title in 1993 and Troy Corser the following year in 1994. Ducati has entered a bike in every AMA Superbike season since 1986, but withdrew from the series after the 2006 season.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Ducati had an important place in early Superbike racing history in the United States and vice versa: In 1977, Cycle magazine editors Cook Neilson and Phil Schilling took a Ducati 750SS to first place at Daytona in the second-ever season of AMA Superbike racing. \"Neilson retired from racing at the end of the year, but the bike he and Schilling built — nicknamed Old Blue for its blue livery — became a legend,\" says Richard Backus from Motorcycle Classics: \"How big a legend? Big enough for Ducati to team with Italian specialty builder NCR to craft a limited-edition update, New Blue, based on the 2007 Sport 1000S, and big enough to inspire the crew at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum (see Barber Motorsports Park), arguably one of the most important motorcycle museums in the world, to commission Ducati specialist Rich Lambrechts to craft a bolt-by-bolt replica for its collection. The finished bike's name? Deja Blue.\"",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Ducati's first ever world title was the 1978 TT Formula 1 World Championship, achieved thanks to Mike Hailwood's victory at the Isle of Man TT. Between 1981 and 1984 Tony Rutter won four TT Formula 2 World Championships riding Ducati bikes.",
"title": "Racing history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "44°31′03″N 11°16′03″E / 44.51750°N 11.26750°E / 44.51750; 11.26750",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Ducati is an Italian motorcycle manufacturing company headquartered in Bologna, Italy. The company is directly owned by Italian automotive manufacturer Lamborghini, whose German parent company is Audi, itself owned by the Volkswagen Group. | 2001-10-15T22:50:20Z | 2023-12-14T08:45:25Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducati |
8,654 | Data General Nova | The Data General Nova is a series of 16-bit minicomputers released by the American company Data General. The Nova family was very popular in the 1970s and ultimately sold tens of thousands of units.
The first model, known simply as "Nova", was released in 1969. The Nova was packaged into a single 3U rack-mount case and had enough computing power to handle most simple tasks. The Nova became popular in science laboratories around the world. It was followed the next year by the SuperNOVA, which ran roughly four times as fast.
Introduced during a period of rapid progress in integrated circuit (or "microchip") design, the line went through several upgrades over the next five years, introducing the 800 and 1200, the Nova 2, Nova 3, and ultimately the Nova 4. A single-chip implementation was also introduced as the microNOVA in 1977, but did not see widespread use as the market moved to new microprocessor designs. Fairchild Semiconductor also introduced a microprocessor version of the Nova in 1977, the Fairchild 9440, but it also saw limited use in the market.
The Nova line was succeeded by the Data General Eclipse, which was similar in most ways but added virtual memory support and other features required by modern operating systems. A 32-bit upgrade of the Eclipse resulted in the Eclipse MV series of the 1980s.
Edson de Castro was the Product Manager of the pioneering Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-8, a 12-bit computer widely referred to as the first true minicomputer. He also led the design of the upgraded PDP-8/I, which used early integrated circuits in place of individual transistors.
During the PDP-8/I process, de Castro had been visiting circuit board manufacturers who were making rapid advances in the complexity of the boards they could assemble. de Castro concluded that the 8/I could be produced using fully automated assembly on large boards, which would have been impossible only a year earlier. Others within DEC had become used to the smaller boards used in earlier machines and were concerned about tracking down problems when there were many components on a single board. For the 8/I, the decision was made to stay with small boards, using the new "flip-chip" packaging for a modest improvement in density.
During the period when the PDP-8 was being developed, the introduction of ASCII and its major update in 1967 led to a new generation of designs with word lengths that were multiples of 8 bits rather than multiples of 6 bits as in most previous designs. This led to mid-range designs working at 16-bit word lengths instead of DEC's current 12- and 18-bit lineups. de Castro was convinced that it was possible to improve upon the PDP-8 by building a 16-bit minicomputer CPU on a single 15-inch square board.
In 1967, de Castro began a new design effort known as "PDP-X" which included several advanced features. Among these was a single underlying design that could be used to build 8-, 16-, and 32-bit platforms. This progressed to the point of producing several detailed architecture documents. Ken Olsen was not supportive of this project, feeling it did not offer sufficient advantages over the 12-bit PDP-8 and the 18-bit PDP-9. It was eventually canceled in the spring of 1968.
Cancelation of the PDP-X prompted de Castro to consider leaving DEC to build a system on his own. He was not alone; in late 1967 a group of like-minded engineers formed to consider such a machine. The group included Pat Green, a divisional manager; Richard Sogge, another hardware engineer; and Henry Burkhardt III, a software engineer. In contrast to the PDP-X, the new effort focused on a single machine that could be brought to market quickly, as de Castro felt the PDP-X concept was far too ambitious for a small startup company.
Discussing it with the others at DEC, the initial concept led to an 8-bit machine which would be less costly to implement. The group began talking with Herbert Richman, a salesman for Fairchild Semiconductor who knew the others through his contacts with DEC. At the time, Fairchild was battling with Texas Instruments and Signetics in the rapidly growing TTL market and were introducing new fabs that allowed more complex designs. Fairchild's latest 9300 series allowed up to 96 gates per chip, and they had used this to implement a number of 4-bit chips like binary counters and shift registers.
Using these ICs reduced the total IC count needed to implement a complete arithmetic logic unit (ALU), the core mathematical component of a CPU, allowing the expansion from an 8-bit design to 16-bit. This did require the expansion of the CPU from a single 15 by 15 inches (38 cm × 38 cm) printed circuit board to two, but such a design would still be significantly cheaper to produce than the 8/I while still being more powerful and ASCII-based. A third board held the input/output circuitry and a complete system typically included another board with 4 kB of random-access memory. A complete four-card system fit in a single rackmount chassis.
The boards were designed so they could be connected together using a printed circuit backplane, with minimal manual wiring, allowing all the boards to be built in an automated fashion. This greatly reduced costs over 8/I, which consisted of many smaller boards that had to be wired together at the backplane, which was itself connected together using wire wrap. The larger-board construction also made the Nova more reliable, which made it especially attractive for industrial or lab settings.
The new design used a simple load–store architecture which would reemerge in the RISC designs in the 1980s. Because the complexity of a flip-flop was being rapidly reduced as they were implemented in chips, the design offset the lack of addressing modes of the load–store design by adding four general-purpose accumulators, instead of the single register that would be found in similar low-cost offerings like the PDP series.
Late in 1967, Richman introduced the group to New York-based lawyer Fred Adler, who began canvassing various funding sources for seed capital. By 1968, Adler had arranged a major funding deal with a consortium of venture capital funds from the Boston area, who agreed to provide an initial US$400,000 investment with a second US$400,000 available for production ramp-up. de Castro, Burkhart and Sogge quit DEC and started Data General (DG) on 15 April 1968. Green did not join them, considering the venture too risky, and Richman did not join until the product was up and running later in the year.
Work on the first system took about nine months, and the first sales efforts started that November. They had a bit of luck because the Fall Joint Computer Conference had been delayed until December that year, so they were able to bring a working unit to the Moscone Center where they ran a version of Spacewar!. DG officially released the Nova in 1969 at a base price of US$3,995 (equivalent to $31,880 in 2022), advertising it as "the best small computer in the world." The basic model was not very useful out of the box, and adding 8 kW (16 kB) RAM in the form of core memory typically brought the price up to US$7,995. In contrast, an 8/I with 4 kW (6 kB) was priced at US$12,800.
The first sale was to a university in Texas, with the team hand-building an example which shipped out in February. However, this was in the midst of a strike in the airline industry and the machine never arrived. They sent a second example, which arrived promptly as the strike had ended by that point, and in May the original one was finally delivered as well.
The system was successful from the start, with the 100th being sold after six months, and the 500th after 15 months. Sales accelerated as newer versions were introduced, and by 1975 the company had annual sales of US$100 million.
Ken Olsen had publicly predicted that DG would fail, but with the release of the Nova it was clear that was not going to happen. By this time a number of other companies were talking about introducing 16-bit designs as well. Olsen decided these presented a threat to their 18-bit line as well as 12-bit, and began a new 16-bit design effort. This emerged in 1970 as the PDP-11, a much more complex design that was as different from the PDP-X as the Nova was. The two designs competed heavily in the market.
Rumors of the new system from DEC reached DG shortly after the Nova began shipping. In the spring of 1970 they hired a new designer, Larry Seligman, to leapfrog any possible machine in the making. Two major changes had taken place since the Nova was designed; one was that Signetics had introduced the 8260, a 4-bit IC that combined an adder, XNOR and AND, meaning the number of chips needed to implement the basic logic was reduced by about three times. Another was that Intel was aggressively talking up semiconductor-based memories, promising 1024 bits on a single chip and running at much higher speeds than core memory.
Seligman's new design took advantage of both of these improvements. To start, the new ICs allowed the ALU to be expanded to full 16-bit width on the same two cards, allowing it to carry out math and logic operations in a single cycle and thereby making the new design four times as fast as the original. In addition, new smaller core memory was used that improved the cycle time from the original's 1,200 ns to 800 ns, offering a further 1/3 improvement. Performance could be further improved by replacing the core with read-only memory; lacking core's read–write cycle, this could be accessed in 300 ns for a dramatic performance boost.
The resulting machine, known as the SuperNOVA, was released in 1970. Although the initial models still used core, the entire design was based on the premise that faster semiconductor memories would become available and the platform could make full use of them. This was introduced later the same year as the SuperNOVA SC, featuring semiconductor (SC) memory. The much higher performance memory allowed the CPU, which was synchronous with memory, to be further increased in speed to run at a 300 ns cycle time (3.3 MHz). This made it the fastest available minicomputer for many years. Initially the new memory was also very expensive and ran hot, so it was not widely used.
As a demonstration of the power of their Micromatrix gate array technology, in 1968 Fairchild prototyped the 4711, a single-chip 4-bit ALU. The design was never intended for mass production and was quite expensive to produce. The introduction of the Signetics 8260 in 1969 forced their hand; both Texas Instruments and Fairchild introduced 4-bit ALUs of their own in 1970, the 74181 and 9341, respectively. In contrast to the 8260, the new designs offered all common logic functions and further reduced the chip count.
This led DG to consider the design of a new CPU using these more integrated ICs. At a minimum, this would reduce the CPU to a single card for either the basic Nova or the SuperNOVA. A new concept emerged where a single chassis would be able to host either machine simply by swapping out the CPU circuit board. This would allow customers to purchase the lower-cost system and then upgrade at any time.
While Seligman was working on the SuperNOVA, the company received a letter from Ron Gruner stating "I've read about your product, I've read your ads, and I'm going to work for you. And I'm going to be at your offices in a week to talk to you about that." He was hired on the spot. Gruner was put in charge of the low-cost machine while Seligman designed a matching high-performance version.
Gruner's low-cost model launched in 1970 as the Nova 1200, the 1200 referring to the use of the original Nova's 1,200 ns core memory. It featured a 4-bit ALU based on a single 74181 chip, and was thus essentially a repackaged Nova. Seligman's repackaged four-ALU SuperNOVA was released in 1971 as the Nova 800, resulting in the somewhat confusing naming where the lower-numbered model has higher performance. Both models were offered in a variety of cases, the 1200 with seven slots, the 1210 with four and the 1220 with fourteen.
By this time the PDP-11 was finally shipping. It offered a much richer instruction set architecture than the deliberately simple one in the Nova. Continuing improvement in IC designs, and especially their price–performance ratio, was eroding the value of the original simplified instructions. Seligman was put in charge of designing a new machine that would be compatible with the Nova while offering a much richer environment for those who wanted it. This concept shipped as the Data General Eclipse series, which offered the ability to add additional circuitry to tailor the instruction set for scientific or data processing workloads. The Eclipse was successful in competing with the PDP-11 at the higher end of the market.
Around the same time, rumors of a new 32-bit machine from DEC began to surface. DG decided they had to have a similar product, and Gruner was put in charge of what became the Fountainhead Project. Given the scope of the project, they agreed that the entire effort should be handled off-site, and Gruner selected a location at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. This design became very complex and was ultimately canceled years later.
While these efforts were underway, work on the Nova line continued.
The 840, first offered in 1973, also included a new paged memory system allowing for addresses of up to 17-bits. An index offset the base address into the larger 128 kword memory. Actually installing this much memory required considerable space; the 840 shipped in a large 14-slot case.
The next version was the Nova 2, with the first versions shipping in 1973. The Nova 2 was essentially a simplified version of the earlier machines as increasing chip densities allowed the CPU to be reduced in size. While the SuperNOVA used three 15×15" boards to implement the CPU and its memory, the Nova 2 fitted all of this onto a single board. ROM was used to store the boot code, which was then copied into core when the "program load" switch was flipped. Versions were available with four ("2/4"), seven and ten ("2/10") slots.
The Nova 3 of 1975 added two more registers, used to control access to a built-in stack. The processor was also re-implemented using TTL components, further increasing the performance of the system. The Nova 3 was offered in four-slot (the Nova 3/4) and twelve-slot (the Nova 3/12) versions.
It appears that Data General originally intended the Nova 3 to be the last of its line, planning to replace the Nova with the later Eclipse machines. However, continued demand led to a Nova 4 machine, this time based on four AMD Am2901 bit-slice ALUs. This machine was designed from the start to be both the Nova 4 and the Eclipse S/140, with different microcode for each. A floating-point co-processor was also available, taking up a separate slot. An additional option allowed for memory mapping, allowing programs to access up to 128 kwords of memory using bank switching. Unlike the earlier machines, the Nova 4 did not include a front panel console and instead relied on the terminal to emulate a console when needed.
There were three different versions of the Nova 4, the Nova 4/C, the Nova 4/S and the Nova 4/X. The Nova 4/C was a single-board implementation that included all of the memory (16 or 32 kwords). The Nova 4/S and 4/X used separate memory boards. The Nova 4/X had the on-board memory management unit (MMU) enabled to allow up to 128 kwords of memory to be used. The MMU was also installed in the Nova 4/S, but was disabled by firmware. Both the 4/S and the 4/X included a "prefetcher" to increase performance by fetching up to two instructions from memory before they were needed.
Data General also produced a series of microNOVA single-chip implementations of the Nova processor. To allow it to fit into a 40-pin dual in-line package (DIP) chip, the address bus and data bus shared a set of 16 pins. This meant that reads and writes to memory required two cycles, and that the machine ran about half the speed of the original Nova as a result.
The first chip in the series was the mN601, of 1977. This was sold both as a CPU for other users, a complete chipset for those wanting to implement a computer, a complete computer on a single board with 4 kB of RAM, and as a complete low-end model of the Nova. An upgraded version of the design, 1979's mN602, reduced the entire chipset to a single VLSI. This was offered in two machines, the microNOVA MP/100 and larger microNOVA MP/200.
The microNOVA was later re-packaged with a monitor in a PC-style case with two floppy disks as the Enterprise. Enterprise shipped in 1981, running RDOS, but the introduction of the IBM PC the same year made most other machines disappear under the radar.
The Nova influenced the design of both the Xerox Alto (1973) and Apple I (1976) computers, and its architecture was the basis for the Computervision CGP (Computervision Graphics Processor) series. Its external design has been reported to be the direct inspiration for the front panel of the MITS Altair (1975) microcomputer.
Data General followed up on the success of the original Nova with a series of faster designs. The Eclipse family of systems was later introduced with an extended upwardly compatible instruction set, and the MV-series further extended the Eclipse into a 32-bit architecture to compete with the DEC VAX. The development of the MV-series was documented in Tracy Kidder's popular 1981 book, The Soul of a New Machine. Data General itself would later evolve into a vendor of Intel processor-based servers and storage arrays, eventually being purchased by EMC.
There is a diverse but ardent group of people worldwide who restore and preserve original 16-bit Data General systems.
The Nova, unlike the PDP-8, was a load–store architecture. It had four 16-bit accumulator registers, two of which (2 and 3) could be used as index registers. There was a 15-bit program counter and a single-bit carry register. As with the PDP-8, current + zero page addressing was central. There was no stack register, but later Eclipse designs would utilize a dedicated hardware memory address for this function.
The earliest models of the Nova processed math serially in 4-bit packets, using a single 74181 bitslice ALU. A year after its introduction, this design was improved to include a full 16-bit parallel math unit using four 74181s, this design being referred to as the SuperNova. Future versions of the system added a stack unit and hardware multiply/divide.
The Nova 4 / Eclipse S/140 was based on four AMD 2901 bit-slice ALUs, with microcode in read-only memory, and was the first Nova designed for DRAM main memory only, without provision for magnetic core memory.
The first models were available with 8 K words of magnetic core memory as an option, one that practically everyone had to buy, bringing the system cost up to $7,995.
This core memory board was organized in planar fashion as four groups of four banks, each bank carrying two sets of core in a 64 by 64 matrix; thus there were 64 x 64 = 4096 bits per set, x 2 sets giving 8,192 bits, x 4 banks giving 32,768 bits, x 4 groups giving a total of 131,072 bits, and this divided by the machine word size of 16 bits gave 8,192 words of memory.
The core on this 8K word memory board occupied a centrally located "board-on-a-board", 5.25" wide by 6.125" high, and was covered by a protective plate. It was surrounded by the necessary support driver read-write-rewrite circuitry. All of the core and the corresponding support electronics fit onto a single standard 15 x 15-inch (380 mm) board. Up to 32K of such core RAM could be supported in one external expansion box. Semiconductor ROM was already available at the time, and RAM-less systems (i.e. with ROM only) became popular in many industrial settings. The original Nova machines ran at approximately 200 kHz, but its SuperNova was designed to run at up to 3 MHz when used with special semiconductor main memory.
The standardized backplane and I/O signals created a simple, efficient I/O design that made interfacing programmed I/O and Data Channel devices to the Nova simple compared to competing machines. In addition to its dedicated I/O bus structure, the Nova backplane had wire wrap pins that could be used for non-standard connectors or other special purposes.
The instruction format could be broadly categorized into one of three functions: 1) register-to-register manipulation, 2) memory reference, and 3) input/output. Each instruction was contained in one word. The register-to-register manipulation was almost RISC-like in its bit-efficiency; and an instruction that manipulated register data could also perform tests, shifts and even elect to discard the result. Hardware options included an integer multiply and divide unit, a floating-point unit (single and double precision), and memory management.
The earliest Nova came with a BASIC interpreter on punched tape. As the product grew, Data General developed many languages for the Nova computers, running under a range of consistent operating systems. FORTRAN IV, ALGOL, Extended BASIC, Data General Business Basic, Interactive COBOL, and several assemblers were available from Data General. Third party vendors and the user community expanded the offerings with Forth, Lisp, BCPL, C, ALGOL, and other proprietary versions of COBOL and BASIC.
The machine instructions implemented below are the common set implemented by all of the Nova series processors. Specific models often implemented additional instructions, and some instructions were provided by optional hardware.
All arithmetic instructions operated between accumulators. For operations requiring two operands, one was taken from the source accumulator, and one from the destination accumulator, and the result was deposited in the destination accumulator. For single-operand operations, the operand was taken from the source register and the result replaced the destination register. For all single-operand opcodes, it was permissible for the source and destination accumulators to be the same, and the operation functioned as expected.
All arithmetic instructions included a "no-load" bit which, when set, suppressed the transfer of the result to the destination register; this was used in conjunction with the test options to perform a test without losing the existing contents of the destination register. In assembly language, adding a '#' to the opcode set the no-load bit.
The CPU contained a single-bit register called the carry bit, which after an arithmetic operation would contain the carry out of the most significant bit. The carry bit could be set to a desired value prior to performing the operation using a two-bit field in the instruction. The bit could be set, cleared, or complemented prior to performing the instruction. In assembly language, these options were specified by adding a letter to the opcode: 'O' — set the carry bit; 'Z' — clear the carry bit, 'C' — complement the carry bit, nothing — leave the carry bit alone. If the no-load bit was also specified, the specified carry value would be used for the computation, but the actual carry register would remain unaltered.
All arithmetic instructions included a two-bit field which could be used to specify a shift option, which would be applied to the result before it was loaded into the destination register. A single-bit left or right shift could be specified, or the two bytes of the result could be swapped. Shifts were 17-bit circular, with the carry bit "to the left" of the most significant bit. In other words, when a left shift was performed, the most significant bit of the result was shifted into the carry bit, and the previous contents of the carry bit were shifted into the least significant bit of the result. Byte swaps did not affect the carry bit. In assembly language, these options were specified by adding a letter to the opcode: 'L' — shift left; 'R' — shift right, 'S' — swap bytes; nothing — do not perform a shift or swap.
All arithmetic instructions included a three-bit field that could specify a test which was to be applied to the result of the operation. If the test evaluated to true, the next instruction in line was skipped. In assembly language, the test option was specified as a third operand to the instruction. The available tests were:
The actual arithmetic instructions were:
An example arithmetic instructions, with all options utilized, is:
This decoded as: clear the carry bit; add the contents of AC2 (accumulator 2) to AC0; circularly shift the result one bit to the right; test the result to see if the carry bit is set and skip the next instruction if so. Discard the result after performing the test. In effect, this adds two numbers and tests to see if the result is odd or even.
The Nova instruction set contained a pair of instructions that transferred memory contents to accumulators and vice versa, two transfer-of-control instructions, and two instructions that tested the contents of a memory location. All memory reference instructions contained an eight-bit address field, and a two-bit field that specified the mode of memory addressing. The four modes were:
Obviously, mode 0 was only capable of addressing the first 256 memory words, given the eight-bit address field. This portion of memory was referred to as "page zero". Page zero memory words were considered precious to Nova assembly language programmers because of the small number available; only page zero locations could be addressed from anywhere in the program without resorting to indexed addressing, which required tying up accumulator 2 or 3 to use as an index register. In assembly language, a ".ZREL" directive caused the assembler to place the instructions and data words that followed it in page zero; an ".NREL" directive placed the following instructions and data words in "normal" memory. Later Nova models added instructions with extended addressing fields, which overcame this difficulty (at a performance penalty).
The assembler computed relative offsets for mode 1 automatically, although it was also possible to write it explicitly in the source. If a memory reference instruction referenced a memory address in .NREL space but no mode specifier, mode 1 was assumed and the assembler calculated the offset between the current instruction and the referenced location, and placed this in the instruction's address field (provided that the resulting value fit into the 8-bit field).
The two load and store instructions were:
Both of these instructions included an "indirect" bit. If this bit was set (done in assembly language by adding a '@' to the opcode), the contents of the target address were assumed to be a memory address itself, and that address would be referenced to do the load or store.
The two transfer-of-control instructions were:
As in the case of the load and store instructions, the jump instructions contained an indirect bit, which likewise was specified in assembly using the '@' character. In the case of an indirect jump, the processor retrieved the contents of the target location, and used the value as the memory address to jump to. However, unlike the load and store instructions, if the indirect address had the most significant bit set, it would perform a further cycle of indirection. On the Nova series processors prior to the Nova 3, there was no limit on the number of indirection cycles; an indirect address that referenced itself would result in an infinite indirect addressing loop, with the instruction never completing. (This could be alarming to users, since when in this condition, pressing the STOP switch on the front panel did nothing. It was necessary to reset the machine to break the loop.)
The two memory test instructions were:
As in the case of the load and store instructions, there was an indirect bit that would perform a single level of indirect addressing. These instructions were odd in that, on the Novas with magnetic core memory, the instruction was executed within the memory board itself. As was common at the time, the memory boards contained a "write-back" circuit to solve the destructive-read problem inherent to magnetic core memory. But the write-back mechanism also contained a mini arithmetic unit, which the processor used for several purposes. For the ISZ and DSZ instructions, the increment or decrement occurred between the memory location being read and the write-back; the CPU simply waited to be told if the result was zero or nonzero. These instructions were useful because they allowed a memory location to be used as a loop counter without tying up an accumulator, but they were slower than performing the equivalent arithmetic instructions.
Some examples of memory reference instructions:
Transfers the contents of the memory location labeled COUNT into accumulator 1. Assuming that COUNT is in .NREL space, this instruction is equivalent to: LDA 1,1,(COUNT-(.+1)) where '.' represents the location of the LDA instruction.
Jump indirect to the memory address specified by the contents of location 17, in page zero space, and deposit the return address in accumulator 3. This was the standard method for making an RDOS system call on early Nova models; the assembly language mnemonic ".SYSTM" translated to this.
Jump to the memory location whose address is contained in accumulator 3. This was a common means of returning from a function or subroutine call, since the JSR instruction left the return address in accumulator 3.
Store the contents of accumulator 0 in the location that is one less than the address contained in accumulator 3.
Decrement the value in the location labeled COUNT, and skip the next instruction if the result is zero. As in the case above, if COUNT is assumed to be in .NREL space, this is equivalent to: DSZ 1,(COUNT-(.+1))
The Novas implemented a channelized model for interfacing to I/O devices. In the model, each I/O device was expected to implement two flags, referred to as "Busy" and "Done", and three data and control registers, referred to as A, B, and C. I/O instructions were available to read and write the registers, and to send one of three signals to the device, referred to as "start", "clear", and "pulse". In general, sending a start signal initiated an I/O operation that had been set up by loading values into the A/B/C registers. The clear signal halted an I/O operation and cleared any resulting interrupt. The pulse signal was used to initiate ancillary operations on complex subsystems, such as seek operations on disk drives. Polled devices usually moved data directly between the device and the A register. DMA devices generally used the A register to specify the memory address, the B register to specify the number of words to be transferred, and the C register for control flags. Channel 63 referred to the CPU itself and was used for various special functions.
Each I/O instruction contained a six-bit channel number field, a four-bit to specify which register to read or write, and a two-bit field to specify which signal was to be sent. In assembly language, the signal was specified by adding a letter to the opcode: 'S' for start, 'C' for clear, 'P' for pulse, and nothing for no signal. The opcodes were:
In addition, four instructions were available to test the status of a device:
Starting a device caused it to set its busy flag. When the requested operation was completed, conventionally the device cleared its busy flag and set its done flag; most devices had their interrupt request mechanism wired to the done flag, so setting the done flag caused an interrupt (if interrupts were enabled and the device wasn't masked).
These instructions performed various CPU control and status functions. All of them were actually shorthand mnemonics for I/O instructions on channel 63, the CPU's self-referential I/O channel.
From the hardware standpoint, the interrupt mechanism was relatively simple, but also less flexible, than current CPU architectures. The backplane supported a single interrupt request line, which all devices capable of interrupting connected to. When a device needed to request an interrupt, it raised this line. The CPU took the interrupt as soon as it completed the current instruction. As stated above, a device was expected to raise its "done" I/O flag when it requested an interrupt, and the convention was that the device would clear its interrupt request when the CPU executed a I/O clear instruction on the device's channel number.
The CPU expected the operating system to place the address of its interrupt service routine into memory address 1. When a device interrupted, the CPU did an indirect jump through address 1, placing the return address into memory address 0, and disabling further interrupts. The interrupt handler would then perform an INTA instruction to discover the channel number of the interrupting device. This worked by raising an "acknowledge" signal on the backplane. The acknowledge signal was wired in a daisy-chain format across the backplane, such that it looped through each board on the bus. Any device requesting an interrupt was expected to block the further propagation of the acknowledge signal down the bus, so that if two or more devices had pending interrupts simultaneously, only the first one would see the acknowledge signal. That device then responded by placing its channel number on the data lines on the bus. This meant that, in the case of simultaneous interrupt requests, the device that had priority was determined by which one was physically closest to the CPU in the card cage.
After the interrupt had been processed and the service routine had sent the device an I/O clear, it resumed normal processing by enabling interrupts and then returning via an indirect jump through memory address 0. In order to prevent a pending interrupt from interrupting immediately before the return jump (which would cause the return address to be overwritten), the INTEN instruction had a one-instruction-cycle delay. When it was executed, interrupts would not be enabled until after the following instruction, which was expected to be the JMP@ 0 instruction, was executed.
The operating system's interrupt service routine then typically performed an indexed jump using the received channel number, to jump to the specific interrupt handling routine for the device. There were a few devices, notably the CPU's power-failure detection circuit, which did not respond to the INTA instruction. If the INTA returned a result of zero, the interrupt service routine had to poll all of the non-INTA-responding devices using the SKPDZ/SKPDN instructions to see which one interrupted.
The operating system could somewhat manage the ordering of interrupts by setting an interrupt mask using the MSKO instruction. This was intended to allow the operating system to determine which devices were permitted to interrupt at a given time. When this instruction was issued, a 16-bit interrupt mask was transmitted to all devices on the backplane. It was up to the device to decide what the mask actually meant to it; by convention, a device that was masked out was not supposed to raise the interrupt line, but the CPU had no means of enforcing this. Most devices that were maskable allowed the mask bit to be selected via a jumper on the board. There were devices that ignored the mask altogether.
On the systems having magnetic core memory (which retained its contents without power), recovery from a power failure was possible. A power failure detection circuit in the CPU issued an interrupt when loss of the main power coming into the computer was detected; from this point, the CPU had a short amount of time until a capacitor in the power supply lost its charge and the power to the CPU failed. This was enough time to stop I/O in progress, by issuing an IORST instruction, and then save the contents of the four accumulators and the carry bit to memory. When the power returned, if the CPU's front panel key switch was in the LOCK position, the CPU would start and perform an indirect jump through memory address 2. This was expected to be the address of an operating system service routine that would reload the accumulators and carry bit, and then resume normal processing. It was up to the service routine to figure out how to restart I/O operations that were aborted by the power failure.
As was the convention of the day, most Nova models provided a front panel console to control and monitor CPU functions. Models prior to the Nova 3 all relied on a canonical front panel layout, as shown in the Nova 840 panel photo above. The layout contained a keyed power switch, two rows of address and data display lamps, a row of data entry switches, and a row of function switches that activated various CPU functions when pressed. The address lamps always displayed the current value of the program counter, in binary. The data lamps displayed various values depending on which CPU function was active at the moment. To the left of the leftmost data lamp, an additional lamp displayed the current value of the carry bit. On most models the lamps were incandescent lamps which were soldered to the panel board; replacing burned-out lamps was a bane of existence for Data General field service engineers.
Each of the data switches controlled the value of one bit in a 16-bit value, and per Data General convention, they were numbered 0-15 from left to right. The data switches provided input to the CPU for various functions, and could also be read by a running program using the READS assembly language instruction. To reduce panel clutter and save money, the function switches were implemented as two-way momentary switches. When a function switch lever was lifted, it triggered the function whose name was printed above the switch on the panel; when the lever was pressed down, it activated the function whose name appeared below the switch. The switch lever returned to a neutral position when released.
Referencing the Nova 840 photo, the first four switches from the left performed the EXAMINE and DEPOSIT functions for the four accumulators. Pressing EXAMINE on one of these caused the current value of the accumulator to be displayed in binary by the data lamps. Pressing DEPOSIT transferred the binary value represented by the current settings of the data switches to the accumulator.
Going to the right, the next switch was the RESET/STOP switch. Pressing STOP caused the CPU to halt after completing the current instruction. Pressing RESET caused the CPU to halt immediately, cleared a number of CPU internal registers, and sent an I/O reset signal to all connected devices. The switch to the right of that was the START/CONTINUE switch. Pressing CONTINUE caused the CPU to resume executing at the instruction currently pointed at by the program counter. Pressing START transferred the value currently set in data switches 1-15 to the program counter, and then began executing from there.
The next two switches provided read and write access to memory from the front panel. Pressing EXAMINE transferred the value set in data switches 1-15 to the program counter, fetched the value in the corresponding memory location, and displayed its value in the data lamps. Pressing EXAMINE NEXT incremented the program counter and then performed an examine operation on that memory location, allowing the user to step through a series of memory locations. Pressing DEPOSIT wrote the value contained in the data switches to the memory location pointed at by the program counter. Pressing DEPOSIT NEXT first incremented the program counter and then deposited to the pointed-to memory location.
The INST STEP function caused the CPU to execute one instruction, at the current program counter location, and then halt. Since the program counter would be incremented as part of the instruction execution, this allowed the user to single-step through a program. MEMORY STEP, a misnomer, caused the CPU to run through a single clock cycle and halt. This was of little use to users and was generally only used by field service personnel for diagnostics.
PROGRAM LOAD was the mechanism usually used to boot a Nova. When this switch was triggered, it caused the 32-word boot ROM to be mapped over the first 32 words of memory, set the program counter to 0, and started the CPU. The boot ROM contained code that would read 256 words (512 bytes) of code from a selected I/O device into memory and then transfer control to the read-in code. The data switches 8-15 were used to tell the boot ROM which I/O channel to boot from. If switch 0 was off, the boot ROM would assume the device was a polled device (e.g., the paper tape reader) and run a polled input loop until 512 bytes had been read. If switch 0 was on, the boot ROM assumed the device was a DMA-capable device and it initiated a DMA data transfer. The boot ROM was not smart enough to position the device prior to initiating the transfer. This was a problem when rebooting after a crash; if the boot device was a disk drive, its heads had likely been left on a random cylinder. They had to be repositioned to cylinder 0, where RDOS wrote the first-level boot block, in order for the boot sequence to work. Conventionally this was done by cycling the drive through its load sequence, but users who got frustrated with the wait time (up to 5 minutes depending on the drive model) learned how to input from the front panel a drive "recalibrate" I/O code and single-step the CPU through it, an operation that took an experienced user only a few seconds.
The power switch was a 3-way keyed switch with positions marked OFF, ON, and LOCK. In the OFF position all power was removed from the CPU. Turning the key to ON applied power to the CPU. However, unlike current CPUs, the CPU did not start automatically when power was applied; the user had to use PROGRAM LOAD or some other method to start the CPU and initiate the boot sequence. Turning the switch to LOCK disabled the front panel function switches; by turning the switch to LOCK and removing the key, the user could render the CPU resistant to tampering. On systems with magnetic core memory, the LOCK position also enabled the auto power failure recovery function. The key could be removed in the OFF or LOCK positions.
The Nova 1200 executed core memory access instructions (LDA and STA) in 2.55 microseconds (μs). Use of read-only memory saved 0.4 μs. Accumulator instructions (ADD, SUB, COM, NEG, etc.) took 1.55 μs, MUL 2.55 μs, DIV 3.75 μs, ISZ 3.15-4.5 μs. On the later Eclipse MV/6000, LDA and STA took 0.44 μs, ADD, etc. took 0.33 μs, MUL 2.2 μs, DIV 3.19 μs, ISZ 1.32 μs, FAD 5.17 μs, FMMD 11.66 μs.
This is a minimal programming example in Nova assembly language. It is designed to run under RDOS and prints the string “Hello, world.” on the console.
Basic models of the Nova came without built-in hardware multiply and divide capability, to keep prices competitive. The following routine multiplies two 16-bit words to produce a 16-bit word result (overflow is ignored). It demonstrates combined use of ALU op, shift, and test (skip). Note that when this routine is called by jsr, AC3 holds the return address. This is used by the return instruction jmp 0,3. An idiomatic way to clear an accumulator is sub 0,0. Other single instructions can be arranged to load a specific set of useful constants (e.g. -2, -1, or +1).
The following routine prints the value of AC1 as a 16-digit binary number, on the RDOS console. It reveals further quirks of the Nova instruction set. For instance, there is no instruction to load an arbitrary "immediate" value into an accumulator (although memory reference instructions do encode such a value to form an effective address). Accumulators must generally be loaded from initialized memory locations (e.g. n16). Other contemporary machines such as the PDP-11, and practically all modern architectures, allow for immediate loads, although many such as ARM restrict the range of values that can be loaded immediately.
Because the RDOS .systm call macro implements a jsr, AC3 is overwritten by the return address for the .pchar function. Therefore, a temporary location is needed to preserve the return address of the caller of this function. For a recursive or otherwise re-entrant routine, a stack, hardware if available, software if not, must be used instead. The return instruction becomes jmp @ retrn which exploits the Nova's indirect addressing mode to load the return PC.
The constant definitions at the end show two assembler features: the assembler radix is octal by default (20 = sixteen), and character constants could be encoded as e.g. "0.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Montreal used the Nova 1200 for channel play-out automation up until the late 1980s. It was then replaced with refurbished Nova 4 units and these were in use until the mid 1990s. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Data General Nova is a series of 16-bit minicomputers released by the American company Data General. The Nova family was very popular in the 1970s and ultimately sold tens of thousands of units.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The first model, known simply as \"Nova\", was released in 1969. The Nova was packaged into a single 3U rack-mount case and had enough computing power to handle most simple tasks. The Nova became popular in science laboratories around the world. It was followed the next year by the SuperNOVA, which ran roughly four times as fast.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Introduced during a period of rapid progress in integrated circuit (or \"microchip\") design, the line went through several upgrades over the next five years, introducing the 800 and 1200, the Nova 2, Nova 3, and ultimately the Nova 4. A single-chip implementation was also introduced as the microNOVA in 1977, but did not see widespread use as the market moved to new microprocessor designs. Fairchild Semiconductor also introduced a microprocessor version of the Nova in 1977, the Fairchild 9440, but it also saw limited use in the market.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Nova line was succeeded by the Data General Eclipse, which was similar in most ways but added virtual memory support and other features required by modern operating systems. A 32-bit upgrade of the Eclipse resulted in the Eclipse MV series of the 1980s.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Edson de Castro was the Product Manager of the pioneering Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-8, a 12-bit computer widely referred to as the first true minicomputer. He also led the design of the upgraded PDP-8/I, which used early integrated circuits in place of individual transistors.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "During the PDP-8/I process, de Castro had been visiting circuit board manufacturers who were making rapid advances in the complexity of the boards they could assemble. de Castro concluded that the 8/I could be produced using fully automated assembly on large boards, which would have been impossible only a year earlier. Others within DEC had become used to the smaller boards used in earlier machines and were concerned about tracking down problems when there were many components on a single board. For the 8/I, the decision was made to stay with small boards, using the new \"flip-chip\" packaging for a modest improvement in density.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "During the period when the PDP-8 was being developed, the introduction of ASCII and its major update in 1967 led to a new generation of designs with word lengths that were multiples of 8 bits rather than multiples of 6 bits as in most previous designs. This led to mid-range designs working at 16-bit word lengths instead of DEC's current 12- and 18-bit lineups. de Castro was convinced that it was possible to improve upon the PDP-8 by building a 16-bit minicomputer CPU on a single 15-inch square board.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1967, de Castro began a new design effort known as \"PDP-X\" which included several advanced features. Among these was a single underlying design that could be used to build 8-, 16-, and 32-bit platforms. This progressed to the point of producing several detailed architecture documents. Ken Olsen was not supportive of this project, feeling it did not offer sufficient advantages over the 12-bit PDP-8 and the 18-bit PDP-9. It was eventually canceled in the spring of 1968.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Cancelation of the PDP-X prompted de Castro to consider leaving DEC to build a system on his own. He was not alone; in late 1967 a group of like-minded engineers formed to consider such a machine. The group included Pat Green, a divisional manager; Richard Sogge, another hardware engineer; and Henry Burkhardt III, a software engineer. In contrast to the PDP-X, the new effort focused on a single machine that could be brought to market quickly, as de Castro felt the PDP-X concept was far too ambitious for a small startup company.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Discussing it with the others at DEC, the initial concept led to an 8-bit machine which would be less costly to implement. The group began talking with Herbert Richman, a salesman for Fairchild Semiconductor who knew the others through his contacts with DEC. At the time, Fairchild was battling with Texas Instruments and Signetics in the rapidly growing TTL market and were introducing new fabs that allowed more complex designs. Fairchild's latest 9300 series allowed up to 96 gates per chip, and they had used this to implement a number of 4-bit chips like binary counters and shift registers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Using these ICs reduced the total IC count needed to implement a complete arithmetic logic unit (ALU), the core mathematical component of a CPU, allowing the expansion from an 8-bit design to 16-bit. This did require the expansion of the CPU from a single 15 by 15 inches (38 cm × 38 cm) printed circuit board to two, but such a design would still be significantly cheaper to produce than the 8/I while still being more powerful and ASCII-based. A third board held the input/output circuitry and a complete system typically included another board with 4 kB of random-access memory. A complete four-card system fit in a single rackmount chassis.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The boards were designed so they could be connected together using a printed circuit backplane, with minimal manual wiring, allowing all the boards to be built in an automated fashion. This greatly reduced costs over 8/I, which consisted of many smaller boards that had to be wired together at the backplane, which was itself connected together using wire wrap. The larger-board construction also made the Nova more reliable, which made it especially attractive for industrial or lab settings.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The new design used a simple load–store architecture which would reemerge in the RISC designs in the 1980s. Because the complexity of a flip-flop was being rapidly reduced as they were implemented in chips, the design offset the lack of addressing modes of the load–store design by adding four general-purpose accumulators, instead of the single register that would be found in similar low-cost offerings like the PDP series.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Late in 1967, Richman introduced the group to New York-based lawyer Fred Adler, who began canvassing various funding sources for seed capital. By 1968, Adler had arranged a major funding deal with a consortium of venture capital funds from the Boston area, who agreed to provide an initial US$400,000 investment with a second US$400,000 available for production ramp-up. de Castro, Burkhart and Sogge quit DEC and started Data General (DG) on 15 April 1968. Green did not join them, considering the venture too risky, and Richman did not join until the product was up and running later in the year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Work on the first system took about nine months, and the first sales efforts started that November. They had a bit of luck because the Fall Joint Computer Conference had been delayed until December that year, so they were able to bring a working unit to the Moscone Center where they ran a version of Spacewar!. DG officially released the Nova in 1969 at a base price of US$3,995 (equivalent to $31,880 in 2022), advertising it as \"the best small computer in the world.\" The basic model was not very useful out of the box, and adding 8 kW (16 kB) RAM in the form of core memory typically brought the price up to US$7,995. In contrast, an 8/I with 4 kW (6 kB) was priced at US$12,800.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The first sale was to a university in Texas, with the team hand-building an example which shipped out in February. However, this was in the midst of a strike in the airline industry and the machine never arrived. They sent a second example, which arrived promptly as the strike had ended by that point, and in May the original one was finally delivered as well.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The system was successful from the start, with the 100th being sold after six months, and the 500th after 15 months. Sales accelerated as newer versions were introduced, and by 1975 the company had annual sales of US$100 million.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Ken Olsen had publicly predicted that DG would fail, but with the release of the Nova it was clear that was not going to happen. By this time a number of other companies were talking about introducing 16-bit designs as well. Olsen decided these presented a threat to their 18-bit line as well as 12-bit, and began a new 16-bit design effort. This emerged in 1970 as the PDP-11, a much more complex design that was as different from the PDP-X as the Nova was. The two designs competed heavily in the market.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Rumors of the new system from DEC reached DG shortly after the Nova began shipping. In the spring of 1970 they hired a new designer, Larry Seligman, to leapfrog any possible machine in the making. Two major changes had taken place since the Nova was designed; one was that Signetics had introduced the 8260, a 4-bit IC that combined an adder, XNOR and AND, meaning the number of chips needed to implement the basic logic was reduced by about three times. Another was that Intel was aggressively talking up semiconductor-based memories, promising 1024 bits on a single chip and running at much higher speeds than core memory.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Seligman's new design took advantage of both of these improvements. To start, the new ICs allowed the ALU to be expanded to full 16-bit width on the same two cards, allowing it to carry out math and logic operations in a single cycle and thereby making the new design four times as fast as the original. In addition, new smaller core memory was used that improved the cycle time from the original's 1,200 ns to 800 ns, offering a further 1/3 improvement. Performance could be further improved by replacing the core with read-only memory; lacking core's read–write cycle, this could be accessed in 300 ns for a dramatic performance boost.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The resulting machine, known as the SuperNOVA, was released in 1970. Although the initial models still used core, the entire design was based on the premise that faster semiconductor memories would become available and the platform could make full use of them. This was introduced later the same year as the SuperNOVA SC, featuring semiconductor (SC) memory. The much higher performance memory allowed the CPU, which was synchronous with memory, to be further increased in speed to run at a 300 ns cycle time (3.3 MHz). This made it the fastest available minicomputer for many years. Initially the new memory was also very expensive and ran hot, so it was not widely used.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "As a demonstration of the power of their Micromatrix gate array technology, in 1968 Fairchild prototyped the 4711, a single-chip 4-bit ALU. The design was never intended for mass production and was quite expensive to produce. The introduction of the Signetics 8260 in 1969 forced their hand; both Texas Instruments and Fairchild introduced 4-bit ALUs of their own in 1970, the 74181 and 9341, respectively. In contrast to the 8260, the new designs offered all common logic functions and further reduced the chip count.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "This led DG to consider the design of a new CPU using these more integrated ICs. At a minimum, this would reduce the CPU to a single card for either the basic Nova or the SuperNOVA. A new concept emerged where a single chassis would be able to host either machine simply by swapping out the CPU circuit board. This would allow customers to purchase the lower-cost system and then upgrade at any time.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "While Seligman was working on the SuperNOVA, the company received a letter from Ron Gruner stating \"I've read about your product, I've read your ads, and I'm going to work for you. And I'm going to be at your offices in a week to talk to you about that.\" He was hired on the spot. Gruner was put in charge of the low-cost machine while Seligman designed a matching high-performance version.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Gruner's low-cost model launched in 1970 as the Nova 1200, the 1200 referring to the use of the original Nova's 1,200 ns core memory. It featured a 4-bit ALU based on a single 74181 chip, and was thus essentially a repackaged Nova. Seligman's repackaged four-ALU SuperNOVA was released in 1971 as the Nova 800, resulting in the somewhat confusing naming where the lower-numbered model has higher performance. Both models were offered in a variety of cases, the 1200 with seven slots, the 1210 with four and the 1220 with fourteen.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "By this time the PDP-11 was finally shipping. It offered a much richer instruction set architecture than the deliberately simple one in the Nova. Continuing improvement in IC designs, and especially their price–performance ratio, was eroding the value of the original simplified instructions. Seligman was put in charge of designing a new machine that would be compatible with the Nova while offering a much richer environment for those who wanted it. This concept shipped as the Data General Eclipse series, which offered the ability to add additional circuitry to tailor the instruction set for scientific or data processing workloads. The Eclipse was successful in competing with the PDP-11 at the higher end of the market.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Around the same time, rumors of a new 32-bit machine from DEC began to surface. DG decided they had to have a similar product, and Gruner was put in charge of what became the Fountainhead Project. Given the scope of the project, they agreed that the entire effort should be handled off-site, and Gruner selected a location at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. This design became very complex and was ultimately canceled years later.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "While these efforts were underway, work on the Nova line continued.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The 840, first offered in 1973, also included a new paged memory system allowing for addresses of up to 17-bits. An index offset the base address into the larger 128 kword memory. Actually installing this much memory required considerable space; the 840 shipped in a large 14-slot case.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The next version was the Nova 2, with the first versions shipping in 1973. The Nova 2 was essentially a simplified version of the earlier machines as increasing chip densities allowed the CPU to be reduced in size. While the SuperNOVA used three 15×15\" boards to implement the CPU and its memory, the Nova 2 fitted all of this onto a single board. ROM was used to store the boot code, which was then copied into core when the \"program load\" switch was flipped. Versions were available with four (\"2/4\"), seven and ten (\"2/10\") slots.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The Nova 3 of 1975 added two more registers, used to control access to a built-in stack. The processor was also re-implemented using TTL components, further increasing the performance of the system. The Nova 3 was offered in four-slot (the Nova 3/4) and twelve-slot (the Nova 3/12) versions.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "It appears that Data General originally intended the Nova 3 to be the last of its line, planning to replace the Nova with the later Eclipse machines. However, continued demand led to a Nova 4 machine, this time based on four AMD Am2901 bit-slice ALUs. This machine was designed from the start to be both the Nova 4 and the Eclipse S/140, with different microcode for each. A floating-point co-processor was also available, taking up a separate slot. An additional option allowed for memory mapping, allowing programs to access up to 128 kwords of memory using bank switching. Unlike the earlier machines, the Nova 4 did not include a front panel console and instead relied on the terminal to emulate a console when needed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "There were three different versions of the Nova 4, the Nova 4/C, the Nova 4/S and the Nova 4/X. The Nova 4/C was a single-board implementation that included all of the memory (16 or 32 kwords). The Nova 4/S and 4/X used separate memory boards. The Nova 4/X had the on-board memory management unit (MMU) enabled to allow up to 128 kwords of memory to be used. The MMU was also installed in the Nova 4/S, but was disabled by firmware. Both the 4/S and the 4/X included a \"prefetcher\" to increase performance by fetching up to two instructions from memory before they were needed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Data General also produced a series of microNOVA single-chip implementations of the Nova processor. To allow it to fit into a 40-pin dual in-line package (DIP) chip, the address bus and data bus shared a set of 16 pins. This meant that reads and writes to memory required two cycles, and that the machine ran about half the speed of the original Nova as a result.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The first chip in the series was the mN601, of 1977. This was sold both as a CPU for other users, a complete chipset for those wanting to implement a computer, a complete computer on a single board with 4 kB of RAM, and as a complete low-end model of the Nova. An upgraded version of the design, 1979's mN602, reduced the entire chipset to a single VLSI. This was offered in two machines, the microNOVA MP/100 and larger microNOVA MP/200.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The microNOVA was later re-packaged with a monitor in a PC-style case with two floppy disks as the Enterprise. Enterprise shipped in 1981, running RDOS, but the introduction of the IBM PC the same year made most other machines disappear under the radar.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Nova influenced the design of both the Xerox Alto (1973) and Apple I (1976) computers, and its architecture was the basis for the Computervision CGP (Computervision Graphics Processor) series. Its external design has been reported to be the direct inspiration for the front panel of the MITS Altair (1975) microcomputer.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Data General followed up on the success of the original Nova with a series of faster designs. The Eclipse family of systems was later introduced with an extended upwardly compatible instruction set, and the MV-series further extended the Eclipse into a 32-bit architecture to compete with the DEC VAX. The development of the MV-series was documented in Tracy Kidder's popular 1981 book, The Soul of a New Machine. Data General itself would later evolve into a vendor of Intel processor-based servers and storage arrays, eventually being purchased by EMC.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "There is a diverse but ardent group of people worldwide who restore and preserve original 16-bit Data General systems.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Nova, unlike the PDP-8, was a load–store architecture. It had four 16-bit accumulator registers, two of which (2 and 3) could be used as index registers. There was a 15-bit program counter and a single-bit carry register. As with the PDP-8, current + zero page addressing was central. There was no stack register, but later Eclipse designs would utilize a dedicated hardware memory address for this function.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The earliest models of the Nova processed math serially in 4-bit packets, using a single 74181 bitslice ALU. A year after its introduction, this design was improved to include a full 16-bit parallel math unit using four 74181s, this design being referred to as the SuperNova. Future versions of the system added a stack unit and hardware multiply/divide.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Nova 4 / Eclipse S/140 was based on four AMD 2901 bit-slice ALUs, with microcode in read-only memory, and was the first Nova designed for DRAM main memory only, without provision for magnetic core memory.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The first models were available with 8 K words of magnetic core memory as an option, one that practically everyone had to buy, bringing the system cost up to $7,995.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "This core memory board was organized in planar fashion as four groups of four banks, each bank carrying two sets of core in a 64 by 64 matrix; thus there were 64 x 64 = 4096 bits per set, x 2 sets giving 8,192 bits, x 4 banks giving 32,768 bits, x 4 groups giving a total of 131,072 bits, and this divided by the machine word size of 16 bits gave 8,192 words of memory.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The core on this 8K word memory board occupied a centrally located \"board-on-a-board\", 5.25\" wide by 6.125\" high, and was covered by a protective plate. It was surrounded by the necessary support driver read-write-rewrite circuitry. All of the core and the corresponding support electronics fit onto a single standard 15 x 15-inch (380 mm) board. Up to 32K of such core RAM could be supported in one external expansion box. Semiconductor ROM was already available at the time, and RAM-less systems (i.e. with ROM only) became popular in many industrial settings. The original Nova machines ran at approximately 200 kHz, but its SuperNova was designed to run at up to 3 MHz when used with special semiconductor main memory.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The standardized backplane and I/O signals created a simple, efficient I/O design that made interfacing programmed I/O and Data Channel devices to the Nova simple compared to competing machines. In addition to its dedicated I/O bus structure, the Nova backplane had wire wrap pins that could be used for non-standard connectors or other special purposes.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The instruction format could be broadly categorized into one of three functions: 1) register-to-register manipulation, 2) memory reference, and 3) input/output. Each instruction was contained in one word. The register-to-register manipulation was almost RISC-like in its bit-efficiency; and an instruction that manipulated register data could also perform tests, shifts and even elect to discard the result. Hardware options included an integer multiply and divide unit, a floating-point unit (single and double precision), and memory management.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The earliest Nova came with a BASIC interpreter on punched tape. As the product grew, Data General developed many languages for the Nova computers, running under a range of consistent operating systems. FORTRAN IV, ALGOL, Extended BASIC, Data General Business Basic, Interactive COBOL, and several assemblers were available from Data General. Third party vendors and the user community expanded the offerings with Forth, Lisp, BCPL, C, ALGOL, and other proprietary versions of COBOL and BASIC.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The machine instructions implemented below are the common set implemented by all of the Nova series processors. Specific models often implemented additional instructions, and some instructions were provided by optional hardware.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "All arithmetic instructions operated between accumulators. For operations requiring two operands, one was taken from the source accumulator, and one from the destination accumulator, and the result was deposited in the destination accumulator. For single-operand operations, the operand was taken from the source register and the result replaced the destination register. For all single-operand opcodes, it was permissible for the source and destination accumulators to be the same, and the operation functioned as expected.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "All arithmetic instructions included a \"no-load\" bit which, when set, suppressed the transfer of the result to the destination register; this was used in conjunction with the test options to perform a test without losing the existing contents of the destination register. In assembly language, adding a '#' to the opcode set the no-load bit.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The CPU contained a single-bit register called the carry bit, which after an arithmetic operation would contain the carry out of the most significant bit. The carry bit could be set to a desired value prior to performing the operation using a two-bit field in the instruction. The bit could be set, cleared, or complemented prior to performing the instruction. In assembly language, these options were specified by adding a letter to the opcode: 'O' — set the carry bit; 'Z' — clear the carry bit, 'C' — complement the carry bit, nothing — leave the carry bit alone. If the no-load bit was also specified, the specified carry value would be used for the computation, but the actual carry register would remain unaltered.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "All arithmetic instructions included a two-bit field which could be used to specify a shift option, which would be applied to the result before it was loaded into the destination register. A single-bit left or right shift could be specified, or the two bytes of the result could be swapped. Shifts were 17-bit circular, with the carry bit \"to the left\" of the most significant bit. In other words, when a left shift was performed, the most significant bit of the result was shifted into the carry bit, and the previous contents of the carry bit were shifted into the least significant bit of the result. Byte swaps did not affect the carry bit. In assembly language, these options were specified by adding a letter to the opcode: 'L' — shift left; 'R' — shift right, 'S' — swap bytes; nothing — do not perform a shift or swap.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "All arithmetic instructions included a three-bit field that could specify a test which was to be applied to the result of the operation. If the test evaluated to true, the next instruction in line was skipped. In assembly language, the test option was specified as a third operand to the instruction. The available tests were:",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The actual arithmetic instructions were:",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "An example arithmetic instructions, with all options utilized, is:",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "This decoded as: clear the carry bit; add the contents of AC2 (accumulator 2) to AC0; circularly shift the result one bit to the right; test the result to see if the carry bit is set and skip the next instruction if so. Discard the result after performing the test. In effect, this adds two numbers and tests to see if the result is odd or even.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Nova instruction set contained a pair of instructions that transferred memory contents to accumulators and vice versa, two transfer-of-control instructions, and two instructions that tested the contents of a memory location. All memory reference instructions contained an eight-bit address field, and a two-bit field that specified the mode of memory addressing. The four modes were:",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Obviously, mode 0 was only capable of addressing the first 256 memory words, given the eight-bit address field. This portion of memory was referred to as \"page zero\". Page zero memory words were considered precious to Nova assembly language programmers because of the small number available; only page zero locations could be addressed from anywhere in the program without resorting to indexed addressing, which required tying up accumulator 2 or 3 to use as an index register. In assembly language, a \".ZREL\" directive caused the assembler to place the instructions and data words that followed it in page zero; an \".NREL\" directive placed the following instructions and data words in \"normal\" memory. Later Nova models added instructions with extended addressing fields, which overcame this difficulty (at a performance penalty).",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The assembler computed relative offsets for mode 1 automatically, although it was also possible to write it explicitly in the source. If a memory reference instruction referenced a memory address in .NREL space but no mode specifier, mode 1 was assumed and the assembler calculated the offset between the current instruction and the referenced location, and placed this in the instruction's address field (provided that the resulting value fit into the 8-bit field).",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The two load and store instructions were:",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Both of these instructions included an \"indirect\" bit. If this bit was set (done in assembly language by adding a '@' to the opcode), the contents of the target address were assumed to be a memory address itself, and that address would be referenced to do the load or store.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The two transfer-of-control instructions were:",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "As in the case of the load and store instructions, the jump instructions contained an indirect bit, which likewise was specified in assembly using the '@' character. In the case of an indirect jump, the processor retrieved the contents of the target location, and used the value as the memory address to jump to. However, unlike the load and store instructions, if the indirect address had the most significant bit set, it would perform a further cycle of indirection. On the Nova series processors prior to the Nova 3, there was no limit on the number of indirection cycles; an indirect address that referenced itself would result in an infinite indirect addressing loop, with the instruction never completing. (This could be alarming to users, since when in this condition, pressing the STOP switch on the front panel did nothing. It was necessary to reset the machine to break the loop.)",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The two memory test instructions were:",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "As in the case of the load and store instructions, there was an indirect bit that would perform a single level of indirect addressing. These instructions were odd in that, on the Novas with magnetic core memory, the instruction was executed within the memory board itself. As was common at the time, the memory boards contained a \"write-back\" circuit to solve the destructive-read problem inherent to magnetic core memory. But the write-back mechanism also contained a mini arithmetic unit, which the processor used for several purposes. For the ISZ and DSZ instructions, the increment or decrement occurred between the memory location being read and the write-back; the CPU simply waited to be told if the result was zero or nonzero. These instructions were useful because they allowed a memory location to be used as a loop counter without tying up an accumulator, but they were slower than performing the equivalent arithmetic instructions.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Some examples of memory reference instructions:",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Transfers the contents of the memory location labeled COUNT into accumulator 1. Assuming that COUNT is in .NREL space, this instruction is equivalent to: LDA 1,1,(COUNT-(.+1)) where '.' represents the location of the LDA instruction.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Jump indirect to the memory address specified by the contents of location 17, in page zero space, and deposit the return address in accumulator 3. This was the standard method for making an RDOS system call on early Nova models; the assembly language mnemonic \".SYSTM\" translated to this.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Jump to the memory location whose address is contained in accumulator 3. This was a common means of returning from a function or subroutine call, since the JSR instruction left the return address in accumulator 3.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Store the contents of accumulator 0 in the location that is one less than the address contained in accumulator 3.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Decrement the value in the location labeled COUNT, and skip the next instruction if the result is zero. As in the case above, if COUNT is assumed to be in .NREL space, this is equivalent to: DSZ 1,(COUNT-(.+1))",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The Novas implemented a channelized model for interfacing to I/O devices. In the model, each I/O device was expected to implement two flags, referred to as \"Busy\" and \"Done\", and three data and control registers, referred to as A, B, and C. I/O instructions were available to read and write the registers, and to send one of three signals to the device, referred to as \"start\", \"clear\", and \"pulse\". In general, sending a start signal initiated an I/O operation that had been set up by loading values into the A/B/C registers. The clear signal halted an I/O operation and cleared any resulting interrupt. The pulse signal was used to initiate ancillary operations on complex subsystems, such as seek operations on disk drives. Polled devices usually moved data directly between the device and the A register. DMA devices generally used the A register to specify the memory address, the B register to specify the number of words to be transferred, and the C register for control flags. Channel 63 referred to the CPU itself and was used for various special functions.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Each I/O instruction contained a six-bit channel number field, a four-bit to specify which register to read or write, and a two-bit field to specify which signal was to be sent. In assembly language, the signal was specified by adding a letter to the opcode: 'S' for start, 'C' for clear, 'P' for pulse, and nothing for no signal. The opcodes were:",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In addition, four instructions were available to test the status of a device:",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Starting a device caused it to set its busy flag. When the requested operation was completed, conventionally the device cleared its busy flag and set its done flag; most devices had their interrupt request mechanism wired to the done flag, so setting the done flag caused an interrupt (if interrupts were enabled and the device wasn't masked).",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "These instructions performed various CPU control and status functions. All of them were actually shorthand mnemonics for I/O instructions on channel 63, the CPU's self-referential I/O channel.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "From the hardware standpoint, the interrupt mechanism was relatively simple, but also less flexible, than current CPU architectures. The backplane supported a single interrupt request line, which all devices capable of interrupting connected to. When a device needed to request an interrupt, it raised this line. The CPU took the interrupt as soon as it completed the current instruction. As stated above, a device was expected to raise its \"done\" I/O flag when it requested an interrupt, and the convention was that the device would clear its interrupt request when the CPU executed a I/O clear instruction on the device's channel number.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The CPU expected the operating system to place the address of its interrupt service routine into memory address 1. When a device interrupted, the CPU did an indirect jump through address 1, placing the return address into memory address 0, and disabling further interrupts. The interrupt handler would then perform an INTA instruction to discover the channel number of the interrupting device. This worked by raising an \"acknowledge\" signal on the backplane. The acknowledge signal was wired in a daisy-chain format across the backplane, such that it looped through each board on the bus. Any device requesting an interrupt was expected to block the further propagation of the acknowledge signal down the bus, so that if two or more devices had pending interrupts simultaneously, only the first one would see the acknowledge signal. That device then responded by placing its channel number on the data lines on the bus. This meant that, in the case of simultaneous interrupt requests, the device that had priority was determined by which one was physically closest to the CPU in the card cage.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "After the interrupt had been processed and the service routine had sent the device an I/O clear, it resumed normal processing by enabling interrupts and then returning via an indirect jump through memory address 0. In order to prevent a pending interrupt from interrupting immediately before the return jump (which would cause the return address to be overwritten), the INTEN instruction had a one-instruction-cycle delay. When it was executed, interrupts would not be enabled until after the following instruction, which was expected to be the JMP@ 0 instruction, was executed.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The operating system's interrupt service routine then typically performed an indexed jump using the received channel number, to jump to the specific interrupt handling routine for the device. There were a few devices, notably the CPU's power-failure detection circuit, which did not respond to the INTA instruction. If the INTA returned a result of zero, the interrupt service routine had to poll all of the non-INTA-responding devices using the SKPDZ/SKPDN instructions to see which one interrupted.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The operating system could somewhat manage the ordering of interrupts by setting an interrupt mask using the MSKO instruction. This was intended to allow the operating system to determine which devices were permitted to interrupt at a given time. When this instruction was issued, a 16-bit interrupt mask was transmitted to all devices on the backplane. It was up to the device to decide what the mask actually meant to it; by convention, a device that was masked out was not supposed to raise the interrupt line, but the CPU had no means of enforcing this. Most devices that were maskable allowed the mask bit to be selected via a jumper on the board. There were devices that ignored the mask altogether.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "On the systems having magnetic core memory (which retained its contents without power), recovery from a power failure was possible. A power failure detection circuit in the CPU issued an interrupt when loss of the main power coming into the computer was detected; from this point, the CPU had a short amount of time until a capacitor in the power supply lost its charge and the power to the CPU failed. This was enough time to stop I/O in progress, by issuing an IORST instruction, and then save the contents of the four accumulators and the carry bit to memory. When the power returned, if the CPU's front panel key switch was in the LOCK position, the CPU would start and perform an indirect jump through memory address 2. This was expected to be the address of an operating system service routine that would reload the accumulators and carry bit, and then resume normal processing. It was up to the service routine to figure out how to restart I/O operations that were aborted by the power failure.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "As was the convention of the day, most Nova models provided a front panel console to control and monitor CPU functions. Models prior to the Nova 3 all relied on a canonical front panel layout, as shown in the Nova 840 panel photo above. The layout contained a keyed power switch, two rows of address and data display lamps, a row of data entry switches, and a row of function switches that activated various CPU functions when pressed. The address lamps always displayed the current value of the program counter, in binary. The data lamps displayed various values depending on which CPU function was active at the moment. To the left of the leftmost data lamp, an additional lamp displayed the current value of the carry bit. On most models the lamps were incandescent lamps which were soldered to the panel board; replacing burned-out lamps was a bane of existence for Data General field service engineers.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Each of the data switches controlled the value of one bit in a 16-bit value, and per Data General convention, they were numbered 0-15 from left to right. The data switches provided input to the CPU for various functions, and could also be read by a running program using the READS assembly language instruction. To reduce panel clutter and save money, the function switches were implemented as two-way momentary switches. When a function switch lever was lifted, it triggered the function whose name was printed above the switch on the panel; when the lever was pressed down, it activated the function whose name appeared below the switch. The switch lever returned to a neutral position when released.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Referencing the Nova 840 photo, the first four switches from the left performed the EXAMINE and DEPOSIT functions for the four accumulators. Pressing EXAMINE on one of these caused the current value of the accumulator to be displayed in binary by the data lamps. Pressing DEPOSIT transferred the binary value represented by the current settings of the data switches to the accumulator.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Going to the right, the next switch was the RESET/STOP switch. Pressing STOP caused the CPU to halt after completing the current instruction. Pressing RESET caused the CPU to halt immediately, cleared a number of CPU internal registers, and sent an I/O reset signal to all connected devices. The switch to the right of that was the START/CONTINUE switch. Pressing CONTINUE caused the CPU to resume executing at the instruction currently pointed at by the program counter. Pressing START transferred the value currently set in data switches 1-15 to the program counter, and then began executing from there.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The next two switches provided read and write access to memory from the front panel. Pressing EXAMINE transferred the value set in data switches 1-15 to the program counter, fetched the value in the corresponding memory location, and displayed its value in the data lamps. Pressing EXAMINE NEXT incremented the program counter and then performed an examine operation on that memory location, allowing the user to step through a series of memory locations. Pressing DEPOSIT wrote the value contained in the data switches to the memory location pointed at by the program counter. Pressing DEPOSIT NEXT first incremented the program counter and then deposited to the pointed-to memory location.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The INST STEP function caused the CPU to execute one instruction, at the current program counter location, and then halt. Since the program counter would be incremented as part of the instruction execution, this allowed the user to single-step through a program. MEMORY STEP, a misnomer, caused the CPU to run through a single clock cycle and halt. This was of little use to users and was generally only used by field service personnel for diagnostics.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "PROGRAM LOAD was the mechanism usually used to boot a Nova. When this switch was triggered, it caused the 32-word boot ROM to be mapped over the first 32 words of memory, set the program counter to 0, and started the CPU. The boot ROM contained code that would read 256 words (512 bytes) of code from a selected I/O device into memory and then transfer control to the read-in code. The data switches 8-15 were used to tell the boot ROM which I/O channel to boot from. If switch 0 was off, the boot ROM would assume the device was a polled device (e.g., the paper tape reader) and run a polled input loop until 512 bytes had been read. If switch 0 was on, the boot ROM assumed the device was a DMA-capable device and it initiated a DMA data transfer. The boot ROM was not smart enough to position the device prior to initiating the transfer. This was a problem when rebooting after a crash; if the boot device was a disk drive, its heads had likely been left on a random cylinder. They had to be repositioned to cylinder 0, where RDOS wrote the first-level boot block, in order for the boot sequence to work. Conventionally this was done by cycling the drive through its load sequence, but users who got frustrated with the wait time (up to 5 minutes depending on the drive model) learned how to input from the front panel a drive \"recalibrate\" I/O code and single-step the CPU through it, an operation that took an experienced user only a few seconds.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "The power switch was a 3-way keyed switch with positions marked OFF, ON, and LOCK. In the OFF position all power was removed from the CPU. Turning the key to ON applied power to the CPU. However, unlike current CPUs, the CPU did not start automatically when power was applied; the user had to use PROGRAM LOAD or some other method to start the CPU and initiate the boot sequence. Turning the switch to LOCK disabled the front panel function switches; by turning the switch to LOCK and removing the key, the user could render the CPU resistant to tampering. On systems with magnetic core memory, the LOCK position also enabled the auto power failure recovery function. The key could be removed in the OFF or LOCK positions.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The Nova 1200 executed core memory access instructions (LDA and STA) in 2.55 microseconds (μs). Use of read-only memory saved 0.4 μs. Accumulator instructions (ADD, SUB, COM, NEG, etc.) took 1.55 μs, MUL 2.55 μs, DIV 3.75 μs, ISZ 3.15-4.5 μs. On the later Eclipse MV/6000, LDA and STA took 0.44 μs, ADD, etc. took 0.33 μs, MUL 2.2 μs, DIV 3.19 μs, ISZ 1.32 μs, FAD 5.17 μs, FMMD 11.66 μs.",
"title": "Technical description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "This is a minimal programming example in Nova assembly language. It is designed to run under RDOS and prints the string “Hello, world.” on the console.",
"title": "Assembly language examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Basic models of the Nova came without built-in hardware multiply and divide capability, to keep prices competitive. The following routine multiplies two 16-bit words to produce a 16-bit word result (overflow is ignored). It demonstrates combined use of ALU op, shift, and test (skip). Note that when this routine is called by jsr, AC3 holds the return address. This is used by the return instruction jmp 0,3. An idiomatic way to clear an accumulator is sub 0,0. Other single instructions can be arranged to load a specific set of useful constants (e.g. -2, -1, or +1).",
"title": "Assembly language examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The following routine prints the value of AC1 as a 16-digit binary number, on the RDOS console. It reveals further quirks of the Nova instruction set. For instance, there is no instruction to load an arbitrary \"immediate\" value into an accumulator (although memory reference instructions do encode such a value to form an effective address). Accumulators must generally be loaded from initialized memory locations (e.g. n16). Other contemporary machines such as the PDP-11, and practically all modern architectures, allow for immediate loads, although many such as ARM restrict the range of values that can be loaded immediately.",
"title": "Assembly language examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Because the RDOS .systm call macro implements a jsr, AC3 is overwritten by the return address for the .pchar function. Therefore, a temporary location is needed to preserve the return address of the caller of this function. For a recursive or otherwise re-entrant routine, a stack, hardware if available, software if not, must be used instead. The return instruction becomes jmp @ retrn which exploits the Nova's indirect addressing mode to load the return PC.",
"title": "Assembly language examples"
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"text": "The constant definitions at the end show two assembler features: the assembler radix is octal by default (20 = sixteen), and character constants could be encoded as e.g. \"0.",
"title": "Assembly language examples"
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"text": "The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Montreal used the Nova 1200 for channel play-out automation up until the late 1980s. It was then replaced with refurbished Nova 4 units and these were in use until the mid 1990s.",
"title": "Applications"
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]
| The Data General Nova is a series of 16-bit minicomputers released by the American company Data General. The Nova family was very popular in the 1970s and ultimately sold tens of thousands of units. The first model, known simply as "Nova", was released in 1969. The Nova was packaged into a single 3U rack-mount case and had enough computing power to handle most simple tasks. The Nova became popular in science laboratories around the world. It was followed the next year by the SuperNOVA, which ran roughly four times as fast. Introduced during a period of rapid progress in integrated circuit design, the line went through several upgrades over the next five years, introducing the 800 and 1200, the Nova 2, Nova 3, and ultimately the Nova 4. A single-chip implementation was also introduced as the microNOVA in 1977, but did not see widespread use as the market moved to new microprocessor designs. Fairchild Semiconductor also introduced a microprocessor version of the Nova in 1977, the Fairchild 9440, but it also saw limited use in the market. The Nova line was succeeded by the Data General Eclipse, which was similar in most ways but added virtual memory support and other features required by modern operating systems. A 32-bit upgrade of the Eclipse resulted in the Eclipse MV series of the 1980s. | 2001-10-16T10:01:29Z | 2023-09-14T03:28:44Z | [
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8,659 | Protestant Church in the Netherlands | The Protestant Church in the Netherlands (Dutch: de Protestantse Kerk in Nederland, abbreviated PKN) is the largest Protestant denomination in the Netherlands, being both Calvinist and Lutheran.
It was founded on 1 May 2004 as the merger of the vast majority of the Dutch Reformed Church, the vast majority of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The merger was the culmination of an organizational process started in 1961. Several orthodox Reformed and liberal churches did not merge into the new church.
The Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) forms the country's second largest Christian denomination after the Catholic Church, with approximately 1.5 million members as per the church official statistics or some 8.6% of the population in 2021. It is the traditional faith of the Dutch Royal Family – a remnant of historical dominance of the Dutch Reformed Church, the main predecessor of the Protestant Church.
The doctrine of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands is expressed in its creeds. In addition to holding the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian creeds of the universal Church, it also holds to the confessions of its predecessor bodies. From the Lutheran tradition are the unaltered Augsburg Confession and Luther's Catechism, and from the Calvinist tradition are the Heidelberg and Genevan Catechisms along with the Belgic Confession with the Canons of Dordt. The Church also acknowledges the Theological Declaration of Barmen and the Leuenberg Agreement. Ordination of women and blessings of same-sex marriages are allowed.
The PKN contains both liberal and conservative movements, although the liberal Remonstrants left talks when they could not agree with the unaltered adoption of the Canons of Dordt. Local congregations have far-reaching powers concerning "controversial" matters (such as admittance to holy communion or whether women are admitted as members of the congregation's consistory).
The polity of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands is a hybrid of presbyterian and congregationalist church governance. Church governance is organised along local, regional, and national lines. At the local level is the congregation. An individual congregation is led by a church council made of the minister along with elders and deacons elected by the congregation. At the regional level were 75 classical assemblies whose members are chosen by the church councils. As of May 1, 2018, these 75 classical assemblies are reorganized into 11 larger ones. At the national level is the General Synod which directs areas of common interest, such as theological education, ministry training and ecumenical cooperation.
The PKN has four different types of congregations:
Lutherans are a minority (about 1 percent) of the PKN's membership. To ensure that Lutherans are represented in the Church, the Lutheran congregations have their own synod. The Lutheran Synod also has representatives in the General Synod.
The Protestant Church in the Netherlands issues yearly reports regarding its membership and finances.
Its make-up by former affiliation of its congregations was as follows in 2017:
Trend shows that since 2011 identification with former denominations has been falling in favor of simply identifying as "Protestant".
Secularization, or the decline in religiosity, first became noticeable after 1960 in the Protestant rural areas of Friesland and Groningen. Then, it spread to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the other large cities in the west. Finally, the southern Catholic areas showed religious declines. Research in 2007 concluded that 42% of the members of the PKN were non-theists. Furthermore, in the PKN and several other smaller denominations of the Netherlands, one in six clergy were either agnostic or atheist. A Dutch minister of the PKN, Klaas Hendrikse once described God as "a word for experience, or human experience" and said that Jesus may have never existed.
A countervailing trend is produced by a religious revival in the Dutch Bible Belt.
Only those congregations belonging to the former Reformed Churches in the Netherlands have the legal right to secede from the PKN without losing its property and church during a transition period of 10 years. Seven congregations have so far decided to form the Continued Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. Two congregations have joined one of the other smaller Calvinist churches in the Netherlands. Some minorities within congregations that joined the PKN decided to leave the church and associated themselves individually with one of the other Reformed churches.
Some congregations and members in the Dutch Reformed Church did not agree with the merger and have separated. They have organized themselves in the Restored Reformed Church. Estimations of their membership vary from 35,000 up to 70,000 people in about 120 local congregations. They disagree with the pluralism of the merged church which maintains, as they see it, contradicting Calvinist and Lutheran confessions. This group also considers same-sex marriages and female clergy unbiblical.
Chart of splits and mergers of the Dutch Reformed churches
In a meeting of eight Jewish and eight Protestant Dutch leaders in Israel in May 2011, a statement of cooperation was issued, indicating, for the most part, that the Protestant Church recognizes the issues involved with the Palestinian Christians and that this is sometimes at odds with support for the State of Israel, but standing up for the rights of the Palestinians does not detract from the emphasis on the safety of the State of Israel and vice versa. | [
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"text": "The Protestant Church in the Netherlands (Dutch: de Protestantse Kerk in Nederland, abbreviated PKN) is the largest Protestant denomination in the Netherlands, being both Calvinist and Lutheran.",
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"text": "It was founded on 1 May 2004 as the merger of the vast majority of the Dutch Reformed Church, the vast majority of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The merger was the culmination of an organizational process started in 1961. Several orthodox Reformed and liberal churches did not merge into the new church.",
"title": ""
},
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"text": "The Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) forms the country's second largest Christian denomination after the Catholic Church, with approximately 1.5 million members as per the church official statistics or some 8.6% of the population in 2021. It is the traditional faith of the Dutch Royal Family – a remnant of historical dominance of the Dutch Reformed Church, the main predecessor of the Protestant Church.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The doctrine of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands is expressed in its creeds. In addition to holding the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian creeds of the universal Church, it also holds to the confessions of its predecessor bodies. From the Lutheran tradition are the unaltered Augsburg Confession and Luther's Catechism, and from the Calvinist tradition are the Heidelberg and Genevan Catechisms along with the Belgic Confession with the Canons of Dordt. The Church also acknowledges the Theological Declaration of Barmen and the Leuenberg Agreement. Ordination of women and blessings of same-sex marriages are allowed.",
"title": "Doctrine and practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The PKN contains both liberal and conservative movements, although the liberal Remonstrants left talks when they could not agree with the unaltered adoption of the Canons of Dordt. Local congregations have far-reaching powers concerning \"controversial\" matters (such as admittance to holy communion or whether women are admitted as members of the congregation's consistory).",
"title": "Doctrine and practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The polity of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands is a hybrid of presbyterian and congregationalist church governance. Church governance is organised along local, regional, and national lines. At the local level is the congregation. An individual congregation is led by a church council made of the minister along with elders and deacons elected by the congregation. At the regional level were 75 classical assemblies whose members are chosen by the church councils. As of May 1, 2018, these 75 classical assemblies are reorganized into 11 larger ones. At the national level is the General Synod which directs areas of common interest, such as theological education, ministry training and ecumenical cooperation.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The PKN has four different types of congregations:",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Lutherans are a minority (about 1 percent) of the PKN's membership. To ensure that Lutherans are represented in the Church, the Lutheran congregations have their own synod. The Lutheran Synod also has representatives in the General Synod.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Protestant Church in the Netherlands issues yearly reports regarding its membership and finances.",
"title": "Statistical details"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Its make-up by former affiliation of its congregations was as follows in 2017:",
"title": "Statistical details"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Trend shows that since 2011 identification with former denominations has been falling in favor of simply identifying as \"Protestant\".",
"title": "Statistical details"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Secularization, or the decline in religiosity, first became noticeable after 1960 in the Protestant rural areas of Friesland and Groningen. Then, it spread to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the other large cities in the west. Finally, the southern Catholic areas showed religious declines. Research in 2007 concluded that 42% of the members of the PKN were non-theists. Furthermore, in the PKN and several other smaller denominations of the Netherlands, one in six clergy were either agnostic or atheist. A Dutch minister of the PKN, Klaas Hendrikse once described God as \"a word for experience, or human experience\" and said that Jesus may have never existed.",
"title": "Secularization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "A countervailing trend is produced by a religious revival in the Dutch Bible Belt.",
"title": "Secularization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Only those congregations belonging to the former Reformed Churches in the Netherlands have the legal right to secede from the PKN without losing its property and church during a transition period of 10 years. Seven congregations have so far decided to form the Continued Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. Two congregations have joined one of the other smaller Calvinist churches in the Netherlands. Some minorities within congregations that joined the PKN decided to leave the church and associated themselves individually with one of the other Reformed churches.",
"title": "Separations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Some congregations and members in the Dutch Reformed Church did not agree with the merger and have separated. They have organized themselves in the Restored Reformed Church. Estimations of their membership vary from 35,000 up to 70,000 people in about 120 local congregations. They disagree with the pluralism of the merged church which maintains, as they see it, contradicting Calvinist and Lutheran confessions. This group also considers same-sex marriages and female clergy unbiblical.",
"title": "Separations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Chart of splits and mergers of the Dutch Reformed churches",
"title": "Separations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In a meeting of eight Jewish and eight Protestant Dutch leaders in Israel in May 2011, a statement of cooperation was issued, indicating, for the most part, that the Protestant Church recognizes the issues involved with the Palestinian Christians and that this is sometimes at odds with support for the State of Israel, but standing up for the rights of the Palestinians does not detract from the emphasis on the safety of the State of Israel and vice versa.",
"title": "Involvement in the Middle East"
}
]
| The Protestant Church in the Netherlands is the largest Protestant denomination in the Netherlands, being both Calvinist and Lutheran. It was founded on 1 May 2004 as the merger of the vast majority of the Dutch Reformed Church, the vast majority of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The merger was the culmination of an organizational process started in 1961. Several orthodox Reformed and liberal churches did not merge into the new church. The Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) forms the country's second largest Christian denomination after the Catholic Church, with approximately 1.5 million members as per the church official statistics or some 8.6% of the population in 2021. It is the traditional faith of the Dutch Royal Family – a remnant of historical dominance of the Dutch Reformed Church, the main predecessor of the Protestant Church. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-18T18:37:34Z | [
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8,660 | Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) | The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination. The denomination started with the Restoration Movement during the Second Great Awakening, first existing during the 19th century as a loose association of churches working towards Christian unity, then slowly forming quasi-denominational structures through missionary societies, regional associations, and an international convention. In 1968, the Disciples of Christ officially adopted a denominational structure at which time a group of churches left to remain nondenominational.
The denomination is referred to by several versions of its full name, including "Disciples of Christ", "Disciples", "Christian Church", and "DOC". The Christian Church was a charter participant in the formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and of the Federal Council of Churches (now the National Council of Churches), and it continues to be engaged in ecumenical conversations.
The Disciples' local churches are congregationally governed. In 2008 there were 679,563 members in 3,714 congregations in the United States and Canada. By 2015, this number had declined to a baptized membership of 497,423 in 3,267 congregations, of whom about 306,905 were active members, while approximately 177,000 attended Sunday services each week. In 2018, the denomination reported 380,248 members with 124,437 people in average worship attendance.
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) traces its roots to the Stone-Campbell Movement on the American frontier. The Movement is so named because it started as two distinct but similar movements, each without knowledge of the other, during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century. The first of these two groups, led by Barton W. Stone began at Cane Ridge, Bourbon County, Kentucky. The group called themselves simply Christians. The second, began in western Pennsylvania and Virginia (now West Virginia), led by Thomas Campbell and his son, Alexander Campbell. Because the founders wanted to abandon all denominational labels, they used the biblical names for the followers of Jesus that they found in the Bible.
In 1801, the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky planted the seed for a movement in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley to disassociate from denominationalism. In 1803 Stone and others withdrew from the Kentucky Presbytery and formed the Springfield Presbytery. The defining event of the Stone wing of the movement was the publication of the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery, at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1804. "The Last Will" is a brief document in which Stone and five others announced their withdrawal from Presbyterianism and their intention to be solely part of the body of Christ. The writers appealed for the unity of all who follow Jesus, suggested the value of congregational self-governance, and lifted the Bible as the source for understanding the will of God. They denounced the use of the Westminster Confession of Faith as divisive.
Soon, they adopted the name "Christian" to identify their group. Thus, the remnants of the Springfield Presbytery became the Christian Church. It is estimated that the Christian Church numbered about 12,000 by 1830.
Independently of Stone, Thomas Campbell published the Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington, (Pennsylvania) in 1809. In The Declaration and Address, he set forth some of his convictions about the church of Jesus Christ, emphasizing Christian unity and the restoration of the New Testament church. He organized the Christian Association of Washington, not as a church but as an association of persons seeking to grow in faith. On May 4, 1811, however, the Christian Association constituted itself as a congregationally governed church. With the building it then constructed at Brush Run, it became known as Brush Run Church.
When their study of the New Testament led the reformers to begin to practice baptism by immersion, the nearby Redstone Baptist Association invited Brush Run Church to join with them for the purpose of fellowship. The reformers agreed provided that they would be "allowed to preach and to teach whatever they learned from the Scriptures."
Thus began a sojourn for the reformers among the Baptists within the Redstone Baptist Association (1815–1824). While the reformers and the Baptists shared the same beliefs in baptism by immersion and congregational polity, it was soon clear that the reformers were not traditional Baptists. Within the Redstone Association, the differences became intolerable to some of the Baptist leaders, when Alexander Campbell began publishing a journal, The Christian Baptist, promoting reform. Campbell anticipated the conflict and moved his membership to a congregation of the Mahoning Baptist Association in 1824.
In 1827, the Mahoning Association appointed reformer Walter Scott as an Evangelist. Through Scott's efforts, the Mahoning Association grew rapidly. In 1828, Thomas Campbell visited several of the congregations formed by Scott and heard him preach. The elder Campbell realized that Scott was bringing an important new dimension to the movement with his approach to evangelism.
Several Baptist associations began disassociating congregations that refused to subscribe to the Philadelphia Confession. The Mahoning Association came under attack. In 1830, the Mahoning Baptist Association disbanded. Alexander ceased publication of The Christian Baptist. In January 1831, he began publication of the Millennial Harbinger.
The two groups united at High Street Meeting House, Lexington, Kentucky, with a handshake between Barton W. Stone and "Raccoon" John Smith, on Saturday, December 31, 1831. Smith had been chosen, by those present, to speak on behalf of the followers of the Campbells. While contemporaneous accounts are clear that the handshake took place on Saturday, some historians have changed the date of the merger to Sunday, January 1, 1832. The 1832 date has become generally accepted. The actual difference is about 20 hours.
Two representatives of those assembled were appointed to carry the news of the union to all the churches: John Rogers, for the Christians and "Raccoon" John Smith for the reformers. Despite some challenges, the merger succeeded.
With the merger, there was the challenge of what to call the new movement. Clearly, finding a Biblical, non-sectarian name was important. Stone wanted to continue to use the name "Christians." Alexander Campbell insisted upon "Disciples of Christ". Walter Scott and Thomas Campbell sided with Stone, but the younger Campbell had strong reasons and would not yield. As a result, both names were used.
In 1849, the first National Convention was held at Cincinnati, Ohio. Alexander Campbell had concerns that holding conventions would lead the movement into divisive denominationalism. He did not attend the gathering. Among its actions, the convention elected Alexander Campbell its President and created the American Christian Missionary Society (ACMS).
The formation of a missionary society set the stage for further "co-operative" efforts. By the end of the century, the Foreign Christian Missionary Society and the Christian Women's Board of Missions were also engaged in missionary activities. Forming the ACMS did not reflect a consensus of the entire movement. Sponsorship of missionary activities became a divisive issue. In the succeeding decades, for some congregations and their leaders, co-operative work through missionary societies and the adoption of instrumental music in church worship was straying too far from their conception of the early church. After the American Civil War, the schism grew. While there was no disagreement over the need for evangelism, many believed that missionary societies were not authorized by scripture and would compromise the autonomy of local congregations. This became one important factor leading to the separation of the Churches of Christ from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
From the beginning of the movement, the free exchange of ideas among the people was fostered by the journals published by its leaders. Alexander Campbell published The Christian Baptist and The Millennial Harbinger. Barton W. Stone published The Christian Messenger. In a respectful way, both men routinely published the contributions of others whose positions were radically different from their own.
Following Campbell's death in 1866, journals continued to keep the discussion and conversation alive. Between 1870 and 1900, two journals emerged as the most prominent. The Christian Standard was edited and published by Isaac Errett of Cincinnati. The Christian Evangelist was edited and published by J. H. Garrison from St. Louis. The two men enjoyed a friendly rivalry, and kept the dialog going within the movement. A third journal became part of the conversation with the publication in 1884 of The Christian Oracle, later to become The Christian Century, with an interdenominational appeal. In 1914, Garrison's Christian Publishing company was purchased by R. A. Long, who then established a non-profit corporation, "The Christian Board of Publication" as the Brotherhood publishing house.
In 1906, the U.S. Religious Census listed Churches of Christ for the first time as a group which was separate and distinct from the Disciples of Christ. However, the division had been growing for years, with published reports as early as 1883. The most obvious distinction between the two groups was the Churches of Christ rejecting the use of musical instruments in worship. The controversy over musical instruments began in 1860, when some congregations introduced organs, traditionally associated with wealthier, denominational churches. More basic were the underlying approaches to Biblical interpretation. The Churches of Christ permitted only those practices found in accounts of New Testament worship. They could find no New Testament documentation of the use of instrumental music in worship. The Disciples, by contrast, considered permissible any practices that the New Testament did not expressly forbid. While music and the approach to missionary work were the most visible issues, there were also some deeper ones. The process that led to the separation had begun prior to the American Civil War.
In the early 20th century, a central point of conflict for the remaining Christian Churches was cooperative missionary efforts, both nationally and internationally. Several missionary societies had already been established, and the congregations that contributed to these societies and attended the national convention became known as "cooperative" and began referring to the larger grouping of these congregations as "the Brotherhood." In 1917 the National Convention became the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) with the incorporation of Canadian Disciples. In 1920, three separate missionary societies merged into the United Christian Missionary Society in 1920, which undertook missions work both in the "homeland" and abroad. Over the next fifty years, the UCMS was the largest agency of the Brotherhood. The National Benevolent Association was also established during the early 20th century as a social services ministry providing assistance to orphans, the elderly and the disabled.
The congregations that did not participate were known as "independents." Until the cooperative churches underwent the process of restructure in the 1960s, the cooperatives and independents coexisted together under the same identity, but were following different paths by the 1940s, with the independents forming the North American Christian Convention in 1947.
While issues of ecclesiology were at the forefront of the growing division, theological issues also divided the two groups, with the cooperative churches largely adopting the new methods of Biblical analysis developed in the late 19th century.
Following World War II, it became obvious that the organizations that had been developed in previous decades no longer effectively met the needs of the postwar era. After a number of discussions throughout the 1950s, the 1960 International Convention of Christian Churches adopted a process to "restructure" the entire organization. The Commission on Restructure, chaired by Granville T. Walker, held its first meeting on October 30 & November 1, 1962. In 1968, the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) adopted the commission's proposed Provisional Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Soon The Provisional Design became The Design.
The Brotherhood's adoption of The Design made the earlier split between the cooperative and independent churches official. Under The Design, all churches in the 1968 yearbook of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) were automatically recognized as part of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In the years that followed, many of the Independent Christian Church Congregations requested formal withdrawal from the yearbook. Many of those congregations were already part of the North American Christian Convention; this group would become known as the Christian churches and churches of Christ and became the third primary group of the Stone-Campbell Movement.
In 1971, the General Assembly adopted a logo for the denomination. The logo depicts a red chalice with a white St. Andrew's Cross. Symbolically the chalice is said to represent the Lord's Supper, which is central to Disciples practice, and the cross of St. Andrew is said to represent the denomination's roots in Scottish Presbyterian and the ministry of all people. The logo was designed by Ronald E. Osborn who drew the logo with a red pen, leading to the red color of the logo, and refined by Bruce Tilsley. The logo can be used by all Disciples congregations, ministries, and other affiliated institutions and provides clarity among confusion from the "Christian Church" moniker many Disciple and non-Disciple congregations use.
As a congregational denomination, each Disciple congregation determines the nature of its worship, study, Christian service, and witness to the world. Through belief in the priesthood of all believers, Disciples also practice freedom of interpretation among its members, with only baptism and confession of Christ as Lord required.
As members of the Christian Church, We confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and proclaim him Lord and Savior of the world. In Christ's name and by his grace we accept our mission of witness and service to all people. We rejoice in God, maker of heaven and earth, and in God's covenant of love which binds us to God and to one another. Through baptism into Christ we enter into newness of life and are made one with the whole people of God. In the communion of the Holy Spirit we are joined together in discipleship and in obedience to Christ. At the Table of the Lord we celebrate with thanksgiving the saving acts and presence of Christ. Within the universal church we receive the gift of ministry and the light of scripture. In the bonds of Christian faith we yield ourselves to God that we may serve the One whose kingdom has no end. Blessing, glory, and honor be to God forever. Amen.
The Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Early members of the Stone-Campbell Movement adopted the slogan "In essentials, Unity; In non-essentials, Liberty; and in all things, Charity." For modern disciples the one essential is the acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and obedience to him in baptism. There is no requirement to give assent to any other statement of belief or creed. Nor is there any official interpretation of the Bible. Hierarchical doctrine was traditionally rejected by Disciples as human-made and divisive, and subsequently, freedom of belief and scriptural interpretation allows many Disciples to question or even deny beliefs common in doctrinal churches such as the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the Atonement. Beyond the essential commitment to follow Jesus, there is a tremendous freedom of belief and interpretation. As the basic teachings of Jesus are studied and applied to life, there is the freedom to interpret Jesus' teaching in different ways. As would be expected from such an approach, there is a wide diversity among Disciples in what individuals and congregations believe. It is not uncommon to find individuals who seemingly hold diametrically opposed beliefs within the same congregation affirming one another's journeys of faith as sisters and brothers in Christ.
Modern Disciples reject the use of creeds as "tests of faith", that is, as required beliefs, necessary to be accepted as a follower of Jesus. Although Disciples respect the great creeds of the church as informative affirmations of faith, they are never seen as binding. Since the adoption of The Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in 1968, Disciples have celebrated a sense of unity in reading the preamble to the Design publicly.
Most congregations sing hymns, read from the Old and New Testaments, hear the word of God proclaimed through sermon or other medium and extend an invitation to become Christ's Disciples.
Most Disciple congregations practice weekly celebrations of the Lord's Supper, often referred to by Disciples as Communion, as an integral part of worship. Through the observance of Communion, individuals are invited to acknowledge their faults and sins, to remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to remember their baptism, and to give thanks for God's redeeming love. Because Disciples believe that the invitation to the table comes from Jesus Christ, Communion is open to all who confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, regardless of their denominational affiliation. For most Disciples, Communion is understood as the symbolic presence of Jesus within the gathered community.
Most Disciple congregations practice believer's baptism in the form of immersion, believing it to be the form used in the New Testament. The experiences of yielding to Christ in being buried with him in the waters of baptism and rising to a new life have profound meaning for the church. While most congregations exclusively practice baptism by immersion, Disciples also accept other forms of baptism including infant baptism.
"The church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things."
Thomas Campbell — Proposition 1 of the Declaration and address
The Disciples celebrate their oneness with all who seek God through Jesus Christ, throughout time and regardless of location. In local communities, congregations share with churches of other denominations in joint worship and in community Christian service. Ecumenical cooperation and collaboration with other Christian Communions has long been practiced by the Regions.
At the General Church level, the Christian Unity and Interfaith Ministries Unity (CUIM) coordinates the ecumenical and interfaith activities of the church. The Disciples continues to relate to the National Council of Churches and Canadian Council of Churches, both of which it was a founding member. It shares in the dialog and in the theological endeavors of the World Council of Churches. The Disciples has been a full participant in the Consultation on Church Union since it began in the 1960s. It continues to support those ongoing conversations which have taken on the title Churches Uniting in Christ.
The Disciples have two full communion partners: the United Church of Christ, since 1989, and the United Church of Canada, since 2019. These three denominations all share mutual full communion with each other. CUIM describes these partnerships as the proclamation of "mutual recognition of their sacraments and ordained ministry." Ordained Disciple ministers are able to directly serve in the United Church of Christ without having to seek additional qualifications. Additionally, the Disciples combined their overseas ministries with the United Church of Christ in 1996. Known as Global Ministries, it is a common agency of both denominations with a joint staff and is a continuance of decades of cooperative work in global missions.
While the Disciples of Christ and United Church of Canada have entered full communion, the recentness of the agreement means that the provisions for mutual recognition of clergy are not yet finalized and adopted.
The Disciples believe in the priesthood of all believers, in that all people baptized are called to minister to others with diverse spiritual gifts. The Disciples view their Order of Ministry as a specific subset of all believers who are called with spiritual gifts specifically suited for pastoral ministry. Congregations use different terms to refer to persons in the Order of Ministry including Pastor and Reverend but most call them Ministers, including the denomination's governing documents.
Congregations sponsor members seeking ordination or commissioning as a Minister, and Regional Ministries organize committees to oversee the process. Ordination can be achieved by obtaining a Master of Divinity from a theological institution, which does not have to be an institution associated with the Disciples. Ordination can also be achieved through an "Apprentice" track which has candidates shadow ordained ministers. Finally, Ministers can be Commissioned, a shorter process for seminary students and those seeking short-term ministry in a Region. Regional requirements for ministry vary. Ordination is made official through a service which includes members of the church, clergy, and Regional Minister laying their hands on the candidate as the ordaining act. Ecumenical representatives are often included to emphasize the Disciples' desire for Christian unity.
Disciples recognize the ordinations of the United Church of Christ as do they for Disciples.
A General Commission on the Order of Ministry exists to interpret and review definitions of ministry, give oversight to Regions and congregations, provide other support, and maintain the standing of Regional Ministers and Ministers of General (National) Ministries.
In 1977, the General Assembly of the denomination debated resolutions about homosexuality for the first time; a resolution condemning the "homosexual lifestyle" was defeated by the Assembly and a resolution to ban gay people from the ordained ministry was referred to the General Minister and President for further study. At the next General Assembly two years later, the Assembly approved a resolution that declared "The ordination of persons who engage in homosexual practices is not in accord with God's will," but concurrently declared that "The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) intends to continue the current pattern of assigning responsibility to the regions with respect to the nurture, certification, and ordination of ministers." Since then, some regions have ordained LGBTQ ministers before the denomination officially supported it. Concerns about LGBTQ people continued to be an issue at the General Assembly, but resolutions that called on more civil rights protections for LGBTQ people were passed with overwhelming majorities and resolutions to ban the "homosexual lifestyle" continued to be rejected.
In 2011, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) stated that "Disciples do not have a formal policy on same-sex marriage. Different congregations have the autonomy to discern on issues such as this one". In 2013, the Disciples of Christ voted in favor of a resolution affirming all members regardless of sexual orientation. After same-sex marriage was legalized in the US, the denomination reiterated that it leaves "all decisions of policy on same-sex marriage to local congregations".
In 2019, the General Assembly passed a resolution specifically affirming that transgender and gender non-conforming people are welcome in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Disciples LGBTQ+ Alliance provides resources to congregations that want to be certified as "Open and Affirming" to show that they are accepting of all gender identities and sexual orientations. The Alliance was founded as the Gay, Lesbian, and Affirming Disciples Alliance (GLAD) during the 1979 General Assembly. The Disciples of Christ supports the right to an abortion.
The structure of the Disciples is unique among Mainline Protestant churches. The Design, the governing document of the denomination, describes three "expressions" of the church: congregational, regional, and general. Each of these expressions are "characterized by its integrity, self-governance, authority, rights, and responsibilities." In relating to each other, they work in covenant and not authority to support the ministry and work of the church.
Congregations of the Disciples are self-governing in the tradition of congregational polity. They call their own Ministers, select their own leadership, own their own property, and manage their own affairs.
In Disciples congregations, the priesthood of all believers finds its expression in worship and Christian service. Congregations elect and ordain lay persons as Elders to share in duties of congregational ministry with the staff ministers, including visiting the sick and administering communion to them, providing spiritual guidance for the congregation, and presiding over Communion during worship, either with or without the staff ministers.
Regional churches consist of all Disciples in a given area, usually a state or group of states. As of 2023, the denomination has 31 regions, which includes the region of Canada that also acts as a national church in relation to other churches in Canada.
Regions meet in a Regional Assembly every two to three years to conduct business. Each Region calls a Regional Minister to serve as its primary pastor and chief executive; most regions also have Associate Regional Ministers and other staff to serve specific aspects of its ministries. Canada calls a national pastor instead of a Regional Minister. Regions are analogous to the middle judicatories of other denominations, and Regional Ministers are analogous to Bishops.
One of the primary responsibilities of the Regions is the care for and oversight of clergy. The Design places primary responsibility for ordination and licensing of ministers with the region. Candidates seeking ordination are sponsored by a congregation but must be approved by their region, which usually entails a process of interviews and other evaluations by a committee made up of clergy and lay people. The Regional Minister usually officiates the ordination service in the sponsoring congregation. After ordination, regions continue to oversee clergy through a process known as standing, which requires ministers to undergo certain trainings periodically and maintain membership in a Disciples congregation. Ministers can lose their standing for violating the ministerial code of ethics the denomination maintains. Finally, Regional Ministers often provide pastoral care to ministers in their region.
Regions also nurture congregations in their region, including planting new churches, providing guidance, supporting struggling congregations, and helping congregations hire their ministers. This latter process consists of a system known as Search and Call, in which ministers seeking a church declare which regions they would like to serve in and the region then suggests those candidates to congregations seeking a minister. Regional Ministers usually provides congregations with a set of candidates that they feel will meet the congregation's particular needs.
Regions also provide fellowship and education opportunities for its members. Many regions have summer camping experiences for children and youth.
As with all parts of the Disciples, Regions do not have authority to control congregations and congregations are not required to use regional programming, including the search and call system.
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) at the "General Church" level consists of a number of self-governing agencies, which focus upon specific Christian witnesses to the world. The church agencies report to the General Assembly, which meets biennially in odd-numbered years and is an assembly of representatives selected by congregations and ordained ministers with standing in the denomination. The General Minister and President (GMP) is the lead pastor for the denomination and the chief executive officer of the legal corporation. Following the covenantal understanding of the denomination, the GMP does not have direct executive power over the General Ministries, regions, or congregations. The GMP is elected to a six-year term by the General Assembly, with the option for a second term.
The current General Minister and President is Teresa Hord Owens. When she was elected in 2017, Owens was the first black woman to lead a mainline denomination as their chief executive. Her presidency followed the presidency of Sharon E. Watkins, the first woman to lead a mainline denomination as their chief executive.
The General Ministries are:
One highly popular and respected General Agency program is the "Week of Compassion," named for the special offering to fund the program when it began in the 1950s. The Week of Compassion is the disaster relief and Third World development agency. It works closely with Church World Service and church-related organizations in countries around the world where disasters strike, providing emergency aid.
The General Church has challenged the entire denomination to work for a 2020 Vision for the first two decades of the 21st Century. Together the denomination is well on the way to achieving its four foci:
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has experienced a very significant loss of membership since the middle of the 20th century. Membership peaked in 1958 at just under 2 million. In 1993, membership dropped below 1 million. In 2009, the denomination reported 658,869 members in 3,691 congregations. In 2010, the five states with the highest adherence rates were Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kentucky and Oklahoma. The states with the largest absolute number of adherents were Missouri, Texas, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. In 2017, membership had declined to 450,425 members.
From the very beginnings of the movement, Disciples have founded institutions of higher learning. Alexander Campbell taught young leaders and founded Bethany College. The movement established similar schools, especially in the years following the American Civil War.
Because intellectual and religious freedom are important values for the Disciples of Christ, the colleges, universities, and seminaries founded by its congregations do not seek to indoctrinate students or faculty with a sectarian point of view.
In the 21st century, the relationship between the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and its affiliated universities is the purview of Higher Education and Leadership Ministries (HELM), an agency of the General Church.
The Disciples have four seminaries and divinity schools directly affiliated with the denomination. These institutions have an ecumenical student body, a reflection of the Disciples' focus on church unity. They are:
The Disciples have three additional institutions that provide supplementary education and community living for ecumenical theological institutions. They are:
The Disciples of Christ maintains ecumenical relations with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. It is also affiliated with other ecumenical organizations such as Churches Uniting in Christ, Christian Churches Together, the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. It maintains Ordained Ministerial Partner Standing with the United Church of Christ, which means that clergy ordained in the Disciples of Christ may also serve in the United Church of Christ. Since 2019, it has been a full Communion partner and had an agreement for mutual recognition of ministerial credentials with the United Church of Canada. It is affiliated with the Disciples Ecumenical Consultative Council and the World Communion of Reformed Churches. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination. The denomination started with the Restoration Movement during the Second Great Awakening, first existing during the 19th century as a loose association of churches working towards Christian unity, then slowly forming quasi-denominational structures through missionary societies, regional associations, and an international convention. In 1968, the Disciples of Christ officially adopted a denominational structure at which time a group of churches left to remain nondenominational.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The denomination is referred to by several versions of its full name, including \"Disciples of Christ\", \"Disciples\", \"Christian Church\", and \"DOC\". The Christian Church was a charter participant in the formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and of the Federal Council of Churches (now the National Council of Churches), and it continues to be engaged in ecumenical conversations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Disciples' local churches are congregationally governed. In 2008 there were 679,563 members in 3,714 congregations in the United States and Canada. By 2015, this number had declined to a baptized membership of 497,423 in 3,267 congregations, of whom about 306,905 were active members, while approximately 177,000 attended Sunday services each week. In 2018, the denomination reported 380,248 members with 124,437 people in average worship attendance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) traces its roots to the Stone-Campbell Movement on the American frontier. The Movement is so named because it started as two distinct but similar movements, each without knowledge of the other, during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century. The first of these two groups, led by Barton W. Stone began at Cane Ridge, Bourbon County, Kentucky. The group called themselves simply Christians. The second, began in western Pennsylvania and Virginia (now West Virginia), led by Thomas Campbell and his son, Alexander Campbell. Because the founders wanted to abandon all denominational labels, they used the biblical names for the followers of Jesus that they found in the Bible.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1801, the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky planted the seed for a movement in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley to disassociate from denominationalism. In 1803 Stone and others withdrew from the Kentucky Presbytery and formed the Springfield Presbytery. The defining event of the Stone wing of the movement was the publication of the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery, at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1804. \"The Last Will\" is a brief document in which Stone and five others announced their withdrawal from Presbyterianism and their intention to be solely part of the body of Christ. The writers appealed for the unity of all who follow Jesus, suggested the value of congregational self-governance, and lifted the Bible as the source for understanding the will of God. They denounced the use of the Westminster Confession of Faith as divisive.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Soon, they adopted the name \"Christian\" to identify their group. Thus, the remnants of the Springfield Presbytery became the Christian Church. It is estimated that the Christian Church numbered about 12,000 by 1830.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Independently of Stone, Thomas Campbell published the Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington, (Pennsylvania) in 1809. In The Declaration and Address, he set forth some of his convictions about the church of Jesus Christ, emphasizing Christian unity and the restoration of the New Testament church. He organized the Christian Association of Washington, not as a church but as an association of persons seeking to grow in faith. On May 4, 1811, however, the Christian Association constituted itself as a congregationally governed church. With the building it then constructed at Brush Run, it became known as Brush Run Church.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "When their study of the New Testament led the reformers to begin to practice baptism by immersion, the nearby Redstone Baptist Association invited Brush Run Church to join with them for the purpose of fellowship. The reformers agreed provided that they would be \"allowed to preach and to teach whatever they learned from the Scriptures.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Thus began a sojourn for the reformers among the Baptists within the Redstone Baptist Association (1815–1824). While the reformers and the Baptists shared the same beliefs in baptism by immersion and congregational polity, it was soon clear that the reformers were not traditional Baptists. Within the Redstone Association, the differences became intolerable to some of the Baptist leaders, when Alexander Campbell began publishing a journal, The Christian Baptist, promoting reform. Campbell anticipated the conflict and moved his membership to a congregation of the Mahoning Baptist Association in 1824.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1827, the Mahoning Association appointed reformer Walter Scott as an Evangelist. Through Scott's efforts, the Mahoning Association grew rapidly. In 1828, Thomas Campbell visited several of the congregations formed by Scott and heard him preach. The elder Campbell realized that Scott was bringing an important new dimension to the movement with his approach to evangelism.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Several Baptist associations began disassociating congregations that refused to subscribe to the Philadelphia Confession. The Mahoning Association came under attack. In 1830, the Mahoning Baptist Association disbanded. Alexander ceased publication of The Christian Baptist. In January 1831, he began publication of the Millennial Harbinger.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The two groups united at High Street Meeting House, Lexington, Kentucky, with a handshake between Barton W. Stone and \"Raccoon\" John Smith, on Saturday, December 31, 1831. Smith had been chosen, by those present, to speak on behalf of the followers of the Campbells. While contemporaneous accounts are clear that the handshake took place on Saturday, some historians have changed the date of the merger to Sunday, January 1, 1832. The 1832 date has become generally accepted. The actual difference is about 20 hours.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Two representatives of those assembled were appointed to carry the news of the union to all the churches: John Rogers, for the Christians and \"Raccoon\" John Smith for the reformers. Despite some challenges, the merger succeeded.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "With the merger, there was the challenge of what to call the new movement. Clearly, finding a Biblical, non-sectarian name was important. Stone wanted to continue to use the name \"Christians.\" Alexander Campbell insisted upon \"Disciples of Christ\". Walter Scott and Thomas Campbell sided with Stone, but the younger Campbell had strong reasons and would not yield. As a result, both names were used.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1849, the first National Convention was held at Cincinnati, Ohio. Alexander Campbell had concerns that holding conventions would lead the movement into divisive denominationalism. He did not attend the gathering. Among its actions, the convention elected Alexander Campbell its President and created the American Christian Missionary Society (ACMS).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The formation of a missionary society set the stage for further \"co-operative\" efforts. By the end of the century, the Foreign Christian Missionary Society and the Christian Women's Board of Missions were also engaged in missionary activities. Forming the ACMS did not reflect a consensus of the entire movement. Sponsorship of missionary activities became a divisive issue. In the succeeding decades, for some congregations and their leaders, co-operative work through missionary societies and the adoption of instrumental music in church worship was straying too far from their conception of the early church. After the American Civil War, the schism grew. While there was no disagreement over the need for evangelism, many believed that missionary societies were not authorized by scripture and would compromise the autonomy of local congregations. This became one important factor leading to the separation of the Churches of Christ from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "From the beginning of the movement, the free exchange of ideas among the people was fostered by the journals published by its leaders. Alexander Campbell published The Christian Baptist and The Millennial Harbinger. Barton W. Stone published The Christian Messenger. In a respectful way, both men routinely published the contributions of others whose positions were radically different from their own.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Following Campbell's death in 1866, journals continued to keep the discussion and conversation alive. Between 1870 and 1900, two journals emerged as the most prominent. The Christian Standard was edited and published by Isaac Errett of Cincinnati. The Christian Evangelist was edited and published by J. H. Garrison from St. Louis. The two men enjoyed a friendly rivalry, and kept the dialog going within the movement. A third journal became part of the conversation with the publication in 1884 of The Christian Oracle, later to become The Christian Century, with an interdenominational appeal. In 1914, Garrison's Christian Publishing company was purchased by R. A. Long, who then established a non-profit corporation, \"The Christian Board of Publication\" as the Brotherhood publishing house.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1906, the U.S. Religious Census listed Churches of Christ for the first time as a group which was separate and distinct from the Disciples of Christ. However, the division had been growing for years, with published reports as early as 1883. The most obvious distinction between the two groups was the Churches of Christ rejecting the use of musical instruments in worship. The controversy over musical instruments began in 1860, when some congregations introduced organs, traditionally associated with wealthier, denominational churches. More basic were the underlying approaches to Biblical interpretation. The Churches of Christ permitted only those practices found in accounts of New Testament worship. They could find no New Testament documentation of the use of instrumental music in worship. The Disciples, by contrast, considered permissible any practices that the New Testament did not expressly forbid. While music and the approach to missionary work were the most visible issues, there were also some deeper ones. The process that led to the separation had begun prior to the American Civil War.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In the early 20th century, a central point of conflict for the remaining Christian Churches was cooperative missionary efforts, both nationally and internationally. Several missionary societies had already been established, and the congregations that contributed to these societies and attended the national convention became known as \"cooperative\" and began referring to the larger grouping of these congregations as \"the Brotherhood.\" In 1917 the National Convention became the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) with the incorporation of Canadian Disciples. In 1920, three separate missionary societies merged into the United Christian Missionary Society in 1920, which undertook missions work both in the \"homeland\" and abroad. Over the next fifty years, the UCMS was the largest agency of the Brotherhood. The National Benevolent Association was also established during the early 20th century as a social services ministry providing assistance to orphans, the elderly and the disabled.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The congregations that did not participate were known as \"independents.\" Until the cooperative churches underwent the process of restructure in the 1960s, the cooperatives and independents coexisted together under the same identity, but were following different paths by the 1940s, with the independents forming the North American Christian Convention in 1947.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "While issues of ecclesiology were at the forefront of the growing division, theological issues also divided the two groups, with the cooperative churches largely adopting the new methods of Biblical analysis developed in the late 19th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Following World War II, it became obvious that the organizations that had been developed in previous decades no longer effectively met the needs of the postwar era. After a number of discussions throughout the 1950s, the 1960 International Convention of Christian Churches adopted a process to \"restructure\" the entire organization. The Commission on Restructure, chaired by Granville T. Walker, held its first meeting on October 30 & November 1, 1962. In 1968, the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) adopted the commission's proposed Provisional Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Soon The Provisional Design became The Design.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Brotherhood's adoption of The Design made the earlier split between the cooperative and independent churches official. Under The Design, all churches in the 1968 yearbook of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) were automatically recognized as part of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In the years that followed, many of the Independent Christian Church Congregations requested formal withdrawal from the yearbook. Many of those congregations were already part of the North American Christian Convention; this group would become known as the Christian churches and churches of Christ and became the third primary group of the Stone-Campbell Movement.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1971, the General Assembly adopted a logo for the denomination. The logo depicts a red chalice with a white St. Andrew's Cross. Symbolically the chalice is said to represent the Lord's Supper, which is central to Disciples practice, and the cross of St. Andrew is said to represent the denomination's roots in Scottish Presbyterian and the ministry of all people. The logo was designed by Ronald E. Osborn who drew the logo with a red pen, leading to the red color of the logo, and refined by Bruce Tilsley. The logo can be used by all Disciples congregations, ministries, and other affiliated institutions and provides clarity among confusion from the \"Christian Church\" moniker many Disciple and non-Disciple congregations use.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "As a congregational denomination, each Disciple congregation determines the nature of its worship, study, Christian service, and witness to the world. Through belief in the priesthood of all believers, Disciples also practice freedom of interpretation among its members, with only baptism and confession of Christ as Lord required.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "As members of the Christian Church, We confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and proclaim him Lord and Savior of the world. In Christ's name and by his grace we accept our mission of witness and service to all people. We rejoice in God, maker of heaven and earth, and in God's covenant of love which binds us to God and to one another. Through baptism into Christ we enter into newness of life and are made one with the whole people of God. In the communion of the Holy Spirit we are joined together in discipleship and in obedience to Christ. At the Table of the Lord we celebrate with thanksgiving the saving acts and presence of Christ. Within the universal church we receive the gift of ministry and the light of scripture. In the bonds of Christian faith we yield ourselves to God that we may serve the One whose kingdom has no end. Blessing, glory, and honor be to God forever. Amen.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Early members of the Stone-Campbell Movement adopted the slogan \"In essentials, Unity; In non-essentials, Liberty; and in all things, Charity.\" For modern disciples the one essential is the acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and obedience to him in baptism. There is no requirement to give assent to any other statement of belief or creed. Nor is there any official interpretation of the Bible. Hierarchical doctrine was traditionally rejected by Disciples as human-made and divisive, and subsequently, freedom of belief and scriptural interpretation allows many Disciples to question or even deny beliefs common in doctrinal churches such as the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the Atonement. Beyond the essential commitment to follow Jesus, there is a tremendous freedom of belief and interpretation. As the basic teachings of Jesus are studied and applied to life, there is the freedom to interpret Jesus' teaching in different ways. As would be expected from such an approach, there is a wide diversity among Disciples in what individuals and congregations believe. It is not uncommon to find individuals who seemingly hold diametrically opposed beliefs within the same congregation affirming one another's journeys of faith as sisters and brothers in Christ.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Modern Disciples reject the use of creeds as \"tests of faith\", that is, as required beliefs, necessary to be accepted as a follower of Jesus. Although Disciples respect the great creeds of the church as informative affirmations of faith, they are never seen as binding. Since the adoption of The Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in 1968, Disciples have celebrated a sense of unity in reading the preamble to the Design publicly.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Most congregations sing hymns, read from the Old and New Testaments, hear the word of God proclaimed through sermon or other medium and extend an invitation to become Christ's Disciples.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Most Disciple congregations practice weekly celebrations of the Lord's Supper, often referred to by Disciples as Communion, as an integral part of worship. Through the observance of Communion, individuals are invited to acknowledge their faults and sins, to remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to remember their baptism, and to give thanks for God's redeeming love. Because Disciples believe that the invitation to the table comes from Jesus Christ, Communion is open to all who confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, regardless of their denominational affiliation. For most Disciples, Communion is understood as the symbolic presence of Jesus within the gathered community.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Most Disciple congregations practice believer's baptism in the form of immersion, believing it to be the form used in the New Testament. The experiences of yielding to Christ in being buried with him in the waters of baptism and rising to a new life have profound meaning for the church. While most congregations exclusively practice baptism by immersion, Disciples also accept other forms of baptism including infant baptism.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "\"The church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things.\"",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Thomas Campbell — Proposition 1 of the Declaration and address",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Disciples celebrate their oneness with all who seek God through Jesus Christ, throughout time and regardless of location. In local communities, congregations share with churches of other denominations in joint worship and in community Christian service. Ecumenical cooperation and collaboration with other Christian Communions has long been practiced by the Regions.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "At the General Church level, the Christian Unity and Interfaith Ministries Unity (CUIM) coordinates the ecumenical and interfaith activities of the church. The Disciples continues to relate to the National Council of Churches and Canadian Council of Churches, both of which it was a founding member. It shares in the dialog and in the theological endeavors of the World Council of Churches. The Disciples has been a full participant in the Consultation on Church Union since it began in the 1960s. It continues to support those ongoing conversations which have taken on the title Churches Uniting in Christ.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Disciples have two full communion partners: the United Church of Christ, since 1989, and the United Church of Canada, since 2019. These three denominations all share mutual full communion with each other. CUIM describes these partnerships as the proclamation of \"mutual recognition of their sacraments and ordained ministry.\" Ordained Disciple ministers are able to directly serve in the United Church of Christ without having to seek additional qualifications. Additionally, the Disciples combined their overseas ministries with the United Church of Christ in 1996. Known as Global Ministries, it is a common agency of both denominations with a joint staff and is a continuance of decades of cooperative work in global missions.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "While the Disciples of Christ and United Church of Canada have entered full communion, the recentness of the agreement means that the provisions for mutual recognition of clergy are not yet finalized and adopted.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Disciples believe in the priesthood of all believers, in that all people baptized are called to minister to others with diverse spiritual gifts. The Disciples view their Order of Ministry as a specific subset of all believers who are called with spiritual gifts specifically suited for pastoral ministry. Congregations use different terms to refer to persons in the Order of Ministry including Pastor and Reverend but most call them Ministers, including the denomination's governing documents.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Congregations sponsor members seeking ordination or commissioning as a Minister, and Regional Ministries organize committees to oversee the process. Ordination can be achieved by obtaining a Master of Divinity from a theological institution, which does not have to be an institution associated with the Disciples. Ordination can also be achieved through an \"Apprentice\" track which has candidates shadow ordained ministers. Finally, Ministers can be Commissioned, a shorter process for seminary students and those seeking short-term ministry in a Region. Regional requirements for ministry vary. Ordination is made official through a service which includes members of the church, clergy, and Regional Minister laying their hands on the candidate as the ordaining act. Ecumenical representatives are often included to emphasize the Disciples' desire for Christian unity.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Disciples recognize the ordinations of the United Church of Christ as do they for Disciples.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "A General Commission on the Order of Ministry exists to interpret and review definitions of ministry, give oversight to Regions and congregations, provide other support, and maintain the standing of Regional Ministers and Ministers of General (National) Ministries.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 1977, the General Assembly of the denomination debated resolutions about homosexuality for the first time; a resolution condemning the \"homosexual lifestyle\" was defeated by the Assembly and a resolution to ban gay people from the ordained ministry was referred to the General Minister and President for further study. At the next General Assembly two years later, the Assembly approved a resolution that declared \"The ordination of persons who engage in homosexual practices is not in accord with God's will,\" but concurrently declared that \"The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) intends to continue the current pattern of assigning responsibility to the regions with respect to the nurture, certification, and ordination of ministers.\" Since then, some regions have ordained LGBTQ ministers before the denomination officially supported it. Concerns about LGBTQ people continued to be an issue at the General Assembly, but resolutions that called on more civil rights protections for LGBTQ people were passed with overwhelming majorities and resolutions to ban the \"homosexual lifestyle\" continued to be rejected.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In 2011, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) stated that \"Disciples do not have a formal policy on same-sex marriage. Different congregations have the autonomy to discern on issues such as this one\". In 2013, the Disciples of Christ voted in favor of a resolution affirming all members regardless of sexual orientation. After same-sex marriage was legalized in the US, the denomination reiterated that it leaves \"all decisions of policy on same-sex marriage to local congregations\".",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 2019, the General Assembly passed a resolution specifically affirming that transgender and gender non-conforming people are welcome in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Disciples LGBTQ+ Alliance provides resources to congregations that want to be certified as \"Open and Affirming\" to show that they are accepting of all gender identities and sexual orientations. The Alliance was founded as the Gay, Lesbian, and Affirming Disciples Alliance (GLAD) during the 1979 General Assembly. The Disciples of Christ supports the right to an abortion.",
"title": "Beliefs and practices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The structure of the Disciples is unique among Mainline Protestant churches. The Design, the governing document of the denomination, describes three \"expressions\" of the church: congregational, regional, and general. Each of these expressions are \"characterized by its integrity, self-governance, authority, rights, and responsibilities.\" In relating to each other, they work in covenant and not authority to support the ministry and work of the church.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Congregations of the Disciples are self-governing in the tradition of congregational polity. They call their own Ministers, select their own leadership, own their own property, and manage their own affairs.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In Disciples congregations, the priesthood of all believers finds its expression in worship and Christian service. Congregations elect and ordain lay persons as Elders to share in duties of congregational ministry with the staff ministers, including visiting the sick and administering communion to them, providing spiritual guidance for the congregation, and presiding over Communion during worship, either with or without the staff ministers.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Regional churches consist of all Disciples in a given area, usually a state or group of states. As of 2023, the denomination has 31 regions, which includes the region of Canada that also acts as a national church in relation to other churches in Canada.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Regions meet in a Regional Assembly every two to three years to conduct business. Each Region calls a Regional Minister to serve as its primary pastor and chief executive; most regions also have Associate Regional Ministers and other staff to serve specific aspects of its ministries. Canada calls a national pastor instead of a Regional Minister. Regions are analogous to the middle judicatories of other denominations, and Regional Ministers are analogous to Bishops.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "One of the primary responsibilities of the Regions is the care for and oversight of clergy. The Design places primary responsibility for ordination and licensing of ministers with the region. Candidates seeking ordination are sponsored by a congregation but must be approved by their region, which usually entails a process of interviews and other evaluations by a committee made up of clergy and lay people. The Regional Minister usually officiates the ordination service in the sponsoring congregation. After ordination, regions continue to oversee clergy through a process known as standing, which requires ministers to undergo certain trainings periodically and maintain membership in a Disciples congregation. Ministers can lose their standing for violating the ministerial code of ethics the denomination maintains. Finally, Regional Ministers often provide pastoral care to ministers in their region.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Regions also nurture congregations in their region, including planting new churches, providing guidance, supporting struggling congregations, and helping congregations hire their ministers. This latter process consists of a system known as Search and Call, in which ministers seeking a church declare which regions they would like to serve in and the region then suggests those candidates to congregations seeking a minister. Regional Ministers usually provides congregations with a set of candidates that they feel will meet the congregation's particular needs.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Regions also provide fellowship and education opportunities for its members. Many regions have summer camping experiences for children and youth.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "As with all parts of the Disciples, Regions do not have authority to control congregations and congregations are not required to use regional programming, including the search and call system.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) at the \"General Church\" level consists of a number of self-governing agencies, which focus upon specific Christian witnesses to the world. The church agencies report to the General Assembly, which meets biennially in odd-numbered years and is an assembly of representatives selected by congregations and ordained ministers with standing in the denomination. The General Minister and President (GMP) is the lead pastor for the denomination and the chief executive officer of the legal corporation. Following the covenantal understanding of the denomination, the GMP does not have direct executive power over the General Ministries, regions, or congregations. The GMP is elected to a six-year term by the General Assembly, with the option for a second term.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The current General Minister and President is Teresa Hord Owens. When she was elected in 2017, Owens was the first black woman to lead a mainline denomination as their chief executive. Her presidency followed the presidency of Sharon E. Watkins, the first woman to lead a mainline denomination as their chief executive.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The General Ministries are:",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "One highly popular and respected General Agency program is the \"Week of Compassion,\" named for the special offering to fund the program when it began in the 1950s. The Week of Compassion is the disaster relief and Third World development agency. It works closely with Church World Service and church-related organizations in countries around the world where disasters strike, providing emergency aid.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The General Church has challenged the entire denomination to work for a 2020 Vision for the first two decades of the 21st Century. Together the denomination is well on the way to achieving its four foci:",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has experienced a very significant loss of membership since the middle of the 20th century. Membership peaked in 1958 at just under 2 million. In 1993, membership dropped below 1 million. In 2009, the denomination reported 658,869 members in 3,691 congregations. In 2010, the five states with the highest adherence rates were Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kentucky and Oklahoma. The states with the largest absolute number of adherents were Missouri, Texas, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. In 2017, membership had declined to 450,425 members.",
"title": "Membership trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "From the very beginnings of the movement, Disciples have founded institutions of higher learning. Alexander Campbell taught young leaders and founded Bethany College. The movement established similar schools, especially in the years following the American Civil War.",
"title": "Affiliated academic institutions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Because intellectual and religious freedom are important values for the Disciples of Christ, the colleges, universities, and seminaries founded by its congregations do not seek to indoctrinate students or faculty with a sectarian point of view.",
"title": "Affiliated academic institutions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In the 21st century, the relationship between the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and its affiliated universities is the purview of Higher Education and Leadership Ministries (HELM), an agency of the General Church.",
"title": "Affiliated academic institutions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The Disciples have four seminaries and divinity schools directly affiliated with the denomination. These institutions have an ecumenical student body, a reflection of the Disciples' focus on church unity. They are:",
"title": "Affiliated academic institutions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The Disciples have three additional institutions that provide supplementary education and community living for ecumenical theological institutions. They are:",
"title": "Affiliated academic institutions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The Disciples of Christ maintains ecumenical relations with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. It is also affiliated with other ecumenical organizations such as Churches Uniting in Christ, Christian Churches Together, the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. It maintains Ordained Ministerial Partner Standing with the United Church of Christ, which means that clergy ordained in the Disciples of Christ may also serve in the United Church of Christ. Since 2019, it has been a full Communion partner and had an agreement for mutual recognition of ministerial credentials with the United Church of Canada. It is affiliated with the Disciples Ecumenical Consultative Council and the World Communion of Reformed Churches.",
"title": "Ecumenical relations"
}
]
| The Christian Church in the United States and Canada is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination. The denomination started with the Restoration Movement during the Second Great Awakening, first existing during the 19th century as a loose association of churches working towards Christian unity, then slowly forming quasi-denominational structures through missionary societies, regional associations, and an international convention. In 1968, the Disciples of Christ officially adopted a denominational structure at which time a group of churches left to remain nondenominational. The denomination is referred to by several versions of its full name, including "Disciples of Christ", "Disciples", "Christian Church", and "DOC". The Christian Church was a charter participant in the formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and of the Federal Council of Churches, and it continues to be engaged in ecumenical conversations. The Disciples' local churches are congregationally governed. In 2008 there were 679,563 members in 3,714 congregations in the United States and Canada. By 2015, this number had declined to a baptized membership of 497,423 in 3,267 congregations, of whom about 306,905 were active members, while approximately 177,000 attended Sunday services each week. In 2018, the denomination reported 380,248 members with 124,437 people in average worship attendance. | 2001-10-16T17:26:32Z | 2023-12-30T16:39:34Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Church_(Disciples_of_Christ) |
8,662 | David Rice Atchison | David Rice Atchison (August 11, 1807 – January 26, 1886) was a mid-19th century Democratic United States Senator from Missouri. He served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate for six years. Atchison served as a major general in the Missouri State Militia in 1838 during Missouri's Mormon War and as a Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War under Major General Sterling Price in the Missouri Home Guard. Some of Atchison's associates claimed that for 24 hours—Sunday, March 4, 1849, through noon on Monday—he may have been Acting President of the United States. This belief, however, is dismissed by nearly all scholars.
Atchison, who owned a plantation and many enslaved African Americans, was a prominent pro-slavery activist and Border Ruffian leader, deeply involved with violence against abolitionists and other free-staters during the "Bleeding Kansas" events that preceded admission of the state to the Union.
Atchison was born to William Atchison and his wife in Frogtown (later Kirklevington), which is now part of Lexington, Kentucky. He was educated at Transylvania University in Lexington. Classmates included five future Democratic senators (Solomon Downs of Louisiana, Jesse Bright of Indiana, George Wallace Jones of Iowa, Edward Hannegan of Indiana, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi). Atchison completed law studies and was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1829.
In 1830 he moved to Liberty in Clay County in western Missouri, and set up practice there. He also acquired a farm or plantation, with labor provided by enslaved African Americans. Atchison's law practice flourished, and his best-known client was Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint Movement. Atchison represented Smith in land disputes with non-Mormon settlers in Caldwell County and Daviess County.
Alexander William Doniphan joined Atchison's law practice in Liberty in May 1833. The two became fast friends and spent many leisure time hours playing cards, going to horse races, hunting, fishing, and attending social functions and political events. Atchison, already a member of the Liberty Blues, a volunteer militia in Missouri, got Doniphan to join.
Atchison was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1834. He worked hard for the Platte Purchase, which required Native American tribes to cede land to the United States and extended the northwestern boundary of Missouri to the Missouri River in 1837.
When early disputes broke out into the Mormon War of 1838, Atchison was appointed a major general in the state militia. He took part in suppressing violence by both sides.
Active in the Democratic Party, in 1838 Atchison was re-elected to the Missouri State House of Representatives. In 1841, he was appointed a circuit court judge for the six-county area of the Platte Purchase. In 1843 he was named a county commissioner in Platte County, where he then lived.
In October 1843, Atchison was appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy left by the death of Lewis F. Linn. He was the first senator from western Missouri to serve in this position. At age 36, he was the youngest senator from Missouri up to that time. Atchison was re-elected to a full term on his own account in 1849.
Atchison was very popular with his fellow Senate Democrats. When the Democrats took control of the US Senate in December 1845, they chose Atchison as President pro tempore, placing him second in succession for the Presidency. He also was responsible for presiding over the Senate when the Vice President was absent. At 38, he was a young man with low seniority in the Senate after two years to gain such a position.
In 1849 Atchison stepped down as President pro tempore in favor of William R. King. King in turn yielded the office back to Atchison in December 1852, after being elected Vice President of the United States. Atchison continued as President pro tempore until December 1854.
As a Senator, Atchison was a fervent advocate of slavery and territorial expansion. He supported the annexation of Texas and the U.S.-Mexican War. Atchison and Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri's other Senator, became rivals and finally enemies, although both were Democrats. Benton declared himself to be against slavery in 1849. In 1851 Atchison allied with the Whigs to defeat incumbent Benton for re-election.
Benton, intending to challenge Atchison in 1854, began to agitate for territorial organization of the area west of Missouri (now the states of Kansas and Nebraska) so that it could be opened to settlement. To counter this, Atchison proposed that the area be organized and that the section of the Missouri Compromise banning slavery there be repealed in favor of popular sovereignty. Under this plan, settlers in each territory would vote to decide whether they would allow slavery.
At Atchison's request, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois introduced the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which embodied this idea, in November 1853. The Act was passed and became law in May 1854, establishing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
Both Douglas and Atchison had believed that Nebraska would be settled by Free-State men from Iowa and Illinois, and Kansas by pro-slavery Missourians and other Southerners, thus preserving the numerical balance between free states and slave states in the nation. In 1854 Atchison helped found the town of Atchison, Kansas, as a pro-slavery settlement. The town (and county) were named for him.
While Southerners supported the idea of settling Kansas, few migrated there. Most free-soilers preferred Kansas to Nebraska. Furthermore, anti-slavery activists throughout the North came to view Kansas as a battleground and formed societies to encourage free-soil settlers to go to Kansas, to ensure there would be enough voters in both Kansas and Nebraska to approve their entry as free states.
It appeared as if the Kansas Territorial legislature to be elected in March 1855 would be controlled by free-soilers and ban slavery. This was viewed as a breach of faith by Atchison and his supporters. An angry Atchison called on pro-slavery Missourians to uphold slavery by force and "to kill every God-damned abolitionist in the district" if necessary. He recruited an immense mob of heavily armed Missourians, the infamous "Border Ruffians". On the election day, March 30, 1855, Atchison led 5,000 Border Ruffians into Kansas. They seized control of all polling places at gunpoint, cast tens of thousands of fraudulent votes for pro-slavery candidates, and elected a pro-slavery legislature.
The outrage was nonetheless accepted by the Federal government. When Territorial Governor Andrew Reeder objected, he was fired by President Franklin Pierce.
Despite this show of force, far more free-soilers than pro-slavery settlers migrated to Kansas. There were continual raids and ambushes by both sides in "Bleeding Kansas". In spite of the best efforts of Atchison and the Ruffians, Kansas rejected slavery and finally became a free state in 1861.
Charles Sumner, in the epic "Crimes Against Kansas" speech on May 19, 1856, exposed Atchison's role in the invasion, tortures, and killings in Kansas. Speaking in the flamboyant style he and others used, lacing his prose with references to Roman history, Sumner compared Atchison to Roman Senator Catiline, who betrayed his country in a plot to overthrow the existing order. For two days, Sumner listed crime, after crime, in detail, complete with documentation by newspapers and letters of the time, showing the tortures and violence by Atchison and his men.
Two days later, Atchison gave his own speech, totally unaware as yet that he was exposed on Senate floor in such a fashion. Atchison's speech was to the Texas men he just met, hired and paid for, Atchison reveals in his speech, by "authorities in Washington". They are about to invade Lawrence, Kansas. Atchison makes the men promise to kill and "draw blood," and boasts of his flag, which was red in color for "Southern Rights" and the color of blood. They would press "to blood" the spread of slavery into Kansas. He revealed in this speech that the immediate goal of the invasion was to stop the newspaper in Lawrence from publishing anti-slavery material. Atchison's men had made it a crime to publish anti-slavery newspapers in Kansas.
Atchison made it clear the men are to kill and draw blood, told the men they will be "well paid," and encouraged them to plunder from the homes that they invaded. That was after the hundreds of dozens of tortures and killings that Sumner had detailed in his Crimes Against Kansas speech. In other words, things were about to get much worse since Atchison had his hired men from Texas.
Atchison's Senate term expired on March 3, 1855. He sought election to another term, but the Democrats in the Missouri legislature were split between him and Benton, while the Whig minority put forward their own man. No Senator was elected until January 1857, when James S. Green was chosen.
When the first transcontinental railroad was proposed in the 1850s, Atchison called for it to be built along the central route (from St. Louis through Missouri, Kansas, and Utah), rather than the southern route (from New Orleans through Texas and New Mexico). Naturally, his suggested route went through Atchison.
Atchison and his law partner Doniphan fell out over politics in 1859–1861, disagreeing on how Missouri should proceed. Atchison favored secession, while Doniphan was torn and would remain for the most part non-committal. Privately Doniphan favored the Union, but found it difficult to oppose his friends and associates.
During the secession crisis in Missouri at the beginning of the American Civil War, Atchison sided with Missouri's pro-Confederate governor, Claiborne Jackson. He was appointed a major general in the Missouri State Guard. Atchison actively recruited State Guardsmen in northern Missouri and served with Guard commander General Sterling Price in the summer campaign of 1861. In September 1861, Atchison led 3,500 State Guard recruits across the Missouri River to reinforce Price, and defeated Union troops that tried to block his force in the Battle of Liberty.
Atchison served in the State Guard through the end of 1861. In March 1862, Union forces in the Trans-Mississippi theater won a decisive victory at Pea Ridge in Arkansas and secured Union control of Missouri. Atchison then resigned from the army over reported strategy arguments with Price and moved to Texas for the duration of the war. After the war he retired to his farm near Gower. He denied many of his pro-slavery public statements made prior to the Civil War. Then, his retirement cottage outside of Plattsburg, Missouri burned to the ground before his death in 1886. This entailed the complete loss of his library containing books, documents, and letters which documented his role in the Mormon War, Indian affairs, pro-slavery activities, Civil War activities, and other legislation covering his career as a lawyer, senator, and soldier.
Inauguration Day—March 4—fell on a Sunday in 1849, and so president-elect Zachary Taylor did not take the presidential oath of office until the next day. Even so, the term of the outgoing president, James K. Polk, ended at noon on March 4. On March 2, outgoing vice president George M. Dallas relinquished his position as president of the Senate. Congress had previously chosen Atchison as president pro tempore. In 1849, according to the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, the Senate president pro tempore immediately followed the vice president in the presidential line of succession. As Dallas's term also ended at noon on the 4th, and as neither Taylor nor vice president-elect Millard Fillmore had been sworn in to office on that day, it was claimed by some of Atchison's friends and colleagues that on March 4–5, 1849, Atchison was acting president of the United States.
Historians, constitutional scholars and biographers all dismiss the claim. They point out that Atchison's Senate term had also ended on March 4. When the Senate of the new Congress convened on March 5 to allow new senators and the new vice president to take the oath of office, the secretary of the Senate called members to order, as the Senate had no president pro tempore. Although an incoming president must take the oath of office before any official acts, the prevailing view is that presidential succession does not depend on the oath. Even supposing that an oath were necessary, Atchison never took it, so he was no more the president than Taylor.
In September 1872, Atchison, who never himself claimed that he was technically president, told a reporter for the Plattsburg Lever:
It was in this way: Polk went out of office on March 3, 1849, on Saturday at 12 noon. The next day, the 4th, occurring on Sunday, Gen. Taylor was not inaugurated. He was not inaugurated till Monday, the 5th, at 12 noon. It was then canvassed among Senators whether there was an interregnum (a time during which a country lacks a government). It was plain that there was either an interregnum or I was the President of the United States being chairman of the Senate, having succeeded Judge Mangum of North Carolina. The judge waked me up at 3 o'clock in the morning and said jocularly that as I was President of the United States he wanted me to appoint him as secretary of state. I made no pretense to the office, but if I was entitled in it I had one boast to make, that not a woman or a child shed a tear on account of my removing any one from office during my incumbency of the place. A great many such questions are liable to arise under our form of government.
Atchison died on January 26, 1886, at his home near Gower, Missouri at the age of 78. He was buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in Plattsburg, Missouri. His grave marker reads "President of the United States for One Day." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "David Rice Atchison (August 11, 1807 – January 26, 1886) was a mid-19th century Democratic United States Senator from Missouri. He served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate for six years. Atchison served as a major general in the Missouri State Militia in 1838 during Missouri's Mormon War and as a Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War under Major General Sterling Price in the Missouri Home Guard. Some of Atchison's associates claimed that for 24 hours—Sunday, March 4, 1849, through noon on Monday—he may have been Acting President of the United States. This belief, however, is dismissed by nearly all scholars.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Atchison, who owned a plantation and many enslaved African Americans, was a prominent pro-slavery activist and Border Ruffian leader, deeply involved with violence against abolitionists and other free-staters during the \"Bleeding Kansas\" events that preceded admission of the state to the Union.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Atchison was born to William Atchison and his wife in Frogtown (later Kirklevington), which is now part of Lexington, Kentucky. He was educated at Transylvania University in Lexington. Classmates included five future Democratic senators (Solomon Downs of Louisiana, Jesse Bright of Indiana, George Wallace Jones of Iowa, Edward Hannegan of Indiana, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi). Atchison completed law studies and was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1829.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1830 he moved to Liberty in Clay County in western Missouri, and set up practice there. He also acquired a farm or plantation, with labor provided by enslaved African Americans. Atchison's law practice flourished, and his best-known client was Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint Movement. Atchison represented Smith in land disputes with non-Mormon settlers in Caldwell County and Daviess County.",
"title": "Missouri lawyer and politician"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Alexander William Doniphan joined Atchison's law practice in Liberty in May 1833. The two became fast friends and spent many leisure time hours playing cards, going to horse races, hunting, fishing, and attending social functions and political events. Atchison, already a member of the Liberty Blues, a volunteer militia in Missouri, got Doniphan to join.",
"title": "Missouri lawyer and politician"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Atchison was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1834. He worked hard for the Platte Purchase, which required Native American tribes to cede land to the United States and extended the northwestern boundary of Missouri to the Missouri River in 1837.",
"title": "Missouri lawyer and politician"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "When early disputes broke out into the Mormon War of 1838, Atchison was appointed a major general in the state militia. He took part in suppressing violence by both sides.",
"title": "Missouri lawyer and politician"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Active in the Democratic Party, in 1838 Atchison was re-elected to the Missouri State House of Representatives. In 1841, he was appointed a circuit court judge for the six-county area of the Platte Purchase. In 1843 he was named a county commissioner in Platte County, where he then lived.",
"title": "Missouri lawyer and politician"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In October 1843, Atchison was appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy left by the death of Lewis F. Linn. He was the first senator from western Missouri to serve in this position. At age 36, he was the youngest senator from Missouri up to that time. Atchison was re-elected to a full term on his own account in 1849.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Atchison was very popular with his fellow Senate Democrats. When the Democrats took control of the US Senate in December 1845, they chose Atchison as President pro tempore, placing him second in succession for the Presidency. He also was responsible for presiding over the Senate when the Vice President was absent. At 38, he was a young man with low seniority in the Senate after two years to gain such a position.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1849 Atchison stepped down as President pro tempore in favor of William R. King. King in turn yielded the office back to Atchison in December 1852, after being elected Vice President of the United States. Atchison continued as President pro tempore until December 1854.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "As a Senator, Atchison was a fervent advocate of slavery and territorial expansion. He supported the annexation of Texas and the U.S.-Mexican War. Atchison and Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri's other Senator, became rivals and finally enemies, although both were Democrats. Benton declared himself to be against slavery in 1849. In 1851 Atchison allied with the Whigs to defeat incumbent Benton for re-election.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Benton, intending to challenge Atchison in 1854, began to agitate for territorial organization of the area west of Missouri (now the states of Kansas and Nebraska) so that it could be opened to settlement. To counter this, Atchison proposed that the area be organized and that the section of the Missouri Compromise banning slavery there be repealed in favor of popular sovereignty. Under this plan, settlers in each territory would vote to decide whether they would allow slavery.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "At Atchison's request, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois introduced the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which embodied this idea, in November 1853. The Act was passed and became law in May 1854, establishing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Both Douglas and Atchison had believed that Nebraska would be settled by Free-State men from Iowa and Illinois, and Kansas by pro-slavery Missourians and other Southerners, thus preserving the numerical balance between free states and slave states in the nation. In 1854 Atchison helped found the town of Atchison, Kansas, as a pro-slavery settlement. The town (and county) were named for him.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "While Southerners supported the idea of settling Kansas, few migrated there. Most free-soilers preferred Kansas to Nebraska. Furthermore, anti-slavery activists throughout the North came to view Kansas as a battleground and formed societies to encourage free-soil settlers to go to Kansas, to ensure there would be enough voters in both Kansas and Nebraska to approve their entry as free states.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "It appeared as if the Kansas Territorial legislature to be elected in March 1855 would be controlled by free-soilers and ban slavery. This was viewed as a breach of faith by Atchison and his supporters. An angry Atchison called on pro-slavery Missourians to uphold slavery by force and \"to kill every God-damned abolitionist in the district\" if necessary. He recruited an immense mob of heavily armed Missourians, the infamous \"Border Ruffians\". On the election day, March 30, 1855, Atchison led 5,000 Border Ruffians into Kansas. They seized control of all polling places at gunpoint, cast tens of thousands of fraudulent votes for pro-slavery candidates, and elected a pro-slavery legislature.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The outrage was nonetheless accepted by the Federal government. When Territorial Governor Andrew Reeder objected, he was fired by President Franklin Pierce.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Despite this show of force, far more free-soilers than pro-slavery settlers migrated to Kansas. There were continual raids and ambushes by both sides in \"Bleeding Kansas\". In spite of the best efforts of Atchison and the Ruffians, Kansas rejected slavery and finally became a free state in 1861.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Charles Sumner, in the epic \"Crimes Against Kansas\" speech on May 19, 1856, exposed Atchison's role in the invasion, tortures, and killings in Kansas. Speaking in the flamboyant style he and others used, lacing his prose with references to Roman history, Sumner compared Atchison to Roman Senator Catiline, who betrayed his country in a plot to overthrow the existing order. For two days, Sumner listed crime, after crime, in detail, complete with documentation by newspapers and letters of the time, showing the tortures and violence by Atchison and his men.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Two days later, Atchison gave his own speech, totally unaware as yet that he was exposed on Senate floor in such a fashion. Atchison's speech was to the Texas men he just met, hired and paid for, Atchison reveals in his speech, by \"authorities in Washington\". They are about to invade Lawrence, Kansas. Atchison makes the men promise to kill and \"draw blood,\" and boasts of his flag, which was red in color for \"Southern Rights\" and the color of blood. They would press \"to blood\" the spread of slavery into Kansas. He revealed in this speech that the immediate goal of the invasion was to stop the newspaper in Lawrence from publishing anti-slavery material. Atchison's men had made it a crime to publish anti-slavery newspapers in Kansas.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Atchison made it clear the men are to kill and draw blood, told the men they will be \"well paid,\" and encouraged them to plunder from the homes that they invaded. That was after the hundreds of dozens of tortures and killings that Sumner had detailed in his Crimes Against Kansas speech. In other words, things were about to get much worse since Atchison had his hired men from Texas.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Atchison's Senate term expired on March 3, 1855. He sought election to another term, but the Democrats in the Missouri legislature were split between him and Benton, while the Whig minority put forward their own man. No Senator was elected until January 1857, when James S. Green was chosen.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "When the first transcontinental railroad was proposed in the 1850s, Atchison called for it to be built along the central route (from St. Louis through Missouri, Kansas, and Utah), rather than the southern route (from New Orleans through Texas and New Mexico). Naturally, his suggested route went through Atchison.",
"title": "Senate career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Atchison and his law partner Doniphan fell out over politics in 1859–1861, disagreeing on how Missouri should proceed. Atchison favored secession, while Doniphan was torn and would remain for the most part non-committal. Privately Doniphan favored the Union, but found it difficult to oppose his friends and associates.",
"title": "American Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "During the secession crisis in Missouri at the beginning of the American Civil War, Atchison sided with Missouri's pro-Confederate governor, Claiborne Jackson. He was appointed a major general in the Missouri State Guard. Atchison actively recruited State Guardsmen in northern Missouri and served with Guard commander General Sterling Price in the summer campaign of 1861. In September 1861, Atchison led 3,500 State Guard recruits across the Missouri River to reinforce Price, and defeated Union troops that tried to block his force in the Battle of Liberty.",
"title": "American Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Atchison served in the State Guard through the end of 1861. In March 1862, Union forces in the Trans-Mississippi theater won a decisive victory at Pea Ridge in Arkansas and secured Union control of Missouri. Atchison then resigned from the army over reported strategy arguments with Price and moved to Texas for the duration of the war. After the war he retired to his farm near Gower. He denied many of his pro-slavery public statements made prior to the Civil War. Then, his retirement cottage outside of Plattsburg, Missouri burned to the ground before his death in 1886. This entailed the complete loss of his library containing books, documents, and letters which documented his role in the Mormon War, Indian affairs, pro-slavery activities, Civil War activities, and other legislation covering his career as a lawyer, senator, and soldier.",
"title": "American Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Inauguration Day—March 4—fell on a Sunday in 1849, and so president-elect Zachary Taylor did not take the presidential oath of office until the next day. Even so, the term of the outgoing president, James K. Polk, ended at noon on March 4. On March 2, outgoing vice president George M. Dallas relinquished his position as president of the Senate. Congress had previously chosen Atchison as president pro tempore. In 1849, according to the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, the Senate president pro tempore immediately followed the vice president in the presidential line of succession. As Dallas's term also ended at noon on the 4th, and as neither Taylor nor vice president-elect Millard Fillmore had been sworn in to office on that day, it was claimed by some of Atchison's friends and colleagues that on March 4–5, 1849, Atchison was acting president of the United States.",
"title": "Purported one-day presidency"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Historians, constitutional scholars and biographers all dismiss the claim. They point out that Atchison's Senate term had also ended on March 4. When the Senate of the new Congress convened on March 5 to allow new senators and the new vice president to take the oath of office, the secretary of the Senate called members to order, as the Senate had no president pro tempore. Although an incoming president must take the oath of office before any official acts, the prevailing view is that presidential succession does not depend on the oath. Even supposing that an oath were necessary, Atchison never took it, so he was no more the president than Taylor.",
"title": "Purported one-day presidency"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In September 1872, Atchison, who never himself claimed that he was technically president, told a reporter for the Plattsburg Lever:",
"title": "Purported one-day presidency"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "It was in this way: Polk went out of office on March 3, 1849, on Saturday at 12 noon. The next day, the 4th, occurring on Sunday, Gen. Taylor was not inaugurated. He was not inaugurated till Monday, the 5th, at 12 noon. It was then canvassed among Senators whether there was an interregnum (a time during which a country lacks a government). It was plain that there was either an interregnum or I was the President of the United States being chairman of the Senate, having succeeded Judge Mangum of North Carolina. The judge waked me up at 3 o'clock in the morning and said jocularly that as I was President of the United States he wanted me to appoint him as secretary of state. I made no pretense to the office, but if I was entitled in it I had one boast to make, that not a woman or a child shed a tear on account of my removing any one from office during my incumbency of the place. A great many such questions are liable to arise under our form of government.",
"title": "Purported one-day presidency"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Atchison died on January 26, 1886, at his home near Gower, Missouri at the age of 78. He was buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in Plattsburg, Missouri. His grave marker reads \"President of the United States for One Day.\"",
"title": "Death"
}
]
| David Rice Atchison was a mid-19th century Democratic United States Senator from Missouri. He served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate for six years. Atchison served as a major general in the Missouri State Militia in 1838 during Missouri's Mormon War and as a Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War under Major General Sterling Price in the Missouri Home Guard. Some of Atchison's associates claimed that for 24 hours—Sunday, March 4, 1849, through noon on Monday—he may have been Acting President of the United States. This belief, however, is dismissed by nearly all scholars. Atchison, who owned a plantation and many enslaved African Americans, was a prominent pro-slavery activist and Border Ruffian leader, deeply involved with violence against abolitionists and other free-staters during the "Bleeding Kansas" events that preceded admission of the state to the Union. | 2001-11-15T00:19:31Z | 2023-12-30T06:28:05Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rice_Atchison |
8,663 | Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit | Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS (/ˈfærənhaɪt/; German: [ˈfaːʁn̩haɪt]; 24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker, born in Poland to a family of German extraction. Fahrenheit invented thermometers accurate and consistent enough to allow the comparison of temperature measurements between different observers using different instruments. Fahrenheit is also credited with inventing mercury-in-glass thermometers more accurate and superior to spirit-filled thermometers at the time. The popularity of his thermometers led to the widespread adoption of his Fahrenheit scale attached to his instruments.
Fahrenheit was born in Danzig (Gdańsk), then in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Fahrenheits were a German Hanse merchant family who had lived in several Hanseatic cities. Fahrenheit's great-grandfather had lived in Rostock, and research suggests that the Fahrenheit family originated in Hildesheim. Daniel's grandfather moved from Kneiphof in Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad) to Danzig and settled there as a merchant in 1650. His son, Daniel Fahrenheit (the father of Daniel Gabriel), married Concordia Schumann, the daughter of a well-known Danzig business family. Daniel was the eldest of the five Fahrenheit children (two sons, three daughters) who survived childhood. His sister, Virginia Elisabeth Fahrenheit, married Benjamin Krüger and was the mother of Benjamin Ephraim Krüger, a clergyman and playwright.
As a young adult, Fahrenheit "showed a particular desire for studying," and was scheduled to enroll in the Danzig Gymnasium. But on 14 August 1701, his parents died after eating poisonous mushrooms. Fahrenheit, along with two brothers and sisters, was placed under guardianship. In 1702, Fahrenheit's guardians enrolled him in a bookkeeping course and sent him to a four-year merchant trade apprenticeship in Amsterdam.
Upon completing his apprenticeship, Fahrenheit ran off and began a period of travel through Germany, Sweden and Denmark in 1707. At the request of his guardians, a warrant was issued for his arrest with the intention of placing him into the service of the Dutch East India company.
By around 1706, Fahrenheit was manufacturing and shipping barometers and spirit-filled thermometers using the Florentine temperature scale. In 1708, Fahrenheit met with the mayor of Copenhagen and astronomer, Ole Rømer, and was introduced to Rømer’s temperature scale and his methods for making thermometers. Rømer told Fahrenheit that demand for accurate thermometers was high. The visit inspired Fahrenheit to try to improve his own offerings. Perhaps not coincidentally, Fahrenheit's arrest warrant was dropped around the time of his meeting with Rømer.
In 1709, Fahrenheit returned to Danzig and took observations using his barometers and thermometers, traveled more in 1710 and returned to Danzig in 1711 to settle his parent's estate. After additional travel to Königsberg and Mitau in 1711, he returned to Danzig in 1712 and stayed there for two years. During this period he worked on solving technical problems with his thermometers.
Fahrenheit began experimenting with mercury thermometers in 1713 Also by this time, Fahrenheit was using a modified version of Rømer's scale for his thermometers which would later evolve into his own Fahrenheit scale. In 1714, Fahrenheit left Danzig for Berlin and Dresden to work closely with the glass-blowers there. In that year Christian Wolff wrote about Fahrenheit's thermometers in a journal after receiving a pair of his alcohol-based devices, helping to boost Fahrenheit's reputation in the scientific community.
In addition to his interest in meteorological instruments, Fahrenheit also worked on his ideas for a mercury clock, a perpetual motion machine, and a heliostat around 1715. He struck up a correspondence with Leibniz about some of these projects. From the exchange of letters, we learn that Fahrenheit was running out of money while working on his projects and asked Leibniz for help obtaining a paid post so he could continue his work.
In 1717 or 1718, Fahrenheit returned to Amsterdam and began selling barometers, areometers, and his mercury and alcohol-based thermometers commercially. By 1721, Fahrenheit had perfected the process of crafting and standardizing his thermometers. The superiority of his mercury thermometers over alcohol-based thermometers made them very popular, leading to the widespread adoption of his Fahrenheit scale, the measurement system he developed and used for his thermometers.
Fahrenheit spent the remainder of his life in Amsterdam. From 1718 onwards, he lectured in chemistry in Amsterdam. He visited England in 1724 and elected into the Fellow of the Royal Society on May 5. In August of that year, he published five papers in Latin for they Royal Society's scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions on various topics. In his second paper, Experimenta et observationes de congelatione aquae in value factae, he provides a description of his thermometers and the reference points he used for calibrating them. For two centuries, this document was the only description of Fahrenheit's process for making thermometers. In the 20th century, Professor Ernst Cohen uncovered correspondence between Fahrenheit and Herman Boerhaave which cast considerable doubt on the veracity of Fahrenheit's article explaining the reference points for his scale and that, in fact, Fahrenheit's scale was largely derived from Rømer's scale. In his book, The History of the Thermometer and Its Use in Meteorology, W. E. Knowles Middleton writes,
I believe that much of the confusion [over the Fahrenheit scale] has resulted from believing that [Fahrenheit] meant exactly what he said [in his Royal Society article], and discounting the natural tendency of an instrumentmaker to wish to conceal his processes, or at least to obfuscate his readers.
From August 1736 Fahrenheit stayed in the house of Johannes Frisleven at Plein square in The Hague, in connection with an application for a patent at the States of Holland and West Friesland. At the beginning of September, he became ill and on the 7th his health had deteriorated to such an extent that he had notary Willem Ruijsbroek come to draw up his will. On the 11th the notary came by again to make some changes. Five days after that Fahrenheit died at the age of fifty. Four days later he received the fourth-class funeral of one who is classified as destitute, in the Kloosterkerk in The Hague (the Cloister or Monastery Church).
According to Fahrenheit's 1724 article, he determined his scale by reference to three fixed points of temperature. The lowest temperature was achieved by preparing a frigorific mixture of ice, water, and a salt ("ammonium chloride or even sea salt"), and waiting for the eutectic system to reach equilibrium temperature. The thermometer then was placed into the mixture and the liquid in the thermometer allowed to descend to its lowest point. The thermometer's reading there was taken as 0 °F. The second reference point was selected as the reading of the thermometer when it was placed in still water when ice was just forming on the surface. This was assigned as 30 °F. The third calibration point, taken as 90 °F, was selected as the thermometer's reading when the instrument was placed under the arm or in the mouth.
Fahrenheit came up with the idea that mercury boils around 300 degrees on this temperature scale. Work by others showed that water boils about 180 degrees above its freezing point. The Fahrenheit scale later was redefined to make the freezing-to-boiling interval exactly 180 degrees, a convenient value as 180 is a highly composite number, meaning that it is evenly divisible into many fractions. It is because of the scale's redefinition that normal mean body temperature today is taken as 98.6 degrees, whereas it was 96 degrees on Fahrenheit's original scale.
The Fahrenheit scale was the primary temperature standard for climatic, industrial and medical purposes in English-speaking countries until the 1970s, presently mostly replaced by the Celsius scale long used in the rest of the world, apart from the United States, where temperatures and weather reports are still broadcast in Fahrenheit. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS (/ˈfærənhaɪt/; German: [ˈfaːʁn̩haɪt]; 24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker, born in Poland to a family of German extraction. Fahrenheit invented thermometers accurate and consistent enough to allow the comparison of temperature measurements between different observers using different instruments. Fahrenheit is also credited with inventing mercury-in-glass thermometers more accurate and superior to spirit-filled thermometers at the time. The popularity of his thermometers led to the widespread adoption of his Fahrenheit scale attached to his instruments.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Fahrenheit was born in Danzig (Gdańsk), then in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Fahrenheits were a German Hanse merchant family who had lived in several Hanseatic cities. Fahrenheit's great-grandfather had lived in Rostock, and research suggests that the Fahrenheit family originated in Hildesheim. Daniel's grandfather moved from Kneiphof in Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad) to Danzig and settled there as a merchant in 1650. His son, Daniel Fahrenheit (the father of Daniel Gabriel), married Concordia Schumann, the daughter of a well-known Danzig business family. Daniel was the eldest of the five Fahrenheit children (two sons, three daughters) who survived childhood. His sister, Virginia Elisabeth Fahrenheit, married Benjamin Krüger and was the mother of Benjamin Ephraim Krüger, a clergyman and playwright.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "As a young adult, Fahrenheit \"showed a particular desire for studying,\" and was scheduled to enroll in the Danzig Gymnasium. But on 14 August 1701, his parents died after eating poisonous mushrooms. Fahrenheit, along with two brothers and sisters, was placed under guardianship. In 1702, Fahrenheit's guardians enrolled him in a bookkeeping course and sent him to a four-year merchant trade apprenticeship in Amsterdam.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Upon completing his apprenticeship, Fahrenheit ran off and began a period of travel through Germany, Sweden and Denmark in 1707. At the request of his guardians, a warrant was issued for his arrest with the intention of placing him into the service of the Dutch East India company.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "By around 1706, Fahrenheit was manufacturing and shipping barometers and spirit-filled thermometers using the Florentine temperature scale. In 1708, Fahrenheit met with the mayor of Copenhagen and astronomer, Ole Rømer, and was introduced to Rømer’s temperature scale and his methods for making thermometers. Rømer told Fahrenheit that demand for accurate thermometers was high. The visit inspired Fahrenheit to try to improve his own offerings. Perhaps not coincidentally, Fahrenheit's arrest warrant was dropped around the time of his meeting with Rømer.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1709, Fahrenheit returned to Danzig and took observations using his barometers and thermometers, traveled more in 1710 and returned to Danzig in 1711 to settle his parent's estate. After additional travel to Königsberg and Mitau in 1711, he returned to Danzig in 1712 and stayed there for two years. During this period he worked on solving technical problems with his thermometers.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Fahrenheit began experimenting with mercury thermometers in 1713 Also by this time, Fahrenheit was using a modified version of Rømer's scale for his thermometers which would later evolve into his own Fahrenheit scale. In 1714, Fahrenheit left Danzig for Berlin and Dresden to work closely with the glass-blowers there. In that year Christian Wolff wrote about Fahrenheit's thermometers in a journal after receiving a pair of his alcohol-based devices, helping to boost Fahrenheit's reputation in the scientific community.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In addition to his interest in meteorological instruments, Fahrenheit also worked on his ideas for a mercury clock, a perpetual motion machine, and a heliostat around 1715. He struck up a correspondence with Leibniz about some of these projects. From the exchange of letters, we learn that Fahrenheit was running out of money while working on his projects and asked Leibniz for help obtaining a paid post so he could continue his work.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1717 or 1718, Fahrenheit returned to Amsterdam and began selling barometers, areometers, and his mercury and alcohol-based thermometers commercially. By 1721, Fahrenheit had perfected the process of crafting and standardizing his thermometers. The superiority of his mercury thermometers over alcohol-based thermometers made them very popular, leading to the widespread adoption of his Fahrenheit scale, the measurement system he developed and used for his thermometers.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Fahrenheit spent the remainder of his life in Amsterdam. From 1718 onwards, he lectured in chemistry in Amsterdam. He visited England in 1724 and elected into the Fellow of the Royal Society on May 5. In August of that year, he published five papers in Latin for they Royal Society's scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions on various topics. In his second paper, Experimenta et observationes de congelatione aquae in value factae, he provides a description of his thermometers and the reference points he used for calibrating them. For two centuries, this document was the only description of Fahrenheit's process for making thermometers. In the 20th century, Professor Ernst Cohen uncovered correspondence between Fahrenheit and Herman Boerhaave which cast considerable doubt on the veracity of Fahrenheit's article explaining the reference points for his scale and that, in fact, Fahrenheit's scale was largely derived from Rømer's scale. In his book, The History of the Thermometer and Its Use in Meteorology, W. E. Knowles Middleton writes,",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "I believe that much of the confusion [over the Fahrenheit scale] has resulted from believing that [Fahrenheit] meant exactly what he said [in his Royal Society article], and discounting the natural tendency of an instrumentmaker to wish to conceal his processes, or at least to obfuscate his readers.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "From August 1736 Fahrenheit stayed in the house of Johannes Frisleven at Plein square in The Hague, in connection with an application for a patent at the States of Holland and West Friesland. At the beginning of September, he became ill and on the 7th his health had deteriorated to such an extent that he had notary Willem Ruijsbroek come to draw up his will. On the 11th the notary came by again to make some changes. Five days after that Fahrenheit died at the age of fifty. Four days later he received the fourth-class funeral of one who is classified as destitute, in the Kloosterkerk in The Hague (the Cloister or Monastery Church).",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "According to Fahrenheit's 1724 article, he determined his scale by reference to three fixed points of temperature. The lowest temperature was achieved by preparing a frigorific mixture of ice, water, and a salt (\"ammonium chloride or even sea salt\"), and waiting for the eutectic system to reach equilibrium temperature. The thermometer then was placed into the mixture and the liquid in the thermometer allowed to descend to its lowest point. The thermometer's reading there was taken as 0 °F. The second reference point was selected as the reading of the thermometer when it was placed in still water when ice was just forming on the surface. This was assigned as 30 °F. The third calibration point, taken as 90 °F, was selected as the thermometer's reading when the instrument was placed under the arm or in the mouth.",
"title": "Fahrenheit scale"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Fahrenheit came up with the idea that mercury boils around 300 degrees on this temperature scale. Work by others showed that water boils about 180 degrees above its freezing point. The Fahrenheit scale later was redefined to make the freezing-to-boiling interval exactly 180 degrees, a convenient value as 180 is a highly composite number, meaning that it is evenly divisible into many fractions. It is because of the scale's redefinition that normal mean body temperature today is taken as 98.6 degrees, whereas it was 96 degrees on Fahrenheit's original scale.",
"title": "Fahrenheit scale"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Fahrenheit scale was the primary temperature standard for climatic, industrial and medical purposes in English-speaking countries until the 1970s, presently mostly replaced by the Celsius scale long used in the rest of the world, apart from the United States, where temperatures and weather reports are still broadcast in Fahrenheit.",
"title": "Fahrenheit scale"
}
]
| Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS was a physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker, born in Poland to a family of German extraction. Fahrenheit invented thermometers accurate and consistent enough to allow the comparison of temperature measurements between different observers using different instruments. Fahrenheit is also credited with inventing mercury-in-glass thermometers more accurate and superior to spirit-filled thermometers at the time. The popularity of his thermometers led to the widespread adoption of his Fahrenheit scale attached to his instruments. | 2001-10-16T20:12:04Z | 2023-12-19T13:12:07Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Gabriel_Fahrenheit |
8,664 | Freescale DragonBall | Motorola/Freescale Semiconductor's DragonBall, or MC68328, is a microcontroller design based on the famous 68000 core, but implemented as an all-in-one low-power system for handheld computer use. It is supported by μClinux. It was designed by Motorola in Hong Kong and released in 1995.
The DragonBall's major design win was in numerous devices running the Palm OS platform. However, from Palm OS 5 onwards their use was superseded by ARM-based processors from Texas Instruments and Intel.
The processor is capable of speeds of up to 16.58 MHz and can run up to 2.7 MIPS (million instructions per second), for the base 68328 and DragonBall EZ (MC68EZ328) model. It was extended to 33 MHz, 5.4 MIPS for the DragonBall VZ (MC68VZ328) model, and 66 MHz, 10.8 MIPS for the DragonBall Super VZ (MC68SZ328).
It is a 32-bit processor with 32-bit internal and external address bus (24-bit external address bus for EZ and VZ variants) and 32-bit data bus. It has many built-in functions, like a color and grayscale display controller, PC speaker sound, serial port with UART and IRDA support, UART bootstrap, real time clock, is able to directly access DRAM, Flash ROM, mask ROM, and has built-in support for touch screens.
The more recent DragonBall MX series microcontrollers, later renamed the Freescale i.MX (MC9328MX/MCIMX) series, are intended for similar application to the earlier DragonBall devices but are based on an ARM processor core instead of a 68000 core. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Motorola/Freescale Semiconductor's DragonBall, or MC68328, is a microcontroller design based on the famous 68000 core, but implemented as an all-in-one low-power system for handheld computer use. It is supported by μClinux. It was designed by Motorola in Hong Kong and released in 1995.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The DragonBall's major design win was in numerous devices running the Palm OS platform. However, from Palm OS 5 onwards their use was superseded by ARM-based processors from Texas Instruments and Intel.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The processor is capable of speeds of up to 16.58 MHz and can run up to 2.7 MIPS (million instructions per second), for the base 68328 and DragonBall EZ (MC68EZ328) model. It was extended to 33 MHz, 5.4 MIPS for the DragonBall VZ (MC68VZ328) model, and 66 MHz, 10.8 MIPS for the DragonBall Super VZ (MC68SZ328).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "It is a 32-bit processor with 32-bit internal and external address bus (24-bit external address bus for EZ and VZ variants) and 32-bit data bus. It has many built-in functions, like a color and grayscale display controller, PC speaker sound, serial port with UART and IRDA support, UART bootstrap, real time clock, is able to directly access DRAM, Flash ROM, mask ROM, and has built-in support for touch screens.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The more recent DragonBall MX series microcontrollers, later renamed the Freescale i.MX (MC9328MX/MCIMX) series, are intended for similar application to the earlier DragonBall devices but are based on an ARM processor core instead of a 68000 core.",
"title": ""
}
]
| Motorola/Freescale Semiconductor's DragonBall, or MC68328, is a microcontroller design based on the famous 68000 core, but implemented as an all-in-one low-power system for handheld computer use. It is supported by μClinux. It was designed by Motorola in Hong Kong and released in 1995. The DragonBall's major design win was in numerous devices running the Palm OS platform. However, from Palm OS 5 onwards their use was superseded by ARM-based processors from Texas Instruments and Intel. The processor is capable of speeds of up to 16.58 MHz and can run up to 2.7 MIPS, for the base 68328 and DragonBall EZ (MC68EZ328) model. It was extended to 33 MHz, 5.4 MIPS for the DragonBall VZ (MC68VZ328) model, and 66 MHz, 10.8 MIPS for the DragonBall Super VZ (MC68SZ328). It is a 32-bit processor with 32-bit internal and external address bus and 32-bit data bus. It has many built-in functions, like a color and grayscale display controller, PC speaker sound, serial port with UART and IRDA support, UART bootstrap, real time clock, is able to directly access DRAM, Flash ROM, mask ROM, and has built-in support for touch screens. The more recent DragonBall MX series microcontrollers, later renamed the Freescale i.MX (MC9328MX/MCIMX) series, are intended for similar application to the earlier DragonBall devices but are based on an ARM processor core instead of a 68000 core. | 2001-10-22T23:06:38Z | 2023-11-27T09:36:25Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freescale_DragonBall |
8,667 | Double-slit experiment | In modern physics, the double-slit experiment demonstrates that light and matter can satisfy the seemingly incongruous classical definitions for both waves and particles, which is considered evidence for the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. This type of experiment was first performed by Thomas Young in 1801, as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light. At that time it was thought that light consisted of either waves or particles. With the beginning of modern physics, about a hundred years later, it was realized that light could in fact show both wave and particle characteristics. In 1927, Davisson and Germer and, independently George Paget Thomson and his research student Alexander Reid demonstrated that electrons show the same behavior, which was later extended to atoms and molecules. Thomas Young's experiment with light was part of classical physics long before the development of quantum mechanics and the concept of wave–particle duality. He believed it demonstrated that Christiaan Huygens' wave theory of light was correct, and his experiment is sometimes referred to as Young's experiment or Young's slits.
The experiment belongs to a general class of "double path" experiments, in which a wave is split into two separate waves (the wave is typically made of many photons and better referred to as a wave front, not to be confused with the wave properties of the individual photon) that later combine into a single wave. Changes in the path-lengths of both waves result in a phase shift, creating an interference pattern. Another version is the Mach–Zehnder interferometer, which splits the beam with a beam splitter.
In the basic version of this experiment, a coherent light source, such as a laser beam, illuminates a plate pierced by two parallel slits, and the light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate. The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on the screen – a result that would not be expected if light consisted of classical particles. However, the light is always found to be absorbed at the screen at discrete points, as individual particles (not waves); the interference pattern appears via the varying density of these particle hits on the screen. Furthermore, versions of the experiment that include detectors at the slits find that each detected photon passes through one slit (as would a classical particle), and not through both slits (as would a wave). However, such experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through. These results demonstrate the principle of wave–particle duality.
Other atomic-scale entities, such as electrons, are found to exhibit the same behavior when fired towards a double slit. Additionally, the detection of individual discrete impacts is observed to be inherently probabilistic, which is inexplicable using classical mechanics.
The experiment can be done with entities much larger than electrons and photons, although it becomes more difficult as size increases. The largest entities for which the double-slit experiment has been performed were molecules that each comprised 2000 atoms (whose total mass was 25,000 atomic mass units).
The double-slit experiment (and its variations) has become a classic for its clarity in expressing the central puzzles of quantum mechanics. Because it demonstrates the fundamental limitation of the ability of the observer to predict experimental results, Richard Feynman called it "a phenomenon which is impossible […] to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery [of quantum mechanics]."
If light consisted strictly of ordinary or classical particles, and these particles were fired in a straight line through a slit and allowed to strike a screen on the other side, we would expect to see a pattern corresponding to the size and shape of the slit. However, when this "single-slit experiment" is actually performed, the pattern on the screen is a diffraction pattern in which the light is spread out. The smaller the slit, the greater the angle of spread. The top portion of the image shows the central portion of the pattern formed when a red laser illuminates a slit and, if one looks carefully, two faint side bands. More bands can be seen with a more highly refined apparatus. Diffraction explains the pattern as being the result of the interference of light waves from the slit.
If one illuminates two parallel slits, the light from the two slits again interferes. Here the interference is a more pronounced pattern with a series of alternating light and dark bands. The width of the bands is a property of the frequency of the illuminating light. (See the bottom photograph to the right.)
When Thomas Young (1773–1829) first demonstrated this phenomenon, it indicated that light consists of waves, as the distribution of brightness can be explained by the alternately additive and subtractive interference of wavefronts. Young's experiment, performed in the early 1800s, played a crucial role in the understanding of the wave theory of light, vanquishing the corpuscular theory of light proposed by Isaac Newton, which had been the accepted model of light propagation in the 17th and 18th centuries.
However, the later discovery of the photoelectric effect demonstrated that under different circumstances, light can behave as if it is composed of discrete particles. These seemingly contradictory discoveries made it necessary to go beyond classical physics and take into account the quantum nature of light.
Feynman was fond of saying that all of quantum mechanics can be gleaned from carefully thinking through the implications of this single experiment. He also proposed (as a thought experiment) that if detectors were placed before each slit, the interference pattern would disappear.
The Englert–Greenberger duality relation provides a detailed treatment of the mathematics of double-slit interference in the context of quantum mechanics.
A low-intensity double-slit experiment was first performed by G. I. Taylor in 1909, by reducing the level of incident light until photon emission/absorption events were mostly non-overlapping. A slit interference experiment was not performed with anything other than light until 1961, when Claus Jönsson of the University of Tübingen performed it with coherent electron beams and multiple slits. In 1974, the Italian physicists Pier Giorgio Merli, Gian Franco Missiroli, and Giulio Pozzi performed a related experiment using single electrons from a coherent source and a biprism beam splitter, showing the statistical nature of the buildup of the interference pattern, as predicted by quantum theory. In 2002, the single-electron version of the experiment was voted "the most beautiful experiment" by readers of Physics World. Since that time a number of related experiments have been published, with a little controversy.
In 2012, Stefano Frabboni and co-workers sent single electrons onto nanofabricated slits (about 100 nm wide) and, by detecting the transmitted electrons with a single-electron detector, they could show the build-up of a double-slit interference pattern. Many related experiments involving the coherent interference have been performed; they are the basis of modern electron diffraction, microscopy and high resolution imaging.
In 2018, single particle interference was demonstrated for antimatter in the Positron Laboratory (L-NESS, Politecnico di Milano) of Rafael Ferragut in Como (Italy), by a group led by Marco Giammarchi.
An important version of this experiment involves single particle detection. Sending coherent particles through a double-slit apparatus one at a time results in single particles being detected as white dots on the screen, as expected. Remarkably, however, an interference pattern emerges when these particles are allowed to build up one by one (see the image below).
This demonstrates the wave–particle duality, which states that all matter exhibits both wave and particle properties: The particle is measured as a single pulse at a single position, while the modulus squared of the wave describes the probability of detecting the particle at a specific place on the screen giving a statistical interference pattern. This phenomenon has been shown to occur with photons, electrons, atoms, and even some molecules: with buckminsterfullerene (C60) in 2001, with 2 molecules of 430 atoms (C60(C12F25)10 and C168H94F152O8N4S4) in 2011, and with molecules of up to 2000 atoms in 2019.
The Mach–Zehnder interferometer can be seen as a simplified version of the double-slit experiment. Instead of propagating through free space after the two slits, and hitting any position in an extended screen, in the interferometer the photons can only propagate via two paths, and hit two discrete photodetectors. This makes it possible to describe it via simple linear algebra in dimension 2, rather than differential equations.
A photon emitted by the laser hits the first beam splitter and is then in a superposition between the two possible paths. In the second beam splitter these paths interfere, causing the photon to hit the photodetector on the right with probability one, and the photodetector on the bottom with probability zero. It is interesting to consider what would happen if the photon were definitely in either of paths between the beam splitters. This can be accomplished by blocking one of the paths, or equivalently by detecting the presence of a photon there. In both cases there will be no interference between the paths anymore, and both photodetectors will be hit with probability 1/2. From this we can conclude that the photon does not take one path or another after the first beam splitter, but rather that it is in a genuine quantum superposition of the two paths.
A well-known thought experiment predicts that if particle detectors are positioned at the slits, showing through which slit a photon goes, the interference pattern will disappear. This which-way experiment illustrates the complementarity principle that photons can behave as either particles or waves, but cannot be observed as both at the same time. Despite the importance of this thought experiment in the history of quantum mechanics (for example, see the discussion on Einstein's version of this experiment), technically feasible realizations of this experiment were not proposed until the 1970s. (Naive implementations of the textbook thought experiment are not possible because photons cannot be detected without absorbing the photon.) Currently, multiple experiments have been performed illustrating various aspects of complementarity.
An experiment performed in 1987 produced results that demonstrated that partial information could be obtained regarding which path a particle had taken without destroying the interference altogether. This "wave-particle trade-off" takes form of an inequality relating the visibility of the interference pattern and the distinguishability of the which-way paths.
Wheeler's delayed-choice experiments demonstrate that extracting "which path" information after a particle passes through the slits can seem to retroactively alter its previous behavior at the slits.
Quantum eraser experiments demonstrate that wave behavior can be restored by erasing or otherwise making permanently unavailable the "which path" information.
A simple do-it-at-home illustration of the quantum eraser phenomenon was given in an article in Scientific American. If one sets polarizers before each slit with their axes orthogonal to each other, the interference pattern will be eliminated. The polarizers can be considered as introducing which-path information to each beam. Introducing a third polarizer in front of the detector with an axis of 45° relative to the other polarizers "erases" this information, allowing the interference pattern to reappear. This can also be accounted for by considering the light to be a classical wave, and also when using circular polarizers and single photons. Implementations of the polarizers using entangled photon pairs have no classical explanation.
In a highly publicized experiment in 2012, researchers claimed to have identified the path each particle had taken without any adverse effects at all on the interference pattern generated by the particles. In order to do this, they used a setup such that particles coming to the screen were not from a point-like source, but from a source with two intensity maxima. However, commentators such as Svensson have pointed out that there is in fact no conflict between the weak measurements performed in this variant of the double-slit experiment and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Weak measurement followed by post-selection did not allow simultaneous position and momentum measurements for each individual particle, but rather allowed measurement of the average trajectory of the particles that arrived at different positions. In other words, the experimenters were creating a statistical map of the full trajectory landscape.
In 1967, Pfleegor and Mandel demonstrated two-source interference using two separate lasers as light sources.
It was shown experimentally in 1972 that in a double-slit system where only one slit was open at any time, interference was nonetheless observed provided the path difference was such that the detected photon could have come from either slit. The experimental conditions were such that the photon density in the system was much less than unity.
In 1991, Carnal and Mlynek performed the classic Young's double slit experiment with metastable helium atoms passing through micrometer-scale slits in gold foil.
In 1999, a quantum interference experiment (using a diffraction grating, rather than two slits) was successfully performed with buckyball molecules (each of which comprises 60 carbon atoms). A buckyball is large enough (diameter about 0.7 nm, nearly half a million times larger than a proton) to be seen in an electron microscope.
In 2002, an electron field emission source was used to demonstrate the double-slit experiment. In this experiment, a coherent electron wave was emitted from two closely located emission sites on the needle apex, which acted as double slits, splitting the wave into two coherent electron waves in a vacuum. The interference pattern between the two electron waves could then be observed. In 2017, researchers performed the double-slit experiment using light-induced field electron emitters. With this technique, emission sites can be optically selected on a scale of ten nanometers. By selectively deactivating (closing) one of the two emissions (slits), researchers were able to show that the interference pattern disappeared.
In 2005, E. R. Eliel presented an experimental and theoretical study of the optical transmission of a thin metal screen perforated by two subwavelength slits, separated by many optical wavelengths. The total intensity of the far-field double-slit pattern is shown to be reduced or enhanced as a function of the wavelength of the incident light beam.
In 2012, researchers at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln performed the double-slit experiment with electrons as described by Richard Feynman, using new instruments that allowed control of the transmission of the two slits and the monitoring of single-electron detection events. Electrons were fired by an electron gun and passed through one or two slits of 62 nm wide × 4 μm tall.
In 2013, a quantum interference experiment (using diffraction gratings, rather than two slits) was successfully performed with molecules that each comprised 810 atoms (whose total mass was over 10,000 atomic mass units). The record was raised to 2000 atoms (25,000 amu) in 2019.
Hydrodynamic analogs have been developed that can recreate various aspects of quantum mechanical systems, including single-particle interference through a double-slit. A silicone oil droplet, bouncing along the surface of a liquid, self-propels via resonant interactions with its own wave field. The droplet gently sloshes the liquid with every bounce. At the same time, ripples from past bounces affect its course. The droplet's interaction with its own ripples, which form what is known as a pilot wave, causes it to exhibit behaviors previously thought to be peculiar to elementary particles – including behaviors customarily taken as evidence that elementary particles are spread through space like waves, without any specific location, until they are measured.
Behaviors mimicked via this hydrodynamic pilot-wave system include quantum single particle diffraction, tunneling, quantized orbits, orbital level splitting, spin, and multimodal statistics. It is also possible to infer uncertainty relations and exclusion principles. Videos are available illustrating various features of this system. (See the External links.)
However, more complicated systems that involve two or more particles in superposition are not amenable to such a simple, classically intuitive explanation. Accordingly, no hydrodynamic analog of entanglement has been developed. Nevertheless, optical analogs are possible.
In 2023, an experiment was reported recreating an interference pattern in time by shining a pump laser pulse at a screen coated in indium tin oxide (ITO) which would alter the properties of the electrons within the material due to the Kerr effect, changing it from transparent to reflective for around 200 femtoseconds long where a subsequent probe laser beam hitting the ITO screen would then see this temporary change in optical properties as a slit in time and two of them as a double slit with a phase difference adding up destructively or constructively on each frequency component resulting in an interference pattern. Similar results have been obtained classically on water waves.
Much of the behaviour of light can be modelled using classical wave theory. The Huygens–Fresnel principle is one such model; it states that each point on a wavefront generates a secondary wavelet, and that the disturbance at any subsequent point can be found by summing the contributions of the individual wavelets at that point. This summation needs to take into account the phase as well as the amplitude of the individual wavelets. Only the intensity of a light field can be measured—this is proportional to the square of the amplitude.
In the double-slit experiment, the two slits are illuminated by the quasi-monochromatic light of a single laser. If the width of the slits is small enough (much less than the wavelength of the laser light), the slits diffract the light into cylindrical waves. These two cylindrical wavefronts are superimposed, and the amplitude, and therefore the intensity, at any point in the combined wavefronts depends on both the magnitude and the phase of the two wavefronts. The difference in phase between the two waves is determined by the difference in the distance travelled by the two waves.
If the viewing distance is large compared with the separation of the slits (the far field), the phase difference can be found using the geometry shown in the figure below right. The path difference between two waves travelling at an angle θ is given by:
Where d is the distance between the two slits. When the two waves are in phase, i.e. the path difference is equal to an integral number of wavelengths, the summed amplitude, and therefore the summed intensity is maximum, and when they are in anti-phase, i.e. the path difference is equal to half a wavelength, one and a half wavelengths, etc., then the two waves cancel and the summed intensity is zero. This effect is known as interference. The interference fringe maxima occur at angles
where λ is the wavelength of the light. The angular spacing of the fringes, θf, is given by
The spacing of the fringes at a distance z from the slits is given by
For example, if two slits are separated by 0.5 mm (d), and are illuminated with a 0.6 μm wavelength laser (λ), then at a distance of 1 m (z), the spacing of the fringes will be 1.2 mm.
If the width of the slits b is appreciable compared to the wavelength, the Fraunhofer diffraction equation is needed to determine the intensity of the diffracted light as follows:
where the sinc function is defined as sinc(x) = sin(x)/x for x ≠ 0, and sinc(0) = 1.
This is illustrated in the figure above, where the first pattern is the diffraction pattern of a single slit, given by the sinc function in this equation, and the second figure shows the combined intensity of the light diffracted from the two slits, where the cos function represents the fine structure, and the coarser structure represents diffraction by the individual slits as described by the sinc function.
Similar calculations for the near field can be made by applying the Fresnel diffraction equation, which implies that as the plane of observation gets closer to the plane in which the slits are located, the diffraction patterns associated with each slit decrease in size, so that the area in which interference occurs is reduced, and may vanish altogether when there is no overlap in the two diffracted patterns.
The double-slit experiment can illustrate the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics provided by Feynman. The path integral formulation replaces the classical notion of a single, unique trajectory for a system, with a sum over all possible trajectories. The trajectories are added together by using functional integration.
Each path is considered equally likely, and thus contributes the same amount. However, the phase of this contribution at any given point along the path is determined by the action along the path:
All these contributions are then added together, and the magnitude of the final result is squared, to get the probability distribution for the position of a particle:
As is always the case when calculating probability, the results must then be normalized by imposing:
The probability distribution of the outcome is the normalized square of the norm of the superposition, over all paths from the point of origin to the final point, of waves propagating proportionally to the action along each path. The differences in the cumulative action along the different paths (and thus the relative phases of the contributions) produces the interference pattern observed by the double-slit experiment. Feynman stressed that his formulation is merely a mathematical description, not an attempt to describe a real process that we can measure.
Like the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, the double-slit experiment is often used to highlight the differences and similarities between the various interpretations of quantum mechanics.
The Copenhagen interpretation is a collection of views about the meaning of quantum mechanics, stemming from the work of Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and others. The term "Copenhagen interpretation" was apparently coined by Heisenberg during the 1950s to refer to ideas developed in the 1925–1927 period, glossing over his disagreements with Bohr. Consequently, there is no definitive historical statement of what the interpretation entails. Features common across versions of the Copenhagen interpretation include the idea that quantum mechanics is intrinsically indeterministic, with probabilities calculated using the Born rule, and the principle of complementarity, which states that objects have certain pairs of complementary properties that cannot all be observed or measured simultaneously. Moreover, the act of "observing" or "measuring" an object is irreversible, and no truth can be attributed to an object, except according to the results of its measurement. A particular experiment can demonstrate particle behavior (passing through a definite slit) or wave behavior (interference), but not both at the same time. Copenhagen-type interpretations hold that quantum descriptions are objective, in that they are independent of physicists' personal beliefs and other arbitrary mental factors.
The results from the most basic double slit experiment, the observation of an interference pattern, is explained by wave interference from the two paths to the screen from each of the two slits. The single-particle results show that the waves are probability amplitudes which square to produce a probability distribution. The particles are discrete and identical; many are needed to build up the full interference pattern. The results from some of the which-way experiments are described as observations of complementarity: modifying the experiment to monitor the slit suppresses the interference pattern. Other which-way experiments make no mention of complementarity in their analysis.
According to the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed by Carlo Rovelli, observations such as those in the double-slit experiment result specifically from the interaction between the observer (measuring device) and the object being observed (physically interacted with), not any absolute property possessed by the object. In the case of an electron, if it is initially "observed" at a particular slit, then the observer–particle (photon–electron) interaction includes information about the electron's position. This partially constrains the particle's eventual location at the screen. If it is "observed" (measured with a photon) not at a particular slit but rather at the screen, then there is no "which path" information as part of the interaction, so the electron's "observed" position on the screen is determined strictly by its probability function. This makes the resulting pattern on the screen the same as if each individual electron had passed through both slits.
As with Copenhagen, there are multiple variants of the many-worlds interpretation. The unifying theme is that physical reality is identified with a wavefunction, and this wavefunction always evolves unitarily, i.e., following the Schrödinger equation with no collapses. Consequently, there are many parallel universes, which only interact with each other only through interference. David Deutsch argues that the way to understand the double-slit experiment is that in each universe the particle travels through a specific slit, but its motion is affected by the interference with particles in other universes. This creates the observable fringes. David Wallace, another advocate of the many-worlds interpretation, writes that in the familiar setup of the double-slit experiment the two paths are not sufficiently separated for a description in terms of parallel universes to make sense.
An alternative to the standard understanding of quantum mechanics, the De Broglie–Bohm theory states that particles also have precise locations at all times, and that their velocities are defined by the wave-function. So while a single particle will travel through one particular slit in the double-slit experiment, the so-called "pilot wave" that influences it will travel through both. The two slit de Broglie-Bohm trajectories were first calculated by Chris Dewdney while working with Chris Philippidis and Basil Hiley at Birkbeck College (London). The de Broglie-Bohm theory produces the same statistical results as standard quantum mechanics, but dispenses with many of its conceptual difficulties by adding complexity through an ad hoc quantum potential to guide the particles.
While the model is in many ways similar to Schrödinger equation, it is known to fail for relativistic cases and does not account for features such as particle creation or annihilation in quantum field theory. Many authors such as nobel laureates Werner Heisenberg, Sir Anthony James Leggett and Sir Roger Penrose have criticized it for not adding anything new.
More complex variants of this type of approach have appeared, for instance the three wave hypothesis of Ryszard Horodecki as well as other complicated combinations of de Broglie and Compton waves. To date there is no evidence that these are useful. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In modern physics, the double-slit experiment demonstrates that light and matter can satisfy the seemingly incongruous classical definitions for both waves and particles, which is considered evidence for the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. This type of experiment was first performed by Thomas Young in 1801, as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light. At that time it was thought that light consisted of either waves or particles. With the beginning of modern physics, about a hundred years later, it was realized that light could in fact show both wave and particle characteristics. In 1927, Davisson and Germer and, independently George Paget Thomson and his research student Alexander Reid demonstrated that electrons show the same behavior, which was later extended to atoms and molecules. Thomas Young's experiment with light was part of classical physics long before the development of quantum mechanics and the concept of wave–particle duality. He believed it demonstrated that Christiaan Huygens' wave theory of light was correct, and his experiment is sometimes referred to as Young's experiment or Young's slits.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The experiment belongs to a general class of \"double path\" experiments, in which a wave is split into two separate waves (the wave is typically made of many photons and better referred to as a wave front, not to be confused with the wave properties of the individual photon) that later combine into a single wave. Changes in the path-lengths of both waves result in a phase shift, creating an interference pattern. Another version is the Mach–Zehnder interferometer, which splits the beam with a beam splitter.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In the basic version of this experiment, a coherent light source, such as a laser beam, illuminates a plate pierced by two parallel slits, and the light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate. The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on the screen – a result that would not be expected if light consisted of classical particles. However, the light is always found to be absorbed at the screen at discrete points, as individual particles (not waves); the interference pattern appears via the varying density of these particle hits on the screen. Furthermore, versions of the experiment that include detectors at the slits find that each detected photon passes through one slit (as would a classical particle), and not through both slits (as would a wave). However, such experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through. These results demonstrate the principle of wave–particle duality.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Other atomic-scale entities, such as electrons, are found to exhibit the same behavior when fired towards a double slit. Additionally, the detection of individual discrete impacts is observed to be inherently probabilistic, which is inexplicable using classical mechanics.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The experiment can be done with entities much larger than electrons and photons, although it becomes more difficult as size increases. The largest entities for which the double-slit experiment has been performed were molecules that each comprised 2000 atoms (whose total mass was 25,000 atomic mass units).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The double-slit experiment (and its variations) has become a classic for its clarity in expressing the central puzzles of quantum mechanics. Because it demonstrates the fundamental limitation of the ability of the observer to predict experimental results, Richard Feynman called it \"a phenomenon which is impossible […] to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery [of quantum mechanics].\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "If light consisted strictly of ordinary or classical particles, and these particles were fired in a straight line through a slit and allowed to strike a screen on the other side, we would expect to see a pattern corresponding to the size and shape of the slit. However, when this \"single-slit experiment\" is actually performed, the pattern on the screen is a diffraction pattern in which the light is spread out. The smaller the slit, the greater the angle of spread. The top portion of the image shows the central portion of the pattern formed when a red laser illuminates a slit and, if one looks carefully, two faint side bands. More bands can be seen with a more highly refined apparatus. Diffraction explains the pattern as being the result of the interference of light waves from the slit.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "If one illuminates two parallel slits, the light from the two slits again interferes. Here the interference is a more pronounced pattern with a series of alternating light and dark bands. The width of the bands is a property of the frequency of the illuminating light. (See the bottom photograph to the right.)",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "When Thomas Young (1773–1829) first demonstrated this phenomenon, it indicated that light consists of waves, as the distribution of brightness can be explained by the alternately additive and subtractive interference of wavefronts. Young's experiment, performed in the early 1800s, played a crucial role in the understanding of the wave theory of light, vanquishing the corpuscular theory of light proposed by Isaac Newton, which had been the accepted model of light propagation in the 17th and 18th centuries.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "However, the later discovery of the photoelectric effect demonstrated that under different circumstances, light can behave as if it is composed of discrete particles. These seemingly contradictory discoveries made it necessary to go beyond classical physics and take into account the quantum nature of light.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Feynman was fond of saying that all of quantum mechanics can be gleaned from carefully thinking through the implications of this single experiment. He also proposed (as a thought experiment) that if detectors were placed before each slit, the interference pattern would disappear.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Englert–Greenberger duality relation provides a detailed treatment of the mathematics of double-slit interference in the context of quantum mechanics.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "A low-intensity double-slit experiment was first performed by G. I. Taylor in 1909, by reducing the level of incident light until photon emission/absorption events were mostly non-overlapping. A slit interference experiment was not performed with anything other than light until 1961, when Claus Jönsson of the University of Tübingen performed it with coherent electron beams and multiple slits. In 1974, the Italian physicists Pier Giorgio Merli, Gian Franco Missiroli, and Giulio Pozzi performed a related experiment using single electrons from a coherent source and a biprism beam splitter, showing the statistical nature of the buildup of the interference pattern, as predicted by quantum theory. In 2002, the single-electron version of the experiment was voted \"the most beautiful experiment\" by readers of Physics World. Since that time a number of related experiments have been published, with a little controversy.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 2012, Stefano Frabboni and co-workers sent single electrons onto nanofabricated slits (about 100 nm wide) and, by detecting the transmitted electrons with a single-electron detector, they could show the build-up of a double-slit interference pattern. Many related experiments involving the coherent interference have been performed; they are the basis of modern electron diffraction, microscopy and high resolution imaging.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 2018, single particle interference was demonstrated for antimatter in the Positron Laboratory (L-NESS, Politecnico di Milano) of Rafael Ferragut in Como (Italy), by a group led by Marco Giammarchi.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "An important version of this experiment involves single particle detection. Sending coherent particles through a double-slit apparatus one at a time results in single particles being detected as white dots on the screen, as expected. Remarkably, however, an interference pattern emerges when these particles are allowed to build up one by one (see the image below).",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "This demonstrates the wave–particle duality, which states that all matter exhibits both wave and particle properties: The particle is measured as a single pulse at a single position, while the modulus squared of the wave describes the probability of detecting the particle at a specific place on the screen giving a statistical interference pattern. This phenomenon has been shown to occur with photons, electrons, atoms, and even some molecules: with buckminsterfullerene (C60) in 2001, with 2 molecules of 430 atoms (C60(C12F25)10 and C168H94F152O8N4S4) in 2011, and with molecules of up to 2000 atoms in 2019.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Mach–Zehnder interferometer can be seen as a simplified version of the double-slit experiment. Instead of propagating through free space after the two slits, and hitting any position in an extended screen, in the interferometer the photons can only propagate via two paths, and hit two discrete photodetectors. This makes it possible to describe it via simple linear algebra in dimension 2, rather than differential equations.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "A photon emitted by the laser hits the first beam splitter and is then in a superposition between the two possible paths. In the second beam splitter these paths interfere, causing the photon to hit the photodetector on the right with probability one, and the photodetector on the bottom with probability zero. It is interesting to consider what would happen if the photon were definitely in either of paths between the beam splitters. This can be accomplished by blocking one of the paths, or equivalently by detecting the presence of a photon there. In both cases there will be no interference between the paths anymore, and both photodetectors will be hit with probability 1/2. From this we can conclude that the photon does not take one path or another after the first beam splitter, but rather that it is in a genuine quantum superposition of the two paths.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "A well-known thought experiment predicts that if particle detectors are positioned at the slits, showing through which slit a photon goes, the interference pattern will disappear. This which-way experiment illustrates the complementarity principle that photons can behave as either particles or waves, but cannot be observed as both at the same time. Despite the importance of this thought experiment in the history of quantum mechanics (for example, see the discussion on Einstein's version of this experiment), technically feasible realizations of this experiment were not proposed until the 1970s. (Naive implementations of the textbook thought experiment are not possible because photons cannot be detected without absorbing the photon.) Currently, multiple experiments have been performed illustrating various aspects of complementarity.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "An experiment performed in 1987 produced results that demonstrated that partial information could be obtained regarding which path a particle had taken without destroying the interference altogether. This \"wave-particle trade-off\" takes form of an inequality relating the visibility of the interference pattern and the distinguishability of the which-way paths.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Wheeler's delayed-choice experiments demonstrate that extracting \"which path\" information after a particle passes through the slits can seem to retroactively alter its previous behavior at the slits.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Quantum eraser experiments demonstrate that wave behavior can be restored by erasing or otherwise making permanently unavailable the \"which path\" information.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "A simple do-it-at-home illustration of the quantum eraser phenomenon was given in an article in Scientific American. If one sets polarizers before each slit with their axes orthogonal to each other, the interference pattern will be eliminated. The polarizers can be considered as introducing which-path information to each beam. Introducing a third polarizer in front of the detector with an axis of 45° relative to the other polarizers \"erases\" this information, allowing the interference pattern to reappear. This can also be accounted for by considering the light to be a classical wave, and also when using circular polarizers and single photons. Implementations of the polarizers using entangled photon pairs have no classical explanation.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In a highly publicized experiment in 2012, researchers claimed to have identified the path each particle had taken without any adverse effects at all on the interference pattern generated by the particles. In order to do this, they used a setup such that particles coming to the screen were not from a point-like source, but from a source with two intensity maxima. However, commentators such as Svensson have pointed out that there is in fact no conflict between the weak measurements performed in this variant of the double-slit experiment and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Weak measurement followed by post-selection did not allow simultaneous position and momentum measurements for each individual particle, but rather allowed measurement of the average trajectory of the particles that arrived at different positions. In other words, the experimenters were creating a statistical map of the full trajectory landscape.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1967, Pfleegor and Mandel demonstrated two-source interference using two separate lasers as light sources.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "It was shown experimentally in 1972 that in a double-slit system where only one slit was open at any time, interference was nonetheless observed provided the path difference was such that the detected photon could have come from either slit. The experimental conditions were such that the photon density in the system was much less than unity.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1991, Carnal and Mlynek performed the classic Young's double slit experiment with metastable helium atoms passing through micrometer-scale slits in gold foil.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 1999, a quantum interference experiment (using a diffraction grating, rather than two slits) was successfully performed with buckyball molecules (each of which comprises 60 carbon atoms). A buckyball is large enough (diameter about 0.7 nm, nearly half a million times larger than a proton) to be seen in an electron microscope.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 2002, an electron field emission source was used to demonstrate the double-slit experiment. In this experiment, a coherent electron wave was emitted from two closely located emission sites on the needle apex, which acted as double slits, splitting the wave into two coherent electron waves in a vacuum. The interference pattern between the two electron waves could then be observed. In 2017, researchers performed the double-slit experiment using light-induced field electron emitters. With this technique, emission sites can be optically selected on a scale of ten nanometers. By selectively deactivating (closing) one of the two emissions (slits), researchers were able to show that the interference pattern disappeared.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 2005, E. R. Eliel presented an experimental and theoretical study of the optical transmission of a thin metal screen perforated by two subwavelength slits, separated by many optical wavelengths. The total intensity of the far-field double-slit pattern is shown to be reduced or enhanced as a function of the wavelength of the incident light beam.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 2012, researchers at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln performed the double-slit experiment with electrons as described by Richard Feynman, using new instruments that allowed control of the transmission of the two slits and the monitoring of single-electron detection events. Electrons were fired by an electron gun and passed through one or two slits of 62 nm wide × 4 μm tall.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 2013, a quantum interference experiment (using diffraction gratings, rather than two slits) was successfully performed with molecules that each comprised 810 atoms (whose total mass was over 10,000 atomic mass units). The record was raised to 2000 atoms (25,000 amu) in 2019.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Hydrodynamic analogs have been developed that can recreate various aspects of quantum mechanical systems, including single-particle interference through a double-slit. A silicone oil droplet, bouncing along the surface of a liquid, self-propels via resonant interactions with its own wave field. The droplet gently sloshes the liquid with every bounce. At the same time, ripples from past bounces affect its course. The droplet's interaction with its own ripples, which form what is known as a pilot wave, causes it to exhibit behaviors previously thought to be peculiar to elementary particles – including behaviors customarily taken as evidence that elementary particles are spread through space like waves, without any specific location, until they are measured.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Behaviors mimicked via this hydrodynamic pilot-wave system include quantum single particle diffraction, tunneling, quantized orbits, orbital level splitting, spin, and multimodal statistics. It is also possible to infer uncertainty relations and exclusion principles. Videos are available illustrating various features of this system. (See the External links.)",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "However, more complicated systems that involve two or more particles in superposition are not amenable to such a simple, classically intuitive explanation. Accordingly, no hydrodynamic analog of entanglement has been developed. Nevertheless, optical analogs are possible.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 2023, an experiment was reported recreating an interference pattern in time by shining a pump laser pulse at a screen coated in indium tin oxide (ITO) which would alter the properties of the electrons within the material due to the Kerr effect, changing it from transparent to reflective for around 200 femtoseconds long where a subsequent probe laser beam hitting the ITO screen would then see this temporary change in optical properties as a slit in time and two of them as a double slit with a phase difference adding up destructively or constructively on each frequency component resulting in an interference pattern. Similar results have been obtained classically on water waves.",
"title": "Variations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Much of the behaviour of light can be modelled using classical wave theory. The Huygens–Fresnel principle is one such model; it states that each point on a wavefront generates a secondary wavelet, and that the disturbance at any subsequent point can be found by summing the contributions of the individual wavelets at that point. This summation needs to take into account the phase as well as the amplitude of the individual wavelets. Only the intensity of a light field can be measured—this is proportional to the square of the amplitude.",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In the double-slit experiment, the two slits are illuminated by the quasi-monochromatic light of a single laser. If the width of the slits is small enough (much less than the wavelength of the laser light), the slits diffract the light into cylindrical waves. These two cylindrical wavefronts are superimposed, and the amplitude, and therefore the intensity, at any point in the combined wavefronts depends on both the magnitude and the phase of the two wavefronts. The difference in phase between the two waves is determined by the difference in the distance travelled by the two waves.",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "If the viewing distance is large compared with the separation of the slits (the far field), the phase difference can be found using the geometry shown in the figure below right. The path difference between two waves travelling at an angle θ is given by:",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Where d is the distance between the two slits. When the two waves are in phase, i.e. the path difference is equal to an integral number of wavelengths, the summed amplitude, and therefore the summed intensity is maximum, and when they are in anti-phase, i.e. the path difference is equal to half a wavelength, one and a half wavelengths, etc., then the two waves cancel and the summed intensity is zero. This effect is known as interference. The interference fringe maxima occur at angles",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "where λ is the wavelength of the light. The angular spacing of the fringes, θf, is given by",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The spacing of the fringes at a distance z from the slits is given by",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "For example, if two slits are separated by 0.5 mm (d), and are illuminated with a 0.6 μm wavelength laser (λ), then at a distance of 1 m (z), the spacing of the fringes will be 1.2 mm.",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "If the width of the slits b is appreciable compared to the wavelength, the Fraunhofer diffraction equation is needed to determine the intensity of the diffracted light as follows:",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "where the sinc function is defined as sinc(x) = sin(x)/x for x ≠ 0, and sinc(0) = 1.",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "This is illustrated in the figure above, where the first pattern is the diffraction pattern of a single slit, given by the sinc function in this equation, and the second figure shows the combined intensity of the light diffracted from the two slits, where the cos function represents the fine structure, and the coarser structure represents diffraction by the individual slits as described by the sinc function.",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Similar calculations for the near field can be made by applying the Fresnel diffraction equation, which implies that as the plane of observation gets closer to the plane in which the slits are located, the diffraction patterns associated with each slit decrease in size, so that the area in which interference occurs is reduced, and may vanish altogether when there is no overlap in the two diffracted patterns.",
"title": "Classical wave-optics formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The double-slit experiment can illustrate the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics provided by Feynman. The path integral formulation replaces the classical notion of a single, unique trajectory for a system, with a sum over all possible trajectories. The trajectories are added together by using functional integration.",
"title": "Path-integral formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Each path is considered equally likely, and thus contributes the same amount. However, the phase of this contribution at any given point along the path is determined by the action along the path:",
"title": "Path-integral formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "All these contributions are then added together, and the magnitude of the final result is squared, to get the probability distribution for the position of a particle:",
"title": "Path-integral formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "As is always the case when calculating probability, the results must then be normalized by imposing:",
"title": "Path-integral formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The probability distribution of the outcome is the normalized square of the norm of the superposition, over all paths from the point of origin to the final point, of waves propagating proportionally to the action along each path. The differences in the cumulative action along the different paths (and thus the relative phases of the contributions) produces the interference pattern observed by the double-slit experiment. Feynman stressed that his formulation is merely a mathematical description, not an attempt to describe a real process that we can measure.",
"title": "Path-integral formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Like the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, the double-slit experiment is often used to highlight the differences and similarities between the various interpretations of quantum mechanics.",
"title": "Interpretations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The Copenhagen interpretation is a collection of views about the meaning of quantum mechanics, stemming from the work of Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and others. The term \"Copenhagen interpretation\" was apparently coined by Heisenberg during the 1950s to refer to ideas developed in the 1925–1927 period, glossing over his disagreements with Bohr. Consequently, there is no definitive historical statement of what the interpretation entails. Features common across versions of the Copenhagen interpretation include the idea that quantum mechanics is intrinsically indeterministic, with probabilities calculated using the Born rule, and the principle of complementarity, which states that objects have certain pairs of complementary properties that cannot all be observed or measured simultaneously. Moreover, the act of \"observing\" or \"measuring\" an object is irreversible, and no truth can be attributed to an object, except according to the results of its measurement. A particular experiment can demonstrate particle behavior (passing through a definite slit) or wave behavior (interference), but not both at the same time. Copenhagen-type interpretations hold that quantum descriptions are objective, in that they are independent of physicists' personal beliefs and other arbitrary mental factors.",
"title": "Interpretations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The results from the most basic double slit experiment, the observation of an interference pattern, is explained by wave interference from the two paths to the screen from each of the two slits. The single-particle results show that the waves are probability amplitudes which square to produce a probability distribution. The particles are discrete and identical; many are needed to build up the full interference pattern. The results from some of the which-way experiments are described as observations of complementarity: modifying the experiment to monitor the slit suppresses the interference pattern. Other which-way experiments make no mention of complementarity in their analysis.",
"title": "Interpretations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "According to the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed by Carlo Rovelli, observations such as those in the double-slit experiment result specifically from the interaction between the observer (measuring device) and the object being observed (physically interacted with), not any absolute property possessed by the object. In the case of an electron, if it is initially \"observed\" at a particular slit, then the observer–particle (photon–electron) interaction includes information about the electron's position. This partially constrains the particle's eventual location at the screen. If it is \"observed\" (measured with a photon) not at a particular slit but rather at the screen, then there is no \"which path\" information as part of the interaction, so the electron's \"observed\" position on the screen is determined strictly by its probability function. This makes the resulting pattern on the screen the same as if each individual electron had passed through both slits.",
"title": "Interpretations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "As with Copenhagen, there are multiple variants of the many-worlds interpretation. The unifying theme is that physical reality is identified with a wavefunction, and this wavefunction always evolves unitarily, i.e., following the Schrödinger equation with no collapses. Consequently, there are many parallel universes, which only interact with each other only through interference. David Deutsch argues that the way to understand the double-slit experiment is that in each universe the particle travels through a specific slit, but its motion is affected by the interference with particles in other universes. This creates the observable fringes. David Wallace, another advocate of the many-worlds interpretation, writes that in the familiar setup of the double-slit experiment the two paths are not sufficiently separated for a description in terms of parallel universes to make sense.",
"title": "Interpretations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "An alternative to the standard understanding of quantum mechanics, the De Broglie–Bohm theory states that particles also have precise locations at all times, and that their velocities are defined by the wave-function. So while a single particle will travel through one particular slit in the double-slit experiment, the so-called \"pilot wave\" that influences it will travel through both. The two slit de Broglie-Bohm trajectories were first calculated by Chris Dewdney while working with Chris Philippidis and Basil Hiley at Birkbeck College (London). The de Broglie-Bohm theory produces the same statistical results as standard quantum mechanics, but dispenses with many of its conceptual difficulties by adding complexity through an ad hoc quantum potential to guide the particles.",
"title": "Interpretations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "While the model is in many ways similar to Schrödinger equation, it is known to fail for relativistic cases and does not account for features such as particle creation or annihilation in quantum field theory. Many authors such as nobel laureates Werner Heisenberg, Sir Anthony James Leggett and Sir Roger Penrose have criticized it for not adding anything new.",
"title": "Interpretations of the experiment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "More complex variants of this type of approach have appeared, for instance the three wave hypothesis of Ryszard Horodecki as well as other complicated combinations of de Broglie and Compton waves. To date there is no evidence that these are useful.",
"title": "Interpretations of the experiment"
}
]
| In modern physics, the double-slit experiment demonstrates that light and matter can satisfy the seemingly incongruous classical definitions for both waves and particles, which is considered evidence for the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. This type of experiment was first performed by Thomas Young in 1801, as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light. At that time it was thought that light consisted of either waves or particles. With the beginning of modern physics, about a hundred years later, it was realized that light could in fact show both wave and particle characteristics. In 1927, Davisson and Germer and, independently George Paget Thomson and his research student Alexander Reid demonstrated that electrons show the same behavior, which was later extended to atoms and molecules. Thomas Young's experiment with light was part of classical physics long before the development of quantum mechanics and the concept of wave–particle duality. He believed it demonstrated that Christiaan Huygens' wave theory of light was correct, and his experiment is sometimes referred to as Young's experiment or Young's slits. The experiment belongs to a general class of "double path" experiments, in which a wave is split into two separate waves that later combine into a single wave. Changes in the path-lengths of both waves result in a phase shift, creating an interference pattern. Another version is the Mach–Zehnder interferometer, which splits the beam with a beam splitter. In the basic version of this experiment, a coherent light source, such as a laser beam, illuminates a plate pierced by two parallel slits, and the light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate. The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on the screen – a result that would not be expected if light consisted of classical particles. However, the light is always found to be absorbed at the screen at discrete points, as individual particles; the interference pattern appears via the varying density of these particle hits on the screen. Furthermore, versions of the experiment that include detectors at the slits find that each detected photon passes through one slit, and not through both slits. However, such experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through. These results demonstrate the principle of wave–particle duality. Other atomic-scale entities, such as electrons, are found to exhibit the same behavior when fired towards a double slit. Additionally, the detection of individual discrete impacts is observed to be inherently probabilistic, which is inexplicable using classical mechanics. The experiment can be done with entities much larger than electrons and photons, although it becomes more difficult as size increases. The largest entities for which the double-slit experiment has been performed were molecules that each comprised 2000 atoms. The double-slit experiment has become a classic for its clarity in expressing the central puzzles of quantum mechanics. Because it demonstrates the fundamental limitation of the ability of the observer to predict experimental results, Richard Feynman called it "a phenomenon which is impossible […] to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery [of quantum mechanics]." | 2001-10-28T21:46:28Z | 2023-12-18T07:39:02Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment |
8,668 | Dan Bricklin | Daniel Singer Bricklin (born July 16, 1951) is an American businessman and engineer who is the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. He also founded Software Garden, Inc., of which he is currently president, and Trellix, which he left in 2004. He currently serves as the chief technology officer of Alpha Software.
His book, Bricklin on Technology, was published by Wiley in May 2009. For his work with VisiCalc, Bricklin is often referred to as “the father of the Spreadsheet.” He was one of 6 people spotlighted when the Computer was denoted "Machine of the Year" by Time magazine in 1982.
Bricklin was born in a Jewish family in Philadelphia, where he attended Akiba Hebrew Academy. He began his college as a mathematics major, but soon switched to computer science. He earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973, where he was a resident of Bexley Hall.
Upon graduating from MIT, Bricklin worked for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) where he was part of the team that worked on WPS-8 until 1976, when he began working for FasFax, a cash register manufacturer. In 1977, he returned to education, and was awarded a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University in 1979.
While a student at Harvard Business School, Bricklin co-developed VisiCalc in 1979, making it the first electronic spreadsheet readily available for home and office use. It ran on an Apple II computer, and was considered a fourth generation software program. VisiCalc is widely credited for fueling the rapid growth of the personal computer industry. Instead of doing financial projections with manually calculated spreadsheets, and having to recalculate with every single cell in the sheet, VisiCalc allowed the user to change any cell, and have the entire sheet automatically recalculated. This could turn 20 hours of work into 15 minutes and allowed for more creativity.
In 1979, Bricklin and Frankston founded Software Arts, Inc., and began selling VisiCalc, via a separate company named VisiCorp. Along with co-founder Bob Frankston, he started writing versions of the program for the Tandy TRS-80, Commodore PET and the Atari 800. Soon after its launch, VisiCalc became a fast seller at $100.
Software Arts also published TK/Solver and "and Spotlight,"a desktop organizer for the IBM Personal Computer."
Bricklin was awarded the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1981 for VisiCalc. Bricklin could not patent VisiCalc, since software inventions were not eligible for patent protection at the time.
Bricklin was chairman of Software Arts until 1985, the year that Software Arts was acquired by Lotus. He left and founded Software Garden.
Dan Bricklin founded Software Garden, a small consulting firm and developer of software applications, in 1985. The company's focus was to produce and market “Dan Bricklin's Demo Program”. The program allowed users to create demonstrations of their programs before they were even written, and was also used to create tutorials for Windows-based programs. Other versions released soon after included demo-it!. He remained the president of the company until he co-founded Slate Corporation in 1990. In 1992, he became the vice president of Phoenix-based Slate corporation, and developed At Hand, a pen-based spreadsheet. When Slate closed in 1994, Bricklin returned to Software Garden.
His "Dan Bricklin's Overall Viewer" (described by The New York Times as "a visual way to display information in Windows-based software") was released in November 1994.
In 1995 Bricklin founded Trellix Corporation, named for Trellix Site Builder.
Trellix was bought by Interland (now Web.com) in 2003, and Bricklin became Interland's chief technology officer until early 2004.
Bricklin continues to serve as president of Software Garden, a small company that develops and markets software tools he creates, as well as providing speaking and consulting services.
He has released Note Taker HD, an application that integrates handwritten notes on the Apple iPad tablet.
He is also developing wikiCalc, a collaborative, basic spreadsheet running on the Web.
He is currently the chief technology officer of Alpha Software in Burlington, Massachusetts, a company that creates tools to easily develop cross-platform mobile business applications.
In 1994, Bricklin was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is a founding trustee of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council and has served on the boards of the Software Publishers Association and the Boston Computer Society.
He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2003 for the invention and creation of the electronic spreadsheet.
In 1981, Bricklin was given a Grace Murray Hopper Award for VisiCalc.
In 1996, Bricklin was awarded by the IEEE Computer Society with the Computer Entrepreneur Award for pioneering the development and commercialization of the spreadsheet and the profound changes it fostered in business and industry.
In 2003, Bricklin was given the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for being a technology change leader. He was recognized for having used information technology in an industry-transforming way. He has received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Newbury College. He also became a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
In 2004, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for advancing the utility of personal computers by developing the VisiCalc electronic spreadsheet."
Bricklin: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Daniel Singer Bricklin (born July 16, 1951) is an American businessman and engineer who is the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. He also founded Software Garden, Inc., of which he is currently president, and Trellix, which he left in 2004. He currently serves as the chief technology officer of Alpha Software.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "His book, Bricklin on Technology, was published by Wiley in May 2009. For his work with VisiCalc, Bricklin is often referred to as “the father of the Spreadsheet.” He was one of 6 people spotlighted when the Computer was denoted \"Machine of the Year\" by Time magazine in 1982.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Bricklin was born in a Jewish family in Philadelphia, where he attended Akiba Hebrew Academy. He began his college as a mathematics major, but soon switched to computer science. He earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973, where he was a resident of Bexley Hall.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Upon graduating from MIT, Bricklin worked for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) where he was part of the team that worked on WPS-8 until 1976, when he began working for FasFax, a cash register manufacturer. In 1977, he returned to education, and was awarded a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University in 1979.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "While a student at Harvard Business School, Bricklin co-developed VisiCalc in 1979, making it the first electronic spreadsheet readily available for home and office use. It ran on an Apple II computer, and was considered a fourth generation software program. VisiCalc is widely credited for fueling the rapid growth of the personal computer industry. Instead of doing financial projections with manually calculated spreadsheets, and having to recalculate with every single cell in the sheet, VisiCalc allowed the user to change any cell, and have the entire sheet automatically recalculated. This could turn 20 hours of work into 15 minutes and allowed for more creativity.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1979, Bricklin and Frankston founded Software Arts, Inc., and began selling VisiCalc, via a separate company named VisiCorp. Along with co-founder Bob Frankston, he started writing versions of the program for the Tandy TRS-80, Commodore PET and the Atari 800. Soon after its launch, VisiCalc became a fast seller at $100.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Software Arts also published TK/Solver and \"and Spotlight,\"a desktop organizer for the IBM Personal Computer.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Bricklin was awarded the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1981 for VisiCalc. Bricklin could not patent VisiCalc, since software inventions were not eligible for patent protection at the time.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Bricklin was chairman of Software Arts until 1985, the year that Software Arts was acquired by Lotus. He left and founded Software Garden.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Dan Bricklin founded Software Garden, a small consulting firm and developer of software applications, in 1985. The company's focus was to produce and market “Dan Bricklin's Demo Program”. The program allowed users to create demonstrations of their programs before they were even written, and was also used to create tutorials for Windows-based programs. Other versions released soon after included demo-it!. He remained the president of the company until he co-founded Slate Corporation in 1990. In 1992, he became the vice president of Phoenix-based Slate corporation, and developed At Hand, a pen-based spreadsheet. When Slate closed in 1994, Bricklin returned to Software Garden.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "His \"Dan Bricklin's Overall Viewer\" (described by The New York Times as \"a visual way to display information in Windows-based software\") was released in November 1994.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1995 Bricklin founded Trellix Corporation, named for Trellix Site Builder.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Trellix was bought by Interland (now Web.com) in 2003, and Bricklin became Interland's chief technology officer until early 2004.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Bricklin continues to serve as president of Software Garden, a small company that develops and markets software tools he creates, as well as providing speaking and consulting services.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "He has released Note Taker HD, an application that integrates handwritten notes on the Apple iPad tablet.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "He is also developing wikiCalc, a collaborative, basic spreadsheet running on the Web.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "He is currently the chief technology officer of Alpha Software in Burlington, Massachusetts, a company that creates tools to easily develop cross-platform mobile business applications.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1994, Bricklin was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is a founding trustee of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council and has served on the boards of the Software Publishers Association and the Boston Computer Society.",
"title": "Affiliations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2003 for the invention and creation of the electronic spreadsheet.",
"title": "Affiliations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1981, Bricklin was given a Grace Murray Hopper Award for VisiCalc.",
"title": "Awards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 1996, Bricklin was awarded by the IEEE Computer Society with the Computer Entrepreneur Award for pioneering the development and commercialization of the spreadsheet and the profound changes it fostered in business and industry.",
"title": "Awards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 2003, Bricklin was given the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for being a technology change leader. He was recognized for having used information technology in an industry-transforming way. He has received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Newbury College. He also became a member of the National Academy of Engineering.",
"title": "Awards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 2004, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum \"for advancing the utility of personal computers by developing the VisiCalc electronic spreadsheet.\"",
"title": "Awards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Bricklin:",
"title": "Awards"
}
]
| Daniel Singer Bricklin is an American businessman and engineer who is the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. He also founded Software Garden, Inc., of which he is currently president, and Trellix, which he left in 2004. He currently serves as the chief technology officer of Alpha Software. His book, Bricklin on Technology, was published by Wiley in May 2009. For his work with VisiCalc, Bricklin is often referred to as “the father of the Spreadsheet.” He was one of 6 people spotlighted when the Computer was denoted "Machine of the Year" by Time magazine in 1982. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-24T04:17:12Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Bricklin |
8,674 | Digital enhanced cordless telecommunications | Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications, usually known by the acronym DECT, is a standard used for creating cordless telephone systems and for IoT systems. It originated in Europe, where it is the common standard, replacing earlier cordless phone standards, such as 900 MHz CT1 and CT2. The IoT usage relies on the new DECT-2020 standard.
Beyond Europe, it has been adopted by Australia and most countries in Asia and South America. North American adoption was delayed by United States radio-frequency regulations. This forced development of a variation of DECT called DECT 6.0, using a slightly different frequency range, which makes these units incompatible with systems intended for use in other areas, even from the same manufacturer. DECT has almost completely replaced other standards in most countries where it is used, with the exception of North America.
DECT was originally intended for fast roaming between networked base stations, and the first DECT product was Net wireless LAN. However, its most popular application is single-cell cordless phones connected to traditional analog telephone, primarily in home and small-office systems, though gateways with multi-cell DECT and/or DECT repeaters are also available in many private branch exchange (PBX) systems for medium and large businesses, produced by Panasonic, Mitel, Gigaset, Ascom, Cisco, Grandstream, Snom, Spectralink, and RTX. DECT can also be used for purposes other than cordless phones, such as baby monitors and industrial sensors. The ULE Alliance's DECT ULE and its "HAN FUN" protocol are variants tailored for home security, automation, and the internet of things (IoT).
The DECT standard includes the generic access profile (GAP), a common interoperability profile for simple telephone capabilities, which most manufacturers implement. GAP-conformance enables DECT handsets and bases from different manufacturers to interoperate at the most basic level of functionality, that of making and receiving calls. Japan uses its own DECT variant, J-DECT, which is supported by the DECT forum.
The New Generation DECT (NG-DECT) standard, marketed as CAT-iq by the DECT Forum, provides a common set of advanced capabilities for handsets and base stations. CAT-iq allows interchangeability across IP-DECT base stations and handsets from different manufacturers, while maintaining backward compatibility with GAP equipment. It also requires mandatory support for wideband audio.
DECT-2020 New Radio, marketed as NR+ (New Radio plus), is a 5G data transmission protocol which meets ITU-R IMT-2020 requirements for ultra-reliable low-latency and massive machine-type communications, and can co-exist with earlier DECT devices.
The DECT standard was developed by ETSI in several phases, the first of which took place between 1988 and 1992 when the first round of standards were published. These were the ETS 300-175 series in nine parts defining the air interface, and ETS 300-176 defining how the units should be type approved. A technical report, ETR-178, was also published to explain the standard. Subsequent standards were developed and published by ETSI to cover interoperability profiles and standards for testing.
Named Digital European Cordless Telephone at its launch by CEPT in November 1987; its name was soon changed to Digital European Cordless Telecommunications, following a suggestion by Enrico Tosato of Italy, to reflect its broader range of application including data services. In 1995, due to its more global usage, the name was changed from European to Enhanced. DECT is recognized by the ITU as fulfilling the IMT-2000 requirements and thus qualifies as a 3G system. Within the IMT-2000 group of technologies, DECT is referred to as IMT-2000 Frequency Time (IMT-FT).
DECT was developed by ETSI but has since been adopted by many countries all over the World. The original DECT frequency band (1880–1900 MHz) is used in all countries in Europe. Outside Europe, it is used in most of Asia, Australia and South America. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission in 2005 changed channelization and licensing costs in a nearby band (1920–1930 MHz, or 1.9 GHz), known as Unlicensed Personal Communications Services (UPCS), allowing DECT devices to be sold in the U.S. with only minimal changes. These channels are reserved exclusively for voice communication applications and therefore are less likely to experience interference from other wireless devices such as baby monitors and wireless networks.
The New Generation DECT (NG-DECT) standard was first published in 2007; it was developed by ETSI with guidance from the Home Gateway Initiative through the DECT Forum to support IP-DECT functions in home gateway/IP-PBX equipment. The ETSI TS 102 527 series comes in five parts and covers wideband audio and mandatory interoperability features between handsets and base stations. They were preceded by an explanatory technical report, ETSI TR 102 570. The DECT Forum maintains the CAT-iq trademark and certification program; CAT-iq wideband voice profile 1.0 and interoperability profiles 2.0/2.1 are based on the relevant parts of ETSI TS 102 527.
The DECT Ultra Low Energy (DECT ULE) standard was announced in January 2011 and the first commercial products were launched later that year by Dialog Semiconductor. The standard was created to enable home automation, security, healthcare and energy monitoring applications that are battery powered. Like DECT, DECT ULE standard uses the 1.9 GHz band, and so suffers less interference than Zigbee, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi from microwave ovens, which all operate in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM band. DECT ULE uses a simple star network topology, so many devices in the home are connected to a single control unit.
A new low-complexity audio codec, LC3plus, has been added as an option to the 2019 revision of the DECT standard. This codec is designed for high-quality voice and music applications, and supports scalable narrowband, wideband, super wideband, and fullband coding, with sample rates of 8, 16, 24, 32 and 48 kHz and audio bandwidth of up to 20 kHz.
DECT-2020 New Radio protocol was published in July 2020; it defines a new physical interface based on cyclic prefix orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CP-OFDM) capable of up to 1.2 Gbit/s transfer rate with QAM-1024 modulation. The updated standard supports multi-antenna MIMO and beamforming, FEC channel coding, and hybrid automatic repeat request. There are 17 radio channel frequencies in the range from 450 MHz up to 5,875 MHz, and channel bandwidths of 1,728, 3,456, or 6,912 kHz. Direct communication between end devices is possible with a mesh network topology. In October 2021, DECT-2020 NR was approved for the IMT-2020 standard, for use in Massive Machine Type Communications (MMTC) industry automation, Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC), and professional wireless audio applications with point-to-point or multicast communications; the proposal was fast-tracked by ITU-R following real-world evaluations. The new protocol will be marketed as NR+ (New Radio plus) by the DECT Forum. OFDMA and SC-FDMA modulations were also considered by the ESTI DECT committee.
OpenD is an open-source framework designed to provide a complete software implementation of DECT ULE protocols on reference hardware from Dialog Semiconductor and DSP Group; the project is maintained by the DECT forum.
The DECT standard originally envisaged three major areas of application:
Of these, the domestic application (cordless home telephones) has been extremely successful. The enterprise PABX market, albeit much smaller than the cordless home market, has been very successful as well, and all the major PABX vendors have advanced DECT access options available. The public access application did not succeed, since public cellular networks rapidly out-competed DECT by coupling their ubiquitous coverage with large increases in capacity and continuously falling costs. There has been only one major installation of DECT for public access: in early 1998 Telecom Italia launched a wide-area DECT network known as "Fido" after much regulatory delay, covering major cities in Italy. The service was promoted for only a few months and, having peaked at 142,000 subscribers, was shut down in 2001.
DECT has been used for wireless local loop as a substitute for copper pairs in the "last mile" in countries such as India and South Africa. By using directional antennas and sacrificing some traffic capacity, cell coverage could extend to over 10 kilometres (6.2 mi). One example is the corDECT standard.
The first data application for DECT was Net wireless LAN system by Olivetti, launched in 1993 and discontinued in 1995. A precursor to Wi-Fi, Net was a micro-cellular data-only network with fast roaming between base stations and 520 kbit/s transmission rates.
Data applications such as electronic cash terminals, traffic lights, and remote door openers also exist, but have been eclipsed by Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G which compete with DECT for both voice and data.
DECT 6.0 is a North American marketing term for DECT devices manufactured for the United States and Canada operating at 1.9 GHz. The "6.0" does not equate to a spectrum band; it was decided the term DECT 1.9 might have confused customers who equate larger numbers (such as the 2.4 and 5.8 in existing 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz cordless telephones) with later products. The term was coined by Rick Krupka, marketing director at Siemens and the DECT USA Working Group / Siemens ICM.
In North America, DECT suffers from deficiencies in comparison to DECT elsewhere, since the UPCS band (1920–1930 MHz) is not free from heavy interference. Bandwidth is half as wide as that used in Europe (1880–1900 MHz), the 4 mW average transmission power reduces range compared to the 10 mW permitted in Europe, and the commonplace lack of GAP compatibility among US vendors binds customers to a single vendor.
Before 1.9 GHz band was approved by the FCC in 2005, DECT could only operate in unlicensed 2.4 GHz and 900 MHz Region 2 ISM bands; some users of Uniden WDECT 2.4 GHz phones reported interoperability issues with Wi-Fi equipment.
North-American DECT 6.0 products may not be used in Europe, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Africa, as they cause and suffer from interference with the local cellular networks. Use of such products is prohibited by European Telecommunications Authorities, PTA, Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka and the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa. European DECT products may not be used in the United States and Canada, as they likewise cause and suffer from interference with American and Canadian cellular networks, and use is prohibited by the Federal Communications Commission and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.
DECT 8.0 HD is a marketing designation for North American DECT devices certified with CAT-iq 2.0 "Multi Line" profile.
Cordless Advanced Technology—internet and quality (CAT-iq) is a certification program maintained by the DECT Forum. It is based on New Generation DECT (NG-DECT) series of standards from ETSI.
NG-DECT/CAT-iq contains features that expand the generic GAP profile with mandatory support for high quality wideband voice, enhanced security, calling party identification, multiple lines, parallel calls, and similar functions to facilitate VoIP calls through SIP and H.323 protocols.
There are several CAT-iq profiles which define supported voice features:
CAT-iq allows any DECT handset to communicate with a DECT base from a different vendor, providing full interoperability. CAT-iq 2.0/2.1 feature set is designed to support IP-DECT base stations found in office IP-PBX and home gateways.
The DECT standard specifies a means for a portable phone or "Portable Part" to access a fixed telephone network via radio. Base station or "Fixed Part" is used to terminate the radio link and provide access to a fixed line. A gateway is then used to connect calls to the fixed network, such as public switched telephone network (telephone jack), office PBX, ISDN, or VoIP over Ethernet connection.
Typical abilities of a domestic DECT Generic Access Profile (GAP) system include multiple handsets to one base station and one phone line socket. This allows several cordless telephones to be placed around the house, all operating from the same telephone jack. Additional handsets have a battery charger station that does not plug into the telephone system. Handsets can in many cases be used as intercoms, communicating between each other, and sometimes as walkie-talkies, intercommunicating without telephone line connection.
DECT operates in the 1880–1900 MHz band and defines ten frequency channels from 1881.792 MHz to 1897.344 MHz with a band gap of 1728 kHz.
DECT operates as a multicarrier frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) and time-division multiple access (TDMA) system. This means that the radio spectrum is divided into physical carriers in two dimensions: frequency and time. FDMA access provides up to 10 frequency channels, and TDMA access provides 24 time slots per every frame of 10 ms. DECT uses time-division duplex (TDD), which means that down- and uplink use the same frequency but different time slots. Thus a base station provides 12 duplex speech channels in each frame, with each time slot occupying any available channel – thus 10 × 12 = 120 carriers are available, each carrying 32 kbit/s.
DECT also provides frequency-hopping spread spectrum over TDMA/TDD structure for ISM band applications. If frequency-hopping is avoided, each base station can provide up to 120 channels in the DECT spectrum before frequency reuse. Each timeslot can be assigned to a different channel in order to exploit advantages of frequency hopping and to avoid interference from other users in asynchronous fashion.
DECT allows interference-free wireless operation to around 100 metres (110 yd) outdoors. Indoor performance is reduced when interior spaces are constrained by walls.
DECT performs with fidelity in common congested domestic radio traffic situations. It is generally immune to interference from other DECT systems, Wi-Fi networks, video senders, Bluetooth technology, baby monitors and other wireless devices.
ETSI standards documentation ETSI EN 300 175 parts 1–8 (DECT), ETSI EN 300 444 (GAP) and ETSI TS 102 527 parts 1–5 (NG-DECT) prescribe the following technical properties:
The DECT physical layer uses FDMA/TDMA access with TDD.
Gaussian frequency-shift keying (GFSK) modulation is used: the binary one is coded with a frequency increase by 288 kHz, and the binary zero with frequency decrease of 288 kHz. With high quality connections, 2-, 4- or 8-level differential PSK modulation (DBPSK, DQPSK or D8PSK), which is similar to QAM-2, QAM-4 and QAM-8, can be used to transmit 1, 2, or 3 bits per each symbol. QAM-16 and QAM-64 modulations with 4 and 6 bits per symbol can be used for user data (B-field) only, with resulting transmission speeds of up to 5,068 Mbit/s.
DECT provides dynamic channel selection and assignment; the choice of transmission frequency and time slot is always made by the mobile terminal. In case of interference in the selected frequency channel, the mobile terminal (possibly from suggestion by the base station) can initiate either intracell handover, selecting another channel/transmitter on the same base, or intercell handover, selecting a different base station altogether. For this purpose, DECT devices scan all idle channels at regular 30 s intervals to generate a received signal strength indication (RSSI) list. When a new channel is required, the mobile terminal (PP) or base station (FP) selects a channel with the minimum interference from the RSSI list.
The maximum allowed power for portable equipment as well as base stations is 250 mW. A portable device radiates an average of about 10 mW during a call as it is only using one of 24 time slots to transmit. In Europe, the power limit was expressed as effective radiated power (ERP), rather than the more commonly used equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP), permitting the use of high-gain directional antennas to produce much higher EIRP and hence long ranges.
The DECT media access control layer controls the physical layer and provides connection oriented, connectionless and broadcast services to the higher layers.
The DECT data link layer uses Link Access Protocol Control (LAPC), a specially designed variant of the ISDN data link protocol called LAPD. They are based on HDLC.
GFSK modulation uses a bit rate of 1152 kbit/s, with a frame of 10 ms (11520 bits) which contains 24 time slots. Each slots contains 480 bits, some of which are reserved for physical packets and the rest is guard space. Slots 0–11 are always used for downlink (FP to PP) and slots 12–23 are used for uplink (PP to FP).
There are several combinations of slots and corresponding types of physical packets with GFSK modulation:
The 420/424 bits of a GFSK basic packet (P32) contain the following fields:
The resulting full data rate is 32 kbit/s, available in both directions.
The DECT network layer always contains the following protocol entities:
Optionally it may also contain others:
All these communicate through a Link Control Entity (LCE).
The call control protocol is derived from ISDN DSS1, which is a Q.931-derived protocol. Many DECT-specific changes have been made.
The mobility management protocol includes the management of identities, authentication, location updating, on-air subscription and key allocation. It includes many elements similar to the GSM protocol, but also includes elements unique to DECT.
Unlike the GSM protocol, the DECT network specifications do not define cross-linkages between the operation of the entities (for example, Mobility Management and Call Control). The architecture presumes that such linkages will be designed into the interworking unit that connects the DECT access network to whatever mobility-enabled fixed network is involved. By keeping the entities separate, the handset is capable of responding to any combination of entity traffic, and this creates great flexibility in fixed network design without breaking full interoperability.
DECT GAP is an interoperability profile for DECT. The intent is that two different products from different manufacturers that both conform not only to the DECT standard, but also to the GAP profile defined within the DECT standard, are able to interoperate for basic calling. The DECT standard includes full testing suites for GAP, and GAP products on the market from different manufacturers are in practice interoperable for the basic functions.
The DECT media access control layer includes authentication of handsets to the base station using the DECT Standard Authentication Algorithm (DSAA). When registering the handset on the base, both record a shared 128-bit Unique Authentication Key (UAK). The base can request authentication by sending two random numbers to the handset, which calculates the response using the shared 128-bit key. The handset can also request authentication by sending a 64-bit random number to the base, which chooses a second random number, calculates the response using the shared key, and sends it back with the second random number.
The standard also provides encryption services with the DECT Standard Cipher (DSC). The encryption is fairly weak, using a 35-bit initialization vector and encrypting the voice stream with 64-bit encryption. While most of the DECT standard is publicly available, the part describing the DECT Standard Cipher was only available under a non-disclosure agreement to the phones' manufacturers from ETSI.
The properties of the DECT protocol make it hard to intercept a frame, modify it and send it later again, as DECT frames are based on time-division multiplexing and need to be transmitted at a specific point in time. Unfortunately very few DECT devices on the market implemented authentication and encryption procedures – and even when encryption was used by the phone, it was possible to implement a man-in-the-middle attack impersonating a DECT base station and revert to unencrypted mode – which allows calls to be listened to, recorded, and re-routed to a different destination.
After an unverified report of a successful attack in 2002, members of the deDECTed.org project actually did reverse engineer the DECT Standard Cipher in 2008, and as of 2010 there has been a viable attack on it that can recover the key.
In 2012, an improved authentication algorithm, the DECT Standard Authentication Algorithm 2 (DSAA2), and improved version of the encryption algorithm, the DECT Standard Cipher 2 (DSC2), both based on AES 128-bit encryption, were included as optional in the NG-DECT/CAT-iq suite.
DECT Forum also launched the DECT Security certification program which mandates the use of previously optional security features in the GAP profile, such as early encryption and base authentication.
Various access profiles have been defined in the DECT standard:
Other interoperability profiles exist in the DECT suite of standards, and in particular the DPRS (DECT Packet Radio Services) bring together a number of prior interoperability profiles for the use of DECT as a wireless LAN and wireless internet access service. With good range (up to 200 metres (660 ft) indoors and 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) using directional antennae outdoors), dedicated spectrum, high interference immunity, open interoperability and data speeds of around 500 kbit/s, DECT appeared at one time to be a superior alternative to Wi-Fi. The protocol capabilities built into the DECT networking protocol standards were particularly good at supporting fast roaming in the public space, between hotspots operated by competing but connected providers. The first DECT product to reach the market, Olivetti's Net, was a wireless LAN, and German firms Dosch & Amand and Hoeft & Wessel built niche businesses on the supply of data transmission systems based on DECT.
However, the timing of the availability of DECT, in the mid-1990s, was too early to find wide application for wireless data outside niche industrial applications. Whilst contemporary providers of Wi-Fi struggled with the same issues, providers of DECT retreated to the more immediately lucrative market for cordless telephones. A key weakness was also the inaccessibility of the U.S. market, due to FCC spectrum restrictions at that time. By the time mass applications for wireless Internet had emerged, and the U.S. had opened up to DECT, well into the new century, the industry had moved far ahead in terms of performance and DECT's time as a technically competitive wireless data transport had passed.
DECT uses UHF radio, similar to mobile phones, baby monitors, Wi-Fi, and other cordless telephone technologies.
In North America, the 4 mW average transmission power reduces range compared to the 10 mW permitted in Europe.
The UK Health Protection Agency (HPA) claims that due to a mobile phone's adaptive power ability, a European DECT cordless phone's radiation could actually exceed the radiation of a mobile phone. A European DECT cordless phone's radiation has an average output power of 10 mW but is in the form of 100 bursts per second of 250 mW, a strength comparable to some mobile phones.
Most studies have been unable to demonstrate any link to health effects, or have been inconclusive. Electromagnetic fields may have an effect on protein expression in laboratory settings but have not yet been demonstrated to have clinically significant effects in real-world settings. The World Health Organization has issued a statement on medical effects of mobile phones which acknowledges that the longer term effects (over several decades) require further research.
DECT-2020 also called NR+ is a new radio standard by ETSI for the DECT bands worldwide. The standard was designed to meet a subset of the ITU IMT-2020 5G requirements that are applicable to IOT and Industrial internet of things. DECT-2020 is compliant with the requirements for Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications URLLC and massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) of IMT-2020.
DECT-2020 NR has new capabilities compared to DECT and DECT Evolution:
The DECT-2020 standard has been designed to co-exist in the DECT radio band with existing DECT deployments. It uses the same Time Division slot timing and Frequency Division center frequencies and uses pre-transmit scanning to minimize co-channel interference.
DECT NR+ (called DECT-2020 NR in ETSI) primarily focuses on addressing the needs of local area deployments for two use case areas: massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) and Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) as defined for 5G networks application areas. The release 1 of the standard targets several applications within these use cases, including Smart Metering and Smart grid, Industrial internet of things, Building automation, and Professional audio
DECT NR+ decentralized and autonomous networking capability was specifically designed for Metering and Smart Grid applications, and mesh networking application in general. The technology can scale up to millions of devices within a single network.
The low latency communications URLLC is suitable for various use cases of Industry 4.0. These applications encompass robotics, monitoring and predictive maintenance and others. NR+ supports these use cases through its low latency and high reliability, dedicated frequency band, and high density and scalability
Regarding Professional Audio and PMSE applications, DECT NR+ offers the necessary features of low latency and high reliability. This makes it suitable for applications requiring real-time audio transmission and performance as required by professional audio systems.
DECT NR+ technology is specified by DECT committee in the ETSI. The specifications for NR+ are called DECT-2020 in ETSI.
An important design criteria for NR+ was to co-exist with Classic DECT communications. This allows NR+ to use the DECT reserved radio bands 1, 2 and 9, in the frequency range of 1880-1930 MHz. DECT reserved radio bands are license free, but devices need to pass certification ensuring correct operation on the bands.
NR+ supports 3 topologies
NR+ Mesh network is based on a clustered tree In all these network topologies the NR+ assumes that a device, called FT node, manages the radio resource usage in the cluster or link it controls.
The Point-to-point and star networks enable dedicated links, with reserved capacity for scheduled transmissions. A leaf node, called PT node in NR+, can ask for certain resource reservation for it when it associates to the FT node. As this reservation can be done only for the next link, Mesh networking with multiple relaying links in the path relies on random access channel usage where the devices needing to communicate compete for the access window defined by the FT node. This increases the communication delays in Mesh.
The benefits of mesh networking network topology and operation are robustness for changes or errors and coverage extension.
Robustness is the result of the autonomous decisions of the devices. There is no single point of failure. NR+ also supports having multiple gateway devices, called Sinks, connecting the NR+ mesh network to Internet. All the devices autonomously measure parent FT device's radio link quality, and can switch to another FT device if a better link or shorter route to sink is available. Similarly, if a parent device is not acknowledging messages, or is not sending the periodic beacon advertisement, a device will look for alternative parents. The mesh network heals itself in error situations and changes in the network.
Each device added to the network may act as a FT device, extending the network coverage. The sinks are configured first and start advertising the network in beacon messages. Devices scan radio channels, and associate to the parent they hear advertising the network and cluster. Associated devices can act as FT devices, and extend the network by selecting a channel with least traffic and start forwarding the network advertisement beacons. This extends the coverage for each FT device that joins the network.
Overall description of the technology and protocol layers are provided in the DECT-2020 New Radio (NR); Part 1: Overview; Release 1 specification
Convergence layer offers identification and multiplexing of the traffic of different applications and services using the NR+ communications. CVG operates end-to-end between the NR+ network nodes. It is analogous to ports in UDP or TCP protocol. Like UDP and TCP, CVG offers both unrealiable and reliable messaging services, datagram or flow control service and segmentation and reassembly for messages.
Convergence layer provides security with encryption and integrity protection of messages end-to-end in the NR+ network.
Data link control layer is the message routing service for NR+ networks. Routing decisions are done in each device in the network, there is no central routing table. DLC routing operates in 3 modes:
Unicast, multicast and broadcast routing is supported.
As the NR+ network has internal routing and addresses it can operate without Internet Protocol routing services. Internet protocols can be carried in NR+ networks.
Medium access control main services are radio resource control and data transfer.
Radio resource control ensures the #Co-Existence with Classic DECT. To do this, FT devices periodically scan the radio channel they operate on, and map busy time slots measured to be in use assuming it is an on-going Classic DECT connection<re name="mac">. FT devices allocate the channel access time for the child devices on free time slots, preserving error free communications on the busy slots time slots. Channel access allocations are sent in beacon messages to all devices in the cluster.
MAC layer also provides link scope encryption and integrity protection.
Physical layer uses Cyclic prefix version of OFDM as the core technology. The technologies provide well-known behaviour in challenging radio conditions.
PHY layer provides error detection to higher layers, Forward error correction and HARQ with soft combining. Received messages with errors are combined with re-transmissions, making it possible to decode correct message even if the re-transmission too contained errors.
NR+ radio can operate on frequencies below 6 GHz. Standard defined speeds are up to gigabits per second. Radio implementations of course vary in the speeds achieved and frequencies supported.
NR+ defines message encryption and integrity protection in both CVG and MAC layers. Encryption and integrity protection use own separate keys on the 2 layers. The encryption is security is based on AES with key length of 128 bits. Integrity protection is based on same algorithm and key length NR+ does not define the key distribution mechanism "the number of key-pairs and the key distribution is outside of the scope of the present document" although it has been studied
The DECT technical committee has started specification work for Release 2 of the standard in June 2023. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications, usually known by the acronym DECT, is a standard used for creating cordless telephone systems and for IoT systems. It originated in Europe, where it is the common standard, replacing earlier cordless phone standards, such as 900 MHz CT1 and CT2. The IoT usage relies on the new DECT-2020 standard.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Beyond Europe, it has been adopted by Australia and most countries in Asia and South America. North American adoption was delayed by United States radio-frequency regulations. This forced development of a variation of DECT called DECT 6.0, using a slightly different frequency range, which makes these units incompatible with systems intended for use in other areas, even from the same manufacturer. DECT has almost completely replaced other standards in most countries where it is used, with the exception of North America.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "DECT was originally intended for fast roaming between networked base stations, and the first DECT product was Net wireless LAN. However, its most popular application is single-cell cordless phones connected to traditional analog telephone, primarily in home and small-office systems, though gateways with multi-cell DECT and/or DECT repeaters are also available in many private branch exchange (PBX) systems for medium and large businesses, produced by Panasonic, Mitel, Gigaset, Ascom, Cisco, Grandstream, Snom, Spectralink, and RTX. DECT can also be used for purposes other than cordless phones, such as baby monitors and industrial sensors. The ULE Alliance's DECT ULE and its \"HAN FUN\" protocol are variants tailored for home security, automation, and the internet of things (IoT).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The DECT standard includes the generic access profile (GAP), a common interoperability profile for simple telephone capabilities, which most manufacturers implement. GAP-conformance enables DECT handsets and bases from different manufacturers to interoperate at the most basic level of functionality, that of making and receiving calls. Japan uses its own DECT variant, J-DECT, which is supported by the DECT forum.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The New Generation DECT (NG-DECT) standard, marketed as CAT-iq by the DECT Forum, provides a common set of advanced capabilities for handsets and base stations. CAT-iq allows interchangeability across IP-DECT base stations and handsets from different manufacturers, while maintaining backward compatibility with GAP equipment. It also requires mandatory support for wideband audio.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "DECT-2020 New Radio, marketed as NR+ (New Radio plus), is a 5G data transmission protocol which meets ITU-R IMT-2020 requirements for ultra-reliable low-latency and massive machine-type communications, and can co-exist with earlier DECT devices.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The DECT standard was developed by ETSI in several phases, the first of which took place between 1988 and 1992 when the first round of standards were published. These were the ETS 300-175 series in nine parts defining the air interface, and ETS 300-176 defining how the units should be type approved. A technical report, ETR-178, was also published to explain the standard. Subsequent standards were developed and published by ETSI to cover interoperability profiles and standards for testing.",
"title": "Standards history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Named Digital European Cordless Telephone at its launch by CEPT in November 1987; its name was soon changed to Digital European Cordless Telecommunications, following a suggestion by Enrico Tosato of Italy, to reflect its broader range of application including data services. In 1995, due to its more global usage, the name was changed from European to Enhanced. DECT is recognized by the ITU as fulfilling the IMT-2000 requirements and thus qualifies as a 3G system. Within the IMT-2000 group of technologies, DECT is referred to as IMT-2000 Frequency Time (IMT-FT).",
"title": "Standards history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "DECT was developed by ETSI but has since been adopted by many countries all over the World. The original DECT frequency band (1880–1900 MHz) is used in all countries in Europe. Outside Europe, it is used in most of Asia, Australia and South America. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission in 2005 changed channelization and licensing costs in a nearby band (1920–1930 MHz, or 1.9 GHz), known as Unlicensed Personal Communications Services (UPCS), allowing DECT devices to be sold in the U.S. with only minimal changes. These channels are reserved exclusively for voice communication applications and therefore are less likely to experience interference from other wireless devices such as baby monitors and wireless networks.",
"title": "Standards history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The New Generation DECT (NG-DECT) standard was first published in 2007; it was developed by ETSI with guidance from the Home Gateway Initiative through the DECT Forum to support IP-DECT functions in home gateway/IP-PBX equipment. The ETSI TS 102 527 series comes in five parts and covers wideband audio and mandatory interoperability features between handsets and base stations. They were preceded by an explanatory technical report, ETSI TR 102 570. The DECT Forum maintains the CAT-iq trademark and certification program; CAT-iq wideband voice profile 1.0 and interoperability profiles 2.0/2.1 are based on the relevant parts of ETSI TS 102 527.",
"title": "Standards history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The DECT Ultra Low Energy (DECT ULE) standard was announced in January 2011 and the first commercial products were launched later that year by Dialog Semiconductor. The standard was created to enable home automation, security, healthcare and energy monitoring applications that are battery powered. Like DECT, DECT ULE standard uses the 1.9 GHz band, and so suffers less interference than Zigbee, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi from microwave ovens, which all operate in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM band. DECT ULE uses a simple star network topology, so many devices in the home are connected to a single control unit.",
"title": "Standards history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "A new low-complexity audio codec, LC3plus, has been added as an option to the 2019 revision of the DECT standard. This codec is designed for high-quality voice and music applications, and supports scalable narrowband, wideband, super wideband, and fullband coding, with sample rates of 8, 16, 24, 32 and 48 kHz and audio bandwidth of up to 20 kHz.",
"title": "Standards history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "DECT-2020 New Radio protocol was published in July 2020; it defines a new physical interface based on cyclic prefix orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CP-OFDM) capable of up to 1.2 Gbit/s transfer rate with QAM-1024 modulation. The updated standard supports multi-antenna MIMO and beamforming, FEC channel coding, and hybrid automatic repeat request. There are 17 radio channel frequencies in the range from 450 MHz up to 5,875 MHz, and channel bandwidths of 1,728, 3,456, or 6,912 kHz. Direct communication between end devices is possible with a mesh network topology. In October 2021, DECT-2020 NR was approved for the IMT-2020 standard, for use in Massive Machine Type Communications (MMTC) industry automation, Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC), and professional wireless audio applications with point-to-point or multicast communications; the proposal was fast-tracked by ITU-R following real-world evaluations. The new protocol will be marketed as NR+ (New Radio plus) by the DECT Forum. OFDMA and SC-FDMA modulations were also considered by the ESTI DECT committee.",
"title": "Standards history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "OpenD is an open-source framework designed to provide a complete software implementation of DECT ULE protocols on reference hardware from Dialog Semiconductor and DSP Group; the project is maintained by the DECT forum.",
"title": "Standards history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The DECT standard originally envisaged three major areas of application:",
"title": "Application"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Of these, the domestic application (cordless home telephones) has been extremely successful. The enterprise PABX market, albeit much smaller than the cordless home market, has been very successful as well, and all the major PABX vendors have advanced DECT access options available. The public access application did not succeed, since public cellular networks rapidly out-competed DECT by coupling their ubiquitous coverage with large increases in capacity and continuously falling costs. There has been only one major installation of DECT for public access: in early 1998 Telecom Italia launched a wide-area DECT network known as \"Fido\" after much regulatory delay, covering major cities in Italy. The service was promoted for only a few months and, having peaked at 142,000 subscribers, was shut down in 2001.",
"title": "Application"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "DECT has been used for wireless local loop as a substitute for copper pairs in the \"last mile\" in countries such as India and South Africa. By using directional antennas and sacrificing some traffic capacity, cell coverage could extend to over 10 kilometres (6.2 mi). One example is the corDECT standard.",
"title": "Application"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The first data application for DECT was Net wireless LAN system by Olivetti, launched in 1993 and discontinued in 1995. A precursor to Wi-Fi, Net was a micro-cellular data-only network with fast roaming between base stations and 520 kbit/s transmission rates.",
"title": "Application"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Data applications such as electronic cash terminals, traffic lights, and remote door openers also exist, but have been eclipsed by Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G which compete with DECT for both voice and data.",
"title": "Application"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "DECT 6.0 is a North American marketing term for DECT devices manufactured for the United States and Canada operating at 1.9 GHz. The \"6.0\" does not equate to a spectrum band; it was decided the term DECT 1.9 might have confused customers who equate larger numbers (such as the 2.4 and 5.8 in existing 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz cordless telephones) with later products. The term was coined by Rick Krupka, marketing director at Siemens and the DECT USA Working Group / Siemens ICM.",
"title": "DECT 6.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In North America, DECT suffers from deficiencies in comparison to DECT elsewhere, since the UPCS band (1920–1930 MHz) is not free from heavy interference. Bandwidth is half as wide as that used in Europe (1880–1900 MHz), the 4 mW average transmission power reduces range compared to the 10 mW permitted in Europe, and the commonplace lack of GAP compatibility among US vendors binds customers to a single vendor.",
"title": "DECT 6.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Before 1.9 GHz band was approved by the FCC in 2005, DECT could only operate in unlicensed 2.4 GHz and 900 MHz Region 2 ISM bands; some users of Uniden WDECT 2.4 GHz phones reported interoperability issues with Wi-Fi equipment.",
"title": "DECT 6.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "North-American DECT 6.0 products may not be used in Europe, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Africa, as they cause and suffer from interference with the local cellular networks. Use of such products is prohibited by European Telecommunications Authorities, PTA, Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka and the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa. European DECT products may not be used in the United States and Canada, as they likewise cause and suffer from interference with American and Canadian cellular networks, and use is prohibited by the Federal Communications Commission and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.",
"title": "DECT 6.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "DECT 8.0 HD is a marketing designation for North American DECT devices certified with CAT-iq 2.0 \"Multi Line\" profile.",
"title": "DECT 6.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "",
"title": "NG-DECT/CAT-iq"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Cordless Advanced Technology—internet and quality (CAT-iq) is a certification program maintained by the DECT Forum. It is based on New Generation DECT (NG-DECT) series of standards from ETSI.",
"title": "NG-DECT/CAT-iq"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "NG-DECT/CAT-iq contains features that expand the generic GAP profile with mandatory support for high quality wideband voice, enhanced security, calling party identification, multiple lines, parallel calls, and similar functions to facilitate VoIP calls through SIP and H.323 protocols.",
"title": "NG-DECT/CAT-iq"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "There are several CAT-iq profiles which define supported voice features:",
"title": "NG-DECT/CAT-iq"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "CAT-iq allows any DECT handset to communicate with a DECT base from a different vendor, providing full interoperability. CAT-iq 2.0/2.1 feature set is designed to support IP-DECT base stations found in office IP-PBX and home gateways.",
"title": "NG-DECT/CAT-iq"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The DECT standard specifies a means for a portable phone or \"Portable Part\" to access a fixed telephone network via radio. Base station or \"Fixed Part\" is used to terminate the radio link and provide access to a fixed line. A gateway is then used to connect calls to the fixed network, such as public switched telephone network (telephone jack), office PBX, ISDN, or VoIP over Ethernet connection.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Typical abilities of a domestic DECT Generic Access Profile (GAP) system include multiple handsets to one base station and one phone line socket. This allows several cordless telephones to be placed around the house, all operating from the same telephone jack. Additional handsets have a battery charger station that does not plug into the telephone system. Handsets can in many cases be used as intercoms, communicating between each other, and sometimes as walkie-talkies, intercommunicating without telephone line connection.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "DECT operates in the 1880–1900 MHz band and defines ten frequency channels from 1881.792 MHz to 1897.344 MHz with a band gap of 1728 kHz.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "DECT operates as a multicarrier frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) and time-division multiple access (TDMA) system. This means that the radio spectrum is divided into physical carriers in two dimensions: frequency and time. FDMA access provides up to 10 frequency channels, and TDMA access provides 24 time slots per every frame of 10 ms. DECT uses time-division duplex (TDD), which means that down- and uplink use the same frequency but different time slots. Thus a base station provides 12 duplex speech channels in each frame, with each time slot occupying any available channel – thus 10 × 12 = 120 carriers are available, each carrying 32 kbit/s.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "DECT also provides frequency-hopping spread spectrum over TDMA/TDD structure for ISM band applications. If frequency-hopping is avoided, each base station can provide up to 120 channels in the DECT spectrum before frequency reuse. Each timeslot can be assigned to a different channel in order to exploit advantages of frequency hopping and to avoid interference from other users in asynchronous fashion.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "DECT allows interference-free wireless operation to around 100 metres (110 yd) outdoors. Indoor performance is reduced when interior spaces are constrained by walls.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "DECT performs with fidelity in common congested domestic radio traffic situations. It is generally immune to interference from other DECT systems, Wi-Fi networks, video senders, Bluetooth technology, baby monitors and other wireless devices.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "ETSI standards documentation ETSI EN 300 175 parts 1–8 (DECT), ETSI EN 300 444 (GAP) and ETSI TS 102 527 parts 1–5 (NG-DECT) prescribe the following technical properties:",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The DECT physical layer uses FDMA/TDMA access with TDD.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Gaussian frequency-shift keying (GFSK) modulation is used: the binary one is coded with a frequency increase by 288 kHz, and the binary zero with frequency decrease of 288 kHz. With high quality connections, 2-, 4- or 8-level differential PSK modulation (DBPSK, DQPSK or D8PSK), which is similar to QAM-2, QAM-4 and QAM-8, can be used to transmit 1, 2, or 3 bits per each symbol. QAM-16 and QAM-64 modulations with 4 and 6 bits per symbol can be used for user data (B-field) only, with resulting transmission speeds of up to 5,068 Mbit/s.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "DECT provides dynamic channel selection and assignment; the choice of transmission frequency and time slot is always made by the mobile terminal. In case of interference in the selected frequency channel, the mobile terminal (possibly from suggestion by the base station) can initiate either intracell handover, selecting another channel/transmitter on the same base, or intercell handover, selecting a different base station altogether. For this purpose, DECT devices scan all idle channels at regular 30 s intervals to generate a received signal strength indication (RSSI) list. When a new channel is required, the mobile terminal (PP) or base station (FP) selects a channel with the minimum interference from the RSSI list.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The maximum allowed power for portable equipment as well as base stations is 250 mW. A portable device radiates an average of about 10 mW during a call as it is only using one of 24 time slots to transmit. In Europe, the power limit was expressed as effective radiated power (ERP), rather than the more commonly used equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP), permitting the use of high-gain directional antennas to produce much higher EIRP and hence long ranges.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The DECT media access control layer controls the physical layer and provides connection oriented, connectionless and broadcast services to the higher layers.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The DECT data link layer uses Link Access Protocol Control (LAPC), a specially designed variant of the ISDN data link protocol called LAPD. They are based on HDLC.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "GFSK modulation uses a bit rate of 1152 kbit/s, with a frame of 10 ms (11520 bits) which contains 24 time slots. Each slots contains 480 bits, some of which are reserved for physical packets and the rest is guard space. Slots 0–11 are always used for downlink (FP to PP) and slots 12–23 are used for uplink (PP to FP).",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "There are several combinations of slots and corresponding types of physical packets with GFSK modulation:",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The 420/424 bits of a GFSK basic packet (P32) contain the following fields:",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The resulting full data rate is 32 kbit/s, available in both directions.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The DECT network layer always contains the following protocol entities:",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Optionally it may also contain others:",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "All these communicate through a Link Control Entity (LCE).",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The call control protocol is derived from ISDN DSS1, which is a Q.931-derived protocol. Many DECT-specific changes have been made.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The mobility management protocol includes the management of identities, authentication, location updating, on-air subscription and key allocation. It includes many elements similar to the GSM protocol, but also includes elements unique to DECT.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Unlike the GSM protocol, the DECT network specifications do not define cross-linkages between the operation of the entities (for example, Mobility Management and Call Control). The architecture presumes that such linkages will be designed into the interworking unit that connects the DECT access network to whatever mobility-enabled fixed network is involved. By keeping the entities separate, the handset is capable of responding to any combination of entity traffic, and this creates great flexibility in fixed network design without breaking full interoperability.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "DECT GAP is an interoperability profile for DECT. The intent is that two different products from different manufacturers that both conform not only to the DECT standard, but also to the GAP profile defined within the DECT standard, are able to interoperate for basic calling. The DECT standard includes full testing suites for GAP, and GAP products on the market from different manufacturers are in practice interoperable for the basic functions.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The DECT media access control layer includes authentication of handsets to the base station using the DECT Standard Authentication Algorithm (DSAA). When registering the handset on the base, both record a shared 128-bit Unique Authentication Key (UAK). The base can request authentication by sending two random numbers to the handset, which calculates the response using the shared 128-bit key. The handset can also request authentication by sending a 64-bit random number to the base, which chooses a second random number, calculates the response using the shared key, and sends it back with the second random number.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The standard also provides encryption services with the DECT Standard Cipher (DSC). The encryption is fairly weak, using a 35-bit initialization vector and encrypting the voice stream with 64-bit encryption. While most of the DECT standard is publicly available, the part describing the DECT Standard Cipher was only available under a non-disclosure agreement to the phones' manufacturers from ETSI.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The properties of the DECT protocol make it hard to intercept a frame, modify it and send it later again, as DECT frames are based on time-division multiplexing and need to be transmitted at a specific point in time. Unfortunately very few DECT devices on the market implemented authentication and encryption procedures – and even when encryption was used by the phone, it was possible to implement a man-in-the-middle attack impersonating a DECT base station and revert to unencrypted mode – which allows calls to be listened to, recorded, and re-routed to a different destination.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "After an unverified report of a successful attack in 2002, members of the deDECTed.org project actually did reverse engineer the DECT Standard Cipher in 2008, and as of 2010 there has been a viable attack on it that can recover the key.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In 2012, an improved authentication algorithm, the DECT Standard Authentication Algorithm 2 (DSAA2), and improved version of the encryption algorithm, the DECT Standard Cipher 2 (DSC2), both based on AES 128-bit encryption, were included as optional in the NG-DECT/CAT-iq suite.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "DECT Forum also launched the DECT Security certification program which mandates the use of previously optional security features in the GAP profile, such as early encryption and base authentication.",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Various access profiles have been defined in the DECT standard:",
"title": "Technical features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Other interoperability profiles exist in the DECT suite of standards, and in particular the DPRS (DECT Packet Radio Services) bring together a number of prior interoperability profiles for the use of DECT as a wireless LAN and wireless internet access service. With good range (up to 200 metres (660 ft) indoors and 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) using directional antennae outdoors), dedicated spectrum, high interference immunity, open interoperability and data speeds of around 500 kbit/s, DECT appeared at one time to be a superior alternative to Wi-Fi. The protocol capabilities built into the DECT networking protocol standards were particularly good at supporting fast roaming in the public space, between hotspots operated by competing but connected providers. The first DECT product to reach the market, Olivetti's Net, was a wireless LAN, and German firms Dosch & Amand and Hoeft & Wessel built niche businesses on the supply of data transmission systems based on DECT.",
"title": "DECT for data networks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "However, the timing of the availability of DECT, in the mid-1990s, was too early to find wide application for wireless data outside niche industrial applications. Whilst contemporary providers of Wi-Fi struggled with the same issues, providers of DECT retreated to the more immediately lucrative market for cordless telephones. A key weakness was also the inaccessibility of the U.S. market, due to FCC spectrum restrictions at that time. By the time mass applications for wireless Internet had emerged, and the U.S. had opened up to DECT, well into the new century, the industry had moved far ahead in terms of performance and DECT's time as a technically competitive wireless data transport had passed.",
"title": "DECT for data networks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "DECT uses UHF radio, similar to mobile phones, baby monitors, Wi-Fi, and other cordless telephone technologies.",
"title": "Health and safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In North America, the 4 mW average transmission power reduces range compared to the 10 mW permitted in Europe.",
"title": "Health and safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The UK Health Protection Agency (HPA) claims that due to a mobile phone's adaptive power ability, a European DECT cordless phone's radiation could actually exceed the radiation of a mobile phone. A European DECT cordless phone's radiation has an average output power of 10 mW but is in the form of 100 bursts per second of 250 mW, a strength comparable to some mobile phones.",
"title": "Health and safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Most studies have been unable to demonstrate any link to health effects, or have been inconclusive. Electromagnetic fields may have an effect on protein expression in laboratory settings but have not yet been demonstrated to have clinically significant effects in real-world settings. The World Health Organization has issued a statement on medical effects of mobile phones which acknowledges that the longer term effects (over several decades) require further research.",
"title": "Health and safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "DECT-2020 also called NR+ is a new radio standard by ETSI for the DECT bands worldwide. The standard was designed to meet a subset of the ITU IMT-2020 5G requirements that are applicable to IOT and Industrial internet of things. DECT-2020 is compliant with the requirements for Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications URLLC and massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) of IMT-2020.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "DECT-2020 NR has new capabilities compared to DECT and DECT Evolution:",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The DECT-2020 standard has been designed to co-exist in the DECT radio band with existing DECT deployments. It uses the same Time Division slot timing and Frequency Division center frequencies and uses pre-transmit scanning to minimize co-channel interference.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "DECT NR+ (called DECT-2020 NR in ETSI) primarily focuses on addressing the needs of local area deployments for two use case areas: massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) and Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) as defined for 5G networks application areas. The release 1 of the standard targets several applications within these use cases, including Smart Metering and Smart grid, Industrial internet of things, Building automation, and Professional audio",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "DECT NR+ decentralized and autonomous networking capability was specifically designed for Metering and Smart Grid applications, and mesh networking application in general. The technology can scale up to millions of devices within a single network.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The low latency communications URLLC is suitable for various use cases of Industry 4.0. These applications encompass robotics, monitoring and predictive maintenance and others. NR+ supports these use cases through its low latency and high reliability, dedicated frequency band, and high density and scalability",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Regarding Professional Audio and PMSE applications, DECT NR+ offers the necessary features of low latency and high reliability. This makes it suitable for applications requiring real-time audio transmission and performance as required by professional audio systems.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "DECT NR+ technology is specified by DECT committee in the ETSI. The specifications for NR+ are called DECT-2020 in ETSI.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "An important design criteria for NR+ was to co-exist with Classic DECT communications. This allows NR+ to use the DECT reserved radio bands 1, 2 and 9, in the frequency range of 1880-1930 MHz. DECT reserved radio bands are license free, but devices need to pass certification ensuring correct operation on the bands.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "NR+ supports 3 topologies",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "NR+ Mesh network is based on a clustered tree In all these network topologies the NR+ assumes that a device, called FT node, manages the radio resource usage in the cluster or link it controls.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The Point-to-point and star networks enable dedicated links, with reserved capacity for scheduled transmissions. A leaf node, called PT node in NR+, can ask for certain resource reservation for it when it associates to the FT node. As this reservation can be done only for the next link, Mesh networking with multiple relaying links in the path relies on random access channel usage where the devices needing to communicate compete for the access window defined by the FT node. This increases the communication delays in Mesh.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The benefits of mesh networking network topology and operation are robustness for changes or errors and coverage extension.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Robustness is the result of the autonomous decisions of the devices. There is no single point of failure. NR+ also supports having multiple gateway devices, called Sinks, connecting the NR+ mesh network to Internet. All the devices autonomously measure parent FT device's radio link quality, and can switch to another FT device if a better link or shorter route to sink is available. Similarly, if a parent device is not acknowledging messages, or is not sending the periodic beacon advertisement, a device will look for alternative parents. The mesh network heals itself in error situations and changes in the network.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Each device added to the network may act as a FT device, extending the network coverage. The sinks are configured first and start advertising the network in beacon messages. Devices scan radio channels, and associate to the parent they hear advertising the network and cluster. Associated devices can act as FT devices, and extend the network by selecting a channel with least traffic and start forwarding the network advertisement beacons. This extends the coverage for each FT device that joins the network.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Overall description of the technology and protocol layers are provided in the DECT-2020 New Radio (NR); Part 1: Overview; Release 1 specification",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Convergence layer offers identification and multiplexing of the traffic of different applications and services using the NR+ communications. CVG operates end-to-end between the NR+ network nodes. It is analogous to ports in UDP or TCP protocol. Like UDP and TCP, CVG offers both unrealiable and reliable messaging services, datagram or flow control service and segmentation and reassembly for messages.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Convergence layer provides security with encryption and integrity protection of messages end-to-end in the NR+ network.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Data link control layer is the message routing service for NR+ networks. Routing decisions are done in each device in the network, there is no central routing table. DLC routing operates in 3 modes:",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Unicast, multicast and broadcast routing is supported.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "As the NR+ network has internal routing and addresses it can operate without Internet Protocol routing services. Internet protocols can be carried in NR+ networks.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Medium access control main services are radio resource control and data transfer.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Radio resource control ensures the #Co-Existence with Classic DECT. To do this, FT devices periodically scan the radio channel they operate on, and map busy time slots measured to be in use assuming it is an on-going Classic DECT connection<re name=\"mac\">. FT devices allocate the channel access time for the child devices on free time slots, preserving error free communications on the busy slots time slots. Channel access allocations are sent in beacon messages to all devices in the cluster.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "MAC layer also provides link scope encryption and integrity protection.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Physical layer uses Cyclic prefix version of OFDM as the core technology. The technologies provide well-known behaviour in challenging radio conditions.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "PHY layer provides error detection to higher layers, Forward error correction and HARQ with soft combining. Received messages with errors are combined with re-transmissions, making it possible to decode correct message even if the re-transmission too contained errors.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "NR+ radio can operate on frequencies below 6 GHz. Standard defined speeds are up to gigabits per second. Radio implementations of course vary in the speeds achieved and frequencies supported.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "NR+ defines message encryption and integrity protection in both CVG and MAC layers. Encryption and integrity protection use own separate keys on the 2 layers. The encryption is security is based on AES with key length of 128 bits. Integrity protection is based on same algorithm and key length NR+ does not define the key distribution mechanism \"the number of key-pairs and the key distribution is outside of the scope of the present document\" although it has been studied",
"title": "DECT-2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The DECT technical committee has started specification work for Release 2 of the standard in June 2023.",
"title": "DECT-2020"
}
]
| Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications, usually known by the acronym DECT, is a standard used for creating cordless telephone systems and for IoT systems. It originated in Europe, where it is the common standard, replacing earlier cordless phone standards, such as 900 MHz CT1 and CT2. The IoT usage relies on the new DECT-2020 standard. Beyond Europe, it has been adopted by Australia and most countries in Asia and South America. North American adoption was delayed by United States radio-frequency regulations. This forced development of a variation of DECT called DECT 6.0, using a slightly different frequency range, which makes these units incompatible with systems intended for use in other areas, even from the same manufacturer. DECT has almost completely replaced other standards in most countries where it is used, with the exception of North America. DECT was originally intended for fast roaming between networked base stations, and the first DECT product was Net3 wireless LAN. However, its most popular application is single-cell cordless phones connected to traditional analog telephone, primarily in home and small-office systems, though gateways with multi-cell DECT and/or DECT repeaters are also available in many private branch exchange (PBX) systems for medium and large businesses, produced by Panasonic, Mitel, Gigaset, Ascom, Cisco, Grandstream, Snom, Spectralink, and RTX. DECT can also be used for purposes other than cordless phones, such as baby monitors and industrial sensors. The ULE Alliance's DECT ULE and its "HAN FUN" protocol are variants tailored for home security, automation, and the internet of things (IoT). The DECT standard includes the generic access profile (GAP), a common interoperability profile for simple telephone capabilities, which most manufacturers implement. GAP-conformance enables DECT handsets and bases from different manufacturers to interoperate at the most basic level of functionality, that of making and receiving calls. Japan uses its own DECT variant, J-DECT, which is supported by the DECT forum. The New Generation DECT (NG-DECT) standard, marketed as CAT-iq by the DECT Forum, provides a common set of advanced capabilities for handsets and base stations. CAT-iq allows interchangeability across IP-DECT base stations and handsets from different manufacturers, while maintaining backward compatibility with GAP equipment. It also requires mandatory support for wideband audio. DECT-2020 New Radio, marketed as NR+, is a 5G data transmission protocol which meets ITU-R IMT-2020 requirements for ultra-reliable low-latency and massive machine-type communications, and can co-exist with earlier DECT devices. | 2001-10-19T20:42:41Z | 2023-12-21T15:22:00Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_enhanced_cordless_telecommunications |
8,676 | Dhyana | Dhyana may refer to: | [
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| Dhyana may refer to: | 2001-10-21T10:12:20Z | 2023-10-31T07:07:59Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhyana |
8,677 | December 30 | December 30 is the 364th day of the year (365th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; one day remains until the end of the year. | [
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"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "December 30 is the 364th day of the year (365th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; one day remains until the end of the year.",
"title": ""
}
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| December 30 is the 364th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; one day remains until the end of the year. | 2001-10-21T16:11:05Z | 2023-12-31T22:27:21Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_30 |
8,678 | Donn | In Irish mythology, Donn ("the dark one", from Proto-Celtic: *Dhuosnos) is an ancestor of the Gaels and is believed to have been a god of the dead. Donn is said to dwell in Tech Duinn (the "house of Donn" or "house of the dark one"), where the souls of the dead gather. He may have originally been an aspect of the Dagda. Folklore about Donn survived into the modern era in parts of Ireland, in which he is said to be a phantom horseman riding a white horse.
A 9th-century poem says that Donn's dying wish was that all his descendants would gather at Donn's house or Tech Duinn (modern Irish Teach Duinn) after death: "To me, to my house, you shall all come after your deaths". The 10th-century tale Airne Fíngein ("Fíngen's Vigil") says that Tech Duinn is where the souls of the dead gather. In their translation of Acallam na Senórach, Ann Dooley and Harry Roe commented that "to go to the House of Donn in Irish tradition means to die". This suggests that the pagan Gaels saw Donn as their ancestor and believed they would go to his abode when they died. Tech Duinn may have been thought of as a place where the souls of the dead gathered before travelling to their final destination in the otherworld, or before being reincarnated. According to Julius Caesar, the Gauls also claimed descent from a god whom he likened to Dīs Pater, the Roman god of the underworld.
The Christian writers who recorded the Lebor Gabála Érenn made Donn into Éber Donn one of the mythical Milesian ancestors of the Gaels. The Milesians invade Ireland and take it from the Tuatha Dé Danann. During their invasion, Donn slights Ériu, one of the eponymous goddesses of Ireland, and he drowns in a shipwreck off the southwest coast. Donn is then buried on a rocky island which becomes known as Tech Duinn. In the literature, Tech Duinn is said to lie at or beyond the western edge of Ireland. Tech Duinn is commonly identified with Bull Rock, an islet off the western tip of the Beara Peninsula. Bull Rock resembles a dolmen or portal tomb as it has a natural tunnel through it, allowing the sea to pass under it as if through a portal. In Ireland there was a belief that the souls of the dead departed westwards over the sea with the setting sun.
The Metrical Dindshenchas entry for “Tech Duinn” recounts the tale:
Through the incantations of the druids a storm came upon them, and the ship wherein Donn was foundered. ‘Let his body be carried to yonder high rock’, says Amairgen: ‘his folk shall come to this spot.’ So hence it is called Tech Duinn: and for this cause, according to the heathen, the souls of sinners visit Tech Duinn before they go to hell, and give their blessing, ere they go, to the soul of Donn. But as for the righteous soul of a penitent, it beholds the place from afar, and is not borne astray. Such, at least, is the belief of the heathen. – Translation by E. Gwynn
In the tale Togail Bruidne Dá Derga ("The Destruction of Dá Derga's Hostel"), king Conaire Mór meets his death in Bruiden Dá Derga (the "great hall or hostel of the red god"). On his way to the hostel, Conaire meets three red men riding red horses from the otherworld. They foretell his doom and tell him "we ride the horses of Donn ... although we are alive, we are dead". Donn is called "king of the dead" in the tale. It has been suggested that Dá Derga and Dá Derga's Hostel is another name for Donn and his abode. It may be a name for the death god in the context of violent death or sacrifice, hence the name "red god".
In the tale Tochmarc Treblainne ("The Wooing of Treblann"), the otherworld woman Treblann elopes with the mortal man Fráech, who sends her to safety in Tech Duinn while he embarks on a quest. In this tale, Donn is said to be the son or foster-son of the Dagda. Dáithí Ó hÓgáin notes similarities between the two and suggests that Donn was originally an epithet of the Dagda.
Donn is the father of Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, whom he gives to the god of youth, Aengus mac Óg, to raise.
Folklore about Donn survived into the early modern era. In County Limerick, a Donn Fírinne was said to dwell in the sacred hill of Cnoc Fírinne (Knockfeerina or Knockfierna), and folklore told of people being brought into the hill to be with Donn when they died. He was said to appear as a phantom horseman riding a white horse. He was also associated with the weather: thunder and lightning meant that Donn Fírinne was riding his horse through the sky, and if clouds were over the hill it meant that he was gathering them together to make rain. This imagery may have been influenced by the lore of Odin and his horse Sleipnir from the Norse settlers in Limerick. Donn Fírinne was also said to appear and warn anyone who interfered with his hill. On the west coast of County Clare there was a Donn na Duimhche or Donn Dumhach ("Donn of the dunes"), who "was also often encountered as a night-horseman". In later folklore, the name 'Donn' came to mean an 'otherworld lord' in general.
In modern Irish, donn is the word for the colour brown. | [
{
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"text": "In Irish mythology, Donn (\"the dark one\", from Proto-Celtic: *Dhuosnos) is an ancestor of the Gaels and is believed to have been a god of the dead. Donn is said to dwell in Tech Duinn (the \"house of Donn\" or \"house of the dark one\"), where the souls of the dead gather. He may have originally been an aspect of the Dagda. Folklore about Donn survived into the modern era in parts of Ireland, in which he is said to be a phantom horseman riding a white horse.",
"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "A 9th-century poem says that Donn's dying wish was that all his descendants would gather at Donn's house or Tech Duinn (modern Irish Teach Duinn) after death: \"To me, to my house, you shall all come after your deaths\". The 10th-century tale Airne Fíngein (\"Fíngen's Vigil\") says that Tech Duinn is where the souls of the dead gather. In their translation of Acallam na Senórach, Ann Dooley and Harry Roe commented that \"to go to the House of Donn in Irish tradition means to die\". This suggests that the pagan Gaels saw Donn as their ancestor and believed they would go to his abode when they died. Tech Duinn may have been thought of as a place where the souls of the dead gathered before travelling to their final destination in the otherworld, or before being reincarnated. According to Julius Caesar, the Gauls also claimed descent from a god whom he likened to Dīs Pater, the Roman god of the underworld.",
"title": "Early literary sources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Christian writers who recorded the Lebor Gabála Érenn made Donn into Éber Donn one of the mythical Milesian ancestors of the Gaels. The Milesians invade Ireland and take it from the Tuatha Dé Danann. During their invasion, Donn slights Ériu, one of the eponymous goddesses of Ireland, and he drowns in a shipwreck off the southwest coast. Donn is then buried on a rocky island which becomes known as Tech Duinn. In the literature, Tech Duinn is said to lie at or beyond the western edge of Ireland. Tech Duinn is commonly identified with Bull Rock, an islet off the western tip of the Beara Peninsula. Bull Rock resembles a dolmen or portal tomb as it has a natural tunnel through it, allowing the sea to pass under it as if through a portal. In Ireland there was a belief that the souls of the dead departed westwards over the sea with the setting sun.",
"title": "Early literary sources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Metrical Dindshenchas entry for “Tech Duinn” recounts the tale:",
"title": "Early literary sources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Through the incantations of the druids a storm came upon them, and the ship wherein Donn was foundered. ‘Let his body be carried to yonder high rock’, says Amairgen: ‘his folk shall come to this spot.’ So hence it is called Tech Duinn: and for this cause, according to the heathen, the souls of sinners visit Tech Duinn before they go to hell, and give their blessing, ere they go, to the soul of Donn. But as for the righteous soul of a penitent, it beholds the place from afar, and is not borne astray. Such, at least, is the belief of the heathen. – Translation by E. Gwynn",
"title": "Early literary sources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the tale Togail Bruidne Dá Derga (\"The Destruction of Dá Derga's Hostel\"), king Conaire Mór meets his death in Bruiden Dá Derga (the \"great hall or hostel of the red god\"). On his way to the hostel, Conaire meets three red men riding red horses from the otherworld. They foretell his doom and tell him \"we ride the horses of Donn ... although we are alive, we are dead\". Donn is called \"king of the dead\" in the tale. It has been suggested that Dá Derga and Dá Derga's Hostel is another name for Donn and his abode. It may be a name for the death god in the context of violent death or sacrifice, hence the name \"red god\".",
"title": "Early literary sources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In the tale Tochmarc Treblainne (\"The Wooing of Treblann\"), the otherworld woman Treblann elopes with the mortal man Fráech, who sends her to safety in Tech Duinn while he embarks on a quest. In this tale, Donn is said to be the son or foster-son of the Dagda. Dáithí Ó hÓgáin notes similarities between the two and suggests that Donn was originally an epithet of the Dagda.",
"title": "Early literary sources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Donn is the father of Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, whom he gives to the god of youth, Aengus mac Óg, to raise.",
"title": "Early literary sources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Folklore about Donn survived into the early modern era. In County Limerick, a Donn Fírinne was said to dwell in the sacred hill of Cnoc Fírinne (Knockfeerina or Knockfierna), and folklore told of people being brought into the hill to be with Donn when they died. He was said to appear as a phantom horseman riding a white horse. He was also associated with the weather: thunder and lightning meant that Donn Fírinne was riding his horse through the sky, and if clouds were over the hill it meant that he was gathering them together to make rain. This imagery may have been influenced by the lore of Odin and his horse Sleipnir from the Norse settlers in Limerick. Donn Fírinne was also said to appear and warn anyone who interfered with his hill. On the west coast of County Clare there was a Donn na Duimhche or Donn Dumhach (\"Donn of the dunes\"), who \"was also often encountered as a night-horseman\". In later folklore, the name 'Donn' came to mean an 'otherworld lord' in general.",
"title": "Modern sources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In modern Irish, donn is the word for the colour brown.",
"title": "Modern sources"
}
]
| In Irish mythology, Donn is an ancestor of the Gaels and is believed to have been a god of the dead. Donn is said to dwell in Tech Duinn, where the souls of the dead gather. He may have originally been an aspect of the Dagda. Folklore about Donn survived into the modern era in parts of Ireland, in which he is said to be a phantom horseman riding a white horse. | 2001-10-21T19:30:56Z | 2023-10-18T10:43:54Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donn |
8,681 | Data compression ratio | Data compression ratio, also known as compression power, is a measurement of the relative reduction in size of data representation produced by a data compression algorithm. It is typically expressed as the division of uncompressed size by compressed size.
Data compression ratio is defined as the ratio between the uncompressed size and compressed size:
Thus, a representation that compresses a file's storage size from 10 MB to 2 MB has a compression ratio of 10/2 = 5, often notated as an explicit ratio, 5:1 (read "five" to "one"), or as an implicit ratio, 5/1. This formulation applies equally for compression, where the uncompressed size is that of the original; and for decompression, where the uncompressed size is that of the reproduction.
Sometimes the space saving is given instead, which is defined as the reduction in size relative to the uncompressed size:
Thus, a representation that compresses the storage size of a file from 10MB to 2MB yields a space saving of 1 - 2/10 = 0.8, often notated as a percentage, 80%.
For signals of indefinite size, such as streaming audio and video, the compression ratio is defined in terms of uncompressed and compressed data rates instead of data sizes:
and instead of space saving, one speaks of data-rate saving, which is defined as the data-rate reduction relative to the uncompressed data rate:
For example, uncompressed songs in CD format have a data rate of 16 bits/channel x 2 channels x 44.1 kHz ≅ 1.4 Mbit/s, whereas AAC files on an iPod are typically compressed to 128 kbit/s, yielding a compression ratio of 10.9, for a data-rate saving of 0.91, or 91%.
When the uncompressed data rate is known, the compression ratio can be inferred from the compressed data rate.
Lossless compression of digitized data such as video, digitized film, and audio preserves all the information, but it does not generally achieve compression ratio much better than 2:1 because of the intrinsic entropy of the data. Compression algorithms which provide higher ratios either incur very large overheads or work only for specific data sequences (e.g. compressing a file with mostly zeros). In contrast, lossy compression (e.g. JPEG for images, or MP3 and Opus for audio) can achieve much higher compression ratios at the cost of a decrease in quality, such as Bluetooth audio streaming, as visual or audio compression artifacts from loss of important information are introduced. A compression ratio of at least 50:1 is needed to get 1080i video into a 20 Mbit/s MPEG transport stream.
The data compression ratio can serve as a measure of the complexity of a data set or signal. In particular it is used to approximate the algorithmic complexity. It is also used to see how much of a file is able to be compressed without increasing its original size. | [
{
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"text": "Data compression ratio, also known as compression power, is a measurement of the relative reduction in size of data representation produced by a data compression algorithm. It is typically expressed as the division of uncompressed size by compressed size.",
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},
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"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Data compression ratio is defined as the ratio between the uncompressed size and compressed size:",
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"text": "Thus, a representation that compresses a file's storage size from 10 MB to 2 MB has a compression ratio of 10/2 = 5, often notated as an explicit ratio, 5:1 (read \"five\" to \"one\"), or as an implicit ratio, 5/1. This formulation applies equally for compression, where the uncompressed size is that of the original; and for decompression, where the uncompressed size is that of the reproduction.",
"title": "Definition"
},
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"text": "Sometimes the space saving is given instead, which is defined as the reduction in size relative to the uncompressed size:",
"title": "Definition"
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"text": "Thus, a representation that compresses the storage size of a file from 10MB to 2MB yields a space saving of 1 - 2/10 = 0.8, often notated as a percentage, 80%.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "For signals of indefinite size, such as streaming audio and video, the compression ratio is defined in terms of uncompressed and compressed data rates instead of data sizes:",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
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"text": "and instead of space saving, one speaks of data-rate saving, which is defined as the data-rate reduction relative to the uncompressed data rate:",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "For example, uncompressed songs in CD format have a data rate of 16 bits/channel x 2 channels x 44.1 kHz ≅ 1.4 Mbit/s, whereas AAC files on an iPod are typically compressed to 128 kbit/s, yielding a compression ratio of 10.9, for a data-rate saving of 0.91, or 91%.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "When the uncompressed data rate is known, the compression ratio can be inferred from the compressed data rate.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Lossless compression of digitized data such as video, digitized film, and audio preserves all the information, but it does not generally achieve compression ratio much better than 2:1 because of the intrinsic entropy of the data. Compression algorithms which provide higher ratios either incur very large overheads or work only for specific data sequences (e.g. compressing a file with mostly zeros). In contrast, lossy compression (e.g. JPEG for images, or MP3 and Opus for audio) can achieve much higher compression ratios at the cost of a decrease in quality, such as Bluetooth audio streaming, as visual or audio compression artifacts from loss of important information are introduced. A compression ratio of at least 50:1 is needed to get 1080i video into a 20 Mbit/s MPEG transport stream.",
"title": "Lossless vs. Lossy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The data compression ratio can serve as a measure of the complexity of a data set or signal. In particular it is used to approximate the algorithmic complexity. It is also used to see how much of a file is able to be compressed without increasing its original size.",
"title": "Uses"
}
]
| Data compression ratio, also known as compression power, is a measurement of the relative reduction in size of data representation produced by a data compression algorithm. It is typically expressed as the division of uncompressed size by compressed size. | 2001-10-22T12:49:40Z | 2023-11-14T11:04:21Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression_ratio |
8,683 | Disc jockey | A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at nightclubs or music festivals), mobile DJs (who are hired to work at public and private events such as weddings, parties, or festivals), and turntablists (who use record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records). Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
The term "disc jockey" was ostensibly coined by radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell in 1935 to describe the radio work of Martin Block. The phrase first appeared in print in a 1941 Variety magazine. Originally, the word "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to phonograph or gramophone records and was used to describe radio personalities who introduced them on the air.
"DJ" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs typically perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or an online radio audience. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over. Some DJs adopt the title "DJ" as part of their names (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow and DJ Yoda). Professional DJs often specialize in a specific genre of music, such as techno, house or hip hop music. DJs typically have extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of vintage, rare or obscure tracks and records.
Club DJs, commonly referred to as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, clubs, music festivals, corporate and private events. Typically, club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques to produce a non-stopping flow of music. Mixing began with hip hop in the 1970s and would subsequently expand to other genres in especially (but not exclusively) dance music.
One key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who mostly plays and mixes one specific music genre is often given the title of that genre; for example, a DJ who plays hip hop music is called a hip hop DJ, a DJ who plays house music is a house DJ, a DJ who plays techno is called a techno DJ, and so on.
The quality of a DJ performance (often called a DJ mix or DJ set) consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well the DJ can operate the equipment and produce smooth transitions between two or more recordings and a playlist; and the ability of a DJ to select the most suitable recordings, also known as "reading the crowd".
DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were members of a block party at South Bronx from 1973 onwards. Kool Herc played records such as James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun", Booker T. & the M.G.'s' "Melting Pot", Incredible Bongo Band's "Bongo Rock" and "Apache", and UK rock band Babe Ruth's "The Mexican". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.
DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the "break". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called "The Merry-Go-Round", a technique by which the DJ switched from break to break at the height of the party. This technique is specifically called "The Merry-Go-Round" because according to Herc, it takes one "back and forth with no slack."
Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcasts on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations.
In Jamaican music, a deejay (DJ) is a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and "toasts" (raps) to an instrumental riddim. Deejays are not to be confused with DJs from other music genres like hip hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays whose style is nearer to singing are sometimes called singjays.
The term deejay originated in the 1960s and 1970s when performers such as U-Roy and King Stitt toasted over the instrumental (dub music) versions of popular records. These versions were often released on the flip side to the song's 45 record. This gave the deejays the chance to create on-the-fly lyrics to the music. Big Youth, and I-Roy were famous deejays in Jamaica.
Turntablists, also called battle DJs, use turntables and DJ mixer to manipulate recorded sounds to produce new music. In essence, they use DJ equipment as a musical instrument. Perhaps the best-known turntablist technique is scratching. Turntablists often participate in DJ contests like DMC World DJ Championships and Red Bull 3Style.
A resident DJ performs at a venue on a regular basis or permanently. They would perform regularly (typically under an agreement) in a particular discotheque, a particular club, a particular event, or a particular broadcasting station. Residents have a decisive influence on the club or a series of events. Per agreement with the management or company, the DJ would have to perform under agreed times and dates. Typically, DJs perform as residents for two or three times in a week, for example, on Friday and Saturday. DJs who make a steady income from a venue are also considered resident DJs.
Examples for resident DJs are:
In Western popular music, even though they are relatively few women DJs and turntablists, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, they are given much less representation than men DJs. Part of this may stem from a generally low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "... few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are [sic] male, and although there are women producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall men's domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare.
In 2007, Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle", stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010, Rebekah Farrugia said "the male-centricity of electronic dance music (EDM) culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia". Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She says:
an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field – is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to [unreasonably] blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles.
Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about their dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations". Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent women DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. Two years later, another article brings out a list with world-famous women DJs including Nastia, tINY, Nora En Pure, Anja Schneider, Peggy Gou, Maya Jane Coles, and Eli & Fur.
American DJ The Black Madonna has been called "one of the world's most exciting turntablists." Her stage name The Black Madonna is a tribute to her mother's favorite Catholic saint. In 2018, The Black Madonna played herself as an in-residence DJ for the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, as part of the After Hours DLC.
There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer [sic] talent."
In Japan, the newest Bushiroad franchise: D4DJ focuses on an all-women DJ unit.
DJs use equipment that enables them to play multiple sources of recorded music and mix them to create seamless transitions and unique arrangements of songs. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to "listen" to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, and align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto-sync technology is not being used. This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the currently playing music. DJs may align the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together to help create a smooth transition from one song to another. Other equipment may include a microphone, effects units such as reverb, and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
As music technology has progressed, DJs have adopted different types of equipment to play and mix music, all of which are still commonly used. Traditionally, DJs used two turntables plugged into a DJ mixer to mix music on vinyl records. As compact discs became popular media for publishing music, specialized high-quality CD players known as CDJs were developed for DJs. CDJs can take the place of turntables or be used together with turntables. Many CDJs can now play digital music files from USB flash drives or SD cards in addition to CDs. With the spread of portable laptops, tablets, and smartphone computers, DJs began using software together with specialized sound cards and DJ controller hardware. DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer or be used instead of a hardware mixer.
Turntables allow DJs to play vinyl records. By adjusting the playback speed of the turntable, either by adjusting the speed knob or by manipulating the platter (e.g., by slowing down the platter by putting a finger gently along the side), DJs can match the tempos of different records so their rhythms can be played together at the same time without clashing or make a smooth, seamless transition from one song to another. This technique is known as beatmatching. DJs typically replace the rubber mat on turntables that keep the record moving in sync with the turntable with a slipmat that facilitates manipulating the playback of the record by hand. With the slipmat, the DJ can stop or slow down the record while the turntable is still spinning. Direct-drive turntables are the type preferred by DJs. Belt-drive turntables are less expensive, but they are not suitable for turntablism and DJing, because the belt-drive motor can be damaged by this type of manipulation. Some DJs, most commonly those who play hip hop music, go beyond merely mixing records and use turntables as musical instruments for scratching, beat juggling, and other turntablism techniques.
CDJs / media players are high-quality digital media players made for DJing. They often have large jog wheels and pitch controls to allow DJs to manipulate the playback of digital files for beatmatching similar to how DJs manipulate vinyl records on turntables. CDJs often have features such as loops and waveform displays similar to DJ software. Originally designed to play music from compact discs, they now can play digital music files stored on USB flash drives and SD cards. Some CDJs can also connect to a computer running DJ software to act as a DJ controller. Modern media players have the ability to stream music from online music providers such as Beatport, Beatsource, Tidal and SoundCloud GO.
DJ mixers are small audio mixing consoles specialized for DJing. Most DJ mixers have far fewer channels than a mixer used by a record producer or audio engineer; whereas standard live sound mixers in small venues have 12 to 24 channels, and standard recording studio mixers have even more (as many as 72 on large boards), basic DJ mixers may have only two channels. While DJ mixers have many of the same features found on larger mixers (faders, equalization knobs, gain knobs, effects units, etc.), DJ mixers have a feature that is usually only found on DJ mixers: the crossfader. The crossfader is a type of fader that is mounted horizontally. DJs used the crossfader to mix two or more sound sources. The midpoint of the crossfader's travel is a 50/50 mix of the two channels (on a two-channel mixer). The far left side of the crossfader provides only the channel A sound source. The far right side provides only the channel B sound source (e.g., record player number 2). Positions in between the two extremes provide different mixes of the two channels. Some DJs use a computer with DJ software and a DJ controller instead of an analog DJ mixer to mix music, although DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer.
DJs generally use higher-quality headphones than those designed for music consumers. DJ headphones have other properties useful for DJs, such as designs that acoustically isolate the sounds of the headphones from the outside environment (hard shell headphones), flexible headbands and pivot joints to allow DJs to listen to one side of the headphones while turning the other headphone away (so they can monitor the mix in the club), and replaceable cables. Replaceable cables enable DJs to buy new cables if a cable becomes frayed, worn, or damaged, or if a cable is accidentally cut.
Closed-back headphones are highly recommended for DJs to block outside noise as the environment of DJ usually tends to be very noisy. Standard headphones have a 3.5mm jack but DJ equipment usually requires ¼ inch jack. Most specialized DJ Headphones have an adapter to switch between a 3.5mm jack and ¼ inch jack. Detachable coiled cables are perfect for DJ Headphones.
DJs have changed their equipment as new technologies are introduced. The earliest DJs in pop music, in 1970s discos, used record turntables, vinyl records and audio consoles. In the 1970s, DJs would have to lug heavy direct-drive turntables and crates of records to clubs and shows. In the 1980s, many DJs transitioned to compact cassettes. In the 1990s and 2000s, many DJs switched to using digital audio such as CDs and MP3 files. As technological advances made it practical to store large collections of digital music files on a laptop computer, DJ software was developed so DJs could use a laptop as a source of music instead of transporting CDs or vinyl records to gigs. Unlike most music player software designed for regular consumers, DJ software can play at least two audio files simultaneously, display the waveforms of the files on screen and enable the DJ to listen to either source.
The waveforms allow the DJ to see what is coming next in the music and how the playback of different files is aligned. The software analyzes music files to identify their tempo and where the beats are. The analyzed information can be used by the DJ to help manually beatmatch like with vinyl records or the software can automatically synchronize the beats. Digital signal processing algorithms in software allow DJs to adjust the tempo of recordings independently of their pitch (and musical key, a feature known as "keylock". Some software analyzes the loudness of the music for automatic normalization with ReplayGain and detects the musical key. Additionally, DJ software can store cue points, set loops, and apply effects.
As tablet computers and smartphones became widespread, DJ software was written to run on these devices in addition to laptops. DJ software requires specialized hardware in addition to a computer to fully take advantage of its features. The consumer-grade, regular sound card integrated into most computer motherboards can only output two channels (one stereo pair). However, DJs need to be able to output at least four channels (two stereo pairs, thus Left and Right for input 1 and Left and Right for input 2), either unmixed signals to send to a DJ mixer or the main output plus a headphone output. Additionally, DJ sound cards output higher-quality signals than the sound cards built into consumer-grade computer motherboards.
Special vinyl records (or CDs/digital files played with CDJs) can be used with DJ software to play digital music files with DJ software as if they were pressed onto vinyl, allowing turntablism techniques to be used with digital files. These vinyl records do not have music recordings pressed onto them. Instead, they are pressed with a special signal, referred to as "timecode", to control DJ software. The DJ software interprets changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the timecode signal and manipulates the digital files it is playing in the same way that the turntable manipulates the timecode record.
This requires a specialized DJ sound card with at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) of inputs and outputs. With this setup, the DJ software typically outputs unmixed signals from the music files to an external hardware DJ mixer. Some DJ mixers have integrated USB sound cards that allow DJ software to connect directly to the mixer without requiring a separate sound card.
A DJ software can be used to mix audio files on the computer instead of a separate hardware mixer. When mixing on a computer, DJs often use a DJ controller device that mimics the layout of two turntables plus a DJ mixer to control the software rather than the computer keyboard & touchpad on a laptop, or the touchscreen on a tablet computer or smartphone. Many DJ controllers have an integrated sound card with 4 output channels (2 stereo pairs) that allow the DJ to use headphones to preview music before playing it on the main output.
Several techniques are used by DJs as a means to better mix and blend recorded music. These techniques primarily include the cueing, equalization and audio mixing of two or more sound sources. The complexity and frequency of special techniques depend largely on the setting in which a DJ is working. Radio DJs are less likely to focus on advanced music-mixing procedures than club DJs, who rely on a smooth transition between songs using a range of techniques. However, some radio DJs are experienced club DJs, so they use the same sophisticated mixing techniques.
Club DJ turntable techniques include beatmatching, phrasing and slip-cueing to preserve energy on a dance floor. Turntablism embodies the art of cutting, beat juggling, scratching, needle drops, phase shifting, back spinning and more to perform the transitions and overdubs of samples in a more creative manner (although turntablism is often considered a use of the turntable as a musical instrument rather than a tool for blending recorded music). Professional DJs may use harmonic mixing to choose songs that are in compatible musical keys. Other techniques include chopping, screwing and looping.
Recent advances in technology in both DJ hardware and software can provide assisted or automatic completion of some traditional DJ techniques and skills. Examples include phrasing and beatmatching, which can be partially or completely automated by using DJ software that performs automatic synchronization of sound recordings, a feature commonly labelled "sync". Most DJ mixers now include a beat counter which analyzes the tempo of an incoming sound source and displays its tempo in beats per minute (BPM), which may assist with beatmatching analog sound sources.
In the past, being a DJ has largely been a self-taught craft but with the complexities of new technologies and the convergence with music production methods, there are a growing number of schools and organizations that offer instruction on the techniques.
In DJ culture, miming refers to the practice of DJ's pantomiming the actions of live-mixing a set on stage while a pre-recorded mix plays over the sound system. Miming mixing in a live performance is considered to be controversial within DJ culture. Some within the DJ community say that miming is increasingly used as a technique by celebrity model DJs who may lack mixing skills, but can draw big crowds to a venue.
During a DJ tour for the release of the French group Justice's A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being reattached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page. After a 2013 Disclosure concert, the duo was criticized for pretending to live mix to a playback of a pre-recorded track. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said they did not deliberately intend to mislead their audience, and cited miming by other DJs such as David Guetta.
Playing recorded music for dancing and parties rose with the mass marketing of home phonographs in the late 19th century.
British radio disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted his first live dance party in 1943 using a single turntable and a makeshift sound system. Four years later, Savile began using two turntables welded together to form a single DJ console. In 1947, the Whisky à Gogo opened in Paris as the first discotheque. In 1959, one of the first discos in Germany, the Scotch Club, opened in Aachen and visiting journalist Klaus Quirini (later DJ Heinrich) made comments, conducted audience games, and announced songs while playing records. The first song he played was the hit Ein Schiff wird kommen by Lale Andersen.
In the 1960s, Rudy Bozak began making the first DJ mixers, mixing consoles specialized for DJing. In the late 1960s to early 1970s Jamaican sound system culture, producer and sound system operator (DJ), (Jamaican) King Tubby and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry were pioneers of the genre known as dub music. They experimented with tape-based composition; emphasized repetitive rhythmic structures (often stripped of their harmonic elements); electronically manipulated spatiality; sonically manipulated pre-recorded musical materials from mass media; and remixed music among other innovative techniques. It is widely known that the Jamaican dancehall culture has had and continues to have a significant impact on the American hip hop culture.
DJ turntablism has origins in the invention of direct-drive turntables. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for turntablism and mixing, since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear-and-tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by engineer Shuichi Obata at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.
In 1972, Technics started making their SL-1200 turntable, featuring high torque direct drive design. The SL-1200 had a rapid start and its durable direct drive enabled DJs to manipulate the platter, as with scratching techniques. Hip hop DJs began using the Technics SL-1200s as musical instruments to manipulate records with turntablism techniques such as scratching and beat juggling rather than merely mixing records. These techniques were developed in the 1970s by DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Afrika Bambaataa, as they experimented with Technics direct-drive decks, finding that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter.
In 1980, Japanese company Roland released the TR-808, an analog rhythm/drum machine, which has unique artificial sounds, such as its booming bass and sharp snare, and a metronome-like rhythm. Yellow Magic Orchestra's use of the instrument in 1980 influenced hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, after which the TR-808 would be widely adopted by hip hop DJs, with 808 sounds remaining central to hip-hop music ever since. The Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer released in 1981, had a similar impact on electronic dance music genres such as techno and house music, along with Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines.
In 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) format was released, popularizing digital audio. In 1998, the first MP3 digital audio player, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, was introduced. In January of that same year at the BeOS Developer Conference, N2IT demonstrated FinalScratch, the first digital DJ system to allow DJs control of MP3 files through special time-coded vinyl records or CDs. While it would take some time for this novel concept to catch on with the "die-hard Vinyl DJs", this would become the first step in the Digital DJ revolution. Manufacturers joined with computer DJing pioneers to offer professional endorsements, the first being Professor Jam (a.k.a. William P. Rader), who went on to develop the industry's first dedicated computer DJ convention and learning program, the "CPS (Computerized Performance System) DJ Summit", to help spread the word about the advantages of this emerging technology.
In 2001, Pioneer DJ began producing the CDJ-1000 CD player, making the use of digital music recordings with traditional DJ techniques practical for the first time. As the 2000s progressed, laptop computers became more powerful and affordable. DJ software, specialized DJ sound cards, and DJ controllers were developed for DJs to use laptops as a source of music rather than turntables or CDJs. In the 2010s, like laptops before them, tablet computers and smartphones became more powerful & affordable. DJ software was written to run on these more portable devices instead of laptops, although laptops remain the more common type of computer for DJing.
The risk of DJs working in nightclubs with loud music includes noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus. Nightclubs constantly exceed safe levels of noise exposure with average sound levels ranging from 93.2 to 109.7 dB. Constant music exposure creates temporary and permanent auditory dysfunction for professional DJs with average levels at 96dB being above the recommended level, at which ear protection is mandatory for industry. Three-quarters of DJs have tinnitus and are at risk of tenosynovitis in the wrists and other limbs. Tenosynovitis results from staying in the same position over multiple gigs for scratching motion and cueing, this would be related to a repetitive strain injury. Gigs can last 4-5 hours in the nightlife and hospitality industry, as a result, there are potential complications of prolonged standing which include slouching, varicose veins, cardiovascular disorders, joint compression, and muscle fatigue. This is common for other staff to experience as well including bartenders and security staff for example. | [
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"text": "A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at nightclubs or music festivals), mobile DJs (who are hired to work at public and private events such as weddings, parties, or festivals), and turntablists (who use record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records). Originally, the \"disc\" in \"disc jockey\" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title \"DJ\" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.",
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"text": "DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.",
"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "The term \"disc jockey\" was ostensibly coined by radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell in 1935 to describe the radio work of Martin Block. The phrase first appeared in print in a 1941 Variety magazine. Originally, the word \"disc\" in \"disc jockey\" referred to phonograph or gramophone records and was used to describe radio personalities who introduced them on the air.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "\"DJ\" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs typically perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or an online radio audience. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over. Some DJs adopt the title \"DJ\" as part of their names (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow and DJ Yoda). Professional DJs often specialize in a specific genre of music, such as techno, house or hip hop music. DJs typically have extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of vintage, rare or obscure tracks and records.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Club DJs, commonly referred to as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, clubs, music festivals, corporate and private events. Typically, club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques to produce a non-stopping flow of music. Mixing began with hip hop in the 1970s and would subsequently expand to other genres in especially (but not exclusively) dance music.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "One key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who mostly plays and mixes one specific music genre is often given the title of that genre; for example, a DJ who plays hip hop music is called a hip hop DJ, a DJ who plays house music is a house DJ, a DJ who plays techno is called a techno DJ, and so on.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The quality of a DJ performance (often called a DJ mix or DJ set) consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well the DJ can operate the equipment and produce smooth transitions between two or more recordings and a playlist; and the ability of a DJ to select the most suitable recordings, also known as \"reading the crowd\".",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were members of a block party at South Bronx from 1973 onwards. Kool Herc played records such as James Brown's \"Give It Up or Turnit a Loose\", Jimmy Castor's \"It's Just Begun\", Booker T. & the M.G.'s' \"Melting Pot\", Incredible Bongo Band's \"Bongo Rock\" and \"Apache\", and UK rock band Babe Ruth's \"The Mexican\". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the \"break\". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a \"five-minute loop of fury\". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called \"The Merry-Go-Round\", a technique by which the DJ switched from break to break at the height of the party. This technique is specifically called \"The Merry-Go-Round\" because according to Herc, it takes one \"back and forth with no slack.\"",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcasts on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In Jamaican music, a deejay (DJ) is a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and \"toasts\" (raps) to an instrumental riddim. Deejays are not to be confused with DJs from other music genres like hip hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays whose style is nearer to singing are sometimes called singjays.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The term deejay originated in the 1960s and 1970s when performers such as U-Roy and King Stitt toasted over the instrumental (dub music) versions of popular records. These versions were often released on the flip side to the song's 45 record. This gave the deejays the chance to create on-the-fly lyrics to the music. Big Youth, and I-Roy were famous deejays in Jamaica.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Turntablists, also called battle DJs, use turntables and DJ mixer to manipulate recorded sounds to produce new music. In essence, they use DJ equipment as a musical instrument. Perhaps the best-known turntablist technique is scratching. Turntablists often participate in DJ contests like DMC World DJ Championships and Red Bull 3Style.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A resident DJ performs at a venue on a regular basis or permanently. They would perform regularly (typically under an agreement) in a particular discotheque, a particular club, a particular event, or a particular broadcasting station. Residents have a decisive influence on the club or a series of events. Per agreement with the management or company, the DJ would have to perform under agreed times and dates. Typically, DJs perform as residents for two or three times in a week, for example, on Friday and Saturday. DJs who make a steady income from a venue are also considered resident DJs.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Examples for resident DJs are:",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In Western popular music, even though they are relatively few women DJs and turntablists, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, they are given much less representation than men DJs. Part of this may stem from a generally low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are \"... few women in record production and sound engineering.\" Ncube states that \"[n]inety-five percent of music producers are [sic] male, and although there are women producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their counterparts.\" The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall men's domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare.",
"title": "Women DJs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 2007, Mark Katz's article \"Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle\", stated that \"very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years.\" In 2010, Rebekah Farrugia said \"the male-centricity of electronic dance music (EDM) culture\" contributes to \"a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces.\" While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as \"male technophilia\". Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She says:",
"title": "Women DJs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field – is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to [unreasonably] blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles.",
"title": "Women DJs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from \"areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJing, sound engineering and producing\" are \"not necessarily about their dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations\". Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and \"carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture\". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent women DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. Two years later, another article brings out a list with world-famous women DJs including Nastia, tINY, Nora En Pure, Anja Schneider, Peggy Gou, Maya Jane Coles, and Eli & Fur.",
"title": "Women DJs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "American DJ The Black Madonna has been called \"one of the world's most exciting turntablists.\" Her stage name The Black Madonna is a tribute to her mother's favorite Catholic saint. In 2018, The Black Madonna played herself as an in-residence DJ for the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, as part of the After Hours DLC.",
"title": "Women DJs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as \"representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer [sic] talent.\"",
"title": "Women DJs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In Japan, the newest Bushiroad franchise: D4DJ focuses on an all-women DJ unit.",
"title": "Women DJs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "DJs use equipment that enables them to play multiple sources of recorded music and mix them to create seamless transitions and unique arrangements of songs. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to \"listen\" to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, and align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto-sync technology is not being used. This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the currently playing music. DJs may align the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together to help create a smooth transition from one song to another. Other equipment may include a microphone, effects units such as reverb, and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "As music technology has progressed, DJs have adopted different types of equipment to play and mix music, all of which are still commonly used. Traditionally, DJs used two turntables plugged into a DJ mixer to mix music on vinyl records. As compact discs became popular media for publishing music, specialized high-quality CD players known as CDJs were developed for DJs. CDJs can take the place of turntables or be used together with turntables. Many CDJs can now play digital music files from USB flash drives or SD cards in addition to CDs. With the spread of portable laptops, tablets, and smartphone computers, DJs began using software together with specialized sound cards and DJ controller hardware. DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer or be used instead of a hardware mixer.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Turntables allow DJs to play vinyl records. By adjusting the playback speed of the turntable, either by adjusting the speed knob or by manipulating the platter (e.g., by slowing down the platter by putting a finger gently along the side), DJs can match the tempos of different records so their rhythms can be played together at the same time without clashing or make a smooth, seamless transition from one song to another. This technique is known as beatmatching. DJs typically replace the rubber mat on turntables that keep the record moving in sync with the turntable with a slipmat that facilitates manipulating the playback of the record by hand. With the slipmat, the DJ can stop or slow down the record while the turntable is still spinning. Direct-drive turntables are the type preferred by DJs. Belt-drive turntables are less expensive, but they are not suitable for turntablism and DJing, because the belt-drive motor can be damaged by this type of manipulation. Some DJs, most commonly those who play hip hop music, go beyond merely mixing records and use turntables as musical instruments for scratching, beat juggling, and other turntablism techniques.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "CDJs / media players are high-quality digital media players made for DJing. They often have large jog wheels and pitch controls to allow DJs to manipulate the playback of digital files for beatmatching similar to how DJs manipulate vinyl records on turntables. CDJs often have features such as loops and waveform displays similar to DJ software. Originally designed to play music from compact discs, they now can play digital music files stored on USB flash drives and SD cards. Some CDJs can also connect to a computer running DJ software to act as a DJ controller. Modern media players have the ability to stream music from online music providers such as Beatport, Beatsource, Tidal and SoundCloud GO.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "DJ mixers are small audio mixing consoles specialized for DJing. Most DJ mixers have far fewer channels than a mixer used by a record producer or audio engineer; whereas standard live sound mixers in small venues have 12 to 24 channels, and standard recording studio mixers have even more (as many as 72 on large boards), basic DJ mixers may have only two channels. While DJ mixers have many of the same features found on larger mixers (faders, equalization knobs, gain knobs, effects units, etc.), DJ mixers have a feature that is usually only found on DJ mixers: the crossfader. The crossfader is a type of fader that is mounted horizontally. DJs used the crossfader to mix two or more sound sources. The midpoint of the crossfader's travel is a 50/50 mix of the two channels (on a two-channel mixer). The far left side of the crossfader provides only the channel A sound source. The far right side provides only the channel B sound source (e.g., record player number 2). Positions in between the two extremes provide different mixes of the two channels. Some DJs use a computer with DJ software and a DJ controller instead of an analog DJ mixer to mix music, although DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "DJs generally use higher-quality headphones than those designed for music consumers. DJ headphones have other properties useful for DJs, such as designs that acoustically isolate the sounds of the headphones from the outside environment (hard shell headphones), flexible headbands and pivot joints to allow DJs to listen to one side of the headphones while turning the other headphone away (so they can monitor the mix in the club), and replaceable cables. Replaceable cables enable DJs to buy new cables if a cable becomes frayed, worn, or damaged, or if a cable is accidentally cut.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Closed-back headphones are highly recommended for DJs to block outside noise as the environment of DJ usually tends to be very noisy. Standard headphones have a 3.5mm jack but DJ equipment usually requires ¼ inch jack. Most specialized DJ Headphones have an adapter to switch between a 3.5mm jack and ¼ inch jack. Detachable coiled cables are perfect for DJ Headphones.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "DJs have changed their equipment as new technologies are introduced. The earliest DJs in pop music, in 1970s discos, used record turntables, vinyl records and audio consoles. In the 1970s, DJs would have to lug heavy direct-drive turntables and crates of records to clubs and shows. In the 1980s, many DJs transitioned to compact cassettes. In the 1990s and 2000s, many DJs switched to using digital audio such as CDs and MP3 files. As technological advances made it practical to store large collections of digital music files on a laptop computer, DJ software was developed so DJs could use a laptop as a source of music instead of transporting CDs or vinyl records to gigs. Unlike most music player software designed for regular consumers, DJ software can play at least two audio files simultaneously, display the waveforms of the files on screen and enable the DJ to listen to either source.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The waveforms allow the DJ to see what is coming next in the music and how the playback of different files is aligned. The software analyzes music files to identify their tempo and where the beats are. The analyzed information can be used by the DJ to help manually beatmatch like with vinyl records or the software can automatically synchronize the beats. Digital signal processing algorithms in software allow DJs to adjust the tempo of recordings independently of their pitch (and musical key, a feature known as \"keylock\". Some software analyzes the loudness of the music for automatic normalization with ReplayGain and detects the musical key. Additionally, DJ software can store cue points, set loops, and apply effects.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "As tablet computers and smartphones became widespread, DJ software was written to run on these devices in addition to laptops. DJ software requires specialized hardware in addition to a computer to fully take advantage of its features. The consumer-grade, regular sound card integrated into most computer motherboards can only output two channels (one stereo pair). However, DJs need to be able to output at least four channels (two stereo pairs, thus Left and Right for input 1 and Left and Right for input 2), either unmixed signals to send to a DJ mixer or the main output plus a headphone output. Additionally, DJ sound cards output higher-quality signals than the sound cards built into consumer-grade computer motherboards.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Special vinyl records (or CDs/digital files played with CDJs) can be used with DJ software to play digital music files with DJ software as if they were pressed onto vinyl, allowing turntablism techniques to be used with digital files. These vinyl records do not have music recordings pressed onto them. Instead, they are pressed with a special signal, referred to as \"timecode\", to control DJ software. The DJ software interprets changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the timecode signal and manipulates the digital files it is playing in the same way that the turntable manipulates the timecode record.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "This requires a specialized DJ sound card with at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) of inputs and outputs. With this setup, the DJ software typically outputs unmixed signals from the music files to an external hardware DJ mixer. Some DJ mixers have integrated USB sound cards that allow DJ software to connect directly to the mixer without requiring a separate sound card.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "A DJ software can be used to mix audio files on the computer instead of a separate hardware mixer. When mixing on a computer, DJs often use a DJ controller device that mimics the layout of two turntables plus a DJ mixer to control the software rather than the computer keyboard & touchpad on a laptop, or the touchscreen on a tablet computer or smartphone. Many DJ controllers have an integrated sound card with 4 output channels (2 stereo pairs) that allow the DJ to use headphones to preview music before playing it on the main output.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Several techniques are used by DJs as a means to better mix and blend recorded music. These techniques primarily include the cueing, equalization and audio mixing of two or more sound sources. The complexity and frequency of special techniques depend largely on the setting in which a DJ is working. Radio DJs are less likely to focus on advanced music-mixing procedures than club DJs, who rely on a smooth transition between songs using a range of techniques. However, some radio DJs are experienced club DJs, so they use the same sophisticated mixing techniques.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Club DJ turntable techniques include beatmatching, phrasing and slip-cueing to preserve energy on a dance floor. Turntablism embodies the art of cutting, beat juggling, scratching, needle drops, phase shifting, back spinning and more to perform the transitions and overdubs of samples in a more creative manner (although turntablism is often considered a use of the turntable as a musical instrument rather than a tool for blending recorded music). Professional DJs may use harmonic mixing to choose songs that are in compatible musical keys. Other techniques include chopping, screwing and looping.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Recent advances in technology in both DJ hardware and software can provide assisted or automatic completion of some traditional DJ techniques and skills. Examples include phrasing and beatmatching, which can be partially or completely automated by using DJ software that performs automatic synchronization of sound recordings, a feature commonly labelled \"sync\". Most DJ mixers now include a beat counter which analyzes the tempo of an incoming sound source and displays its tempo in beats per minute (BPM), which may assist with beatmatching analog sound sources.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In the past, being a DJ has largely been a self-taught craft but with the complexities of new technologies and the convergence with music production methods, there are a growing number of schools and organizations that offer instruction on the techniques.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In DJ culture, miming refers to the practice of DJ's pantomiming the actions of live-mixing a set on stage while a pre-recorded mix plays over the sound system. Miming mixing in a live performance is considered to be controversial within DJ culture. Some within the DJ community say that miming is increasingly used as a technique by celebrity model DJs who may lack mixing skills, but can draw big crowds to a venue.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "During a DJ tour for the release of the French group Justice's A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being reattached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page. After a 2013 Disclosure concert, the duo was criticized for pretending to live mix to a playback of a pre-recorded track. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said they did not deliberately intend to mislead their audience, and cited miming by other DJs such as David Guetta.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Playing recorded music for dancing and parties rose with the mass marketing of home phonographs in the late 19th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "British radio disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted his first live dance party in 1943 using a single turntable and a makeshift sound system. Four years later, Savile began using two turntables welded together to form a single DJ console. In 1947, the Whisky à Gogo opened in Paris as the first discotheque. In 1959, one of the first discos in Germany, the Scotch Club, opened in Aachen and visiting journalist Klaus Quirini (later DJ Heinrich) made comments, conducted audience games, and announced songs while playing records. The first song he played was the hit Ein Schiff wird kommen by Lale Andersen.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In the 1960s, Rudy Bozak began making the first DJ mixers, mixing consoles specialized for DJing. In the late 1960s to early 1970s Jamaican sound system culture, producer and sound system operator (DJ), (Jamaican) King Tubby and producer Lee \"Scratch\" Perry were pioneers of the genre known as dub music. They experimented with tape-based composition; emphasized repetitive rhythmic structures (often stripped of their harmonic elements); electronically manipulated spatiality; sonically manipulated pre-recorded musical materials from mass media; and remixed music among other innovative techniques. It is widely known that the Jamaican dancehall culture has had and continues to have a significant impact on the American hip hop culture.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "DJ turntablism has origins in the invention of direct-drive turntables. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for turntablism and mixing, since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear-and-tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by engineer Shuichi Obata at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In 1972, Technics started making their SL-1200 turntable, featuring high torque direct drive design. The SL-1200 had a rapid start and its durable direct drive enabled DJs to manipulate the platter, as with scratching techniques. Hip hop DJs began using the Technics SL-1200s as musical instruments to manipulate records with turntablism techniques such as scratching and beat juggling rather than merely mixing records. These techniques were developed in the 1970s by DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Afrika Bambaataa, as they experimented with Technics direct-drive decks, finding that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In 1980, Japanese company Roland released the TR-808, an analog rhythm/drum machine, which has unique artificial sounds, such as its booming bass and sharp snare, and a metronome-like rhythm. Yellow Magic Orchestra's use of the instrument in 1980 influenced hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, after which the TR-808 would be widely adopted by hip hop DJs, with 808 sounds remaining central to hip-hop music ever since. The Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer released in 1981, had a similar impact on electronic dance music genres such as techno and house music, along with Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) format was released, popularizing digital audio. In 1998, the first MP3 digital audio player, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, was introduced. In January of that same year at the BeOS Developer Conference, N2IT demonstrated FinalScratch, the first digital DJ system to allow DJs control of MP3 files through special time-coded vinyl records or CDs. While it would take some time for this novel concept to catch on with the \"die-hard Vinyl DJs\", this would become the first step in the Digital DJ revolution. Manufacturers joined with computer DJing pioneers to offer professional endorsements, the first being Professor Jam (a.k.a. William P. Rader), who went on to develop the industry's first dedicated computer DJ convention and learning program, the \"CPS (Computerized Performance System) DJ Summit\", to help spread the word about the advantages of this emerging technology.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In 2001, Pioneer DJ began producing the CDJ-1000 CD player, making the use of digital music recordings with traditional DJ techniques practical for the first time. As the 2000s progressed, laptop computers became more powerful and affordable. DJ software, specialized DJ sound cards, and DJ controllers were developed for DJs to use laptops as a source of music rather than turntables or CDJs. In the 2010s, like laptops before them, tablet computers and smartphones became more powerful & affordable. DJ software was written to run on these more portable devices instead of laptops, although laptops remain the more common type of computer for DJing.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The risk of DJs working in nightclubs with loud music includes noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus. Nightclubs constantly exceed safe levels of noise exposure with average sound levels ranging from 93.2 to 109.7 dB. Constant music exposure creates temporary and permanent auditory dysfunction for professional DJs with average levels at 96dB being above the recommended level, at which ear protection is mandatory for industry. Three-quarters of DJs have tinnitus and are at risk of tenosynovitis in the wrists and other limbs. Tenosynovitis results from staying in the same position over multiple gigs for scratching motion and cueing, this would be related to a repetitive strain injury. Gigs can last 4-5 hours in the nightlife and hospitality industry, as a result, there are potential complications of prolonged standing which include slouching, varicose veins, cardiovascular disorders, joint compression, and muscle fatigue. This is common for other staff to experience as well including bartenders and security staff for example.",
"title": "Health concerns"
}
]
| A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs, club DJs, mobile DJs, and turntablists. Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names. DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers. | 2001-10-22T20:04:20Z | 2023-12-30T23:08:36Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_jockey |
8,687 | Detroit | Detroit (/dɪˈtrɔɪt/; dih-TROYT, locally also /ˈdiːtrɔɪt/) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census, making it the 29th-most populous city in the United States. The Metro Detroit area, home to 4.3 million people, is the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area and the 14th-largest in the United States. A significant cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive background.
In 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and Alphonse de Tonty founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit. During the late 19th and early 20th century, it became an important industrial hub at the center of the Great Lakes region. The city's population rose to be the fourth-largest in the nation by 1920, after New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia, with the expansion of the automotive industry in the early 20th century. The Detroit River became the busiest commercial hub in the world as it carried over 65 million tons of shipping commerce each year. In the late 20th century, Detroit entered a state of urban decay which has continued to the present, as a result of industrial restructuring, the loss of jobs in the auto industry, and rapid suburbanization. Since reaching a peak of 1.85 million at the 1950 census, Detroit's population has declined by more than 65 percent. In 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, which it successfully exited in December 2014.
Detroit is a port on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the St. Lawrence Seaway. The city anchors the second-largest regional economy in the Midwest and the 14th-largest in the United States. Detroit is best known as the center of the U.S. automotive industry, and the "Big Three" auto manufacturers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis North America (Chrysler)—are all headquartered in Metro Detroit. The Detroit Metropolitan Airport is among the most important hub airports in the United States. Detroit and its neighboring Canadian city Windsor constitute the second-busiest international crossing in North America, after San Diego–Tijuana.
Detroit's diverse culture has had both local and international influence, particularly in music, with the city giving rise to the genres of Motown and techno and playing an important role in the development of jazz, hip-hop, rock, and punk. The rapid growth of Detroit in its boom years resulted in a globally unique stock of architectural monuments and historic places. Since the 2000s, conservation efforts have managed to save many architectural pieces and achieve several large-scale revitalizations, including the restoration of several historic theaters and entertainment venues, high-rise renovations, new sports stadiums, and a riverfront revitalization project.
An increasingly popular tourist destination, Detroit receives 16 million visitors per year. In 2015, Detroit was named a "City of Design" by UNESCO, the first U.S. city to receive that designation. Time named Detroit as one of the fifty World's Greatest Places of 2022 to explore.
Detroit is named after the Detroit River, connecting Lake Huron with Lake Erie. The name comes from the French word détroit meaning 'strait' as the city was situated on a narrow passage of water linking the two lakes. The river was known as le détroit du Lac Érié in French, which means 'the strait of Lake Erie'. In the historical context, the strait included the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River.
Kingdom of France 1701–1760 Kingdom of Great Britain 1760–1783 United States 1783-1812 United Kingdom 1812–1813 United States 1813–present
Paleo-Indians inhabited areas near Detroit as early as 11,000 years ago including the culture referred to as the Mound Builders. By the 17th century, the region was inhabited by Huron, Odawa, Potawatomi and Iroquois peoples. The area is known by the Anishinaabe people as Waawiiyaataanong, translating to 'where the water curves around'.
The first Europeans did not penetrate into the region and reach the straits of Detroit until French missionaries and traders worked their way around the Iroquois League, with whom they were at war in the 1630s. The Huron and Neutral people held the north side of Lake Erie until the 1650s, when the Iroquois pushed them and the Erie people away from the lake and its beaver-rich feeder streams in the Beaver Wars of 1649–1655. By the 1670s, the war-weakened Iroquois laid claim to as far south as the Ohio River valley in northern Kentucky as hunting grounds, and had absorbed many other Iroquoian peoples after defeating them in war. For the next hundred years, virtually no British or French action was contemplated without consultation with the Iroquois or consideration of their likely response. When the French and Indian War evicted the Kingdom of France from Canada, it removed one barrier to American colonists migrating west.
British negotiations with the Iroquois would both prove critical and lead to a Crown policy limiting settlements below the Great Lakes and west of the Alleghenies. Many colonial American would-be migrants resented this restraint and became supporters of the American Revolution. The 1778 raids and resultant 1779 decisive Sullivan Expedition reopened the Ohio Country to westward emigration, which began almost immediately. By 1800 white settlers were pouring westwards.
On July 24, 1701, the French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, with his lieutenant Alphonse de Tonty and more than a hundred other settlers, began constructing a small fort on the north bank of the Detroit River. Cadillac named the settlement Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, after Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, Secretary of State of the Navy under Louis XIV. Sainte-Anne-de-Détroit was founded on July 26 and is the second-oldest continuously operating Roman Catholic parish in the United States. France offered free land to colonists to attract families to Detroit; when it reached a population of 800 in 1765, it became the largest European settlement between Montreal and New Orleans, both also French settlements, in the former colonies of New France and La Louisiane, respectively.
By 1773, after the addition of Anglo-American settlers, the population of Detroit was 1,400. By 1778, its population reached 2,144 and it was the third-largest city in what was known as the Province of Quebec since the British takeover of French colonies following their victory in the Seven Years' War.
The region's economy was based on the lucrative fur trade, in which numerous Native American people had important roles as trappers and traders. Today the flag of Detroit reflects its French colonial heritage. Descendants of the earliest French and French-Canadian settlers formed a cohesive community, who gradually were superseded as the dominant population after more Anglo-American settlers arrived in the early 19th century with American westward migration. Living along the shores of Lake St. Clair and south to Monroe and downriver suburbs, the ethnic French Canadians of Detroit, also known as Muskrat French in reference to the fur trade, remain a subculture in the region in the 21st century.
During the French and Indian War (1754–63)—the North American front of the Seven Years' War between Britain and France—British troops gained control of the settlement in 1760 and shortened its name to Detroit. Several regional Native American tribes, such as the Potowatomi, Ojibwe and Huron, launched Pontiac's War in 1763 and laid siege to Fort Detroit but failed to capture it. In defeat, France ceded its territory in North America east of the Mississippi to Britain following the war.
Following the American Revolutionary War and the establishment of the United States as an independent country, Britain ceded Detroit along with other territories in the area under the Jay Treaty which established the northern border with its colony of Canada. The Great Fire of 1805 destroyed most of the Detroit settlement, which had primarily buildings made of wood. One stone fort, a river warehouse, and brick chimneys of former wooden homes were the sole structures to survive. Of the 600 Detroit residents in this area, none died in the fire.
From 1805 to 1847, Detroit was the capital of Michigan as a territory and as a state. William Hull, the United States commander at Detroit, surrendered without a fight to British troops and their Native American allies during the War of 1812 in the siege of Detroit, believing his forces were vastly outnumbered. The Battle of Frenchtown was part of a U.S. effort to retake the city, and U.S. troops suffered their highest fatalities of any battle in the war. This battle is commemorated at River Raisin National Battlefield Park south of Detroit in Monroe County. Detroit was recaptured by the United States later that year.
The settlement was incorporated as a city in 1815. As the city expanded, a geometric street plan developed by Augustus B. Woodward was followed, featuring grand boulevards as in Paris.
Prior to the American Civil War, the city's access to the Canada–US border made it a key stop for refugee slaves gaining freedom in the North along the Underground Railroad. Many went across the Detroit River to Canada to escape pursuit by slave catchers. An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 African-American refugees settled in Canada. George DeBaptiste was considered to be the "president" of the Detroit Underground Railroad, William Lambert the "vice president" or "secretary", and Laura Smith Haviland the "superintendent".
Numerous men from Detroit volunteered to fight for the Union during the Civil War, including the 24th Michigan Infantry Regiment. It was part of the legendary Iron Brigade, which fought with distinction and suffered 82% casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. When the First Volunteer Infantry Regiment arrived to fortify Washington, D.C., President Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying, "Thank God for Michigan!" George Armstrong Custer led the Michigan Brigade during the Civil War and called them the "Wolverines".
During the late 19th century, wealthy industry and shipping magnates commissioned the design and construction of several Gilded Age mansions east and west of the current downtown, along the major avenues of the Woodward plan. Most notable among them was the David Whitney House at 4421 Woodward Avenue, and the grand avenue became a favored address for mansions. During this period, some referred to Detroit as the "Paris of the West" for its architecture, grand avenues in the Paris style, and for Washington Boulevard, recently electrified by Thomas Edison. The city had grown steadily from the 1830s with the rise of shipping, shipbuilding, and manufacturing industries. Strategically located along the Great Lakes waterway, Detroit emerged as a major port and transportation hub.
In 1896, a thriving carriage trade prompted Henry Ford to build his first automobile in a rented workshop on Mack Avenue. During this growth period, Detroit expanded its borders by annexing all or part of several surrounding villages and townships.
In 1903, Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company. Ford's manufacturing—and those of automotive pioneers William C. Durant, the Horace and John Dodge, James and William Packard, and Walter Chrysler—established Detroit's status in the early 20th century as the world's automotive capital. The growth of the auto industry was reflected by changes in businesses throughout the Midwest and nation, with the development of garages to service vehicles and gas stations, as well as factories for parts and tires. Because of the booming auto industry, Detroit became the fourth-largest city in the nation by 1920, following New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia.
In 1907, the Detroit River carried 67,292,504 tons of shipping commerce through Detroit to locations all over the world. For comparison, London shipped 18,727,230 tons, and New York shipped 20,390,953 tons. The river was dubbed "the Greatest Commercial Artery on Earth" by The Detroit News in 1908. The prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933 resulted in the Detroit River becoming a major conduit for smuggling of illegal Canadian spirits.
With the rapid growth of industrial workers in the auto factories, labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor and the United Auto Workers (UAW) fought to organize workers to gain them better working conditions and wages. They initiated strikes and other tactics in support of improvements such as the 8-hour day/40-hour work week, increased wages, greater benefits, and improved working conditions. The labor activism during those years increased the influence of union leaders in the city such as Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters and Walter Reuther of the UAW.
Detroit, like many places in the United States, developed racial conflict and discrimination in the 20th century following the rapid demographic changes as hundreds of thousands of new workers were attracted to the industrial city. The Great Migration brought rural blacks from the South; they were outnumbered by southern whites who also migrated to the city. Immigration brought southern and eastern Europeans of Catholic and Jewish faith; these new groups competed with native-born whites for jobs and housing in the booming city.
Detroit was one of the major Midwest cities that was a site for the dramatic urban revival of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) beginning in 1915. "By the 1920s the city had become a stronghold of the KKK", whose members primarily opposed Catholic and Jewish immigrants but also practiced discrimination against Black Americans. Even after the decline of the KKK in the late 1920s, the Black Legion, a secret vigilante group, was active in the Detroit area in the 1930s. One-third of its estimated 20,000 to 30,000 members in Michigan were based in the city. It was defeated after numerous prosecutions following the kidnapping and murder in 1936 of Charles Poole, a Catholic organizer with the federal Works Progress Administration. Some 49 men of the Black Legion were convicted of numerous crimes, with many sentenced to life in prison for murder.
By 1940, 80% of Detroit deeds contained restrictive covenants prohibiting African Americans from buying houses they could afford. These discriminatory tactics were successful as a majority of black people in Detroit resorted to living in all-black neighborhoods such as Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. At this time, white people still made up about 90.4% of the city's population. White residents attacked black homes: breaking windows, starting fires, and detonating bombs.
In the 1940s the world's "first urban depressed freeway" ever built, the Davison, was constructed. During World War II, the government encouraged retooling of the American automobile industry in support of the Allied powers, leading to Detroit's key role in the American Arsenal of Democracy. Jobs expanded so rapidly due to the defense buildup in World War II that 400,000 people migrated to the city from 1941 to 1943, including 50,000 blacks in the second wave of the Great Migration, and 350,000 whites, many of them from the South. Whites, including ethnic Europeans, feared black competition for jobs and scarce housing. The federal government prohibited discrimination in defense work, but when in June 1943 Packard promoted three black people to work next to whites on its assembly lines, 25,000 white workers walked off the job. The 1943 Detroit race riot took place in June, three weeks after the Packard plant protest, beginning with an altercation at Belle Isle. A total of 34 people were killed, 25 of them black and most at the hands of the white police force, while 433 were wounded (75% of them black), and property valued at $2 million (worth $30.4 million in 2020) was destroyed. Rioters moved through the city, and young whites traveled across town to attack more settled blacks in their neighborhood of Paradise Valley.
Industrial mergers in the 1950s, especially in the automobile sector, increased oligopoly in the American auto industry. Detroit manufacturers such as Packard and Hudson merged into other companies and eventually disappeared. At its peak population of 1,849,568, in the 1950 Census, the city was the fifth-largest in the United States.
In this postwar era, the auto industry continued to create opportunities for many African Americans from the South, who continued with their Great Migration to Detroit and other northern and western cities to escape the strict Jim Crow laws and racial discrimination policies of the South. Postwar Detroit was a prosperous industrial center of mass production. The auto industry comprised about 60% of all industry in the city, allowing space for a plethora of separate booming businesses including stove making, brewing, furniture building, oil refineries, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and more. The expansion of jobs created unique opportunities for black Americans, who saw novel high employment rates: there was a 103% increase in the number of blacks employed in postwar Detroit. Black Americans who immigrated to northern industrial cities from the south still faced intense racial discrimination in the employment sector. Racial discrimination kept the workforce and better jobs predominantly white, while many black Detroiters held lower-paying factory jobs. Despite changes in demographics as the city's black population expanded, Detroit's police force, fire department, and other city jobs continued to be held by predominantly white residents. This created an unbalanced racial power dynamic.
Unequal opportunities in employment resulted in unequal housing opportunities for the majority of the black community: with overall lower incomes and facing the backlash of discriminatory housing policies, the black community was limited to lower cost, lower quality housing in the city. The surge in the black population augmented the strain on housing scarcity. The livable areas available to the black community were limited, and as a result, families often crowded together in unsanitary, unsafe, and illegal quarters. Such discrimination became increasingly evident in the policies of redlining implemented by banks and federal housing groups, which almost completely restricted the ability of blacks to improve their housing and encouraged white people to guard the racial divide that defined their neighborhoods. As a result, black people were often denied bank loans to obtain better housing, and interest rates and rents were unfairly inflated to prevent their moving into white neighborhoods. White residents and political leaders largely opposed the influx of black Detroiters to white neighborhoods, believing that their presence would lead to neighborhood deterioration (most predominantly black neighborhoods deteriorated due to local and federal governmental neglect). This perpetuated a cyclical exclusionary process that marginalized the agency of black Detroiters by trapping them in the unhealthiest, least safe areas of the city.
As in other major American cities in the postwar era, modernist planning ideology drove the construction of a federally subsidized, extensive highway and freeway system around Detroit, and pent-up demand for new housing stimulated suburbanization; highways made commuting by car for higher-income residents easier. However, this construction had negative implications for many lower-income urban residents. Highways were constructed through and completely demolished neighborhoods of poor residents and black communities who had less political power to oppose them. The neighborhoods were mostly low income, considered blighted, or made up of older housing where investment had been lacking due to racial redlining, so the highways were presented as a kind of urban renewal. These neighborhoods (such as Black Bottom and Paradise Valley) were extremely important to the black communities of Detroit, providing spaces for independent black businesses and social/cultural organizations. Their destruction displaced residents with little consideration of the effects of breaking up functioning neighborhoods and businesses.
In 1956, Detroit's last heavily used electric streetcar line, which traveled along the length of Woodward Avenue, was removed and replaced with gas-powered buses. It was the last line of what had once been a 534-mile network of electric streetcars. In 1941, at peak times, a streetcar ran on Woodward Avenue every 60 seconds.
All of these changes in the area's transportation system favored low-density, auto-oriented development rather than high-density urban development. Industry also moved to the suburbs, seeking large plots of land for single-story factories. By the 21st century, the metro Detroit area had developed as one of the most sprawling job markets in the United States; combined with poor public transport, this resulted in many new jobs being beyond the reach of urban low-income workers.
In 1950, the city held about one-third of the state's population. Over the next 60 years, the city's population declined to less than 10 percent of the state's population. During the same time period, the sprawling metropolitan area grew to contain more than half of Michigan's population. The shift of population and jobs eroded Detroit's tax base.
In June 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a major speech as part of a civil rights march in Detroit that foreshadowed his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, D.C., two months later. While the civil rights movement gained significant federal civil rights laws in 1964 and 1965, longstanding inequities resulted in confrontations between the police and inner-city black youth who wanted change.
I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children, that my four little children will not come up in the same young days that I came up within, but they will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin ... I have a dream this evening that one day we will recognize the words of Jefferson that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I have a dream ...
—Martin Luther King Jr. (June 1963 Speech at the Great March on Detroit)
Longstanding tensions in Detroit culminated in the Twelfth Street riot in July 1967. Governor George W. Romney ordered the Michigan National Guard into Detroit, and President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in U.S. Army troops. The result was 43 dead, 467 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed, mostly in black residential and business areas. Thousands of small businesses closed permanently or relocated to safer neighborhoods. The affected district lay in ruins for decades. According to the Chicago Tribune, it was the 3rd most costly riot in the United States.
On August 18, 1970, the NAACP filed suit against Michigan state officials, including Governor William Milliken, charging de facto public school segregation. The NAACP argued that although schools were not legally segregated, the city of Detroit and its surrounding counties had enacted policies to maintain racial segregation in public schools. The NAACP also suggested a direct relationship between unfair housing practices and educational segregation, as the composition of students in the schools followed segregated neighborhoods. The District Court held all levels of government accountable for the segregation in its ruling. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed some of the decision, holding that it was the state's responsibility to integrate across the segregated metropolitan area. The U.S. Supreme Court took up the case February 27, 1974. The subsequent Milliken v. Bradley decision had nationwide influence. In a narrow decision, the Supreme Court found schools were a subject of local control, and suburbs could not be forced to aid with the desegregation of the city's school district.
"Milliken was perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of that period", said Myron Orfield, professor of law at the University of Minnesota. "Had that gone the other way, it would have opened the door to fixing nearly all of Detroit's current problems." John Mogk, a professor of law and an expert in urban planning at Wayne State University in Detroit, says,
Everybody thinks that it was the riots [in 1967] that caused the white families to leave. Some people were leaving at that time but, really, it was after Milliken that you saw mass flight to the suburbs. If the case had gone the other way, it is likely that Detroit would not have experienced the steep decline in its tax base that has occurred since then.
In November 1973, the city elected Coleman Young as its first black mayor. After taking office, Young emphasized increasing racial diversity in the police department, which was predominantly white. Young also worked to improve Detroit's transportation system, but the tension between Young and his suburban counterparts over regional matters was problematic throughout his mayoral term.
In 1976, the federal government offered $600 million (~$2.41 billion in 2022) for building a regional rapid transit system, under a single regional authority. But the inability of Detroit and its suburban neighbors to solve conflicts over transit planning resulted in the region losing the majority of funding for rapid transit. The city then moved forward with construction of the elevated downtown circulator portion of the system, which became known as the Detroit People Mover.
The gasoline crises of 1973 and 1979 affected auto industry. Buyers chose smaller, more fuel-efficient cars made by foreign makers as the price of gas rose. Efforts to revive the city were stymied by the struggles of the auto industry, as their sales and market share declined. Automakers laid off thousands of employees and closed plants in the city, further eroding the tax base. To counteract this, the city used eminent domain to build two large new auto assembly plants in the city.
Young sought to revive the city by seeking to increase investment in the city's declining downtown. The Renaissance Center, a mixed-use office and retail complex, opened in 1977. This group of skyscrapers was an attempt to keep businesses in downtown. Young also gave city support to other large developments to attract middle and upper-class residents back to the city. Despite the Renaissance Center and other projects, the downtown area continued to lose businesses to the automobile-dependent suburbs. Major stores and hotels closed, and many large office buildings went vacant. Young was criticized for being too focused on downtown development and not doing enough to lower the city's high crime rate and improve city services to residents.
High unemployment was compounded by middle-class flight to the suburbs, and some residents leaving the state to find work. The result for the city was a higher proportion of poor in its population, reduced tax base, depressed property values, abandoned buildings, abandoned neighborhoods, and high crime rates.
On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed near Detroit Metro airport, killing all but one of the 155 people on board, as well as two people on the ground.
In 1993, Young retired as Detroit's longest-serving mayor, deciding not to seek a sixth term, with Dennis Archer succeeding him. Archer prioritized downtown development, easing tensions with its suburban neighbors. A referendum to allow casino gambling in the city passed in 1996; several temporary casino facilities opened in 1999, and permanent downtown casinos with hotels opened in 2007–08.
Campus Martius, a reconfiguration of downtown's main intersection as a new park, was opened in 2004. The park has been cited as one of the best public spaces in the United States. In 2001, the first portion of the International Riverfront redevelopment was completed as a part of the city's 300th-anniversary celebration.
In September 2008, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (who had served for six years) resigned following felony convictions. In 2013, Kilpatrick was convicted on 24 federal felony counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, and racketeering, and was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison. The former mayor's activities cost the city an estimated $20 million. Roughly half of the owners of Detroit's 305,000 properties failed to pay their 2011 tax bills, resulting in about $246 million (~$317 million in 2022) in taxes and fees going uncollected, nearly half of which was due to Detroit. The rest of the money would have been earmarked for Wayne County, Detroit Public Schools, and the library system.
The city's financial crisis resulted in Michigan taking over administrative control of its government. Governor Rick Snyder declared a financial emergency in March 2013, stating the city had a $327 million budget deficit and faced more than $14 billion in long-term debt. It had been making ends meet on a month-to-month basis with the help of bond money held in a state escrow account and had instituted mandatory unpaid days off for many city workers. Those troubles, along with underfunded city services, such as police and fire departments, and ineffective turnaround plans from Mayor Bing and the City Council led the state of Michigan to appoint an emergency manager for Detroit. On June 14, 2013, Detroit defaulted on $2.5 billion of debt by withholding $39.7 million in interest payments, while Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr met with bondholders and other creditors in an attempt to restructure the city's $18.5 billion debt and avoid bankruptcy. On July 18, 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy. It was declared bankrupt by U.S. District Court on December 3, with its $18.5 billion debt. On November 7, 2014, the city's plan for exiting bankruptcy was approved. On December 11 the city officially exited bankruptcy. The plan allowed the city to eliminate $7 billion in debt and invest $1.7 billion into improved city services.
One way the city obtained this money was through the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). Holding over 60,000 pieces of art worth billions of dollars, some saw it as the key to funding this investment. The city came up with a plan to monetize the art and sell it, leading to the DIA becoming a private organization. After months of legal battles, the city finally got hundreds of millions of dollars towards funding a new Detroit.
One of the largest post-bankruptcy efforts to improve city services has been to fix the city's broken street lighting system. At one time it was estimated that 40% of lights were not working, which resulted in public safety issues and abandonment of housing. The plan called for replacing outdated high-pressure sodium lights with 65,000 LED lights. Construction began in late 2014 and finished in December 2016; Detroit is the largest U.S. city with all LED street lighting.
In the 2010s, several initiatives were taken by Detroit's citizens and new residents to improve the cityscape by renovating and revitalizing neighborhoods. Such projects include volunteer renovation groups and various urban gardening movements. Miles of associated parks and landscaping have been completed in recent years. In 2011, the Port Authority Passenger Terminal opened, with the riverwalk connecting Hart Plaza to the Renaissance Center.
One symbol of the city's decades-long decline, the Michigan Central Station, was long vacant. The city renovated it with new windows, elevators and facilities, completing the work in December 2015. In 2018, Ford Motor Company purchased the building and plans to use it for mobility testing with a potential return of train service. Several other landmark buildings have been privately renovated and adapted as condominiums, hotels, offices, or for cultural uses. Detroit was mentioned as a city of renaissance and has reversed many of the trends of the prior decades.
The city has seen a rise in gentrification. In downtown, for example, the construction of Little Caesars Arena brought with it high class shops and restaurants along Woodward Avenue. Office tower and condominium construction has led to an influx of wealthy families but also a displacement of long-time residents and culture. Areas outside of downtown and other recently revived areas have an average household income of about 25% less than the gentrified areas, a gap that is continuing to grow. Rents and cost of living in these gentrified areas rise every year, pushing minorities and the poor out, causing more and more racial disparity and separation in the city. In 2019, the cost of a one-bedroom loft in Rivertown reached $300,000 (~$340,352 in 2022), with a five-year sale price change of over 500% and average income rising by 18%.
Detroit is the center of a three-county urban area (with a population of 3,734,090 within an area of 1,337 square miles (3,460 km) according to the 2010 United States Census), six-county metropolitan statistical area (population of 5,322,219 in an area of 3,913 square miles [10,130 km] as of the 2010 census), and a nine-county Combined Statistical Area (population of 5.3 million within 5,814 square miles [15,060 km] as of 2010).
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 142.87 square miles (370.03 km), of which 138.75 square miles (359.36 km) is land and 4.12 square miles (10.67 km) is water. Detroit is the principal city in Metro Detroit and Southeast Michigan. It is situated in the Midwestern United States and the Great Lakes region.
The Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge is the only international wildlife preserve in North America and is uniquely located in the heart of a major metropolitan area. The refuge includes islands, coastal wetlands, marshes, shoals, and waterfront lands along 48 miles (77 km) of the Detroit River and western Lake Erie shoreline.
The city slopes gently from the northwest to southeast on a till plain composed largely of glacial and lake clay. The most notable topographical feature in the city is the Detroit Moraine, a broad clay ridge on which the older portions of Detroit and Windsor are located, rising approximately 62 feet (19 m) above the river at its highest point. The highest elevation in the city is directly north of Gorham Playground on the northwest side approximately three blocks south of 8 Mile Road, at a height of 675 to 680 feet (206 to 207 m). Detroit's lowest elevation is along the Detroit River, at a surface height of 572 feet (174 m).
Belle Isle Park is a 982-acre (1.534 sq mi; 397 ha) island park in the Detroit River, between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. It is connected to the mainland by the MacArthur Bridge. Belle Isle Park contains such attractions as the James Scott Memorial Fountain, the Belle Isle Conservatory, the Detroit Yacht Club on an adjacent island, a half-mile (800 m) beach, a golf course, a nature center, monuments, and gardens. Both the Detroit and Windsor skylines can be viewed at the island's Sunset Point.
Three road systems cross the city: the original French template, with avenues radiating from the waterfront, and true north–south roads based on the Northwest Ordinance township system. The city is north of Windsor, Ontario. Detroit is the only major city along the Canada–U.S. border in which one travels south in order to cross into Canada.
Detroit has four border crossings: the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit–Windsor tunnel provide motor vehicle thoroughfares, with the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel providing railroad access to and from Canada. The fourth border crossing is the Detroit–Windsor Truck Ferry, near the Windsor Salt Mine and Zug Island. Near Zug Island, the southwest part of the city was developed over a 1,500-acre (610 ha) salt mine that is 1,100 feet (340 m) below the surface. The Detroit salt mine run by the Detroit Salt Company has over 100 miles (160 km) of roads within.
Detroit and the rest of southeastern Michigan have a hot-summer humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfa) which is influenced by the Great Lakes like other places in the state; the city and close-in suburbs are part of USDA Hardiness zone 6b, while the more distant northern and western suburbs generally are included in zone 6a. Winters are cold, with moderate snowfall and temperatures not rising above freezing on an average 44 days annually, while dropping to or below 0 °F (−18 °C) on an average 4.4 days a year; summers are warm to hot with temperatures exceeding 90 °F (32 °C) on 12 days. The warm season runs from May to September. The monthly daily mean temperature ranges from 25.6 °F (−3.6 °C) in January to 73.6 °F (23.1 °C) in July. Official temperature extremes range from 105 °F (41 °C) on July 24, 1934, down to −21 °F (−29 °C) on January 21, 1984; the record low maximum is −4 °F (−20 °C) on January 19, 1994, while, conversely the record high minimum is 80 °F (27 °C) on August 1, 2006, the most recent of five occurrences. A decade or two may pass between readings of 100 °F (38 °C) or higher, which last occurred July 17, 2012. The average window for freezing temperatures is October 20 thru April 22, allowing a growing season of 180 days.
Precipitation is moderate and somewhat evenly distributed throughout the year, although the warmer months such as May and June average more, averaging 33.5 inches (850 mm) annually, but historically ranging from 20.49 in (520 mm) in 1963 to 47.70 in (1,212 mm) in 2011. Snowfall, which typically falls in measurable amounts between November 15 through April 4 (occasionally in October and very rarely in May), averages 42.5 inches (108 cm) per season, although historically ranging from 11.5 in (29 cm) in 1881–82 to 94.9 in (241 cm) in 2013–14. A thick snowpack is not often seen, with an average of only 27.5 days with 3 in (7.6 cm) or more of snow cover. Thunderstorms are frequent in the Detroit area. These usually occur during spring and summer.
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Seen in panorama, Detroit's waterfront shows a variety of architectural styles. The postmodern Neo-Gothic spires of Ally Detroit Center were designed to refer to the city's Art Deco skyscrapers. Together with the Renaissance Center, these buildings form a distinctive and recognizable skyline. Examples of the Art Deco style include the Guardian Building and Penobscot Building downtown, as well as the Fisher Building and Cadillac Place in the New Center area near Wayne State University. Among the city's prominent structures are United States' largest Fox Theatre, the Detroit Opera House, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, all built in the early 20th century.
While the Downtown and New Center areas contain high-rise buildings, the majority of the surrounding city consists of low-rise structures and single-family homes. Outside of the city's core, residential high-rises are found in upper-class neighborhoods such as the East Riverfront, extending toward Grosse Pointe, and the Palmer Park neighborhood just west of Woodward. The University Commons-Palmer Park district in northwest Detroit, near the University of Detroit Mercy and Marygrove College, anchors historic neighborhoods including Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest, and the University District.
Forty-two significant structures or sites are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Neighborhoods constructed prior to World War II feature the architecture of the times, with wood-frame and brick houses in the working-class neighborhoods, larger brick homes in middle-class neighborhoods, and ornate mansions in upper-class neighborhoods such as Brush Park, Woodbridge, Indian Village, Palmer Woods, Boston-Edison, and others.
Some of the oldest neighborhoods are along the major Woodward and East Jefferson corridors, which formed spines of the city. Some newer residential construction may also be found along the Woodward corridor and in the far west and northeast. The oldest extant neighborhoods include West Canfield and Brush Park. There have been multi-million dollar restorations of existing homes and construction of new homes and condominiums here.
The city has one of the United States' largest surviving collections of late 19th- and early 20th-century buildings. Architecturally significant churches and cathedrals in the city include St. Joseph's, Old St. Mary's, the Sweetest Heart of Mary, and the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament.
The city has substantial activity in urban design, historic preservation, and architecture. A number of downtown redevelopment projects—of which Campus Martius Park is one of the most notable—have revitalized parts of the city. Grand Circus Park and historic district is near the city's theater district; Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, and Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers. Little Caesars Arena, a new home for the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Pistons, with attached residential, hotel, and retail use, opened in 2017. The plans for the project call for mixed-use residential on the blocks surrounding the arena and the renovation of the vacant 14-story Eddystone Hotel. It will be a part of The District Detroit, a group of places owned by Olympia Entertainment Inc., including Comerica Park and the Detroit Opera House, among others.
The Detroit International Riverfront includes a partially completed three-and-one-half-mile riverfront promenade with a combination of parks, residential buildings, and commercial areas. It extends from Hart Plaza to the MacArthur Bridge, which connects to Belle Isle Park, the largest island park in a U.S. city. The riverfront includes Tri-Centennial State Park and Harbor, Michigan's first urban state park. The second phase is a two-mile (3.2-kilometer) extension from Hart Plaza to the Ambassador Bridge for a total of five miles (8.0 kilometres) of parkway from bridge to bridge. Civic planners envision the pedestrian parks will stimulate residential redevelopment of riverfront properties condemned under eminent domain.
Other major parks include River Rouge (in the southwest side), the largest park in Detroit; Palmer (north of Highland Park) and Chene Park (on the east river downtown).
Detroit has a variety of neighborhood types. The revitalized Downtown, Midtown, Corktown, New Center areas feature many historic buildings and are high density, while further out, particularly in the northeast and on the fringes, high vacancy levels are problematic, for which a number of solutions have been proposed. In 2007, Downtown Detroit was recognized as the best city neighborhood in which to retire among the United States' largest metro areas by CNNMoney editors.
Lafayette Park is a revitalized neighborhood on the city's east side, part of the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe residential district. The 78-acre (32 ha) development was originally called the Gratiot Park. Planned by Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig Hilberseimer and Alfred Caldwell it includes a landscaped, 19-acre (7.7 ha) park with no through traffic, in which these and other low-rise apartment buildings are situated. Immigrants have contributed to the city's neighborhood revitalization, especially in southwest Detroit. Southwest Detroit has experienced a thriving economy in recent years, as evidenced by new housing, increased business openings and the recently opened Mexicantown International Welcome Center.
The city has numerous neighborhoods consisting of vacant properties resulting in low inhabited density in those areas, stretching city services and infrastructure. These neighborhoods are concentrated in the northeast and on the city's fringes. A 2009 parcel survey found about a quarter of residential lots in the city to be undeveloped or vacant, and about 10% of the city's housing to be unoccupied. The survey also reported that most (86%) of the city's homes are in good condition with a minority (9%) in fair condition needing only minor repairs.
To deal with vacancy issues, the city has begun demolishing the derelict houses, razing 3,000 of the total 10,000 in 2010, but the resulting low density creates a strain on the city's infrastructure. To remedy this, a number of solutions have been proposed including resident relocation from more sparsely populated neighborhoods and converting unused space to urban agricultural use, including Hantz Woodlands, though the city expects to be in the planning stages for up to another two years.
Public funding and private investment have been made with promises to rehabilitate neighborhoods. In April 2008, the city announced a $300 million (~$402 million in 2022) stimulus plan to create jobs and revitalize neighborhoods, financed by city bonds and paid for by earmarking about 15% of the wagering tax. The city's working plans for neighborhood revitalizations include 7-Mile/Livernois, Brightmoor, East English Village, Grand River/Greenfield, North End, and Osborn. Private organizations have pledged substantial funding to the efforts. Additionally, the city has cleared a 1,200-acre (490 ha) section of land for large-scale neighborhood construction, which the city is calling the Far Eastside Plan. In 2011, Mayor Dave Bing announced a plan to categorize neighborhoods by their needs and prioritize the most needed services for those neighborhoods.
In the 2020 United States Census, the city had 639,111 residents, ranking it the 27th most populous city in the United States. Of the large shrinking cities in the United States, Detroit has had the most dramatic decline in the population of the past 70 years (down 1,210,457) and the second-largest percentage decline (down 65.4%). While the drop in Detroit's population has been ongoing since 1950, the most dramatic period was the significant 25% decline between the 2000 and 2010 Census.
Detroit's 639,111 residents represent 269,445 households, and 162,924 families residing in the city. The population density was 5,144.3 people per square mile (1,986.2 people/km). There were 349,170 housing units at an average density of 2,516.5 units per square mile (971.6 units/km). Of the 269,445 households, 34.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 21.5% were married couples living together, 31.4% had a female householder with no husband present, 39.5% were non-families, 34.0% were made up of individuals, and 3.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.59, and the average family size was 3.36.
There was a wide distribution of age in the city, with 31.1% under the age of 18, 9.7% from 18 to 24, 29.5% from 25 to 44, 19.3% from 45 to 64, and 10.4% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females, there were 89.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 83.5 males.
According to a 2014 study, 67% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christians, with 49% professing attendance at Protestant churches, and 16% professing Roman Catholic beliefs, while 24% claim no religious affiliation. Other religions collectively make up about 8% of the population.
The loss of industrial and working-class jobs in the city has resulted in high rates of poverty and associated problems. From 2000 to 2009, the city's estimated median household income fell from $29,526 to $26,098. As of 2010, the mean income of Detroit is below the overall U.S. average by several thousand dollars. Of every three Detroit residents, one lives in poverty. Luke Bergmann, author of Getting Ghost: Two Young Lives and the Struggle for the Soul of an American City, said in 2010, "Detroit is now one of the poorest big cities in the country".
In the 2018 American Community Survey, median household income in the city was $31,283, compared with the median for Michigan of $56,697. The median income for a family was $36,842, well below the state median of $72,036. 33.4% of families had income at or below the federally defined poverty level. Out of the total population, 47.3% of those under the age of 18 and 21.0% of those 65 and older had income at or below the federally defined poverty line.
Beginning with the rise of the automobile industry, Detroit's population increased more than sixfold during the first half of the 20th century as an influx of European, Middle Eastern (Lebanese, Assyrian/Chaldean), and Southern migrants brought their families to the city. With this economic boom following World War I, the African American population grew from a mere 6,000 in 1910 to more than 120,000 by 1930. Perhaps one of the most overt examples of neighborhood discrimination occurred in 1925 when African American physician Ossian Sweet found his home surrounded by an angry mob of his hostile white neighbors violently protesting his new move into a traditionally white neighborhood. Sweet and ten of his family members and friends were put on trial for murder as one of the mob members throwing rocks at the newly purchased house was shot and killed by someone firing out of a second-floor window.
Detroit has a relatively large Mexican-American population. In the early 20th century, thousands of Mexicans came to Detroit to work in agricultural, automotive, and steel jobs. During the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s many Mexicans in Detroit were willingly repatriated or forced to repatriate. By the 1940s much of the Mexican community began to settle what is now Mexicantown. Immigration from Jalisco significantly increased the Latino population in the 1990s. By 2010 Detroit had 48,679 Hispanics, including 36,452 Mexicans: a 70% increase from 1990.
After World War II, many people from Appalachia also settled in Detroit. Appalachians formed communities and their children acquired southern accents. Many Lithuanians also settled in Detroit during the World War II era, especially on the city's Southwest side in the West Vernor area, where the renovated Lithuanian Hall reopened in 2006.
While African Americans previously comprised only 13% of Michigan's population, by 2010 they made up nearly 82% of Detroit's population. The next largest population groups were white people, at 10%, and Hispanics, at 6%. In 2001, 103,000 Jews, or about 1.9% of the population, were living in the Detroit area. According to the 2010 census, segregation in Detroit has decreased in absolute and relative terms and in the first decade of the 21st century, about two-thirds of the total black population in the metropolitan area resided within the city limits of Detroit. The number of integrated neighborhoods increased from 100 in 2000 to 204 in 2010. Detroit also moved down the ranking from number one most segregated city to number four. A 2011 op-ed in The New York Times attributed the decreased segregation rating to the overall exodus from the city, cautioning that these areas may soon become more segregated.
As of 2002, Detroit's percentage of Asians was 1%. There are four areas in Detroit with significant Asian and Asian American populations. Northeast Detroit has a large population of Hmong with a smaller group of Lao people. A portion of Detroit next to eastern Hamtramck includes Bangladeshi Americans, Indian Americans, and Pakistani Americans; nearly all of the Bangladeshi population in Detroit lives in that area. The area north of downtown has transient Asian national origin residents who are university students or hospital workers. Few of them have permanent residency after schooling ends. They are mostly Chinese and Indian but the population also includes Filipinos, Koreans, and Pakistanis. In Southwest Detroit and western Detroit there are smaller, scattered Asian communities.
Several major corporations are based in the city, including three Fortune 500 companies. The most heavily represented sectors are manufacturing (particularly automotive), finance, technology, and health care. The most significant companies based in Detroit include General Motors, Quicken Loans, Ally Financial, Compuware, Shinola, American Axle, Little Caesars, DTE Energy, Lowe Campbell Ewald, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and Rossetti Architects.
About 80,500 people work in downtown Detroit, comprising one-fifth of the city's employment base. Aside from the numerous Detroit-based companies listed above, downtown contains large offices for Comerica, Chrysler, Fifth Third Bank, HP Enterprise, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, and Ernst & Young. Ford Motor Company is in the adjacent city of Dearborn.
Thousands more employees work in Midtown, north of the central business district. Midtown's anchors are the city's largest single employer Detroit Medical Center, Wayne State University, and the Henry Ford Health System in New Center. Midtown is also home to watchmaker Shinola and an array of small and startup companies. New Center bases TechTown, a research and business incubator hub that is part of the Wayne State University system. Like downtown, Corktown Is experiencing growth with the new Ford Corktown Campus under development.
Many downtown employers are relatively new, as there has been a marked trend of companies moving from satellite suburbs into the downtown core. Compuware completed its world headquarters in downtown in 2003. OnStar, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and HP Enterprise Services are at the Renaissance Center. PricewaterhouseCoopers Plaza offices are adjacent to Ford Field, and Ernst & Young completed its office building at One Kennedy Square in 2006. Perhaps most prominently, in 2010, Quicken Loans, one of the largest mortgage lenders, relocated its world headquarters and 4,000 employees to downtown Detroit, consolidating its suburban offices. In July 2012, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office opened its Elijah J. McCoy Satellite Office in the Rivertown/Warehouse District as its first location outside Washington, D.C.'s metropolitan area.
In April 2014, the United States Department of Labor reported the city's unemployment rate at 14.5%.
The city of Detroit and other public–private partnerships have attempted to catalyze the region's growth by facilitating the building and historical rehabilitation of residential high-rises in the downtown, creating a zone that offers many business tax incentives, creating recreational spaces such as the Detroit RiverWalk, Campus Martius Park, Dequindre Cut Greenway, and Green Alleys in Midtown. The city has cleared sections of land while retaining some historically significant vacant buildings in order to spur redevelopment; even though it has struggled with finances, the city issued bonds in 2008 to provide funding for ongoing work to demolish blighted properties. Two years earlier, downtown reported $1.3 billion in restorations and new developments which increased the number of construction jobs in the city. In the decade prior to 2006, downtown gained more than $15 billion in new investment from private and public sectors.
Despite the city's recent financial issues, many developers remain unfazed by Detroit's problems. Midtown is one of the most successful areas within Detroit to have a residential occupancy rate of 96%. Numerous developments have been recently completed or are in various stages of construction. These include the $82 million reconstruction of downtown's David Whitney Building (now an Aloft Hotel and luxury residences), the Woodward Garden Block Development in Midtown, the residential conversion of the David Broderick Tower in downtown, the rehabilitation of the Book Cadillac Hotel (now a Westin and luxury condos) and Fort Shelby Hotel (now Doubletree) also in downtown, and various smaller projects.
Downtown's population of young professionals is growing, and retail is expanding. A study in 2007 found out that Downtown's new residents are predominantly young professionals (57% are ages 25 to 34, 45% have bachelor's degrees, and 34% have a master's or professional degree), a trend which has hastened over the last decade. Since 2006, $9 billion has been invested in downtown and surrounding neighborhoods; $5.2 billion of which has come in 2013 and 2014. Construction activity, particularly rehabilitation of historic downtown buildings, has increased markedly. As of 2014, the number of vacant downtown buildings has dropped from nearly 50 to around 13.
In 2013 Meijer, a midwestern retail chain, opened its first supercenter store in Detroit; this was a $20 million, 190,000-square-foot store in the northern portion of the city and it also is the centerpiece of a new $72 million shopping center named Gateway Marketplace. In 2015 Meijer opened its second supercenter store in the city. In 2019 JPMorgan Chase announced plans to invest $50 million more in affordable housing, job training and entrepreneurship by the end of 2022, growing its investment to $200 million.
In the central portions of Detroit, the population of young professionals, artists, and other transplants is growing and retail is expanding. This dynamic is luring additional new residents, and former residents returning from other cities, to the city's Downtown along with the revitalized Midtown and New Center areas.
A desire to be closer to the urban scene has attracted some young professionals to reside in inner ring suburbs such as Ferndale and Royal Oak. The proximity to Windsor provides for views and nightlife, along with Ontario's minimum drinking age of 19. A 2011 study by Walk Score recognized Detroit for its above average walkability among large U.S. cities. About two-thirds of suburban residents occasionally dine and attend cultural events or take in professional games in the city.
Known as the world's automotive center, "Detroit" is a metonym for that industry. It is an important source of popular music legacies celebrated by the city's two familiar nicknames, the Motor City and Motown. Other nicknames arose in the 20th century, including City of Champions, beginning in the 1930s for its successes in individual and team sport; The D; Hockeytown (a trademark owned by the Detroit Red Wings); Rock City (after the Kiss song "Detroit Rock City"); and The 313 (its telephone area code).
Live music has been a prominent feature of Detroit's nightlife since the late 1940s, bringing the city recognition under the nickname "Motown". The metropolitan area has many nationally prominent live music venues. Concerts hosted by Live Nation perform throughout the Detroit area. The theater venue circuit is the United States' second largest and hosts Broadway performances.
The city has a rich musical heritage and has contributed to many genres over the decades. Important music events include the Detroit International Jazz Festival, the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, the Motor City Music Conference (MC2), the Urban Organic Music Conference, the Concert of Colors, and the hip-hop Summer Jamz festival.
In the 1940s, Detroit blues artist John Lee Hooker became a long-term resident in the Delray neighborhood. Hooker, among other important blues musicians, migrated from his home in Mississippi, bringing the Delta blues to Detroit. Hooker recorded for Fortune Records, the biggest pre-Motown blues/soul label. During the 1950s, the city became a center for jazz, with stars performing in the Black Bottom neighborhood. Prominent emerging jazz musicians included trumpeter Donald Byrd (who attended Cass Tech and performed with Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers early in his career) and saxophonist Pepper Adams (who enjoyed a solo career and accompanied Byrd on several albums). The Graystone International Jazz Museum documents jazz in Detroit.
Other prominent Motor City R&B stars in the 1950s and early 1960s were Nolan Strong, Andre Williams and Nathaniel Mayer—who all scored local and national hits on the Fortune Records label. According to Smokey Robinson, Strong was a primary influence on his voice as a teenager. The Fortune label, a family-operated label on Third Avenue, was owned by the husband-and-wife team of Jack Brown and Devora Brown. Fortune—which also released country, gospel and rockabilly LPs and 45s—laid the groundwork for Motown, which became Detroit's most legendary record label.
Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Motown Records, which rose to prominence during the 1960s and early 1970s with acts such as Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Diana Ross & The Supremes, the Jackson 5, Martha and the Vandellas, the Spinners, Gladys Knight & the Pips, the Marvelettes, the Elgins, the Monitors, the Velvelettes and Marvin Gaye. Artists were backed by in-house vocalists The Andantes and The Funk Brothers.
"The Motown sound" played an important role in the crossover appeal with popular music, since it was the first African American–owned record label to primarily feature African-American artists. Gordy moved Motown to Los Angeles in 1972 to pursue film production, but the company has since returned to Detroit. Aretha Franklin, another Detroit R&B star, carried the Motown sound; however, she did not record with Berry's Motown label.
Local artists and bands rose to prominence in the 1960s and 70s, including the MC5, Glenn Frey, the Stooges, Bob Seger, Amboy Dukes featuring Ted Nugent, Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels, Rare Earth, Alice Cooper, and Suzi Quatro. The group Kiss emphasized the city's connection with rock in the song "Detroit Rock City" and the movie produced in 1999. In the 1980s, Detroit was an important center of the hardcore punk rock underground with many nationally known bands coming out of the city and its suburbs, such as the Necros, the Meatmen, and Negative Approach.
In the 1990s and 2000s, the city produced many influential hip hop artists, including Eminem, the hip-hop artist with the highest cumulative sales, his rap group D12, hip-hop rapper and producer Royce da 5'9", hip-hop producer Denaun Porter, hip-hop producer J Dilla, rapper and musician Kid Rock and rappers Big Sean and Danny Brown. The band Sponge toured and produced music. The city also has an active garage rock scene that has generated national attention with acts such as the White Stripes, the Von Bondies, the Detroit Cobras, the Dirtbombs, Electric Six, and the Hard Lessons.Detroit is cited as the birthplace of techno music in the early 1980s. The city also lends its name to an early and pioneering genre of electronic dance music, "Detroit techno". Featuring science fiction imagery and robotic themes, its futuristic style was greatly influenced by the geography of Detroit's urban decline and its industrial past. Prominent Detroit techno artists include Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, and Jeff Mills. The Detroit Electronic Music Festival, now known as Movement, occurs annually in late May on Memorial Day Weekend, and takes place in Hart Plaza.
Major theaters in Detroit include the Fox Theatre (5,174 seats), Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts (1,770 seats), the Gem Theatre (451 seats), Masonic Temple Theatre (4,404 seats), the Detroit Opera House (2,765 seats), the Fisher Theatre (2,089 seats), The Fillmore Detroit (2,200 seats), Saint Andrew's Hall, the Majestic Theater, and Orchestra Hall (2,286 seats), which hosts the renowned Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The Nederlander Organization, the largest controller of Broadway productions in New York City, originated with the purchase of the Detroit Opera House in 1922 by the Nederlander family.
Motown Motion Picture Studios with 535,000 square feet (49,700 m) produces movies in Detroit and the surrounding area based at the Pontiac Centerpoint Business Campus for a film industry expected to employ over 4,000 people in the metro area.
Because of its unique culture, distinctive architecture, and revitalization and urban renewal efforts in the 21st century, Detroit has enjoyed increased prominence as a tourist destination in recent years. The New York Times listed Detroit as the ninth-best destination in its list of 52 Places to Go in 2017, while travel guide publisher Lonely Planet named Detroit the second-best city in the world to visit in 2018.Time named Detroit as one of the 50 World's Greatest Places of 2022 to explore.
Many of the area's prominent museums are in the historic cultural center neighborhood around Wayne State University and the College for Creative Studies. These museums include the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Historical Museum, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Detroit Science Center, as well as the main branch of the Detroit Public Library. Other cultural highlights include Motown Historical Museum, the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant museum, the Pewabic Pottery studio and school, the Tuskegee Airmen Museum, Fort Wayne, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, and the Belle Isle Conservatory.
In 2010, the G.R. N'Namdi Gallery opened in a 16,000-square-foot (1,500 m) complex in Midtown. Important history of America and the Detroit area are exhibited at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, the United States' largest indoor-outdoor museum complex. The Detroit Historical Society provides information about tours of area churches, skyscrapers, and mansions. Inside Detroit hosts tours, educational programming, and a downtown welcome center. Other sites of interest are the Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak, the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory on Belle Isle, and Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills.
Greektown and three downtown casino resort hotels serve as part of an entertainment hub. The Eastern Market farmer's distribution center is the largest open-air flowerbed market in the United States and has more than 150 foods and specialty businesses. On Saturdays, about 45,000 people shop there. The annual Detroit Festival of the Arts in Midtown draws about 350,000 people.
Annual summer events include the Electronic Music Festival, International Jazz Festival, the Woodward Dream Cruise, the African World Festival, the country music Hoedown, Noel Night, and Dally in the Alley. Within downtown, Campus Martius Park hosts large events, including the annual Motown Winter Blast. As the world's traditional automotive center, the city hosts the North American International Auto Show. Held since 1924, America's Thanksgiving Parade is one of the nation's largest. River Days, a five-day summer festival on the International Riverfront lead up to the Windsor–Detroit International Freedom Festival fireworks, which draw super sized-crowds ranging from hundreds of thousands to over three million people.
An important civic sculpture is The Spirit of Detroit by Marshall Fredericks at the Coleman Young Municipal Center. The image is often used as a symbol of Detroit, and the statue is occasionally dressed in sports jerseys to celebrate when a Detroit team is doing well. A memorial to Joe Louis is located at the intersection of Jefferson and Woodward Avenues. The sculpture, commissioned by Sports Illustrated and executed by Robert Graham, is a 24-foot (7.3 m) long arm with a fisted hand suspended by a pyramidal framework.
Detroit is one of 3 U.S. cities that is home to professional teams with venues within the city representing the four major sports in North America. Detroit is the only city to have its four major sports teams play within its downtown district. Venues include: Comerica Park (home of MLB's Detroit Tigers), Ford Field (home of the NFL's Detroit Lions), and Little Caesars Arena (home of the NHL's Detroit Red Wings and the NBA's Detroit Pistons).
Detroit has won titles in all four of the major professional sports leagues. The Tigers have won four World Series titles (1935, 1945, 1968, and 1984). The Red Wings have won 11 Stanley Cups (1935–36, 1936–37, 1942–43, 1949–50, 1951–52, 1953–54, 1954–55, 1996–97, 1997–98, 2001–02, 2007–08) (the most by an American NHL franchise). The Lions have won 4 NFL titles (1935, 1952, 1953, 1957) . The Pistons have won three NBA titles (1989, 1990, 2004). In the years following the mid-1930s, Detroit was referred to as the "City of Champions" after the Tigers, Lions, and Red Wings captured the three major professional sports championships in existence at the time in a seven-month period (the Tigers won the World Series in October 1935; the Lions won the NFL championship in December 1935; the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in April 1936).
Founded in 2012 as a semi-professional soccer club, Detroit City FC plays professional soccer in the USL Championship. Nicknamed, Le Rouge, the club are two-time champions of NISA since joining in 2020. They play their home matches in Keyworth Stadium, which is located in the enclave of Hamtramck.
In college sports, Detroit's central location within the Mid-American Conference (MAC) has made it a frequent site for the league's championship events. While the MAC Basketball Tournament moved permanently to Cleveland starting in 2000, the MAC Football Championship Game has been played at Ford Field since 2004 and annually attracts 25,000 to 30,000 fans. The University of Detroit Mercy has an NCAA Division I program, and Wayne State University has both NCAA Division I and II programs. The NCAA football Quick Lane Bowl is held at Ford Field each December.
The city hosted the 2005 MLB All-Star Game, Super Bowl XL in 2006, the 2006 and 2012 World Series, WrestleMania 23 in 2007, and the NCAA Final Four in April 2009. The Detroit Indy Grand Prix is held in Belle Isle Park. In 2007, open-wheel racing returned to Belle Isle with both Indy Racing League and American Le Mans Series Racing. From 1982 to 1988, Detroit held the Detroit Grand Prix, at the Detroit street circuit.
In 1932, Eddie "The Midnight Express" Tolan from Detroit won the 100- and 200-meter races and two gold medals at the 1932 Summer Olympics. Joe Louis won the heavyweight championship of the world in 1937. Detroit has made the most bids to host the Summer Olympics without ever being awarded the games, with seven unsuccessful bids for the 1944, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972 summer games.
The city is governed pursuant to the home rule Charter of the City of Detroit. The government is run by a mayor, the nine-member Detroit City Council, the eleven-member Board of Police Commissioners, and a clerk. All of these officers are elected on a nonpartisan ballot, with the exception of four of the police commissioners, who are appointed by the mayor. Detroit has a "strong mayoral" system, with the mayor approving departmental appointments. The council approves budgets, but the mayor is not obligated to adhere to any earmarking. The city clerk supervises elections and is formally charged with the maintenance of municipal records. City ordinances and substantially large contracts must be approved by the council. The Detroit City Code is the codification of Detroit's local ordinances.
Presently three Community Advisory Councils advise City Council representatives. Residents of each of Detroit's seven districts have the option of electing Community Advisory Councils. The city clerk supervises elections and is formally charged with the maintenance of municipal records. Municipal elections for mayor, city council and city clerk are held at four-year intervals, in the year after presidential elections. Following a November 2009 referendum, seven council members will be elected from districts beginning in 2013 while two will continue to be elected at-large.
Detroit's courts are state-administered and elections are nonpartisan. The Probate Court for Wayne County is in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in downtown. The Circuit Court is across Gratiot Avenue in the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. The city is home to the Thirty-Sixth District Court, as well as the First District of the Michigan Court of Appeals and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The city provides law enforcement through the Detroit Police Department and emergency services through the Detroit Fire Department.
Beginning with its incorporation in 1802, Detroit has had a total of 74 mayors. Detroit's last mayor from the Republican Party was Louis Miriani, who served from 1957 to 1962. In 1973, the city elected its first black mayor, Coleman Young. Despite development efforts, his combative style during his five terms in office was not well received by many suburban residents. Mayor Dennis Archer, a former Michigan Supreme Court Justice, refocused the city's attention on redevelopment with a plan to permit three casinos downtown. By 2008, three major casino resort hotels established operations in the city.
In 2000, the city requested an investigation by the United States Justice Department into the Detroit Police Department which was concluded in 2003 over allegations regarding its use of force and civil rights violations. The city proceeded with a major reorganization of the Detroit Police Department. In 2013, felony bribery charges were brought against seven building inspectors. In 2016, further corruption charges were brought against 12 principals, a former school superintendent and supply vendor for a $12 million (~$14.4 million in 2022) kickback scheme. However, law professor Peter Henning argues Detroit's corruption is not unusual for a city its size, especially when compared with Chicago.
Detroit is sometimes referred to as a sanctuary city because it has "anti-profiling ordinances that generally prohibit local police from asking about the immigration status of people who are not suspected of any crime". The city in recent years has been a stronghold for the Democratic Party, with around 94% of votes in the city going to Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate in the 2020 Presidential election.
Detroit is home to several institutions of higher learning including Wayne State University, a national research university with medical and law schools in the Midtown area offering hundreds of academic degrees and programs. The University of Detroit Mercy, in northwest Detroit in the University District, is a prominent Roman Catholic co-educational university affiliated with the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and the Sisters of Mercy. The University of Detroit Mercy School of Law is downtown across from the Renaissance Center.
Grand Valley State University's Detroit Center hosts workshops, seminars, professional development, and other large gatherings. Located in the heart of downtown next to Comerica Park and the Detroit Athletic Club, the center has become a key component for educational activity in the city.
Sacred Heart Major Seminary, founded in 1919, is affiliated with Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome and offers pontifical degrees as well as civil undergraduate and graduate degrees. Other institutions in the city include the College for Creative Studies and Wayne County Community College. In June 2009, the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine which is based in East Lansing opened a satellite campus at the Detroit Medical Center.
As of 2016 many K-12 students in Detroit frequently change schools, with some children having been enrolled in seven schools before finishing their K-12 careers. There is a concentration of senior high schools and charter schools in the downtown area, which had wealthier residents and more gentrification relative to other parts of Detroit: Downtown, northwest Detroit, and northeast Detroit have 1,894, 3,742, and 6,018 students of high school age, respectively, while they have 11, three, and two high schools, respectively. As of 2016 because of the lack of public transportation and the lack of school bus services, many Detroit families have to rely on themselves to transport children to school.
With about 66,000 public school students (2011–12), the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) district is the largest school district in Michigan. Detroit has an additional 56,000 charter school students for a combined enrollment of about 122,000 students. As of 2009 there are about as many students in charter schools as there are in district schools. As of 2016 DPS continues to have the majority of the special education pupils. In addition, some Detroit students, as of 2016, attend public schools in other municipalities.
In 1999, the Michigan Legislature removed the locally elected board of education amid allegations of mismanagement and replaced it with a reform board appointed by the mayor and governor. The elected board of education was re-established following a city referendum in 2005. The first election of the new 11-member board of education occurred on November 8, 2005.
With growing charter schools enrollment as well as a continued exodus of population, the city planned to close many public schools. State officials report a 68% graduation rate for Detroit's public schools adjusted for those who change schools. Traditional public and charter school students in the city have performed poorly on standardized tests. c. 2009 and 2011, while Detroit traditional public schools scored a record low on national tests, the publicly funded charter schools did even worse than the traditional public schools. As of 2016 there were 30,000 excess openings in Detroit traditional public and charter schools, bearing in mind the number of K-12-aged children in the city. In 2016, Kate Zernike of The New York Times stated school performance did not improve despite the proliferation of charters, describing the situation as "lots of choice, with no good choice".
Detroit public schools students scored the lowest on tests of reading and writing of all major cities in the United States in 2015. Among eighth-graders, only 27% showed basic proficiency in math and 44% in reading. Nearly half of Detroit's adults are functionally illiterate.
Detroit is served by various private schools, as well as parochial Roman Catholic schools operated by the Archdiocese of Detroit. As of 2013 there are four Catholic grade schools and three Catholic high schools in the City of Detroit, with all of them in the city's west side. The Archdiocese of Detroit lists a number of primary and secondary schools in the metro area as Catholic education has emigrated to the suburbs. Of the three Catholic high schools, two are operated by the Society of Jesus and the third is co-sponsored by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Congregation of St. Basil.
The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News are the major daily newspapers, both broadsheet publications published together under a joint operating agreement called the Detroit Media Partnership. Media philanthropy includes the Detroit Free Press high school journalism program and the Old Newsboys' Goodfellow Fund of Detroit. In March 2009, the two newspapers reduced home delivery to three days per week, print reduced newsstand issues of the papers on non-delivery days and focus resources on Internet-based news delivery. The Metro Times, founded in 1980, is a weekly publication, covering news, arts & entertainment.
Founded in 1935 and based in Detroit, the Michigan Chronicle is one of the oldest and most respected African-American weekly newspapers in America, covering politics, entertainment, sports and community events. The Detroit television market is the 11th largest in the United States; according to estimates that do not include audiences in large areas of Ontario (Windsor and its surrounding area on broadcast and cable TV, as well as several other cable markets in Ontario, such as Ottawa) which receive and watch Detroit television stations.
Detroit has the 11th largest radio market in the United States, though this ranking does not take into account Canadian audiences. Nearby Canadian stations such as Windsor's CKLW (whose jingles formerly proclaimed "CKLW-the Motor City") are popular in Detroit.
Detroit has gained notoriety for its high amount of crime, having struggled with it for decades. The number of homicides in 1974 was 714. The homicide rate in 2022 was the third highest in the nation at 50.0 per 100,000. Downtown typically has lower crime than national and state averages. According to a 2007 analysis, Detroit officials note about 65 to 70 percent of homicides in the city were drug related, with the rate of unsolved murders roughly 70%.
Although the rate of violent crime dropped 11% in 2008, violent crime in Detroit has not declined as much as the national average from 2007 to 2011. The violent crime rate is one of the highest in the United States. Neighborhoodscout.com reported a crime rate of 62.18 per 1,000 residents for property crimes, and 16.73 per 1,000 for violent crimes (compared to national figures of 32 per 1,000 for property crimes and 5 per 1,000 for violent crime in 2008). In 2012, crime in the city was among the reasons for more expensive car insurance.
Areas of the city adjacent to the Detroit River are also patrolled by the United States Border Patrol.
There are over a dozen major hospitals, which include the Detroit Medical Center (DMC), Henry Ford Health System, St. John Health System, and the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center. DMC, a regional Level I trauma center, consists of Detroit Receiving Hospital and University Health Center, Children's Hospital of Michigan, Harper University Hospital, Hutzel Women's Hospital, Kresge Eye Institute, Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan, Sinai-Grace Hospital, and the Karmanos Cancer Institute. DMC has more than 2,000 licensed beds and 3,000 affiliated physicians. It is the largest private employer in the city. The center is staffed by physicians from the Wayne State University School of Medicine, the largest single-campus medical school in the United States and the fourth largest medical school overall.
DMC formally became a part of Vanguard Health Systems on December 30, 2010, as a for-profit corporation. Vanguard has agreed to invest nearly $1.5 B in the DMC complex. Vanguard has agreed to assume all debts and pension obligations. The metro area has many other hospitals including William Beaumont Hospital, St. Joseph's, and University of Michigan Medical Center.
In 2011, DMC and Henry Ford Health System substantially increased investments in medical research facilities and hospitals in the city's Midtown and New Center. In 2012, two major construction projects were begun in New Center. The Henry Ford Health System started the first phase of a $500 million, 300-acre revitalization project, with the construction of a new $30 million, 275,000-square-foot, Medical Distribution Center for Cardinal Health, Inc. and Wayne State University started construction on a new $93 million, 207,000-square-foot, Integrative Biosciences Center (IBio). As many as 500 researchers and staff will work out of the IBio Center.
With its proximity to Canada and its facilities, ports, major highways, rail connections and international airports, Detroit is an important transportation hub. The city has three international border crossings, the Ambassador Bridge, Detroit–Windsor Tunnel and Michigan Central Railway Tunnel, linking Detroit to Windsor. The Ambassador Bridge is the single busiest border crossing in North America, carrying 27% of the total trade between the U.S. and Canada.
In 2015 Canadian Transport Minister Lisa Raitt announced Canada agreed to pay the entire cost to build a $250 million U.S. Customs plaza adjacent to the planned new Detroit–Windsor bridge, now the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Canada had already planned to pay for 95% of the bridge, which will cost $2.1 billion and is expected to open in 2024. "This allows Canada and Michigan to move the project forward immediately to its next steps which include further design work and property acquisition on the U.S. side of the border", Raitt said in a statement issued after she spoke in the House of Commons.
Mass transit in the region is provided by bus services. The Detroit Department of Transportation provides service within city limits up to the outer edges of the city. From there, the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) provides service to the suburbs and the city regionally with local routes and SMART's FAST service. FAST is a new service provided by SMART which offers limited stops along major corridors throughout the Detroit metropolitan area connecting the suburbs to downtown. The new high-frequency service travels along three of Detroit's busiest corridors, Gratiot, Woodward, and Michigan, and only stops at designated FAST stops. Cross border service between the downtown areas of Windsor and Detroit is provided by Transit Windsor via the Tunnel Bus.
An elevated rail system known as the People Mover, completed in 1987, provides daily service around a 2.94-mile (4.73 km) loop downtown. The QLINE serves as a link between the People Mover and the Amtrak station via Woodward Avenue. The Ann Arbor–Detroit Regional Rail line will extend from New Center, connecting to Ann Arbor via Dearborn, Wayne, and Ypsilanti when it is opened.
The Regional Transit Authority (RTA) was established by an act of the Michigan legislature in 2012 to oversee and coordinate all existing regional mass transit operations, and to develop new transit services in the region. The RTA's first project was the introduction of RelfeX, a limited-stop, cross-county bus service connecting downtown and midtown Detroit with Oakland county via Woodward avenue.
Amtrak provides service to Detroit, operating its Wolverine service between Chicago and Pontiac. The Amtrak station is in New Center north of downtown. Intercity bus service is offered at the Detroit Bus Station. Greyhound Lines, Flixbus, Indian Trails, and Barons Bus Lines connect Detroit with numerous cities across the Midwest.
The city of Detroit has a higher than average percentage of households without a car. In 2016, 24.7% of Detroit households lacked a car, much higher than the national average of 8.7%. Detroit averaged 1.15 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.
Freight railroad operations in the city of Detroit are provided by Canadian National Railway, Canadian Pacific Railway, Conrail Shared Assets, CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway, each of which have local yards within the city. Detroit is also served by the Delray Connecting Railroad and Detroit Connecting Railroad shortlines.
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW), the principal airport serving Detroit, is in nearby Romulus. DTW is a primary hub for Delta Air Lines (following its acquisition of Northwest Airlines), and a secondary hub for Spirit Airlines. The airport is connected to Downtown Detroit by the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) FAST Michigan route.
Coleman A. Young International Airport (DET), previously called Detroit City Airport, is on Detroit's northeast side; the airport now maintains only charter service and general aviation. Willow Run Airport, in western Wayne County near Ypsilanti, is a general aviation and cargo airport.
Metro Detroit has an extensive toll-free network of freeways administered by the Michigan Department of Transportation. Four major Interstate Highways surround the city. Detroit is connected via Interstate 75 (I-75) and I-96 to Kings Highway 401 and to major Southern Ontario cities such as London, Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area. I-75 (Chrysler and Fisher freeways) is the region's main north–south route, serving Flint, Pontiac, Troy, and Detroit, before continuing south (as the Detroit–Toledo and Seaway Freeways) to serve many of the communities along the shore of Lake Erie.
I-94 (Edsel Ford Freeway) runs east–west through Detroit and serves Ann Arbor to the west (where it continues to Chicago) and Port Huron to the northeast. The stretch of the I-94 freeway from Ypsilanti to Detroit was one of America's earlier limited-access highways. Henry Ford built it to link the factories at Willow Run and Dearborn during World War II. A portion was known as the Willow Run Expressway. The I-96 freeway runs northwest–southeast through Livingston, Oakland and Wayne counties and (as the Jeffries Freeway through Wayne County) has its eastern terminus in downtown Detroit.
I-275 runs north–south from I-75 in the south to the junction of I-96 and I-696 in the north, providing a bypass through the western suburbs of Detroit. I-375 is a short spur route in downtown Detroit, an extension of the Chrysler Freeway. I-696 (Reuther Freeway) runs east–west from the junction of I-96 and I-275, providing a route through the northern suburbs of Detroit. Taken together, I-275 and I-696 form a semicircle around Detroit. Michigan state highways designated with the letter M serve to connect major freeways.
Detroit has a floating post office, the J. W. Westcott II, which serves lake freighters along the Detroit River. Its ZIP Code is 48222. The ZIP Code is used exclusively for the J. W. Westcott II, which makes it the only floating ZIP Code in the United States. It has a land-based office at 12 24th Street, just south of the Ambassador Bridge. The J.W. Westcott Company was established in 1874 by Captain John Ward Westcott as a maritime reporting agency to inform other vessels about port conditions, and the J. W. Westcott II vessel began service in 1949 and is still in operation today.
Detroit's sister cities include the following: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Detroit (/dɪˈtrɔɪt/; dih-TROYT, locally also /ˈdiːtrɔɪt/) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census, making it the 29th-most populous city in the United States. The Metro Detroit area, home to 4.3 million people, is the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area and the 14th-largest in the United States. A significant cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive background.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and Alphonse de Tonty founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit. During the late 19th and early 20th century, it became an important industrial hub at the center of the Great Lakes region. The city's population rose to be the fourth-largest in the nation by 1920, after New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia, with the expansion of the automotive industry in the early 20th century. The Detroit River became the busiest commercial hub in the world as it carried over 65 million tons of shipping commerce each year. In the late 20th century, Detroit entered a state of urban decay which has continued to the present, as a result of industrial restructuring, the loss of jobs in the auto industry, and rapid suburbanization. Since reaching a peak of 1.85 million at the 1950 census, Detroit's population has declined by more than 65 percent. In 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, which it successfully exited in December 2014.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Detroit is a port on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the St. Lawrence Seaway. The city anchors the second-largest regional economy in the Midwest and the 14th-largest in the United States. Detroit is best known as the center of the U.S. automotive industry, and the \"Big Three\" auto manufacturers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis North America (Chrysler)—are all headquartered in Metro Detroit. The Detroit Metropolitan Airport is among the most important hub airports in the United States. Detroit and its neighboring Canadian city Windsor constitute the second-busiest international crossing in North America, after San Diego–Tijuana.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Detroit's diverse culture has had both local and international influence, particularly in music, with the city giving rise to the genres of Motown and techno and playing an important role in the development of jazz, hip-hop, rock, and punk. The rapid growth of Detroit in its boom years resulted in a globally unique stock of architectural monuments and historic places. Since the 2000s, conservation efforts have managed to save many architectural pieces and achieve several large-scale revitalizations, including the restoration of several historic theaters and entertainment venues, high-rise renovations, new sports stadiums, and a riverfront revitalization project.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "An increasingly popular tourist destination, Detroit receives 16 million visitors per year. In 2015, Detroit was named a \"City of Design\" by UNESCO, the first U.S. city to receive that designation. Time named Detroit as one of the fifty World's Greatest Places of 2022 to explore.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Detroit is named after the Detroit River, connecting Lake Huron with Lake Erie. The name comes from the French word détroit meaning 'strait' as the city was situated on a narrow passage of water linking the two lakes. The river was known as le détroit du Lac Érié in French, which means 'the strait of Lake Erie'. In the historical context, the strait included the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kingdom of France 1701–1760 Kingdom of Great Britain 1760–1783 United States 1783-1812 United Kingdom 1812–1813 United States 1813–present",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Paleo-Indians inhabited areas near Detroit as early as 11,000 years ago including the culture referred to as the Mound Builders. By the 17th century, the region was inhabited by Huron, Odawa, Potawatomi and Iroquois peoples. The area is known by the Anishinaabe people as Waawiiyaataanong, translating to 'where the water curves around'.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The first Europeans did not penetrate into the region and reach the straits of Detroit until French missionaries and traders worked their way around the Iroquois League, with whom they were at war in the 1630s. The Huron and Neutral people held the north side of Lake Erie until the 1650s, when the Iroquois pushed them and the Erie people away from the lake and its beaver-rich feeder streams in the Beaver Wars of 1649–1655. By the 1670s, the war-weakened Iroquois laid claim to as far south as the Ohio River valley in northern Kentucky as hunting grounds, and had absorbed many other Iroquoian peoples after defeating them in war. For the next hundred years, virtually no British or French action was contemplated without consultation with the Iroquois or consideration of their likely response. When the French and Indian War evicted the Kingdom of France from Canada, it removed one barrier to American colonists migrating west.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "British negotiations with the Iroquois would both prove critical and lead to a Crown policy limiting settlements below the Great Lakes and west of the Alleghenies. Many colonial American would-be migrants resented this restraint and became supporters of the American Revolution. The 1778 raids and resultant 1779 decisive Sullivan Expedition reopened the Ohio Country to westward emigration, which began almost immediately. By 1800 white settlers were pouring westwards.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "On July 24, 1701, the French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, with his lieutenant Alphonse de Tonty and more than a hundred other settlers, began constructing a small fort on the north bank of the Detroit River. Cadillac named the settlement Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, after Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, Secretary of State of the Navy under Louis XIV. Sainte-Anne-de-Détroit was founded on July 26 and is the second-oldest continuously operating Roman Catholic parish in the United States. France offered free land to colonists to attract families to Detroit; when it reached a population of 800 in 1765, it became the largest European settlement between Montreal and New Orleans, both also French settlements, in the former colonies of New France and La Louisiane, respectively.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "By 1773, after the addition of Anglo-American settlers, the population of Detroit was 1,400. By 1778, its population reached 2,144 and it was the third-largest city in what was known as the Province of Quebec since the British takeover of French colonies following their victory in the Seven Years' War.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The region's economy was based on the lucrative fur trade, in which numerous Native American people had important roles as trappers and traders. Today the flag of Detroit reflects its French colonial heritage. Descendants of the earliest French and French-Canadian settlers formed a cohesive community, who gradually were superseded as the dominant population after more Anglo-American settlers arrived in the early 19th century with American westward migration. Living along the shores of Lake St. Clair and south to Monroe and downriver suburbs, the ethnic French Canadians of Detroit, also known as Muskrat French in reference to the fur trade, remain a subculture in the region in the 21st century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "During the French and Indian War (1754–63)—the North American front of the Seven Years' War between Britain and France—British troops gained control of the settlement in 1760 and shortened its name to Detroit. Several regional Native American tribes, such as the Potowatomi, Ojibwe and Huron, launched Pontiac's War in 1763 and laid siege to Fort Detroit but failed to capture it. In defeat, France ceded its territory in North America east of the Mississippi to Britain following the war.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Following the American Revolutionary War and the establishment of the United States as an independent country, Britain ceded Detroit along with other territories in the area under the Jay Treaty which established the northern border with its colony of Canada. The Great Fire of 1805 destroyed most of the Detroit settlement, which had primarily buildings made of wood. One stone fort, a river warehouse, and brick chimneys of former wooden homes were the sole structures to survive. Of the 600 Detroit residents in this area, none died in the fire.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "From 1805 to 1847, Detroit was the capital of Michigan as a territory and as a state. William Hull, the United States commander at Detroit, surrendered without a fight to British troops and their Native American allies during the War of 1812 in the siege of Detroit, believing his forces were vastly outnumbered. The Battle of Frenchtown was part of a U.S. effort to retake the city, and U.S. troops suffered their highest fatalities of any battle in the war. This battle is commemorated at River Raisin National Battlefield Park south of Detroit in Monroe County. Detroit was recaptured by the United States later that year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The settlement was incorporated as a city in 1815. As the city expanded, a geometric street plan developed by Augustus B. Woodward was followed, featuring grand boulevards as in Paris.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Prior to the American Civil War, the city's access to the Canada–US border made it a key stop for refugee slaves gaining freedom in the North along the Underground Railroad. Many went across the Detroit River to Canada to escape pursuit by slave catchers. An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 African-American refugees settled in Canada. George DeBaptiste was considered to be the \"president\" of the Detroit Underground Railroad, William Lambert the \"vice president\" or \"secretary\", and Laura Smith Haviland the \"superintendent\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Numerous men from Detroit volunteered to fight for the Union during the Civil War, including the 24th Michigan Infantry Regiment. It was part of the legendary Iron Brigade, which fought with distinction and suffered 82% casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. When the First Volunteer Infantry Regiment arrived to fortify Washington, D.C., President Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying, \"Thank God for Michigan!\" George Armstrong Custer led the Michigan Brigade during the Civil War and called them the \"Wolverines\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "During the late 19th century, wealthy industry and shipping magnates commissioned the design and construction of several Gilded Age mansions east and west of the current downtown, along the major avenues of the Woodward plan. Most notable among them was the David Whitney House at 4421 Woodward Avenue, and the grand avenue became a favored address for mansions. During this period, some referred to Detroit as the \"Paris of the West\" for its architecture, grand avenues in the Paris style, and for Washington Boulevard, recently electrified by Thomas Edison. The city had grown steadily from the 1830s with the rise of shipping, shipbuilding, and manufacturing industries. Strategically located along the Great Lakes waterway, Detroit emerged as a major port and transportation hub.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 1896, a thriving carriage trade prompted Henry Ford to build his first automobile in a rented workshop on Mack Avenue. During this growth period, Detroit expanded its borders by annexing all or part of several surrounding villages and townships.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1903, Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company. Ford's manufacturing—and those of automotive pioneers William C. Durant, the Horace and John Dodge, James and William Packard, and Walter Chrysler—established Detroit's status in the early 20th century as the world's automotive capital. The growth of the auto industry was reflected by changes in businesses throughout the Midwest and nation, with the development of garages to service vehicles and gas stations, as well as factories for parts and tires. Because of the booming auto industry, Detroit became the fourth-largest city in the nation by 1920, following New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1907, the Detroit River carried 67,292,504 tons of shipping commerce through Detroit to locations all over the world. For comparison, London shipped 18,727,230 tons, and New York shipped 20,390,953 tons. The river was dubbed \"the Greatest Commercial Artery on Earth\" by The Detroit News in 1908. The prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933 resulted in the Detroit River becoming a major conduit for smuggling of illegal Canadian spirits.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "With the rapid growth of industrial workers in the auto factories, labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor and the United Auto Workers (UAW) fought to organize workers to gain them better working conditions and wages. They initiated strikes and other tactics in support of improvements such as the 8-hour day/40-hour work week, increased wages, greater benefits, and improved working conditions. The labor activism during those years increased the influence of union leaders in the city such as Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters and Walter Reuther of the UAW.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Detroit, like many places in the United States, developed racial conflict and discrimination in the 20th century following the rapid demographic changes as hundreds of thousands of new workers were attracted to the industrial city. The Great Migration brought rural blacks from the South; they were outnumbered by southern whites who also migrated to the city. Immigration brought southern and eastern Europeans of Catholic and Jewish faith; these new groups competed with native-born whites for jobs and housing in the booming city.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Detroit was one of the major Midwest cities that was a site for the dramatic urban revival of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) beginning in 1915. \"By the 1920s the city had become a stronghold of the KKK\", whose members primarily opposed Catholic and Jewish immigrants but also practiced discrimination against Black Americans. Even after the decline of the KKK in the late 1920s, the Black Legion, a secret vigilante group, was active in the Detroit area in the 1930s. One-third of its estimated 20,000 to 30,000 members in Michigan were based in the city. It was defeated after numerous prosecutions following the kidnapping and murder in 1936 of Charles Poole, a Catholic organizer with the federal Works Progress Administration. Some 49 men of the Black Legion were convicted of numerous crimes, with many sentenced to life in prison for murder.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "By 1940, 80% of Detroit deeds contained restrictive covenants prohibiting African Americans from buying houses they could afford. These discriminatory tactics were successful as a majority of black people in Detroit resorted to living in all-black neighborhoods such as Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. At this time, white people still made up about 90.4% of the city's population. White residents attacked black homes: breaking windows, starting fires, and detonating bombs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In the 1940s the world's \"first urban depressed freeway\" ever built, the Davison, was constructed. During World War II, the government encouraged retooling of the American automobile industry in support of the Allied powers, leading to Detroit's key role in the American Arsenal of Democracy. Jobs expanded so rapidly due to the defense buildup in World War II that 400,000 people migrated to the city from 1941 to 1943, including 50,000 blacks in the second wave of the Great Migration, and 350,000 whites, many of them from the South. Whites, including ethnic Europeans, feared black competition for jobs and scarce housing. The federal government prohibited discrimination in defense work, but when in June 1943 Packard promoted three black people to work next to whites on its assembly lines, 25,000 white workers walked off the job. The 1943 Detroit race riot took place in June, three weeks after the Packard plant protest, beginning with an altercation at Belle Isle. A total of 34 people were killed, 25 of them black and most at the hands of the white police force, while 433 were wounded (75% of them black), and property valued at $2 million (worth $30.4 million in 2020) was destroyed. Rioters moved through the city, and young whites traveled across town to attack more settled blacks in their neighborhood of Paradise Valley.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Industrial mergers in the 1950s, especially in the automobile sector, increased oligopoly in the American auto industry. Detroit manufacturers such as Packard and Hudson merged into other companies and eventually disappeared. At its peak population of 1,849,568, in the 1950 Census, the city was the fifth-largest in the United States.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In this postwar era, the auto industry continued to create opportunities for many African Americans from the South, who continued with their Great Migration to Detroit and other northern and western cities to escape the strict Jim Crow laws and racial discrimination policies of the South. Postwar Detroit was a prosperous industrial center of mass production. The auto industry comprised about 60% of all industry in the city, allowing space for a plethora of separate booming businesses including stove making, brewing, furniture building, oil refineries, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and more. The expansion of jobs created unique opportunities for black Americans, who saw novel high employment rates: there was a 103% increase in the number of blacks employed in postwar Detroit. Black Americans who immigrated to northern industrial cities from the south still faced intense racial discrimination in the employment sector. Racial discrimination kept the workforce and better jobs predominantly white, while many black Detroiters held lower-paying factory jobs. Despite changes in demographics as the city's black population expanded, Detroit's police force, fire department, and other city jobs continued to be held by predominantly white residents. This created an unbalanced racial power dynamic.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Unequal opportunities in employment resulted in unequal housing opportunities for the majority of the black community: with overall lower incomes and facing the backlash of discriminatory housing policies, the black community was limited to lower cost, lower quality housing in the city. The surge in the black population augmented the strain on housing scarcity. The livable areas available to the black community were limited, and as a result, families often crowded together in unsanitary, unsafe, and illegal quarters. Such discrimination became increasingly evident in the policies of redlining implemented by banks and federal housing groups, which almost completely restricted the ability of blacks to improve their housing and encouraged white people to guard the racial divide that defined their neighborhoods. As a result, black people were often denied bank loans to obtain better housing, and interest rates and rents were unfairly inflated to prevent their moving into white neighborhoods. White residents and political leaders largely opposed the influx of black Detroiters to white neighborhoods, believing that their presence would lead to neighborhood deterioration (most predominantly black neighborhoods deteriorated due to local and federal governmental neglect). This perpetuated a cyclical exclusionary process that marginalized the agency of black Detroiters by trapping them in the unhealthiest, least safe areas of the city.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "As in other major American cities in the postwar era, modernist planning ideology drove the construction of a federally subsidized, extensive highway and freeway system around Detroit, and pent-up demand for new housing stimulated suburbanization; highways made commuting by car for higher-income residents easier. However, this construction had negative implications for many lower-income urban residents. Highways were constructed through and completely demolished neighborhoods of poor residents and black communities who had less political power to oppose them. The neighborhoods were mostly low income, considered blighted, or made up of older housing where investment had been lacking due to racial redlining, so the highways were presented as a kind of urban renewal. These neighborhoods (such as Black Bottom and Paradise Valley) were extremely important to the black communities of Detroit, providing spaces for independent black businesses and social/cultural organizations. Their destruction displaced residents with little consideration of the effects of breaking up functioning neighborhoods and businesses.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 1956, Detroit's last heavily used electric streetcar line, which traveled along the length of Woodward Avenue, was removed and replaced with gas-powered buses. It was the last line of what had once been a 534-mile network of electric streetcars. In 1941, at peak times, a streetcar ran on Woodward Avenue every 60 seconds.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "All of these changes in the area's transportation system favored low-density, auto-oriented development rather than high-density urban development. Industry also moved to the suburbs, seeking large plots of land for single-story factories. By the 21st century, the metro Detroit area had developed as one of the most sprawling job markets in the United States; combined with poor public transport, this resulted in many new jobs being beyond the reach of urban low-income workers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 1950, the city held about one-third of the state's population. Over the next 60 years, the city's population declined to less than 10 percent of the state's population. During the same time period, the sprawling metropolitan area grew to contain more than half of Michigan's population. The shift of population and jobs eroded Detroit's tax base.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In June 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a major speech as part of a civil rights march in Detroit that foreshadowed his \"I Have a Dream\" speech in Washington, D.C., two months later. While the civil rights movement gained significant federal civil rights laws in 1964 and 1965, longstanding inequities resulted in confrontations between the police and inner-city black youth who wanted change.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children, that my four little children will not come up in the same young days that I came up within, but they will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin ... I have a dream this evening that one day we will recognize the words of Jefferson that \"all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.\" I have a dream ...",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "—Martin Luther King Jr. (June 1963 Speech at the Great March on Detroit)",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Longstanding tensions in Detroit culminated in the Twelfth Street riot in July 1967. Governor George W. Romney ordered the Michigan National Guard into Detroit, and President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in U.S. Army troops. The result was 43 dead, 467 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed, mostly in black residential and business areas. Thousands of small businesses closed permanently or relocated to safer neighborhoods. The affected district lay in ruins for decades. According to the Chicago Tribune, it was the 3rd most costly riot in the United States.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On August 18, 1970, the NAACP filed suit against Michigan state officials, including Governor William Milliken, charging de facto public school segregation. The NAACP argued that although schools were not legally segregated, the city of Detroit and its surrounding counties had enacted policies to maintain racial segregation in public schools. The NAACP also suggested a direct relationship between unfair housing practices and educational segregation, as the composition of students in the schools followed segregated neighborhoods. The District Court held all levels of government accountable for the segregation in its ruling. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed some of the decision, holding that it was the state's responsibility to integrate across the segregated metropolitan area. The U.S. Supreme Court took up the case February 27, 1974. The subsequent Milliken v. Bradley decision had nationwide influence. In a narrow decision, the Supreme Court found schools were a subject of local control, and suburbs could not be forced to aid with the desegregation of the city's school district.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "\"Milliken was perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of that period\", said Myron Orfield, professor of law at the University of Minnesota. \"Had that gone the other way, it would have opened the door to fixing nearly all of Detroit's current problems.\" John Mogk, a professor of law and an expert in urban planning at Wayne State University in Detroit, says,",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Everybody thinks that it was the riots [in 1967] that caused the white families to leave. Some people were leaving at that time but, really, it was after Milliken that you saw mass flight to the suburbs. If the case had gone the other way, it is likely that Detroit would not have experienced the steep decline in its tax base that has occurred since then.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In November 1973, the city elected Coleman Young as its first black mayor. After taking office, Young emphasized increasing racial diversity in the police department, which was predominantly white. Young also worked to improve Detroit's transportation system, but the tension between Young and his suburban counterparts over regional matters was problematic throughout his mayoral term.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 1976, the federal government offered $600 million (~$2.41 billion in 2022) for building a regional rapid transit system, under a single regional authority. But the inability of Detroit and its suburban neighbors to solve conflicts over transit planning resulted in the region losing the majority of funding for rapid transit. The city then moved forward with construction of the elevated downtown circulator portion of the system, which became known as the Detroit People Mover.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The gasoline crises of 1973 and 1979 affected auto industry. Buyers chose smaller, more fuel-efficient cars made by foreign makers as the price of gas rose. Efforts to revive the city were stymied by the struggles of the auto industry, as their sales and market share declined. Automakers laid off thousands of employees and closed plants in the city, further eroding the tax base. To counteract this, the city used eminent domain to build two large new auto assembly plants in the city.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Young sought to revive the city by seeking to increase investment in the city's declining downtown. The Renaissance Center, a mixed-use office and retail complex, opened in 1977. This group of skyscrapers was an attempt to keep businesses in downtown. Young also gave city support to other large developments to attract middle and upper-class residents back to the city. Despite the Renaissance Center and other projects, the downtown area continued to lose businesses to the automobile-dependent suburbs. Major stores and hotels closed, and many large office buildings went vacant. Young was criticized for being too focused on downtown development and not doing enough to lower the city's high crime rate and improve city services to residents.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "High unemployment was compounded by middle-class flight to the suburbs, and some residents leaving the state to find work. The result for the city was a higher proportion of poor in its population, reduced tax base, depressed property values, abandoned buildings, abandoned neighborhoods, and high crime rates.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed near Detroit Metro airport, killing all but one of the 155 people on board, as well as two people on the ground.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 1993, Young retired as Detroit's longest-serving mayor, deciding not to seek a sixth term, with Dennis Archer succeeding him. Archer prioritized downtown development, easing tensions with its suburban neighbors. A referendum to allow casino gambling in the city passed in 1996; several temporary casino facilities opened in 1999, and permanent downtown casinos with hotels opened in 2007–08.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Campus Martius, a reconfiguration of downtown's main intersection as a new park, was opened in 2004. The park has been cited as one of the best public spaces in the United States. In 2001, the first portion of the International Riverfront redevelopment was completed as a part of the city's 300th-anniversary celebration.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In September 2008, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (who had served for six years) resigned following felony convictions. In 2013, Kilpatrick was convicted on 24 federal felony counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, and racketeering, and was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison. The former mayor's activities cost the city an estimated $20 million. Roughly half of the owners of Detroit's 305,000 properties failed to pay their 2011 tax bills, resulting in about $246 million (~$317 million in 2022) in taxes and fees going uncollected, nearly half of which was due to Detroit. The rest of the money would have been earmarked for Wayne County, Detroit Public Schools, and the library system.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The city's financial crisis resulted in Michigan taking over administrative control of its government. Governor Rick Snyder declared a financial emergency in March 2013, stating the city had a $327 million budget deficit and faced more than $14 billion in long-term debt. It had been making ends meet on a month-to-month basis with the help of bond money held in a state escrow account and had instituted mandatory unpaid days off for many city workers. Those troubles, along with underfunded city services, such as police and fire departments, and ineffective turnaround plans from Mayor Bing and the City Council led the state of Michigan to appoint an emergency manager for Detroit. On June 14, 2013, Detroit defaulted on $2.5 billion of debt by withholding $39.7 million in interest payments, while Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr met with bondholders and other creditors in an attempt to restructure the city's $18.5 billion debt and avoid bankruptcy. On July 18, 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy. It was declared bankrupt by U.S. District Court on December 3, with its $18.5 billion debt. On November 7, 2014, the city's plan for exiting bankruptcy was approved. On December 11 the city officially exited bankruptcy. The plan allowed the city to eliminate $7 billion in debt and invest $1.7 billion into improved city services.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "One way the city obtained this money was through the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). Holding over 60,000 pieces of art worth billions of dollars, some saw it as the key to funding this investment. The city came up with a plan to monetize the art and sell it, leading to the DIA becoming a private organization. After months of legal battles, the city finally got hundreds of millions of dollars towards funding a new Detroit.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "One of the largest post-bankruptcy efforts to improve city services has been to fix the city's broken street lighting system. At one time it was estimated that 40% of lights were not working, which resulted in public safety issues and abandonment of housing. The plan called for replacing outdated high-pressure sodium lights with 65,000 LED lights. Construction began in late 2014 and finished in December 2016; Detroit is the largest U.S. city with all LED street lighting.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In the 2010s, several initiatives were taken by Detroit's citizens and new residents to improve the cityscape by renovating and revitalizing neighborhoods. Such projects include volunteer renovation groups and various urban gardening movements. Miles of associated parks and landscaping have been completed in recent years. In 2011, the Port Authority Passenger Terminal opened, with the riverwalk connecting Hart Plaza to the Renaissance Center.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "One symbol of the city's decades-long decline, the Michigan Central Station, was long vacant. The city renovated it with new windows, elevators and facilities, completing the work in December 2015. In 2018, Ford Motor Company purchased the building and plans to use it for mobility testing with a potential return of train service. Several other landmark buildings have been privately renovated and adapted as condominiums, hotels, offices, or for cultural uses. Detroit was mentioned as a city of renaissance and has reversed many of the trends of the prior decades.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The city has seen a rise in gentrification. In downtown, for example, the construction of Little Caesars Arena brought with it high class shops and restaurants along Woodward Avenue. Office tower and condominium construction has led to an influx of wealthy families but also a displacement of long-time residents and culture. Areas outside of downtown and other recently revived areas have an average household income of about 25% less than the gentrified areas, a gap that is continuing to grow. Rents and cost of living in these gentrified areas rise every year, pushing minorities and the poor out, causing more and more racial disparity and separation in the city. In 2019, the cost of a one-bedroom loft in Rivertown reached $300,000 (~$340,352 in 2022), with a five-year sale price change of over 500% and average income rising by 18%.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Detroit is the center of a three-county urban area (with a population of 3,734,090 within an area of 1,337 square miles (3,460 km) according to the 2010 United States Census), six-county metropolitan statistical area (population of 5,322,219 in an area of 3,913 square miles [10,130 km] as of the 2010 census), and a nine-county Combined Statistical Area (population of 5.3 million within 5,814 square miles [15,060 km] as of 2010).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 142.87 square miles (370.03 km), of which 138.75 square miles (359.36 km) is land and 4.12 square miles (10.67 km) is water. Detroit is the principal city in Metro Detroit and Southeast Michigan. It is situated in the Midwestern United States and the Great Lakes region.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge is the only international wildlife preserve in North America and is uniquely located in the heart of a major metropolitan area. The refuge includes islands, coastal wetlands, marshes, shoals, and waterfront lands along 48 miles (77 km) of the Detroit River and western Lake Erie shoreline.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The city slopes gently from the northwest to southeast on a till plain composed largely of glacial and lake clay. The most notable topographical feature in the city is the Detroit Moraine, a broad clay ridge on which the older portions of Detroit and Windsor are located, rising approximately 62 feet (19 m) above the river at its highest point. The highest elevation in the city is directly north of Gorham Playground on the northwest side approximately three blocks south of 8 Mile Road, at a height of 675 to 680 feet (206 to 207 m). Detroit's lowest elevation is along the Detroit River, at a surface height of 572 feet (174 m).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Belle Isle Park is a 982-acre (1.534 sq mi; 397 ha) island park in the Detroit River, between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. It is connected to the mainland by the MacArthur Bridge. Belle Isle Park contains such attractions as the James Scott Memorial Fountain, the Belle Isle Conservatory, the Detroit Yacht Club on an adjacent island, a half-mile (800 m) beach, a golf course, a nature center, monuments, and gardens. Both the Detroit and Windsor skylines can be viewed at the island's Sunset Point.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Three road systems cross the city: the original French template, with avenues radiating from the waterfront, and true north–south roads based on the Northwest Ordinance township system. The city is north of Windsor, Ontario. Detroit is the only major city along the Canada–U.S. border in which one travels south in order to cross into Canada.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Detroit has four border crossings: the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit–Windsor tunnel provide motor vehicle thoroughfares, with the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel providing railroad access to and from Canada. The fourth border crossing is the Detroit–Windsor Truck Ferry, near the Windsor Salt Mine and Zug Island. Near Zug Island, the southwest part of the city was developed over a 1,500-acre (610 ha) salt mine that is 1,100 feet (340 m) below the surface. The Detroit salt mine run by the Detroit Salt Company has over 100 miles (160 km) of roads within.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Detroit and the rest of southeastern Michigan have a hot-summer humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfa) which is influenced by the Great Lakes like other places in the state; the city and close-in suburbs are part of USDA Hardiness zone 6b, while the more distant northern and western suburbs generally are included in zone 6a. Winters are cold, with moderate snowfall and temperatures not rising above freezing on an average 44 days annually, while dropping to or below 0 °F (−18 °C) on an average 4.4 days a year; summers are warm to hot with temperatures exceeding 90 °F (32 °C) on 12 days. The warm season runs from May to September. The monthly daily mean temperature ranges from 25.6 °F (−3.6 °C) in January to 73.6 °F (23.1 °C) in July. Official temperature extremes range from 105 °F (41 °C) on July 24, 1934, down to −21 °F (−29 °C) on January 21, 1984; the record low maximum is −4 °F (−20 °C) on January 19, 1994, while, conversely the record high minimum is 80 °F (27 °C) on August 1, 2006, the most recent of five occurrences. A decade or two may pass between readings of 100 °F (38 °C) or higher, which last occurred July 17, 2012. The average window for freezing temperatures is October 20 thru April 22, allowing a growing season of 180 days.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Precipitation is moderate and somewhat evenly distributed throughout the year, although the warmer months such as May and June average more, averaging 33.5 inches (850 mm) annually, but historically ranging from 20.49 in (520 mm) in 1963 to 47.70 in (1,212 mm) in 2011. Snowfall, which typically falls in measurable amounts between November 15 through April 4 (occasionally in October and very rarely in May), averages 42.5 inches (108 cm) per season, although historically ranging from 11.5 in (29 cm) in 1881–82 to 94.9 in (241 cm) in 2013–14. A thick snowpack is not often seen, with an average of only 27.5 days with 3 in (7.6 cm) or more of snow cover. Thunderstorms are frequent in the Detroit area. These usually occur during spring and summer.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "See or edit raw graph data.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Seen in panorama, Detroit's waterfront shows a variety of architectural styles. The postmodern Neo-Gothic spires of Ally Detroit Center were designed to refer to the city's Art Deco skyscrapers. Together with the Renaissance Center, these buildings form a distinctive and recognizable skyline. Examples of the Art Deco style include the Guardian Building and Penobscot Building downtown, as well as the Fisher Building and Cadillac Place in the New Center area near Wayne State University. Among the city's prominent structures are United States' largest Fox Theatre, the Detroit Opera House, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, all built in the early 20th century.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "While the Downtown and New Center areas contain high-rise buildings, the majority of the surrounding city consists of low-rise structures and single-family homes. Outside of the city's core, residential high-rises are found in upper-class neighborhoods such as the East Riverfront, extending toward Grosse Pointe, and the Palmer Park neighborhood just west of Woodward. The University Commons-Palmer Park district in northwest Detroit, near the University of Detroit Mercy and Marygrove College, anchors historic neighborhoods including Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest, and the University District.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Forty-two significant structures or sites are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Neighborhoods constructed prior to World War II feature the architecture of the times, with wood-frame and brick houses in the working-class neighborhoods, larger brick homes in middle-class neighborhoods, and ornate mansions in upper-class neighborhoods such as Brush Park, Woodbridge, Indian Village, Palmer Woods, Boston-Edison, and others.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Some of the oldest neighborhoods are along the major Woodward and East Jefferson corridors, which formed spines of the city. Some newer residential construction may also be found along the Woodward corridor and in the far west and northeast. The oldest extant neighborhoods include West Canfield and Brush Park. There have been multi-million dollar restorations of existing homes and construction of new homes and condominiums here.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The city has one of the United States' largest surviving collections of late 19th- and early 20th-century buildings. Architecturally significant churches and cathedrals in the city include St. Joseph's, Old St. Mary's, the Sweetest Heart of Mary, and the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The city has substantial activity in urban design, historic preservation, and architecture. A number of downtown redevelopment projects—of which Campus Martius Park is one of the most notable—have revitalized parts of the city. Grand Circus Park and historic district is near the city's theater district; Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, and Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers. Little Caesars Arena, a new home for the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Pistons, with attached residential, hotel, and retail use, opened in 2017. The plans for the project call for mixed-use residential on the blocks surrounding the arena and the renovation of the vacant 14-story Eddystone Hotel. It will be a part of The District Detroit, a group of places owned by Olympia Entertainment Inc., including Comerica Park and the Detroit Opera House, among others.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Detroit International Riverfront includes a partially completed three-and-one-half-mile riverfront promenade with a combination of parks, residential buildings, and commercial areas. It extends from Hart Plaza to the MacArthur Bridge, which connects to Belle Isle Park, the largest island park in a U.S. city. The riverfront includes Tri-Centennial State Park and Harbor, Michigan's first urban state park. The second phase is a two-mile (3.2-kilometer) extension from Hart Plaza to the Ambassador Bridge for a total of five miles (8.0 kilometres) of parkway from bridge to bridge. Civic planners envision the pedestrian parks will stimulate residential redevelopment of riverfront properties condemned under eminent domain.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Other major parks include River Rouge (in the southwest side), the largest park in Detroit; Palmer (north of Highland Park) and Chene Park (on the east river downtown).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Detroit has a variety of neighborhood types. The revitalized Downtown, Midtown, Corktown, New Center areas feature many historic buildings and are high density, while further out, particularly in the northeast and on the fringes, high vacancy levels are problematic, for which a number of solutions have been proposed. In 2007, Downtown Detroit was recognized as the best city neighborhood in which to retire among the United States' largest metro areas by CNNMoney editors.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Lafayette Park is a revitalized neighborhood on the city's east side, part of the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe residential district. The 78-acre (32 ha) development was originally called the Gratiot Park. Planned by Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig Hilberseimer and Alfred Caldwell it includes a landscaped, 19-acre (7.7 ha) park with no through traffic, in which these and other low-rise apartment buildings are situated. Immigrants have contributed to the city's neighborhood revitalization, especially in southwest Detroit. Southwest Detroit has experienced a thriving economy in recent years, as evidenced by new housing, increased business openings and the recently opened Mexicantown International Welcome Center.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The city has numerous neighborhoods consisting of vacant properties resulting in low inhabited density in those areas, stretching city services and infrastructure. These neighborhoods are concentrated in the northeast and on the city's fringes. A 2009 parcel survey found about a quarter of residential lots in the city to be undeveloped or vacant, and about 10% of the city's housing to be unoccupied. The survey also reported that most (86%) of the city's homes are in good condition with a minority (9%) in fair condition needing only minor repairs.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "To deal with vacancy issues, the city has begun demolishing the derelict houses, razing 3,000 of the total 10,000 in 2010, but the resulting low density creates a strain on the city's infrastructure. To remedy this, a number of solutions have been proposed including resident relocation from more sparsely populated neighborhoods and converting unused space to urban agricultural use, including Hantz Woodlands, though the city expects to be in the planning stages for up to another two years.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Public funding and private investment have been made with promises to rehabilitate neighborhoods. In April 2008, the city announced a $300 million (~$402 million in 2022) stimulus plan to create jobs and revitalize neighborhoods, financed by city bonds and paid for by earmarking about 15% of the wagering tax. The city's working plans for neighborhood revitalizations include 7-Mile/Livernois, Brightmoor, East English Village, Grand River/Greenfield, North End, and Osborn. Private organizations have pledged substantial funding to the efforts. Additionally, the city has cleared a 1,200-acre (490 ha) section of land for large-scale neighborhood construction, which the city is calling the Far Eastside Plan. In 2011, Mayor Dave Bing announced a plan to categorize neighborhoods by their needs and prioritize the most needed services for those neighborhoods.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "In the 2020 United States Census, the city had 639,111 residents, ranking it the 27th most populous city in the United States. Of the large shrinking cities in the United States, Detroit has had the most dramatic decline in the population of the past 70 years (down 1,210,457) and the second-largest percentage decline (down 65.4%). While the drop in Detroit's population has been ongoing since 1950, the most dramatic period was the significant 25% decline between the 2000 and 2010 Census.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Detroit's 639,111 residents represent 269,445 households, and 162,924 families residing in the city. The population density was 5,144.3 people per square mile (1,986.2 people/km). There were 349,170 housing units at an average density of 2,516.5 units per square mile (971.6 units/km). Of the 269,445 households, 34.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 21.5% were married couples living together, 31.4% had a female householder with no husband present, 39.5% were non-families, 34.0% were made up of individuals, and 3.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.59, and the average family size was 3.36.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "There was a wide distribution of age in the city, with 31.1% under the age of 18, 9.7% from 18 to 24, 29.5% from 25 to 44, 19.3% from 45 to 64, and 10.4% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females, there were 89.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 83.5 males.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "According to a 2014 study, 67% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christians, with 49% professing attendance at Protestant churches, and 16% professing Roman Catholic beliefs, while 24% claim no religious affiliation. Other religions collectively make up about 8% of the population.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The loss of industrial and working-class jobs in the city has resulted in high rates of poverty and associated problems. From 2000 to 2009, the city's estimated median household income fell from $29,526 to $26,098. As of 2010, the mean income of Detroit is below the overall U.S. average by several thousand dollars. Of every three Detroit residents, one lives in poverty. Luke Bergmann, author of Getting Ghost: Two Young Lives and the Struggle for the Soul of an American City, said in 2010, \"Detroit is now one of the poorest big cities in the country\".",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In the 2018 American Community Survey, median household income in the city was $31,283, compared with the median for Michigan of $56,697. The median income for a family was $36,842, well below the state median of $72,036. 33.4% of families had income at or below the federally defined poverty level. Out of the total population, 47.3% of those under the age of 18 and 21.0% of those 65 and older had income at or below the federally defined poverty line.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Beginning with the rise of the automobile industry, Detroit's population increased more than sixfold during the first half of the 20th century as an influx of European, Middle Eastern (Lebanese, Assyrian/Chaldean), and Southern migrants brought their families to the city. With this economic boom following World War I, the African American population grew from a mere 6,000 in 1910 to more than 120,000 by 1930. Perhaps one of the most overt examples of neighborhood discrimination occurred in 1925 when African American physician Ossian Sweet found his home surrounded by an angry mob of his hostile white neighbors violently protesting his new move into a traditionally white neighborhood. Sweet and ten of his family members and friends were put on trial for murder as one of the mob members throwing rocks at the newly purchased house was shot and killed by someone firing out of a second-floor window.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Detroit has a relatively large Mexican-American population. In the early 20th century, thousands of Mexicans came to Detroit to work in agricultural, automotive, and steel jobs. During the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s many Mexicans in Detroit were willingly repatriated or forced to repatriate. By the 1940s much of the Mexican community began to settle what is now Mexicantown. Immigration from Jalisco significantly increased the Latino population in the 1990s. By 2010 Detroit had 48,679 Hispanics, including 36,452 Mexicans: a 70% increase from 1990.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "After World War II, many people from Appalachia also settled in Detroit. Appalachians formed communities and their children acquired southern accents. Many Lithuanians also settled in Detroit during the World War II era, especially on the city's Southwest side in the West Vernor area, where the renovated Lithuanian Hall reopened in 2006.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "While African Americans previously comprised only 13% of Michigan's population, by 2010 they made up nearly 82% of Detroit's population. The next largest population groups were white people, at 10%, and Hispanics, at 6%. In 2001, 103,000 Jews, or about 1.9% of the population, were living in the Detroit area. According to the 2010 census, segregation in Detroit has decreased in absolute and relative terms and in the first decade of the 21st century, about two-thirds of the total black population in the metropolitan area resided within the city limits of Detroit. The number of integrated neighborhoods increased from 100 in 2000 to 204 in 2010. Detroit also moved down the ranking from number one most segregated city to number four. A 2011 op-ed in The New York Times attributed the decreased segregation rating to the overall exodus from the city, cautioning that these areas may soon become more segregated.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "As of 2002, Detroit's percentage of Asians was 1%. There are four areas in Detroit with significant Asian and Asian American populations. Northeast Detroit has a large population of Hmong with a smaller group of Lao people. A portion of Detroit next to eastern Hamtramck includes Bangladeshi Americans, Indian Americans, and Pakistani Americans; nearly all of the Bangladeshi population in Detroit lives in that area. The area north of downtown has transient Asian national origin residents who are university students or hospital workers. Few of them have permanent residency after schooling ends. They are mostly Chinese and Indian but the population also includes Filipinos, Koreans, and Pakistanis. In Southwest Detroit and western Detroit there are smaller, scattered Asian communities.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Several major corporations are based in the city, including three Fortune 500 companies. The most heavily represented sectors are manufacturing (particularly automotive), finance, technology, and health care. The most significant companies based in Detroit include General Motors, Quicken Loans, Ally Financial, Compuware, Shinola, American Axle, Little Caesars, DTE Energy, Lowe Campbell Ewald, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and Rossetti Architects.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "About 80,500 people work in downtown Detroit, comprising one-fifth of the city's employment base. Aside from the numerous Detroit-based companies listed above, downtown contains large offices for Comerica, Chrysler, Fifth Third Bank, HP Enterprise, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, and Ernst & Young. Ford Motor Company is in the adjacent city of Dearborn.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Thousands more employees work in Midtown, north of the central business district. Midtown's anchors are the city's largest single employer Detroit Medical Center, Wayne State University, and the Henry Ford Health System in New Center. Midtown is also home to watchmaker Shinola and an array of small and startup companies. New Center bases TechTown, a research and business incubator hub that is part of the Wayne State University system. Like downtown, Corktown Is experiencing growth with the new Ford Corktown Campus under development.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Many downtown employers are relatively new, as there has been a marked trend of companies moving from satellite suburbs into the downtown core. Compuware completed its world headquarters in downtown in 2003. OnStar, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and HP Enterprise Services are at the Renaissance Center. PricewaterhouseCoopers Plaza offices are adjacent to Ford Field, and Ernst & Young completed its office building at One Kennedy Square in 2006. Perhaps most prominently, in 2010, Quicken Loans, one of the largest mortgage lenders, relocated its world headquarters and 4,000 employees to downtown Detroit, consolidating its suburban offices. In July 2012, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office opened its Elijah J. McCoy Satellite Office in the Rivertown/Warehouse District as its first location outside Washington, D.C.'s metropolitan area.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In April 2014, the United States Department of Labor reported the city's unemployment rate at 14.5%.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The city of Detroit and other public–private partnerships have attempted to catalyze the region's growth by facilitating the building and historical rehabilitation of residential high-rises in the downtown, creating a zone that offers many business tax incentives, creating recreational spaces such as the Detroit RiverWalk, Campus Martius Park, Dequindre Cut Greenway, and Green Alleys in Midtown. The city has cleared sections of land while retaining some historically significant vacant buildings in order to spur redevelopment; even though it has struggled with finances, the city issued bonds in 2008 to provide funding for ongoing work to demolish blighted properties. Two years earlier, downtown reported $1.3 billion in restorations and new developments which increased the number of construction jobs in the city. In the decade prior to 2006, downtown gained more than $15 billion in new investment from private and public sectors.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Despite the city's recent financial issues, many developers remain unfazed by Detroit's problems. Midtown is one of the most successful areas within Detroit to have a residential occupancy rate of 96%. Numerous developments have been recently completed or are in various stages of construction. These include the $82 million reconstruction of downtown's David Whitney Building (now an Aloft Hotel and luxury residences), the Woodward Garden Block Development in Midtown, the residential conversion of the David Broderick Tower in downtown, the rehabilitation of the Book Cadillac Hotel (now a Westin and luxury condos) and Fort Shelby Hotel (now Doubletree) also in downtown, and various smaller projects.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Downtown's population of young professionals is growing, and retail is expanding. A study in 2007 found out that Downtown's new residents are predominantly young professionals (57% are ages 25 to 34, 45% have bachelor's degrees, and 34% have a master's or professional degree), a trend which has hastened over the last decade. Since 2006, $9 billion has been invested in downtown and surrounding neighborhoods; $5.2 billion of which has come in 2013 and 2014. Construction activity, particularly rehabilitation of historic downtown buildings, has increased markedly. As of 2014, the number of vacant downtown buildings has dropped from nearly 50 to around 13.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "In 2013 Meijer, a midwestern retail chain, opened its first supercenter store in Detroit; this was a $20 million, 190,000-square-foot store in the northern portion of the city and it also is the centerpiece of a new $72 million shopping center named Gateway Marketplace. In 2015 Meijer opened its second supercenter store in the city. In 2019 JPMorgan Chase announced plans to invest $50 million more in affordable housing, job training and entrepreneurship by the end of 2022, growing its investment to $200 million.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "In the central portions of Detroit, the population of young professionals, artists, and other transplants is growing and retail is expanding. This dynamic is luring additional new residents, and former residents returning from other cities, to the city's Downtown along with the revitalized Midtown and New Center areas.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "A desire to be closer to the urban scene has attracted some young professionals to reside in inner ring suburbs such as Ferndale and Royal Oak. The proximity to Windsor provides for views and nightlife, along with Ontario's minimum drinking age of 19. A 2011 study by Walk Score recognized Detroit for its above average walkability among large U.S. cities. About two-thirds of suburban residents occasionally dine and attend cultural events or take in professional games in the city.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Known as the world's automotive center, \"Detroit\" is a metonym for that industry. It is an important source of popular music legacies celebrated by the city's two familiar nicknames, the Motor City and Motown. Other nicknames arose in the 20th century, including City of Champions, beginning in the 1930s for its successes in individual and team sport; The D; Hockeytown (a trademark owned by the Detroit Red Wings); Rock City (after the Kiss song \"Detroit Rock City\"); and The 313 (its telephone area code).",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Live music has been a prominent feature of Detroit's nightlife since the late 1940s, bringing the city recognition under the nickname \"Motown\". The metropolitan area has many nationally prominent live music venues. Concerts hosted by Live Nation perform throughout the Detroit area. The theater venue circuit is the United States' second largest and hosts Broadway performances.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "The city has a rich musical heritage and has contributed to many genres over the decades. Important music events include the Detroit International Jazz Festival, the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, the Motor City Music Conference (MC2), the Urban Organic Music Conference, the Concert of Colors, and the hip-hop Summer Jamz festival.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "In the 1940s, Detroit blues artist John Lee Hooker became a long-term resident in the Delray neighborhood. Hooker, among other important blues musicians, migrated from his home in Mississippi, bringing the Delta blues to Detroit. Hooker recorded for Fortune Records, the biggest pre-Motown blues/soul label. During the 1950s, the city became a center for jazz, with stars performing in the Black Bottom neighborhood. Prominent emerging jazz musicians included trumpeter Donald Byrd (who attended Cass Tech and performed with Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers early in his career) and saxophonist Pepper Adams (who enjoyed a solo career and accompanied Byrd on several albums). The Graystone International Jazz Museum documents jazz in Detroit.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Other prominent Motor City R&B stars in the 1950s and early 1960s were Nolan Strong, Andre Williams and Nathaniel Mayer—who all scored local and national hits on the Fortune Records label. According to Smokey Robinson, Strong was a primary influence on his voice as a teenager. The Fortune label, a family-operated label on Third Avenue, was owned by the husband-and-wife team of Jack Brown and Devora Brown. Fortune—which also released country, gospel and rockabilly LPs and 45s—laid the groundwork for Motown, which became Detroit's most legendary record label.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Motown Records, which rose to prominence during the 1960s and early 1970s with acts such as Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Diana Ross & The Supremes, the Jackson 5, Martha and the Vandellas, the Spinners, Gladys Knight & the Pips, the Marvelettes, the Elgins, the Monitors, the Velvelettes and Marvin Gaye. Artists were backed by in-house vocalists The Andantes and The Funk Brothers.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "\"The Motown sound\" played an important role in the crossover appeal with popular music, since it was the first African American–owned record label to primarily feature African-American artists. Gordy moved Motown to Los Angeles in 1972 to pursue film production, but the company has since returned to Detroit. Aretha Franklin, another Detroit R&B star, carried the Motown sound; however, she did not record with Berry's Motown label.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Local artists and bands rose to prominence in the 1960s and 70s, including the MC5, Glenn Frey, the Stooges, Bob Seger, Amboy Dukes featuring Ted Nugent, Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels, Rare Earth, Alice Cooper, and Suzi Quatro. The group Kiss emphasized the city's connection with rock in the song \"Detroit Rock City\" and the movie produced in 1999. In the 1980s, Detroit was an important center of the hardcore punk rock underground with many nationally known bands coming out of the city and its suburbs, such as the Necros, the Meatmen, and Negative Approach.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "In the 1990s and 2000s, the city produced many influential hip hop artists, including Eminem, the hip-hop artist with the highest cumulative sales, his rap group D12, hip-hop rapper and producer Royce da 5'9\", hip-hop producer Denaun Porter, hip-hop producer J Dilla, rapper and musician Kid Rock and rappers Big Sean and Danny Brown. The band Sponge toured and produced music. The city also has an active garage rock scene that has generated national attention with acts such as the White Stripes, the Von Bondies, the Detroit Cobras, the Dirtbombs, Electric Six, and the Hard Lessons.Detroit is cited as the birthplace of techno music in the early 1980s. The city also lends its name to an early and pioneering genre of electronic dance music, \"Detroit techno\". Featuring science fiction imagery and robotic themes, its futuristic style was greatly influenced by the geography of Detroit's urban decline and its industrial past. Prominent Detroit techno artists include Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, and Jeff Mills. The Detroit Electronic Music Festival, now known as Movement, occurs annually in late May on Memorial Day Weekend, and takes place in Hart Plaza.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Major theaters in Detroit include the Fox Theatre (5,174 seats), Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts (1,770 seats), the Gem Theatre (451 seats), Masonic Temple Theatre (4,404 seats), the Detroit Opera House (2,765 seats), the Fisher Theatre (2,089 seats), The Fillmore Detroit (2,200 seats), Saint Andrew's Hall, the Majestic Theater, and Orchestra Hall (2,286 seats), which hosts the renowned Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The Nederlander Organization, the largest controller of Broadway productions in New York City, originated with the purchase of the Detroit Opera House in 1922 by the Nederlander family.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Motown Motion Picture Studios with 535,000 square feet (49,700 m) produces movies in Detroit and the surrounding area based at the Pontiac Centerpoint Business Campus for a film industry expected to employ over 4,000 people in the metro area.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Because of its unique culture, distinctive architecture, and revitalization and urban renewal efforts in the 21st century, Detroit has enjoyed increased prominence as a tourist destination in recent years. The New York Times listed Detroit as the ninth-best destination in its list of 52 Places to Go in 2017, while travel guide publisher Lonely Planet named Detroit the second-best city in the world to visit in 2018.Time named Detroit as one of the 50 World's Greatest Places of 2022 to explore.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Many of the area's prominent museums are in the historic cultural center neighborhood around Wayne State University and the College for Creative Studies. These museums include the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Historical Museum, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Detroit Science Center, as well as the main branch of the Detroit Public Library. Other cultural highlights include Motown Historical Museum, the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant museum, the Pewabic Pottery studio and school, the Tuskegee Airmen Museum, Fort Wayne, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, and the Belle Isle Conservatory.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "In 2010, the G.R. N'Namdi Gallery opened in a 16,000-square-foot (1,500 m) complex in Midtown. Important history of America and the Detroit area are exhibited at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, the United States' largest indoor-outdoor museum complex. The Detroit Historical Society provides information about tours of area churches, skyscrapers, and mansions. Inside Detroit hosts tours, educational programming, and a downtown welcome center. Other sites of interest are the Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak, the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory on Belle Isle, and Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Greektown and three downtown casino resort hotels serve as part of an entertainment hub. The Eastern Market farmer's distribution center is the largest open-air flowerbed market in the United States and has more than 150 foods and specialty businesses. On Saturdays, about 45,000 people shop there. The annual Detroit Festival of the Arts in Midtown draws about 350,000 people.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Annual summer events include the Electronic Music Festival, International Jazz Festival, the Woodward Dream Cruise, the African World Festival, the country music Hoedown, Noel Night, and Dally in the Alley. Within downtown, Campus Martius Park hosts large events, including the annual Motown Winter Blast. As the world's traditional automotive center, the city hosts the North American International Auto Show. Held since 1924, America's Thanksgiving Parade is one of the nation's largest. River Days, a five-day summer festival on the International Riverfront lead up to the Windsor–Detroit International Freedom Festival fireworks, which draw super sized-crowds ranging from hundreds of thousands to over three million people.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "An important civic sculpture is The Spirit of Detroit by Marshall Fredericks at the Coleman Young Municipal Center. The image is often used as a symbol of Detroit, and the statue is occasionally dressed in sports jerseys to celebrate when a Detroit team is doing well. A memorial to Joe Louis is located at the intersection of Jefferson and Woodward Avenues. The sculpture, commissioned by Sports Illustrated and executed by Robert Graham, is a 24-foot (7.3 m) long arm with a fisted hand suspended by a pyramidal framework.",
"title": "Arts and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Detroit is one of 3 U.S. cities that is home to professional teams with venues within the city representing the four major sports in North America. Detroit is the only city to have its four major sports teams play within its downtown district. Venues include: Comerica Park (home of MLB's Detroit Tigers), Ford Field (home of the NFL's Detroit Lions), and Little Caesars Arena (home of the NHL's Detroit Red Wings and the NBA's Detroit Pistons).",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Detroit has won titles in all four of the major professional sports leagues. The Tigers have won four World Series titles (1935, 1945, 1968, and 1984). The Red Wings have won 11 Stanley Cups (1935–36, 1936–37, 1942–43, 1949–50, 1951–52, 1953–54, 1954–55, 1996–97, 1997–98, 2001–02, 2007–08) (the most by an American NHL franchise). The Lions have won 4 NFL titles (1935, 1952, 1953, 1957) . The Pistons have won three NBA titles (1989, 1990, 2004). In the years following the mid-1930s, Detroit was referred to as the \"City of Champions\" after the Tigers, Lions, and Red Wings captured the three major professional sports championships in existence at the time in a seven-month period (the Tigers won the World Series in October 1935; the Lions won the NFL championship in December 1935; the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in April 1936).",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Founded in 2012 as a semi-professional soccer club, Detroit City FC plays professional soccer in the USL Championship. Nicknamed, Le Rouge, the club are two-time champions of NISA since joining in 2020. They play their home matches in Keyworth Stadium, which is located in the enclave of Hamtramck.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "In college sports, Detroit's central location within the Mid-American Conference (MAC) has made it a frequent site for the league's championship events. While the MAC Basketball Tournament moved permanently to Cleveland starting in 2000, the MAC Football Championship Game has been played at Ford Field since 2004 and annually attracts 25,000 to 30,000 fans. The University of Detroit Mercy has an NCAA Division I program, and Wayne State University has both NCAA Division I and II programs. The NCAA football Quick Lane Bowl is held at Ford Field each December.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "The city hosted the 2005 MLB All-Star Game, Super Bowl XL in 2006, the 2006 and 2012 World Series, WrestleMania 23 in 2007, and the NCAA Final Four in April 2009. The Detroit Indy Grand Prix is held in Belle Isle Park. In 2007, open-wheel racing returned to Belle Isle with both Indy Racing League and American Le Mans Series Racing. From 1982 to 1988, Detroit held the Detroit Grand Prix, at the Detroit street circuit.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "In 1932, Eddie \"The Midnight Express\" Tolan from Detroit won the 100- and 200-meter races and two gold medals at the 1932 Summer Olympics. Joe Louis won the heavyweight championship of the world in 1937. Detroit has made the most bids to host the Summer Olympics without ever being awarded the games, with seven unsuccessful bids for the 1944, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972 summer games.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "The city is governed pursuant to the home rule Charter of the City of Detroit. The government is run by a mayor, the nine-member Detroit City Council, the eleven-member Board of Police Commissioners, and a clerk. All of these officers are elected on a nonpartisan ballot, with the exception of four of the police commissioners, who are appointed by the mayor. Detroit has a \"strong mayoral\" system, with the mayor approving departmental appointments. The council approves budgets, but the mayor is not obligated to adhere to any earmarking. The city clerk supervises elections and is formally charged with the maintenance of municipal records. City ordinances and substantially large contracts must be approved by the council. The Detroit City Code is the codification of Detroit's local ordinances.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Presently three Community Advisory Councils advise City Council representatives. Residents of each of Detroit's seven districts have the option of electing Community Advisory Councils. The city clerk supervises elections and is formally charged with the maintenance of municipal records. Municipal elections for mayor, city council and city clerk are held at four-year intervals, in the year after presidential elections. Following a November 2009 referendum, seven council members will be elected from districts beginning in 2013 while two will continue to be elected at-large.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Detroit's courts are state-administered and elections are nonpartisan. The Probate Court for Wayne County is in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in downtown. The Circuit Court is across Gratiot Avenue in the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. The city is home to the Thirty-Sixth District Court, as well as the First District of the Michigan Court of Appeals and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The city provides law enforcement through the Detroit Police Department and emergency services through the Detroit Fire Department.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "Beginning with its incorporation in 1802, Detroit has had a total of 74 mayors. Detroit's last mayor from the Republican Party was Louis Miriani, who served from 1957 to 1962. In 1973, the city elected its first black mayor, Coleman Young. Despite development efforts, his combative style during his five terms in office was not well received by many suburban residents. Mayor Dennis Archer, a former Michigan Supreme Court Justice, refocused the city's attention on redevelopment with a plan to permit three casinos downtown. By 2008, three major casino resort hotels established operations in the city.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "In 2000, the city requested an investigation by the United States Justice Department into the Detroit Police Department which was concluded in 2003 over allegations regarding its use of force and civil rights violations. The city proceeded with a major reorganization of the Detroit Police Department. In 2013, felony bribery charges were brought against seven building inspectors. In 2016, further corruption charges were brought against 12 principals, a former school superintendent and supply vendor for a $12 million (~$14.4 million in 2022) kickback scheme. However, law professor Peter Henning argues Detroit's corruption is not unusual for a city its size, especially when compared with Chicago.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Detroit is sometimes referred to as a sanctuary city because it has \"anti-profiling ordinances that generally prohibit local police from asking about the immigration status of people who are not suspected of any crime\". The city in recent years has been a stronghold for the Democratic Party, with around 94% of votes in the city going to Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate in the 2020 Presidential election.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "Detroit is home to several institutions of higher learning including Wayne State University, a national research university with medical and law schools in the Midtown area offering hundreds of academic degrees and programs. The University of Detroit Mercy, in northwest Detroit in the University District, is a prominent Roman Catholic co-educational university affiliated with the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and the Sisters of Mercy. The University of Detroit Mercy School of Law is downtown across from the Renaissance Center.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "Grand Valley State University's Detroit Center hosts workshops, seminars, professional development, and other large gatherings. Located in the heart of downtown next to Comerica Park and the Detroit Athletic Club, the center has become a key component for educational activity in the city.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Sacred Heart Major Seminary, founded in 1919, is affiliated with Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome and offers pontifical degrees as well as civil undergraduate and graduate degrees. Other institutions in the city include the College for Creative Studies and Wayne County Community College. In June 2009, the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine which is based in East Lansing opened a satellite campus at the Detroit Medical Center.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "As of 2016 many K-12 students in Detroit frequently change schools, with some children having been enrolled in seven schools before finishing their K-12 careers. There is a concentration of senior high schools and charter schools in the downtown area, which had wealthier residents and more gentrification relative to other parts of Detroit: Downtown, northwest Detroit, and northeast Detroit have 1,894, 3,742, and 6,018 students of high school age, respectively, while they have 11, three, and two high schools, respectively. As of 2016 because of the lack of public transportation and the lack of school bus services, many Detroit families have to rely on themselves to transport children to school.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "With about 66,000 public school students (2011–12), the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) district is the largest school district in Michigan. Detroit has an additional 56,000 charter school students for a combined enrollment of about 122,000 students. As of 2009 there are about as many students in charter schools as there are in district schools. As of 2016 DPS continues to have the majority of the special education pupils. In addition, some Detroit students, as of 2016, attend public schools in other municipalities.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "In 1999, the Michigan Legislature removed the locally elected board of education amid allegations of mismanagement and replaced it with a reform board appointed by the mayor and governor. The elected board of education was re-established following a city referendum in 2005. The first election of the new 11-member board of education occurred on November 8, 2005.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "With growing charter schools enrollment as well as a continued exodus of population, the city planned to close many public schools. State officials report a 68% graduation rate for Detroit's public schools adjusted for those who change schools. Traditional public and charter school students in the city have performed poorly on standardized tests. c. 2009 and 2011, while Detroit traditional public schools scored a record low on national tests, the publicly funded charter schools did even worse than the traditional public schools. As of 2016 there were 30,000 excess openings in Detroit traditional public and charter schools, bearing in mind the number of K-12-aged children in the city. In 2016, Kate Zernike of The New York Times stated school performance did not improve despite the proliferation of charters, describing the situation as \"lots of choice, with no good choice\".",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "Detroit public schools students scored the lowest on tests of reading and writing of all major cities in the United States in 2015. Among eighth-graders, only 27% showed basic proficiency in math and 44% in reading. Nearly half of Detroit's adults are functionally illiterate.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "Detroit is served by various private schools, as well as parochial Roman Catholic schools operated by the Archdiocese of Detroit. As of 2013 there are four Catholic grade schools and three Catholic high schools in the City of Detroit, with all of them in the city's west side. The Archdiocese of Detroit lists a number of primary and secondary schools in the metro area as Catholic education has emigrated to the suburbs. Of the three Catholic high schools, two are operated by the Society of Jesus and the third is co-sponsored by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Congregation of St. Basil.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News are the major daily newspapers, both broadsheet publications published together under a joint operating agreement called the Detroit Media Partnership. Media philanthropy includes the Detroit Free Press high school journalism program and the Old Newsboys' Goodfellow Fund of Detroit. In March 2009, the two newspapers reduced home delivery to three days per week, print reduced newsstand issues of the papers on non-delivery days and focus resources on Internet-based news delivery. The Metro Times, founded in 1980, is a weekly publication, covering news, arts & entertainment.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "Founded in 1935 and based in Detroit, the Michigan Chronicle is one of the oldest and most respected African-American weekly newspapers in America, covering politics, entertainment, sports and community events. The Detroit television market is the 11th largest in the United States; according to estimates that do not include audiences in large areas of Ontario (Windsor and its surrounding area on broadcast and cable TV, as well as several other cable markets in Ontario, such as Ottawa) which receive and watch Detroit television stations.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "Detroit has the 11th largest radio market in the United States, though this ranking does not take into account Canadian audiences. Nearby Canadian stations such as Windsor's CKLW (whose jingles formerly proclaimed \"CKLW-the Motor City\") are popular in Detroit.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Detroit has gained notoriety for its high amount of crime, having struggled with it for decades. The number of homicides in 1974 was 714. The homicide rate in 2022 was the third highest in the nation at 50.0 per 100,000. Downtown typically has lower crime than national and state averages. According to a 2007 analysis, Detroit officials note about 65 to 70 percent of homicides in the city were drug related, with the rate of unsolved murders roughly 70%.",
"title": "Crime"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "Although the rate of violent crime dropped 11% in 2008, violent crime in Detroit has not declined as much as the national average from 2007 to 2011. The violent crime rate is one of the highest in the United States. Neighborhoodscout.com reported a crime rate of 62.18 per 1,000 residents for property crimes, and 16.73 per 1,000 for violent crimes (compared to national figures of 32 per 1,000 for property crimes and 5 per 1,000 for violent crime in 2008). In 2012, crime in the city was among the reasons for more expensive car insurance.",
"title": "Crime"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "Areas of the city adjacent to the Detroit River are also patrolled by the United States Border Patrol.",
"title": "Crime"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "There are over a dozen major hospitals, which include the Detroit Medical Center (DMC), Henry Ford Health System, St. John Health System, and the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center. DMC, a regional Level I trauma center, consists of Detroit Receiving Hospital and University Health Center, Children's Hospital of Michigan, Harper University Hospital, Hutzel Women's Hospital, Kresge Eye Institute, Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan, Sinai-Grace Hospital, and the Karmanos Cancer Institute. DMC has more than 2,000 licensed beds and 3,000 affiliated physicians. It is the largest private employer in the city. The center is staffed by physicians from the Wayne State University School of Medicine, the largest single-campus medical school in the United States and the fourth largest medical school overall.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "DMC formally became a part of Vanguard Health Systems on December 30, 2010, as a for-profit corporation. Vanguard has agreed to invest nearly $1.5 B in the DMC complex. Vanguard has agreed to assume all debts and pension obligations. The metro area has many other hospitals including William Beaumont Hospital, St. Joseph's, and University of Michigan Medical Center.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "In 2011, DMC and Henry Ford Health System substantially increased investments in medical research facilities and hospitals in the city's Midtown and New Center. In 2012, two major construction projects were begun in New Center. The Henry Ford Health System started the first phase of a $500 million, 300-acre revitalization project, with the construction of a new $30 million, 275,000-square-foot, Medical Distribution Center for Cardinal Health, Inc. and Wayne State University started construction on a new $93 million, 207,000-square-foot, Integrative Biosciences Center (IBio). As many as 500 researchers and staff will work out of the IBio Center.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "With its proximity to Canada and its facilities, ports, major highways, rail connections and international airports, Detroit is an important transportation hub. The city has three international border crossings, the Ambassador Bridge, Detroit–Windsor Tunnel and Michigan Central Railway Tunnel, linking Detroit to Windsor. The Ambassador Bridge is the single busiest border crossing in North America, carrying 27% of the total trade between the U.S. and Canada.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "In 2015 Canadian Transport Minister Lisa Raitt announced Canada agreed to pay the entire cost to build a $250 million U.S. Customs plaza adjacent to the planned new Detroit–Windsor bridge, now the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Canada had already planned to pay for 95% of the bridge, which will cost $2.1 billion and is expected to open in 2024. \"This allows Canada and Michigan to move the project forward immediately to its next steps which include further design work and property acquisition on the U.S. side of the border\", Raitt said in a statement issued after she spoke in the House of Commons.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "Mass transit in the region is provided by bus services. The Detroit Department of Transportation provides service within city limits up to the outer edges of the city. From there, the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) provides service to the suburbs and the city regionally with local routes and SMART's FAST service. FAST is a new service provided by SMART which offers limited stops along major corridors throughout the Detroit metropolitan area connecting the suburbs to downtown. The new high-frequency service travels along three of Detroit's busiest corridors, Gratiot, Woodward, and Michigan, and only stops at designated FAST stops. Cross border service between the downtown areas of Windsor and Detroit is provided by Transit Windsor via the Tunnel Bus.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "An elevated rail system known as the People Mover, completed in 1987, provides daily service around a 2.94-mile (4.73 km) loop downtown. The QLINE serves as a link between the People Mover and the Amtrak station via Woodward Avenue. The Ann Arbor–Detroit Regional Rail line will extend from New Center, connecting to Ann Arbor via Dearborn, Wayne, and Ypsilanti when it is opened.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "The Regional Transit Authority (RTA) was established by an act of the Michigan legislature in 2012 to oversee and coordinate all existing regional mass transit operations, and to develop new transit services in the region. The RTA's first project was the introduction of RelfeX, a limited-stop, cross-county bus service connecting downtown and midtown Detroit with Oakland county via Woodward avenue.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "Amtrak provides service to Detroit, operating its Wolverine service between Chicago and Pontiac. The Amtrak station is in New Center north of downtown. Intercity bus service is offered at the Detroit Bus Station. Greyhound Lines, Flixbus, Indian Trails, and Barons Bus Lines connect Detroit with numerous cities across the Midwest.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "The city of Detroit has a higher than average percentage of households without a car. In 2016, 24.7% of Detroit households lacked a car, much higher than the national average of 8.7%. Detroit averaged 1.15 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 156,
"text": "Freight railroad operations in the city of Detroit are provided by Canadian National Railway, Canadian Pacific Railway, Conrail Shared Assets, CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway, each of which have local yards within the city. Detroit is also served by the Delray Connecting Railroad and Detroit Connecting Railroad shortlines.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 157,
"text": "Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW), the principal airport serving Detroit, is in nearby Romulus. DTW is a primary hub for Delta Air Lines (following its acquisition of Northwest Airlines), and a secondary hub for Spirit Airlines. The airport is connected to Downtown Detroit by the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) FAST Michigan route.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 158,
"text": "Coleman A. Young International Airport (DET), previously called Detroit City Airport, is on Detroit's northeast side; the airport now maintains only charter service and general aviation. Willow Run Airport, in western Wayne County near Ypsilanti, is a general aviation and cargo airport.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 159,
"text": "Metro Detroit has an extensive toll-free network of freeways administered by the Michigan Department of Transportation. Four major Interstate Highways surround the city. Detroit is connected via Interstate 75 (I-75) and I-96 to Kings Highway 401 and to major Southern Ontario cities such as London, Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area. I-75 (Chrysler and Fisher freeways) is the region's main north–south route, serving Flint, Pontiac, Troy, and Detroit, before continuing south (as the Detroit–Toledo and Seaway Freeways) to serve many of the communities along the shore of Lake Erie.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 160,
"text": "I-94 (Edsel Ford Freeway) runs east–west through Detroit and serves Ann Arbor to the west (where it continues to Chicago) and Port Huron to the northeast. The stretch of the I-94 freeway from Ypsilanti to Detroit was one of America's earlier limited-access highways. Henry Ford built it to link the factories at Willow Run and Dearborn during World War II. A portion was known as the Willow Run Expressway. The I-96 freeway runs northwest–southeast through Livingston, Oakland and Wayne counties and (as the Jeffries Freeway through Wayne County) has its eastern terminus in downtown Detroit.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 161,
"text": "I-275 runs north–south from I-75 in the south to the junction of I-96 and I-696 in the north, providing a bypass through the western suburbs of Detroit. I-375 is a short spur route in downtown Detroit, an extension of the Chrysler Freeway. I-696 (Reuther Freeway) runs east–west from the junction of I-96 and I-275, providing a route through the northern suburbs of Detroit. Taken together, I-275 and I-696 form a semicircle around Detroit. Michigan state highways designated with the letter M serve to connect major freeways.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 162,
"text": "Detroit has a floating post office, the J. W. Westcott II, which serves lake freighters along the Detroit River. Its ZIP Code is 48222. The ZIP Code is used exclusively for the J. W. Westcott II, which makes it the only floating ZIP Code in the United States. It has a land-based office at 12 24th Street, just south of the Ambassador Bridge. The J.W. Westcott Company was established in 1874 by Captain John Ward Westcott as a maritime reporting agency to inform other vessels about port conditions, and the J. W. Westcott II vessel began service in 1949 and is still in operation today.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 163,
"text": "Detroit's sister cities include the following:",
"title": "Sister cities"
}
]
| Detroit is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census, making it the 29th-most populous city in the United States. The Metro Detroit area, home to 4.3 million people, is the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area and the 14th-largest in the United States. A significant cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive background. In 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and Alphonse de Tonty founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit. During the late 19th and early 20th century, it became an important industrial hub at the center of the Great Lakes region. The city's population rose to be the fourth-largest in the nation by 1920, after New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia, with the expansion of the automotive industry in the early 20th century. The Detroit River became the busiest commercial hub in the world as it carried over 65 million tons of shipping commerce each year. In the late 20th century, Detroit entered a state of urban decay which has continued to the present, as a result of industrial restructuring, the loss of jobs in the auto industry, and rapid suburbanization. Since reaching a peak of 1.85 million at the 1950 census, Detroit's population has declined by more than 65 percent. In 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, which it successfully exited in December 2014. Detroit is a port on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the St. Lawrence Seaway. The city anchors the second-largest regional economy in the Midwest and the 14th-largest in the United States. Detroit is best known as the center of the U.S. automotive industry, and the "Big Three" auto manufacturers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis North America (Chrysler)—are all headquartered in Metro Detroit. The Detroit Metropolitan Airport is among the most important hub airports in the United States. Detroit and its neighboring Canadian city Windsor constitute the second-busiest international crossing in North America, after San Diego–Tijuana. Detroit's diverse culture has had both local and international influence, particularly in music, with the city giving rise to the genres of Motown and techno and playing an important role in the development of jazz, hip-hop, rock, and punk. The rapid growth of Detroit in its boom years resulted in a globally unique stock of architectural monuments and historic places. Since the 2000s, conservation efforts have managed to save many architectural pieces and achieve several large-scale revitalizations, including the restoration of several historic theaters and entertainment venues, high-rise renovations, new sports stadiums, and a riverfront revitalization project. An increasingly popular tourist destination, Detroit receives 16 million visitors per year. In 2015, Detroit was named a "City of Design" by UNESCO, the first U.S. city to receive that designation. Time named Detroit as one of the fifty World's Greatest Places of 2022 to explore. | 2001-10-23T14:55:37Z | 2023-12-28T16:39:52Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit |
8,688 | Deccan Traps | The Deccan Traps is a large igneous province of west-central India (17–24°N, 73–74°E). It is one of the largest volcanic features on Earth, taking the form of a large shield volcano. It consists of numerous layers of solidified flood basalt that together are more than about 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) thick, cover an area of about 500,000 square kilometres (200,000 sq mi), and have a volume of about 1,000,000 cubic kilometres (200,000 cu mi). Originally, the Deccan Traps may have covered about 1,500,000 square kilometres (600,000 sq mi), with a correspondingly larger original volume. This volume overlies the Archean age Indian Shield, which is likely the lithology the province passed through during eruption. The province is commonly divided into four subprovinces: the main Deccan, the Malwa Plateau, the Mandla Lobe, and the Saurashtran Plateau.
The term trap has been used in geology since 1785–1795 for such rock formations. It is derived from the Swedish word for stairs (trapp) and refers to the step-like hills forming the landscape of the region. The name Deccan has Sanskrit origins meaning "southern".
The Deccan Traps began forming 66.25 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, although it is possible that some of the oldest material may underlie younger material. The bulk of the volcanic eruption occurred at the Western Ghats between 66 and 65 million years ago when lava began to extrude through fissures in the crust known as fissure eruptions. Determining the exact age for Deccan rock is difficult due to a number of limitations, one being that the transition between eruption events may be separated by only a few thousand years and the resolution of dating methods used is not able to pinpoint these events. In this way, determining the rate of magma emplacement is also difficult to constrain. This series of eruptions may have lasted for less than 30,000 years.
The original area covered by the lava flows is estimated to have been as large as 1.5 million km (0.58 million sq mi), approximately half the size of modern India. The Deccan Traps region was reduced to its current size by erosion and plate tectonics; the present area of directly observable lava flows is around 500,000 km (200,000 sq mi).
The Deccan Traps are segmented into three stratigraphic units: the Upper, Middle, and Lower traps. While it was previously interpreted that these groups represented their own key points in the sequence of events in Deccan extrusion, it is now more widely accepted that these horizons relate more closely to paleo topography and distance from the eruption site.
The release of volcanic gases, particularly sulfur dioxide, during the formation of the traps may have contributed to climate change. An average drop in temperature of about 2 °C (3.6 °F) was recorded during this period.
Because of its magnitude, scientists have speculated that the gases released during the formation of the Deccan Traps played a major role in the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event (also known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary or K–T extinction). It has been theorized that sudden cooling due to sulfurous volcanic gases released by the formation of the traps and toxic gas emissions may have contributed significantly to the K–Pg mass extinction. However, the current consensus among the scientific community is that the extinction was primarily triggered by the Chicxulub impact event in North America, which would have produced a sunlight-blocking dust cloud that killed much of the plant life and reduced global temperature (this cooling is called an impact winter).
Work published in 2014 by geologist Gerta Keller and others on the timing of the Deccan volcanism suggests the extinction may have been caused by both the volcanism and the impact event. This was followed by a similar study in 2015, both of which consider the hypothesis that the impact exacerbated or induced the Deccan volcanism, since the events occurred approximately at antipodes.
However, the impact theory is still the best supported and has been determined by various reviews to be the consensus view.
A more recent discovery appears to demonstrate the scope of the destruction from the impact alone, however. In a March 2019 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of twelve scientists revealed the contents of the Tanis fossil site discovered near Bowman, North Dakota, that appeared to show a devastating mass destruction of an ancient lake and its inhabitants at the time of the Chicxulub impact. In the paper, the group reports that the geology of the site is strewn with fossilized trees and remains of fish and other animals. The lead researcher, Robert A. DePalma of the University of Kansas, was quoted in the New York Times as stating that "You would be blind to miss the carcasses sticking out... It is impossible to miss when you see the outcrop". Evidence correlating this find to the Chicxulub impact included tektites bearing "the unique chemical signature of other tektites associated with the Chicxulub event" found in the gills of fish fossils and embedded in amber, an iridium-rich top layer that is considered another signature of the event, and an atypical lack of evidence for scavenging perhaps suggesting that there were few survivors. The exact mechanism of the site's destruction has been debated as either an impact-caused tsunami or lake and river seiche activity triggered by post-impact earthquakes, though there has yet been no firm conclusion upon which researchers have settled.
However, a recent computation involving more than 100 processors dedicated to algorithmic intelligence show that the Deccan Traps had been erupting for 300,000 years prior to the impact, and likely kept erupting for nearly 700,000 years, which would have greatly contributed to global extinction.
Within the Deccan Traps at least 95% of the lavas are tholeiitic basalts. Major mineral constituents are olivine, pyroxenes, and plagioclase, as well as certain Fe-Ti-rich oxides. These magmas are <7% MgO. Many of these minerals are observed however, as highly altered forms. Other rock types present include: alkali basalt, nephelinite, lamprophyre, and carbonatite.
Mantle xenoliths have been described from Kachchh (northwestern India) and elsewhere in the western Deccan and contain spinel lherzolite and pyroxenite constituents.
While the Deccan traps have been categorized in many different ways including the three different stratigraphic groups, geochemically the province can be split into as many as eleven different formations. Many of the petrologic differences in these units are a product of varying degrees of crustal contamination.
The Deccan Traps are famous for the beds of fossils that have been found between layers of lava. Particularly well known species include the frog Oxyglossus pusillus (Owen) of the Eocene of India and the toothed frog Indobatrachus, an early lineage of modern frogs, which is now placed in the Australian family Myobatrachidae. The Infratrappean Beds (Lameta Formation) and Intertrappean Beds also contain fossil freshwater molluscs.
It is postulated that the Deccan Traps eruption was associated with a deep mantle plume. High He/He ratios of the main pulse of the eruption are often seen in magmas with mantle plume origin. The area of long-term eruption (the hotspot), known as the Réunion hotspot, is suspected of both causing the Deccan Traps eruption and opening the rift that separated the Mascarene Plateau from India. Regional crustal thinning supports the theory of this rifting event and likely encouraged the rise of the plume in this area. Seafloor spreading at the boundary between the Indian and African Plates subsequently pushed India north over the plume, which now lies under Réunion island in the Indian Ocean, southwest of India. The mantle plume model has, however, been challenged.
Data continues to emerge that supports the plume model. The motion of the Indian tectonic plate and the eruptive history of the Deccan traps show strong correlations. Based on data from marine magnetic profiles, a pulse of unusually rapid plate motion began at the same time as the first pulse of Deccan flood basalts, which is dated at 67 million years ago. The spreading rate rapidly increased and reached a maximum at the same time as the peak basaltic eruptions. The spreading rate then dropped off, with the decrease occurring around 63 million years ago, by which time the main phase of Deccan volcanism ended. This correlation is seen as driven by plume dynamics.
The motions of the Indian and African plates have also been shown to be coupled, the common element being the position of these plates relative to the location of the Réunion plume head. The onset of accelerated motion of India coincides with a large slowing of the rate of counterclockwise rotation of Africa. The close correlations between the plate motions suggest that they were both driven by the force of the Réunion plume.
When comparing the Na8, Fe8, and Si8 contents of the Deccan to other major igneous provinces, the Deccan appears to have undergone the greatest degree of melting suggesting a deep plume origin. Olivine appears to have fractionated at near-Moho depths with additional fractionation of gabbro ~6 km below the surface. Features such as widespread faulting, frequent diking events, high heat flux, and positive gravity anomalies suggest that the extrusive phase of the Deccan Traps is associated with the existence of a triple junction which may have existed during the Late Cretaceous, having been caused by a deep mantle plume. Not all of these diking events are attributed to large-scale contributions to the overall flow volume. It can be difficult, however, to locate the largest dikes as they are often located towards the west coast and are therefore believed to currently reside under water.
Although the Deccan Traps began erupting well before the impact, in a 2015 study, it was proposed based on argon–argon dating that the impact may have caused an increase in permeability that allowed magma to reach the surface and produced the most voluminous flows, accounting for around 70% of the volume. The combination of the asteroid impact and the resulting increase in eruptive volume may have been responsible for the mass extinctions that occurred at the time that separates the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods, known as the K–Pg boundary. However this proposal has been questioned by other authors, who describe the suggestion as being "convenient interpretations based on superficial and cursory observations."
A geological structure that exists in the sea floor off the west coast of India has been suggested as a possible impact crater, in this context called the Shiva crater. It was also dated approximately 66 million years ago, potentially matching the Deccan traps. The researchers claiming that this feature is an impact crater suggest that the impact may have been the triggering event for the Deccan Traps as well as contributing to the acceleration of the Indian plate in the early Paleogene. However, the current consensus in the Earth science community is that this feature is unlikely to be an actual impact crater.
18°51′N 73°43′E / 18.850°N 73.717°E / 18.850; 73.717 | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Deccan Traps is a large igneous province of west-central India (17–24°N, 73–74°E). It is one of the largest volcanic features on Earth, taking the form of a large shield volcano. It consists of numerous layers of solidified flood basalt that together are more than about 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) thick, cover an area of about 500,000 square kilometres (200,000 sq mi), and have a volume of about 1,000,000 cubic kilometres (200,000 cu mi). Originally, the Deccan Traps may have covered about 1,500,000 square kilometres (600,000 sq mi), with a correspondingly larger original volume. This volume overlies the Archean age Indian Shield, which is likely the lithology the province passed through during eruption. The province is commonly divided into four subprovinces: the main Deccan, the Malwa Plateau, the Mandla Lobe, and the Saurashtran Plateau.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The term trap has been used in geology since 1785–1795 for such rock formations. It is derived from the Swedish word for stairs (trapp) and refers to the step-like hills forming the landscape of the region. The name Deccan has Sanskrit origins meaning \"southern\".",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Deccan Traps began forming 66.25 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, although it is possible that some of the oldest material may underlie younger material. The bulk of the volcanic eruption occurred at the Western Ghats between 66 and 65 million years ago when lava began to extrude through fissures in the crust known as fissure eruptions. Determining the exact age for Deccan rock is difficult due to a number of limitations, one being that the transition between eruption events may be separated by only a few thousand years and the resolution of dating methods used is not able to pinpoint these events. In this way, determining the rate of magma emplacement is also difficult to constrain. This series of eruptions may have lasted for less than 30,000 years.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The original area covered by the lava flows is estimated to have been as large as 1.5 million km (0.58 million sq mi), approximately half the size of modern India. The Deccan Traps region was reduced to its current size by erosion and plate tectonics; the present area of directly observable lava flows is around 500,000 km (200,000 sq mi).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Deccan Traps are segmented into three stratigraphic units: the Upper, Middle, and Lower traps. While it was previously interpreted that these groups represented their own key points in the sequence of events in Deccan extrusion, it is now more widely accepted that these horizons relate more closely to paleo topography and distance from the eruption site.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The release of volcanic gases, particularly sulfur dioxide, during the formation of the traps may have contributed to climate change. An average drop in temperature of about 2 °C (3.6 °F) was recorded during this period.",
"title": "Effect on mass extinctions and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Because of its magnitude, scientists have speculated that the gases released during the formation of the Deccan Traps played a major role in the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event (also known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary or K–T extinction). It has been theorized that sudden cooling due to sulfurous volcanic gases released by the formation of the traps and toxic gas emissions may have contributed significantly to the K–Pg mass extinction. However, the current consensus among the scientific community is that the extinction was primarily triggered by the Chicxulub impact event in North America, which would have produced a sunlight-blocking dust cloud that killed much of the plant life and reduced global temperature (this cooling is called an impact winter).",
"title": "Effect on mass extinctions and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Work published in 2014 by geologist Gerta Keller and others on the timing of the Deccan volcanism suggests the extinction may have been caused by both the volcanism and the impact event. This was followed by a similar study in 2015, both of which consider the hypothesis that the impact exacerbated or induced the Deccan volcanism, since the events occurred approximately at antipodes.",
"title": "Effect on mass extinctions and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "However, the impact theory is still the best supported and has been determined by various reviews to be the consensus view.",
"title": "Effect on mass extinctions and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "A more recent discovery appears to demonstrate the scope of the destruction from the impact alone, however. In a March 2019 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of twelve scientists revealed the contents of the Tanis fossil site discovered near Bowman, North Dakota, that appeared to show a devastating mass destruction of an ancient lake and its inhabitants at the time of the Chicxulub impact. In the paper, the group reports that the geology of the site is strewn with fossilized trees and remains of fish and other animals. The lead researcher, Robert A. DePalma of the University of Kansas, was quoted in the New York Times as stating that \"You would be blind to miss the carcasses sticking out... It is impossible to miss when you see the outcrop\". Evidence correlating this find to the Chicxulub impact included tektites bearing \"the unique chemical signature of other tektites associated with the Chicxulub event\" found in the gills of fish fossils and embedded in amber, an iridium-rich top layer that is considered another signature of the event, and an atypical lack of evidence for scavenging perhaps suggesting that there were few survivors. The exact mechanism of the site's destruction has been debated as either an impact-caused tsunami or lake and river seiche activity triggered by post-impact earthquakes, though there has yet been no firm conclusion upon which researchers have settled.",
"title": "Effect on mass extinctions and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "However, a recent computation involving more than 100 processors dedicated to algorithmic intelligence show that the Deccan Traps had been erupting for 300,000 years prior to the impact, and likely kept erupting for nearly 700,000 years, which would have greatly contributed to global extinction.",
"title": "Effect on mass extinctions and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Within the Deccan Traps at least 95% of the lavas are tholeiitic basalts. Major mineral constituents are olivine, pyroxenes, and plagioclase, as well as certain Fe-Ti-rich oxides. These magmas are <7% MgO. Many of these minerals are observed however, as highly altered forms. Other rock types present include: alkali basalt, nephelinite, lamprophyre, and carbonatite.",
"title": "Petrology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Mantle xenoliths have been described from Kachchh (northwestern India) and elsewhere in the western Deccan and contain spinel lherzolite and pyroxenite constituents.",
"title": "Petrology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "While the Deccan traps have been categorized in many different ways including the three different stratigraphic groups, geochemically the province can be split into as many as eleven different formations. Many of the petrologic differences in these units are a product of varying degrees of crustal contamination.",
"title": "Petrology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Deccan Traps are famous for the beds of fossils that have been found between layers of lava. Particularly well known species include the frog Oxyglossus pusillus (Owen) of the Eocene of India and the toothed frog Indobatrachus, an early lineage of modern frogs, which is now placed in the Australian family Myobatrachidae. The Infratrappean Beds (Lameta Formation) and Intertrappean Beds also contain fossil freshwater molluscs.",
"title": "Fossils"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "It is postulated that the Deccan Traps eruption was associated with a deep mantle plume. High He/He ratios of the main pulse of the eruption are often seen in magmas with mantle plume origin. The area of long-term eruption (the hotspot), known as the Réunion hotspot, is suspected of both causing the Deccan Traps eruption and opening the rift that separated the Mascarene Plateau from India. Regional crustal thinning supports the theory of this rifting event and likely encouraged the rise of the plume in this area. Seafloor spreading at the boundary between the Indian and African Plates subsequently pushed India north over the plume, which now lies under Réunion island in the Indian Ocean, southwest of India. The mantle plume model has, however, been challenged.",
"title": "Theories of formation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Data continues to emerge that supports the plume model. The motion of the Indian tectonic plate and the eruptive history of the Deccan traps show strong correlations. Based on data from marine magnetic profiles, a pulse of unusually rapid plate motion began at the same time as the first pulse of Deccan flood basalts, which is dated at 67 million years ago. The spreading rate rapidly increased and reached a maximum at the same time as the peak basaltic eruptions. The spreading rate then dropped off, with the decrease occurring around 63 million years ago, by which time the main phase of Deccan volcanism ended. This correlation is seen as driven by plume dynamics.",
"title": "Theories of formation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The motions of the Indian and African plates have also been shown to be coupled, the common element being the position of these plates relative to the location of the Réunion plume head. The onset of accelerated motion of India coincides with a large slowing of the rate of counterclockwise rotation of Africa. The close correlations between the plate motions suggest that they were both driven by the force of the Réunion plume.",
"title": "Theories of formation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "When comparing the Na8, Fe8, and Si8 contents of the Deccan to other major igneous provinces, the Deccan appears to have undergone the greatest degree of melting suggesting a deep plume origin. Olivine appears to have fractionated at near-Moho depths with additional fractionation of gabbro ~6 km below the surface. Features such as widespread faulting, frequent diking events, high heat flux, and positive gravity anomalies suggest that the extrusive phase of the Deccan Traps is associated with the existence of a triple junction which may have existed during the Late Cretaceous, having been caused by a deep mantle plume. Not all of these diking events are attributed to large-scale contributions to the overall flow volume. It can be difficult, however, to locate the largest dikes as they are often located towards the west coast and are therefore believed to currently reside under water.",
"title": "Theories of formation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Although the Deccan Traps began erupting well before the impact, in a 2015 study, it was proposed based on argon–argon dating that the impact may have caused an increase in permeability that allowed magma to reach the surface and produced the most voluminous flows, accounting for around 70% of the volume. The combination of the asteroid impact and the resulting increase in eruptive volume may have been responsible for the mass extinctions that occurred at the time that separates the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods, known as the K–Pg boundary. However this proposal has been questioned by other authors, who describe the suggestion as being \"convenient interpretations based on superficial and cursory observations.\"",
"title": "Suggested link to impact events"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "A geological structure that exists in the sea floor off the west coast of India has been suggested as a possible impact crater, in this context called the Shiva crater. It was also dated approximately 66 million years ago, potentially matching the Deccan traps. The researchers claiming that this feature is an impact crater suggest that the impact may have been the triggering event for the Deccan Traps as well as contributing to the acceleration of the Indian plate in the early Paleogene. However, the current consensus in the Earth science community is that this feature is unlikely to be an actual impact crater.",
"title": "Suggested link to impact events"
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"text": "18°51′N 73°43′E / 18.850°N 73.717°E / 18.850; 73.717",
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| The Deccan Traps is a large igneous province of west-central India. It is one of the largest volcanic features on Earth, taking the form of a large shield volcano. It consists of numerous layers of solidified flood basalt that together are more than about 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) thick, cover an area of about 500,000 square kilometres (200,000 sq mi), and have a volume of about 1,000,000 cubic kilometres (200,000 cu mi). Originally, the Deccan Traps may have covered about 1,500,000 square kilometres (600,000 sq mi), with a correspondingly larger original volume. This volume overlies the Archean age Indian Shield, which is likely the lithology the province passed through during eruption. The province is commonly divided into four subprovinces: the main Deccan, the Malwa Plateau, the Mandla Lobe, and the Saurashtran Plateau. | 2001-10-23T17:53:27Z | 2023-12-25T17:40:13Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps |
8,690 | Don't ask, don't tell | "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of non-heterosexual people. Instituted during the Clinton administration, the policy was issued under Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 on December 21, 1993, and was in effect from February 28, 1994, until September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. This relaxation of legal restrictions on service by gays and lesbians in the armed forces was mandated by Public Law 103–160 (Title 10 of the United States Code §654), which was signed November 30, 1993. The policy prohibited people who "demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because their presence "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability".
The act prohibited any non-heterosexual person from disclosing their sexual orientation or from speaking about any same-sex relationships, including marriages or other familial attributes, while serving in the United States armed forces. The act specified that service members who disclose that they are homosexual or engage in homosexual conduct should be separated (discharged) except when a service member's conduct was "for the purpose of avoiding or terminating military service" or when it "would not be in the best interest of the armed forces". Since DADT ended in 2011, persons who are openly homosexual and bisexual have been able to serve.
The "don't ask" section of the DADT policy specified that superiors should not initiate an investigation of a service member's orientation without witnessing disallowed behaviors. However, evidence of homosexual behavior deemed credible could be used to initiate an investigation. Unauthorized investigations and harassment of suspected servicemen and women led to an expansion of the policy to "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue, don't harass".
Beginning in the early 2000s, several legal challenges to DADT were filed, and legislation to repeal DADT was enacted in December 2010, specifying that the policy would remain in place until the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certified that repeal would not harm military readiness, followed by a 60-day waiting period. A July 6, 2011, ruling from a federal appeals court barred further enforcement of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members. President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen sent that certification to Congress on July 22, 2011, which set the end of DADT to September 20, 2011.
Even with DADT repealed, the legal definition of marriage as being one man and one woman under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) meant that, although same-sex partners could get married, their marriage was not recognized by the federal government. This barred partners from access to the same benefits afforded to heterosexual couples such as base access, health care, and United States military pay, including family separation allowance and Basic Allowance for Housing with dependents. The Department of Defense attempted to open some of the benefits that were not restricted by DOMA, but the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor (2013) made these efforts unnecessary.
Engaging in homosexual activity had been grounds for discharge from the American military since the Revolutionary War. Policies based on sexual orientation appeared as the United States prepared to enter World War II. When the military added psychiatric screening to its induction process, it included homosexuality as a disqualifying trait, then seen as a form of psychopathology. When the army issued revised mobilization regulations in 1942, it distinguished "homosexual" recruits from "normal" recruits for the first time. Before the buildup to the war, gay service members were court-martialed, imprisoned, and dishonorably discharged; but in wartime, commanding officers found it difficult to convene court-martial boards of commissioned officers and the administrative blue discharge became the military's standard method for handling gay and lesbian personnel. In 1944, a new policy directive decreed that homosexuals were to be committed to military hospitals, examined by psychiatrists, and discharged under Regulation 615–360, section 8.
In 1947, blue discharges were discontinued and two new classifications were created: "general" and "undesirable". Under such a system, a serviceman or woman found to be gay but who had not committed any sexual acts while in service would tend to receive an undesirable discharge. Those found guilty of engaging in sexual conduct were usually dishonorably discharged. A 1957 U.S. Navy study known as the Crittenden Report dismissed the charge that homosexuals constitute a security risk, but nonetheless did not advocate for an end to anti-gay discrimination in the navy on the basis that "The service should not move ahead of civilian society nor attempt to set substantially different standards in attitude or action with respect to homosexual offenders." It remained secret until 1976. Fannie Mae Clackum was the first service member to successfully appeal such a discharge, winning eight years of back pay from the US Court of Claims in 1960.
From the 1950s through the Vietnam War, some notable gay service members avoided discharges despite pre-screening efforts, and when personnel shortages occurred, homosexuals were allowed to serve.
The gay and lesbian rights movement in the 1970s and 1980s raised the issue by publicizing several noteworthy dismissals of gay service members. Air Force TSgt Leonard Matlovich, the first service member to purposely out himself to challenge the ban, appeared on the cover of Time in 1975. In 1982 the Department of Defense issued a policy stating that, "Homosexuality is incompatible with military service." It cited the military's need "to maintain discipline, good order, and morale" and "to prevent breaches of security". In 1988, in response to a campaign against lesbians at the Marines' Parris Island Depot, activists launched the Gay and Lesbian Military Freedom Project (MFP) to advocate for an end to the exclusion of gays and lesbians from the armed forces. In 1989, reports commissioned by the Personnel Security Research and Education Center (PERSEREC), an arm of the Pentagon, were discovered in the process of Joseph Steffan's lawsuit fighting his forced resignation from the U.S. Naval Academy. One report said that "having a same-gender or an opposite-gender orientation is unrelated to job performance in the same way as is being left- or right-handed." Other lawsuits fighting discharges highlighted the service record of service members like Tracy Thorne and Margarethe (Grethe) Cammermeyer. The MFP began lobbying Congress in 1990, and in 1991 Senator Brock Adams (D-Washington) and Rep. Barbara Boxer introduced the Military Freedom Act, legislation to end the ban completely. Adams and Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colorado) re-introduced it the next year. In July 1991, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, in the context of the outing of his press aide Pete Williams, dismissed the idea that gays posed a security risk as "a bit of an old chestnut" in testimony before the House Budget Committee. In response to his comment, several major newspapers endorsed ending the ban, including USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Detroit Free Press. In June 1992, the General Accounting Office released a report that members of Congress had requested two years earlier estimating the costs associated with the ban on gays and lesbians in the military at $27 million annually.
During the 1992 U.S. presidential election campaign, the civil rights of gays and lesbians, particularly their open service in the military, attracted some press attention, and all candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination supported ending the ban on military service by gays and lesbians, but the Republicans did not make a political issue of that position. In an August cover letter to all his senior officers, General Carl Mundy Jr., Commandant of the Marine Corps, praised a position paper authored by a Marine Corps chaplain that said that "In the unique, intensely close environment of the military, homosexual conduct can threaten the lives, including the physical (e.g. AIDS) and psychological well-being of others". Mundy called it "extremely insightful" and said it offered "a sound basis for discussion of the issue". The murder of gay U.S. Navy petty officer Allen R. Schindler Jr. on October 27, 1992, brought calls from advocates of allowing open service by gays and lesbians for prompt action from the incoming Clinton administration.
The policy was introduced as a compromise measure in 1993 by President Bill Clinton who campaigned in 1992 on the promise to allow all citizens to serve in the military regardless of sexual orientation. Commander Craig Quigley, a Navy spokesman, expressed the opposition of many in the military at the time when he said, "Homosexuals are notoriously promiscuous" and that in shared shower situations, heterosexuals would have an "uncomfortable feeling of someone watching".
During the 1993 policy debate, the National Defense Research Institute prepared a study for the Office of the Secretary of Defense published as Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel Policy: Options and Assessment. It concluded that "circumstances could exist under which the ban on homosexuals could be lifted with little or no adverse consequences for recruitment and retention" if the policy were implemented with care, principally because many factors contribute to individual enlistment and re-enlistment decisions. On May 5, 1993, Gregory M. Herek, associate research psychologist at the University of California at Davis and an authority on public attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on behalf of several professional associations. He stated, "The research data show that there is nothing about lesbians and gay men that makes them inherently unfit for military service, and there is nothing about heterosexuals that makes them inherently unable to work and live with gay people in close quarters." Herek added, "The assumption that heterosexuals cannot overcome their prejudices toward gay people is a mistaken one."
In Congress, Democratic Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia and Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee led the contingent that favored maintaining the absolute ban on gays. Reformers were led by Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who favored modification (but ultimately voted for the defense authorization bill with the gay ban language), and 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, a former Senator and a retired Major General, who argued on behalf of allowing service by open gays and lesbians but was not allowed to appear before the Committee by Nunn. In a June 1993 Washington Post opinion piece, Goldwater wrote: "You don't have to be straight to shoot straight".
Congress rushed to enact the existing gay ban policy into federal law, outflanking Clinton's planned repeal effort. Clinton called for legislation to overturn the ban, but encountered intense opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, members of Congress, and portions of the public. DADT emerged as a compromise policy. Congress included text in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (passed in 1993) requiring the military to abide by regulations essentially identical to the 1982 absolute ban policy. The Clinton administration on December 21, 1993, issued Defense Directive 1304.26, which directed that military applicants were not to be asked about their sexual orientation. This policy is now known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". The phrase was coined by Charles Moskos, a military sociologist.
In accordance with the December 21, 1993, Department of Defense Directive 1332.14, it was legal policy (10 U.S.C. § 654) that homosexuality was incompatible with military service and that persons who engaged in homosexual acts or stated that they are homosexual or bisexual were to be discharged. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, passed by Congress in 1950 and signed by President Harry S Truman, established the policies and procedures for discharging service members.
The full name of the policy at the time was "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue". The "Don't Ask" provision mandated that military or appointed officials not ask about or require members to reveal their sexual orientation. The "Don't Tell" stated that a member may be discharged for claiming to be a homosexual or bisexual or making a statement indicating a tendency towards or intent to engage in homosexual activities. The "Don't Pursue" established what was minimally required for an investigation to be initiated. A "Don't Harass" provision was added to the policy later. It ensured that the military would not allow harassment or violence against service members for any reason.
The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network was founded in 1993 to advocate an end to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the U.S. Armed Forces.
DADT was upheld by five federal Courts of Appeal. The Supreme Court, in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. (2006), unanimously held that the federal government could constitutionally withhold funding from universities, no matter what their nondiscrimination policies might be, for refusing to give military recruiters access to school resources. An association of law schools had argued that allowing military recruiting at their institutions compromised their ability to exercise their free speech rights in opposition to discrimination based on sexual orientation as represented by DADT.
In January 1998, Senior Chief Petty Officer Timothy R. McVeigh (not to be confused with convicted Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy J. McVeigh) won a preliminary injunction from a U.S. district court that prevented his discharge from the U.S. Navy for "homosexual conduct" after 17 years of service. His lawsuit did not challenge the DADT policy but asked the court to hold the military accountable for adhering to the policy's particulars. The Navy had investigated McVeigh's sexual orientation based on his AOL email account name and user profile. District Judge Stanley Sporkin ruled in McVeigh v. Cohen that the Navy had violated its own DADT guidelines: "Suggestions of sexual orientation in a private, anonymous email account did not give the Navy a sufficient reason to investigate to determine whether to commence discharge proceedings." He called the Navy's investigation "a search and destroy mission" against McVeigh. The case also attracted attention because a navy paralegal had misrepresented himself when querying AOL for information about McVeigh's account. Frank Rich linked the two issues: "McVeigh is as clear-cut a victim of a witch hunt as could be imagined, and that witch hunt could expand exponentially if the military wants to add on-line fishing to its invasion of service members' privacy." AOL apologized to McVeigh and paid him damages. McVeigh reached a settlement with the Navy that paid his legal expenses and allowed him to retire with full benefits in July. The New York Times called Sporkin's ruling "a victory for gay rights, with implications for the millions of people who use computer on-line services".
In April 2006, Margaret Witt, a major in the United States Air Force who was being investigated for homosexuality, filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on the grounds that DADT violates substantive due process, the Equal Protection Clause, and procedural due process. In July 2007 the Secretary of the Air Force ordered her honorable discharge. Dismissed by the district court, the case was heard on appeal, and the Ninth Circuit issued its ruling on May 21, 2008. Its decision in Witt v. Department of the Air Force reinstated Witt's substantive-due-process and procedural-due-process claims and affirmed the dismissal of her Equal Protection claim. The Ninth Circuit, analyzing the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), determined that DADT had to be subjected to heightened scrutiny, meaning that there must be an "important" governmental interest at issue, that DADT must "significantly" further the governmental interest, and that there can be no less intrusive way for the government to advance that interest.
The Obama administration declined to appeal, allowing a May 3, 2009, deadline to pass, leaving Witt as binding on the entire Ninth Circuit, and returning the case to the District Court. On September 24, 2010, District Judge Ronald B. Leighton ruled that Witt's constitutional rights had been violated by her discharge and that she must be reinstated to the Air Force.
The government filed an appeal with the Ninth Circuit on November 23, but did not attempt to have the trial court's ruling stayed pending the outcome. In a settlement announced on May 10, 2011, the Air Force agreed to drop its appeal and remove Witt's discharge from her military record. She will retire with full benefits.
In 2010, a lawsuit filed in 2004 by the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR), the nation's largest Republican gay organization, went to trial. Challenging the constitutionality of DADT, the plaintiffs stated that the policy violates the rights of gay military members to free speech, due process and open association. The government argued that DADT was necessary to advance a legitimate governmental interest. Plaintiffs introduced statements by President Barack Obama, from prepared remarks, that DADT "doesn't contribute to our national security", "weakens our national security", and that reversal is "essential for our national security". According to plaintiffs, these statements alone satisfied their burden of proof on the due process claims.
On September 9, 2010, Judge Virginia A. Phillips ruled in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America that the ban on service by openly gay service members was an unconstitutional violation of the First and Fifth Amendments. On October 12, 2010, she granted an immediate worldwide injunction prohibiting the Department of Defense from enforcing the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy and ordered the military to suspend and discontinue any investigation or discharge, separation, or other proceedings based on it. The Department of Justice appealed her decision and requested a stay of her injunction, which Phillips denied but which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted on October 20 and stayed pending appeal on November 1. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to overrule the stay. District Court neither anticipated questions of constitutional law nor formulated a rule broader than is required by the facts. The constitutional issues regarding DADT are well-defined, and the District Court focused specifically on the relevant inquiry of whether the statute impermissibly infringed upon substantive due process rights with regard to a protected area of individual liberty. Engaging in a careful and detailed review of the facts presented to it at trial, the District Court properly concluded that the Government put forward no persuasive evidence to demonstrate that the statute is a valid exercise of congressional authority to legislate in the realm of protected liberty interests. See Log Cabin, 716 F. Supp. 2d at 923. Hypothetical questions were neither presented nor answered in reaching this decision. On October 19, 2010, military recruiters were told they could accept openly gay applicants. On October 20, 2010, Lt. Daniel Choi, an openly gay man honorably discharged under DADT, re-enlisted in the U.S. Army.
Following the passage of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, the Justice Department asked the Ninth Circuit to suspend LCR's suit in light of the legislative repeal. LCR opposed the request, noting that gay personnel were still subject to discharge. On January 28, 2011, the Court denied the Justice Department's request. The Obama administration responded by requesting that the policy be allowed to stay in place while they completed the process of assuring that its end would not impact combat readiness. On March 28, the LCR filed a brief asking that the court deny the administration's request.
In 2011, while waiting for certification, several service members were discharged under DADT at their own insistence, until July 6 when a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals re-instated Judge Phillips' injunction barring further enforcement of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members. On July 11, the appeals court asked the DOJ to inform the court if it intended to proceed with its appeal. On July 14, the Justice Department filed a motion "to avoid short-circuiting the repeal process established by Congress during the final stages of the implementation of the repeal". and warning of "significant immediate harms on the government". On July 15, the Ninth Circuit restored most of the DADT policy, but continued to prohibit the government from discharging or investigating openly gay personnel. Following the implementation of DADT's repeal, a panel of three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the Phillips ruling.
Following the July 1999 murder of Army Pfc. Barry Winchell, apparently motivated by anti-gay bias, President Clinton issued an executive order modifying the Uniform Code of Military Justice to permit evidence of a hate crime to be admitted during the sentencing phase of a trial. In December, Secretary of Defense William Cohen ordered a review of DADT to determine if the policy's anti-gay harassment component was being observed. When that review found anti-gay sentiments were widely expressed and tolerated in the military, the DOD adopted a new anti-harassment policy in July 2000, though its effectiveness was disputed. On December 7, 1999, Hillary Clinton told an audience of gay supporters that "Gays and lesbians already serve with distinction in our nation's armed forces and should not face discrimination. Fitness to serve should be based on an individual's conduct, not their sexual orientation." Later that month, retired General Carl E. Mundy Jr. defended the implementation of DADT against what he called the "politicization" of the issue by both Clintons. He cited discharge statistics for the Marines for the past five years that showed 75% were based on "voluntary admission of homosexuality" and 49% occurred during the first six months of service, when new recruits were most likely to reevaluate their decision to enlist. He also argued against any change in the policy, writing in the New York Times: "Conduct that is widely rejected by a majority of Americans can undermine the trust that is essential to creating and maintaining the sense of unity that is critical to the success of a military organization operating under the very different and difficult demands of combat." The conviction of Winchell's murderer, according to the New York Times, "galvanized opposition" to DADT, an issue that had "largely vanished from public debate". Opponents of the policy focused on punishing harassment in the military rather than the policy itself, which Senator Chuck Hagel defended on December 25: "The U.S. armed forces aren't some social experiment."
The principal candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, both endorsed military service by open gays and lesbians, provoking opposition from high-ranking retired military officers, notably the recently retired commandant of the Marine Corps, General Charles C. Krulak. He and others objected to Gore's statement that he would use support for ending DADT as a "litmus test" when considering candidates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The 2000 Democratic Party platform was silent on the issue, while the Republican Party platform that year said: "We affirm that homosexuality is incompatible with military service." Following the election of George W. Bush in 2000, observers expected him to avoid any changes to DADT, since his nominee for Secretary of State Colin Powell had participated in its creation.
In February 2004, members of the British Armed Forces, Lt Rolf Kurth and Lt Cdr Craig Jones, along with Aaron Belkin, Director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military met with members of Congress and spoke at the National Defense University. They spoke about their experience of the current situation in the UK. The UK lifted the gay ban on members serving in their forces in 2000.
In July 2004, the American Psychological Association issued a statement that DADT "discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation" and that "Empirical evidence fails to show that sexual orientation is germane to any aspect of military effectiveness including unit cohesion, morale, recruitment and retention." It said that the U.S. military's track record overcoming past racial and gender discrimination demonstrated its ability to integrate groups previously excluded. The Republican Party platform that year reiterated its support for the policy—"We affirm traditional military culture, and we affirm that homosexuality is incompatible with military service."—while the Democratic Party maintained its silence.
In February 2005, the Government Accountability Office released estimates of the cost of DADT. It reported at least $95.4 million in recruiting costs and at least $95.1 million for training replacements for the 9,488 troops discharged from 1994 through 2003, while noting that the true figures might be higher. In September, as part of its campaign to demonstrate that the military allowed open homosexuals to serve when its workforce requirements were greatest, the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military (now the Palm Center) reported that army regulations allowed the active-duty deployment of Army Reservists and National Guard troops who claim to be or who are accused of being gay. A U.S. Army Forces Command spokesperson said the regulation was intended to prevent Reservists and National Guard members from pretending to be gay to escape combat. Advocates of ending DADT repeatedly publicized discharges of highly trained gay and lesbian personnel, especially those in positions with critical shortages, including fifty-nine Arabic speakers and nine Persian speakers. Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, later argued that the military's failure to ask about sexual orientation at recruitment was the cause of the discharges: [Y]ou could reduce this number to zero or near zero if the Department of Defense dropped Don't Ask, Don't Tell. ... We should not be training people who are not eligible to be in the Armed Forces."
In February 2006, a University of California Blue Ribbon Commission that included Lawrence Korb, a former assistant defense secretary during the Reagan administration, William Perry, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, and professors from the United States Military Academy released their assessment of the GAO's analysis of the cost of DADT released a year earlier. The commission report stated that the GAO did not take into account the value the military lost from the departures. They said that that total cost was closer to $363 million, including $14.3 million for "separation travel" following a service member's discharge, $17.8 million for training officers, $252.4 million for training enlistees, and $79.3 million in recruiting costs.
In 2006, Soulforce, a national LGBT rights organization, organized its Right to Serve Campaign, in which gay men and lesbians in several cities attempted to enlist in the Armed Forces or National Guard. Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness stated in September: "I think the people involved here do not have the best interests of the military at heart. They never have. They are promoting an agenda to normalize homosexuality in America using the military as a battering ram to promote that broader agenda." She said that "pro-homosexual activists ... are creating media events all over the country and even internationally."
In 2006, a speaking tour of gay former service members, organized by SLDN, Log Cabin Republicans, and Meehan, visited 18 colleges and universities. Patrick Guerriero, executive director of Log Cabin, thought the repeal movement was gaining "new traction" but "Ultimately", said, "we think it's going to take a Republican with strong military credentials to make a shift in the policy." Elaine Donnelly called such efforts "a big P.R. campaign" and said that "The law is there to protect good order and discipline in the military, and it's not going to change."
In December 2006, Zogby International released the results of a poll of military personnel conducted in October 2006 that found that 26% favored allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, 37% were opposed, while 37% expressed no preference or were unsure. Of respondents who had experience with gay people in their unit, 6% said their presence had a positive impact on their personal morale, 66% said no impact, and 28% said negative impact. Regarding overall unit morale, 3% said positive impact, 64% no impact, and 27% negative impact.
Retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili and former Senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen opposed the policy in January 2007: "I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces" Shalikashvili wrote. "Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job." Shalikashvili cited the recent "Zogby poll of more than 500 service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, three-quarters of whom said they were comfortable interacting with gay people. The debate took a different turn in March when General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune he supported DADT because "homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and ... we should not condone immoral acts." His remarks became, according to the Tribune, "a huge news story on radio, television and the Internet during the day and showed how sensitive the Pentagon's policy has become." Senator John Warner, who backed DADT, said "I respectfully, but strongly, disagree with the chairman's view that homosexuality is immoral", and Pace expressed regret for expressing his personal views and said that DADT "does not make a judgment about the morality of individual acts." Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, then in the early stages of his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, defended DADT:
When I first heard [the phrase], I thought it sounded silly and I just dismissed it and said, well, that can't possibly work. Well, I sure was wrong. It has worked. It's been in place now for over a decade. The military says it's working and they don't want to change it ... and they're the people closest to the front. We're in the middle of a conflict right now. I would not change it.
That summer, after U.S. Senator Larry Craig was arrested for lewd conduct in a men's restroom, conservative commentator Michael Medved argued that any liberalization of DADT would "compromise restroom integrity and security". He wrote: "The national shudder of discomfort and queasiness associated with any introduction of homosexual eroticism into public men's rooms should make us more determined than ever to resist the injection of those lurid attitudes into the even more explosive situation of the U.S. military."
In November 2007, 28 retired generals and admirals urged Congress to repeal the policy, citing evidence that 65,000 gay men and women were serving in the armed forces and that there were over a million gay veterans. On November 17, 2008, 104 retired generals and admirals signed a similar statement. In December, SLDN arranged for 60 Minutes to interview Darren Manzella, an Army medic who served in Iraq after coming out to his unit.
On May 4, 2008, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen addressed the graduating cadets at West Point, a cadet asked what would happen if the next administration were supportive of legislation allowing gays to serve openly. Mullen responded, "Congress, and not the military, is responsible for DADT." Previously, during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2007, Mullen told lawmakers, "I really think it is for the American people to come forward, really through this body, to both debate that policy and make changes, if that's appropriate." He went on to say, "I'd love to have Congress make its own decisions" with respect to considering repeal.
In May 2009, when a committee of military law experts at the Palm Center, an anti-DADT research institute, concluded that the President could issue an Executive Order to suspend homosexual conduct discharges, Obama rejected that option and said he wanted Congress to change the law.
On July 5, 2009, Colin Powell told CNN that the policy was "correct for the time" but that "sixteen years have now gone by, and I think a lot has changed with respect to attitudes within our country, and therefore I think this is a policy and a law that should be reviewed." Interviewed for the same broadcast, Mullen said the policy would continue to be implemented until the law was repealed, and that his advice was to "move in a measured way. ... At a time when we're fighting two conflicts there is a great deal of pressure on our forces and their families." In September, Joint Force Quarterly published an article by an Air Force colonel that disputed the argument that unit cohesion is compromised by the presence of openly gay personnel.
In October 2009, the Commission on Military Justice, known as the Cox Commission, repeated its 2001 recommendation that Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which bans sodomy, be repealed, noting that "most acts of consensual sodomy committed by consenting military personnel are not prosecuted, creating a perception that prosecution of this sexual behavior is arbitrary."
In January 2010, the White House and congressional officials started work on repealing the ban by inserting language into the 2011 defense authorization bill. During Obama's State of the Union Address on January 27, 2010, he said that he would work with Congress and the military to enact a repeal of the gay ban law and for the first time set a timetable for repeal.
At a February 2, 2010, congressional hearing, Senator John McCain read from a letter signed by "over one thousand former general and flag officers". It said: "We firmly believe that this law, which Congress passed to protect good order, discipline and morale in the unique environment of the armed forces, deserves continued support." The signature campaign had been organized by Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, a longtime supporter of a traditional all-male and all-heterosexual military. Servicemembers United, a veterans group opposed to DADT, issued a report critical of the letter's legitimacy. They said that among those signing the letter were officers who had no knowledge of their inclusion or who had refused to be included, and even one instance of a general's widow who signed her husband's name to the letter though he had died before the survey was published. The average age of the officers whose names were listed as signing the letter was 74, the oldest was 98, and Servicemembers United noted that "only a small fraction of these officers have even served in the military during the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' period, much less in the 21st century military."
The Center for American Progress issued a report in March 2010 that said a smooth implementation of an end to DADT required eight specified changes to the military's internal regulations. On March 25, 2010, Defense Secretary Gates announced new rules mandating that only flag officers could initiate discharge proceedings and imposing more stringent rules of evidence on discharge proceedings.
The underlying justifications for DADT had been subjected to increasing suspicion and outright rejection by the early 21st century. Mounting evidence obtained from the integration efforts of foreign militaries, surveys of U.S. military personnel, and studies conducted by the DoD gave credence to the view that the presence of open homosexuals within the military would not be detrimental at all to the armed forces. A DoD study conducted at the behest of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in 2010 supports this most.
The DoD working group conducting the study considered the impact that lifting the ban would have on unit cohesion and effectiveness, good order and discipline, and military morale. The study included a survey that revealed significant differences between respondents who believed they had served with homosexual troops and those who did not believe they had. In analyzing such data, the DoD working group concluded that it was actually generalized perceptions of homosexual troops that led to the perceived unrest that would occur without DADT. Ultimately, the study deemed the overall risk to military effectiveness of lifting the ban to be low. Citing the ability of the armed forces to adjust to the previous integration of African-Americans and women, the DoD study asserted that the United States military could adjust as had it before in history without an impending serious effect.
In March 2005, Rep. Martin T. Meehan introduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act in the House. It aimed "to amend title 10, United States Code, to enhance the readiness of the Armed Forces by replacing the current policy concerning homosexuality in the Armed Forces, referred to as 'Don't ask, don't tell,' with a policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation". As of 2006, it had 105 Democrats and 4 Republicans as co-sponsors. He introduced the bill again in 2007 and 2009.
During the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign, Senator Barack Obama advocated a full repeal of the laws barring gays and lesbians from serving in the military. Nineteen days after his election, Obama's advisers announced that plans to repeal the policy might be delayed until 2010, because Obama "first wants to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his new political appointees at the Pentagon to reach a consensus, and then present legislation to Congress". As president he advocated a policy change to allow gay personnel to serve openly in the armed forces, stating that the U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops expelled from the military, including language experts fluent in Arabic, because of DADT. On the eve of the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., October 10, 2009, Obama stated in a speech before the Human Rights Campaign that he would end the ban, but he offered no timetable. Obama said in his 2010 State of the Union Address: "This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are." This statement was quickly followed up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs chairman Michael Mullen voicing their support for a repeal of DADT.
Democrats in both houses of Congress first attempted to end DADT by amending the Defense Authorization Act. On May 27, 2010, on a 234–194 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Murphy amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011. It provided for repeal of the DADT policy and created a process for lifting the policy, including a U.S. Department of Defense study and certification by key officials that the change in policy would not harm military readiness followed by a waiting period of 60 days. The amended defense bill passed the House on May 28, 2010. On September 21, 2010, John McCain led a successful filibuster against the debate on the Defense Authorization Act, in which 56 Senators voted to end debate, four short of the 60 votes required. Some advocates for repeal, including the Palm Center, OutServe, and Knights Out, opposed any attempt to block the passage of NDAA if it failed to include DADT repeal language. The Human Rights Campaign, the Center for American Progress, Servicemembers United and SLDN refused to concede that possibility.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit, Collins v. United States, against the Department of Defense in November 2010 seeking full compensation for those discharged under the policy.
On November 30, 2010, the Joint Chiefs of Staff released the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) report authored by Jeh C. Johnson, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, and Army General Carter F. Ham. It outlined a path to the implementation of repeal of DADT. The report indicated that there was a low risk of service disruptions due to repealing the ban, provided time was provided for proper implementation and training. It included the results of a survey of 115,000 active-duty and reserve service members. Across all service branches, 30 percent thought that integrating gays into the military would have negative consequences. In the Marine Corps and combat specialties, the percentage with that negative assessment ranged from 40 to 60 percent. The CRWG also said that 69 percent of all those surveyed believed they had already worked with a gay or lesbian and of those, 92 percent reported that the impact of that person's presence was positive or neutral. The same day, in response to the CRWG, 30 professors and scholars, most from military institutions, issued a joint statement saying that the CRWG "echoes more than 20 studies, including studies by military researchers, all of which reach the same conclusion: allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly will not harm the military ... We hope that our collective statement underscores that the debate about the evidence is now officially over". The Family Research Council's president, Tony Perkins, interpreted the CRWG data differently, writing that it "reveals that 40 percent of Marines and 25 percent of the Army could leave".
Gates encouraged Congress to act quickly to repeal the law so that the military could carefully adjust rather than face a court decision requiring it to lift the policy immediately. The United States Senate held two days of hearings on December 2 and 3, 2010, to consider the CRWG report. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs chairman Michael Mullen urged immediate repeal. The heads of the Marine Corps, Army, and Navy all advised against immediate repeal and expressed varied views on its eventual repeal. Oliver North, writing in National Review the next week, said that Gates' testimony showed "a deeply misguided commitment to political correctness". He interpreted the CRWG's data as indicating a high risk that large numbers of resignations would follow the repeal of DADT. Service members, especially combat troops, he wrote, "deserve better than to be treated like lab rats in Mr. Obama's radical social experiment".
On December 9, 2010, another filibuster prevented debate on the Defense Authorization Act. In response to that vote, Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins introduced a bill that included the policy-related portions of the Defense Authorization Act that they considered more likely to pass as a stand-alone bill. It passed the House on a vote of 250 to 175 on December 15, 2010. On December 18, 2010, the Senate voted to end debate on its version of the bill by a cloture vote of 63–33. The final Senate vote was held later that same day, with the measure passing by a vote of 65–31.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates released a statement following the vote indicating that the planning for implementation of a policy repeal would begin right away and would continue until Gates certified that conditions were met for orderly repeal of the policy. President Obama signed the repeal into law on December 22, 2010.
The repeal act established a process for ending the DADT policy. The President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were required to certify in writing that they had reviewed the Pentagon's report on the effects of DADT repeal, that the appropriate regulations had been reviewed and drafted, and that implementation of repeal regulations "is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces". Once certification was given, DADT would be lifted after a 60-day waiting period.
Representative Duncan D. Hunter announced plans in January 2011 to introduce a bill designed to delay the end of DADT. His proposed legislation required all of the chiefs of the armed services to submit the certification at the time required only of the President, Defense Secretary and Joint Chiefs chairman. In April, Perkins of the Family Research Council argued that the Pentagon was misrepresenting its own survey data and that hearings by the House Armed Services Committee, now under Republican control, could persuade Obama to withhold certification. Congressional efforts to prevent the change in policy from going into effect continued into May and June 2011.
On January 29, 2011, Pentagon officials stated that the training process to prepare troops for the end of DADT would begin in February and would proceed quickly, though they suggested that it might not be completed in 2011. On the same day, the DOD announced it would not offer any additional compensation to service members who had been discharged under DADT, who received half of the separation pay other honorably discharged service members received.
In May 2011, the U.S. Army reprimanded three colonels for performing a skit in March 2011 at a function at Yongsan Garrison, South Korea, that mocked the repeal.
In May 2011, revelations that an April Navy memo relating to its DADT training guidelines contemplated allowing same-sex weddings in base chapels and allowing chaplains to officiate if they so chose resulted in a letter of protest from 63 Republican congressman, citing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as controlling the use of federal property. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said the guidelines "make it even more uncomfortable for men and women of faith to perform their duties". A Pentagon spokesperson replied that DOMA "does not limit the type of religious ceremonies a chaplain may perform in a chapel on a military installation", and a Navy spokesperson said that "A chaplain can conduct a same-sex ceremony if it is in the tenets of his faith". A few days later the Navy rescinded its earlier instructions "pending additional legal and policy review and interdepartmental coordination".
While waiting for certification, several service members were discharged at their own insistence until a July 6 ruling from a federal appeals court barred further enforcement of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members, which the military promptly did.
Anticipating the lifting of DADT, some active duty service members wearing civilian clothes marched in San Diego's gay pride parade on July 16. The DOD noted that participation "does not constitute a declaration of sexual orientation".
President Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent the certification required by the Repeal Act to Congress on July 22, 2011, setting the end of DADT for September 20, 2011. A Pentagon spokesman said that service members discharged under DADT would be able to re-apply to rejoin the military then.
At the end of August 2011, the DOD approved the distribution of the magazine produced by OutServe, an organization of gay and lesbian service members, at Army and Air Force base exchanges beginning with the September 20 issue, coinciding with the end of DADT.
On September 20, Air Force officials announced that 22 Air Force Instructions were "updated as a result of the repeal of DADT". On September 30, 2011, the Department of Defense modified regulations to reflect the repeal by deleting "homosexual conduct" as a ground for administrative separation.
On the eve of repeal, US Air Force 1st Lt. Josh Seefried, one of the founders of OutServe, an organization of LGBT troops, revealed his identity after two years of hiding behind a pseudonym. Senior Airman Randy Phillips, after conducting a social media campaign seeking encouragement coming out and already out to his military co-workers, came out to his father on the evening of September 19. When the video of their conversation he posted on YouTube went viral, it made him, in one journalist's estimation, "the poster boy for the DADT repeal". The moment the repeal took effect at midnight on September 19, US Navy Lt. Gary C. Ross married his same-sex partner of eleven and a half years, Dan Swezy, making them the first same-sex military couple to legally marry in the United States. Retired Rear Adm. Alan M. Steinman became the highest-ranking person to come out immediately following the end of DADT. HBO produced a World of Wonder documentary, The Strange History of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and premiered it on September 20. Variety called it "an unapologetic piece of liberal advocacy" and "a testament to what formidable opponents ignorance and prejudice can be". Discharge proceedings on the grounds of homosexuality, some begun years earlier, came to an end.
In the weeks that followed, a series of firsts attracted press attention to the impact of the repeal. The Marine Corps were the first branch of the armed services to recruit from the LGBTQ community. Reservist Jeremy Johnson became the first person discharged under DADT to re-enlist. Jase Daniels became the first to return to active duty, re-joining the Navy as a third class petty officer. On December 2, Air Force intelligence officer Ginger Wallace became the first open LGBT service member to have a same-sex partner participate in the "pinning-on" ceremony that marked her promotion to colonel. On December 23, after 80 days at sea, US Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta won the right to the traditional "first kiss" upon returning to port and shared it with her same-sex partner. On January 20, 2012, U.S. service members deployed to Bagram, Afghanistan, produced a video in support of the It Gets Better Project, which aims to support LGBT at-risk youth. Widespread news coverage continued even months after the repeal date, when a photograph of Marine Sgt. Brandon Morgan kissing his partner at a February 22, 2012, homecoming celebration on Marine Corps Base Hawaii went viral. When asked for a comment, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps said: "It's your typical homecoming photo."
On September 30, 2011, Under Secretary of Defense Clifford Stanley announced the DOD's policy that military chaplains are allowed to perform same-sex marriages "on or off a military installation" where local law permits them. His memo noted that "a chaplain is not required to participate in or officiate a private ceremony if doing so would be in variance with the tenets of his or her religion" and "a military chaplain's participation in a private ceremony does not constitute an endorsement of the ceremony by DoD". Some religious groups announced that their chaplains would not participate in such weddings, including an organization of evangelical Protestants, the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty and Roman Catholics led by Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA.
In late October 2011, speaking at the Air Force Academy, Colonel Gary Packard, leader of the team that drafted the DOD's repeal implementation plan, said: "The best quote I've heard so far is, 'Well, some people's Facebook status changed, but that was about it.'" In late November, discussing the repeal of DADT and its implementation, Marine General James F. Amos said "I'm very pleased with how it has gone" and called it a "non-event". He said his earlier public opposition was appropriate based on ongoing combat operations and the negative assessment of the policy given by 56% of combat troops under his command in the Department of Defense's November 2010 survey. A Defense Department spokesperson said implementation of repeal occurred without incident and added: "We attribute this success to our comprehensive pre-repeal training program, combined with the continued close monitoring and enforcement of standards by our military leaders at all levels."
In December 2011, Congress considered two DADT-related amendments in the course of work on the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012. The Senate approved 97–3, an amendment removing the prohibition on sodomy found in Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as recommended by the Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) a year earlier. The House approved an amendment banning same-sex marriages from being performed at military bases or by military employees, including chaplains and other employees of the military when "acting in an official capacity". Neither amendment appeared in the final legislation.
In July 2012, the Department of Defense granted permission for military personnel to wear their uniforms while participating in the San Diego Pride Parade. This was the first time that U.S. military personnel were permitted to wear their service uniforms in such a parade.
Marking the first anniversary of the passage of the Repeal Act, television news networks reported no incidents in the three months since DADT ended. One aired video of a social gathering for gay service members at a base in Afghanistan. Another reported on the experience of lesbian and gay troops, including some rejection after coming out to colleagues.
The Palm Center, a think tank that studies issues of sexuality and the military, released a study in September 2012 that found no negative consequences, nor any effect on military effectiveness from DADT repeal. This study began six months following repeal and concluded at the one year mark. The study included surveys of 553 generals and admirals who had opposed repeal, experts who supported DADT, and more than 60 heterosexual, gay, lesbian and bisexual active duty service personnel.
On January 7, 2013, the ACLU reached a settlement with the federal government in Collins v. United States. It provided for the payment of full separation pay to service members discharged under DADT since November 10, 2004, who had previously been granted only half that.
Several candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination called for the restoration of DADT, including Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum. Newt Gingrich called for an extensive review of DADT's repeal.
Ron Paul, having voted for the Repeal Act, maintained his support for allowing military service by open homosexuals. Herman Cain called the issue "a distraction" and opposed reinstating DADT. Mitt Romney said that the winding down of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan obviated his opposition to the repeal and said he was not proposing any change to policy.
On September 22, 2011, the audience at a Republican candidates' debate booed a U.S. soldier posted in Iraq who asked a question via video about the repeal of DADT, and none of the candidates acknowledged or responded to the crowd's behavior. Two days later, Obama commented on the incident while addressing a dinner of the Human Rights Campaign: "You want to be commander in chief? You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it's not politically convenient".
In June 2012, Rep. Howard McKeon, Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said he considered the repeal of DADT a settled issue, and that if Romney became president he would not advocate its reinstatement, though others in his party might.
In September 2021, on the 10th anniversary of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, President Joe Biden announced that the Veterans Administration would start providing benefits for service members who received other-than-honorable discharges (before DADT was enacted and while it was in effect) because of their sexual orientation.
In 1993, Time reported that 44% of those polled supported openly gay service members, and in 1994, a CNN poll indicated 53% of Americans believed gays and lesbians should be permitted to serve openly.
According to a December 2010 Washington Post–ABC News poll, 77% of Americans said gays and lesbians who publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be able to serve in the military. That number showed little change from polls over the previous two years, but represented the highest level of support in a Post-ABC poll. The support also cut across partisan and ideological lines, with majorities of Democrats (86%), Republicans (74%), independents (74%), liberals (92%), conservatives (67%), white evangelical Protestants (70%) and non-religious (84%) in favor of homosexuals serving openly.
A November 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 58% of the U.S. public favored allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, while less than half as many (27%) were opposed. According to a November 2010 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 72% of adult Americans favored permitting people who are openly gay or lesbian to serve in the military, while 23% opposed it. "The main difference between the CNN poll and the Pew poll is in the number of respondents who told pollsters that they didn't have an opinion on this topic – 16 percent in the Pew poll compared to only five percent in the CNN survey", said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "The two polls report virtually the same number who say they oppose gays serving openly in the military, which suggests that there are some people who favor that change in policy but for some reason were reluctant to admit that to the Pew interviewers. That happens occasionally on topics where moral issues and equal-treatment issues intersect."
A February 2010 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute national poll showed 57% of American voters favored gays serving openly, compared to 36% opposed, while 66% said not allowing openly gay personnel to serve is discrimination, compared to 31% who did not see it as discrimination. A CBS News/New York Times national poll done at the same time showed 58% of Americans favored gays serving openly, compared to 28% opposed.
Chaplain groups and religious organizations took various positions on DADT. Some felt that the policy needed to be withdrawn to make the military more inclusive. The Southern Baptist Convention battled the repeal of DADT, warning that their endorsements for chaplains might be withdrawn if the repeal took place. They took the position that allowing gay men and women to serve in the military without restriction would have a negative impact on the ability of chaplains who think homosexuality is a sin to speak freely regarding their religious beliefs. The Roman Catholic Church called for the retention of the policy, but had no plans to withdraw its priests from serving as military chaplains. Sixty-five retired chaplains signed a letter opposing repeal, stating that repeal would make it impossible for chaplains whose faith teaches that same-sex behavior is immoral to minister to military service members. Other religious organizations and agencies called the repeal of the policy a "non-event" or "non-issue" for chaplains, claiming that chaplains have always supported military service personnel, whether or not they agree with all their actions or beliefs.
After the policy was introduced in 1993, the military discharged over 13,000 troops from the military under DADT. The number of discharges per fiscal year under DADT dropped sharply after the September 11 attacks and remained comparatively low through to the repeal. Discharges exceeded 600 every year until 2009.
In November 2019, both Rhode Island and New York State signed into law and implemented restoring military benefits to gay and lesbian military veterans. An estimated approximately 100,000 individuals were affected by the "don't ask don't tell policy" (since it was repealed in September 2011). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "\"Don't ask, don't tell\" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of non-heterosexual people. Instituted during the Clinton administration, the policy was issued under Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 on December 21, 1993, and was in effect from February 28, 1994, until September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. This relaxation of legal restrictions on service by gays and lesbians in the armed forces was mandated by Public Law 103–160 (Title 10 of the United States Code §654), which was signed November 30, 1993. The policy prohibited people who \"demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts\" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because their presence \"would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The act prohibited any non-heterosexual person from disclosing their sexual orientation or from speaking about any same-sex relationships, including marriages or other familial attributes, while serving in the United States armed forces. The act specified that service members who disclose that they are homosexual or engage in homosexual conduct should be separated (discharged) except when a service member's conduct was \"for the purpose of avoiding or terminating military service\" or when it \"would not be in the best interest of the armed forces\". Since DADT ended in 2011, persons who are openly homosexual and bisexual have been able to serve.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The \"don't ask\" section of the DADT policy specified that superiors should not initiate an investigation of a service member's orientation without witnessing disallowed behaviors. However, evidence of homosexual behavior deemed credible could be used to initiate an investigation. Unauthorized investigations and harassment of suspected servicemen and women led to an expansion of the policy to \"don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue, don't harass\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Beginning in the early 2000s, several legal challenges to DADT were filed, and legislation to repeal DADT was enacted in December 2010, specifying that the policy would remain in place until the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certified that repeal would not harm military readiness, followed by a 60-day waiting period. A July 6, 2011, ruling from a federal appeals court barred further enforcement of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members. President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen sent that certification to Congress on July 22, 2011, which set the end of DADT to September 20, 2011.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Even with DADT repealed, the legal definition of marriage as being one man and one woman under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) meant that, although same-sex partners could get married, their marriage was not recognized by the federal government. This barred partners from access to the same benefits afforded to heterosexual couples such as base access, health care, and United States military pay, including family separation allowance and Basic Allowance for Housing with dependents. The Department of Defense attempted to open some of the benefits that were not restricted by DOMA, but the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor (2013) made these efforts unnecessary.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Engaging in homosexual activity had been grounds for discharge from the American military since the Revolutionary War. Policies based on sexual orientation appeared as the United States prepared to enter World War II. When the military added psychiatric screening to its induction process, it included homosexuality as a disqualifying trait, then seen as a form of psychopathology. When the army issued revised mobilization regulations in 1942, it distinguished \"homosexual\" recruits from \"normal\" recruits for the first time. Before the buildup to the war, gay service members were court-martialed, imprisoned, and dishonorably discharged; but in wartime, commanding officers found it difficult to convene court-martial boards of commissioned officers and the administrative blue discharge became the military's standard method for handling gay and lesbian personnel. In 1944, a new policy directive decreed that homosexuals were to be committed to military hospitals, examined by psychiatrists, and discharged under Regulation 615–360, section 8.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1947, blue discharges were discontinued and two new classifications were created: \"general\" and \"undesirable\". Under such a system, a serviceman or woman found to be gay but who had not committed any sexual acts while in service would tend to receive an undesirable discharge. Those found guilty of engaging in sexual conduct were usually dishonorably discharged. A 1957 U.S. Navy study known as the Crittenden Report dismissed the charge that homosexuals constitute a security risk, but nonetheless did not advocate for an end to anti-gay discrimination in the navy on the basis that \"The service should not move ahead of civilian society nor attempt to set substantially different standards in attitude or action with respect to homosexual offenders.\" It remained secret until 1976. Fannie Mae Clackum was the first service member to successfully appeal such a discharge, winning eight years of back pay from the US Court of Claims in 1960.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "From the 1950s through the Vietnam War, some notable gay service members avoided discharges despite pre-screening efforts, and when personnel shortages occurred, homosexuals were allowed to serve.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The gay and lesbian rights movement in the 1970s and 1980s raised the issue by publicizing several noteworthy dismissals of gay service members. Air Force TSgt Leonard Matlovich, the first service member to purposely out himself to challenge the ban, appeared on the cover of Time in 1975. In 1982 the Department of Defense issued a policy stating that, \"Homosexuality is incompatible with military service.\" It cited the military's need \"to maintain discipline, good order, and morale\" and \"to prevent breaches of security\". In 1988, in response to a campaign against lesbians at the Marines' Parris Island Depot, activists launched the Gay and Lesbian Military Freedom Project (MFP) to advocate for an end to the exclusion of gays and lesbians from the armed forces. In 1989, reports commissioned by the Personnel Security Research and Education Center (PERSEREC), an arm of the Pentagon, were discovered in the process of Joseph Steffan's lawsuit fighting his forced resignation from the U.S. Naval Academy. One report said that \"having a same-gender or an opposite-gender orientation is unrelated to job performance in the same way as is being left- or right-handed.\" Other lawsuits fighting discharges highlighted the service record of service members like Tracy Thorne and Margarethe (Grethe) Cammermeyer. The MFP began lobbying Congress in 1990, and in 1991 Senator Brock Adams (D-Washington) and Rep. Barbara Boxer introduced the Military Freedom Act, legislation to end the ban completely. Adams and Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colorado) re-introduced it the next year. In July 1991, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, in the context of the outing of his press aide Pete Williams, dismissed the idea that gays posed a security risk as \"a bit of an old chestnut\" in testimony before the House Budget Committee. In response to his comment, several major newspapers endorsed ending the ban, including USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Detroit Free Press. In June 1992, the General Accounting Office released a report that members of Congress had requested two years earlier estimating the costs associated with the ban on gays and lesbians in the military at $27 million annually.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "During the 1992 U.S. presidential election campaign, the civil rights of gays and lesbians, particularly their open service in the military, attracted some press attention, and all candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination supported ending the ban on military service by gays and lesbians, but the Republicans did not make a political issue of that position. In an August cover letter to all his senior officers, General Carl Mundy Jr., Commandant of the Marine Corps, praised a position paper authored by a Marine Corps chaplain that said that \"In the unique, intensely close environment of the military, homosexual conduct can threaten the lives, including the physical (e.g. AIDS) and psychological well-being of others\". Mundy called it \"extremely insightful\" and said it offered \"a sound basis for discussion of the issue\". The murder of gay U.S. Navy petty officer Allen R. Schindler Jr. on October 27, 1992, brought calls from advocates of allowing open service by gays and lesbians for prompt action from the incoming Clinton administration.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The policy was introduced as a compromise measure in 1993 by President Bill Clinton who campaigned in 1992 on the promise to allow all citizens to serve in the military regardless of sexual orientation. Commander Craig Quigley, a Navy spokesman, expressed the opposition of many in the military at the time when he said, \"Homosexuals are notoriously promiscuous\" and that in shared shower situations, heterosexuals would have an \"uncomfortable feeling of someone watching\".",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "During the 1993 policy debate, the National Defense Research Institute prepared a study for the Office of the Secretary of Defense published as Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel Policy: Options and Assessment. It concluded that \"circumstances could exist under which the ban on homosexuals could be lifted with little or no adverse consequences for recruitment and retention\" if the policy were implemented with care, principally because many factors contribute to individual enlistment and re-enlistment decisions. On May 5, 1993, Gregory M. Herek, associate research psychologist at the University of California at Davis and an authority on public attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on behalf of several professional associations. He stated, \"The research data show that there is nothing about lesbians and gay men that makes them inherently unfit for military service, and there is nothing about heterosexuals that makes them inherently unable to work and live with gay people in close quarters.\" Herek added, \"The assumption that heterosexuals cannot overcome their prejudices toward gay people is a mistaken one.\"",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In Congress, Democratic Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia and Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee led the contingent that favored maintaining the absolute ban on gays. Reformers were led by Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who favored modification (but ultimately voted for the defense authorization bill with the gay ban language), and 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, a former Senator and a retired Major General, who argued on behalf of allowing service by open gays and lesbians but was not allowed to appear before the Committee by Nunn. In a June 1993 Washington Post opinion piece, Goldwater wrote: \"You don't have to be straight to shoot straight\".",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Congress rushed to enact the existing gay ban policy into federal law, outflanking Clinton's planned repeal effort. Clinton called for legislation to overturn the ban, but encountered intense opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, members of Congress, and portions of the public. DADT emerged as a compromise policy. Congress included text in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (passed in 1993) requiring the military to abide by regulations essentially identical to the 1982 absolute ban policy. The Clinton administration on December 21, 1993, issued Defense Directive 1304.26, which directed that military applicants were not to be asked about their sexual orientation. This policy is now known as \"Don't Ask, Don't Tell\". The phrase was coined by Charles Moskos, a military sociologist.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In accordance with the December 21, 1993, Department of Defense Directive 1332.14, it was legal policy (10 U.S.C. § 654) that homosexuality was incompatible with military service and that persons who engaged in homosexual acts or stated that they are homosexual or bisexual were to be discharged. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, passed by Congress in 1950 and signed by President Harry S Truman, established the policies and procedures for discharging service members.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The full name of the policy at the time was \"Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue\". The \"Don't Ask\" provision mandated that military or appointed officials not ask about or require members to reveal their sexual orientation. The \"Don't Tell\" stated that a member may be discharged for claiming to be a homosexual or bisexual or making a statement indicating a tendency towards or intent to engage in homosexual activities. The \"Don't Pursue\" established what was minimally required for an investigation to be initiated. A \"Don't Harass\" provision was added to the policy later. It ensured that the military would not allow harassment or violence against service members for any reason.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network was founded in 1993 to advocate an end to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the U.S. Armed Forces.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "DADT was upheld by five federal Courts of Appeal. The Supreme Court, in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. (2006), unanimously held that the federal government could constitutionally withhold funding from universities, no matter what their nondiscrimination policies might be, for refusing to give military recruiters access to school resources. An association of law schools had argued that allowing military recruiting at their institutions compromised their ability to exercise their free speech rights in opposition to discrimination based on sexual orientation as represented by DADT.",
"title": "Court challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In January 1998, Senior Chief Petty Officer Timothy R. McVeigh (not to be confused with convicted Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy J. McVeigh) won a preliminary injunction from a U.S. district court that prevented his discharge from the U.S. Navy for \"homosexual conduct\" after 17 years of service. His lawsuit did not challenge the DADT policy but asked the court to hold the military accountable for adhering to the policy's particulars. The Navy had investigated McVeigh's sexual orientation based on his AOL email account name and user profile. District Judge Stanley Sporkin ruled in McVeigh v. Cohen that the Navy had violated its own DADT guidelines: \"Suggestions of sexual orientation in a private, anonymous email account did not give the Navy a sufficient reason to investigate to determine whether to commence discharge proceedings.\" He called the Navy's investigation \"a search and destroy mission\" against McVeigh. The case also attracted attention because a navy paralegal had misrepresented himself when querying AOL for information about McVeigh's account. Frank Rich linked the two issues: \"McVeigh is as clear-cut a victim of a witch hunt as could be imagined, and that witch hunt could expand exponentially if the military wants to add on-line fishing to its invasion of service members' privacy.\" AOL apologized to McVeigh and paid him damages. McVeigh reached a settlement with the Navy that paid his legal expenses and allowed him to retire with full benefits in July. The New York Times called Sporkin's ruling \"a victory for gay rights, with implications for the millions of people who use computer on-line services\".",
"title": "Court challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In April 2006, Margaret Witt, a major in the United States Air Force who was being investigated for homosexuality, filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on the grounds that DADT violates substantive due process, the Equal Protection Clause, and procedural due process. In July 2007 the Secretary of the Air Force ordered her honorable discharge. Dismissed by the district court, the case was heard on appeal, and the Ninth Circuit issued its ruling on May 21, 2008. Its decision in Witt v. Department of the Air Force reinstated Witt's substantive-due-process and procedural-due-process claims and affirmed the dismissal of her Equal Protection claim. The Ninth Circuit, analyzing the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), determined that DADT had to be subjected to heightened scrutiny, meaning that there must be an \"important\" governmental interest at issue, that DADT must \"significantly\" further the governmental interest, and that there can be no less intrusive way for the government to advance that interest.",
"title": "Court challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Obama administration declined to appeal, allowing a May 3, 2009, deadline to pass, leaving Witt as binding on the entire Ninth Circuit, and returning the case to the District Court. On September 24, 2010, District Judge Ronald B. Leighton ruled that Witt's constitutional rights had been violated by her discharge and that she must be reinstated to the Air Force.",
"title": "Court challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The government filed an appeal with the Ninth Circuit on November 23, but did not attempt to have the trial court's ruling stayed pending the outcome. In a settlement announced on May 10, 2011, the Air Force agreed to drop its appeal and remove Witt's discharge from her military record. She will retire with full benefits.",
"title": "Court challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 2010, a lawsuit filed in 2004 by the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR), the nation's largest Republican gay organization, went to trial. Challenging the constitutionality of DADT, the plaintiffs stated that the policy violates the rights of gay military members to free speech, due process and open association. The government argued that DADT was necessary to advance a legitimate governmental interest. Plaintiffs introduced statements by President Barack Obama, from prepared remarks, that DADT \"doesn't contribute to our national security\", \"weakens our national security\", and that reversal is \"essential for our national security\". According to plaintiffs, these statements alone satisfied their burden of proof on the due process claims.",
"title": "Court challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "On September 9, 2010, Judge Virginia A. Phillips ruled in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America that the ban on service by openly gay service members was an unconstitutional violation of the First and Fifth Amendments. On October 12, 2010, she granted an immediate worldwide injunction prohibiting the Department of Defense from enforcing the \"Don't Ask Don't Tell\" policy and ordered the military to suspend and discontinue any investigation or discharge, separation, or other proceedings based on it. The Department of Justice appealed her decision and requested a stay of her injunction, which Phillips denied but which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted on October 20 and stayed pending appeal on November 1. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to overrule the stay. District Court neither anticipated questions of constitutional law nor formulated a rule broader than is required by the facts. The constitutional issues regarding DADT are well-defined, and the District Court focused specifically on the relevant inquiry of whether the statute impermissibly infringed upon substantive due process rights with regard to a protected area of individual liberty. Engaging in a careful and detailed review of the facts presented to it at trial, the District Court properly concluded that the Government put forward no persuasive evidence to demonstrate that the statute is a valid exercise of congressional authority to legislate in the realm of protected liberty interests. See Log Cabin, 716 F. Supp. 2d at 923. Hypothetical questions were neither presented nor answered in reaching this decision. On October 19, 2010, military recruiters were told they could accept openly gay applicants. On October 20, 2010, Lt. Daniel Choi, an openly gay man honorably discharged under DADT, re-enlisted in the U.S. Army.",
"title": "Court challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Following the passage of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, the Justice Department asked the Ninth Circuit to suspend LCR's suit in light of the legislative repeal. LCR opposed the request, noting that gay personnel were still subject to discharge. On January 28, 2011, the Court denied the Justice Department's request. The Obama administration responded by requesting that the policy be allowed to stay in place while they completed the process of assuring that its end would not impact combat readiness. On March 28, the LCR filed a brief asking that the court deny the administration's request.",
"title": "Court challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 2011, while waiting for certification, several service members were discharged under DADT at their own insistence, until July 6 when a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals re-instated Judge Phillips' injunction barring further enforcement of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members. On July 11, the appeals court asked the DOJ to inform the court if it intended to proceed with its appeal. On July 14, the Justice Department filed a motion \"to avoid short-circuiting the repeal process established by Congress during the final stages of the implementation of the repeal\". and warning of \"significant immediate harms on the government\". On July 15, the Ninth Circuit restored most of the DADT policy, but continued to prohibit the government from discharging or investigating openly gay personnel. Following the implementation of DADT's repeal, a panel of three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the Phillips ruling.",
"title": "Court challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Following the July 1999 murder of Army Pfc. Barry Winchell, apparently motivated by anti-gay bias, President Clinton issued an executive order modifying the Uniform Code of Military Justice to permit evidence of a hate crime to be admitted during the sentencing phase of a trial. In December, Secretary of Defense William Cohen ordered a review of DADT to determine if the policy's anti-gay harassment component was being observed. When that review found anti-gay sentiments were widely expressed and tolerated in the military, the DOD adopted a new anti-harassment policy in July 2000, though its effectiveness was disputed. On December 7, 1999, Hillary Clinton told an audience of gay supporters that \"Gays and lesbians already serve with distinction in our nation's armed forces and should not face discrimination. Fitness to serve should be based on an individual's conduct, not their sexual orientation.\" Later that month, retired General Carl E. Mundy Jr. defended the implementation of DADT against what he called the \"politicization\" of the issue by both Clintons. He cited discharge statistics for the Marines for the past five years that showed 75% were based on \"voluntary admission of homosexuality\" and 49% occurred during the first six months of service, when new recruits were most likely to reevaluate their decision to enlist. He also argued against any change in the policy, writing in the New York Times: \"Conduct that is widely rejected by a majority of Americans can undermine the trust that is essential to creating and maintaining the sense of unity that is critical to the success of a military organization operating under the very different and difficult demands of combat.\" The conviction of Winchell's murderer, according to the New York Times, \"galvanized opposition\" to DADT, an issue that had \"largely vanished from public debate\". Opponents of the policy focused on punishing harassment in the military rather than the policy itself, which Senator Chuck Hagel defended on December 25: \"The U.S. armed forces aren't some social experiment.\"",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The principal candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, both endorsed military service by open gays and lesbians, provoking opposition from high-ranking retired military officers, notably the recently retired commandant of the Marine Corps, General Charles C. Krulak. He and others objected to Gore's statement that he would use support for ending DADT as a \"litmus test\" when considering candidates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The 2000 Democratic Party platform was silent on the issue, while the Republican Party platform that year said: \"We affirm that homosexuality is incompatible with military service.\" Following the election of George W. Bush in 2000, observers expected him to avoid any changes to DADT, since his nominee for Secretary of State Colin Powell had participated in its creation.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In February 2004, members of the British Armed Forces, Lt Rolf Kurth and Lt Cdr Craig Jones, along with Aaron Belkin, Director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military met with members of Congress and spoke at the National Defense University. They spoke about their experience of the current situation in the UK. The UK lifted the gay ban on members serving in their forces in 2000.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In July 2004, the American Psychological Association issued a statement that DADT \"discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation\" and that \"Empirical evidence fails to show that sexual orientation is germane to any aspect of military effectiveness including unit cohesion, morale, recruitment and retention.\" It said that the U.S. military's track record overcoming past racial and gender discrimination demonstrated its ability to integrate groups previously excluded. The Republican Party platform that year reiterated its support for the policy—\"We affirm traditional military culture, and we affirm that homosexuality is incompatible with military service.\"—while the Democratic Party maintained its silence.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In February 2005, the Government Accountability Office released estimates of the cost of DADT. It reported at least $95.4 million in recruiting costs and at least $95.1 million for training replacements for the 9,488 troops discharged from 1994 through 2003, while noting that the true figures might be higher. In September, as part of its campaign to demonstrate that the military allowed open homosexuals to serve when its workforce requirements were greatest, the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military (now the Palm Center) reported that army regulations allowed the active-duty deployment of Army Reservists and National Guard troops who claim to be or who are accused of being gay. A U.S. Army Forces Command spokesperson said the regulation was intended to prevent Reservists and National Guard members from pretending to be gay to escape combat. Advocates of ending DADT repeatedly publicized discharges of highly trained gay and lesbian personnel, especially those in positions with critical shortages, including fifty-nine Arabic speakers and nine Persian speakers. Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, later argued that the military's failure to ask about sexual orientation at recruitment was the cause of the discharges: [Y]ou could reduce this number to zero or near zero if the Department of Defense dropped Don't Ask, Don't Tell. ... We should not be training people who are not eligible to be in the Armed Forces.\"",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In February 2006, a University of California Blue Ribbon Commission that included Lawrence Korb, a former assistant defense secretary during the Reagan administration, William Perry, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, and professors from the United States Military Academy released their assessment of the GAO's analysis of the cost of DADT released a year earlier. The commission report stated that the GAO did not take into account the value the military lost from the departures. They said that that total cost was closer to $363 million, including $14.3 million for \"separation travel\" following a service member's discharge, $17.8 million for training officers, $252.4 million for training enlistees, and $79.3 million in recruiting costs.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 2006, Soulforce, a national LGBT rights organization, organized its Right to Serve Campaign, in which gay men and lesbians in several cities attempted to enlist in the Armed Forces or National Guard. Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness stated in September: \"I think the people involved here do not have the best interests of the military at heart. They never have. They are promoting an agenda to normalize homosexuality in America using the military as a battering ram to promote that broader agenda.\" She said that \"pro-homosexual activists ... are creating media events all over the country and even internationally.\"",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 2006, a speaking tour of gay former service members, organized by SLDN, Log Cabin Republicans, and Meehan, visited 18 colleges and universities. Patrick Guerriero, executive director of Log Cabin, thought the repeal movement was gaining \"new traction\" but \"Ultimately\", said, \"we think it's going to take a Republican with strong military credentials to make a shift in the policy.\" Elaine Donnelly called such efforts \"a big P.R. campaign\" and said that \"The law is there to protect good order and discipline in the military, and it's not going to change.\"",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In December 2006, Zogby International released the results of a poll of military personnel conducted in October 2006 that found that 26% favored allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, 37% were opposed, while 37% expressed no preference or were unsure. Of respondents who had experience with gay people in their unit, 6% said their presence had a positive impact on their personal morale, 66% said no impact, and 28% said negative impact. Regarding overall unit morale, 3% said positive impact, 64% no impact, and 27% negative impact.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili and former Senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen opposed the policy in January 2007: \"I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces\" Shalikashvili wrote. \"Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.\" Shalikashvili cited the recent \"Zogby poll of more than 500 service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, three-quarters of whom said they were comfortable interacting with gay people. The debate took a different turn in March when General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune he supported DADT because \"homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and ... we should not condone immoral acts.\" His remarks became, according to the Tribune, \"a huge news story on radio, television and the Internet during the day and showed how sensitive the Pentagon's policy has become.\" Senator John Warner, who backed DADT, said \"I respectfully, but strongly, disagree with the chairman's view that homosexuality is immoral\", and Pace expressed regret for expressing his personal views and said that DADT \"does not make a judgment about the morality of individual acts.\" Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, then in the early stages of his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, defended DADT:",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "When I first heard [the phrase], I thought it sounded silly and I just dismissed it and said, well, that can't possibly work. Well, I sure was wrong. It has worked. It's been in place now for over a decade. The military says it's working and they don't want to change it ... and they're the people closest to the front. We're in the middle of a conflict right now. I would not change it.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "That summer, after U.S. Senator Larry Craig was arrested for lewd conduct in a men's restroom, conservative commentator Michael Medved argued that any liberalization of DADT would \"compromise restroom integrity and security\". He wrote: \"The national shudder of discomfort and queasiness associated with any introduction of homosexual eroticism into public men's rooms should make us more determined than ever to resist the injection of those lurid attitudes into the even more explosive situation of the U.S. military.\"",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In November 2007, 28 retired generals and admirals urged Congress to repeal the policy, citing evidence that 65,000 gay men and women were serving in the armed forces and that there were over a million gay veterans. On November 17, 2008, 104 retired generals and admirals signed a similar statement. In December, SLDN arranged for 60 Minutes to interview Darren Manzella, an Army medic who served in Iraq after coming out to his unit.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On May 4, 2008, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen addressed the graduating cadets at West Point, a cadet asked what would happen if the next administration were supportive of legislation allowing gays to serve openly. Mullen responded, \"Congress, and not the military, is responsible for DADT.\" Previously, during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2007, Mullen told lawmakers, \"I really think it is for the American people to come forward, really through this body, to both debate that policy and make changes, if that's appropriate.\" He went on to say, \"I'd love to have Congress make its own decisions\" with respect to considering repeal.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In May 2009, when a committee of military law experts at the Palm Center, an anti-DADT research institute, concluded that the President could issue an Executive Order to suspend homosexual conduct discharges, Obama rejected that option and said he wanted Congress to change the law.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "On July 5, 2009, Colin Powell told CNN that the policy was \"correct for the time\" but that \"sixteen years have now gone by, and I think a lot has changed with respect to attitudes within our country, and therefore I think this is a policy and a law that should be reviewed.\" Interviewed for the same broadcast, Mullen said the policy would continue to be implemented until the law was repealed, and that his advice was to \"move in a measured way. ... At a time when we're fighting two conflicts there is a great deal of pressure on our forces and their families.\" In September, Joint Force Quarterly published an article by an Air Force colonel that disputed the argument that unit cohesion is compromised by the presence of openly gay personnel.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In October 2009, the Commission on Military Justice, known as the Cox Commission, repeated its 2001 recommendation that Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which bans sodomy, be repealed, noting that \"most acts of consensual sodomy committed by consenting military personnel are not prosecuted, creating a perception that prosecution of this sexual behavior is arbitrary.\"",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In January 2010, the White House and congressional officials started work on repealing the ban by inserting language into the 2011 defense authorization bill. During Obama's State of the Union Address on January 27, 2010, he said that he would work with Congress and the military to enact a repeal of the gay ban law and for the first time set a timetable for repeal.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "At a February 2, 2010, congressional hearing, Senator John McCain read from a letter signed by \"over one thousand former general and flag officers\". It said: \"We firmly believe that this law, which Congress passed to protect good order, discipline and morale in the unique environment of the armed forces, deserves continued support.\" The signature campaign had been organized by Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, a longtime supporter of a traditional all-male and all-heterosexual military. Servicemembers United, a veterans group opposed to DADT, issued a report critical of the letter's legitimacy. They said that among those signing the letter were officers who had no knowledge of their inclusion or who had refused to be included, and even one instance of a general's widow who signed her husband's name to the letter though he had died before the survey was published. The average age of the officers whose names were listed as signing the letter was 74, the oldest was 98, and Servicemembers United noted that \"only a small fraction of these officers have even served in the military during the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' period, much less in the 21st century military.\"",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The Center for American Progress issued a report in March 2010 that said a smooth implementation of an end to DADT required eight specified changes to the military's internal regulations. On March 25, 2010, Defense Secretary Gates announced new rules mandating that only flag officers could initiate discharge proceedings and imposing more stringent rules of evidence on discharge proceedings.",
"title": "Debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The underlying justifications for DADT had been subjected to increasing suspicion and outright rejection by the early 21st century. Mounting evidence obtained from the integration efforts of foreign militaries, surveys of U.S. military personnel, and studies conducted by the DoD gave credence to the view that the presence of open homosexuals within the military would not be detrimental at all to the armed forces. A DoD study conducted at the behest of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in 2010 supports this most.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The DoD working group conducting the study considered the impact that lifting the ban would have on unit cohesion and effectiveness, good order and discipline, and military morale. The study included a survey that revealed significant differences between respondents who believed they had served with homosexual troops and those who did not believe they had. In analyzing such data, the DoD working group concluded that it was actually generalized perceptions of homosexual troops that led to the perceived unrest that would occur without DADT. Ultimately, the study deemed the overall risk to military effectiveness of lifting the ban to be low. Citing the ability of the armed forces to adjust to the previous integration of African-Americans and women, the DoD study asserted that the United States military could adjust as had it before in history without an impending serious effect.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In March 2005, Rep. Martin T. Meehan introduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act in the House. It aimed \"to amend title 10, United States Code, to enhance the readiness of the Armed Forces by replacing the current policy concerning homosexuality in the Armed Forces, referred to as 'Don't ask, don't tell,' with a policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation\". As of 2006, it had 105 Democrats and 4 Republicans as co-sponsors. He introduced the bill again in 2007 and 2009.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "During the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign, Senator Barack Obama advocated a full repeal of the laws barring gays and lesbians from serving in the military. Nineteen days after his election, Obama's advisers announced that plans to repeal the policy might be delayed until 2010, because Obama \"first wants to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his new political appointees at the Pentagon to reach a consensus, and then present legislation to Congress\". As president he advocated a policy change to allow gay personnel to serve openly in the armed forces, stating that the U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops expelled from the military, including language experts fluent in Arabic, because of DADT. On the eve of the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., October 10, 2009, Obama stated in a speech before the Human Rights Campaign that he would end the ban, but he offered no timetable. Obama said in his 2010 State of the Union Address: \"This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.\" This statement was quickly followed up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs chairman Michael Mullen voicing their support for a repeal of DADT.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Democrats in both houses of Congress first attempted to end DADT by amending the Defense Authorization Act. On May 27, 2010, on a 234–194 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Murphy amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011. It provided for repeal of the DADT policy and created a process for lifting the policy, including a U.S. Department of Defense study and certification by key officials that the change in policy would not harm military readiness followed by a waiting period of 60 days. The amended defense bill passed the House on May 28, 2010. On September 21, 2010, John McCain led a successful filibuster against the debate on the Defense Authorization Act, in which 56 Senators voted to end debate, four short of the 60 votes required. Some advocates for repeal, including the Palm Center, OutServe, and Knights Out, opposed any attempt to block the passage of NDAA if it failed to include DADT repeal language. The Human Rights Campaign, the Center for American Progress, Servicemembers United and SLDN refused to concede that possibility.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit, Collins v. United States, against the Department of Defense in November 2010 seeking full compensation for those discharged under the policy.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "On November 30, 2010, the Joint Chiefs of Staff released the \"Don't Ask, Don't Tell\" Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) report authored by Jeh C. Johnson, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, and Army General Carter F. Ham. It outlined a path to the implementation of repeal of DADT. The report indicated that there was a low risk of service disruptions due to repealing the ban, provided time was provided for proper implementation and training. It included the results of a survey of 115,000 active-duty and reserve service members. Across all service branches, 30 percent thought that integrating gays into the military would have negative consequences. In the Marine Corps and combat specialties, the percentage with that negative assessment ranged from 40 to 60 percent. The CRWG also said that 69 percent of all those surveyed believed they had already worked with a gay or lesbian and of those, 92 percent reported that the impact of that person's presence was positive or neutral. The same day, in response to the CRWG, 30 professors and scholars, most from military institutions, issued a joint statement saying that the CRWG \"echoes more than 20 studies, including studies by military researchers, all of which reach the same conclusion: allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly will not harm the military ... We hope that our collective statement underscores that the debate about the evidence is now officially over\". The Family Research Council's president, Tony Perkins, interpreted the CRWG data differently, writing that it \"reveals that 40 percent of Marines and 25 percent of the Army could leave\".",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Gates encouraged Congress to act quickly to repeal the law so that the military could carefully adjust rather than face a court decision requiring it to lift the policy immediately. The United States Senate held two days of hearings on December 2 and 3, 2010, to consider the CRWG report. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs chairman Michael Mullen urged immediate repeal. The heads of the Marine Corps, Army, and Navy all advised against immediate repeal and expressed varied views on its eventual repeal. Oliver North, writing in National Review the next week, said that Gates' testimony showed \"a deeply misguided commitment to political correctness\". He interpreted the CRWG's data as indicating a high risk that large numbers of resignations would follow the repeal of DADT. Service members, especially combat troops, he wrote, \"deserve better than to be treated like lab rats in Mr. Obama's radical social experiment\".",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "On December 9, 2010, another filibuster prevented debate on the Defense Authorization Act. In response to that vote, Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins introduced a bill that included the policy-related portions of the Defense Authorization Act that they considered more likely to pass as a stand-alone bill. It passed the House on a vote of 250 to 175 on December 15, 2010. On December 18, 2010, the Senate voted to end debate on its version of the bill by a cloture vote of 63–33. The final Senate vote was held later that same day, with the measure passing by a vote of 65–31.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates released a statement following the vote indicating that the planning for implementation of a policy repeal would begin right away and would continue until Gates certified that conditions were met for orderly repeal of the policy. President Obama signed the repeal into law on December 22, 2010.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The repeal act established a process for ending the DADT policy. The President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were required to certify in writing that they had reviewed the Pentagon's report on the effects of DADT repeal, that the appropriate regulations had been reviewed and drafted, and that implementation of repeal regulations \"is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces\". Once certification was given, DADT would be lifted after a 60-day waiting period.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Representative Duncan D. Hunter announced plans in January 2011 to introduce a bill designed to delay the end of DADT. His proposed legislation required all of the chiefs of the armed services to submit the certification at the time required only of the President, Defense Secretary and Joint Chiefs chairman. In April, Perkins of the Family Research Council argued that the Pentagon was misrepresenting its own survey data and that hearings by the House Armed Services Committee, now under Republican control, could persuade Obama to withhold certification. Congressional efforts to prevent the change in policy from going into effect continued into May and June 2011.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "On January 29, 2011, Pentagon officials stated that the training process to prepare troops for the end of DADT would begin in February and would proceed quickly, though they suggested that it might not be completed in 2011. On the same day, the DOD announced it would not offer any additional compensation to service members who had been discharged under DADT, who received half of the separation pay other honorably discharged service members received.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In May 2011, the U.S. Army reprimanded three colonels for performing a skit in March 2011 at a function at Yongsan Garrison, South Korea, that mocked the repeal.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In May 2011, revelations that an April Navy memo relating to its DADT training guidelines contemplated allowing same-sex weddings in base chapels and allowing chaplains to officiate if they so chose resulted in a letter of protest from 63 Republican congressman, citing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as controlling the use of federal property. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said the guidelines \"make it even more uncomfortable for men and women of faith to perform their duties\". A Pentagon spokesperson replied that DOMA \"does not limit the type of religious ceremonies a chaplain may perform in a chapel on a military installation\", and a Navy spokesperson said that \"A chaplain can conduct a same-sex ceremony if it is in the tenets of his faith\". A few days later the Navy rescinded its earlier instructions \"pending additional legal and policy review and interdepartmental coordination\".",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "While waiting for certification, several service members were discharged at their own insistence until a July 6 ruling from a federal appeals court barred further enforcement of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members, which the military promptly did.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Anticipating the lifting of DADT, some active duty service members wearing civilian clothes marched in San Diego's gay pride parade on July 16. The DOD noted that participation \"does not constitute a declaration of sexual orientation\".",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "President Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent the certification required by the Repeal Act to Congress on July 22, 2011, setting the end of DADT for September 20, 2011. A Pentagon spokesman said that service members discharged under DADT would be able to re-apply to rejoin the military then.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "At the end of August 2011, the DOD approved the distribution of the magazine produced by OutServe, an organization of gay and lesbian service members, at Army and Air Force base exchanges beginning with the September 20 issue, coinciding with the end of DADT.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "On September 20, Air Force officials announced that 22 Air Force Instructions were \"updated as a result of the repeal of DADT\". On September 30, 2011, the Department of Defense modified regulations to reflect the repeal by deleting \"homosexual conduct\" as a ground for administrative separation.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "On the eve of repeal, US Air Force 1st Lt. Josh Seefried, one of the founders of OutServe, an organization of LGBT troops, revealed his identity after two years of hiding behind a pseudonym. Senior Airman Randy Phillips, after conducting a social media campaign seeking encouragement coming out and already out to his military co-workers, came out to his father on the evening of September 19. When the video of their conversation he posted on YouTube went viral, it made him, in one journalist's estimation, \"the poster boy for the DADT repeal\". The moment the repeal took effect at midnight on September 19, US Navy Lt. Gary C. Ross married his same-sex partner of eleven and a half years, Dan Swezy, making them the first same-sex military couple to legally marry in the United States. Retired Rear Adm. Alan M. Steinman became the highest-ranking person to come out immediately following the end of DADT. HBO produced a World of Wonder documentary, The Strange History of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and premiered it on September 20. Variety called it \"an unapologetic piece of liberal advocacy\" and \"a testament to what formidable opponents ignorance and prejudice can be\". Discharge proceedings on the grounds of homosexuality, some begun years earlier, came to an end.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In the weeks that followed, a series of firsts attracted press attention to the impact of the repeal. The Marine Corps were the first branch of the armed services to recruit from the LGBTQ community. Reservist Jeremy Johnson became the first person discharged under DADT to re-enlist. Jase Daniels became the first to return to active duty, re-joining the Navy as a third class petty officer. On December 2, Air Force intelligence officer Ginger Wallace became the first open LGBT service member to have a same-sex partner participate in the \"pinning-on\" ceremony that marked her promotion to colonel. On December 23, after 80 days at sea, US Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta won the right to the traditional \"first kiss\" upon returning to port and shared it with her same-sex partner. On January 20, 2012, U.S. service members deployed to Bagram, Afghanistan, produced a video in support of the It Gets Better Project, which aims to support LGBT at-risk youth. Widespread news coverage continued even months after the repeal date, when a photograph of Marine Sgt. Brandon Morgan kissing his partner at a February 22, 2012, homecoming celebration on Marine Corps Base Hawaii went viral. When asked for a comment, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps said: \"It's your typical homecoming photo.\"",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "On September 30, 2011, Under Secretary of Defense Clifford Stanley announced the DOD's policy that military chaplains are allowed to perform same-sex marriages \"on or off a military installation\" where local law permits them. His memo noted that \"a chaplain is not required to participate in or officiate a private ceremony if doing so would be in variance with the tenets of his or her religion\" and \"a military chaplain's participation in a private ceremony does not constitute an endorsement of the ceremony by DoD\". Some religious groups announced that their chaplains would not participate in such weddings, including an organization of evangelical Protestants, the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty and Roman Catholics led by Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In late October 2011, speaking at the Air Force Academy, Colonel Gary Packard, leader of the team that drafted the DOD's repeal implementation plan, said: \"The best quote I've heard so far is, 'Well, some people's Facebook status changed, but that was about it.'\" In late November, discussing the repeal of DADT and its implementation, Marine General James F. Amos said \"I'm very pleased with how it has gone\" and called it a \"non-event\". He said his earlier public opposition was appropriate based on ongoing combat operations and the negative assessment of the policy given by 56% of combat troops under his command in the Department of Defense's November 2010 survey. A Defense Department spokesperson said implementation of repeal occurred without incident and added: \"We attribute this success to our comprehensive pre-repeal training program, combined with the continued close monitoring and enforcement of standards by our military leaders at all levels.\"",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In December 2011, Congress considered two DADT-related amendments in the course of work on the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012. The Senate approved 97–3, an amendment removing the prohibition on sodomy found in Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as recommended by the Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) a year earlier. The House approved an amendment banning same-sex marriages from being performed at military bases or by military employees, including chaplains and other employees of the military when \"acting in an official capacity\". Neither amendment appeared in the final legislation.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In July 2012, the Department of Defense granted permission for military personnel to wear their uniforms while participating in the San Diego Pride Parade. This was the first time that U.S. military personnel were permitted to wear their service uniforms in such a parade.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Marking the first anniversary of the passage of the Repeal Act, television news networks reported no incidents in the three months since DADT ended. One aired video of a social gathering for gay service members at a base in Afghanistan. Another reported on the experience of lesbian and gay troops, including some rejection after coming out to colleagues.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Palm Center, a think tank that studies issues of sexuality and the military, released a study in September 2012 that found no negative consequences, nor any effect on military effectiveness from DADT repeal. This study began six months following repeal and concluded at the one year mark. The study included surveys of 553 generals and admirals who had opposed repeal, experts who supported DADT, and more than 60 heterosexual, gay, lesbian and bisexual active duty service personnel.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "On January 7, 2013, the ACLU reached a settlement with the federal government in Collins v. United States. It provided for the payment of full separation pay to service members discharged under DADT since November 10, 2004, who had previously been granted only half that.",
"title": "Repeal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Several candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination called for the restoration of DADT, including Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum. Newt Gingrich called for an extensive review of DADT's repeal.",
"title": "2012 presidential campaign issue"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Ron Paul, having voted for the Repeal Act, maintained his support for allowing military service by open homosexuals. Herman Cain called the issue \"a distraction\" and opposed reinstating DADT. Mitt Romney said that the winding down of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan obviated his opposition to the repeal and said he was not proposing any change to policy.",
"title": "2012 presidential campaign issue"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "On September 22, 2011, the audience at a Republican candidates' debate booed a U.S. soldier posted in Iraq who asked a question via video about the repeal of DADT, and none of the candidates acknowledged or responded to the crowd's behavior. Two days later, Obama commented on the incident while addressing a dinner of the Human Rights Campaign: \"You want to be commander in chief? You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it's not politically convenient\".",
"title": "2012 presidential campaign issue"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In June 2012, Rep. Howard McKeon, Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said he considered the repeal of DADT a settled issue, and that if Romney became president he would not advocate its reinstatement, though others in his party might.",
"title": "2012 presidential campaign issue"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In September 2021, on the 10th anniversary of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, President Joe Biden announced that the Veterans Administration would start providing benefits for service members who received other-than-honorable discharges (before DADT was enacted and while it was in effect) because of their sexual orientation.",
"title": "2021 benefits restoration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "In 1993, Time reported that 44% of those polled supported openly gay service members, and in 1994, a CNN poll indicated 53% of Americans believed gays and lesbians should be permitted to serve openly.",
"title": "Views of the policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "According to a December 2010 Washington Post–ABC News poll, 77% of Americans said gays and lesbians who publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be able to serve in the military. That number showed little change from polls over the previous two years, but represented the highest level of support in a Post-ABC poll. The support also cut across partisan and ideological lines, with majorities of Democrats (86%), Republicans (74%), independents (74%), liberals (92%), conservatives (67%), white evangelical Protestants (70%) and non-religious (84%) in favor of homosexuals serving openly.",
"title": "Views of the policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "A November 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 58% of the U.S. public favored allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, while less than half as many (27%) were opposed. According to a November 2010 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 72% of adult Americans favored permitting people who are openly gay or lesbian to serve in the military, while 23% opposed it. \"The main difference between the CNN poll and the Pew poll is in the number of respondents who told pollsters that they didn't have an opinion on this topic – 16 percent in the Pew poll compared to only five percent in the CNN survey\", said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. \"The two polls report virtually the same number who say they oppose gays serving openly in the military, which suggests that there are some people who favor that change in policy but for some reason were reluctant to admit that to the Pew interviewers. That happens occasionally on topics where moral issues and equal-treatment issues intersect.\"",
"title": "Views of the policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "A February 2010 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute national poll showed 57% of American voters favored gays serving openly, compared to 36% opposed, while 66% said not allowing openly gay personnel to serve is discrimination, compared to 31% who did not see it as discrimination. A CBS News/New York Times national poll done at the same time showed 58% of Americans favored gays serving openly, compared to 28% opposed.",
"title": "Views of the policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Chaplain groups and religious organizations took various positions on DADT. Some felt that the policy needed to be withdrawn to make the military more inclusive. The Southern Baptist Convention battled the repeal of DADT, warning that their endorsements for chaplains might be withdrawn if the repeal took place. They took the position that allowing gay men and women to serve in the military without restriction would have a negative impact on the ability of chaplains who think homosexuality is a sin to speak freely regarding their religious beliefs. The Roman Catholic Church called for the retention of the policy, but had no plans to withdraw its priests from serving as military chaplains. Sixty-five retired chaplains signed a letter opposing repeal, stating that repeal would make it impossible for chaplains whose faith teaches that same-sex behavior is immoral to minister to military service members. Other religious organizations and agencies called the repeal of the policy a \"non-event\" or \"non-issue\" for chaplains, claiming that chaplains have always supported military service personnel, whether or not they agree with all their actions or beliefs.",
"title": "Views of the policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "After the policy was introduced in 1993, the military discharged over 13,000 troops from the military under DADT. The number of discharges per fiscal year under DADT dropped sharply after the September 11 attacks and remained comparatively low through to the repeal. Discharges exceeded 600 every year until 2009.",
"title": "Discharges under DADT"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "In November 2019, both Rhode Island and New York State signed into law and implemented restoring military benefits to gay and lesbian military veterans. An estimated approximately 100,000 individuals were affected by the \"don't ask don't tell policy\" (since it was repealed in September 2011).",
"title": "State-based gay and lesbian military veteran laws"
}
]
| "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of non-heterosexual people. Instituted during the Clinton administration, the policy was issued under Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 on December 21, 1993, and was in effect from February 28, 1994, until September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. This relaxation of legal restrictions on service by gays and lesbians in the armed forces was mandated by Public Law 103–160, which was signed November 30, 1993. The policy prohibited people who "demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because their presence "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability". The act prohibited any non-heterosexual person from disclosing their sexual orientation or from speaking about any same-sex relationships, including marriages or other familial attributes, while serving in the United States armed forces. The act specified that service members who disclose that they are homosexual or engage in homosexual conduct should be separated (discharged) except when a service member's conduct was "for the purpose of avoiding or terminating military service" or when it "would not be in the best interest of the armed forces". Since DADT ended in 2011, persons who are openly homosexual and bisexual have been able to serve. The "don't ask" section of the DADT policy specified that superiors should not initiate an investigation of a service member's orientation without witnessing disallowed behaviors. However, evidence of homosexual behavior deemed credible could be used to initiate an investigation. Unauthorized investigations and harassment of suspected servicemen and women led to an expansion of the policy to "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue, don't harass". Beginning in the early 2000s, several legal challenges to DADT were filed, and legislation to repeal DADT was enacted in December 2010, specifying that the policy would remain in place until the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certified that repeal would not harm military readiness, followed by a 60-day waiting period. A July 6, 2011, ruling from a federal appeals court barred further enforcement of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members. President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen sent that certification to Congress on July 22, 2011, which set the end of DADT to September 20, 2011. Even with DADT repealed, the legal definition of marriage as being one man and one woman under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) meant that, although same-sex partners could get married, their marriage was not recognized by the federal government. This barred partners from access to the same benefits afforded to heterosexual couples such as base access, health care, and United States military pay, including family separation allowance and Basic Allowance for Housing with dependents. The Department of Defense attempted to open some of the benefits that were not restricted by DOMA, but the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor (2013) made these efforts unnecessary. | 2001-10-24T08:33:49Z | 2023-12-28T15:32:57Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_ask,_don%27t_tell |
8,691 | Divination | Divination (from Latin divinare 'to foresee, foretell, predict, prophesy, etc.') is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic ritual or practice. Using various methods throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact or interaction with supernatural agencies such as spirits, gods, god-like-beings or the "will of the universe".
Divination can be seen as a systematic approach to organizing what appears to be disjointed - random facets of existence - such that they provide insight into a problem or issue at hand. Some modern instruments or practices of divination for magical practices include Tarot-card reading, rune casting, tea-leaf reading, automatic writing, and water scrying. If a distinction is made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and religion.
In its functional relation to magic in general, divination can have a preliminary and investigative role:
[...] the diagnosis or prognosis achieved through divination is both temporarily and logically related to the manipulative, protective or alleviative function of magic rituals. In divination one finds the cause of an ailment or a potential danger, in magic one subsequently acts upon this knowledge.
Divination has long attracted criticism. In the modern era, it has been dismissed by the scientific community and by skeptics as being superstitious; experiments do not support the idea that divination techniques can actually predict the future more reliably or precisely than would be possible without it. In antiquity, divination came under attack from philosophers such as the Academic skeptic Cicero in De Divinatione (1st century BCE) and the Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus in Against the Astrologers (2nd century CE). The satirist Lucian (c. 125 – after 180) devoted an essay to Alexander the false prophet.
The Oracle of Amun at the Siwa Oasis was made famous when Alexander the Great visited it after conquering Egypt from Persia in 332 BC.
Deuteronomy 18:10–12 or Leviticus 19:26 can be interpreted as categorically forbidding divination. However, some would claim that divination is indeed practiced in the Bible, such as in Exodus 28, when the Urim and Thummim are mentioned. Some would also say that Gideon also practiced divination, though when he uses a piece of fleece or wool in Judges 6:36–40, he is not attempting to predict the outcome of an important battle; rather, he is communicating with God.
Communicating with God through prayer may in some cases be considered divination; both are open, typically two-way conversations with God. In addition, the method of "casting lots" used in Joshua 14:1–5 and Joshua 18:1–10 to divide the conquered lands of Canaan between the twelve tribes is not seen by some as divination, but as done at the behest of God (Numbers 26:55).
Hatch disputes these comparisons because these practices invoked the "one true God" and discouraged individuals from manipulating this god for their own benefit. He believes that these two aspects are absent from divination.
Both oracles and seers in ancient Greece practiced divination. Oracles were the conduits for the gods on earth; their prophecies were understood to be the will of the gods verbatim. Because of the high demand for oracle consultations and the oracles’ limited work schedule, they were not the main source of divination for the ancient Greeks. That role fell to the seers (Greek: μάντεις).
Seers were not in direct contact with the gods; instead, they were interpreters of signs provided by the gods. Seers used many methods to explicate the will of the gods including extispicy, ornithomancy, etc. They were more numerous than the oracles and did not keep a limited schedule; thus, they were highly valued by all Greeks, not just those with the capacity to travel to Delphi or other such distant sites.
The disadvantage of seers was that only direct yes-or-no questions could be answered. Oracles could answer more generalized questions, and seers often had to perform several sacrifices in order to get the most consistent answer. For example, if a general wanted to know if the omens were proper for him to advance on the enemy, he would ask his seer both that question and if it were better for him to remain on the defensive. If the seer gave consistent answers, the advice was considered valid.
During battle, generals would frequently ask seers at both the campground (a process called the hiera) and at the battlefield (called the sphagia). The hiera entailed the seer slaughtering a sheep and examining its liver for answers regarding a more generic question; the sphagia involved killing a young female goat by slitting its throat and noting the animal's last movements and blood flow. The battlefield sacrifice only occurred when two armies prepared for battle against each other. Neither force would advance until the seer revealed appropriate omens.
Because the seers had such power over influential individuals in ancient Greece, many were skeptical of the accuracy and honesty of the seers. The degree to which seers were honest depends entirely on the individual seers. Despite the doubt surrounding individual seers, the craft as a whole was well regarded and trusted by the Greeks, and the Stoics accounted for the validity of divination in their physics.
The divination method of casting lots (Cleromancy) was used by the remaining eleven disciples of Jesus in Acts 1:23–26 to select a replacement for Judas Iscariot. Therefore, divination was arguably an accepted practice in the early church. However, divination became viewed as a pagan practice by Christian emperors during ancient Rome.
In 692 the Quinisext Council, also known as the "Council in Trullo" in the Eastern Orthodox Church, passed canons to eliminate pagan and divination practices. Fortune-telling and other forms of divination were widespread through the Middle Ages. In the constitution of 1572 and public regulations of 1661 of the Electorate of Saxony, capital punishment was used on those predicting the future. Laws forbidding divination practice continue to this day. The Waldensians sect were accused of practicing divination.
Småland is famous for Årsgång, a practice which occurred until the early 19th century in some parts of Småland. Generally occurring on Christmas and New Year's Eve, it is a practice in which one would fast and keep themselves away from light in a room until midnight to then complete a set of complex events to interpret symbols encountered throughout the journey to foresee the coming year.
In Islam, astrology (‘ilm ahkam al-nujum), the most widespread divinatory science, is the study of how celestial entities could be applied to the daily lives of people on earth. It is important to emphasize the practical nature of divinatory sciences because people from all socioeconomic levels and pedigrees sought the advice of astrologers to make important decisions in their lives. Astronomy was made a distinct science by intellectuals who did not agree with the former, although distinction may not have been made in daily practice, where astrology was technically outlawed and only tolerated if it was employed in public. Astrologers, trained as scientists and astronomers, were able to interpret the celestial forces that ruled the "sub-lunar" to predict a variety of information from lunar phases and drought to times of prayer and the foundation of cities. The courtly sanction and elite patronage of Muslim rulers benefited astrologers’ intellectual statures.
The “science of the sand” (‘ilm al-raml), otherwise translated as geomancy, is “based on the interpretation of figures traced on sand or other surface known as geomantic figures.” It is a good example of Islamic divination at a popular level. The core principle that meaning derives from a unique occupied position is identical to the core principle of astrology.
Like astronomy, geomancy used deduction and computation to uncover significant prophecies as opposed to omens (‘ilm al-fa’l), which were process of “reading” visible random events to decipher the invisible realities from which they originated. It was upheld by prophetic tradition and relied almost exclusively on text, specifically the Qur’an (which carried a table for guidance) and poetry, as a development of bibliomancy. The practice culminated in the appearance of the illustrated “Books of Omens” (Falnama) in the early 16th century, an embodiment of the apocalyptic fears as the end of the millennium in the Islamic calendar approached.
Dream interpretation, or oneiromancy (‘ilm ta’bir al-ru’ya), is more specific to Islam than other divinatory science, largely because of the Qur’an’s emphasis on the predictive dreams of Abraham, Yusuf, and Muhammad. The important delineation within the practice lies between “incoherent dreams” and “sound dreams,” which were “a part of prophecy” or heavenly message. Dream interpretation was always tied to Islamic religious texts, providing a moral compass to those seeking advice. The practitioner needed to be skilled enough to apply the individual dream to general precedent while appraising the singular circumstances.
The power of text held significant weight in the "science of letters" (‘ilm al-huruf), the foundational principle being "God created the world through His speech." The science began with the concept of language, specifically Arabic, as the expression of "the essence of what it signifies." Once the believer understood this, while remaining obedient to God’s will, they could uncover the essence and divine truth of the objects inscribed with Arabic like amulets and talismans through the study of the letters of the Qur’an with alphanumeric computations.
In Islamic practice in Senegal and Gambia, just like many other West African countries, diviners and religious leaders and healers were interchangeable because Islam was closely related with esoteric practices (like divination), which were responsible for the regional spread of Islam. As scholars learned esoteric sciences, they joined local non-Islamic aristocratic courts, who quickly aligned divination and amulets with the "proof of the power of Islamic religion." So strong was the idea of esoteric knowledge in West African Islam, diviners and magicians uneducated in Islamic texts and Arabic bore the same titles as those who did.
From the beginning of Islam, there "was (and is) still a vigorous debate about whether or not such [divinatory] practices were actually permissible under Islam,” with some scholars like Abu-Hamid al Ghazili (d. 1111) objecting to the science of divination because he believed it bore too much similarity to pagan practices of invoking spiritual entities that were not God. Other scholars justified esoteric sciences by comparing a practitioner to "a physician trying to heal the sick with the help of the same natural principles."
Divination was a central component of ancient Mesoamerican religious life. Many Aztec gods, including central creator gods, were described as diviners and were closely associated with sorcery. Tezcatlipoca is the patron of sorcerers and practitioners of magic. His name means "smoking mirror," a reference to a device used for divinatory scrying. In the Mayan Popol Vuh, the creator gods Xmucane and Xpiacoc perform divinatory hand casting during the creation of people. The Aztec Codex Borbonicus shows the original human couple, Oxomoco and Cipactonal, engaged in divining with kernels of maize. This primordial pair is associated with the ritual calendar, and the Aztecs considered them to be the first diviners.
Every civilization that developed in pre-Columbian Mexico, from the Olmecs to the Aztecs, practiced divination in daily life, both public and private. Scrying through the use of reflective water surfaces, mirrors, or the casting of lots were among the most widespread forms of divinatory practice. Visions derived from hallucinogens were another important form of divination, and are still widely used among contemporary diviners of Mexico. Among the more common hallucinogenic plants used in divination are morning glory, jimson weed, and peyote.
Theyyam or "theiyam" in Malayalam is the process by which a devotee invites a Hindu god or goddess to use his or her body as a medium or channel and answer other devotees' questions. The same is called "arulvaakku" or "arulvaak" in Tamil, another south Indian language - Adhiparasakthi Siddhar Peetam is famous for arulvakku in Tamil Nadu. The people in and around Mangalore in Karnataka call the same, Buta Kola, "paathri" or "darshin"; in other parts of Karnataka, it is known by various names such as, "prashnaavali", "vaagdaana", "asei", "aashirvachana", and so on. In Nepal it is known as, "Devta ka dhaamee" or "jhaakri".
In English, the closest translation for these is, "oracle." The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in northern India, still consults an oracle known as the Nechung Oracle, which is considered the official state oracle of the government of Tibet. The Dalai Lama has according to centuries-old custom, consulted the Nechung Oracle during the new year festivities of Losar.
Although Japan retains a history of traditional and local methods of divination, such as onmyōdō, contemporary divination in Japan, called uranai, derives from outside sources. Contemporary methods of divination in Japan include both Western and Chinese astrology, geomancy or feng shui, tarot cards, I Ching (Book of Changes) divination, and physiognomy (methods of reading the body to identify traits).
In Japan, divination methods include Futomani from the Shinto tradition.
Personality typing as a form of divination has been prevalent in Japan since the 1980s. Various methods exist for divining personality type. Each attempt to reveal glimpses of an individual's destiny, productive and inhibiting traits, future parenting techniques, and compatibility in marriage. Personality type is increasingly important for young Japanese, who consider personality the driving factor of compatibility, given the ongoing marriage drought and birth rate decline in Japan.
An import to Japan, Chinese zodiac signs based on the birth year in 12 year cycles (rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, cock, dog, and boar) are frequently combined with other forms of divination, such as so-called 'celestial types' based on the planets (Saturn, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, or Uranus). Personality can also be divined using cardinal directions, the four elements (water, earth, fire, air), and yin-yang. Names can also lend important personality information under name classification which asserts that names bearing certain Japanese vowel sounds (a, i, u, e, o) share common characteristics. Numerology, which utilizes methods of divining 'birth numbers' from significant numbers such as birth date, may also reveal character traits of individuals.
Individuals can also assess their own and others' personalities according to physical characteristics. Blood type remains a popular form of divination from physiology. Stemming from Western influences, body reading or ninsou, determines personality traits based on body measurements. The face is the most commonly analyzed feature, with eye size, pupil shape, mouth shape, and eyebrow shape representing the most important traits. An upturned mouth may be cheerful, and a triangle eyebrow may indicate that someone is strong-willed.
Methods of assessment in daily life may include self-taken measurements or quizzes. As such, magazines targeted at women in their early-to-mid twenties feature the highest concentration of personality assessment guides. There are approximately 144 different women's magazines, known as nihon zashi koukoku kyoukai, published in Japan aimed at this audience.
The adaptation of the Western divination method of tarot cards into Japanese culture presents a particularly unique example of contemporary divination as this adaptation mingles with Japan's robust visual culture. Japanese tarot cards are created by professional artists, advertisers, and fans of tarot. One tarot card collector claimed to have accumulated more than 1,500 Japan-made decks of tarot cards.
Japanese tarot cards fall into diverse categories such as:
The images on tarot cards may come from images from Japanese popular culture, such as characters from manga and anime including Hello Kitty, or may feature cultural symbols. Tarot cards may adapt the images of Japanese historical figures, such as high priestess Himiko (170–248CE) or imperial court wizard Abe no Seimei (921–1005CE) . Still others may feature images of cultural displacement, such as English knights, pentagrams, the Jewish Torah, or invented glyphs. The introduction of such cards began by the 1930s and reached prominence 1970s. Japanese tarot cards were originally created by men, often based on the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot published by the Rider Company in London in 1909. Since, the practice of Japanese tarot has become overwhelmingly feminine and intertwined with kawaii culture. Referring to the cuteness of tarot cards, Japanese model Kuromiya Niina was quoted as saying "because the images are cute, even holding them is enjoyable." While these differences exist, Japanese tarot cards function similarly to their Western counterparts. Cards are shuffled and cut into piles then used to forecast the future, for spiritual reflection, or as a tool for self-understanding.
A common act of divination in Taiwan is called the Poe. “The Poe” translated to English means “moon boards”. It consists of two wood or bamboo blocks cut into the shape of a crescent moon. The one edge is rounded while the other is flat; the two are mirror images. Both crescents are held out in one's palms and while kneeling, they are raised to the forehead level. Once in this position, the blocks are dropped and the future can be understood depending on their landing. If both fall flat side up or both fall rounded side up, that can be taken as a failure of the deity to agree. If the blocks land one rounded and one flat, the deity indicates "Yes", or positive. “Laughing poe” is when rounded sides land down and they rock before coming to a standstill. “Negative poe” is when the flat sides fall downward and abruptly stop; this indicates "No". When there is a positive fall, it is called “Sacred poe”, although the negative falls are not usually taken seriously. As the blocks are being dropped the question is said in a murmur, and if the answer is yes, the blocks are dropped again. To make sure the answer is definitely a yes, the blocks must fall in a “yes” position three times in a row.
A more serious type of divination is the Kiō-á. There is a small wooden chair, and around the sides of the chair are small pieces of wood that can move up and down in their sockets, this causes a clicking sounds when the chair is moved in any way. Two men hold this chair by its legs before an altar, while the incense is being burned, and the deity is invited to descend onto the chair. It is seen that it is in the chair by an onset of motion. Eventually, the chair crashes onto a table prepared with wood chips and burlap. The characters on the table are then traced and these are said to be written by the deity who possessed the chair, these characters are then interpreted for the devotees.
Divination is widespread throughout Africa. Among many examples it is one of the central tenets of Serer religion in Senegal. Only those who have been initiated as Saltigues (the Serer high priests and priestesses) can divine the future. These are the "hereditary rain priests" whose role is both religious and medicinal. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Divination (from Latin divinare 'to foresee, foretell, predict, prophesy, etc.') is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic ritual or practice. Using various methods throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact or interaction with supernatural agencies such as spirits, gods, god-like-beings or the \"will of the universe\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Divination can be seen as a systematic approach to organizing what appears to be disjointed - random facets of existence - such that they provide insight into a problem or issue at hand. Some modern instruments or practices of divination for magical practices include Tarot-card reading, rune casting, tea-leaf reading, automatic writing, and water scrying. If a distinction is made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and religion.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In its functional relation to magic in general, divination can have a preliminary and investigative role:",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "[...] the diagnosis or prognosis achieved through divination is both temporarily and logically related to the manipulative, protective or alleviative function of magic rituals. In divination one finds the cause of an ailment or a potential danger, in magic one subsequently acts upon this knowledge.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Divination has long attracted criticism. In the modern era, it has been dismissed by the scientific community and by skeptics as being superstitious; experiments do not support the idea that divination techniques can actually predict the future more reliably or precisely than would be possible without it. In antiquity, divination came under attack from philosophers such as the Academic skeptic Cicero in De Divinatione (1st century BCE) and the Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus in Against the Astrologers (2nd century CE). The satirist Lucian (c. 125 – after 180) devoted an essay to Alexander the false prophet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Oracle of Amun at the Siwa Oasis was made famous when Alexander the Great visited it after conquering Egypt from Persia in 332 BC.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Deuteronomy 18:10–12 or Leviticus 19:26 can be interpreted as categorically forbidding divination. However, some would claim that divination is indeed practiced in the Bible, such as in Exodus 28, when the Urim and Thummim are mentioned. Some would also say that Gideon also practiced divination, though when he uses a piece of fleece or wool in Judges 6:36–40, he is not attempting to predict the outcome of an important battle; rather, he is communicating with God.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Communicating with God through prayer may in some cases be considered divination; both are open, typically two-way conversations with God. In addition, the method of \"casting lots\" used in Joshua 14:1–5 and Joshua 18:1–10 to divide the conquered lands of Canaan between the twelve tribes is not seen by some as divination, but as done at the behest of God (Numbers 26:55).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hatch disputes these comparisons because these practices invoked the \"one true God\" and discouraged individuals from manipulating this god for their own benefit. He believes that these two aspects are absent from divination.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Both oracles and seers in ancient Greece practiced divination. Oracles were the conduits for the gods on earth; their prophecies were understood to be the will of the gods verbatim. Because of the high demand for oracle consultations and the oracles’ limited work schedule, they were not the main source of divination for the ancient Greeks. That role fell to the seers (Greek: μάντεις).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Seers were not in direct contact with the gods; instead, they were interpreters of signs provided by the gods. Seers used many methods to explicate the will of the gods including extispicy, ornithomancy, etc. They were more numerous than the oracles and did not keep a limited schedule; thus, they were highly valued by all Greeks, not just those with the capacity to travel to Delphi or other such distant sites.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The disadvantage of seers was that only direct yes-or-no questions could be answered. Oracles could answer more generalized questions, and seers often had to perform several sacrifices in order to get the most consistent answer. For example, if a general wanted to know if the omens were proper for him to advance on the enemy, he would ask his seer both that question and if it were better for him to remain on the defensive. If the seer gave consistent answers, the advice was considered valid.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "During battle, generals would frequently ask seers at both the campground (a process called the hiera) and at the battlefield (called the sphagia). The hiera entailed the seer slaughtering a sheep and examining its liver for answers regarding a more generic question; the sphagia involved killing a young female goat by slitting its throat and noting the animal's last movements and blood flow. The battlefield sacrifice only occurred when two armies prepared for battle against each other. Neither force would advance until the seer revealed appropriate omens.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Because the seers had such power over influential individuals in ancient Greece, many were skeptical of the accuracy and honesty of the seers. The degree to which seers were honest depends entirely on the individual seers. Despite the doubt surrounding individual seers, the craft as a whole was well regarded and trusted by the Greeks, and the Stoics accounted for the validity of divination in their physics.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The divination method of casting lots (Cleromancy) was used by the remaining eleven disciples of Jesus in Acts 1:23–26 to select a replacement for Judas Iscariot. Therefore, divination was arguably an accepted practice in the early church. However, divination became viewed as a pagan practice by Christian emperors during ancient Rome.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 692 the Quinisext Council, also known as the \"Council in Trullo\" in the Eastern Orthodox Church, passed canons to eliminate pagan and divination practices. Fortune-telling and other forms of divination were widespread through the Middle Ages. In the constitution of 1572 and public regulations of 1661 of the Electorate of Saxony, capital punishment was used on those predicting the future. Laws forbidding divination practice continue to this day. The Waldensians sect were accused of practicing divination.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Småland is famous for Årsgång, a practice which occurred until the early 19th century in some parts of Småland. Generally occurring on Christmas and New Year's Eve, it is a practice in which one would fast and keep themselves away from light in a room until midnight to then complete a set of complex events to interpret symbols encountered throughout the journey to foresee the coming year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In Islam, astrology (‘ilm ahkam al-nujum), the most widespread divinatory science, is the study of how celestial entities could be applied to the daily lives of people on earth. It is important to emphasize the practical nature of divinatory sciences because people from all socioeconomic levels and pedigrees sought the advice of astrologers to make important decisions in their lives. Astronomy was made a distinct science by intellectuals who did not agree with the former, although distinction may not have been made in daily practice, where astrology was technically outlawed and only tolerated if it was employed in public. Astrologers, trained as scientists and astronomers, were able to interpret the celestial forces that ruled the \"sub-lunar\" to predict a variety of information from lunar phases and drought to times of prayer and the foundation of cities. The courtly sanction and elite patronage of Muslim rulers benefited astrologers’ intellectual statures.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The “science of the sand” (‘ilm al-raml), otherwise translated as geomancy, is “based on the interpretation of figures traced on sand or other surface known as geomantic figures.” It is a good example of Islamic divination at a popular level. The core principle that meaning derives from a unique occupied position is identical to the core principle of astrology.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Like astronomy, geomancy used deduction and computation to uncover significant prophecies as opposed to omens (‘ilm al-fa’l), which were process of “reading” visible random events to decipher the invisible realities from which they originated. It was upheld by prophetic tradition and relied almost exclusively on text, specifically the Qur’an (which carried a table for guidance) and poetry, as a development of bibliomancy. The practice culminated in the appearance of the illustrated “Books of Omens” (Falnama) in the early 16th century, an embodiment of the apocalyptic fears as the end of the millennium in the Islamic calendar approached.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Dream interpretation, or oneiromancy (‘ilm ta’bir al-ru’ya), is more specific to Islam than other divinatory science, largely because of the Qur’an’s emphasis on the predictive dreams of Abraham, Yusuf, and Muhammad. The important delineation within the practice lies between “incoherent dreams” and “sound dreams,” which were “a part of prophecy” or heavenly message. Dream interpretation was always tied to Islamic religious texts, providing a moral compass to those seeking advice. The practitioner needed to be skilled enough to apply the individual dream to general precedent while appraising the singular circumstances.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The power of text held significant weight in the \"science of letters\" (‘ilm al-huruf), the foundational principle being \"God created the world through His speech.\" The science began with the concept of language, specifically Arabic, as the expression of \"the essence of what it signifies.\" Once the believer understood this, while remaining obedient to God’s will, they could uncover the essence and divine truth of the objects inscribed with Arabic like amulets and talismans through the study of the letters of the Qur’an with alphanumeric computations.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In Islamic practice in Senegal and Gambia, just like many other West African countries, diviners and religious leaders and healers were interchangeable because Islam was closely related with esoteric practices (like divination), which were responsible for the regional spread of Islam. As scholars learned esoteric sciences, they joined local non-Islamic aristocratic courts, who quickly aligned divination and amulets with the \"proof of the power of Islamic religion.\" So strong was the idea of esoteric knowledge in West African Islam, diviners and magicians uneducated in Islamic texts and Arabic bore the same titles as those who did.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "From the beginning of Islam, there \"was (and is) still a vigorous debate about whether or not such [divinatory] practices were actually permissible under Islam,” with some scholars like Abu-Hamid al Ghazili (d. 1111) objecting to the science of divination because he believed it bore too much similarity to pagan practices of invoking spiritual entities that were not God. Other scholars justified esoteric sciences by comparing a practitioner to \"a physician trying to heal the sick with the help of the same natural principles.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Divination was a central component of ancient Mesoamerican religious life. Many Aztec gods, including central creator gods, were described as diviners and were closely associated with sorcery. Tezcatlipoca is the patron of sorcerers and practitioners of magic. His name means \"smoking mirror,\" a reference to a device used for divinatory scrying. In the Mayan Popol Vuh, the creator gods Xmucane and Xpiacoc perform divinatory hand casting during the creation of people. The Aztec Codex Borbonicus shows the original human couple, Oxomoco and Cipactonal, engaged in divining with kernels of maize. This primordial pair is associated with the ritual calendar, and the Aztecs considered them to be the first diviners.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Every civilization that developed in pre-Columbian Mexico, from the Olmecs to the Aztecs, practiced divination in daily life, both public and private. Scrying through the use of reflective water surfaces, mirrors, or the casting of lots were among the most widespread forms of divinatory practice. Visions derived from hallucinogens were another important form of divination, and are still widely used among contemporary diviners of Mexico. Among the more common hallucinogenic plants used in divination are morning glory, jimson weed, and peyote.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Theyyam or \"theiyam\" in Malayalam is the process by which a devotee invites a Hindu god or goddess to use his or her body as a medium or channel and answer other devotees' questions. The same is called \"arulvaakku\" or \"arulvaak\" in Tamil, another south Indian language - Adhiparasakthi Siddhar Peetam is famous for arulvakku in Tamil Nadu. The people in and around Mangalore in Karnataka call the same, Buta Kola, \"paathri\" or \"darshin\"; in other parts of Karnataka, it is known by various names such as, \"prashnaavali\", \"vaagdaana\", \"asei\", \"aashirvachana\", and so on. In Nepal it is known as, \"Devta ka dhaamee\" or \"jhaakri\".",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In English, the closest translation for these is, \"oracle.\" The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in northern India, still consults an oracle known as the Nechung Oracle, which is considered the official state oracle of the government of Tibet. The Dalai Lama has according to centuries-old custom, consulted the Nechung Oracle during the new year festivities of Losar.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Although Japan retains a history of traditional and local methods of divination, such as onmyōdō, contemporary divination in Japan, called uranai, derives from outside sources. Contemporary methods of divination in Japan include both Western and Chinese astrology, geomancy or feng shui, tarot cards, I Ching (Book of Changes) divination, and physiognomy (methods of reading the body to identify traits).",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In Japan, divination methods include Futomani from the Shinto tradition.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Personality typing as a form of divination has been prevalent in Japan since the 1980s. Various methods exist for divining personality type. Each attempt to reveal glimpses of an individual's destiny, productive and inhibiting traits, future parenting techniques, and compatibility in marriage. Personality type is increasingly important for young Japanese, who consider personality the driving factor of compatibility, given the ongoing marriage drought and birth rate decline in Japan.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "An import to Japan, Chinese zodiac signs based on the birth year in 12 year cycles (rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, cock, dog, and boar) are frequently combined with other forms of divination, such as so-called 'celestial types' based on the planets (Saturn, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, or Uranus). Personality can also be divined using cardinal directions, the four elements (water, earth, fire, air), and yin-yang. Names can also lend important personality information under name classification which asserts that names bearing certain Japanese vowel sounds (a, i, u, e, o) share common characteristics. Numerology, which utilizes methods of divining 'birth numbers' from significant numbers such as birth date, may also reveal character traits of individuals.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Individuals can also assess their own and others' personalities according to physical characteristics. Blood type remains a popular form of divination from physiology. Stemming from Western influences, body reading or ninsou, determines personality traits based on body measurements. The face is the most commonly analyzed feature, with eye size, pupil shape, mouth shape, and eyebrow shape representing the most important traits. An upturned mouth may be cheerful, and a triangle eyebrow may indicate that someone is strong-willed.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Methods of assessment in daily life may include self-taken measurements or quizzes. As such, magazines targeted at women in their early-to-mid twenties feature the highest concentration of personality assessment guides. There are approximately 144 different women's magazines, known as nihon zashi koukoku kyoukai, published in Japan aimed at this audience.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The adaptation of the Western divination method of tarot cards into Japanese culture presents a particularly unique example of contemporary divination as this adaptation mingles with Japan's robust visual culture. Japanese tarot cards are created by professional artists, advertisers, and fans of tarot. One tarot card collector claimed to have accumulated more than 1,500 Japan-made decks of tarot cards.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Japanese tarot cards fall into diverse categories such as:",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The images on tarot cards may come from images from Japanese popular culture, such as characters from manga and anime including Hello Kitty, or may feature cultural symbols. Tarot cards may adapt the images of Japanese historical figures, such as high priestess Himiko (170–248CE) or imperial court wizard Abe no Seimei (921–1005CE) . Still others may feature images of cultural displacement, such as English knights, pentagrams, the Jewish Torah, or invented glyphs. The introduction of such cards began by the 1930s and reached prominence 1970s. Japanese tarot cards were originally created by men, often based on the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot published by the Rider Company in London in 1909. Since, the practice of Japanese tarot has become overwhelmingly feminine and intertwined with kawaii culture. Referring to the cuteness of tarot cards, Japanese model Kuromiya Niina was quoted as saying \"because the images are cute, even holding them is enjoyable.\" While these differences exist, Japanese tarot cards function similarly to their Western counterparts. Cards are shuffled and cut into piles then used to forecast the future, for spiritual reflection, or as a tool for self-understanding.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "A common act of divination in Taiwan is called the Poe. “The Poe” translated to English means “moon boards”. It consists of two wood or bamboo blocks cut into the shape of a crescent moon. The one edge is rounded while the other is flat; the two are mirror images. Both crescents are held out in one's palms and while kneeling, they are raised to the forehead level. Once in this position, the blocks are dropped and the future can be understood depending on their landing. If both fall flat side up or both fall rounded side up, that can be taken as a failure of the deity to agree. If the blocks land one rounded and one flat, the deity indicates \"Yes\", or positive. “Laughing poe” is when rounded sides land down and they rock before coming to a standstill. “Negative poe” is when the flat sides fall downward and abruptly stop; this indicates \"No\". When there is a positive fall, it is called “Sacred poe”, although the negative falls are not usually taken seriously. As the blocks are being dropped the question is said in a murmur, and if the answer is yes, the blocks are dropped again. To make sure the answer is definitely a yes, the blocks must fall in a “yes” position three times in a row.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "A more serious type of divination is the Kiō-á. There is a small wooden chair, and around the sides of the chair are small pieces of wood that can move up and down in their sockets, this causes a clicking sounds when the chair is moved in any way. Two men hold this chair by its legs before an altar, while the incense is being burned, and the deity is invited to descend onto the chair. It is seen that it is in the chair by an onset of motion. Eventually, the chair crashes onto a table prepared with wood chips and burlap. The characters on the table are then traced and these are said to be written by the deity who possessed the chair, these characters are then interpreted for the devotees.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Divination is widespread throughout Africa. Among many examples it is one of the central tenets of Serer religion in Senegal. Only those who have been initiated as Saltigues (the Serer high priests and priestesses) can divine the future. These are the \"hereditary rain priests\" whose role is both religious and medicinal.",
"title": "Contemporary divination in Africa"
}
]
| Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic ritual or practice. Using various methods throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact or interaction with supernatural agencies such as spirits, gods, god-like-beings or the "will of the universe". Divination can be seen as a systematic approach to organizing what appears to be disjointed - random facets of existence - such that they provide insight into a problem or issue at hand. Some modern instruments or practices of divination for magical practices include Tarot-card reading, rune casting, tea-leaf reading, automatic writing, and water scrying. If a distinction is made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and religion. In its functional relation to magic in general, divination can have a preliminary and investigative role: Divination has long attracted criticism. In the modern era, it has been dismissed by the scientific community and by skeptics as being superstitious; experiments do not support the idea that divination techniques can actually predict the future more reliably or precisely than would be possible without it. In antiquity, divination came under attack from philosophers such as the Academic skeptic Cicero in De Divinatione and the Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus in Against the Astrologers. The satirist Lucian devoted an essay to Alexander the false prophet. | 2001-10-25T09:53:11Z | 2023-12-12T00:33:55Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divination |
8,693 | Diets of Nuremberg | The Diets of Nuremberg, also called the Imperial Diets of Nuremberg, took place at different times between the Middle Ages and the 17th century.
The first Diet of Nuremberg, in 1211, elected the future emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen as German king.
At the Diet of 1356 the Emperor Charles IV issued the Golden Bull of 1356, which required each Holy Roman Emperor to summon the first Imperial Diet after his election at Nuremberg. Apart from that, a number of other diets were held there.
Important to Protestantism were the Diets of 1522 ("First Diet of Nuremberg"), 1524 ("Second Diet of Nuremberg") and 1532 ("Third Diet of Nuremberg").
This Diet has become known mostly for the reaction of the papacy to the decision made on Luther at the Diet of Worms the previous year. The new pope, Adrian VI, sent his nuncio Francesco Chieregati to the Diet, to insist both that the Edict of Worms be executed and that action be taken promptly against Luther. This demand, however, was coupled with a promise of thorough reform in the Roman hierarchy, frankly admitting the partial guilt of the Vatican in the decline of the Church.
In the recess drafted on 9 February 1523, however, the German princes rejected this appeal. Using Adrian's admissions, they declared that they could not have it appear 'as though they wished to oppress evangelical truth and assist unchristian and evil abuses.'
This Diet generally took the same line as the previous one. The Estates reiterated their decision from the previous Diet. The Cardinal-legate, Campeggio, who was present, showed his disgust at the behaviour of the Estates. On 18 April, the Estates decided to call 'a general gathering of the German nation', to meet at Speyer the following year and to decide what would be done until the meeting of the general council of the Church which they demanded. This resulted in the Diet of Speyer (1526), which in turn was followed by the Diet of Speyer (1529). The latter included the Protestation at Speyer. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Diets of Nuremberg, also called the Imperial Diets of Nuremberg, took place at different times between the Middle Ages and the 17th century.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The first Diet of Nuremberg, in 1211, elected the future emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen as German king.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "At the Diet of 1356 the Emperor Charles IV issued the Golden Bull of 1356, which required each Holy Roman Emperor to summon the first Imperial Diet after his election at Nuremberg. Apart from that, a number of other diets were held there.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Important to Protestantism were the Diets of 1522 (\"First Diet of Nuremberg\"), 1524 (\"Second Diet of Nuremberg\") and 1532 (\"Third Diet of Nuremberg\").",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "This Diet has become known mostly for the reaction of the papacy to the decision made on Luther at the Diet of Worms the previous year. The new pope, Adrian VI, sent his nuncio Francesco Chieregati to the Diet, to insist both that the Edict of Worms be executed and that action be taken promptly against Luther. This demand, however, was coupled with a promise of thorough reform in the Roman hierarchy, frankly admitting the partial guilt of the Vatican in the decline of the Church.",
"title": "The 1522 Diet of Nuremberg"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the recess drafted on 9 February 1523, however, the German princes rejected this appeal. Using Adrian's admissions, they declared that they could not have it appear 'as though they wished to oppress evangelical truth and assist unchristian and evil abuses.'",
"title": "The 1522 Diet of Nuremberg"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "This Diet generally took the same line as the previous one. The Estates reiterated their decision from the previous Diet. The Cardinal-legate, Campeggio, who was present, showed his disgust at the behaviour of the Estates. On 18 April, the Estates decided to call 'a general gathering of the German nation', to meet at Speyer the following year and to decide what would be done until the meeting of the general council of the Church which they demanded. This resulted in the Diet of Speyer (1526), which in turn was followed by the Diet of Speyer (1529). The latter included the Protestation at Speyer.",
"title": "The 1524 Diet of Nuremberg"
}
]
| The Diets of Nuremberg, also called the Imperial Diets of Nuremberg, took place at different times between the Middle Ages and the 17th century. The first Diet of Nuremberg, in 1211, elected the future emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen as German king. At the Diet of 1356 the Emperor Charles IV issued the Golden Bull of 1356, which required each Holy Roman Emperor to summon the first Imperial Diet after his election at Nuremberg. Apart from that, a number of other diets were held there. Important to Protestantism were the Diets of 1522, 1524 and 1532. | 2022-08-20T12:21:39Z | [
"Template:Short description",
"Template:More citations needed",
"Template:Cite book"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diets_of_Nuremberg |
|
8,695 | Dr. Strangelove | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, known simply and more commonly as Dr. Strangelove, is a 1964 political satire black comedy film directed, co-written, and produced by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers in three roles, including the title character. The film also stars George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed. The film, which satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, is loosely based on the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kubrick and Terry Southern.
The story concerns an unhinged United States Air Force general who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It separately follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force exchange officer as they attempt to prevent the crew of a B-52 (following orders from the general) from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war.
The film is often considered one of the best comedies ever made and one of the greatest films of all time. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it twenty-sixth in its list of the best American movies (in the 2007 edition, the film ranked thirty-ninth), and in 2000, it was listed as number three on its list of the funniest American films. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress included Dr. Strangelove as one of the first 25 films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Sellers. The film was also nominated for seven BAFTA Film Awards, winning Best Film From Any Source, Best British Film, and Best Art Direction (Black and White), and it also won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
United States Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper is commander of Burpelson Air Force Base, which houses the 843rd Bomb Wing, flying B-52 bombers armed with hydrogen bombs. The planes are on airborne alert two hours from their targets inside the USSR.
General Ripper orders his executive officer, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (an exchange officer from the Royal Air Force), to put the base on alert, confiscate all privately owned radios from base personnel and issue "Wing Attack Plan R" to the patrolling bombers. All the aircraft commence attack flights on the USSR and set their radios to allow communications only through their CRM 114 discriminators, which are designed to accept only communications preceded by a secret three-letter code known only to General Ripper. Happening upon a radio that had been missed earlier and hearing regular civilian broadcasting, Mandrake realizes that no attack order has been issued by the Pentagon and tries to stop Ripper, who locks them both in his office. Ripper tells Mandrake that he believes the Soviets have been fluoridating American water supplies to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of Americans. Mandrake realizes Ripper has become insane.
In the War Room at the Pentagon, General Buck Turgidson briefs President Merkin Muffley and other officers about how "Plan R" enables a senior officer to launch a retaliatory nuclear attack on the Soviets if all superiors have been killed in a first strike on the United States. Trying every CRM code combination to issue a recall order would require two days, so Muffley orders the U.S. Army to storm the base and arrest General Ripper. Turgidson, noting the slim odds of recalling the planes in time, then proposes that Muffley not only let the attack proceed but send reinforcements. According to an unofficial study, this would result in "modest and acceptable civilian casualties" from the "badly damaged and uncoordinated" Soviet military remaining after the initial attack. Muffley rejects Turgidson's recommendation and instead brings Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadeski into the War Room to telephone Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissov on the "hotline". Muffley warns the Premier of the impending attack and offers to reveal the targets, flight plans, and defensive systems of the bombers so that the Soviets can protect themselves.
After a heated discussion with the Premier, the ambassador informs President Muffley that the Soviet Union created a doomsday machine as a nuclear deterrent; it consists of many buried bombs jacketed with "cobalt–thorium G", which are set to detonate automatically should any nuclear attack strike the country. The resulting nuclear fallout would then engulf the planet for 93 years, rendering the Earth's surface uninhabitable. The device cannot be deactivated, as it is programmed to explode if any such attempt is made. The President's German wheelchair-using scientific advisor, former Nazi Dr. Strangelove, points out that such a doomsday machine would only be an effective deterrent if everyone knew about it; de Sadeski replies that the Soviet Premier had planned to reveal its existence to the world the following week at the Party Congress.
U.S. Army troops arrive at Burpelson and battle with the garrison. After General Ripper commits suicide, Mandrake identifies Ripper's CRM code from doodles on his desk blotter and relays it to the Pentagon. Using the code, Strategic Air Command successfully recalls all of the bombers except for one, commanded by Major T. J. "King" Kong, due to the radio equipment being damaged by a Soviet SAM. The Soviets hunt the bomber, but Kong flies below radar and switches targets due to dwindling fuel. As the plane approaches the new target, a Soviet ICBM site, the crew is unable to open the damaged bomb bay doors. Kong enters the bay and repairs the electrical wiring while straddling an H-bomb, causing the doors to open, and the bomb to drop, with Kong on top of it. Kong joyously hoots and waves his cowboy hat as he rides the falling bomb to his death.
In the War Room, Dr. Strangelove recommends that the President gather several hundred thousand people to live in deep underground mines where the radiation will not penetrate. He suggests a 10:1 female-to-male ratio for a breeding program to repopulate the Earth once the radiation has subsided. Worried that the Soviets will do the same, Turgidson warns about a "mineshaft gap" while de Sadeski secretly photographs the War Room. Dr. Strangelove declares he has a plan, then suddenly rises from his wheelchair and exclaims, "Mein Führer, I can walk!" The film ends with a montage of nuclear explosions, accompanied by Vera Lynn's rendition of the song "We'll Meet Again".
Columbia Pictures agreed to finance the film if Peter Sellers played at least four major roles. The condition stemmed from the studio's opinion that much of the success of Kubrick's previous film Lolita (1962) was based on Sellers's performance, in which his single character assumes several identities. Sellers also played three roles in The Mouse That Roared (1959). Kubrick accepted the demand, later saying that "such crass and grotesque stipulations are the sine qua non of the motion-picture business."
Sellers ended up playing three of the four roles written for him. He had been expected to play Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 aircraft commander, but from the beginning, Sellers was reluctant. He felt his workload was too heavy and worried he would not properly portray the character's Texan English accent. Kubrick pleaded with him, and he asked the screenwriter Terry Southern (who had been raised in Texas) to record a tape with Kong's lines spoken in the correct accent, which he practiced using Southern's tapes. But after the start of shooting in the aircraft, Sellers sprained his ankle and could no longer work in the cramped aircraft mockup.
Sellers improvised much of his dialogue, with Kubrick incorporating the ad-libs into the written screenplay so that the improvised lines became part of the canonical screenplay, a practice known as retroscripting.
According to film critic Alexander Walker, the author of biographies of both Sellers and Kubrick, the role of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake was the easiest of the three for Sellers to play, since he was aided by his experience of mimicking his superiors while serving in the RAF during World War II. There is also a heavy resemblance to Sellers's friend and occasional co-star Terry-Thomas and the prosthetic-limbed RAF flying ace Sir Douglas Bader.
For his performance as President Merkin Muffley, Sellers assumed a Midwestern American English accent. Sellers drew inspiration for the role from Adlai Stevenson, a former Illinois governor who was the Democratic candidate for the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections and the U.N. ambassador during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In early takes, Sellers simulated cold symptoms to emphasize the character's apparent weakness. That caused frequent laughter among the film crew, ruining several takes. Kubrick ultimately found this comic portrayal inappropriate, feeling Muffley should be a serious character. In later takes, Sellers played the role straight, though the President's cold is still evident in several scenes.
Dr. Strangelove is a scientist and former Nazi, suggesting Operation Paperclip, the US effort to recruit top German technical talent at the end of World War II. He serves as President Muffley's scientific adviser in the War Room. When General Turgidson wonders aloud to Mr. Staines (Jack Creley), what kind of name "Strangelove" is, possibly a "Kraut name", Staines responds that Strangelove's original German surname was Merkwürdigliebe ("Strange love" in German) and that "he changed it when he became a citizen". Strangelove accidentally addresses the president as Mein Führer twice in the film. Dr. Strangelove did not appear in the book Red Alert.
The character is an amalgamation of RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (a central figure in Nazi Germany's rocket development program recruited to the US after the war), and Edward Teller, the "father of the hydrogen bomb". It is frequently claimed the character was based on Henry Kissinger, but Kubrick and Sellers denied this; Sellers said: "Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger—that's a popular misconception. It was always Wernher von Braun." Furthermore, Henry Kissinger points out in his memoirs that at the time of the writing of Dr. Strangelove, he was a little-known academic.
The wheelchair-using Strangelove furthers a Kubrick trope of the menacing, seated antagonist, first depicted in Lolita through the character "Dr. Zaempf". Strangelove's accent was influenced by that of Austrian-American photographer Weegee, who worked for Kubrick as a special photographic effects consultant. Strangelove's appearance echoes the mad scientist archetype as seen in the character Rotwang in Fritz Lang's film Metropolis (1927). Sellers's Strangelove takes from Rotwang the single black gloved hand (which, in Rotwang's case, is mechanical because of a lab accident), the wild hair, and, most importantly, his ability to avoid being controlled by political power. According to Alexander Walker, Sellers improvised Dr. Strangelove's lapse into the Nazi salute, borrowing one of Kubrick's black leather gloves for the uncontrollable hand that makes the gesture. Dr. Strangelove apparently has alien hand syndrome. Kubrick wore the gloves on the set to avoid being burned when handling hot lights, and Sellers, recognizing the potential connection to Lang's work, found them to be menacing.
Slim Pickens, an established character actor and veteran of many Western films, was eventually chosen to replace Sellers as Major Kong after Sellers' injury. John Wayne was offered the role after Sellers was injured, but he never responded to Kubrick's offer. Dan Blocker of the Bonanza western television series was also approached to play the part, but according to Southern, Blocker's agent rejected the script as being "too pinko". Kubrick then recruited Pickens, whom he knew from his brief involvement in a Marlon Brando western film project that was eventually filmed as One-Eyed Jacks.
His fellow actor James Earl Jones recalls, "He was Major Kong on and off the set—he didn't change a thing—his temperament, his language, his behavior." Pickens was not told that the movie was a black comedy, and he was only given the script for scenes he was in to get him to play it "straight".
Kubrick's biographer John Baxter explained, in the documentary Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove:
As it turns out, Slim Pickens had never left the United States. He had to hurry and get his first passport. He arrived on the set, and somebody said, "Gosh, he's arrived in costume!", not realizing that that's how he always dressed ... with the cowboy hat and the fringed jacket and the cowboy boots—and that he wasn't putting on the character—that's the way he talked.
Pickens, who had previously played only supporting and character roles, said that his appearance as Maj. Kong greatly improved his career. He later commented, "After Dr. Strangelove, my salary jumped five times, and assistant directors started saying 'Hey, Slim' instead of 'Hey, you'."
George C. Scott played the role of General Buck Turgidson, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this capacity General Turgidson was the nation's highest-ranking military officer and the principal military advisor to the President and the National Security Council. He is seen during most of the movie advising President Muffley on the best steps to take in order to stop the fleet of B-52 Stratofortresses that was deployed by Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper to drop nuclear bombs on Soviet soil.
According to James Earl Jones, Kubrick tricked Scott into playing the role of Gen. Turgidson in a much more outlandish manner than Scott was comfortable doing. Kubrick talked Scott into doing absurd "practice" takes, which Kubrick told Scott would never be used, as a way to warm up for the "real" takes. Kubrick used these takes rather than the more restrained ones in the final film, causing Scott to swear never to work with Kubrick again.
During the filming, Kubrick and Scott had different opinions regarding certain scenes, but Kubrick obtained Scott's compliance largely by beating him at chess, which they played frequently on the set.
Stanley Kubrick started with nothing but a vague idea to make a thriller about a nuclear accident that built on the widespread Cold War fear for survival. While doing research, Kubrick gradually became aware of the subtle and paradoxical "balance of terror" between nuclear powers. At Kubrick's request, Alastair Buchan (the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies) recommended the thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George. Kubrick was impressed with the book, which had also been praised by game theorist and future Nobel Prize in Economics winner Thomas Schelling in an article written for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and reprinted in The Observer, and immediately bought the film rights. In 2006, Schelling wrote that conversations between Kubrick, Schelling, and George in late 1960 about a treatment of Red Alert updated with intercontinental missiles eventually led to the making of the film.
In collaboration with George, Kubrick started writing a screenplay based on the book. While writing the screenplay, they benefited from some brief consultations with Schelling and later, Herman Kahn. In following the tone of the book, Kubrick originally intended to film the story as a serious drama. However, he began to see comedy inherent in the idea of mutual assured destruction as he wrote the first draft. He later said:
My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question.
Among the titles that Kubrick considered for the film were Dr. Doomsday or: How to Start World War III Without Even Trying, Dr. Strangelove's Secret Uses of Uranus, and Wonderful Bomb. After deciding to make the film a black comedy, Kubrick brought in Terry Southern as a co-writer in late 1962. The choice was influenced by reading Southern's comic novel The Magic Christian, which Kubrick had received as a gift from Peter Sellers, and which itself became a Sellers film in 1969. Southern made important contributions to the film, but his role led to a rift between Kubrick and Peter George; after Life magazine published a photo-essay on Southern in August 1964 which implied that Southern had been the script's principal author—a misperception neither Kubrick nor Southern did much to dispel— George wrote a letter to the magazine, published in its September 1964 issue, in which he pointed out that he had both written the film's source novel and collaborated on various incarnations of the script over a period of ten months, whereas "Southern was briefly employed ... to do some additional rewriting for Kubrick and myself and fittingly received a screenplay credit in third place behind Mr. Kubrick and myself."
Dr. Strangelove was filmed at Shepperton Studios, near London, as Sellers was in the middle of a divorce at the time and unable to leave England. The sets occupied three main sound stages: the Pentagon War Room, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber and the last one containing both the motel room and General Ripper's office and outside corridor. The studio's buildings were also used as the Air Force base exterior. The film's set design was done by Ken Adam, the production designer of several James Bond films (at the time he had already worked on Dr. No). The black-and-white cinematography was by Gilbert Taylor, and the film was edited by Anthony Harvey and an uncredited Kubrick. The original musical score for the film was composed by Laurie Johnson and the special effects were by Wally Veevers. The opening theme is an instrumental version of "Try a Little Tenderness." The theme of the chorus from the bomb run scene is a modification of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Sellers and Kubrick got along well during the film's production and shared a love of photography.
For the War Room, Ken Adam first designed a two-level set which Kubrick initially liked, only to decide later that it was not what he wanted. Adam next began work on the design that was used in the film, an expressionist set that was compared with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It was an enormous concrete room (130 feet (40 m) long and 100 feet (30 m) wide, with a 35-foot (11 m)-high ceiling) suggesting a bomb shelter, with a triangular shape (based on Kubrick's idea that this particular shape would prove the most resistant against an explosion). One side of the room was covered with gigantic strategic maps reflecting in a shiny black floor inspired by dance scenes in Fred Astaire films. In the middle of the room there was a large circular table lit from above by a circle of lamps, suggesting a poker table. Kubrick insisted that the table would be covered with green baize (although this could not be seen in the black-and-white film) to reinforce the actors' impression that they are playing 'a game of poker for the fate of the world.' Kubrick asked Adam to build the set ceiling in concrete to force the director of photography to use only the on-set lights from the circle of lamps. Moreover, each lamp in the circle of lights was carefully placed and tested until Kubrick was happy with the result.
Lacking cooperation from the Pentagon in the making of the film, the set designers reconstructed the aircraft cockpit to the best of their ability by comparing the cockpit of a B-29 Superfortress and a single photograph of the cockpit of a B-52 and relating this to the geometry of the B-52's fuselage. The B-52 was state-of-the-art in the 1960s, and its cockpit was off-limits to the film crew. When some United States Air Force personnel were invited to view the reconstructed B-52 cockpit, they said that "it was absolutely correct, even to the little black box which was the CRM." It was so accurate that Kubrick was concerned about whether Adam's team had carried out all its research legally.
In several shots of the B-52 flying over the polar ice en route to Russia, the shadow of the actual camera plane, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, is visible on the icecap below. The B-52 was a scale model composited into the Arctic footage, which was sped up to create a sense of jet speed. Home movie footage included in Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove on the 2001 Special Edition DVD release of the film shows clips of the B-17 with a cursive "Dr. Strangelove" painted over the rear entry hatch on the right side of the fuselage.
In 1967, some of the flying footage from Dr. Strangelove was re-used in The Beatles' television film Magical Mystery Tour. As told by editor Roy Benson in the BBC Radio Documentary Celluloid Beatles, the production team of Magical Mystery Tour lacked footage to cover the sequence for the song "Flying." Benson had access to the aerial footage filmed for the B-52 sequences of Dr. Strangelove, which was stored at Shepperton Studios. The use of the footage prompted Kubrick to call Benson to complain.
Red Alert author Peter George collaborated on the screenplay with Kubrick and satirist Terry Southern. Red Alert was more solemn than its film version, and it did not include the character Dr. Strangelove, though the main plot and technical elements were quite similar. A novelization of the actual film, rather than a reprint of the original novel, was published by Peter George, based on an early draft in which the narrative is bookended by the account of aliens, who, having arrived at a desolated Earth, try to piece together what has happened. It was reissued in October 2015 by Candy Jar Books, featuring never-before-published material on Strangelove's early career.
During the filming of Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick learned that Fail Safe, a film with a similar theme, was being produced. Although Fail Safe was to be an ultrarealistic thriller, Kubrick feared that its plot resemblance would damage his film's box office potential, especially if it were released first. Indeed, the novel Fail-Safe (on which the film is based) is so similar to Red Alert that Peter George sued on charges of plagiarism and settled out of court. What worried Kubrick the most was that Fail Safe boasted the acclaimed director Sidney Lumet and the first-rate dramatic actors Henry Fonda as the American president and Walter Matthau as the advisor to the Pentagon, Professor Groeteschele. Kubrick decided to throw a legal wrench into Fail Safe's production gears. Lumet recalled in the documentary Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove: "We started casting. Fonda was already set ... which of course meant a big commitment in terms of money. I was set, Walter [Bernstein, the screenwriter] was set ... And suddenly, this lawsuit arrived, filed by Stanley Kubrick and Columbia Pictures."
Kubrick argued that Fail Safe's own source novel Fail-Safe (1962) had been plagiarized from Peter George's Red Alert, to which Kubrick owned creative rights. He pointed out unmistakable similarities in intentions between the characters Groeteschele and Strangelove. The plan worked, and the suit was settled out of court, with the agreement that Columbia Pictures, which had financed and was distributing Strangelove, also buy Fail Safe, which had been an independently financed production. Kubrick insisted that the studio release his movie first, and Fail Safe opened eight months after Dr. Strangelove, to critical acclaim but mediocre ticket sales.
The end of the film shows Dr. Strangelove exclaiming, "Mein Führer, I can walk!" before cutting to footage of nuclear explosions, with Vera Lynn and her audience singing "We'll Meet Again". This footage comes from nuclear tests such as shot "Baker" of Operation Crossroads at Bikini Atoll, the Trinity test, a test from Operation Sandstone and the hydrogen bomb tests from Operation Redwing and Operation Ivy. In some shots, old warships (such as the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen), which were used as targets, are plainly visible. In others, the smoke trails of rockets used to create a calibration backdrop can be seen. Former Goon Show writer and friend of Sellers Spike Milligan was credited with suggesting Vera Lynn's song for the ending.
It was originally planned for the film to end with a scene that depicted everyone in the War Room involved in a pie fight. Accounts vary as to why the pie fight was cut. In a 1969 interview, Kubrick said, "I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film." Critic Alexander Walker observed that "the cream pies were flying around so thickly that people lost definition, and you couldn't really say whom you were looking at." Nile Southern, son of screenwriter Terry Southern, suggested the fight was intended to be less jovial: "Since they were laughing, it was unusable, because instead of having that totally black, which would have been amazing, like, this blizzard, which in a sense is metaphorical for all of the missiles that are coming, as well, you just have these guys having a good old time. So, as Kubrick later said, 'it was a disaster of Homeric proportions.'"
A first test screening of the film was scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The film was just weeks from its scheduled premiere, but because of the assassination, the release was delayed until late January 1964, as it was felt that the public was in no mood for such a film any sooner.
During post-production, one line by Slim Pickens, "a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff", was dubbed to change "Dallas" to "Vegas", since Dallas was where Kennedy was killed. The original reference to Dallas survives in the English audio of the French-subtitled version of the film.
The assassination also serves as another possible reason that the pie-fight scene was cut. In the scene, after Muffley takes a pie in the face, General Turgidson exclaims: "Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime!" Editor Anthony Harvey stated that the scene "would have stayed, except that Columbia Pictures were horrified, and thought it would offend the president's family." Kubrick and others have said that the scene had already been cut before preview night because it was inconsistent with the rest of the film.
In 1994, the film was re-released. While the 1964 release used a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the new print was in the slightly squarer 1.66:1 (5:3) ratio that Kubrick had originally intended.
Dr. Strangelove ridicules nuclear war planning. It mocks numerous contemporary Cold War attitudes such as the "missile gap" but it primarily directs its satire on the theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD), in which each side is supposed to be deterred from a nuclear war by the prospect of a universal cataclysm regardless of who "won". Military strategist and former physicist Herman Kahn, in the book On Thermonuclear War (1960), used the theoretical example of a "doomsday machine" to illustrate the limitations of MAD, which was developed by John von Neumann.
The concept of such a machine is consistent with MAD doctrine when it is logically pursued to its conclusion. It thus worried Kahn that the military might like the idea of a doomsday machine and build one. Kahn, a leading critic of MAD and the Eisenhower administration's doctrine of massive retaliation upon the slightest provocation by the USSR, considered MAD to be foolish bravado, and urged America to instead plan for proportionality, and thus even a limited nuclear war. With this reasoning, Kahn became one of the architects of the flexible response doctrine which, while superficially resembling MAD, allowed for the possibility of responding to a limited nuclear strike with a proportional, or calibrated, return of fire (see Conflict escalation).
Kahn educated Kubrick on the concept of the semi-realistic "cobalt-thorium G" doomsday machine, and then Kubrick used the concept for the film. Kahn in his writings and talks would often come across as cold and calculating, for example, with his use of the term "megadeaths" and in his willingness to estimate how many human lives the United States could lose and still rebuild economically. Kahn's dispassionate attitude towards millions of deaths is reflected in Turgidson's remark to the president about the outcome of a preemptive nuclear war: "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks." Turgidson has a binder that is labelled "World Targets in Megadeaths," a term coined in 1953 by Kahn and popularized in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War.
The fallout-shelter-network proposal mentioned in the film, with its inherently high radiation protection characteristics, has similarities and contrasts to that of the real Swiss civil defense network. Switzerland has an overcapacity of nuclear fallout shelters for the country's population size, and by law, new homes must still be built with a fallout shelter. If the US did that, it would violate the spirit of MAD and, according to MAD adherents, allegedly destabilize the situation because the US could launch a first strike and its population would largely survive a retaliatory second strike (see MAD § Theory).
To rebut early 1960s novels and Hollywood films like Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove, which raised questions about US control over nuclear weapons, the Air Force produced a documentary film, SAC Command Post, to demonstrate its responsiveness to presidential command and its tight control over nuclear weapons. However, later academic research into declassified documents showed that U.S. military commanders had been given presidentially-authorized pre-delegation for the use of nuclear weapons during the early Cold War, showing that this aspect of the film's plot was plausible.
The characters of Buck Turgidson and Jack Ripper both satirize the real-life Gen. Curtis LeMay of the Strategic Air Command.
In the months following the film's release, director Stanley Kubrick received a fan letter from Legrace G. Benson of the Department of History of Art at Cornell University interpreting the film as being sexually-layered. The director wrote back to Benson and confirmed the interpretation, "Seriously, you are the first one who seems to have noticed the sexual framework from intromission (the planes going in) to the last spasm (Kong's ride down and detonation at target)."
The film was a popular success, earning US$4,420,000 in rentals in North America during its initial theatrical release.
Dr. Strangelove is Kubrick's highest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes, holding a 98% approval rating based on 96 reviews, with an average rating of 9.1/10. The site's summary states that "Stanley Kubrick's brilliant Cold War satire remains as funny and razor-sharp today as it was in 1964." The film also holds a score of 97 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 32 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". The film is ranked number 7 in the All-Time High Scores chart of Metacritic's Video/DVD section. It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Dr. Strangelove is on Roger Ebert's list of The Great Movies, and he described it as "arguably the best political satire of the century". One of the most celebrated of all film comedies, in 1998, Time Out conducted a reader's poll and Dr. Strangelove was voted the 47th greatest film of all time. Entertainment Weekly voted it at No. 14 on their list of 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. in 2002, it was ranked as the 5th best film in Sight & Sound poll of best films. John Patterson of The Guardian wrote, "There had been nothing in comedy like Dr Strangelove ever before. All the gods before whom the America of the stolid, paranoid 50s had genuflected—the Bomb, the Pentagon, the National Security State, the President himself, Texan masculinity and the alleged Commie menace of water-fluoridation—went into the wood-chipper and never got the same respect ever again." It is also listed as number 26 on Empire's 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, and in 2010 it was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best films since the publication's inception in 1923. The Writers Guild of America ranked its screenplay the 12th best ever written.
In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 24th greatest comedic film of all time. The film ranked 42nd in BBCs 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films. The film was selected as the 2nd best comedy of all time in a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017.
Columbia Pictures' early reaction to Dr. Strangelove was anything but enthusiastic. In "Notes From The War Room", in the summer 1994 issue of Grand Street magazine, co-screenwriter Terry Southern recalled that, as production neared the end, "It was about this time that word began to reach us, reflecting concern as to the nature of the film in production. Was it anti-American? Or just anti-military? And the jackpot question: Was it, in fact, anti-American to whatever extent it was anti-military?"
Southern recalled how Kubrick grew concerned about seeming apathy and distancing by studio heads Abe Schneider and Mo Rothman, and by Columbia's characterization of the film as "just a zany, novelty flick which did not reflect the views of the corporation in any way." Southern noted that Rothman was in "prominent attendance" at a ceremony in 1989 when the Library of Congress announced it as one of the first 25 films on the National Film Registry.
The film ranked No. 32 on TV Guide's list of the 50 Greatest Movies on TV (and Video).
American Film Institute included the film as #26 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies, #3 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs, #64 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes ("Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!") and #39 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).
In 1995, Kubrick enlisted Terry Southern to script a sequel titled Son of Strangelove. Kubrick had Terry Gilliam in mind to direct. The script was never completed, but index cards laying out the story's basic structure were found among Southern's papers after he died in October 1995. It was set largely in underground bunkers, where Dr. Strangelove had taken refuge with a group of women.
In 2013, Gilliam commented, "I was told after Kubrick died—by someone who had been dealing with him—that he had been interested in trying to do another Strangelove with me directing. I never knew about that until after he died but I would have loved to."
On July 14, 2023, it was announced that a stage adaptation of the film, co-adapted by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley and starring Steve Coogan will premiere in London's West End in autumn 2024. It will be the first stage adaptation of Kubrick's works.
Papers
Metadata | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, known simply and more commonly as Dr. Strangelove, is a 1964 political satire black comedy film directed, co-written, and produced by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers in three roles, including the title character. The film also stars George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed. The film, which satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, is loosely based on the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kubrick and Terry Southern.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The story concerns an unhinged United States Air Force general who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It separately follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force exchange officer as they attempt to prevent the crew of a B-52 (following orders from the general) from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The film is often considered one of the best comedies ever made and one of the greatest films of all time. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it twenty-sixth in its list of the best American movies (in the 2007 edition, the film ranked thirty-ninth), and in 2000, it was listed as number three on its list of the funniest American films. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress included Dr. Strangelove as one of the first 25 films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for being \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\". The film received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Sellers. The film was also nominated for seven BAFTA Film Awards, winning Best Film From Any Source, Best British Film, and Best Art Direction (Black and White), and it also won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "United States Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper is commander of Burpelson Air Force Base, which houses the 843rd Bomb Wing, flying B-52 bombers armed with hydrogen bombs. The planes are on airborne alert two hours from their targets inside the USSR.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "General Ripper orders his executive officer, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (an exchange officer from the Royal Air Force), to put the base on alert, confiscate all privately owned radios from base personnel and issue \"Wing Attack Plan R\" to the patrolling bombers. All the aircraft commence attack flights on the USSR and set their radios to allow communications only through their CRM 114 discriminators, which are designed to accept only communications preceded by a secret three-letter code known only to General Ripper. Happening upon a radio that had been missed earlier and hearing regular civilian broadcasting, Mandrake realizes that no attack order has been issued by the Pentagon and tries to stop Ripper, who locks them both in his office. Ripper tells Mandrake that he believes the Soviets have been fluoridating American water supplies to pollute the \"precious bodily fluids\" of Americans. Mandrake realizes Ripper has become insane.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the War Room at the Pentagon, General Buck Turgidson briefs President Merkin Muffley and other officers about how \"Plan R\" enables a senior officer to launch a retaliatory nuclear attack on the Soviets if all superiors have been killed in a first strike on the United States. Trying every CRM code combination to issue a recall order would require two days, so Muffley orders the U.S. Army to storm the base and arrest General Ripper. Turgidson, noting the slim odds of recalling the planes in time, then proposes that Muffley not only let the attack proceed but send reinforcements. According to an unofficial study, this would result in \"modest and acceptable civilian casualties\" from the \"badly damaged and uncoordinated\" Soviet military remaining after the initial attack. Muffley rejects Turgidson's recommendation and instead brings Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadeski into the War Room to telephone Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissov on the \"hotline\". Muffley warns the Premier of the impending attack and offers to reveal the targets, flight plans, and defensive systems of the bombers so that the Soviets can protect themselves.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "After a heated discussion with the Premier, the ambassador informs President Muffley that the Soviet Union created a doomsday machine as a nuclear deterrent; it consists of many buried bombs jacketed with \"cobalt–thorium G\", which are set to detonate automatically should any nuclear attack strike the country. The resulting nuclear fallout would then engulf the planet for 93 years, rendering the Earth's surface uninhabitable. The device cannot be deactivated, as it is programmed to explode if any such attempt is made. The President's German wheelchair-using scientific advisor, former Nazi Dr. Strangelove, points out that such a doomsday machine would only be an effective deterrent if everyone knew about it; de Sadeski replies that the Soviet Premier had planned to reveal its existence to the world the following week at the Party Congress.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "U.S. Army troops arrive at Burpelson and battle with the garrison. After General Ripper commits suicide, Mandrake identifies Ripper's CRM code from doodles on his desk blotter and relays it to the Pentagon. Using the code, Strategic Air Command successfully recalls all of the bombers except for one, commanded by Major T. J. \"King\" Kong, due to the radio equipment being damaged by a Soviet SAM. The Soviets hunt the bomber, but Kong flies below radar and switches targets due to dwindling fuel. As the plane approaches the new target, a Soviet ICBM site, the crew is unable to open the damaged bomb bay doors. Kong enters the bay and repairs the electrical wiring while straddling an H-bomb, causing the doors to open, and the bomb to drop, with Kong on top of it. Kong joyously hoots and waves his cowboy hat as he rides the falling bomb to his death.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In the War Room, Dr. Strangelove recommends that the President gather several hundred thousand people to live in deep underground mines where the radiation will not penetrate. He suggests a 10:1 female-to-male ratio for a breeding program to repopulate the Earth once the radiation has subsided. Worried that the Soviets will do the same, Turgidson warns about a \"mineshaft gap\" while de Sadeski secretly photographs the War Room. Dr. Strangelove declares he has a plan, then suddenly rises from his wheelchair and exclaims, \"Mein Führer, I can walk!\" The film ends with a montage of nuclear explosions, accompanied by Vera Lynn's rendition of the song \"We'll Meet Again\".",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Columbia Pictures agreed to finance the film if Peter Sellers played at least four major roles. The condition stemmed from the studio's opinion that much of the success of Kubrick's previous film Lolita (1962) was based on Sellers's performance, in which his single character assumes several identities. Sellers also played three roles in The Mouse That Roared (1959). Kubrick accepted the demand, later saying that \"such crass and grotesque stipulations are the sine qua non of the motion-picture business.\"",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Sellers ended up playing three of the four roles written for him. He had been expected to play Air Force Major T. J. \"King\" Kong, the B-52 aircraft commander, but from the beginning, Sellers was reluctant. He felt his workload was too heavy and worried he would not properly portray the character's Texan English accent. Kubrick pleaded with him, and he asked the screenwriter Terry Southern (who had been raised in Texas) to record a tape with Kong's lines spoken in the correct accent, which he practiced using Southern's tapes. But after the start of shooting in the aircraft, Sellers sprained his ankle and could no longer work in the cramped aircraft mockup.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Sellers improvised much of his dialogue, with Kubrick incorporating the ad-libs into the written screenplay so that the improvised lines became part of the canonical screenplay, a practice known as retroscripting.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "According to film critic Alexander Walker, the author of biographies of both Sellers and Kubrick, the role of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake was the easiest of the three for Sellers to play, since he was aided by his experience of mimicking his superiors while serving in the RAF during World War II. There is also a heavy resemblance to Sellers's friend and occasional co-star Terry-Thomas and the prosthetic-limbed RAF flying ace Sir Douglas Bader.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "For his performance as President Merkin Muffley, Sellers assumed a Midwestern American English accent. Sellers drew inspiration for the role from Adlai Stevenson, a former Illinois governor who was the Democratic candidate for the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections and the U.N. ambassador during the Cuban Missile Crisis.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In early takes, Sellers simulated cold symptoms to emphasize the character's apparent weakness. That caused frequent laughter among the film crew, ruining several takes. Kubrick ultimately found this comic portrayal inappropriate, feeling Muffley should be a serious character. In later takes, Sellers played the role straight, though the President's cold is still evident in several scenes.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Dr. Strangelove is a scientist and former Nazi, suggesting Operation Paperclip, the US effort to recruit top German technical talent at the end of World War II. He serves as President Muffley's scientific adviser in the War Room. When General Turgidson wonders aloud to Mr. Staines (Jack Creley), what kind of name \"Strangelove\" is, possibly a \"Kraut name\", Staines responds that Strangelove's original German surname was Merkwürdigliebe (\"Strange love\" in German) and that \"he changed it when he became a citizen\". Strangelove accidentally addresses the president as Mein Führer twice in the film. Dr. Strangelove did not appear in the book Red Alert.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The character is an amalgamation of RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (a central figure in Nazi Germany's rocket development program recruited to the US after the war), and Edward Teller, the \"father of the hydrogen bomb\". It is frequently claimed the character was based on Henry Kissinger, but Kubrick and Sellers denied this; Sellers said: \"Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger—that's a popular misconception. It was always Wernher von Braun.\" Furthermore, Henry Kissinger points out in his memoirs that at the time of the writing of Dr. Strangelove, he was a little-known academic.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The wheelchair-using Strangelove furthers a Kubrick trope of the menacing, seated antagonist, first depicted in Lolita through the character \"Dr. Zaempf\". Strangelove's accent was influenced by that of Austrian-American photographer Weegee, who worked for Kubrick as a special photographic effects consultant. Strangelove's appearance echoes the mad scientist archetype as seen in the character Rotwang in Fritz Lang's film Metropolis (1927). Sellers's Strangelove takes from Rotwang the single black gloved hand (which, in Rotwang's case, is mechanical because of a lab accident), the wild hair, and, most importantly, his ability to avoid being controlled by political power. According to Alexander Walker, Sellers improvised Dr. Strangelove's lapse into the Nazi salute, borrowing one of Kubrick's black leather gloves for the uncontrollable hand that makes the gesture. Dr. Strangelove apparently has alien hand syndrome. Kubrick wore the gloves on the set to avoid being burned when handling hot lights, and Sellers, recognizing the potential connection to Lang's work, found them to be menacing.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Slim Pickens, an established character actor and veteran of many Western films, was eventually chosen to replace Sellers as Major Kong after Sellers' injury. John Wayne was offered the role after Sellers was injured, but he never responded to Kubrick's offer. Dan Blocker of the Bonanza western television series was also approached to play the part, but according to Southern, Blocker's agent rejected the script as being \"too pinko\". Kubrick then recruited Pickens, whom he knew from his brief involvement in a Marlon Brando western film project that was eventually filmed as One-Eyed Jacks.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "His fellow actor James Earl Jones recalls, \"He was Major Kong on and off the set—he didn't change a thing—his temperament, his language, his behavior.\" Pickens was not told that the movie was a black comedy, and he was only given the script for scenes he was in to get him to play it \"straight\".",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Kubrick's biographer John Baxter explained, in the documentary Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove:",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "As it turns out, Slim Pickens had never left the United States. He had to hurry and get his first passport. He arrived on the set, and somebody said, \"Gosh, he's arrived in costume!\", not realizing that that's how he always dressed ... with the cowboy hat and the fringed jacket and the cowboy boots—and that he wasn't putting on the character—that's the way he talked.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Pickens, who had previously played only supporting and character roles, said that his appearance as Maj. Kong greatly improved his career. He later commented, \"After Dr. Strangelove, my salary jumped five times, and assistant directors started saying 'Hey, Slim' instead of 'Hey, you'.\"",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "George C. Scott played the role of General Buck Turgidson, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this capacity General Turgidson was the nation's highest-ranking military officer and the principal military advisor to the President and the National Security Council. He is seen during most of the movie advising President Muffley on the best steps to take in order to stop the fleet of B-52 Stratofortresses that was deployed by Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper to drop nuclear bombs on Soviet soil.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "According to James Earl Jones, Kubrick tricked Scott into playing the role of Gen. Turgidson in a much more outlandish manner than Scott was comfortable doing. Kubrick talked Scott into doing absurd \"practice\" takes, which Kubrick told Scott would never be used, as a way to warm up for the \"real\" takes. Kubrick used these takes rather than the more restrained ones in the final film, causing Scott to swear never to work with Kubrick again.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "During the filming, Kubrick and Scott had different opinions regarding certain scenes, but Kubrick obtained Scott's compliance largely by beating him at chess, which they played frequently on the set.",
"title": "Cast"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Stanley Kubrick started with nothing but a vague idea to make a thriller about a nuclear accident that built on the widespread Cold War fear for survival. While doing research, Kubrick gradually became aware of the subtle and paradoxical \"balance of terror\" between nuclear powers. At Kubrick's request, Alastair Buchan (the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies) recommended the thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George. Kubrick was impressed with the book, which had also been praised by game theorist and future Nobel Prize in Economics winner Thomas Schelling in an article written for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and reprinted in The Observer, and immediately bought the film rights. In 2006, Schelling wrote that conversations between Kubrick, Schelling, and George in late 1960 about a treatment of Red Alert updated with intercontinental missiles eventually led to the making of the film.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In collaboration with George, Kubrick started writing a screenplay based on the book. While writing the screenplay, they benefited from some brief consultations with Schelling and later, Herman Kahn. In following the tone of the book, Kubrick originally intended to film the story as a serious drama. However, he began to see comedy inherent in the idea of mutual assured destruction as he wrote the first draft. He later said:",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Among the titles that Kubrick considered for the film were Dr. Doomsday or: How to Start World War III Without Even Trying, Dr. Strangelove's Secret Uses of Uranus, and Wonderful Bomb. After deciding to make the film a black comedy, Kubrick brought in Terry Southern as a co-writer in late 1962. The choice was influenced by reading Southern's comic novel The Magic Christian, which Kubrick had received as a gift from Peter Sellers, and which itself became a Sellers film in 1969. Southern made important contributions to the film, but his role led to a rift between Kubrick and Peter George; after Life magazine published a photo-essay on Southern in August 1964 which implied that Southern had been the script's principal author—a misperception neither Kubrick nor Southern did much to dispel— George wrote a letter to the magazine, published in its September 1964 issue, in which he pointed out that he had both written the film's source novel and collaborated on various incarnations of the script over a period of ten months, whereas \"Southern was briefly employed ... to do some additional rewriting for Kubrick and myself and fittingly received a screenplay credit in third place behind Mr. Kubrick and myself.\"",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Dr. Strangelove was filmed at Shepperton Studios, near London, as Sellers was in the middle of a divorce at the time and unable to leave England. The sets occupied three main sound stages: the Pentagon War Room, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber and the last one containing both the motel room and General Ripper's office and outside corridor. The studio's buildings were also used as the Air Force base exterior. The film's set design was done by Ken Adam, the production designer of several James Bond films (at the time he had already worked on Dr. No). The black-and-white cinematography was by Gilbert Taylor, and the film was edited by Anthony Harvey and an uncredited Kubrick. The original musical score for the film was composed by Laurie Johnson and the special effects were by Wally Veevers. The opening theme is an instrumental version of \"Try a Little Tenderness.\" The theme of the chorus from the bomb run scene is a modification of \"When Johnny Comes Marching Home.\" Sellers and Kubrick got along well during the film's production and shared a love of photography.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "For the War Room, Ken Adam first designed a two-level set which Kubrick initially liked, only to decide later that it was not what he wanted. Adam next began work on the design that was used in the film, an expressionist set that was compared with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It was an enormous concrete room (130 feet (40 m) long and 100 feet (30 m) wide, with a 35-foot (11 m)-high ceiling) suggesting a bomb shelter, with a triangular shape (based on Kubrick's idea that this particular shape would prove the most resistant against an explosion). One side of the room was covered with gigantic strategic maps reflecting in a shiny black floor inspired by dance scenes in Fred Astaire films. In the middle of the room there was a large circular table lit from above by a circle of lamps, suggesting a poker table. Kubrick insisted that the table would be covered with green baize (although this could not be seen in the black-and-white film) to reinforce the actors' impression that they are playing 'a game of poker for the fate of the world.' Kubrick asked Adam to build the set ceiling in concrete to force the director of photography to use only the on-set lights from the circle of lamps. Moreover, each lamp in the circle of lights was carefully placed and tested until Kubrick was happy with the result.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Lacking cooperation from the Pentagon in the making of the film, the set designers reconstructed the aircraft cockpit to the best of their ability by comparing the cockpit of a B-29 Superfortress and a single photograph of the cockpit of a B-52 and relating this to the geometry of the B-52's fuselage. The B-52 was state-of-the-art in the 1960s, and its cockpit was off-limits to the film crew. When some United States Air Force personnel were invited to view the reconstructed B-52 cockpit, they said that \"it was absolutely correct, even to the little black box which was the CRM.\" It was so accurate that Kubrick was concerned about whether Adam's team had carried out all its research legally.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In several shots of the B-52 flying over the polar ice en route to Russia, the shadow of the actual camera plane, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, is visible on the icecap below. The B-52 was a scale model composited into the Arctic footage, which was sped up to create a sense of jet speed. Home movie footage included in Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove on the 2001 Special Edition DVD release of the film shows clips of the B-17 with a cursive \"Dr. Strangelove\" painted over the rear entry hatch on the right side of the fuselage.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 1967, some of the flying footage from Dr. Strangelove was re-used in The Beatles' television film Magical Mystery Tour. As told by editor Roy Benson in the BBC Radio Documentary Celluloid Beatles, the production team of Magical Mystery Tour lacked footage to cover the sequence for the song \"Flying.\" Benson had access to the aerial footage filmed for the B-52 sequences of Dr. Strangelove, which was stored at Shepperton Studios. The use of the footage prompted Kubrick to call Benson to complain.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Red Alert author Peter George collaborated on the screenplay with Kubrick and satirist Terry Southern. Red Alert was more solemn than its film version, and it did not include the character Dr. Strangelove, though the main plot and technical elements were quite similar. A novelization of the actual film, rather than a reprint of the original novel, was published by Peter George, based on an early draft in which the narrative is bookended by the account of aliens, who, having arrived at a desolated Earth, try to piece together what has happened. It was reissued in October 2015 by Candy Jar Books, featuring never-before-published material on Strangelove's early career.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "During the filming of Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick learned that Fail Safe, a film with a similar theme, was being produced. Although Fail Safe was to be an ultrarealistic thriller, Kubrick feared that its plot resemblance would damage his film's box office potential, especially if it were released first. Indeed, the novel Fail-Safe (on which the film is based) is so similar to Red Alert that Peter George sued on charges of plagiarism and settled out of court. What worried Kubrick the most was that Fail Safe boasted the acclaimed director Sidney Lumet and the first-rate dramatic actors Henry Fonda as the American president and Walter Matthau as the advisor to the Pentagon, Professor Groeteschele. Kubrick decided to throw a legal wrench into Fail Safe's production gears. Lumet recalled in the documentary Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove: \"We started casting. Fonda was already set ... which of course meant a big commitment in terms of money. I was set, Walter [Bernstein, the screenwriter] was set ... And suddenly, this lawsuit arrived, filed by Stanley Kubrick and Columbia Pictures.\"",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Kubrick argued that Fail Safe's own source novel Fail-Safe (1962) had been plagiarized from Peter George's Red Alert, to which Kubrick owned creative rights. He pointed out unmistakable similarities in intentions between the characters Groeteschele and Strangelove. The plan worked, and the suit was settled out of court, with the agreement that Columbia Pictures, which had financed and was distributing Strangelove, also buy Fail Safe, which had been an independently financed production. Kubrick insisted that the studio release his movie first, and Fail Safe opened eight months after Dr. Strangelove, to critical acclaim but mediocre ticket sales.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The end of the film shows Dr. Strangelove exclaiming, \"Mein Führer, I can walk!\" before cutting to footage of nuclear explosions, with Vera Lynn and her audience singing \"We'll Meet Again\". This footage comes from nuclear tests such as shot \"Baker\" of Operation Crossroads at Bikini Atoll, the Trinity test, a test from Operation Sandstone and the hydrogen bomb tests from Operation Redwing and Operation Ivy. In some shots, old warships (such as the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen), which were used as targets, are plainly visible. In others, the smoke trails of rockets used to create a calibration backdrop can be seen. Former Goon Show writer and friend of Sellers Spike Milligan was credited with suggesting Vera Lynn's song for the ending.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "It was originally planned for the film to end with a scene that depicted everyone in the War Room involved in a pie fight. Accounts vary as to why the pie fight was cut. In a 1969 interview, Kubrick said, \"I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film.\" Critic Alexander Walker observed that \"the cream pies were flying around so thickly that people lost definition, and you couldn't really say whom you were looking at.\" Nile Southern, son of screenwriter Terry Southern, suggested the fight was intended to be less jovial: \"Since they were laughing, it was unusable, because instead of having that totally black, which would have been amazing, like, this blizzard, which in a sense is metaphorical for all of the missiles that are coming, as well, you just have these guys having a good old time. So, as Kubrick later said, 'it was a disaster of Homeric proportions.'\"",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "A first test screening of the film was scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The film was just weeks from its scheduled premiere, but because of the assassination, the release was delayed until late January 1964, as it was felt that the public was in no mood for such a film any sooner.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "During post-production, one line by Slim Pickens, \"a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff\", was dubbed to change \"Dallas\" to \"Vegas\", since Dallas was where Kennedy was killed. The original reference to Dallas survives in the English audio of the French-subtitled version of the film.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The assassination also serves as another possible reason that the pie-fight scene was cut. In the scene, after Muffley takes a pie in the face, General Turgidson exclaims: \"Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime!\" Editor Anthony Harvey stated that the scene \"would have stayed, except that Columbia Pictures were horrified, and thought it would offend the president's family.\" Kubrick and others have said that the scene had already been cut before preview night because it was inconsistent with the rest of the film.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 1994, the film was re-released. While the 1964 release used a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the new print was in the slightly squarer 1.66:1 (5:3) ratio that Kubrick had originally intended.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Dr. Strangelove ridicules nuclear war planning. It mocks numerous contemporary Cold War attitudes such as the \"missile gap\" but it primarily directs its satire on the theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD), in which each side is supposed to be deterred from a nuclear war by the prospect of a universal cataclysm regardless of who \"won\". Military strategist and former physicist Herman Kahn, in the book On Thermonuclear War (1960), used the theoretical example of a \"doomsday machine\" to illustrate the limitations of MAD, which was developed by John von Neumann.",
"title": "Themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The concept of such a machine is consistent with MAD doctrine when it is logically pursued to its conclusion. It thus worried Kahn that the military might like the idea of a doomsday machine and build one. Kahn, a leading critic of MAD and the Eisenhower administration's doctrine of massive retaliation upon the slightest provocation by the USSR, considered MAD to be foolish bravado, and urged America to instead plan for proportionality, and thus even a limited nuclear war. With this reasoning, Kahn became one of the architects of the flexible response doctrine which, while superficially resembling MAD, allowed for the possibility of responding to a limited nuclear strike with a proportional, or calibrated, return of fire (see Conflict escalation).",
"title": "Themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Kahn educated Kubrick on the concept of the semi-realistic \"cobalt-thorium G\" doomsday machine, and then Kubrick used the concept for the film. Kahn in his writings and talks would often come across as cold and calculating, for example, with his use of the term \"megadeaths\" and in his willingness to estimate how many human lives the United States could lose and still rebuild economically. Kahn's dispassionate attitude towards millions of deaths is reflected in Turgidson's remark to the president about the outcome of a preemptive nuclear war: \"Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks.\" Turgidson has a binder that is labelled \"World Targets in Megadeaths,\" a term coined in 1953 by Kahn and popularized in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War.",
"title": "Themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The fallout-shelter-network proposal mentioned in the film, with its inherently high radiation protection characteristics, has similarities and contrasts to that of the real Swiss civil defense network. Switzerland has an overcapacity of nuclear fallout shelters for the country's population size, and by law, new homes must still be built with a fallout shelter. If the US did that, it would violate the spirit of MAD and, according to MAD adherents, allegedly destabilize the situation because the US could launch a first strike and its population would largely survive a retaliatory second strike (see MAD § Theory).",
"title": "Themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "To rebut early 1960s novels and Hollywood films like Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove, which raised questions about US control over nuclear weapons, the Air Force produced a documentary film, SAC Command Post, to demonstrate its responsiveness to presidential command and its tight control over nuclear weapons. However, later academic research into declassified documents showed that U.S. military commanders had been given presidentially-authorized pre-delegation for the use of nuclear weapons during the early Cold War, showing that this aspect of the film's plot was plausible.",
"title": "Themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The characters of Buck Turgidson and Jack Ripper both satirize the real-life Gen. Curtis LeMay of the Strategic Air Command.",
"title": "Themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In the months following the film's release, director Stanley Kubrick received a fan letter from Legrace G. Benson of the Department of History of Art at Cornell University interpreting the film as being sexually-layered. The director wrote back to Benson and confirmed the interpretation, \"Seriously, you are the first one who seems to have noticed the sexual framework from intromission (the planes going in) to the last spasm (Kong's ride down and detonation at target).\"",
"title": "Themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The film was a popular success, earning US$4,420,000 in rentals in North America during its initial theatrical release.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Dr. Strangelove is Kubrick's highest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes, holding a 98% approval rating based on 96 reviews, with an average rating of 9.1/10. The site's summary states that \"Stanley Kubrick's brilliant Cold War satire remains as funny and razor-sharp today as it was in 1964.\" The film also holds a score of 97 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 32 reviews, indicating \"universal acclaim\". The film is ranked number 7 in the All-Time High Scores chart of Metacritic's Video/DVD section. It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Dr. Strangelove is on Roger Ebert's list of The Great Movies, and he described it as \"arguably the best political satire of the century\". One of the most celebrated of all film comedies, in 1998, Time Out conducted a reader's poll and Dr. Strangelove was voted the 47th greatest film of all time. Entertainment Weekly voted it at No. 14 on their list of 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. in 2002, it was ranked as the 5th best film in Sight & Sound poll of best films. John Patterson of The Guardian wrote, \"There had been nothing in comedy like Dr Strangelove ever before. All the gods before whom the America of the stolid, paranoid 50s had genuflected—the Bomb, the Pentagon, the National Security State, the President himself, Texan masculinity and the alleged Commie menace of water-fluoridation—went into the wood-chipper and never got the same respect ever again.\" It is also listed as number 26 on Empire's 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, and in 2010 it was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best films since the publication's inception in 1923. The Writers Guild of America ranked its screenplay the 12th best ever written.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 24th greatest comedic film of all time. The film ranked 42nd in BBCs 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films. The film was selected as the 2nd best comedy of all time in a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Columbia Pictures' early reaction to Dr. Strangelove was anything but enthusiastic. In \"Notes From The War Room\", in the summer 1994 issue of Grand Street magazine, co-screenwriter Terry Southern recalled that, as production neared the end, \"It was about this time that word began to reach us, reflecting concern as to the nature of the film in production. Was it anti-American? Or just anti-military? And the jackpot question: Was it, in fact, anti-American to whatever extent it was anti-military?\"",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Southern recalled how Kubrick grew concerned about seeming apathy and distancing by studio heads Abe Schneider and Mo Rothman, and by Columbia's characterization of the film as \"just a zany, novelty flick which did not reflect the views of the corporation in any way.\" Southern noted that Rothman was in \"prominent attendance\" at a ceremony in 1989 when the Library of Congress announced it as one of the first 25 films on the National Film Registry.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The film ranked No. 32 on TV Guide's list of the 50 Greatest Movies on TV (and Video).",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "American Film Institute included the film as #26 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies, #3 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs, #64 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes (\"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!\") and #39 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In 1995, Kubrick enlisted Terry Southern to script a sequel titled Son of Strangelove. Kubrick had Terry Gilliam in mind to direct. The script was never completed, but index cards laying out the story's basic structure were found among Southern's papers after he died in October 1995. It was set largely in underground bunkers, where Dr. Strangelove had taken refuge with a group of women.",
"title": "Canceled sequel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In 2013, Gilliam commented, \"I was told after Kubrick died—by someone who had been dealing with him—that he had been interested in trying to do another Strangelove with me directing. I never knew about that until after he died but I would have loved to.\"",
"title": "Canceled sequel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "On July 14, 2023, it was announced that a stage adaptation of the film, co-adapted by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley and starring Steve Coogan will premiere in London's West End in autumn 2024. It will be the first stage adaptation of Kubrick's works.",
"title": "Stage adaptation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Papers",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Metadata",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, known simply and more commonly as Dr. Strangelove, is a 1964 political satire black comedy film directed, co-written, and produced by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers in three roles, including the title character. The film also stars George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed. The film, which satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, is loosely based on the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kubrick and Terry Southern. The story concerns an unhinged United States Air Force general who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It separately follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force exchange officer as they attempt to prevent the crew of a B-52 from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war. The film is often considered one of the best comedies ever made and one of the greatest films of all time. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it twenty-sixth in its list of the best American movies, and in 2000, it was listed as number three on its list of the funniest American films. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress included Dr. Strangelove as one of the first 25 films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Sellers. The film was also nominated for seven BAFTA Film Awards, winning Best Film From Any Source, Best British Film, and Best Art Direction, and it also won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. | 2001-10-24T18:17:58Z | 2023-12-29T09:20:09Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove |
8,697 | DNA ligase | DNA ligase is a type of enzyme that facilitates the joining of DNA strands together by catalyzing the formation of a phosphodiester bond. It plays a role in repairing single-strand breaks in duplex DNA in living organisms, but some forms (such as DNA ligase IV) may specifically repair double-strand breaks (i.e. a break in both complementary strands of DNA). Single-strand breaks are repaired by DNA ligase using the complementary strand of the double helix as a template, with DNA ligase creating the final phosphodiester bond to fully repair the DNA.
DNA ligase is used in both DNA repair and DNA replication (see Mammalian ligases). In addition, DNA ligase has extensive use in molecular biology laboratories for recombinant DNA experiments (see Research applications). Purified DNA ligase is used in gene cloning to join DNA molecules together to form recombinant DNA.
The mechanism of DNA ligase is to form two covalent phosphodiester bonds between 3' hydroxyl ends of one nucleotide ("acceptor"), with the 5' phosphate end of another ("donor"). Two ATP molecules are consumed for each phosphodiester bond formed. AMP is required for the ligase reaction, which proceeds in four steps:
Ligase will also work with blunt ends, although higher enzyme concentrations and different reaction conditions are required.
The E. coli DNA ligase is encoded by the lig gene. DNA ligase in E. coli, as well as most prokaryotes, uses energy gained by cleaving nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) to create the phosphodiester bond. It does not ligate blunt-ended DNA except under conditions of molecular crowding with polyethylene glycol, and cannot join RNA to DNA efficiently.
The activity of E. coli DNA ligase can be enhanced by DNA polymerase at the right concentrations. Enhancement only works when the concentrations of the DNA polymerase 1 are much lower than the DNA fragments to be ligated. When the concentrations of Pol I DNA polymerases are higher, it has an adverse effect on E. coli DNA ligase
The DNA ligase from bacteriophage T4 (a bacteriophage that infects Escherichia coli bacteria). The T4 ligase is the most-commonly used in laboratory research. It can ligate either cohesive or blunt ends of DNA, oligonucleotides, as well as RNA and RNA-DNA hybrids, but not single-stranded nucleic acids. It can also ligate blunt-ended DNA with much greater efficiency than E. coli DNA ligase. Unlike E. coli DNA ligase, T4 DNA ligase cannot utilize NAD and it has an absolute requirement for ATP as a cofactor. Some engineering has been done to improve the in vitro activity of T4 DNA ligase; one successful approach, for example, tested T4 DNA ligase fused to several alternative DNA binding proteins and found that the constructs with either p50 or NF-kB as fusion partners were over 160% more active in blunt-end ligations for cloning purposes than wild type T4 DNA ligase. A typical reaction for inserting a fragment into a plasmid vector would use about 0.01 (sticky ends) to 1 (blunt ends) units of ligase. The optimal incubation temperature for T4 DNA ligase is 16 °C.
Bacteriophage T4 ligase mutants have increased sensitivity to both UV irradiation and the alkylating agent methyl methanesulfonate indicating that DNA ligase is employed in the repair of the DNA damages caused by these agents.
In mammals, there are four specific types of ligase.
DNA ligase from eukaryotes and some microbes uses adenosine triphosphate (ATP) rather than NAD.
Derived from a thermophilic bacterium, the enzyme is stable and active at much higher temperatures than conventional DNA ligases. Its half-life is 48 hours at 65 °C and greater than 1 hour at 95 °C. Ampligase DNA Ligase has been shown to be active for at least 500 thermal cycles (94 °C/80 °C) or 16 hours of cycling. This exceptional thermostability permits extremely high hybridization stringency and ligation specificity.
There are at least three different units used to measure the activity of DNA ligase:
DNA ligases have become indispensable tools in modern molecular biology research for generating recombinant DNA sequences. For example, DNA ligases are used with restriction enzymes to insert DNA fragments, often genes, into plasmids.
Controlling the optimal temperature is a vital aspect of performing efficient recombination experiments involving the ligation of cohesive-ended fragments. Most experiments use T4 DNA Ligase (isolated from bacteriophage T4), which is most active at 37 °C. However, for optimal ligation efficiency with cohesive-ended fragments ("sticky ends"), the optimal enzyme temperature needs to be balanced with the melting temperature Tm of the sticky ends being ligated, the homologous pairing of the sticky ends will not be stable because the high temperature disrupts hydrogen bonding. A ligation reaction is most efficient when the sticky ends are already stably annealed, and disruption of the annealing ends would therefore result in low ligation efficiency. The shorter the overhang, the lower the Tm.
Since blunt-ended DNA fragments have no cohesive ends to anneal, the melting temperature is not a factor to consider within the normal temperature range of the ligation reaction. The limiting factor in blunt end ligation is not the activity of the ligase but rather the number of alignments between DNA fragment ends that occur. The most efficient ligation temperature for blunt-ended DNA would therefore be the temperature at which the greatest number of alignments can occur. The majority of blunt-ended ligations are carried out at 14-25 °C overnight. The absence of stably annealed ends also means that the ligation efficiency is lowered, requiring a higher ligase concentration to be used.
A novel use of DNA ligase can be seen in the field of nano chemistry, specifically in DNA origami. DNA based self-assembly principles have proven useful for organizing nanoscale objects, such as biomolecules, nanomachines, nanoelectronic and photonic component. Assembly of such nano structure requires the creation of an intricate mesh of DNA molecules. Although DNA self-assembly is possible without any outside help using different substrates such as provision of catatonic surface of Aluminium foil, DNA ligase can provide the enzymatic assistance that is required to make DNA lattice structure from DNA over hangs.
The first DNA ligase was purified and characterized in 1967 by the Gellert, Lehman, Richardson, and Hurwitz laboratories. It was first purified and characterized by Weiss and Richardson using a six-step chromatographic-fractionation process beginning with elimination of cell debris and addition of streptomycin, followed by several Diethylaminoethyl (DEAE)-cellulose column washes and a final phosphocellulose fractionation. The final extract contained 10% of the activity initially recorded in the E. coli media; along the process it was discovered that ATP and Mg++ were necessary to optimize the reaction. The common commercially available DNA ligases were originally discovered in bacteriophage T4, E. coli and other bacteria.
Genetic deficiencies in human DNA ligases have been associated with clinical syndromes marked by immunodeficiency, radiation sensitivity, and developmental abnormalities, LIG4 syndrome (Ligase IV syndrome) is a rare disease associated with mutations in DNA ligase 4 and interferes with dsDNA break-repair mechanisms. Ligase IV syndrome causes immunodeficiency in individuals and is commonly associated with microcephaly and marrow hypoplasia. A list of prevalent diseases caused by lack of or malfunctioning of DNA ligase is as follows.
Xeroderma pigmentosum, which is commonly known as XP, is an inherited condition characterized by an extreme sensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) rays from sunlight. This condition mostly affects the eyes and areas of skin exposed to the sun. Some affected individuals also have problems involving the nervous system.
Mutations in the ATM gene cause ataxia–telangiectasia. The ATM gene provides instructions for making a protein that helps control cell division and is involved in DNA repair. This protein plays an important role in the normal development and activity of several body systems, including the nervous system and immune system. The ATM protein assists cells in recognizing damaged or broken DNA strands and coordinates DNA repair by activating enzymes that fix the broken strands. Efficient repair of damaged DNA strands helps maintain the stability of the cell's genetic information. Affected children typically develop difficulty walking, problems with balance and hand coordination, involuntary jerking movements (chorea), muscle twitches (myoclonus), and disturbances in nerve function (neuropathy). The movement problems typically cause people to require wheelchair assistance by adolescence. People with this disorder also have slurred speech and trouble moving their eyes to look side-to-side (oculomotor apraxia).
Fanconi anemia (FA) is a rare, inherited blood disorder that leads to bone marrow failure. FA prevents bone marrow from making enough new blood cells for the body to work normally. FA also can cause the bone marrow to make many faulty blood cells. This can lead to serious health problems, such as leukemia.
Bloom syndrome results in skin that is sensitive to sun exposure, and usually the development of a butterfly-shaped patch of reddened skin across the nose and cheeks. A skin rash can also appear on other areas that are typically exposed to the sun, such as the back of the hands and the forearms. Small clusters of enlarged blood vessels (telangiectases) often appear in the rash; telangiectases can also occur in the eyes. Other skin features include patches of skin that are lighter or darker than the surrounding areas (hypopigmentation or hyperpigmentation respectively). These patches appear on areas of the skin that are not exposed to the sun, and their development is not related to the rashes.
In recent studies, human DNA ligase I was used in Computer-aided drug design to identify DNA ligase inhibitors as possible therapeutic agents to treat cancer. Since excessive cell growth is a hallmark of cancer development, targeted chemotherapy that disrupts the functioning of DNA ligase can impede adjuvant cancer forms. Furthermore, it has been shown that DNA ligases can be broadly divided into two categories, namely, ATP- and NAD-dependent. Previous research has shown that although NAD-dependent DNA ligases have been discovered in sporadic cellular or viral niches outside the bacterial domain of life, there is no instance in which a NAD-dependent ligase is present in a eukaryotic organism. The presence solely in non-eukaryotic organisms, unique substrate specificity, and distinctive domain structure of NAD+ dependent compared with ATP-dependent human DNA ligases together make NAD-dependent ligases ideal targets for the development of new antibacterial drugs. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "DNA ligase is a type of enzyme that facilitates the joining of DNA strands together by catalyzing the formation of a phosphodiester bond. It plays a role in repairing single-strand breaks in duplex DNA in living organisms, but some forms (such as DNA ligase IV) may specifically repair double-strand breaks (i.e. a break in both complementary strands of DNA). Single-strand breaks are repaired by DNA ligase using the complementary strand of the double helix as a template, with DNA ligase creating the final phosphodiester bond to fully repair the DNA.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "DNA ligase is used in both DNA repair and DNA replication (see Mammalian ligases). In addition, DNA ligase has extensive use in molecular biology laboratories for recombinant DNA experiments (see Research applications). Purified DNA ligase is used in gene cloning to join DNA molecules together to form recombinant DNA.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The mechanism of DNA ligase is to form two covalent phosphodiester bonds between 3' hydroxyl ends of one nucleotide (\"acceptor\"), with the 5' phosphate end of another (\"donor\"). Two ATP molecules are consumed for each phosphodiester bond formed. AMP is required for the ligase reaction, which proceeds in four steps:",
"title": "Enzymatic mechanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Ligase will also work with blunt ends, although higher enzyme concentrations and different reaction conditions are required.",
"title": "Enzymatic mechanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The E. coli DNA ligase is encoded by the lig gene. DNA ligase in E. coli, as well as most prokaryotes, uses energy gained by cleaving nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) to create the phosphodiester bond. It does not ligate blunt-ended DNA except under conditions of molecular crowding with polyethylene glycol, and cannot join RNA to DNA efficiently.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The activity of E. coli DNA ligase can be enhanced by DNA polymerase at the right concentrations. Enhancement only works when the concentrations of the DNA polymerase 1 are much lower than the DNA fragments to be ligated. When the concentrations of Pol I DNA polymerases are higher, it has an adverse effect on E. coli DNA ligase",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The DNA ligase from bacteriophage T4 (a bacteriophage that infects Escherichia coli bacteria). The T4 ligase is the most-commonly used in laboratory research. It can ligate either cohesive or blunt ends of DNA, oligonucleotides, as well as RNA and RNA-DNA hybrids, but not single-stranded nucleic acids. It can also ligate blunt-ended DNA with much greater efficiency than E. coli DNA ligase. Unlike E. coli DNA ligase, T4 DNA ligase cannot utilize NAD and it has an absolute requirement for ATP as a cofactor. Some engineering has been done to improve the in vitro activity of T4 DNA ligase; one successful approach, for example, tested T4 DNA ligase fused to several alternative DNA binding proteins and found that the constructs with either p50 or NF-kB as fusion partners were over 160% more active in blunt-end ligations for cloning purposes than wild type T4 DNA ligase. A typical reaction for inserting a fragment into a plasmid vector would use about 0.01 (sticky ends) to 1 (blunt ends) units of ligase. The optimal incubation temperature for T4 DNA ligase is 16 °C.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Bacteriophage T4 ligase mutants have increased sensitivity to both UV irradiation and the alkylating agent methyl methanesulfonate indicating that DNA ligase is employed in the repair of the DNA damages caused by these agents.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In mammals, there are four specific types of ligase.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "DNA ligase from eukaryotes and some microbes uses adenosine triphosphate (ATP) rather than NAD.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Derived from a thermophilic bacterium, the enzyme is stable and active at much higher temperatures than conventional DNA ligases. Its half-life is 48 hours at 65 °C and greater than 1 hour at 95 °C. Ampligase DNA Ligase has been shown to be active for at least 500 thermal cycles (94 °C/80 °C) or 16 hours of cycling. This exceptional thermostability permits extremely high hybridization stringency and ligation specificity.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "There are at least three different units used to measure the activity of DNA ligase:",
"title": "Measurement of activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "DNA ligases have become indispensable tools in modern molecular biology research for generating recombinant DNA sequences. For example, DNA ligases are used with restriction enzymes to insert DNA fragments, often genes, into plasmids.",
"title": "Research applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Controlling the optimal temperature is a vital aspect of performing efficient recombination experiments involving the ligation of cohesive-ended fragments. Most experiments use T4 DNA Ligase (isolated from bacteriophage T4), which is most active at 37 °C. However, for optimal ligation efficiency with cohesive-ended fragments (\"sticky ends\"), the optimal enzyme temperature needs to be balanced with the melting temperature Tm of the sticky ends being ligated, the homologous pairing of the sticky ends will not be stable because the high temperature disrupts hydrogen bonding. A ligation reaction is most efficient when the sticky ends are already stably annealed, and disruption of the annealing ends would therefore result in low ligation efficiency. The shorter the overhang, the lower the Tm.",
"title": "Research applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Since blunt-ended DNA fragments have no cohesive ends to anneal, the melting temperature is not a factor to consider within the normal temperature range of the ligation reaction. The limiting factor in blunt end ligation is not the activity of the ligase but rather the number of alignments between DNA fragment ends that occur. The most efficient ligation temperature for blunt-ended DNA would therefore be the temperature at which the greatest number of alignments can occur. The majority of blunt-ended ligations are carried out at 14-25 °C overnight. The absence of stably annealed ends also means that the ligation efficiency is lowered, requiring a higher ligase concentration to be used.",
"title": "Research applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "A novel use of DNA ligase can be seen in the field of nano chemistry, specifically in DNA origami. DNA based self-assembly principles have proven useful for organizing nanoscale objects, such as biomolecules, nanomachines, nanoelectronic and photonic component. Assembly of such nano structure requires the creation of an intricate mesh of DNA molecules. Although DNA self-assembly is possible without any outside help using different substrates such as provision of catatonic surface of Aluminium foil, DNA ligase can provide the enzymatic assistance that is required to make DNA lattice structure from DNA over hangs.",
"title": "Research applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The first DNA ligase was purified and characterized in 1967 by the Gellert, Lehman, Richardson, and Hurwitz laboratories. It was first purified and characterized by Weiss and Richardson using a six-step chromatographic-fractionation process beginning with elimination of cell debris and addition of streptomycin, followed by several Diethylaminoethyl (DEAE)-cellulose column washes and a final phosphocellulose fractionation. The final extract contained 10% of the activity initially recorded in the E. coli media; along the process it was discovered that ATP and Mg++ were necessary to optimize the reaction. The common commercially available DNA ligases were originally discovered in bacteriophage T4, E. coli and other bacteria.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Genetic deficiencies in human DNA ligases have been associated with clinical syndromes marked by immunodeficiency, radiation sensitivity, and developmental abnormalities, LIG4 syndrome (Ligase IV syndrome) is a rare disease associated with mutations in DNA ligase 4 and interferes with dsDNA break-repair mechanisms. Ligase IV syndrome causes immunodeficiency in individuals and is commonly associated with microcephaly and marrow hypoplasia. A list of prevalent diseases caused by lack of or malfunctioning of DNA ligase is as follows.",
"title": "Disorders"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Xeroderma pigmentosum, which is commonly known as XP, is an inherited condition characterized by an extreme sensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) rays from sunlight. This condition mostly affects the eyes and areas of skin exposed to the sun. Some affected individuals also have problems involving the nervous system.",
"title": "Disorders"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Mutations in the ATM gene cause ataxia–telangiectasia. The ATM gene provides instructions for making a protein that helps control cell division and is involved in DNA repair. This protein plays an important role in the normal development and activity of several body systems, including the nervous system and immune system. The ATM protein assists cells in recognizing damaged or broken DNA strands and coordinates DNA repair by activating enzymes that fix the broken strands. Efficient repair of damaged DNA strands helps maintain the stability of the cell's genetic information. Affected children typically develop difficulty walking, problems with balance and hand coordination, involuntary jerking movements (chorea), muscle twitches (myoclonus), and disturbances in nerve function (neuropathy). The movement problems typically cause people to require wheelchair assistance by adolescence. People with this disorder also have slurred speech and trouble moving their eyes to look side-to-side (oculomotor apraxia).",
"title": "Disorders"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Fanconi anemia (FA) is a rare, inherited blood disorder that leads to bone marrow failure. FA prevents bone marrow from making enough new blood cells for the body to work normally. FA also can cause the bone marrow to make many faulty blood cells. This can lead to serious health problems, such as leukemia.",
"title": "Disorders"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Bloom syndrome results in skin that is sensitive to sun exposure, and usually the development of a butterfly-shaped patch of reddened skin across the nose and cheeks. A skin rash can also appear on other areas that are typically exposed to the sun, such as the back of the hands and the forearms. Small clusters of enlarged blood vessels (telangiectases) often appear in the rash; telangiectases can also occur in the eyes. Other skin features include patches of skin that are lighter or darker than the surrounding areas (hypopigmentation or hyperpigmentation respectively). These patches appear on areas of the skin that are not exposed to the sun, and their development is not related to the rashes.",
"title": "Disorders"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In recent studies, human DNA ligase I was used in Computer-aided drug design to identify DNA ligase inhibitors as possible therapeutic agents to treat cancer. Since excessive cell growth is a hallmark of cancer development, targeted chemotherapy that disrupts the functioning of DNA ligase can impede adjuvant cancer forms. Furthermore, it has been shown that DNA ligases can be broadly divided into two categories, namely, ATP- and NAD-dependent. Previous research has shown that although NAD-dependent DNA ligases have been discovered in sporadic cellular or viral niches outside the bacterial domain of life, there is no instance in which a NAD-dependent ligase is present in a eukaryotic organism. The presence solely in non-eukaryotic organisms, unique substrate specificity, and distinctive domain structure of NAD+ dependent compared with ATP-dependent human DNA ligases together make NAD-dependent ligases ideal targets for the development of new antibacterial drugs.",
"title": "As a drug target"
}
]
| DNA ligase is a type of enzyme that facilitates the joining of DNA strands together by catalyzing the formation of a phosphodiester bond. It plays a role in repairing single-strand breaks in duplex DNA in living organisms, but some forms may specifically repair double-strand breaks. Single-strand breaks are repaired by DNA ligase using the complementary strand of the double helix as a template, with DNA ligase creating the final phosphodiester bond to fully repair the DNA. DNA ligase is used in both DNA repair and DNA replication. In addition, DNA ligase has extensive use in molecular biology laboratories for recombinant DNA experiments. Purified DNA ligase is used in gene cloning to join DNA molecules together to form recombinant DNA. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-11-26T08:20:51Z | [
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"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite web",
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"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox enzyme",
"Template:Infobox protein",
"Template:DNA replication",
"Template:Phosphoric ester and nitrogen-metal ligases",
"Template:Enzymes"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_ligase |
8,699 | Dewey Decimal Classification | The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), colloquially known as the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. It was first published in the United States by Melvil Dewey in 1876. Originally described in a 44-page pamphlet, it has been expanded to multiple volumes and revised through 23 major editions, the latest printed in 2011. It is also available in an abridged version suitable for smaller libraries. OCLC, a non-profit cooperative that serves libraries, currently maintains the system and licenses online access to WebDewey, a continuously updated version for catalogers.
The decimal number classification introduced the concepts of relative location and relative index. Libraries previously had given books permanent shelf locations that were related to the order of acquisition rather than topic. The classification's notation makes use of three-digit numbers for main classes, with fractional decimals allowing expansion for further detail. Numbers are flexible to the degree that they can be expanded in linear fashion to cover special aspects of general subjects. A library assigns a classification number that unambiguously locates a particular volume in a position relative to other books in the library, on the basis of its subject. The number makes it possible to find any book and to return it to its proper place on the library shelves. The classification system is used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries.
Melvil Dewey (1851–1931) was an American librarian and self-declared reformer. He was a founding member of the American Library Association and can be credited with the promotion of card systems in libraries and business. He developed the ideas for his library classification system in 1873 while working at the Amherst College library. He applied the classification to the books in that library, until in 1876 he had a first version of the classification. In 1876, he published the classification in pamphlet form with the title A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library. He used the pamphlet, published in more than one version during the year, to solicit comments from other librarians. It is not known who received copies or how many commented as only one copy with comments has survived, that of Ernest Cushing Richardson. His classification system was mentioned in an article in the first issue of the Library Journal and in an article by Dewey in the Department of Education publication Public Libraries in America in 1876. In March 1876, he applied for, and received, copyright on the first edition of the index. The edition was 44 pages in length, with 2,000 index entries, and was printed in 200 copies.
The second edition of the Dewey Decimal system, published in 1885 with the title Decimal Classification and Relativ Index for arranging, cataloging, and indexing public and private libraries and for pamflets, clippings, notes, scrap books, index rerums, etc., comprised 314 pages, with 10,000 index entries. Five hundred copies were produced. Editions 3–14, published between 1888 and 1942, used a variant of this same title. Dewey modified and expanded his system considerably for the second edition. In an introduction to that edition Dewey states that "nearly 100 persons hav [spelling of 'have' per English-language spelling reform, which Dewey championed] contributed criticisms and suggestions".
One of the innovations of the Dewey Decimal system was that of positioning books on the shelves in relation to other books on similar topics. When the system was first introduced, most libraries in the US used fixed positioning: each book was assigned a permanent shelf position based on the book's height and date of acquisition. Library stacks were generally closed to all but the most privileged patrons, so shelf browsing was not considered of importance. The use of the Dewey Decimal system increased during the early 20th century as librarians were convinced of the advantages of relative positioning and of open shelf access for patrons.
New editions were readied as supplies of previously published editions were exhausted, even though some editions provided little change from the previous, as they were primarily needed to fulfill demand. In the next decade, three editions followed closely on: the 3rd (1888), 4th (1891), and 5th (1894). Editions 6 through 11 were published from 1899 to 1922. The 6th edition was published in a record 7,600 copies, although subsequent editions were much lower. During this time, the size of the volume grew, and edition 12 swelled to 1,243 pages, an increase of 25% over the previous edition.
In response to the needs of smaller libraries which were finding the expanded classification schedules difficult to use, in 1894, the first abridged edition of the Dewey Decimal system was produced. The abridged edition generally parallels the full edition, and has been developed for most full editions since that date. By popular request, in 1930, the Library of Congress began to print Dewey Classification numbers on nearly all of its cards, thus making the system immediately available to all libraries making use of the Library of Congress card sets.
Dewey's was not the only library classification available, although it was the most complete. Charles Ammi Cutter published the Expansive Classification in 1882, with initial encouragement from Melvil Dewey. Cutter's system was not adopted by many libraries, with one major exception: it was used as the basis for the Library of Congress Classification system.
In 1895, the International Institute of Bibliography, located in Belgium and led by Paul Otlet, contacted Dewey about the possibility of translating the classification into French, and using the classification system for bibliographies (as opposed to its use for books in libraries). This would have required some changes to the classification, which was under copyright. Dewey gave permission for the creation of a version intended for bibliographies, and also for its translation into French. Dewey did not agree, however, to allow the International Institute of Bibliography to later create an English version of the resulting classification, considering that a violation of their agreement, as well as a violation of Dewey's copyright. Shortly after Dewey's death in 1931, however, an agreement was reached between the committee overseeing the development of the Decimal Classification and the developers of the French Classification Decimal. The English version was published as the Universal Decimal Classification and is still in use today.
According to a study done in 1927, the Dewey system was used in the US in approximately 96% of responding public libraries and 89% of the college libraries. After the death of Melvil Dewey in 1931, administration of the classification was under the Decimal Classification Committee of the Lake Placid Club Education Foundation, and the editorial body was the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee with participation of the American Library Association (ALA), Library of Congress, and Forest Press. By the 14th edition in 1942, the Dewey Decimal Classification index was over 1,900 pages in length and was published in two volumes.
The growth of the classification to date had led to significant criticism from medium and large libraries which were too large to use the abridged edition but found the full classification overwhelming. Dewey had intended issuing the classification in three editions: the library edition, which would be the fullest edition; the bibliographic edition, in English and French, which was to be used for the organization of bibliographies rather than of books on the shelf; and the abridged edition. In 1933, the bibliographic edition became the Universal Decimal Classification, which left the library and abridged versions as the formal Dewey Decimal Classification editions. The 15th edition, edited by Milton Ferguson, implemented the growing concept of the "standard edition", designed for the majority of general libraries but not attempting to satisfy the needs of the very largest or of special libraries. It also reduced the size of the Dewey system by over half, from 1,900 to 700 pages. This revision was so radical that an advisory committee was formed right away for the 16th and 17th editions. The 16th and 17th editions, under the editorship of the Library of Congress, grew again to two volumes. However, by then, the Dewey Decimal system had established itself as a classification for general libraries, with the Library of Congress Classification having gained acceptance for large research libraries.
The first electronic version of "Dewey" was created in 1993. Hard-copy editions continue to be issued at intervals; the online WebDewey and Abridged WebDewey are updated quarterly.
Dewey and a small editorial staff managed the administration of the very early editions. Beginning in 1922, the Lake Placid Club Educational Foundation, a not-for-profit organization founded by Melvil Dewey, managed administrative affairs. The ALA set up a Special Advisory Committee on the Decimal Classification as part of the Cataloging and Classification division of ALA in 1952. The previous Decimal Classification Committee was changed to the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee, with participation of the ALA Division of Cataloging and Classification, and of the Library of Congress.
Melvil Dewey edited the first three editions of the classification system and oversaw the revisions of all editions until his death in 1931. May Seymour became editor in 1891 and served until her death in 1921. She was followed by Dorcas Fellows, who was editor until her death in 1938. Constantin J. Mazney edited the 14th edition. Milton Ferguson functioned as editor from 1949 to 1951. The 16th edition in 1958 was edited under an agreement between the Library of Congress and Forest Press, with David Haykin as director. Editions 16–19 were edited by Benjamin A. Custer and the editor of edition 20 was John P. Comaromi. Joan Mitchell was editor until 2013, covering editions 21 to 23. In 2013 Michael Panzer of OCLC became Editor-in-Chief. The Dewey Editorial Program Manager since 2016 has been Rebecca Green.
Dewey himself held copyright in editions 1 to 6 (1876–1919). Copyright in editions 7–10 was held by the publisher, The Library Bureau. On the death of May Seymour, Dewey conveyed the "copyrights and control of all editions" to the Lake Placid Club Educational Foundation, a non-profit chartered in 1922. The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) of Dublin, Ohio, US, acquired the trademark and copyrights associated with the Dewey Decimal Classification system when it bought Forest Press in 1988. In 2003 the Dewey Decimal Classification came to the attention of the U.S. press when OCLC sued the Library Hotel for trademark infringement for using the classification system as the hotel theme. The case was settled shortly thereafter.
The OCLC has maintained the classification since 1988, and also publishes new editions of the system. The editorial staff responsible for updates is based partly at the Library of Congress and partly at OCLC. Their work is reviewed by the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee, a ten-member international board which meets twice each year. The four-volume unabridged edition was published approximately every six years, with the last edition (DDC 23) published in mid-2011. In 2017 the editorial staff announced that the English edition of DDC will no longer be printed, in favor of using the frequently updated WebDewey. An experimental version of Dewey in RDF was previously available at dewey.info beginning in 2009, but has not been available since 2015.
In addition to the full version, a single-volume abridged edition designed for libraries with 20,000 titles or fewer has been made available since 1895. The last printed English abridged edition, Abridged Edition 15, was published in early 2012.
The Dewey Decimal Classification organizes library materials by discipline or field of study. The scheme comprises ten classes, each divided into ten divisions, each having ten sections. The system's notation uses Indo-Arabic numbers, with three whole numbers making up the main classes and sub-classes and decimals designating further divisions. The classification structure is hierarchical and the notation follows the same hierarchy. Libraries not needing the full level of detail of the classification can trim right-most decimal digits from the class number to obtain more general classifications. For example:
The classification was originally enumerative, meaning that it listed all of the classes explicitly in the schedules. Over time it added some aspects of a faceted classification scheme, allowing classifiers to construct a number by combining a class number for a topic with an entry from a separate table. Tables cover commonly used elements such as geographical and temporal aspects, language, and bibliographic forms. For example, a class number could be constructed using 330 for economics + .9 for geographic treatment + .04 for Europe to create the class 330.94 European economy. Or one could combine the class 973 (for the United States) + .05 (for periodical publications on the topic) to arrive at the number 973.05 for periodicals concerning the United States generally. The classification also makes use of mnemonics in some areas, such that the number 5 represents the country Italy in classification numbers like 945 (history of Italy), 450 (Italian language), and 195 (Italian philosophy). The combination of faceting and mnemonics makes the classification synthetic in nature, with meaning built into parts of the classification number.
The Dewey Decimal Classification has a number for all subjects, including fiction, although many libraries maintain a separate fiction section shelved by alphabetical order of the author's surname. Each assigned number consists of two parts: a class number (from the Dewey system) and a book number, which "prevents confusion of different books on the same subject". A common form of the book number is called a Cutter number, which represents the author and distinguishes the book from other books on the same topic.
(From DDC 23)
(From DDC 23)
The Relative Index (or, as Dewey spelled it, "Relativ Index") is an alphabetical index to the classification, for use both by classifiers and by library users when seeking books by topic. The index was "relative" because the index entries pointed to the class numbers, not to the page numbers of the printed classification schedule. In this way, the Dewey Decimal Classification itself had the same relative positioning as the library shelf and could be used either as an entry point to the classification, by catalogers, or as an index to a Dewey-classed library itself.
Dewey Decimal Classification numbers formed the basis of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), which combines the basic Dewey numbers with selected punctuation marks (comma, colon, parentheses, etc.). Adaptations of the system for specific regions outside the English-speaking world include the Korean Decimal Classification, the New Classification Scheme for Chinese Libraries, and the Nippon Decimal Classification in Japan.
Despite its widespread use, the classification has been criticized for its complexity and its limited capability for amendment. In particular, the arrangement of subheadings has been described as archaic and biased towards an Anglo-American world view. This is particularly clear in the 800s section, in which most literature, particularly from outside the United States or Europe, is relegated to the 890s particularly when contrasted with the 900s—history. In 2007–08, the Maricopa County Library District in Arizona abandoned the DDC in favor of the Book Industry Standards and Communications (BISAC) system commonly used by commercial bookstores, in an effort to make its libraries more accessible for their users. Several other libraries across the United States and other countries (including Canada and the Netherlands) followed suit.
In 1932, topics relating to homosexuality were first added to the system under 132 (mental derangements) and 159.9 (abnormal psychology). In 1952, homosexuality was also included under 301.424 (the study of sexes in society). In 1989, it was added to 363.49 (social problems), a classification that continues in the current edition.
In 1996, homosexuality was added to 306.7 (sexual relations); this remains the preferred location in the current edition. Although books can also be found under 616.8583 (sexual practices viewed as medical disorders), the official direction states:
Use 616.8583 for homosexuality only when the work treats homosexuality as a medical disorder, or focuses on arguing against the views of those who consider homosexuality to be a medical disorder. ... If in doubt, prefer a number other than 616.8583.
The top-level class for religion heavily favors Christianity, dedicating nearly all of the 200 division to it: the world's thousands of other religions were listed under the 290s. For example, Islam is under just DDC 297, despite being almost as large as Christianity by population. The entire 200 section has remained largely unchanged since DDC 1, since restructuring would pose a significant amount of work for existing libraries. The motivation for this change is ideological rather than technical, as appending significant figures can add space as needed.
It has also been argued by Hope A. Olson that the placement of topics related to women shows implicit bias, but this has been simpler to address than the religion schema. Some changes made so far have been in numerical proximity, altering the placement of topics relative to each other. For example, in older versions of the DDC, some categories regarding women were adjacent to categories on etiquette; the placement of these categories next to each other imposed an association of etiquette with women, rather than treating it as gender-neutral. This was changed in DDC version 17, in 1965. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), colloquially known as the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. It was first published in the United States by Melvil Dewey in 1876. Originally described in a 44-page pamphlet, it has been expanded to multiple volumes and revised through 23 major editions, the latest printed in 2011. It is also available in an abridged version suitable for smaller libraries. OCLC, a non-profit cooperative that serves libraries, currently maintains the system and licenses online access to WebDewey, a continuously updated version for catalogers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The decimal number classification introduced the concepts of relative location and relative index. Libraries previously had given books permanent shelf locations that were related to the order of acquisition rather than topic. The classification's notation makes use of three-digit numbers for main classes, with fractional decimals allowing expansion for further detail. Numbers are flexible to the degree that they can be expanded in linear fashion to cover special aspects of general subjects. A library assigns a classification number that unambiguously locates a particular volume in a position relative to other books in the library, on the basis of its subject. The number makes it possible to find any book and to return it to its proper place on the library shelves. The classification system is used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Melvil Dewey (1851–1931) was an American librarian and self-declared reformer. He was a founding member of the American Library Association and can be credited with the promotion of card systems in libraries and business. He developed the ideas for his library classification system in 1873 while working at the Amherst College library. He applied the classification to the books in that library, until in 1876 he had a first version of the classification. In 1876, he published the classification in pamphlet form with the title A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library. He used the pamphlet, published in more than one version during the year, to solicit comments from other librarians. It is not known who received copies or how many commented as only one copy with comments has survived, that of Ernest Cushing Richardson. His classification system was mentioned in an article in the first issue of the Library Journal and in an article by Dewey in the Department of Education publication Public Libraries in America in 1876. In March 1876, he applied for, and received, copyright on the first edition of the index. The edition was 44 pages in length, with 2,000 index entries, and was printed in 200 copies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The second edition of the Dewey Decimal system, published in 1885 with the title Decimal Classification and Relativ Index for arranging, cataloging, and indexing public and private libraries and for pamflets, clippings, notes, scrap books, index rerums, etc., comprised 314 pages, with 10,000 index entries. Five hundred copies were produced. Editions 3–14, published between 1888 and 1942, used a variant of this same title. Dewey modified and expanded his system considerably for the second edition. In an introduction to that edition Dewey states that \"nearly 100 persons hav [spelling of 'have' per English-language spelling reform, which Dewey championed] contributed criticisms and suggestions\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "One of the innovations of the Dewey Decimal system was that of positioning books on the shelves in relation to other books on similar topics. When the system was first introduced, most libraries in the US used fixed positioning: each book was assigned a permanent shelf position based on the book's height and date of acquisition. Library stacks were generally closed to all but the most privileged patrons, so shelf browsing was not considered of importance. The use of the Dewey Decimal system increased during the early 20th century as librarians were convinced of the advantages of relative positioning and of open shelf access for patrons.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "New editions were readied as supplies of previously published editions were exhausted, even though some editions provided little change from the previous, as they were primarily needed to fulfill demand. In the next decade, three editions followed closely on: the 3rd (1888), 4th (1891), and 5th (1894). Editions 6 through 11 were published from 1899 to 1922. The 6th edition was published in a record 7,600 copies, although subsequent editions were much lower. During this time, the size of the volume grew, and edition 12 swelled to 1,243 pages, an increase of 25% over the previous edition.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In response to the needs of smaller libraries which were finding the expanded classification schedules difficult to use, in 1894, the first abridged edition of the Dewey Decimal system was produced. The abridged edition generally parallels the full edition, and has been developed for most full editions since that date. By popular request, in 1930, the Library of Congress began to print Dewey Classification numbers on nearly all of its cards, thus making the system immediately available to all libraries making use of the Library of Congress card sets.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Dewey's was not the only library classification available, although it was the most complete. Charles Ammi Cutter published the Expansive Classification in 1882, with initial encouragement from Melvil Dewey. Cutter's system was not adopted by many libraries, with one major exception: it was used as the basis for the Library of Congress Classification system.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1895, the International Institute of Bibliography, located in Belgium and led by Paul Otlet, contacted Dewey about the possibility of translating the classification into French, and using the classification system for bibliographies (as opposed to its use for books in libraries). This would have required some changes to the classification, which was under copyright. Dewey gave permission for the creation of a version intended for bibliographies, and also for its translation into French. Dewey did not agree, however, to allow the International Institute of Bibliography to later create an English version of the resulting classification, considering that a violation of their agreement, as well as a violation of Dewey's copyright. Shortly after Dewey's death in 1931, however, an agreement was reached between the committee overseeing the development of the Decimal Classification and the developers of the French Classification Decimal. The English version was published as the Universal Decimal Classification and is still in use today.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "According to a study done in 1927, the Dewey system was used in the US in approximately 96% of responding public libraries and 89% of the college libraries. After the death of Melvil Dewey in 1931, administration of the classification was under the Decimal Classification Committee of the Lake Placid Club Education Foundation, and the editorial body was the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee with participation of the American Library Association (ALA), Library of Congress, and Forest Press. By the 14th edition in 1942, the Dewey Decimal Classification index was over 1,900 pages in length and was published in two volumes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The growth of the classification to date had led to significant criticism from medium and large libraries which were too large to use the abridged edition but found the full classification overwhelming. Dewey had intended issuing the classification in three editions: the library edition, which would be the fullest edition; the bibliographic edition, in English and French, which was to be used for the organization of bibliographies rather than of books on the shelf; and the abridged edition. In 1933, the bibliographic edition became the Universal Decimal Classification, which left the library and abridged versions as the formal Dewey Decimal Classification editions. The 15th edition, edited by Milton Ferguson, implemented the growing concept of the \"standard edition\", designed for the majority of general libraries but not attempting to satisfy the needs of the very largest or of special libraries. It also reduced the size of the Dewey system by over half, from 1,900 to 700 pages. This revision was so radical that an advisory committee was formed right away for the 16th and 17th editions. The 16th and 17th editions, under the editorship of the Library of Congress, grew again to two volumes. However, by then, the Dewey Decimal system had established itself as a classification for general libraries, with the Library of Congress Classification having gained acceptance for large research libraries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The first electronic version of \"Dewey\" was created in 1993. Hard-copy editions continue to be issued at intervals; the online WebDewey and Abridged WebDewey are updated quarterly.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Dewey and a small editorial staff managed the administration of the very early editions. Beginning in 1922, the Lake Placid Club Educational Foundation, a not-for-profit organization founded by Melvil Dewey, managed administrative affairs. The ALA set up a Special Advisory Committee on the Decimal Classification as part of the Cataloging and Classification division of ALA in 1952. The previous Decimal Classification Committee was changed to the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee, with participation of the ALA Division of Cataloging and Classification, and of the Library of Congress.",
"title": "Administration and publication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Melvil Dewey edited the first three editions of the classification system and oversaw the revisions of all editions until his death in 1931. May Seymour became editor in 1891 and served until her death in 1921. She was followed by Dorcas Fellows, who was editor until her death in 1938. Constantin J. Mazney edited the 14th edition. Milton Ferguson functioned as editor from 1949 to 1951. The 16th edition in 1958 was edited under an agreement between the Library of Congress and Forest Press, with David Haykin as director. Editions 16–19 were edited by Benjamin A. Custer and the editor of edition 20 was John P. Comaromi. Joan Mitchell was editor until 2013, covering editions 21 to 23. In 2013 Michael Panzer of OCLC became Editor-in-Chief. The Dewey Editorial Program Manager since 2016 has been Rebecca Green.",
"title": "Administration and publication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Dewey himself held copyright in editions 1 to 6 (1876–1919). Copyright in editions 7–10 was held by the publisher, The Library Bureau. On the death of May Seymour, Dewey conveyed the \"copyrights and control of all editions\" to the Lake Placid Club Educational Foundation, a non-profit chartered in 1922. The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) of Dublin, Ohio, US, acquired the trademark and copyrights associated with the Dewey Decimal Classification system when it bought Forest Press in 1988. In 2003 the Dewey Decimal Classification came to the attention of the U.S. press when OCLC sued the Library Hotel for trademark infringement for using the classification system as the hotel theme. The case was settled shortly thereafter.",
"title": "Administration and publication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The OCLC has maintained the classification since 1988, and also publishes new editions of the system. The editorial staff responsible for updates is based partly at the Library of Congress and partly at OCLC. Their work is reviewed by the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee, a ten-member international board which meets twice each year. The four-volume unabridged edition was published approximately every six years, with the last edition (DDC 23) published in mid-2011. In 2017 the editorial staff announced that the English edition of DDC will no longer be printed, in favor of using the frequently updated WebDewey. An experimental version of Dewey in RDF was previously available at dewey.info beginning in 2009, but has not been available since 2015.",
"title": "Administration and publication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In addition to the full version, a single-volume abridged edition designed for libraries with 20,000 titles or fewer has been made available since 1895. The last printed English abridged edition, Abridged Edition 15, was published in early 2012.",
"title": "Administration and publication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Dewey Decimal Classification organizes library materials by discipline or field of study. The scheme comprises ten classes, each divided into ten divisions, each having ten sections. The system's notation uses Indo-Arabic numbers, with three whole numbers making up the main classes and sub-classes and decimals designating further divisions. The classification structure is hierarchical and the notation follows the same hierarchy. Libraries not needing the full level of detail of the classification can trim right-most decimal digits from the class number to obtain more general classifications. For example:",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The classification was originally enumerative, meaning that it listed all of the classes explicitly in the schedules. Over time it added some aspects of a faceted classification scheme, allowing classifiers to construct a number by combining a class number for a topic with an entry from a separate table. Tables cover commonly used elements such as geographical and temporal aspects, language, and bibliographic forms. For example, a class number could be constructed using 330 for economics + .9 for geographic treatment + .04 for Europe to create the class 330.94 European economy. Or one could combine the class 973 (for the United States) + .05 (for periodical publications on the topic) to arrive at the number 973.05 for periodicals concerning the United States generally. The classification also makes use of mnemonics in some areas, such that the number 5 represents the country Italy in classification numbers like 945 (history of Italy), 450 (Italian language), and 195 (Italian philosophy). The combination of faceting and mnemonics makes the classification synthetic in nature, with meaning built into parts of the classification number.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Dewey Decimal Classification has a number for all subjects, including fiction, although many libraries maintain a separate fiction section shelved by alphabetical order of the author's surname. Each assigned number consists of two parts: a class number (from the Dewey system) and a book number, which \"prevents confusion of different books on the same subject\". A common form of the book number is called a Cutter number, which represents the author and distinguishes the book from other books on the same topic.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "(From DDC 23)",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "(From DDC 23)",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Relative Index (or, as Dewey spelled it, \"Relativ Index\") is an alphabetical index to the classification, for use both by classifiers and by library users when seeking books by topic. The index was \"relative\" because the index entries pointed to the class numbers, not to the page numbers of the printed classification schedule. In this way, the Dewey Decimal Classification itself had the same relative positioning as the library shelf and could be used either as an entry point to the classification, by catalogers, or as an index to a Dewey-classed library itself.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Dewey Decimal Classification numbers formed the basis of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), which combines the basic Dewey numbers with selected punctuation marks (comma, colon, parentheses, etc.). Adaptations of the system for specific regions outside the English-speaking world include the Korean Decimal Classification, the New Classification Scheme for Chinese Libraries, and the Nippon Decimal Classification in Japan.",
"title": "Influence and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Despite its widespread use, the classification has been criticized for its complexity and its limited capability for amendment. In particular, the arrangement of subheadings has been described as archaic and biased towards an Anglo-American world view. This is particularly clear in the 800s section, in which most literature, particularly from outside the United States or Europe, is relegated to the 890s particularly when contrasted with the 900s—history. In 2007–08, the Maricopa County Library District in Arizona abandoned the DDC in favor of the Book Industry Standards and Communications (BISAC) system commonly used by commercial bookstores, in an effort to make its libraries more accessible for their users. Several other libraries across the United States and other countries (including Canada and the Netherlands) followed suit.",
"title": "Influence and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 1932, topics relating to homosexuality were first added to the system under 132 (mental derangements) and 159.9 (abnormal psychology). In 1952, homosexuality was also included under 301.424 (the study of sexes in society). In 1989, it was added to 363.49 (social problems), a classification that continues in the current edition.",
"title": "Influence and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1996, homosexuality was added to 306.7 (sexual relations); this remains the preferred location in the current edition. Although books can also be found under 616.8583 (sexual practices viewed as medical disorders), the official direction states:",
"title": "Influence and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Use 616.8583 for homosexuality only when the work treats homosexuality as a medical disorder, or focuses on arguing against the views of those who consider homosexuality to be a medical disorder. ... If in doubt, prefer a number other than 616.8583.",
"title": "Influence and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The top-level class for religion heavily favors Christianity, dedicating nearly all of the 200 division to it: the world's thousands of other religions were listed under the 290s. For example, Islam is under just DDC 297, despite being almost as large as Christianity by population. The entire 200 section has remained largely unchanged since DDC 1, since restructuring would pose a significant amount of work for existing libraries. The motivation for this change is ideological rather than technical, as appending significant figures can add space as needed.",
"title": "Influence and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "It has also been argued by Hope A. Olson that the placement of topics related to women shows implicit bias, but this has been simpler to address than the religion schema. Some changes made so far have been in numerical proximity, altering the placement of topics relative to each other. For example, in older versions of the DDC, some categories regarding women were adjacent to categories on etiquette; the placement of these categories next to each other imposed an association of etiquette with women, rather than treating it as gender-neutral. This was changed in DDC version 17, in 1965.",
"title": "Influence and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), colloquially known as the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. It was first published in the United States by Melvil Dewey in 1876. Originally described in a 44-page pamphlet, it has been expanded to multiple volumes and revised through 23 major editions, the latest printed in 2011. It is also available in an abridged version suitable for smaller libraries. OCLC, a non-profit cooperative that serves libraries, currently maintains the system and licenses online access to WebDewey, a continuously updated version for catalogers. The decimal number classification introduced the concepts of relative location and relative index. Libraries previously had given books permanent shelf locations that were related to the order of acquisition rather than topic. The classification's notation makes use of three-digit numbers for main classes, with fractional decimals allowing expansion for further detail. Numbers are flexible to the degree that they can be expanded in linear fashion to cover special aspects of general subjects. A library assigns a classification number that unambiguously locates a particular volume in a position relative to other books in the library, on the basis of its subject. The number makes it possible to find any book and to return it to its proper place on the library shelves. The classification system is used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries. | 2001-10-25T15:28:10Z | 2023-12-14T21:46:25Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification |
8,702 | Duḥkha | Duḥkha (/ˈduːkə/), 'unease', "standing unstable," commonly translated as "suffering", "pain", or "unhappiness", is an important concept in Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism. Its meaning depends on the context, and may refer more specifically to the "unsatisfactoriness" or "unease" of mundane life, not being at ease when driven by craving/grasping and ignorance.
While the term dukkha has often been derived from the prefix du ("bad" or "difficult") and the root kha, "empty", "hole", a badly fitting axle-hole of a cart or chariot giving "a very bumpy ride", it may actually be derived from duḥ-stha, a "dis-/ bad- + stand-", that is, "standing badly, unsteady", "unstable".
It is the first of the Four Noble Truths and it is one of the three marks of existence. The term also appears in scriptures of Hinduism, such as the Upanishads, in discussions of moksha (spiritual liberation).
Duḥkha (Sanskrit: दुःख; Pali: dukkha) is a term found in the Upanishads and Buddhist texts, meaning anything that is "uneasy, uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult, causing pain or sadness". It is also a concept in Indian religions about the nature of life that innately includes the "unpleasant", "suffering", "pain", "sorrow", "distress", "grief" or "misery." The term duḥkha does not have a one-word English translation, and embodies diverse aspects of unpleasant human experiences. It is often understood as the opposite of sukha, meaning "happiness," "comfort" or "ease."
The word has been explained in recent times as a derivation from Aryan terminology for an axle hole, referring to an axle hole which is not in the center and leads to a bumpy, uncomfortable ride. According to Winthrop Sargeant,
The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning "sky," "ether," or "space," was originally the word for "hole," particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan's vehicles. Thus sukha ... meant, originally, "having a good axle hole," while duhkha meant "having a poor axle hole," leading to discomfort.
Joseph Goldstein, American vipassana teacher and writer, explains the etymology as follows:
The word dukkha is made up of the prefix du and the root kha. Du means "bad" or "difficult". Kha means "empty". "Empty", here, refers to several things—some specific, others more general. One of the specific meanings refers to the empty axle hole of a wheel. If the axle fits badly into the center hole, we get a very bumpy ride. This is a good analogy for our ride through saṃsāra.
However, according to Monier Monier-Williams, the actual roots of the Pali term dukkha appear to be Sanskrit दुस्- (dus-, "bad") + स्था (stha, "to stand"). Regular phonological changes in the development of Sanskrit into the various Prakrits led to a shift from dus-sthā to duḥkha to dukkha.
Analayo concurs, stating that dukkha as derived from duh-stha, "standing badly," "conveys nuances of "uneasiness" or of being "uncomfortable." Silk Road philologist Christopher I. Beckwith elaborates on this derivation. According to Beckwith:
...although the sense of duḥkha in Normative Buddhism is traditionally given as 'suffering', that and similar interpretations are highly unlikely for Early Buddhism. Significantly, Monier-Williams himself doubts the usual explanation of duḥkha and presents an alternative one immediately after it, namely: duḥ-stha "'standing badly,' unsteady, disquieted (lit. and fig.); uneasy", and so on. This form is also attested, and makes much better sense as the opposite of the Rig Veda sense of sukha, which Monier-Williams gives in full.
The literal meaning of duhkha, as used in a general sense is "suffering" or "painful." Its exact translation depends on the context. Contemporary translators of Buddhist texts use a variety of English words to convey the aspects of dukh. Early Western translators of Buddhist texts (before the 1970s) typically translated the Pali term dukkha as "suffering." Later translators have emphasized that "suffering" is a too limited translation for the term duḥkha, and have preferred to either leave the term untranslated, or to clarify that translation with terms such as anxiety, distress, frustration, unease, unsatisfactoriness, not having what one wants, having what one doesn't want, etc. In the sequence "birth is painfull," dukhka may be translated as "painfull." When related to vedana, "feeling," dukkha ("unpleasant," "painfull") is the opposite of sukkha ("pleasure," "pleasant"), yet all feelings are dukkha in that they are impermanent, conditioned phenomena, which are unsatisfactory, incapable of providing lasting satisfaction. The term "unsatisfactoriness" then is often used to emphasize the unsatisfactoriness of "life under the influence of afflictions and polluted karma."
Duḥkha is one of the three marks of existence, namely anitya ("impermanent"), duḥkha ("unsatisfactory"), anatman (without a lasting essence).
Within the Buddhist sutras, duḥkha has a broad meaning, and is divided in three categories:
Various sutras sum up how life in this "mundane world" is regarded to be duḥkha, starting with samsara, the ongoing process of death and rebirth itself:
Early emphasizes the importance of developing insight into the nature of duḥkha, the conditions that cause it, and how it can be overcome. This process is formulated in the teachings on the Four Noble Truths.
Chinese Buddhist tradition has been influenced by Taoism and Confucian theory that advocates that duhkha (古:十Ten directions, 口 hole or opening) is associated to the theory of seven emotions of endogenous disease through the formation of the spirit of the po a term that relates to the Western psychological notion of ego or the theological reference to the human soul. This theory is expounded in the application of traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment and prevention of pain and suffering from illness, disease and ignorance.
Awakening, that is, awakening to one's true mind of emptiness and compassion, does not necessarily end physical suffering. In the Buddhist tradition, suffering after awakening is often explained as the working-out of karma of one's previous life.
In Hindu literature, the earliest Upaniṣads — the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya — in all likelihood predate the advent of Buddhism. In these scriptures of Hinduism, the Sanskrit word duḥkha (दुःख) appears in the sense of "suffering, sorrow, distress", and in the context of a spiritual pursuit and liberation through the knowledge of Atman (soul/self).
The verse 4.4.14 of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad states:
The verse 7.26.2 of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad states:
The concept of sorrow and suffering, and self-knowledge as a means to overcome it, appears extensively with other terms in the pre-Buddhist Upanishads. The term Duhkha also appears in many other middle and later post-Buddhist Upanishads such as the verse 6.20 of Shvetashvatara Upanishad, as well as in the Bhagavada Gita, all in the context of moksha. The term also appears in the foundational Sutras of the six schools of Hindu philosophy, such as the opening lines of Samkhya karika of the Samkhya school. | [
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"title": ""
},
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"text": "Duḥkha (Sanskrit: दुःख; Pali: dukkha) is a term found in the Upanishads and Buddhist texts, meaning anything that is \"uneasy, uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult, causing pain or sadness\". It is also a concept in Indian religions about the nature of life that innately includes the \"unpleasant\", \"suffering\", \"pain\", \"sorrow\", \"distress\", \"grief\" or \"misery.\" The term duḥkha does not have a one-word English translation, and embodies diverse aspects of unpleasant human experiences. It is often understood as the opposite of sukha, meaning \"happiness,\" \"comfort\" or \"ease.\"",
"title": "Etymology and meaning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The word has been explained in recent times as a derivation from Aryan terminology for an axle hole, referring to an axle hole which is not in the center and leads to a bumpy, uncomfortable ride. According to Winthrop Sargeant,",
"title": "Etymology and meaning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning \"sky,\" \"ether,\" or \"space,\" was originally the word for \"hole,\" particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan's vehicles. Thus sukha ... meant, originally, \"having a good axle hole,\" while duhkha meant \"having a poor axle hole,\" leading to discomfort.",
"title": "Etymology and meaning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Joseph Goldstein, American vipassana teacher and writer, explains the etymology as follows:",
"title": "Etymology and meaning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The word dukkha is made up of the prefix du and the root kha. Du means \"bad\" or \"difficult\". Kha means \"empty\". \"Empty\", here, refers to several things—some specific, others more general. One of the specific meanings refers to the empty axle hole of a wheel. If the axle fits badly into the center hole, we get a very bumpy ride. This is a good analogy for our ride through saṃsāra.",
"title": "Etymology and meaning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "However, according to Monier Monier-Williams, the actual roots of the Pali term dukkha appear to be Sanskrit दुस्- (dus-, \"bad\") + स्था (stha, \"to stand\"). Regular phonological changes in the development of Sanskrit into the various Prakrits led to a shift from dus-sthā to duḥkha to dukkha.",
"title": "Etymology and meaning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Analayo concurs, stating that dukkha as derived from duh-stha, \"standing badly,\" \"conveys nuances of \"uneasiness\" or of being \"uncomfortable.\" Silk Road philologist Christopher I. Beckwith elaborates on this derivation. According to Beckwith:",
"title": "Etymology and meaning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "...although the sense of duḥkha in Normative Buddhism is traditionally given as 'suffering', that and similar interpretations are highly unlikely for Early Buddhism. Significantly, Monier-Williams himself doubts the usual explanation of duḥkha and presents an alternative one immediately after it, namely: duḥ-stha \"'standing badly,' unsteady, disquieted (lit. and fig.); uneasy\", and so on. This form is also attested, and makes much better sense as the opposite of the Rig Veda sense of sukha, which Monier-Williams gives in full.",
"title": "Etymology and meaning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The literal meaning of duhkha, as used in a general sense is \"suffering\" or \"painful.\" Its exact translation depends on the context. Contemporary translators of Buddhist texts use a variety of English words to convey the aspects of dukh. Early Western translators of Buddhist texts (before the 1970s) typically translated the Pali term dukkha as \"suffering.\" Later translators have emphasized that \"suffering\" is a too limited translation for the term duḥkha, and have preferred to either leave the term untranslated, or to clarify that translation with terms such as anxiety, distress, frustration, unease, unsatisfactoriness, not having what one wants, having what one doesn't want, etc. In the sequence \"birth is painfull,\" dukhka may be translated as \"painfull.\" When related to vedana, \"feeling,\" dukkha (\"unpleasant,\" \"painfull\") is the opposite of sukkha (\"pleasure,\" \"pleasant\"), yet all feelings are dukkha in that they are impermanent, conditioned phenomena, which are unsatisfactory, incapable of providing lasting satisfaction. The term \"unsatisfactoriness\" then is often used to emphasize the unsatisfactoriness of \"life under the influence of afflictions and polluted karma.\"",
"title": "Etymology and meaning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Duḥkha is one of the three marks of existence, namely anitya (\"impermanent\"), duḥkha (\"unsatisfactory\"), anatman (without a lasting essence).",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Within the Buddhist sutras, duḥkha has a broad meaning, and is divided in three categories:",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Various sutras sum up how life in this \"mundane world\" is regarded to be duḥkha, starting with samsara, the ongoing process of death and rebirth itself:",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Early emphasizes the importance of developing insight into the nature of duḥkha, the conditions that cause it, and how it can be overcome. This process is formulated in the teachings on the Four Noble Truths.",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Chinese Buddhist tradition has been influenced by Taoism and Confucian theory that advocates that duhkha (古:十Ten directions, 口 hole or opening) is associated to the theory of seven emotions of endogenous disease through the formation of the spirit of the po a term that relates to the Western psychological notion of ego or the theological reference to the human soul. This theory is expounded in the application of traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment and prevention of pain and suffering from illness, disease and ignorance.",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Awakening, that is, awakening to one's true mind of emptiness and compassion, does not necessarily end physical suffering. In the Buddhist tradition, suffering after awakening is often explained as the working-out of karma of one's previous life.",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In Hindu literature, the earliest Upaniṣads — the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya — in all likelihood predate the advent of Buddhism. In these scriptures of Hinduism, the Sanskrit word duḥkha (दुःख) appears in the sense of \"suffering, sorrow, distress\", and in the context of a spiritual pursuit and liberation through the knowledge of Atman (soul/self).",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The verse 4.4.14 of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad states:",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The verse 7.26.2 of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad states:",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The concept of sorrow and suffering, and self-knowledge as a means to overcome it, appears extensively with other terms in the pre-Buddhist Upanishads. The term Duhkha also appears in many other middle and later post-Buddhist Upanishads such as the verse 6.20 of Shvetashvatara Upanishad, as well as in the Bhagavada Gita, all in the context of moksha. The term also appears in the foundational Sutras of the six schools of Hindu philosophy, such as the opening lines of Samkhya karika of the Samkhya school.",
"title": "Hinduism"
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"text": "",
"title": "External links"
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| Duḥkha, 'unease', "standing unstable," commonly translated as "suffering", "pain", or "unhappiness", is an important concept in Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism. Its meaning depends on the context, and may refer more specifically to the "unsatisfactoriness" or "unease" of mundane life, not being at ease when driven by craving/grasping and ignorance. While the term dukkha has often been derived from the prefix du and the root kha, "empty", "hole", a badly fitting axle-hole of a cart or chariot giving "a very bumpy ride", it may actually be derived from duḥ-stha, a "dis-/ bad- + stand-", that is, "standing badly, unsteady", "unstable". It is the first of the Four Noble Truths and it is one of the three marks of existence. The term also appears in scriptures of Hinduism, such as the Upanishads, in discussions of moksha. | 2001-10-25T20:30:33Z | 2023-12-02T07:00:58Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du%E1%B8%A5kha |
8,703 | Darwin Awards | The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor that originated in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. They recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool by dying or becoming sterilized by their own actions.
The project became more formalized with the creation of a website in 1993, followed by a series of books starting in 2000 by Wendy Northcutt. The criterion for the awards states: "In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival."
Accidental self-sterilization also qualifies, but the site notes: "Of necessity, the award is usually bestowed posthumously." The candidate is disqualified, though, if "innocent bystanders" are killed in the process, as they might have contributed positively to the gene pool. The logical problem presented by award winners who may have already reproduced is not addressed in the selection process owing to the difficulty of ascertaining whether or not a person has children; the Darwin Award rules state that the presence of offspring does not disqualify a nominee.
The origin of the Darwin Awards can be traced back to posts on Usenet group discussions as early as 1985. A post on August 7, 1985 describes the awards as being "given posthumously to people who have made the supreme sacrifice to keep their genes out of our pool. Style counts, not everyone who dies from their own stupidity can win." This early post cites an example of a person who tried to break into a vending machine and was crushed to death when he pulled it over himself. Another widely distributed early story mentioning the Darwin Awards is the JATO Rocket Car, which describes a man who strapped a jet-assisted take-off unit to his Chevrolet Impala in the Arizona desert and who died on the side of a cliff as his car achieved speeds of 250 to 300 miles per hour (400 to 480 km/h). This story was later determined to be an urban legend by the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Wendy Northcutt says the official Darwin Awards website run by Northcutt does its best to confirm all stories submitted, listing them as, "confirmed true by Darwin". Many of the viral emails circulating the Internet, however, are hoaxes and urban legends.
The website and collection of books were started in 1993 by Wendy Northcutt, who at the time was a graduate in molecular biology from the University of California, Berkeley. She went on to study neurobiology at Stanford University, doing research on cancer and telomerase. In her spare time, she organised chain letters from family members into the original Darwin Awards website hosted in her personal account space at Stanford. She eventually left the bench in 1998 and devoted herself full-time to her website and books in September 1999. By 2002, the website received 7 million page hits per month.
Northcutt encountered some difficulty in publishing the first book, since most publishers would only offer her a deal if she agreed to remove the stories from the Internet, but she refused: "It was a community! I could not do that. Even though it might have cost me a lot of money, I kept saying no." She eventually found a publisher who agreed to print a book containing only 10% of the material gathered for the website. The first book turned out to be a success, and was listed on The New York Times best-seller list for 6 months.
Not all of the feedback from the stories Northcutt published was positive, and she occasionally received email from people who knew the deceased. One such person advised: "This is horrible. It has shocked our community to the core. You should remove this." Northcutt demurred: "I can't. It's just too stupid." Northcutt kept the stories on the website and in her books, citing them as a "funny-but-true safety guide", and mentioning that children who read the book are going to be much more careful around explosives.
The website also awards Honorable Mentions to individuals who survive their misadventures with their reproductive capacity intact. One example of this is Larry Walters, who attached helium-filled weather balloons to a lawn chair and floated far above Long Beach, California, in July 1982. He reached an altitude of 16,000 ft (4,900 m), but survived, to be later fined for crossing controlled airspace. (Walters later fell into depression and committed suicide.) Another notable honorable mention was given to the two men who attempted to burgle the home of footballer Duncan Ferguson (who had an infamous reputation for physical aggression on and off the pitch, including four convictions for assault and who had served six months in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison) in 2001, with one burglar requiring three days' hospitalisation after being confronted by the player.
A 2014 study published in the British Medical Journal found that between 1995 and 2014, males represented 88.7% of Darwin Award winners (see figure).
The comedy film The Darwin Awards (2006), written and directed by Finn Taylor, was based on the website and many of the Darwin Awards stories.
Northcutt has stated five requirements for a Darwin Award:
Nominee must be dead or rendered sterile
This may be subject to dispute. Potential awardees may be out of the gene pool because of age; others have already reproduced before their deaths. To avoid debates about the possibility of in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, or cloning, the original Darwin Awards book applied the following "deserted island" test to potential winners: If the person were unable to reproduce when stranded on a deserted island with a fertile member of the opposite sex, he or she would be considered sterile. Winners of the award, in general, either are dead or have become unable to use their sexual organs.
Astoundingly stupid judgment
The candidate's foolishness must be unique and sensational, likely because the award is intended to be funny. A number of foolish but common activities, such as smoking in bed, are excluded from consideration. In contrast, self-immolation caused by smoking after being administered a flammable ointment in a hospital and specifically told not to smoke is grounds for nomination. One "Honorable Mention" (a man who attempted suicide by swallowing nitroglycerine pills, and then tried to detonate them by running into a wall) is noted to be in this category, despite being intentional and self-inflicted (i.e. attempted suicide), which would normally disqualify the inductee.
Cause of one's own demise
Killing a friend with a hand grenade would not be eligible, but killing oneself while manufacturing a homemade chimney-cleaning device from a grenade would be. To earn a Darwin Award, one must have killed oneself, or rendered oneself sterile; merely causing death to a third party is insufficient.
Capable of sound judgement
The nominee must be at least past the legal driving age and free of mental defect (Northcutt considers injury or death caused by mental defect to be tragic, rather than amusing, and routinely disqualifies such entries). After much discussion, a small category regarding deaths below this age limit also exists. Entry into this category requires that the peers of the candidate be of the opinion that the actions of the person in question were above and beyond the limits of reason.
In 2011, however, the awards targeted a 16-year-old boy in Leeds who died stealing copper wiring (the standard minimum driving age in Great Britain being 17). In 2012, Northcutt made similar light of a 14-year-old girl in Brazil who was killed while leaning out of a school bus window, but she was "disqualified" for the award itself because of the likely public objection owing to the girl's age, which Northcutt asserts is based on "magical thinking".
Event must be verified
The story must be documented by reliable sources: e.g., reputable newspaper articles, confirmed television reports, or responsible eyewitnesses. If a story is found to be untrue, it is disqualified, but particularly amusing ones are placed in the urban legend section of the archives. Despite this requirement, many of the stories are fictional, often appearing as "original submissions" and presenting no further sources than unverified "eyewitnesses". Most such stories on Northcutt's Darwin Awards site are filed in the Personal Accounts section.
In addition, later revisions to the qualification criteria add several requirements that have not been made into formalized "rules":
The Darwin Awards have received varying levels of scrutiny from the scientific community. In his book Encyclopedia of Evolution, biology professor Stanley A. Rice comments: "Despite the tremendous value of these stories as entertainment, it is unlikely that they represent evolution in action", citing the nonexistence of "judgment impairment genes". On an essay in the book The Evolution of Evil, professor Nathan Hallanger acknowledges that the Darwin Awards are meant as black humor, but associates them with the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. University of Oxford biophysicist Sylvia McLain, writing for The Guardian, says that while the Darwin Awards are "clearly meant to be funny", they do not accurately represent how genetics work, further noting that "'smart' people do stupid things all the time". Geologist and science communicator Sharon A. Hill has criticized the Darwin Awards on both scientific and ethical grounds, claiming that no genetic traits impact personal intelligence or good judgment to be targeted by natural selection, and calling them an example of "ignorance" and "heartlessness". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor that originated in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. They recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool by dying or becoming sterilized by their own actions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The project became more formalized with the creation of a website in 1993, followed by a series of books starting in 2000 by Wendy Northcutt. The criterion for the awards states: \"In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Accidental self-sterilization also qualifies, but the site notes: \"Of necessity, the award is usually bestowed posthumously.\" The candidate is disqualified, though, if \"innocent bystanders\" are killed in the process, as they might have contributed positively to the gene pool. The logical problem presented by award winners who may have already reproduced is not addressed in the selection process owing to the difficulty of ascertaining whether or not a person has children; the Darwin Award rules state that the presence of offspring does not disqualify a nominee.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The origin of the Darwin Awards can be traced back to posts on Usenet group discussions as early as 1985. A post on August 7, 1985 describes the awards as being \"given posthumously to people who have made the supreme sacrifice to keep their genes out of our pool. Style counts, not everyone who dies from their own stupidity can win.\" This early post cites an example of a person who tried to break into a vending machine and was crushed to death when he pulled it over himself. Another widely distributed early story mentioning the Darwin Awards is the JATO Rocket Car, which describes a man who strapped a jet-assisted take-off unit to his Chevrolet Impala in the Arizona desert and who died on the side of a cliff as his car achieved speeds of 250 to 300 miles per hour (400 to 480 km/h). This story was later determined to be an urban legend by the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Wendy Northcutt says the official Darwin Awards website run by Northcutt does its best to confirm all stories submitted, listing them as, \"confirmed true by Darwin\". Many of the viral emails circulating the Internet, however, are hoaxes and urban legends.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The website and collection of books were started in 1993 by Wendy Northcutt, who at the time was a graduate in molecular biology from the University of California, Berkeley. She went on to study neurobiology at Stanford University, doing research on cancer and telomerase. In her spare time, she organised chain letters from family members into the original Darwin Awards website hosted in her personal account space at Stanford. She eventually left the bench in 1998 and devoted herself full-time to her website and books in September 1999. By 2002, the website received 7 million page hits per month.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Northcutt encountered some difficulty in publishing the first book, since most publishers would only offer her a deal if she agreed to remove the stories from the Internet, but she refused: \"It was a community! I could not do that. Even though it might have cost me a lot of money, I kept saying no.\" She eventually found a publisher who agreed to print a book containing only 10% of the material gathered for the website. The first book turned out to be a success, and was listed on The New York Times best-seller list for 6 months.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Not all of the feedback from the stories Northcutt published was positive, and she occasionally received email from people who knew the deceased. One such person advised: \"This is horrible. It has shocked our community to the core. You should remove this.\" Northcutt demurred: \"I can't. It's just too stupid.\" Northcutt kept the stories on the website and in her books, citing them as a \"funny-but-true safety guide\", and mentioning that children who read the book are going to be much more careful around explosives.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The website also awards Honorable Mentions to individuals who survive their misadventures with their reproductive capacity intact. One example of this is Larry Walters, who attached helium-filled weather balloons to a lawn chair and floated far above Long Beach, California, in July 1982. He reached an altitude of 16,000 ft (4,900 m), but survived, to be later fined for crossing controlled airspace. (Walters later fell into depression and committed suicide.) Another notable honorable mention was given to the two men who attempted to burgle the home of footballer Duncan Ferguson (who had an infamous reputation for physical aggression on and off the pitch, including four convictions for assault and who had served six months in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison) in 2001, with one burglar requiring three days' hospitalisation after being confronted by the player.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "A 2014 study published in the British Medical Journal found that between 1995 and 2014, males represented 88.7% of Darwin Award winners (see figure).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The comedy film The Darwin Awards (2006), written and directed by Finn Taylor, was based on the website and many of the Darwin Awards stories.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Northcutt has stated five requirements for a Darwin Award:",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Nominee must be dead or rendered sterile",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "This may be subject to dispute. Potential awardees may be out of the gene pool because of age; others have already reproduced before their deaths. To avoid debates about the possibility of in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, or cloning, the original Darwin Awards book applied the following \"deserted island\" test to potential winners: If the person were unable to reproduce when stranded on a deserted island with a fertile member of the opposite sex, he or she would be considered sterile. Winners of the award, in general, either are dead or have become unable to use their sexual organs.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Astoundingly stupid judgment",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The candidate's foolishness must be unique and sensational, likely because the award is intended to be funny. A number of foolish but common activities, such as smoking in bed, are excluded from consideration. In contrast, self-immolation caused by smoking after being administered a flammable ointment in a hospital and specifically told not to smoke is grounds for nomination. One \"Honorable Mention\" (a man who attempted suicide by swallowing nitroglycerine pills, and then tried to detonate them by running into a wall) is noted to be in this category, despite being intentional and self-inflicted (i.e. attempted suicide), which would normally disqualify the inductee.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Cause of one's own demise",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Killing a friend with a hand grenade would not be eligible, but killing oneself while manufacturing a homemade chimney-cleaning device from a grenade would be. To earn a Darwin Award, one must have killed oneself, or rendered oneself sterile; merely causing death to a third party is insufficient.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Capable of sound judgement",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The nominee must be at least past the legal driving age and free of mental defect (Northcutt considers injury or death caused by mental defect to be tragic, rather than amusing, and routinely disqualifies such entries). After much discussion, a small category regarding deaths below this age limit also exists. Entry into this category requires that the peers of the candidate be of the opinion that the actions of the person in question were above and beyond the limits of reason.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 2011, however, the awards targeted a 16-year-old boy in Leeds who died stealing copper wiring (the standard minimum driving age in Great Britain being 17). In 2012, Northcutt made similar light of a 14-year-old girl in Brazil who was killed while leaning out of a school bus window, but she was \"disqualified\" for the award itself because of the likely public objection owing to the girl's age, which Northcutt asserts is based on \"magical thinking\".",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Event must be verified",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The story must be documented by reliable sources: e.g., reputable newspaper articles, confirmed television reports, or responsible eyewitnesses. If a story is found to be untrue, it is disqualified, but particularly amusing ones are placed in the urban legend section of the archives. Despite this requirement, many of the stories are fictional, often appearing as \"original submissions\" and presenting no further sources than unverified \"eyewitnesses\". Most such stories on Northcutt's Darwin Awards site are filed in the Personal Accounts section.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In addition, later revisions to the qualification criteria add several requirements that have not been made into formalized \"rules\":",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Darwin Awards have received varying levels of scrutiny from the scientific community. In his book Encyclopedia of Evolution, biology professor Stanley A. Rice comments: \"Despite the tremendous value of these stories as entertainment, it is unlikely that they represent evolution in action\", citing the nonexistence of \"judgment impairment genes\". On an essay in the book The Evolution of Evil, professor Nathan Hallanger acknowledges that the Darwin Awards are meant as black humor, but associates them with the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. University of Oxford biophysicist Sylvia McLain, writing for The Guardian, says that while the Darwin Awards are \"clearly meant to be funny\", they do not accurately represent how genetics work, further noting that \"'smart' people do stupid things all the time\". Geologist and science communicator Sharon A. Hill has criticized the Darwin Awards on both scientific and ethical grounds, claiming that no genetic traits impact personal intelligence or good judgment to be targeted by natural selection, and calling them an example of \"ignorance\" and \"heartlessness\".",
"title": "Reception"
}
]
| The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor that originated in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. They recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool by dying or becoming sterilized by their own actions. The project became more formalized with the creation of a website in 1993, followed by a series of books starting in 2000 by Wendy Northcutt. The criterion for the awards states: "In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival." Accidental self-sterilization also qualifies, but the site notes: "Of necessity, the award is usually bestowed posthumously." The candidate is disqualified, though, if "innocent bystanders" are killed in the process, as they might have contributed positively to the gene pool. The logical problem presented by award winners who may have already reproduced is not addressed in the selection process owing to the difficulty of ascertaining whether or not a person has children; the Darwin Award rules state that the presence of offspring does not disqualify a nominee. | 2001-10-26T02:50:13Z | 2023-12-19T22:12:25Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards |
8,704 | Outline of dance | The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to dance:
Dance – human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting. Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who does this is called a choreographer. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as Folk dance) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet. A great many dances and dance styles are performed to dance music.
Dance (also called "dancing") can fit the following categories:
Some other things can be named "dance" metaphorically; see dance (disambiguation)
Type of dance – a particular dance or dance style. There are many varieties of dance. Dance categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, tango is traditionally a partner dance. While it is mostly social dance, its ballroom form may be competitive dance, as in DanceSport. At the same time it is enjoyed as performance dance, whereby it may well be a solo dance.
History of dance
Dance science | [
{
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"text": "The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to dance:",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Dance – human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting. Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who does this is called a choreographer. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as Folk dance) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet. A great many dances and dance styles are performed to dance music.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Dance (also called \"dancing\") can fit the following categories:",
"title": "What type of thing is dance?"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Some other things can be named \"dance\" metaphorically; see dance (disambiguation)",
"title": "What type of thing is dance?"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Type of dance – a particular dance or dance style. There are many varieties of dance. Dance categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, tango is traditionally a partner dance. While it is mostly social dance, its ballroom form may be competitive dance, as in DanceSport. At the same time it is enjoyed as performance dance, whereby it may well be a solo dance.",
"title": "Types of dance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "History of dance",
"title": "History of dance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Dance science",
"title": "Dance science"
}
]
| The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to dance: Dance – human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting. Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who does this is called a choreographer. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet. A great many dances and dance styles are performed to dance music. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-12T01:34:53Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_dance |
8,706 | DCM | DCM may refer to: | [
{
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"text": "DCM may refer to:",
"title": ""
}
]
| DCM may refer to: | 2001-10-26T04:00:57Z | 2023-10-10T18:26:40Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCM |
8,707 | DKW | DKW (Dampf-Kraft-Wagen, English: "steam-powered car", also Deutsche Kinder-Wagen English: "German children's car". Das-Kleine-Wunder, English: "the little wonder" or Des-Knaben-Wunsch, English: "the boy's wish"- from when the company built toy two-stroke engines) was a German car- and motorcycle-marque. DKW was one of the four companies that formed Auto Union in 1932 and thus became an ancestor of the modern-day Audi company.
In 1916, Danish engineer Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen founded a factory in Zschopau, Saxony, Germany, to produce steam fittings. That year he attempted to produce a steam-driven car, called the DKW. Although unsuccessful, he made a two-stroke toy engine in 1919, called Des Knaben Wunsch – "the boy's wish". He put a slightly modified version of this engine into a motorcycle and called it Das Kleine Wunder – "the little wonder" the initials from this becoming the DKW brand: by the late 1920s, DKW had become the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer.
In September 1924, DKW bought Slaby-Beringer, saving them from Germany's hyperinflation economic crisis. Rudolf Slaby became chief-engineer at DKW. In 1932, DKW merged with Audi, Horch and Wanderer to form Auto Union. After World War II, DKW moved to West Germany. The original factory became MZ. Auto Union came under Daimler-Benz ownership in 1957 and was purchased by the Volkswagen Group in 1964. The last German-built DKW car was the F102, which ceased production in 1966. Its successor, the four-stroke F103, was marketed under the Audi brand, another Auto Union marque.
DKW-badged cars continued to be built under license in Brazil and Argentina until 1967 and 1969 respectively. The DKW trademark is currently owned by Auto Union GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Audi AG which also owns the rights to other historical trademarks and intellectual property of the Auto Union combine.
DKW cars were made from 1928 until 1966, apart from the interruption caused by the Second World War. DKWs always used two-stroke engines, reflecting the company's position by the end of the 1920s as the world's largest producer of motorcycles. The first DKW car, the small and rather crude Typ P, emerged on 7 May 1928 and the model continued to be built at the company's Spandau (Berlin) plant, first as a roadster and later as a stylish if basic sports car, until 1931.
More significant was a series of inexpensive cars built 300 km (185 miles) to the south in Zwickau in the plant acquired by the company's owner in 1928 when he had become the majority owner in Audi Werke AG. Models F1 to F8 (F for Front) were built between 1931 and 1942, with successor models reappearing after the end of the war in 1945. They were the first volume production cars in Europe with front wheel drive, and were powered by transversely mounted two-cylinder two-stroke engines. Displacement was 584 or 692 cc: claimed maximum power was initially 15 PS, and from 1931 a choice between 18 or 20 hp (15 kW). These models had a generator that doubled as a starter, mounted directly on the crankshaft, known as a Dynastart. DKWs from Zwickau notched up approximately 218,000 units between 1931 and 1942. Most cars were sold on the home market and over 85% of DKWs produced in the 1930s were the little F series cars: DKW reached second place in German sales by 1934 and stayed there, accounting for 189,369 of the cars sold between 1931 and 1938, more than 16% of the market.
Between 1929 and 1940, DKW produced a less well remembered but technically intriguing series of rear-wheel drive cars called (among other names) Schwebeklasse and Sonderklasse with two-stroke V4 engines. Engine displacement was 1,000 cc, later 1,100 cc. The engines had two extra cylinders for forced induction, so they appeared like V6 engines but without spark plugs on the front cylinder pair.
In 1939, DKW made a prototype with the first three-cylinder engine, with a displacement of 900 cc and producing 30 hp (22 kW). With a streamlined body, the car could run at 115 km/h (71 mph). It was put into production after World War II, first as an Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau (IFA) F9 (later Wartburg) in Zwickau, East Germany, and shortly afterwards in DKW-form from Düsseldorf as the 3=6 or F91.
DKW engines were used by Saab as a model for the Saab two-stroke in its Saab 92 car manufacturing venture, in 1947.
As Auto Union was based in Saxony in what became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), it took some time for it to regroup after the war. The company was registered in West Germany as Auto Union GmbH in 1949, first as a spare-part provider, but soon to take up production of the RT 125 motorcycle and a new delivery van, called a Schnellaster F800. Their first line of production took place in Düsseldorf. This van used the same engine as the last F8 made before the war.
Their first car was the F89 using the body from the prototype F9 made before the war and the two-cylinder two-stroke engine from the last F8. Production went on until it was replaced by the successful three-cylinder engine that came with the F91. The F91 was in production 1953–1955, and was replaced by the larger F93 in 1956. The F91 and F93 had 900 cc three-cylinder two-stroke engines, the first ones delivering 34 hp (25 kW), the last 38 hp (28 kW). The ignition system comprised three independent sets of points and coils, one for each cylinder, with the points mounted in a cluster around a single lobed cam at the front end of the crankshaft. The cooling system was of the free convection type assisted by a fan driven from a pulley mounted at the front end of the crankshaft.
The F93 was produced until 1959, and was replaced by the Auto-Union 1000. These models were produced with a 1,000 cc two-stroke engine, with a choice between 44 hp (33 kW) or 50 hp (37 kW) S versions until 1963. During this transition, production was moved from Düsseldorf to Ingolstadt, where Audi still has its production. From 1957, the cars could be fitted with a saxomat, an automatic clutch, the only small car then offering this feature. The last versions of the Auto-Union 1000S had disc brakes as option, an early development for this technology. A sporting 2+2 seater version was available as the Auto-Union 1000 SP from 1957 to 1964, the first years only as a coupé and from 1962 also as a convertible.
In 1956, the very rare DKW Monza was put into small-scale production on a private initiative, with a sporting two-seater body of glassfiber on a standard F93 frame. It was first called Solitude, but got its final name from the long-distance speed records it made on the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Italy in December 1956. Running in Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) class G, it set records including 48 hours at an average speed of 140.961 km/h (87.589 mph), 10,000 km at 139.453 km/h (86.652 mph) and 72 hours at 139.459 km/h (86.656 mph). The car was first produced by Dannenhauer & Strauss in Stuttgart, then by Massholder in Heidelberg and lastly by Robert Schenk in Stuttgart. The number produced is said to be around 75, 50 survived. Production finished by the end of 1958.
A more successful range of cars was sold from 1959, the Junior/F12 series based on a modern concept from the late 1950s. The range consists of Junior (basic model) made from 1959 to 1961, Junior de Luxe (a little enhanced) from 1961 to 1963, F11 (a little larger) and F12 (larger and bigger engine) from 1963 to 1965, and F12 Roadster from 1964 to 1965. The Junior/F12 series became quite popular, and many cars were produced. An assembly plant was licensed in Ballincollig, County Cork, Ireland between 1952 and c.1964 and roughly 4,000 vehicles were assembled, ranging from saloons, vans and motorbikes to commercial combine harvesters. This was the only DKW factory outside Germany in Europe and for many years after its closure its large DKW sign could be visible on the wall of the factory. The building was demolished in the late 2000s and was redeveloped into a German Aldi store and a McDonald's drive-thru.
All the three-cylinder two-stroke post-war cars had some sporting potential and formed the basis for many rally victories in the 1950s and early 1960s. This made DKW the most winning car brand in the European rally league for several years during the fifties.
In 1960, DKW developed a V6 engine by combining two three-cylinder two-stroke engines, with a capacity of 1,000 cc. The capacity was increased and the final V6 in 1966 had a capacity of 1,300 cc, which developed 83 hp (62 kW) at 5,000 rpm using the standard configuration with two carburettors. A four-carburettor version produced 100 hp (75 kW), a six-carburettor one 130 hp (97 kW). It weighed only 84 kg (185 lb). The V6 was planned to be used in the DKW Munga and the F102. About 100 engines were built for testing purposes and 13 DKW F102 and some Mungas were fitted with the V6 engine in the 1960s.
The last DKW was the F102, coming into production in 1964 as a replacement for the old-looking AU1000. However, the F102 sold poorly, largely due to its two-stroke engine technology which was at the limit of its development. Auto Union's parent, Daimler-Benz, decided to offload the company to Volkswagen. The car was re-engineered with a four-stroke engine and relaunched as the Audi F103. This marked the end of the DKW marque for cars, and the rebirth of the Audi name.
From 1956 to 1961, Dutch importer Hart, Nibbrig & Greve assembled cars in an abandoned asphalt factory in Sassenheim, where they employed about 120 workers, two transporter, that collected SKD kits from Duesseldorf and built about 13.500 cars. When the DKW plant moved the import of SKD kits stopped, as it became too expensive.
From 1956 to 1967, DKW cars were made in Brazil by the local company Vemag (Veículos e Máquinas Agrícolas S.A., "Vehicles and Agricultural Machinery Inc."). Vemag was assembling Scania-Vabis trucks, but Scania Vabis became an independent company in July 1960. The original plans were to build the Candango off-roader (Munga), a utility vehicle and a four-door sedan, called Vemaguet and Belcar respectively. The first model built was the 900 cc F91 Universal but the Belcar and Vemaguet names were applied later.
In 1958, the F94 four-door sedan and station wagon were launched, in the early 1960s renamed Belcar and Vemaguet. The company also produced a luxury coupe (the DKW Fissore) and the off-road Munga (locally called Candango). In 1960 Vemag cars received the larger one-litre, 50 PS (37 kW) engine from the Auto Union 1000.
Vemag had a successful official racing team, with the coupe GT Malzoni, with fiberglass body. This project was the foundation of the long-lasting Brazilian sports car brand Puma. The Brazilian F94 line has been improved with several cosmetic changes and became more and more different from the German and Argentine models. Vemag had no capital to invest in new products and came under governmental pressure to merge. In 1964–1965 Volkswagen gradually took over Auto Union, a minority holder in Vemag, and in 1967 Volkswagen bought the remainder of the stock. VW quickly began phasing out DKW-Vemag production and introduced the Volkswagen 1600 sedan to the old Vemag plant, after a total of 109,343 DKW-Vemag cars had been built.
DKW vehicles were made in Argentina from 1960 to 1969 by IASF S.A. (Industria Automotriz Santa Fe Sociedad Anónima) in Sauce Viejo, Santa Fe. The most beautiful were the Cupé Fissore, which had many famous owners (Julio Sosa, César Luis Menotti, and others). Other models are the Auto Union 1000 S Sedán (21,797 made until 1969) and the Auto Union 1000 Universal S (6,396 made until 1969). and the Auto Union Combi/Pick-up. The last version of the Auto Union Combi/Pick-up (DKW F1000 L), launched in 1969, survived a few months and was bought out by IME, which continued production until 1979.
The DKW Munga was built by Auto Union in Ingolstadt. Production began in October 1956 and ended in December 1968, with 46,750 cars built.
From 1949 to 1962, DKW produced the Schnellaster with a trailing-arm rear suspension system with springs in the cross bar assembly. Spanish subsidiary IMOSA produced a modern successor introduced in 1963, the DKW F 1000 L. This van started with the three-cylinder 1,000 cc engine, but later received a Mercedes-Benz Diesel engine and was renamed a Mercedes-Benz in 1975.
During the late 1920s and until WWII broke out, DKW was both the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer, as well as Europe's pioneer of front-wheel drive automobiles with their successful 1931 and later DKW Front models, before the 1932 Adler Trumpf and the 1934 Citroen Traction Avant. In 1931, Arnold Zoller started building split-singles and this concept made DKW the dominant racing motorcycle in the Lightweight and Junior classes between the wars. This included off-road events like the International Six Days Trial where the marque scored some considerable inter-war year successes alongside Bavarian Motor Works At the same time, the company also had some success with super-charged racing motorcycles which because of their light weight were particularly successful in the ISDT
The motorcycle branch produced famous models such as the RT 125 pre- and post-World War II, and after the war with production at the original factory in GDR becoming MZ it made 175, 250 and 350 (cc) models. As war reparations, the design drawings of the RT125 were given to Harley-Davidson in the US and BSA in the UK. The Harley-Davidson version was known loosely as the Hummer (Hummer is really just a few specific years, but generally people call the Harley lightweights Hummers), while BSA used them for the Bantam. IFA and later MZ models continued in production until the 1990s, when economics brought production of the two stroke to an end. Other manufacturers copied the DKW design, officially or otherwise. This can be seen in the similarity of many small two-stroke motorcycles from the 1950s, including from Yamaha, Voskhod, Maserati, and Polish WSK.
Pre-war and war-years production of civilian models totalled almost 250,000 units, of which some 218,000 were front-wheel driven. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "DKW (Dampf-Kraft-Wagen, English: \"steam-powered car\", also Deutsche Kinder-Wagen English: \"German children's car\". Das-Kleine-Wunder, English: \"the little wonder\" or Des-Knaben-Wunsch, English: \"the boy's wish\"- from when the company built toy two-stroke engines) was a German car- and motorcycle-marque. DKW was one of the four companies that formed Auto Union in 1932 and thus became an ancestor of the modern-day Audi company.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In 1916, Danish engineer Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen founded a factory in Zschopau, Saxony, Germany, to produce steam fittings. That year he attempted to produce a steam-driven car, called the DKW. Although unsuccessful, he made a two-stroke toy engine in 1919, called Des Knaben Wunsch – \"the boy's wish\". He put a slightly modified version of this engine into a motorcycle and called it Das Kleine Wunder – \"the little wonder\" the initials from this becoming the DKW brand: by the late 1920s, DKW had become the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In September 1924, DKW bought Slaby-Beringer, saving them from Germany's hyperinflation economic crisis. Rudolf Slaby became chief-engineer at DKW. In 1932, DKW merged with Audi, Horch and Wanderer to form Auto Union. After World War II, DKW moved to West Germany. The original factory became MZ. Auto Union came under Daimler-Benz ownership in 1957 and was purchased by the Volkswagen Group in 1964. The last German-built DKW car was the F102, which ceased production in 1966. Its successor, the four-stroke F103, was marketed under the Audi brand, another Auto Union marque.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "DKW-badged cars continued to be built under license in Brazil and Argentina until 1967 and 1969 respectively. The DKW trademark is currently owned by Auto Union GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Audi AG which also owns the rights to other historical trademarks and intellectual property of the Auto Union combine.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "DKW cars were made from 1928 until 1966, apart from the interruption caused by the Second World War. DKWs always used two-stroke engines, reflecting the company's position by the end of the 1920s as the world's largest producer of motorcycles. The first DKW car, the small and rather crude Typ P, emerged on 7 May 1928 and the model continued to be built at the company's Spandau (Berlin) plant, first as a roadster and later as a stylish if basic sports car, until 1931.",
"title": "Automobiles made between 1928 and 1942"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "More significant was a series of inexpensive cars built 300 km (185 miles) to the south in Zwickau in the plant acquired by the company's owner in 1928 when he had become the majority owner in Audi Werke AG. Models F1 to F8 (F for Front) were built between 1931 and 1942, with successor models reappearing after the end of the war in 1945. They were the first volume production cars in Europe with front wheel drive, and were powered by transversely mounted two-cylinder two-stroke engines. Displacement was 584 or 692 cc: claimed maximum power was initially 15 PS, and from 1931 a choice between 18 or 20 hp (15 kW). These models had a generator that doubled as a starter, mounted directly on the crankshaft, known as a Dynastart. DKWs from Zwickau notched up approximately 218,000 units between 1931 and 1942. Most cars were sold on the home market and over 85% of DKWs produced in the 1930s were the little F series cars: DKW reached second place in German sales by 1934 and stayed there, accounting for 189,369 of the cars sold between 1931 and 1938, more than 16% of the market.",
"title": "Automobiles made between 1928 and 1942"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Between 1929 and 1940, DKW produced a less well remembered but technically intriguing series of rear-wheel drive cars called (among other names) Schwebeklasse and Sonderklasse with two-stroke V4 engines. Engine displacement was 1,000 cc, later 1,100 cc. The engines had two extra cylinders for forced induction, so they appeared like V6 engines but without spark plugs on the front cylinder pair.",
"title": "Automobiles made between 1928 and 1942"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1939, DKW made a prototype with the first three-cylinder engine, with a displacement of 900 cc and producing 30 hp (22 kW). With a streamlined body, the car could run at 115 km/h (71 mph). It was put into production after World War II, first as an Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau (IFA) F9 (later Wartburg) in Zwickau, East Germany, and shortly afterwards in DKW-form from Düsseldorf as the 3=6 or F91.",
"title": "Automobiles made between 1928 and 1942"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "DKW engines were used by Saab as a model for the Saab two-stroke in its Saab 92 car manufacturing venture, in 1947.",
"title": "Automobiles made between 1928 and 1942"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "As Auto Union was based in Saxony in what became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), it took some time for it to regroup after the war. The company was registered in West Germany as Auto Union GmbH in 1949, first as a spare-part provider, but soon to take up production of the RT 125 motorcycle and a new delivery van, called a Schnellaster F800. Their first line of production took place in Düsseldorf. This van used the same engine as the last F8 made before the war.",
"title": "Automobiles made after 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Their first car was the F89 using the body from the prototype F9 made before the war and the two-cylinder two-stroke engine from the last F8. Production went on until it was replaced by the successful three-cylinder engine that came with the F91. The F91 was in production 1953–1955, and was replaced by the larger F93 in 1956. The F91 and F93 had 900 cc three-cylinder two-stroke engines, the first ones delivering 34 hp (25 kW), the last 38 hp (28 kW). The ignition system comprised three independent sets of points and coils, one for each cylinder, with the points mounted in a cluster around a single lobed cam at the front end of the crankshaft. The cooling system was of the free convection type assisted by a fan driven from a pulley mounted at the front end of the crankshaft.",
"title": "Automobiles made after 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The F93 was produced until 1959, and was replaced by the Auto-Union 1000. These models were produced with a 1,000 cc two-stroke engine, with a choice between 44 hp (33 kW) or 50 hp (37 kW) S versions until 1963. During this transition, production was moved from Düsseldorf to Ingolstadt, where Audi still has its production. From 1957, the cars could be fitted with a saxomat, an automatic clutch, the only small car then offering this feature. The last versions of the Auto-Union 1000S had disc brakes as option, an early development for this technology. A sporting 2+2 seater version was available as the Auto-Union 1000 SP from 1957 to 1964, the first years only as a coupé and from 1962 also as a convertible.",
"title": "Automobiles made after 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1956, the very rare DKW Monza was put into small-scale production on a private initiative, with a sporting two-seater body of glassfiber on a standard F93 frame. It was first called Solitude, but got its final name from the long-distance speed records it made on the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Italy in December 1956. Running in Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) class G, it set records including 48 hours at an average speed of 140.961 km/h (87.589 mph), 10,000 km at 139.453 km/h (86.652 mph) and 72 hours at 139.459 km/h (86.656 mph). The car was first produced by Dannenhauer & Strauss in Stuttgart, then by Massholder in Heidelberg and lastly by Robert Schenk in Stuttgart. The number produced is said to be around 75, 50 survived. Production finished by the end of 1958.",
"title": "Automobiles made after 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A more successful range of cars was sold from 1959, the Junior/F12 series based on a modern concept from the late 1950s. The range consists of Junior (basic model) made from 1959 to 1961, Junior de Luxe (a little enhanced) from 1961 to 1963, F11 (a little larger) and F12 (larger and bigger engine) from 1963 to 1965, and F12 Roadster from 1964 to 1965. The Junior/F12 series became quite popular, and many cars were produced. An assembly plant was licensed in Ballincollig, County Cork, Ireland between 1952 and c.1964 and roughly 4,000 vehicles were assembled, ranging from saloons, vans and motorbikes to commercial combine harvesters. This was the only DKW factory outside Germany in Europe and for many years after its closure its large DKW sign could be visible on the wall of the factory. The building was demolished in the late 2000s and was redeveloped into a German Aldi store and a McDonald's drive-thru.",
"title": "Automobiles made after 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "All the three-cylinder two-stroke post-war cars had some sporting potential and formed the basis for many rally victories in the 1950s and early 1960s. This made DKW the most winning car brand in the European rally league for several years during the fifties.",
"title": "Automobiles made after 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1960, DKW developed a V6 engine by combining two three-cylinder two-stroke engines, with a capacity of 1,000 cc. The capacity was increased and the final V6 in 1966 had a capacity of 1,300 cc, which developed 83 hp (62 kW) at 5,000 rpm using the standard configuration with two carburettors. A four-carburettor version produced 100 hp (75 kW), a six-carburettor one 130 hp (97 kW). It weighed only 84 kg (185 lb). The V6 was planned to be used in the DKW Munga and the F102. About 100 engines were built for testing purposes and 13 DKW F102 and some Mungas were fitted with the V6 engine in the 1960s.",
"title": "Automobiles made after 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The last DKW was the F102, coming into production in 1964 as a replacement for the old-looking AU1000. However, the F102 sold poorly, largely due to its two-stroke engine technology which was at the limit of its development. Auto Union's parent, Daimler-Benz, decided to offload the company to Volkswagen. The car was re-engineered with a four-stroke engine and relaunched as the Audi F103. This marked the end of the DKW marque for cars, and the rebirth of the Audi name.",
"title": "Automobiles made after 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "From 1956 to 1961, Dutch importer Hart, Nibbrig & Greve assembled cars in an abandoned asphalt factory in Sassenheim, where they employed about 120 workers, two transporter, that collected SKD kits from Duesseldorf and built about 13.500 cars. When the DKW plant moved the import of SKD kits stopped, as it became too expensive.",
"title": "Automobiles made after 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "From 1956 to 1967, DKW cars were made in Brazil by the local company Vemag (Veículos e Máquinas Agrícolas S.A., \"Vehicles and Agricultural Machinery Inc.\"). Vemag was assembling Scania-Vabis trucks, but Scania Vabis became an independent company in July 1960. The original plans were to build the Candango off-roader (Munga), a utility vehicle and a four-door sedan, called Vemaguet and Belcar respectively. The first model built was the 900 cc F91 Universal but the Belcar and Vemaguet names were applied later.",
"title": "DKW in South America"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1958, the F94 four-door sedan and station wagon were launched, in the early 1960s renamed Belcar and Vemaguet. The company also produced a luxury coupe (the DKW Fissore) and the off-road Munga (locally called Candango). In 1960 Vemag cars received the larger one-litre, 50 PS (37 kW) engine from the Auto Union 1000.",
"title": "DKW in South America"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Vemag had a successful official racing team, with the coupe GT Malzoni, with fiberglass body. This project was the foundation of the long-lasting Brazilian sports car brand Puma. The Brazilian F94 line has been improved with several cosmetic changes and became more and more different from the German and Argentine models. Vemag had no capital to invest in new products and came under governmental pressure to merge. In 1964–1965 Volkswagen gradually took over Auto Union, a minority holder in Vemag, and in 1967 Volkswagen bought the remainder of the stock. VW quickly began phasing out DKW-Vemag production and introduced the Volkswagen 1600 sedan to the old Vemag plant, after a total of 109,343 DKW-Vemag cars had been built.",
"title": "DKW in South America"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "DKW vehicles were made in Argentina from 1960 to 1969 by IASF S.A. (Industria Automotriz Santa Fe Sociedad Anónima) in Sauce Viejo, Santa Fe. The most beautiful were the Cupé Fissore, which had many famous owners (Julio Sosa, César Luis Menotti, and others). Other models are the Auto Union 1000 S Sedán (21,797 made until 1969) and the Auto Union 1000 Universal S (6,396 made until 1969). and the Auto Union Combi/Pick-up. The last version of the Auto Union Combi/Pick-up (DKW F1000 L), launched in 1969, survived a few months and was bought out by IME, which continued production until 1979.",
"title": "DKW in South America"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The DKW Munga was built by Auto Union in Ingolstadt. Production began in October 1956 and ended in December 1968, with 46,750 cars built.",
"title": "Vans and utility vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "From 1949 to 1962, DKW produced the Schnellaster with a trailing-arm rear suspension system with springs in the cross bar assembly. Spanish subsidiary IMOSA produced a modern successor introduced in 1963, the DKW F 1000 L. This van started with the three-cylinder 1,000 cc engine, but later received a Mercedes-Benz Diesel engine and was renamed a Mercedes-Benz in 1975.",
"title": "Vans and utility vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "During the late 1920s and until WWII broke out, DKW was both the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer, as well as Europe's pioneer of front-wheel drive automobiles with their successful 1931 and later DKW Front models, before the 1932 Adler Trumpf and the 1934 Citroen Traction Avant. In 1931, Arnold Zoller started building split-singles and this concept made DKW the dominant racing motorcycle in the Lightweight and Junior classes between the wars. This included off-road events like the International Six Days Trial where the marque scored some considerable inter-war year successes alongside Bavarian Motor Works At the same time, the company also had some success with super-charged racing motorcycles which because of their light weight were particularly successful in the ISDT",
"title": "Motorcycles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The motorcycle branch produced famous models such as the RT 125 pre- and post-World War II, and after the war with production at the original factory in GDR becoming MZ it made 175, 250 and 350 (cc) models. As war reparations, the design drawings of the RT125 were given to Harley-Davidson in the US and BSA in the UK. The Harley-Davidson version was known loosely as the Hummer (Hummer is really just a few specific years, but generally people call the Harley lightweights Hummers), while BSA used them for the Bantam. IFA and later MZ models continued in production until the 1990s, when economics brought production of the two stroke to an end. Other manufacturers copied the DKW design, officially or otherwise. This can be seen in the similarity of many small two-stroke motorcycles from the 1950s, including from Yamaha, Voskhod, Maserati, and Polish WSK.",
"title": "Motorcycles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Pre-war and war-years production of civilian models totalled almost 250,000 units, of which some 218,000 were front-wheel driven.",
"title": "Cars"
}
]
| DKW was a German car- and motorcycle-marque. DKW was one of the four companies that formed Auto Union in 1932 and thus became an ancestor of the modern-day Audi company. In 1916, Danish engineer Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen founded a factory in Zschopau, Saxony, Germany, to produce steam fittings. That year he attempted to produce a steam-driven car, called the DKW. Although unsuccessful, he made a two-stroke toy engine in 1919, called Des Knaben Wunsch – "the boy's wish". He put a slightly modified version of this engine into a motorcycle and called it Das Kleine Wunder – "the little wonder" the initials from this becoming the DKW brand: by the late 1920s, DKW had become the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer. In September 1924, DKW bought Slaby-Beringer, saving them from Germany's hyperinflation economic crisis. Rudolf Slaby became chief-engineer at DKW.
In 1932, DKW merged with Audi, Horch and Wanderer to form Auto Union. After World War II, DKW moved to West Germany. The original factory became MZ. Auto Union came under Daimler-Benz ownership in 1957 and was purchased by the Volkswagen Group in 1964. The last German-built DKW car was the F102, which ceased production in 1966. Its successor, the four-stroke F103, was marketed under the Audi brand, another Auto Union marque. DKW-badged cars continued to be built under license in Brazil and Argentina until 1967 and 1969 respectively. The DKW trademark is currently owned by Auto Union GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Audi AG which also owns the rights to other historical trademarks and intellectual property of the Auto Union combine. | 2002-01-27T08:28:14Z | 2023-09-23T17:48:51Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DKW |
8,708 | Doctor Syn | The Reverend Doctor Christopher Syn is the smuggler hero of a series of novels by Russell Thorndike. The first book, Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh was published in 1915. The story idea came from smuggling in the 18th-century Romney Marsh, where brandy and tobacco were brought in at night by boat from France to avoid the tax. Minor battles were fought, sometimes at night, between gangs of smugglers, such as the Hawkhurst Gang, and the Revenue, supported by the army and local militias in South Kent and Sussex.
Christopher Syn, born 1729, is portrayed as a brilliant scholar from Queen's College, Oxford, possessing swashbuckling skills such as riding, fencing, and seamanship. He was content to live the quiet life of a country vicar in Dymchurch-under-the-Wall under the patronage of Sir Charles Cobtree, the father of his best friend Anthony Cobtree, until his beautiful young Spanish wife Imogene was seduced by and eloped with Nicholas Tappitt, who Dr. Syn had considered a close friend.
Christopher Syn set out on a quest for revenge, always managing to reach the eloped pair's destinations ahead of them just in time to terrify them against landing and facing him in a deliberate campaign of terror. While sailing from Spain to America in pursuit, his ship was captured by the pirate ship The Sulphur Pit, commanded by Captain Satan. In a one-on-one fight, Syn defeated and killed Captain Satan to take command of his ship and crew; among them was Mr. Mipps, a former Royal Navy carpenter with whom Syn had become friends in England after rescuing him from the Customs men. Mipps swore loyalty to Syn from that time onward.
With Mipps at his side, Syn turned to piracy and became a great success. Later, when his crew refused to let Syn leave, Syn and Mipps slipped away in one of the ship's boats; unknown to Syn, Mipps had arranged a convenient "accident" in the ship's powder magazine with an exploding barrel of gunpowder, eliminating witnesses of Syn's piratical acts.
Mipps then joined Syn in his quest for revenge, pursuing Tappitt and Imogene throughout the thirteen American colonies (supposedly preaching the gospel to the Indians) and around the world (as part of a whaling voyage) afterwards. Mipps was with him in the Caribbean when Dr. Syn turned again to piracy, assuming the name of Captain Clegg (taking the name "Clegg" from a certain vicious biting fly he had encountered in America)., "Clegg" hijacked his enemy Tappitt's own ship and crew and sailed off with them (renaming the ship the Imogene) to become the most infamous pirate of the day.
However, a mulatto who escaped the destruction of Syn's previous ship stowed away in Clegg's ship and accused him before the crew; Clegg quelled the potential mutiny by having the mulatto's tongue cut out, marooning him on a coral reef and violently killing Yellow Pete, the ship's Chinese cook, who represented the crew in their wish to rescue the mulatto. Afterwards, realizing that Clegg had become too notorious, Syn decided to abandon his quest and return to England, and Mipps set up a second "accidental" explosion to destroy the Imogene and her crew.
Syn returned to England on the night of a storm (13 November 1775) that wrecked his brig off the English coast in sight of Dymchurch. That night he went to the house of his old friend (and now squire) Anthony Cobtree. When news came that the local vicar had drowned while trying to save victims of the shipwreck, Squire Cobtree offered the post to Christopher Syn. Syn accepted and settled down to a more respectable life as the vicar of Dymchurch and Dean of Peculiars in Romney Marsh, Kent, resuming his original name.
Mipps arrived in Dymchurch with the intent of settling down. Syn made him the village sexton upon condition that Mipps "remember to forget" (that Syn had been Clegg and that they had known each other before), and that Mipps never get involved with the local smugglers.
Syn soon became aware that his parishioners were smuggling goods from France to avoid the excessive customs duties the government charged. Learning from Mipps (who, contrary to Syn's orders, had become a leader of the smugglers) that certain townsfolk had been ambushed and captured during a smuggling run, Syn purchased the great black stallion Gehenna from gypsy horse-traders and raced to their rescue. A suit of clothing borrowed from a scarecrow made an improvised disguise, and Syn and Mipps were able to rescue the townsfolk from the Dragoons.
After this, Syn decided that he could only protect his people by becoming their leader. He created a more elaborate scarecrow costume, with eerie luminous paint. Riding Gehenna at night, the respectable Dr. Syn became "The Scarecrow", the feared head of the smugglers. Together with Mipps, he organized the smugglers into a well-organized band of "Night Riders", also called "The Devil Riders", with macabre disguises and code-names.
Syn's cunning was so great that the smugglers outwitted the government forces for many years. A hidden stable watched over by Mother Handaway, the local "witch" (who believed the Scarecrow to be The Devil in living form), was the hiding place for the horses of the Scarecrow and his lieutenants, Mipps and the local highwayman Jimmie Bone (who, being as good a horseman as Syn and of similar build, was sometimes called upon to impersonate the Scarecrow when Syn either had to be elsewhere or seen in the same place.).
Shortly after the first appearances of the Scarecrow, Nicholas Tappitt (using the name "Colonel Delacourt") and the ailing Imogene returned to England, ending up in Dymchurch. Recognizing Syn as Clegg, Tappitt realized that Syn and the Scarecrow were one and the same person, and helped the authorities set a trap for him, hoping to both rid himself of his enemy and claim the reward for his capture. The trap was sprung, but Squire Cobtree's daughter Charlotte, who had fallen in love with Syn and also learned his secret identities as both Clegg and the Scarecrow, was the tragic victim when she dressed in the Scarecrow's disguise and was fatally wounded as a result. Tappitt was then suspected of being the Scarecrow, and a Customs officer and three constables came to arrest him. In the ensuing fight, Tappitt killed the Customs man and the constables subdued and arrested Tappitt for murdering the Customs officer.
After Imogene's death in Syn's arms (during which she revealed to him that he had a son by her who was missing somewhere in America), Syn fought a final duel with Tappitt in his jail cell, defeating him. Syn then struck a bargain with Tappitt: If Tappitt confessed to being the notorious pirate Clegg, then Syn would look after and care for Tappitt and Imogene's new-born infant daughter (also named Imogene). Tappitt agreed, and "Captain Clegg" was hanged and later "buried without benefit of clergy at a cross-roads hard by the Kent Ditch."
Many years later, Captain Collyer, a Royal Navy officer assigned to smash the local smuggling ring, uncovered the deception and Dr. Syn's true identity, thanks in part to the tongueless mulatto (who had been rescued by Collyer years before and who had been serving Collyer as a "ferret" seeking out hidden contraband) who recognized Syn as Clegg. Syn evaded capture while at the same time making sure that Imogene and Squire Cobtree's son Denis (who had fallen in love with Imogene) would have a happy life together (they were eventually married), but was murdered in revenge by the mulatto, who then mysteriously managed to escape, leaving Syn harpooned through the neck. As a last mark of respect, Collyer ordered that Syn be buried at sea, rather than have his body hung in chains.
Mipps escaped in the confusion of Syn's death and disappeared from England, but it is said that a little man very much like him is living out his days in a Buddhist Monastery somewhere in the Malay Peninsula, delighting the monks with recounting the adventures of Doctor Syn and the eerie stories of the Romney Marsh and the mysterious Scarecrow and his Night Riders.
The Dr. Syn books detail his adventures and attempts to help the people of Dymchurch and the surrounding area evade the Excise tax. There are seven novels in the series:
Note: the "first" book, Doctor Syn, is actually the final story chronologically; the others proceed in published sequence.
An expanded version of Doctor Syn Returns titled The Scarecrow Rides was published for the U.S. market by The Dial Press in 1935; years later in 2013 it was re-printed in paperback by Black Curtain Press. (ISBN 978-1627554459).
In 1960, American author William Buchanan reworked Thorndike's Further Adventures of Doctor Syn under the title Christopher Syn (New York, Abelard Schuman), giving Thorndike co-authorship credit; this version provides a different conclusion and some conflation, renaming and even removal of the supporting characters. Christopher Syn became the basis for the 1962 Disney production (see below); there was also a novelization of the Disney theatrical version titled Doctor Syn, Alias the Scarecrow written by Vic Crume.
Three film adaptations have been made of Dr. Syn's exploits.
The first, Doctor Syn (1937), starred the actor George Arliss in the title role and was his last film.
Captain Clegg (1962), known as Night Creatures in the U. S., was produced by Hammer Film Productions with actor Peter Cushing in the lead role, directed by Peter Graham Scott. In the screenplay by Anthony Hinds, the main character's name was changed from Doctor Syn to Parson Blyss to avoid rights problems with Disney's forthcoming version, and Captain Clegg's screenplay follows the novel Doctor Syn and the screenplay of the 1937 film closely with the exception of a tightening of the plot. In the Arliss movie Doctor Syn, Syn escapes to sea with Mipps and the rest of the Dymchurch smugglers, whereas Captain Clegg ends more faithfully to the novel, with Parson Blyss being killed by the mulatto (who is then killed by Mipps) and then being carried to and buried in Captain Clegg's empty grave by Mipps. Captain Clegg was released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray in 2014; Night Creatures was never released on videotape in the United States, but is included in the 2014 two-disc DVD collection The Hammer Horror Series. In North America, the film was released on 6 September 2005 along with seven other Hammer horror films on the 4-DVD set The Hammer Horror Series (ASIN: B0009X770O), which is part of MCA-Universal's "Franchise Collection". This set was re-released on Blu-ray September 13, 2016. A Blu-ray was released in the UK on 23 June 2014 by Final Cut Entertainment. In 2021, Powerhouse Films re-released the film on Blu-Ray, along with The Shadow of the Cat, The Phantom of the Opera, and Nightmare, as part of Hammer Volume Six: Night Shadows boxset.
The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1963) was produced for the Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color TV series. It was shot on location in Kent, England and was directed by James Neilson. It stars Patrick McGoohan in the title role, with George Cole as Mipps and Sean Scully as John Banks, the younger son of Squire Banks (Michael Hordern). St Clement's Church in Old Romney doubled as Dr Syn's Dymchurch parish church in the production, and Disney funded the repair of the building in order to use it as a filming location.
Part One dealt with the arrival of General Pugh (Geoffrey Keen), who had been ordered by the War Office to smash the smuggling ring and prevent the Scarecrow from rescuing a Dymchurch man captured by a naval press gang as bait to trap the Scarecrow. Part Two depicted The Scarecrow dealing with the traitorous Joe Ransley (Patrick Wymark). Part Three showed how the Scarecrow rescued Harry Banks (David Buck) and American Simon Bates (Tony Britton) from General Pugh's clutches in Dover Castle.
While originally conceived and edited for American television (and announced in an advertisement by NBC in the Tuesday, July 9, 1963 issue of The Hollywood Reporter), The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh was re-edited for a British theatrical release before the American television debut. Retitled Dr Syn, Alias the Scarecrow, the British theatrical version was released on a double bill with The Sword in the Stone and ran during the 1963 Christmas season (advertised in the January 1964 issue of Photoplay). This version was shown in Europe as well as Central and South America through 1966.
In the 1970s, the production was re-edited again for its first American theatrical release, on double bills with both Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Treasure Island. (The VHS release of the 1980s, sharing the removal of the Scarecrow's laugh from Terry Gilkyson's title song, was expanded to include the story material from all three television episodes, while retaining the feature film structure and credits; it was available for a relatively short amount of time.) Shortly after the US theatrical run, it was re-edited once more for a two-part presentation on Disney's television series in the 1970s, simply omitting the middle episode. The original three-part series was first shown as part of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on February 9, 16 and 23, 1964. Later it was included in a late 1980s Wonderful World of Disney syndication rerun package, and cablecast in 1990s on the Disney Channel. This version generally followed the storyline of The Further Adventures of Dr. Syn and made it clear that Syn did not die or stage his own death: at the film's end, he is having a cup of tea with the Squire, who admits to now owing a debt of gratitude to the Scarecrow.
On November 11, 2008 The Walt Disney Company released a limited pressing of 39,500 copies of The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh on DVD for the first time, in a collector's metal tin case. This was a part of the Disney Treasures collection and was now titled Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. This release sold out in three weeks. On February 17, 2009 the DVD was made available again for the members of the Disney Movie Club. This two-disc set includes the American television version and the original British theatrical release version Dr Syn, Alias the Scarecrow in a widescreen format. It also includes the original introductions by Walt Disney (in which he erroneously states that Dr. Syn was an actual historical figure) and a documentary on Disney's interest in filming the property. In October 2019, the Disney Movie Club released it on Blu-ray, this time titled The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. Its single disc, also in the widescreen format, contains the three episodes originally broadcast on television in 1963. It also includes Walt Disney's introductions, but none of the supplemental features that appear on 2009 release.
Made in 1974, Carry On Dick, of the Carry On series of films, followed the same premise of a country vicar (Sid James) who is secretly an outlaw, in this case the highwayman Dick Turpin.
In 2001 a stage adaptation titled Doctor Syn was performed at churches throughout the Romney Marsh, the final night being performed in Dymchurch. The cast featured Daniel Thorndike (the author's son), Michael Fields, Steven Povey and Ben Barton, along with various amateurs from the area.
Rufus Sewell read a 10-part audio adaptation combining and abridging Doctor Syn on the High Seas and Doctor Syn Returns for BBC Radio, broadcast on BBC Radio 7 in December 2006 and repeated in June 2007.
A 10-part audio adaptation of The Further Adventures of Doctor Syn (combining and abridging The Further Adventures of Doctor Syn and The Shadow of Doctor Syn) read by Rufus Sewell was performed on BBC Radio 7 in December 2007.
In April 2009, a third series was announced for broadcast later in 2009. BBC Radio 7 broadcast the six-part series, an abridged reading by Rufus Sewell of the original Doctor Syn novel, from January 4, 2010 to January 11.
John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin reinterpreted elements of the Doctor Syn story as his "No Quarter" fantasy sequence in Led Zeppelin's concert film The Song Remains the Same.
A three-issue adaptation of the Disney production was published by Gold Key Comics under the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh title, spanning April 1964 through October 1965.
A much abridged revision of the adventures of Dr. Syn appeared as a short comic serialized in the monthly publication Disney Adventures. The new story features the heroic Doctor and his young sidekick protecting innocent villagers from corrupt government officials and soldiers. Disney Adventures would also produce a crossover story with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, where Dr. Syn meets Captain Jack Sparrow.
Doctor Syn appears in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series as a member of the league gathered by Lemuel Gulliver. His alter ego, Captain Clegg, also makes appearances, where he is mentioned to have had a brief romantic liaison with future teammate Fanny Hill. In the 2003 film adaptation of League, Dr. Syn can be spotted in one of the portraits hanging on the wall in M's library.
A "Days of Syn" festival is held even-numbered years by Dymchurch residents for fund-raising. The 2006 "Days of Syn" was on 26–28 August (UK August Bank Holiday weekend) and featured a talk on Dr. Syn at the Anglican church at 6:30 p.m. On Sunday at 3 p.m. there was a church service where Dr. Syn and the cast appeared in period costume. On Monday, starting at the Bowery Hall, scenes were reenacted from Doctor Syn, and again during the day along the Dymchurch shoreline and in the Ocean pub.
In 2009, discussions took place to build a 100 ft high statue of "The Scarecrow" on a site in the centre of Romney Marsh. This had not been done by 2016.
Doctor Syn is also the name given to one of the locomotives on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway.
Doctor Syn also inspired novelist George Chittenden, who captured smuggling on the Kent coast in his debut novel The Boy Who Led Them, which follows the rise and fall of a smuggling gang leader further down the coast in the notorious town of Deal.
In 2009, an playfully erotic Afrikaans-language novel, Dagtaak, was published pseudonymously by D R Syn. The author's name and some of the traits of the main character in this novel, allude to the Dr Syn series. (Initial advances to produce an arthouse circuit movie from the novel, did not come to fuition.) | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Reverend Doctor Christopher Syn is the smuggler hero of a series of novels by Russell Thorndike. The first book, Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh was published in 1915. The story idea came from smuggling in the 18th-century Romney Marsh, where brandy and tobacco were brought in at night by boat from France to avoid the tax. Minor battles were fought, sometimes at night, between gangs of smugglers, such as the Hawkhurst Gang, and the Revenue, supported by the army and local militias in South Kent and Sussex.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Christopher Syn, born 1729, is portrayed as a brilliant scholar from Queen's College, Oxford, possessing swashbuckling skills such as riding, fencing, and seamanship. He was content to live the quiet life of a country vicar in Dymchurch-under-the-Wall under the patronage of Sir Charles Cobtree, the father of his best friend Anthony Cobtree, until his beautiful young Spanish wife Imogene was seduced by and eloped with Nicholas Tappitt, who Dr. Syn had considered a close friend.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Christopher Syn set out on a quest for revenge, always managing to reach the eloped pair's destinations ahead of them just in time to terrify them against landing and facing him in a deliberate campaign of terror. While sailing from Spain to America in pursuit, his ship was captured by the pirate ship The Sulphur Pit, commanded by Captain Satan. In a one-on-one fight, Syn defeated and killed Captain Satan to take command of his ship and crew; among them was Mr. Mipps, a former Royal Navy carpenter with whom Syn had become friends in England after rescuing him from the Customs men. Mipps swore loyalty to Syn from that time onward.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "With Mipps at his side, Syn turned to piracy and became a great success. Later, when his crew refused to let Syn leave, Syn and Mipps slipped away in one of the ship's boats; unknown to Syn, Mipps had arranged a convenient \"accident\" in the ship's powder magazine with an exploding barrel of gunpowder, eliminating witnesses of Syn's piratical acts.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Mipps then joined Syn in his quest for revenge, pursuing Tappitt and Imogene throughout the thirteen American colonies (supposedly preaching the gospel to the Indians) and around the world (as part of a whaling voyage) afterwards. Mipps was with him in the Caribbean when Dr. Syn turned again to piracy, assuming the name of Captain Clegg (taking the name \"Clegg\" from a certain vicious biting fly he had encountered in America)., \"Clegg\" hijacked his enemy Tappitt's own ship and crew and sailed off with them (renaming the ship the Imogene) to become the most infamous pirate of the day.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "However, a mulatto who escaped the destruction of Syn's previous ship stowed away in Clegg's ship and accused him before the crew; Clegg quelled the potential mutiny by having the mulatto's tongue cut out, marooning him on a coral reef and violently killing Yellow Pete, the ship's Chinese cook, who represented the crew in their wish to rescue the mulatto. Afterwards, realizing that Clegg had become too notorious, Syn decided to abandon his quest and return to England, and Mipps set up a second \"accidental\" explosion to destroy the Imogene and her crew.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Syn returned to England on the night of a storm (13 November 1775) that wrecked his brig off the English coast in sight of Dymchurch. That night he went to the house of his old friend (and now squire) Anthony Cobtree. When news came that the local vicar had drowned while trying to save victims of the shipwreck, Squire Cobtree offered the post to Christopher Syn. Syn accepted and settled down to a more respectable life as the vicar of Dymchurch and Dean of Peculiars in Romney Marsh, Kent, resuming his original name.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Mipps arrived in Dymchurch with the intent of settling down. Syn made him the village sexton upon condition that Mipps \"remember to forget\" (that Syn had been Clegg and that they had known each other before), and that Mipps never get involved with the local smugglers.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Syn soon became aware that his parishioners were smuggling goods from France to avoid the excessive customs duties the government charged. Learning from Mipps (who, contrary to Syn's orders, had become a leader of the smugglers) that certain townsfolk had been ambushed and captured during a smuggling run, Syn purchased the great black stallion Gehenna from gypsy horse-traders and raced to their rescue. A suit of clothing borrowed from a scarecrow made an improvised disguise, and Syn and Mipps were able to rescue the townsfolk from the Dragoons.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "After this, Syn decided that he could only protect his people by becoming their leader. He created a more elaborate scarecrow costume, with eerie luminous paint. Riding Gehenna at night, the respectable Dr. Syn became \"The Scarecrow\", the feared head of the smugglers. Together with Mipps, he organized the smugglers into a well-organized band of \"Night Riders\", also called \"The Devil Riders\", with macabre disguises and code-names.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Syn's cunning was so great that the smugglers outwitted the government forces for many years. A hidden stable watched over by Mother Handaway, the local \"witch\" (who believed the Scarecrow to be The Devil in living form), was the hiding place for the horses of the Scarecrow and his lieutenants, Mipps and the local highwayman Jimmie Bone (who, being as good a horseman as Syn and of similar build, was sometimes called upon to impersonate the Scarecrow when Syn either had to be elsewhere or seen in the same place.).",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Shortly after the first appearances of the Scarecrow, Nicholas Tappitt (using the name \"Colonel Delacourt\") and the ailing Imogene returned to England, ending up in Dymchurch. Recognizing Syn as Clegg, Tappitt realized that Syn and the Scarecrow were one and the same person, and helped the authorities set a trap for him, hoping to both rid himself of his enemy and claim the reward for his capture. The trap was sprung, but Squire Cobtree's daughter Charlotte, who had fallen in love with Syn and also learned his secret identities as both Clegg and the Scarecrow, was the tragic victim when she dressed in the Scarecrow's disguise and was fatally wounded as a result. Tappitt was then suspected of being the Scarecrow, and a Customs officer and three constables came to arrest him. In the ensuing fight, Tappitt killed the Customs man and the constables subdued and arrested Tappitt for murdering the Customs officer.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "After Imogene's death in Syn's arms (during which she revealed to him that he had a son by her who was missing somewhere in America), Syn fought a final duel with Tappitt in his jail cell, defeating him. Syn then struck a bargain with Tappitt: If Tappitt confessed to being the notorious pirate Clegg, then Syn would look after and care for Tappitt and Imogene's new-born infant daughter (also named Imogene). Tappitt agreed, and \"Captain Clegg\" was hanged and later \"buried without benefit of clergy at a cross-roads hard by the Kent Ditch.\"",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Many years later, Captain Collyer, a Royal Navy officer assigned to smash the local smuggling ring, uncovered the deception and Dr. Syn's true identity, thanks in part to the tongueless mulatto (who had been rescued by Collyer years before and who had been serving Collyer as a \"ferret\" seeking out hidden contraband) who recognized Syn as Clegg. Syn evaded capture while at the same time making sure that Imogene and Squire Cobtree's son Denis (who had fallen in love with Imogene) would have a happy life together (they were eventually married), but was murdered in revenge by the mulatto, who then mysteriously managed to escape, leaving Syn harpooned through the neck. As a last mark of respect, Collyer ordered that Syn be buried at sea, rather than have his body hung in chains.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Mipps escaped in the confusion of Syn's death and disappeared from England, but it is said that a little man very much like him is living out his days in a Buddhist Monastery somewhere in the Malay Peninsula, delighting the monks with recounting the adventures of Doctor Syn and the eerie stories of the Romney Marsh and the mysterious Scarecrow and his Night Riders.",
"title": "Character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Dr. Syn books detail his adventures and attempts to help the people of Dymchurch and the surrounding area evade the Excise tax. There are seven novels in the series:",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Note: the \"first\" book, Doctor Syn, is actually the final story chronologically; the others proceed in published sequence.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "An expanded version of Doctor Syn Returns titled The Scarecrow Rides was published for the U.S. market by The Dial Press in 1935; years later in 2013 it was re-printed in paperback by Black Curtain Press. (ISBN 978-1627554459).",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1960, American author William Buchanan reworked Thorndike's Further Adventures of Doctor Syn under the title Christopher Syn (New York, Abelard Schuman), giving Thorndike co-authorship credit; this version provides a different conclusion and some conflation, renaming and even removal of the supporting characters. Christopher Syn became the basis for the 1962 Disney production (see below); there was also a novelization of the Disney theatrical version titled Doctor Syn, Alias the Scarecrow written by Vic Crume.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Three film adaptations have been made of Dr. Syn's exploits.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The first, Doctor Syn (1937), starred the actor George Arliss in the title role and was his last film.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Captain Clegg (1962), known as Night Creatures in the U. S., was produced by Hammer Film Productions with actor Peter Cushing in the lead role, directed by Peter Graham Scott. In the screenplay by Anthony Hinds, the main character's name was changed from Doctor Syn to Parson Blyss to avoid rights problems with Disney's forthcoming version, and Captain Clegg's screenplay follows the novel Doctor Syn and the screenplay of the 1937 film closely with the exception of a tightening of the plot. In the Arliss movie Doctor Syn, Syn escapes to sea with Mipps and the rest of the Dymchurch smugglers, whereas Captain Clegg ends more faithfully to the novel, with Parson Blyss being killed by the mulatto (who is then killed by Mipps) and then being carried to and buried in Captain Clegg's empty grave by Mipps. Captain Clegg was released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray in 2014; Night Creatures was never released on videotape in the United States, but is included in the 2014 two-disc DVD collection The Hammer Horror Series. In North America, the film was released on 6 September 2005 along with seven other Hammer horror films on the 4-DVD set The Hammer Horror Series (ASIN: B0009X770O), which is part of MCA-Universal's \"Franchise Collection\". This set was re-released on Blu-ray September 13, 2016. A Blu-ray was released in the UK on 23 June 2014 by Final Cut Entertainment. In 2021, Powerhouse Films re-released the film on Blu-Ray, along with The Shadow of the Cat, The Phantom of the Opera, and Nightmare, as part of Hammer Volume Six: Night Shadows boxset.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1963) was produced for the Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color TV series. It was shot on location in Kent, England and was directed by James Neilson. It stars Patrick McGoohan in the title role, with George Cole as Mipps and Sean Scully as John Banks, the younger son of Squire Banks (Michael Hordern). St Clement's Church in Old Romney doubled as Dr Syn's Dymchurch parish church in the production, and Disney funded the repair of the building in order to use it as a filming location.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Part One dealt with the arrival of General Pugh (Geoffrey Keen), who had been ordered by the War Office to smash the smuggling ring and prevent the Scarecrow from rescuing a Dymchurch man captured by a naval press gang as bait to trap the Scarecrow. Part Two depicted The Scarecrow dealing with the traitorous Joe Ransley (Patrick Wymark). Part Three showed how the Scarecrow rescued Harry Banks (David Buck) and American Simon Bates (Tony Britton) from General Pugh's clutches in Dover Castle.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "While originally conceived and edited for American television (and announced in an advertisement by NBC in the Tuesday, July 9, 1963 issue of The Hollywood Reporter), The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh was re-edited for a British theatrical release before the American television debut. Retitled Dr Syn, Alias the Scarecrow, the British theatrical version was released on a double bill with The Sword in the Stone and ran during the 1963 Christmas season (advertised in the January 1964 issue of Photoplay). This version was shown in Europe as well as Central and South America through 1966.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In the 1970s, the production was re-edited again for its first American theatrical release, on double bills with both Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Treasure Island. (The VHS release of the 1980s, sharing the removal of the Scarecrow's laugh from Terry Gilkyson's title song, was expanded to include the story material from all three television episodes, while retaining the feature film structure and credits; it was available for a relatively short amount of time.) Shortly after the US theatrical run, it was re-edited once more for a two-part presentation on Disney's television series in the 1970s, simply omitting the middle episode. The original three-part series was first shown as part of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on February 9, 16 and 23, 1964. Later it was included in a late 1980s Wonderful World of Disney syndication rerun package, and cablecast in 1990s on the Disney Channel. This version generally followed the storyline of The Further Adventures of Dr. Syn and made it clear that Syn did not die or stage his own death: at the film's end, he is having a cup of tea with the Squire, who admits to now owing a debt of gratitude to the Scarecrow.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On November 11, 2008 The Walt Disney Company released a limited pressing of 39,500 copies of The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh on DVD for the first time, in a collector's metal tin case. This was a part of the Disney Treasures collection and was now titled Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. This release sold out in three weeks. On February 17, 2009 the DVD was made available again for the members of the Disney Movie Club. This two-disc set includes the American television version and the original British theatrical release version Dr Syn, Alias the Scarecrow in a widescreen format. It also includes the original introductions by Walt Disney (in which he erroneously states that Dr. Syn was an actual historical figure) and a documentary on Disney's interest in filming the property. In October 2019, the Disney Movie Club released it on Blu-ray, this time titled The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. Its single disc, also in the widescreen format, contains the three episodes originally broadcast on television in 1963. It also includes Walt Disney's introductions, but none of the supplemental features that appear on 2009 release.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Made in 1974, Carry On Dick, of the Carry On series of films, followed the same premise of a country vicar (Sid James) who is secretly an outlaw, in this case the highwayman Dick Turpin.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 2001 a stage adaptation titled Doctor Syn was performed at churches throughout the Romney Marsh, the final night being performed in Dymchurch. The cast featured Daniel Thorndike (the author's son), Michael Fields, Steven Povey and Ben Barton, along with various amateurs from the area.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Rufus Sewell read a 10-part audio adaptation combining and abridging Doctor Syn on the High Seas and Doctor Syn Returns for BBC Radio, broadcast on BBC Radio 7 in December 2006 and repeated in June 2007.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "A 10-part audio adaptation of The Further Adventures of Doctor Syn (combining and abridging The Further Adventures of Doctor Syn and The Shadow of Doctor Syn) read by Rufus Sewell was performed on BBC Radio 7 in December 2007.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In April 2009, a third series was announced for broadcast later in 2009. BBC Radio 7 broadcast the six-part series, an abridged reading by Rufus Sewell of the original Doctor Syn novel, from January 4, 2010 to January 11.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin reinterpreted elements of the Doctor Syn story as his \"No Quarter\" fantasy sequence in Led Zeppelin's concert film The Song Remains the Same.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "A three-issue adaptation of the Disney production was published by Gold Key Comics under the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh title, spanning April 1964 through October 1965.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "A much abridged revision of the adventures of Dr. Syn appeared as a short comic serialized in the monthly publication Disney Adventures. The new story features the heroic Doctor and his young sidekick protecting innocent villagers from corrupt government officials and soldiers. Disney Adventures would also produce a crossover story with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, where Dr. Syn meets Captain Jack Sparrow.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Doctor Syn appears in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series as a member of the league gathered by Lemuel Gulliver. His alter ego, Captain Clegg, also makes appearances, where he is mentioned to have had a brief romantic liaison with future teammate Fanny Hill. In the 2003 film adaptation of League, Dr. Syn can be spotted in one of the portraits hanging on the wall in M's library.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "A \"Days of Syn\" festival is held even-numbered years by Dymchurch residents for fund-raising. The 2006 \"Days of Syn\" was on 26–28 August (UK August Bank Holiday weekend) and featured a talk on Dr. Syn at the Anglican church at 6:30 p.m. On Sunday at 3 p.m. there was a church service where Dr. Syn and the cast appeared in period costume. On Monday, starting at the Bowery Hall, scenes were reenacted from Doctor Syn, and again during the day along the Dymchurch shoreline and in the Ocean pub.",
"title": "Cultural legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 2009, discussions took place to build a 100 ft high statue of \"The Scarecrow\" on a site in the centre of Romney Marsh. This had not been done by 2016.",
"title": "Cultural legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Doctor Syn is also the name given to one of the locomotives on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway.",
"title": "Cultural legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Doctor Syn also inspired novelist George Chittenden, who captured smuggling on the Kent coast in his debut novel The Boy Who Led Them, which follows the rise and fall of a smuggling gang leader further down the coast in the notorious town of Deal.",
"title": "Cultural legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 2009, an playfully erotic Afrikaans-language novel, Dagtaak, was published pseudonymously by D R Syn. The author's name and some of the traits of the main character in this novel, allude to the Dr Syn series. (Initial advances to produce an arthouse circuit movie from the novel, did not come to fuition.)",
"title": "Cultural legacy"
}
]
| The Reverend Doctor Christopher Syn is the smuggler hero of a series of novels by Russell Thorndike. The first book, Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh was published in 1915. The story idea came from smuggling in the 18th-century Romney Marsh, where brandy and tobacco were brought in at night by boat from France to avoid the tax. Minor battles were fought, sometimes at night, between gangs of smugglers, such as the Hawkhurst Gang, and the Revenue, supported by the army and local militias in South Kent and Sussex. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-09-06T13:53:10Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Syn |
8,709 | Dhrystone | Dhrystone is a synthetic computing benchmark program developed in 1984 by Reinhold P. Weicker intended to be representative of system (integer) programming. The Dhrystone grew to become representative of general processor (CPU) performance. The name "Dhrystone" is a pun on a different benchmark algorithm called Whetstone (pun explained: whet-stone = wet-stone | dhry-stone = dry-stone), which emphasizes floating point performance.
With Dhrystone, Weicker gathered meta-data from a broad range of software, including programs written in FORTRAN, PL/1, SAL, ALGOL 68, and Pascal. He then characterized these programs in terms of various common constructs: procedure calls, pointer indirections, assignments, etc. From this he wrote the Dhrystone benchmark to correspond to a representative mix. Dhrystone was published in Ada, with the C version for Unix developed by Rick Richardson ("version 1.1") greatly contributing to its popularity.
The Dhrystone benchmark contains no floating point operations, thus the name is a pun on the then-popular Whetstone benchmark for floating point operations. The output from the benchmark is the number of Dhrystones per second (the number of iterations of the main code loop per second).
Both Whetstone and Dhrystone are synthetic benchmarks, meaning that they are simple programs that are carefully designed to statistically mimic the processor usage of some common set of programs. Whetstone, developed in 1972, originally strove to mimic typical Algol 60 programs based on measurements from 1970, but eventually became most popular in its Fortran version, reflecting the highly numerical orientation of computing in the 1960s.
Dhrystone's eventual importance as an indicator of general-purpose ("integer") performance of new computers made it a target for commercial compiler writers. Various modern compiler static code analysis techniques (such as elimination of dead code: for example, code which uses the processor but produces internal results which are not used or output) make the use and design of synthetic benchmarks more difficult. Version 2.0 of the benchmark, released by Weicker and Richardson in March 1988, had a number of changes intended to foil a range of compiler techniques. Yet it was carefully crafted so as not to change the underlying benchmark. This effort to foil compilers was only partly successful. Dhrystone 2.1, released in May of the same year, had some minor changes and as of July 2010 remains the current definition of Dhrystone.
Other than issues related to compiler optimization, various other issues have been cited with the Dhrystone. Most of these, including the small code size and small data set size, were understood at the time of its publication in 1984. More subtle is the slight over-representation of string operations, which is largely language-related: both Ada and Pascal have strings as normal variables in the language, whereas C does not, so what was simple variable assignment in reference benchmarks became buffer copy operations in the C library. Another issue is that the score reported does not include information which is critical when comparing systems such as which compiler was used, and what optimizations.
Dhrystone remains remarkably resilient as a simple benchmark, but its continuing value in establishing true performance is questionable. It is easy to use, well documented, fully self-contained, well understood, and can be made to work on almost any system. In particular, it has remained in broad use in the embedded computing world, though the recently developed EEMBC benchmark suite, the CoreMark standalone benchmark, HINT, Stream, and even Bytemark are widely quoted and used, as well as more specific benchmarks for the memory subsystem (Cachebench), TCP/IP (TTCP), and many others.
Dhrystone may represent a result more meaningfully than MIPS (million instructions per second) because instruction count comparisons between different instruction sets (e.g. RISC vs. CISC) can confound simple comparisons. For example, the same high-level task may require many more instructions on a RISC machine, but might execute faster than a single CISC instruction. Thus, the Dhrystone score counts only the number of program iteration completions per second, allowing individual machines to perform this calculation in a machine-specific way. Another common representation of the Dhrystone benchmark is the DMIPS (Dhrystone MIPS) obtained when the Dhrystone score is divided by 1757 (the number of Dhrystones per second obtained on the VAX 11/780, nominally a 1 MIPS machine).
Another way to represent results is in DMIPS/MHz, where DMIPS result is further divided by CPU frequency, to allow for easier comparison of CPUs running at different clock rates.
Using Dhrystone as a benchmark has pitfalls: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Dhrystone is a synthetic computing benchmark program developed in 1984 by Reinhold P. Weicker intended to be representative of system (integer) programming. The Dhrystone grew to become representative of general processor (CPU) performance. The name \"Dhrystone\" is a pun on a different benchmark algorithm called Whetstone (pun explained: whet-stone = wet-stone | dhry-stone = dry-stone), which emphasizes floating point performance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "With Dhrystone, Weicker gathered meta-data from a broad range of software, including programs written in FORTRAN, PL/1, SAL, ALGOL 68, and Pascal. He then characterized these programs in terms of various common constructs: procedure calls, pointer indirections, assignments, etc. From this he wrote the Dhrystone benchmark to correspond to a representative mix. Dhrystone was published in Ada, with the C version for Unix developed by Rick Richardson (\"version 1.1\") greatly contributing to its popularity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Dhrystone benchmark contains no floating point operations, thus the name is a pun on the then-popular Whetstone benchmark for floating point operations. The output from the benchmark is the number of Dhrystones per second (the number of iterations of the main code loop per second).",
"title": "Dhrystone vs. Whetstone"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Both Whetstone and Dhrystone are synthetic benchmarks, meaning that they are simple programs that are carefully designed to statistically mimic the processor usage of some common set of programs. Whetstone, developed in 1972, originally strove to mimic typical Algol 60 programs based on measurements from 1970, but eventually became most popular in its Fortran version, reflecting the highly numerical orientation of computing in the 1960s.",
"title": "Dhrystone vs. Whetstone"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Dhrystone's eventual importance as an indicator of general-purpose (\"integer\") performance of new computers made it a target for commercial compiler writers. Various modern compiler static code analysis techniques (such as elimination of dead code: for example, code which uses the processor but produces internal results which are not used or output) make the use and design of synthetic benchmarks more difficult. Version 2.0 of the benchmark, released by Weicker and Richardson in March 1988, had a number of changes intended to foil a range of compiler techniques. Yet it was carefully crafted so as not to change the underlying benchmark. This effort to foil compilers was only partly successful. Dhrystone 2.1, released in May of the same year, had some minor changes and as of July 2010 remains the current definition of Dhrystone.",
"title": "Issues addressed by Dhrystone"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Other than issues related to compiler optimization, various other issues have been cited with the Dhrystone. Most of these, including the small code size and small data set size, were understood at the time of its publication in 1984. More subtle is the slight over-representation of string operations, which is largely language-related: both Ada and Pascal have strings as normal variables in the language, whereas C does not, so what was simple variable assignment in reference benchmarks became buffer copy operations in the C library. Another issue is that the score reported does not include information which is critical when comparing systems such as which compiler was used, and what optimizations.",
"title": "Issues addressed by Dhrystone"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Dhrystone remains remarkably resilient as a simple benchmark, but its continuing value in establishing true performance is questionable. It is easy to use, well documented, fully self-contained, well understood, and can be made to work on almost any system. In particular, it has remained in broad use in the embedded computing world, though the recently developed EEMBC benchmark suite, the CoreMark standalone benchmark, HINT, Stream, and even Bytemark are widely quoted and used, as well as more specific benchmarks for the memory subsystem (Cachebench), TCP/IP (TTCP), and many others.",
"title": "Issues addressed by Dhrystone"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Dhrystone may represent a result more meaningfully than MIPS (million instructions per second) because instruction count comparisons between different instruction sets (e.g. RISC vs. CISC) can confound simple comparisons. For example, the same high-level task may require many more instructions on a RISC machine, but might execute faster than a single CISC instruction. Thus, the Dhrystone score counts only the number of program iteration completions per second, allowing individual machines to perform this calculation in a machine-specific way. Another common representation of the Dhrystone benchmark is the DMIPS (Dhrystone MIPS) obtained when the Dhrystone score is divided by 1757 (the number of Dhrystones per second obtained on the VAX 11/780, nominally a 1 MIPS machine).",
"title": "Results"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Another way to represent results is in DMIPS/MHz, where DMIPS result is further divided by CPU frequency, to allow for easier comparison of CPUs running at different clock rates.",
"title": "Results"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Using Dhrystone as a benchmark has pitfalls:",
"title": "Shortcomings"
}
]
| Dhrystone is a synthetic computing benchmark program developed in 1984 by Reinhold P. Weicker intended to be representative of system (integer) programming. The Dhrystone grew to become representative of general processor (CPU) performance. The name "Dhrystone" is a pun on a different benchmark algorithm called Whetstone, which emphasizes floating point performance. With Dhrystone, Weicker gathered meta-data from a broad range of software, including programs written in FORTRAN, PL/1, SAL, ALGOL 68, and Pascal. He then characterized these programs in terms of various common constructs: procedure calls, pointer indirections, assignments, etc. From this he wrote the Dhrystone benchmark to correspond to a representative mix. Dhrystone was published in Ada, with the C version for Unix developed by Rick Richardson greatly contributing to its popularity. | 2001-10-26T16:37:08Z | 2023-08-14T18:52:10Z | [
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"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Short description",
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhrystone |
8,713 | Dave Winer | Dave Winer (born May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City) is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting. He is the founder of the software companies Living Videotext, Userland Software and Small Picture Inc., a former contributing editor for the Web magazine HotWired, the author of the Scripting News weblog, a former research fellow at Harvard Law School, and current visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
Winer was born on May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City, the son of Eve Winer, PhD, a school psychologist, and Leon Winer, PhD, a former professor of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Winer is also the grandnephew of German novelist Arno Schmidt and a relative of Hedy Lamarr. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1972. Winer received a BA in Mathematics from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1976. In 1978 he received an MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
In 1979 Dave Winer became an employee of Personal Software, where he worked on his own product idea named VisiText, which was his first attempt to build a commercial product around an "expand and collapse" outline display and which ultimately established outliners as a software product. In 1981 he left the company and founded Living Videotext to develop this still-unfinished product. The company was based in Mountain View, CA, and grew to more than 50 employees.
ThinkTank, which was based on VisiText, was released in 1983 for Apple II and was promoted as an "idea processor." It became the "first popular outline processor, the one that made the term generic." A ThinkTank release for the IBM PC followed in 1984, as well as releases for the Macintosh 128K and 512K. Ready, a RAM resident outliner for the IBM PC released in 1985, was commercially successful but soon succumbed to the competing Sidekick product by Borland. MORE, released for Apple's Macintosh in 1986, combined an outliner and a presentation program. It became "uncontested in the marketplace" and won the MacUser's Editor's Choice Award for "Best Product" in 1986.
In 1987, at the height of the company's success, Winer sold Living Videotext to Symantec for an undisclosed but substantial transfer of stock that "made his fortune." Winer continued to work at Symantec's Living Videotext division, but after six months he left the company in pursuit of other challenges.
Winer founded UserLand Software in 1988 and served as the company's CEO until 2002.
UserLand's original flagship product, Frontier, was a system-level scripting environment for the Mac. Winer's pioneering weblog, Scripting News, takes its name from this early interest. Frontier was an outliner-based scripting language, echoing Winer's longstanding interest in outliners and anticipating code-folding editors of the late 1990s. Winer became interested in web publishing while helping automate the production process of the strikers' online newspaper during San Francisco's newspaper strike of November 1994, According to Newsweek, through this experience, he "revolutionized Net publishing." Winer subsequently shifted the company's focus to online publishing products, enthusiastically promoting and experimenting with these products while building his websites and developing new features. One of these products was Frontier's NewsPage Suite of 1997, which supported the publication of Winer's Scripting News and was adopted by a handful of users who "began playing around with their own sites in the Scripting News vein." These users included notably Chris Gulker and Jorn Barger, who envisaged blogging as a networked practice among users of the software.
Winer was named a Seybold Fellow in 1997, to assist the executives and editors that comprised the Seybold Institute in ensuring "the highest quality and topicality" in their educational program, the Seybold Seminars; the honor was bestowed for his "pioneering work in web-based publishing systems." Keen to enter the "competitive arena of high-end Web development," Winer then came to collaborate with Microsoft and jointly developed the XML-RPC protocol. This led to the creation of SOAP, which he co-authored with Microsoft's Don Box, Bob Atkinson, and Mohsen Al-Ghosein.
In December 1997, acting on the desire to "offer much more timely information," Winer designed and implemented an XML syndication format for use on his Scripting News weblog, thus making an early contribution to the history of web syndication technology. By December 2000, competing dialects of RSS included several varieties of Netscape's RSS, Winer's RSS 0.92, and an RDF-based RSS 1.0. Winer continued to develop the branch of the RSS fork originating from RSS 0.92, releasing in 2002 a version called RSS 2.0. Winer's advocacy of web syndication in general and RSS 2.0 in particular convinced many news organizations to syndicate their news content in that format. For example, in early 2002 The New York Times entered an agreement with UserLand to syndicate many of their articles in RSS 2.0 format. Winer resisted calls by technologists to have the shortcomings of RSS 2.0 improved. Instead, he froze the format and turned its ownership over to Harvard University.
With products and services based on UserLand's Frontier system, Winer became a leader in blogging tools from 1999 onwards, as well as a "leading evangelist of weblogs." In 2000 Winer developed the Outline Processor Markup Language OPML, an XML format for outlines, which originally served as the native file format for Radio UserLand's outliner application and has since been adopted for other uses, the most common being to exchange lists of web feeds between web feed aggregators. UserLand was the first to add an "enclosure" tag in its RSS, modifying its blog software and its aggregator so that bloggers could easily link to an audio file (see podcasting and history of podcasting).
In February 2002 Winer was named one of the "Top Ten Technology Innovators" by InfoWorld.
In June 2002 Winer underwent life-saving bypass surgery to prevent a heart attack and as a consequence stepped down as CEO of UserLand shortly after. He remained the firm's majority shareholder, however, and claimed personal ownership of Weblogs.com.
As "one of the most prolific content generators in Web history," Winer has enjoyed a long career as a writer and has come to be counted among Silicon Valley's "most influential web voices."
Winer started DaveNet, "a stream-of-consciousness newsletter distributed by e-mail" in November 1994 and maintained Web archives of the "goofy and informative" 800-word essays since January 1995, which earned him a Cool Site of the Day award in March 1995. From the start, the "Internet newsletter" DaveNet was widely read among industry leaders and analysts, who experienced it as a "real community." Dissatisfied with the quality of the coverage that the Mac and, especially, his own Frontier software received in the trade press, Winer saw DaveNet as an opportunity to "bypass" the conventional news channels of the software business. Satisfied with his success, he "reveled in the new direct email line he had established with his colleagues and peers, and in his ability to circumvent the media." In the early years, Winer often used DaveNet to vent his grievances against Apple's management, and as a consequence of his strident criticism came to be seen as "the most notorious of the disgruntled Apple developers." Redacted DaveNet columns were published weekly by the web magazine HotWired between June 1995 and May 1996. DaveNet was discontinued in 2004.
Winer's Scripting News, described as "one of the [web's] oldest blogs," launched in February 1997 and earned him titles such as "protoblogger" and "forefather of blogging." Scripting News started as "a home for links, offhand observations, and ephemera" and allowed Winer to mix "his roles as a widely read pundit and an ambitious entrepreneur." Offering an "as-it-happened portrait of the work of writing software for the Web in the 1990s," the site became an "established must-read for industry insiders." Scripting News continues to be updated regularly.
Winer spent one year as a resident fellow at the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where he worked on using weblogs in education. While there, he launched Weblogs at Harvard Law School using UserLand software, and held the first BloggerCon conferences. Winer's fellowship ended in June 2004.
In 2010 Winer was appointed visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
On December 19, 2012, Winer co-founded Small Picture, Inc. with Kyle Shank; Small Picture is a corporation that builds two outlining products, Little Outliner and Fargo. Little Outliner, an entry-level outliner designed to teach new users about outliners, which launched on March 25, 2013. Fargo, the company's "primary product", launched less than a month later, on April 17, 2013. Fargo is a free browser-based outliner which syncs with a user's Dropbox account. Small Picture has stated that in future it may offer paid-for services to Fargo users. Fargo was retired at the end of September 2017.
In February 1996, while working as a columnist for HotWired, Winer organized 24 Hours of Democracy, an online protest against the recently passed Communications Decency Act. As part of the protest, over 1,000 people, among them Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, posted essays to the Web on the subject of democracy, civil liberty and freedom of speech.
In December 1999, Winer became the "proprietor of a growing free blog service" at EditThisPage.com, hosting "approximately 20,000 sites" in February 2001. The service closed in December 2005.
Winer has been given "credit for the invention of the podcasting model." Having received user requests for audioblogging features since October 2000, especially from Adam Curry, Winer decided to include new functionality in RSS 0.92 by defining a new element called "enclosure," which would pass the address of a media file to the RSS aggregator. He demonstrated the RSS enclosure feature on January 11, 2001, by enclosing a Grateful Dead song in his Scripting News weblog.
Winer's weblogging product, Radio Userland, the program favored by Curry, had a built-in aggregator and thus provided both the "send" and "receive" components of what was then called audioblogging. In July 2003 Winer challenged other aggregator developers to provide support for enclosures. In October 2003, Kevin Marks demonstrated a script to download RSS enclosures and pass them to iTunes for transfer to an iPod. Curry then offered an RSS-to-iPod script that moved MP3 files from Radio UserLand to iTunes. The term "podcasting" was suggested by Ben Hammersley in February 2004.
Winer also has an occasional podcast, Morning Coffee Notes, which has featured guests such as Doc Searls, Mike Kowalchik, Jason Calacanis, Steve Gillmor, Peter Rojas, Cecile Andrews, Adam Curry, Betsy Devine and others.
BloggerCon is a user-focused conference for the blogger community. BloggerCon I (October 2003) and II (April 2004), were organized by Dave Winer and friends at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society in Cambridge, Mass. BloggerCon III met at Stanford Law School on November 6, 2004.
Weblogs.com provided a free ping-server used by many blogging applications, as well as free hosting to many bloggers. After leaving Userland, Winer claimed personal ownership of the site, and in mid-June 2004 he shut down its free blog-hosting service, citing lack of resources and personal problems. A swift and orderly migration off Winer's server was facilitated by Rogers Cadenhead, whom Winer then hired to port the server to a more stable platform. In October 2005, VeriSign bought the Weblogs.com ping-server from Winer and promised that its free services would remain free. The podcasting-related web site audio.weblogs.com was also included in the $2.3 million deal.
Winer opened his self-described "commons for sharing outlines, feeds, and taxonomy" in May 2006. The site allowed users to publish and syndicate blogrolls and aggregator subscriptions using OPML. Winer suspended its service in January 2008.
Since 2009, Winer has collaborated with New York University's associate professor of journalism Jay Rosen on Rebooting the News, a weekly podcast on technology and innovation in journalism. It was announced on July 1, 2011, that the show would be on break, as NYU itself was, from June to September. However, no new episodes have been released since, making show #94 released on May 23, 2011, the last. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Dave Winer (born May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City) is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting. He is the founder of the software companies Living Videotext, Userland Software and Small Picture Inc., a former contributing editor for the Web magazine HotWired, the author of the Scripting News weblog, a former research fellow at Harvard Law School, and current visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Winer was born on May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City, the son of Eve Winer, PhD, a school psychologist, and Leon Winer, PhD, a former professor of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Winer is also the grandnephew of German novelist Arno Schmidt and a relative of Hedy Lamarr. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1972. Winer received a BA in Mathematics from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1976. In 1978 he received an MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 1979 Dave Winer became an employee of Personal Software, where he worked on his own product idea named VisiText, which was his first attempt to build a commercial product around an \"expand and collapse\" outline display and which ultimately established outliners as a software product. In 1981 he left the company and founded Living Videotext to develop this still-unfinished product. The company was based in Mountain View, CA, and grew to more than 50 employees.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "ThinkTank, which was based on VisiText, was released in 1983 for Apple II and was promoted as an \"idea processor.\" It became the \"first popular outline processor, the one that made the term generic.\" A ThinkTank release for the IBM PC followed in 1984, as well as releases for the Macintosh 128K and 512K. Ready, a RAM resident outliner for the IBM PC released in 1985, was commercially successful but soon succumbed to the competing Sidekick product by Borland. MORE, released for Apple's Macintosh in 1986, combined an outliner and a presentation program. It became \"uncontested in the marketplace\" and won the MacUser's Editor's Choice Award for \"Best Product\" in 1986.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1987, at the height of the company's success, Winer sold Living Videotext to Symantec for an undisclosed but substantial transfer of stock that \"made his fortune.\" Winer continued to work at Symantec's Living Videotext division, but after six months he left the company in pursuit of other challenges.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Winer founded UserLand Software in 1988 and served as the company's CEO until 2002.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "UserLand's original flagship product, Frontier, was a system-level scripting environment for the Mac. Winer's pioneering weblog, Scripting News, takes its name from this early interest. Frontier was an outliner-based scripting language, echoing Winer's longstanding interest in outliners and anticipating code-folding editors of the late 1990s. Winer became interested in web publishing while helping automate the production process of the strikers' online newspaper during San Francisco's newspaper strike of November 1994, According to Newsweek, through this experience, he \"revolutionized Net publishing.\" Winer subsequently shifted the company's focus to online publishing products, enthusiastically promoting and experimenting with these products while building his websites and developing new features. One of these products was Frontier's NewsPage Suite of 1997, which supported the publication of Winer's Scripting News and was adopted by a handful of users who \"began playing around with their own sites in the Scripting News vein.\" These users included notably Chris Gulker and Jorn Barger, who envisaged blogging as a networked practice among users of the software.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Winer was named a Seybold Fellow in 1997, to assist the executives and editors that comprised the Seybold Institute in ensuring \"the highest quality and topicality\" in their educational program, the Seybold Seminars; the honor was bestowed for his \"pioneering work in web-based publishing systems.\" Keen to enter the \"competitive arena of high-end Web development,\" Winer then came to collaborate with Microsoft and jointly developed the XML-RPC protocol. This led to the creation of SOAP, which he co-authored with Microsoft's Don Box, Bob Atkinson, and Mohsen Al-Ghosein.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In December 1997, acting on the desire to \"offer much more timely information,\" Winer designed and implemented an XML syndication format for use on his Scripting News weblog, thus making an early contribution to the history of web syndication technology. By December 2000, competing dialects of RSS included several varieties of Netscape's RSS, Winer's RSS 0.92, and an RDF-based RSS 1.0. Winer continued to develop the branch of the RSS fork originating from RSS 0.92, releasing in 2002 a version called RSS 2.0. Winer's advocacy of web syndication in general and RSS 2.0 in particular convinced many news organizations to syndicate their news content in that format. For example, in early 2002 The New York Times entered an agreement with UserLand to syndicate many of their articles in RSS 2.0 format. Winer resisted calls by technologists to have the shortcomings of RSS 2.0 improved. Instead, he froze the format and turned its ownership over to Harvard University.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "With products and services based on UserLand's Frontier system, Winer became a leader in blogging tools from 1999 onwards, as well as a \"leading evangelist of weblogs.\" In 2000 Winer developed the Outline Processor Markup Language OPML, an XML format for outlines, which originally served as the native file format for Radio UserLand's outliner application and has since been adopted for other uses, the most common being to exchange lists of web feeds between web feed aggregators. UserLand was the first to add an \"enclosure\" tag in its RSS, modifying its blog software and its aggregator so that bloggers could easily link to an audio file (see podcasting and history of podcasting).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In February 2002 Winer was named one of the \"Top Ten Technology Innovators\" by InfoWorld.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In June 2002 Winer underwent life-saving bypass surgery to prevent a heart attack and as a consequence stepped down as CEO of UserLand shortly after. He remained the firm's majority shareholder, however, and claimed personal ownership of Weblogs.com.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "As \"one of the most prolific content generators in Web history,\" Winer has enjoyed a long career as a writer and has come to be counted among Silicon Valley's \"most influential web voices.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Winer started DaveNet, \"a stream-of-consciousness newsletter distributed by e-mail\" in November 1994 and maintained Web archives of the \"goofy and informative\" 800-word essays since January 1995, which earned him a Cool Site of the Day award in March 1995. From the start, the \"Internet newsletter\" DaveNet was widely read among industry leaders and analysts, who experienced it as a \"real community.\" Dissatisfied with the quality of the coverage that the Mac and, especially, his own Frontier software received in the trade press, Winer saw DaveNet as an opportunity to \"bypass\" the conventional news channels of the software business. Satisfied with his success, he \"reveled in the new direct email line he had established with his colleagues and peers, and in his ability to circumvent the media.\" In the early years, Winer often used DaveNet to vent his grievances against Apple's management, and as a consequence of his strident criticism came to be seen as \"the most notorious of the disgruntled Apple developers.\" Redacted DaveNet columns were published weekly by the web magazine HotWired between June 1995 and May 1996. DaveNet was discontinued in 2004.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Winer's Scripting News, described as \"one of the [web's] oldest blogs,\" launched in February 1997 and earned him titles such as \"protoblogger\" and \"forefather of blogging.\" Scripting News started as \"a home for links, offhand observations, and ephemera\" and allowed Winer to mix \"his roles as a widely read pundit and an ambitious entrepreneur.\" Offering an \"as-it-happened portrait of the work of writing software for the Web in the 1990s,\" the site became an \"established must-read for industry insiders.\" Scripting News continues to be updated regularly.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Winer spent one year as a resident fellow at the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where he worked on using weblogs in education. While there, he launched Weblogs at Harvard Law School using UserLand software, and held the first BloggerCon conferences. Winer's fellowship ended in June 2004.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 2010 Winer was appointed visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "On December 19, 2012, Winer co-founded Small Picture, Inc. with Kyle Shank; Small Picture is a corporation that builds two outlining products, Little Outliner and Fargo. Little Outliner, an entry-level outliner designed to teach new users about outliners, which launched on March 25, 2013. Fargo, the company's \"primary product\", launched less than a month later, on April 17, 2013. Fargo is a free browser-based outliner which syncs with a user's Dropbox account. Small Picture has stated that in future it may offer paid-for services to Fargo users. Fargo was retired at the end of September 2017.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In February 1996, while working as a columnist for HotWired, Winer organized 24 Hours of Democracy, an online protest against the recently passed Communications Decency Act. As part of the protest, over 1,000 people, among them Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, posted essays to the Web on the subject of democracy, civil liberty and freedom of speech.",
"title": "Projects and activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In December 1999, Winer became the \"proprietor of a growing free blog service\" at EditThisPage.com, hosting \"approximately 20,000 sites\" in February 2001. The service closed in December 2005.",
"title": "Projects and activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Winer has been given \"credit for the invention of the podcasting model.\" Having received user requests for audioblogging features since October 2000, especially from Adam Curry, Winer decided to include new functionality in RSS 0.92 by defining a new element called \"enclosure,\" which would pass the address of a media file to the RSS aggregator. He demonstrated the RSS enclosure feature on January 11, 2001, by enclosing a Grateful Dead song in his Scripting News weblog.",
"title": "Projects and activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Winer's weblogging product, Radio Userland, the program favored by Curry, had a built-in aggregator and thus provided both the \"send\" and \"receive\" components of what was then called audioblogging. In July 2003 Winer challenged other aggregator developers to provide support for enclosures. In October 2003, Kevin Marks demonstrated a script to download RSS enclosures and pass them to iTunes for transfer to an iPod. Curry then offered an RSS-to-iPod script that moved MP3 files from Radio UserLand to iTunes. The term \"podcasting\" was suggested by Ben Hammersley in February 2004.",
"title": "Projects and activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Winer also has an occasional podcast, Morning Coffee Notes, which has featured guests such as Doc Searls, Mike Kowalchik, Jason Calacanis, Steve Gillmor, Peter Rojas, Cecile Andrews, Adam Curry, Betsy Devine and others.",
"title": "Projects and activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "BloggerCon is a user-focused conference for the blogger community. BloggerCon I (October 2003) and II (April 2004), were organized by Dave Winer and friends at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society in Cambridge, Mass. BloggerCon III met at Stanford Law School on November 6, 2004.",
"title": "Projects and activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Weblogs.com provided a free ping-server used by many blogging applications, as well as free hosting to many bloggers. After leaving Userland, Winer claimed personal ownership of the site, and in mid-June 2004 he shut down its free blog-hosting service, citing lack of resources and personal problems. A swift and orderly migration off Winer's server was facilitated by Rogers Cadenhead, whom Winer then hired to port the server to a more stable platform. In October 2005, VeriSign bought the Weblogs.com ping-server from Winer and promised that its free services would remain free. The podcasting-related web site audio.weblogs.com was also included in the $2.3 million deal.",
"title": "Projects and activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Winer opened his self-described \"commons for sharing outlines, feeds, and taxonomy\" in May 2006. The site allowed users to publish and syndicate blogrolls and aggregator subscriptions using OPML. Winer suspended its service in January 2008.",
"title": "Projects and activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Since 2009, Winer has collaborated with New York University's associate professor of journalism Jay Rosen on Rebooting the News, a weekly podcast on technology and innovation in journalism. It was announced on July 1, 2011, that the show would be on break, as NYU itself was, from June to September. However, no new episodes have been released since, making show #94 released on May 23, 2011, the last.",
"title": "Projects and activities"
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| Dave Winer is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting. He is the founder of the software companies Living Videotext, Userland Software and Small Picture Inc., a former contributing editor for the Web magazine HotWired, the author of the Scripting News weblog, a former research fellow at Harvard Law School, and current visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-27T04:13:27Z | [
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8,714 | December 10 | December 10 is the 344th day of the year (345th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 21 days remain until the end of the year. | [
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| December 10 is the 344th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 21 days remain until the end of the year. | 2001-10-26T23:42:37Z | 2023-12-12T06:57:40Z | [
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8,715 | Taiko | Taiko (太鼓) are a broad range of Japanese percussion instruments. In Japanese, the term taiko refers to any kind of drum, but outside Japan, it is used specifically to refer to any of the various Japanese drums called wadaiko (和太鼓, lit. 'Japanese drums') and to the form of ensemble taiko drumming more specifically called kumi-daiko (組太鼓, lit. 'set of drums'). The process of constructing taiko varies between manufacturers, and the preparation of both the drum body and skin can take several years depending on the method.
Taiko have a mythological origin in Japanese folklore, but historical records suggest that taiko were introduced to Japan through Chinese and Korean cultural influence as early as the 6th century CE; pottery from the Haniwa period depicting taiko drums has also been found. Some taiko are similar to instruments originating from India. Archaeological evidence also supports the view that taiko were present in Japan during the 6th century in the Kofun period. Their function has varied throughout history, ranging from communication, military action, theatrical accompaniment, religious ceremony and concert performances. In modern times, taiko have also played a central role in social movements for minorities both within and outside Japan.
Kumi-daiko performance, characterized by an ensemble playing on different drums, was developed in 1951 through the work of Daihachi Oguchi and later in 1961 by the Ondekoza, and taiko was made later popular with many other groups copying the format of Ondekoza such as Kodo, Yamato, Tao, Taikoza, Fuun No Kai, Sukeroku Taiko, etc. Other performance styles, such as hachijō-daiko, have also emerged from specific communities in Japan. Kumi-daiko performance groups are active not only in Japan, but also in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe, Taiwan, and Brazil. Taiko performance consists of many components in technical rhythm, form, stick grip, clothing, and the particular instrumentation. Ensembles typically use different types of barrel-shaped nagadō-daiko as well as smaller shime-daiko. Many groups accompany the drums with vocals, strings, and woodwind instruments.
The origin of the taiko and its variants is unclear, though there have been many suggestions. Historical accounts, of which the earliest date from 588 CE, note that young Japanese men traveled to Korea to study the kakko, a drum that originated in South China. This study and appropriation of Chinese instruments may have influenced the emergence of taiko. Certain court music styles, especially gigaku and gagaku, arrived in Japan through both China and Korea. In both traditions, dancers were accompanied by several instruments that included drums similar to taiko. Certain percussive patterns and terminology in togaku, an early dance and music style in Japan, in addition to physical features of the kakko, also reflect influence from both China and India on drum use in gagaku performance.
Archaeological evidence shows that taiko were used in Japan as early as the 6th century CE, during the latter part of the Kofun period, and were likely used for communication, in festivals, and in other rituals. This evidence was substantiated by the discovery of haniwa statues in the Sawa District of Gunma Prefecture. Two of these figures are depicted playing drums; one of them, wearing skins, is equipped with a barrel-shaped drum hung from his shoulder and uses a stick to play the drum at hip height. This statue is titled "Man Beating the Taiko" and is considered the oldest evidence of taiko performance in Japan. Similarities between the playing style demonstrated by this haniwa and known music traditions in China and Korea further suggest influences from these regions.
The Nihon Shoki, the second-oldest book of Japanese classical history, contains a mythological story describing the origin of taiko. The myth tells how Amaterasu, who had sealed herself inside a cave in anger, was beckoned out by an elder goddess Ame-no-Uzume when others had failed. Ame-no-Uzume accomplished this by emptying out a barrel of sake and dancing furiously on top of it. Historians regard her performance as the mythological creation of taiko music.
In feudal Japan, taiko were often used to motivate troops, call out orders or announcements, and set a marching pace; marches were usually set to six paces per beat of the drum. During the 16th-century Warring States period, specific drum calls were used to communicate orders for retreating and advancing. Other rhythms and techniques were detailed in period texts. According to the war chronicle Gunji Yoshū, nine sets of five beats would summon an ally to battle, while nine sets of three beats, sped up three or four times, was the call to advance and pursue an enemy. Folklore from the 16th century on the legendary 6th-century Emperor Keitai offers a story that he obtained a large drum from China, which he named Senjin-daiko (線陣太鼓, "front drum"). The Emperor was thought to have used it to both encourage his own army and intimidate his enemies.
Taiko have been incorporated in Japanese theatre for rhythmic needs, general atmosphere, and in certain settings decoration. In the kabuki play The Tale of Shiroishi and the Taihei Chronicles, scenes in the pleasure quarters are accompanied by taiko to create dramatic tension. Noh theatre also features taiko music, where performance consists of highly specific rhythmic patterns. The Konparu (金春流) school of drumming, for example, contains 65 basic patterns in addition to 25 special patterns; these patterns are categorized in several classes. Differences between these patterns include changes in tempo, accent, dynamics, pitch, and function in the theatrical performance. Patterns are also often connected together in progressions.
Taiko continue to be used in gagaku, a classical music tradition typically performed at the Tokyo Imperial Palace in addition to local temples and shrines. In gagaku, one component of the art form is traditional dance, which is guided in part by the rhythm set by the taiko.
Taiko have played an important role in many local festivals across Japan. They are also used to accompany religious ritual music. In kagura, a category of music and dances stemming from Shinto practices, taiko frequently appear alongside other performers during local festivals. In Buddhist traditions, taiko are used for ritual dances as part of the Bon Festival. Taiko, along with other instruments, are featured atop towers that are adorned with red-and-white cloth and serve to provide rhythms for the dancers who are encircled around the performers.
In addition to the instruments, the term taiko also refers to the performance itself, and commonly to one style called kumi-daiko, or ensemble-style playing (as opposed to festival performances, rituals, or theatrical use of the drums). Kumi-daiko was developed by Daihachi Oguchi in 1951. He is considered a master performer and helped transform taiko performance from its roots in traditional settings in festivals and shrines. Oguchi was trained as a jazz musician in Nagano, and at one point, a relative gave him an old piece of written taiko music. Unable to read the traditional and esoteric notation, Oguchi found help to transcribe the piece, and on his own added rhythms and transformed the work to accommodate multiple taiko players on different-sized instruments. Each instrument served a specific purpose that established present-day conventions in kumi-daiko performance.
Oguchi's ensemble, Osuwa Daiko, incorporated these alterations and other drums into their performances. They also devised novel pieces that were intended for non-religious performances. Several other groups emerged in Japan through the 1950s and 1960s. Oedo Sukeroku Daiko was formed in Tokyo in 1959 under Seidō Kobayashi, and has been referred to as the first taiko group who toured professionally. Globally, kumi-daiko performance became more visible during the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, when it was featured during the Festival of Arts event.
Kumi-daiko was also developed through the leadership of Den Tagayasu (田耕), who gathered young men who were willing to devote their entire lifestyle to taiko playing and took them to Sado Island for training where Den and his family had settled in 1968. Den chose the island based on a desire to reinvigorate the folk arts in Japan, particularly taiko; he became inspired by a drumming tradition unique to Sado called ondeko (鬼太鼓, "demon drumming" in the Sado dialect) that required considerable strength to play well. Den called the group "Za Ondekoza" or Ondekoza for short, and implemented a rigorous set of exercises for its members including long-distance running. In 1975, Ondekoza was the first taiko group to tour in the United States. Their first performance occurred just after the group finished running the Boston Marathon while wearing their traditional uniforms. In 1981, some members of Ondekoza split from Den and formed another group called Kodo under the leadership of Eitetsu Hayashi. Kodo continued to use Sado Island for rigorous training and communal living, and went on to popularize taiko through frequent touring and collaborations with other musical performers. Kodo is one of the most recognized taiko groups both in Japan and worldwide.
Estimates of the number of taiko groups in Japan vary to up to 5,000 active groups in Japan, but more conservative assessments place the number closer to 800 based on membership in the Nippon Taiko Foundation, the largest national organization of taiko groups. Some pieces that have emerged from early kumi-daiko groups that continue to be performed include Yatai-bayashi from Ondekoza, Isami-goma (勇み駒, lit. "galloping horse") from Osuwa Daiko, and Zoku (族, lit. "tribe") from Kodo.
Taiko have been developed into a broad range of percussion instruments that are used in both Japanese folk and classical musical traditions. An early classification system based on shape and tension was advanced by Francis Taylor Piggott in 1909. Taiko are generally classified based on the construction process, or the specific context in which the drum is used, but some are not classified, such as the toy den-den daiko.
With few exceptions, taiko have a drum shell with heads on both sides of the body, and a sealed resonating cavity. The head may be fastened to the shell using a number of different systems, such as using ropes. Taiko may be either tunable or non-tunable depending on the system used.
Taiko are categorized into three types based on construction process. Byō-uchi-daiko are constructed with the drumhead nailed to the body. Shime-daiko are classically constructed with the skin placed over iron or steel rings, which are then tightened with ropes. Contemporary shime-daiko are tensioned using bolts or turnbuckles systems attached to the drum body. Tsuzumi are also rope-tensioned drums, but have a distinct hourglass shape and their skins are made using deerskin.
Byō-uchi-daiko were historically made only using a single piece of wood; they continue to be made in this manner, but are also constructed from staves of wood. Larger drums can be made using a single piece of wood, but at a much greater cost due to the difficulty in finding appropriate trees. The preferred wood is the Japanese zelkova or keyaki, but a number of other woods, and even wine barrels, have been used to create taiko. Byō-uchi-daiko cannot be tuned.
The typical byō-uchi-daiko is the nagadō-daiko, an elongated drum that is roughly shaped like a wine barrel. Nagadō-daiko are available in a variety of sizes, and their head diameter is traditionally measured in shaku (units of roughly 30 cm). Head diameters range from 1 to 6 shaku (30 to 182 cm; 12 to 72 in). Ko-daiko (小太鼓) are the smallest of these drums and are usually about 1 shaku (30 cm; 12 in) in diameter. The chū-daiko (中太鼓) is a medium-sized nagadō-daiko ranging from 1.6 to 2.8 shaku (48 to 85 cm; 19 to 33 in), and weighing about 27 kilograms (60 lb). Ō-daiko (大太鼓) vary in size, and are often as large as 6 shaku (180 cm; 72 in) in diameter. Some ō-daiko are difficult to move due to their size, and therefore permanently remain inside the performance space, such as temple or shrine. Ō-daiko means "large drum" and for a given ensemble, the term refers to their largest drum. The other type of byō-uchi-daiko is called a hira-daiko (平太鼓, "flat drum") and can be any drum constructed such that the head diameter is greater than the length of the body.
Shime-daiko are a set of smaller, roughly snare drum-sized instrument that are tunable. The tensioning system usually consists of hemp cords or rope, but bolt or turnbuckle systems have been used as well. Nagauta shime-daiko (長唄締め太鼓), sometimes referred to as "taiko" in the context of theater, have thinner heads than other kinds of shime-daiko. The head includes a patch of deerskin placed in the center, and in performance, drum strokes are generally restricted to this area. The tsukeshime-daiko (付け締め太鼓) is a heavier type of shime-daiko. They are available in sizes 1–5, and are named according to their number: namitsuke (1), nichō-gakke (2), sanchō-gakke (3), yonchō-gakke (4), and gochō-gakke (5). The namitsuke has the thinnest skins and the shortest body in terms of height; thickness and tension of skins, as well as body height, increase toward the gochō-gakke. The head diameters of all shime-daiko sizes are around 27 cm (10.6 in).
Uchiwa-daiko (団扇太鼓, literally, fan drum) is a type of racket-shaped Japanese drum. It is the only Japanese traditional drum without a sound box and only one skin. It is played with a drumstick while hanging it with the other hand.
Okedō-daiko or simply okedō, are a type of shime-daiko that are stave-constructed using narrower strips of wood, have a tube-shaped frame. Like other shime-daiko, drum heads are attached by metal hoops and fastened by rope or cords. Okedō can be played using the same drumsticks (called bachi) as shime-daiko, but can also be hand-played. Okedō come in short- and long-bodied types.
Tsuzumi are a class of hourglass-shaped drums. The drum body is shaped on a spool and the inner body carved by hand. Their skins can be made from cowhide, horsehide, or deerskin. While the ō-tsuzumi skins are made from cowhide, ko-tsuzumi are made from horsehide. While some classify tsuzumi as a type of taiko, others have described them as a drum entirely separate from taiko.
Taiko can also be categorized by the context in which they are used. The miya-daiko, for instance, is constructed in the same manner as other byō-uchi-daiko, but is distinguished by an ornamental stand and is used for ceremonial purposes at Buddhist temples. The Sumō-daiko (相撲太鼓) (a ko-daiko) and sairei-nagadō (祭礼長胴) (a nagadō-daiko with a cigar-shaped body) are used in sumo and festivals respectively.
Several drums, categorized as gagakki, are used in the Japanese theatrical form, gagaku. The lead instrument of the ensemble is the kakko, which is a smaller shime-daiko with heads made of deerskin, and is placed horizontally on a stand during performance. A tsuzumi, called the san-no-tsuzumi is another small drum in gagaku that is placed horizontally and struck with a thin stick. Dadaiko (鼉太鼓) are the largest drums of the ensemble, and have heads that are about 127 cm (50 in) in diameter. During performance, the drum is placed on a tall pedestals and surrounded by a rim decoratively painted with flames and adorned with mystical figures such as wyverns. Dadaiko are played while standing, and are usually only played on the downbeat of the music. The tsuri-daiko (釣太鼓, "suspended drum") is a smaller drum that produces a lower sound, its head measuring about 55 cm (22 in) in diameter. It is used in ensembles that accompany bugaku, a traditional dance performed at the Tokyo Imperial Palace and in religious contexts. Tsuri-daiko are suspended on a small stand, and are played sitting down. Tsuri-daiko performers typically use shorter mallets covered in leather knobs instead of bachi. They can be played simultaneously by two performers; while one performer plays on the head, another performer uses bachi on the body of the drum.
The larger ō-tsuzumi and smaller ko-tsuzumi are used in the opening and dances of Noh theater. Both drums are struck using the fingers; players can also adjust pitch by manually applying pressure to the ropes on the drum. The color of the cords of these drums also indicates the skill of the musician: Orange and red for amateur players, light blue for performers with expertise, and lilac for masters of the instrument. Nagauta-shime daiko or uta daiko are also featured in Noh performance.
Many taiko in Noh are also featured in kabuki performance and are used in a similar manner. In addition to the ō-tsuzumi, ko-tsuzumi, and nagauta-shime daiko, Kabuki performances make use of the larger ō-daiko offstage to help set the atmosphere for different scenes.
Taiko construction has several stages, including making and shaping of the drum body (or shell), preparing the drum skin, and tuning the skin to the drumhead. Variations in the construction process often occur in the latter two parts of this process. Historically, byō-uchi-daiko were crafted from trunks of the Japanese zelkova tree that were dried out over years, using techniques to prevent splitting. A master carpenter then carved out the rough shape of the drum body with a chisel; the texture of the wood after carving softened the tone of the drum. In contemporary times, taiko are carved out on a large lathe using wood staves or logs that can be shaped to fit drum bodies of various sizes. Drumheads can be left to air-dry over a period of years, but some companies use large, smoke-filled warehouses to hasten the drying process. After drying is complete, the inside of the drum is worked with a deep-grooved chisel and sanded. Lastly, handles are placed onto the drum. These are used to carry smaller drums and they serve an ornamental purpose for larger drums.
The skins or heads of taiko are generally made from cowhide from Holstein cows aged about three or four years. Skins also come from horses, and bull skin is preferred for larger drums. Thinner skins are preferred for smaller taiko, and thicker skins are used for larger ones. On some drumheads, a patch of deer skin placed in the center serves as the target for many strokes during performance. Before fitting it to the drum body the hair is removed from the hide by soaking it in a river or stream for about a month; winter months are preferred as colder temperatures better facilitate hair removal. To stretch the skin over the drum properly, one process requires the body to be held on a platform with several hydraulic jacks underneath it. The edges of the cowhide are secured to an apparatus below the jacks, and the jacks stretch the skin incrementally to precisely apply tension across the drumhead. Other forms of stretching use rope or cords with wooden dowels or an iron wheel to create appropriate tension. Small tension adjustments can be made during this process using small pieces of bamboo that twist around the ropes. Particularly large drumheads are sometimes stretched by having several workers, clad in stockings, hop rhythmically atop it, forming a circle along the edge. After the skin has dried, tacks, called byō, are added to the appropriate drums to secure it; chū-daiko require about 300 of them for each side. After the body and skin have been finished, excess hide is cut off and the drum can be stained as needed.
Several companies specialize in the production of taiko. One such company that created drums exclusively for the Emperor of Japan, Miyamoto Unosuke Shoten in Tokyo, has been making taiko since 1861. The Asano Taiko Corporation is another major taiko-producing organization, and has been producing taiko for over 400 years. The family-owned business started in Mattō, Ishikawa, and, aside from military equipment, made taiko for Noh theater and later expanded to creating instruments for festivals during the Meiji period. Asano currently maintains an entire complex of large buildings referred to as Asano Taiko Village, and the company reports producing up to 8000 drums each year. As of 2012, there is approximately one major taiko production company in each prefecture of Japan, with some regions having several companies. Of the manufacturers in Naniwa, Taikoya Matabē is one of the most successful and is thought to have brought considerable recognition to the community and attracted many drum makers there. Umetsu Daiko, a company that operates in Hakata, has been producing taiko since 1821.
Taiko performance styles vary widely across groups in terms of the number of performers, repertoire, instrument choices, and stage techniques. Nevertheless, a number of early groups have had broad influence on the tradition. For instance, many pieces developed by Ondekoza and Kodo are considered standard in many taiko groups.
Kata is the posture and movement associated with taiko performance. The notion is similar to that of kata in martial arts: for example, both traditions include the idea that the hara is the center of being. Author Shawn Bender argues that kata is the primary feature that distinguishes different taiko groups from one another and is a key factor in judging the quality of performance. For this reason, many practice rooms intended for taiko contain mirrors to provide visual feedback to players. An important part of kata in taiko is keeping the body stabilized while performing and can be accomplished by keeping a wide, low stance with the legs, with the left knee bent over the toes and keeping the right leg straight. It is important that the hips face the drum and the shoulders are relaxed. Some teachers note a tendency to rely on the upper body while playing and emphasize the importance of the holistic use of the body during performance.
Some groups in Japan, particularly those active in Tokyo, also emphasize the importance of the lively and spirited iki aesthetic. In taiko, it refers to very specific kinds of movement while performing that evoke the sophistication stemming from the mercantile and artisan classes active during the Edo period (1603–1868).
The sticks for playing taiko are called bachi, and are made in various sizes and from different kinds of wood such as white oak, bamboo, and Japanese magnolia. Bachi are also held in a number of different styles. In kumi-daiko, it is common for a player to hold their sticks in a relaxed manner between the V-shape of the index finger and thumb, which points to the player. There are other grips that allow performers to play much more technically difficult rhythms, such as the shime grip, which is similar to a matched grip: the bachi are gripped at the back end, and the fulcrum rests between the performer's index finger and thumb, while the other fingers remain relaxed and slightly curled around the stick.
Performance in some groups is also guided by principles based on Zen Buddhism. For instance, among other concepts, the San Francisco Taiko Dojo is guided by rei (礼) emphasizing communication, respect, and harmony. The way the bachi are held can also be significant; for some groups, bachi represent a spiritual link between the body and the sky. Some physical parts of taiko, like the drum body, its skin, and the tacks also hold symbolic significance in Buddhism.
Kumi-daiko groups consist primarily of percussive instruments where each of the drums plays a specific role. Of the different kinds of taiko, the most common in groups is the nagadō-daiko. Chū-daiko are common in taiko groups and represent the main rhythm of the group, whereas shime-daiko set and change tempo. A shime-daiko often plays the Jiuchi, a base rhythm holding together the ensemble. Ō-daiko provide a steady, underlying pulse and serve as a counter-rhythm to the other parts. It is common for performances to begin with a single stroke roll called an oroshi (颪, "wind blowing down from mountains"). The player starts slowly, leaving considerable space between strikes, gradually shortening the interval between hits, until the drummer is playing a rapid roll of hits. Oroshi are also played as a part of theatrical performance, such as in Noh theater.
Drums are not the only instruments played in the ensemble; other Japanese instruments are also used. Other kinds of percussion instruments include the atarigane (当り鉦), a hand-sized gong played with a small mallet. In kabuki, the shamisen, a plucked string instrument, often accompanies taiko during the theatrical performance. Kumi-daiko performances can also feature woodwinds such as the shakuhachi and the shinobue.
Voiced calls or shouts called kakegoe and kiai are also common in taiko performance. They are used as encouragement to other players or cues for transition or change in dynamics such as an increase in tempo. In contrast, the philosophical concept of ma, or the space between drum strikes, is also important in shaping rhythmic phrases and creating appropriate contrast.
There is a wide variety of traditional clothing that players wear during taiko performance. Common in many kumi-daiko groups is the use of the happi, a decorative, thin-fabric coat, and traditional headbands called hachimaki. Tabi, momohiki (もも引き, "loose-fitting pants"), and haragake (腹掛け, "working aprons") are also typical. During his time with the group Ondekoza, Eitetsu Hayashi suggested that a loincloth called a fundoshi be worn when performing for French fashion designer Pierre Cardin, who saw Ondekoza perform for him in 1975. The Japanese group Kodo has sometimes worn fundoshi for its performances.
Taiko performance is generally taught orally and through demonstration. Historically, general patterns for taiko were written down, such as in the 1512 encyclopedia called the Taigensho, but written scores for taiko pieces are generally unavailable. One reason for the adherence to an oral tradition is that, from group to group, the rhythmic patterns in a given piece are often performed differently. Furthermore, ethnomusicologist William P. Malm observed that Japanese players within a group could not usefully predict one another using written notation, and instead did so through listening. In Japan, printed parts are not used during lessons.
Orally, patterns of onomatopoeia called kuchi shōga are taught from teacher to student that convey the rhythm and timbre of drum strikes for a particular piece. For example, don (どん) represents a single strike to the center of the drum, where as do-ko (どこ) represents two successive strikes, first by the right and then the left, and lasts the same amount of time as one don strike. Some taiko pieces, such as Yatai-bayashi, include patterns that are difficult to represent in Western musical notation. The exact words used can also differ from region to region.
More recently, Japanese publications have emerged in an attempt to standardize taiko performance. The Nippon Taiko Foundation was formed in 1979; its primary goals were to foster good relations among taiko groups in Japan and to both publicize and teach how to perform taiko. Daihachi Oguchi, the leader of the Foundation, wrote Japan Taiko with other teachers in 1994 out of concern that correct form in performance would degrade over time. The instructional publication described the different drums used in kumi-daiko performance, methods of gripping, correct form, and suggestions on instrumentation. The book also contains practice exercises and transcribed pieces from Oguchi's group, Osuwa Daiko. While there were similar textbooks published before 1994, this publication had much more visibility due to the Foundation's scope.
The system of fundamentals Japan Taiko put forward was not widely adopted because taiko performance varied substantially across Japan. An updated 2001 publication from the Foundation, called the Nihon Taiko Kyōhon (日本太鼓教本, "Japan Taiko Textbook"), describes regional variations that depart from the main techniques taught in the textbook. The creators of the text maintained that mastering a set of prescribed basics should be compatible with learning local traditions.
Aside from kumi-daiko performance, a number of folk traditions that use taiko have been recognized in different regions in Japan. Some of these include ondeko (鬼太鼓, "demon drumming") from Sado Island, gion-daiko [ja] from the town of Kokura, and sansa-odori [ja] from Iwate Prefecture.
A variety of folk dances originating from Okinawa, known collectively as eisa, often make use of the taiko. Some performers use drums while dancing, and generally speaking, perform in one of two styles: groups on the Yokatsu Peninsula and on Hamahiga Island use small, single-sided drums called pāranku (パーランク) whereas groups near the city of Okinawa generally use shime-daiko. Use of shime-daiko over pāranku has spread throughout the island, and is considered the dominant style. Small nagadō-daiko, referred to as ō-daiko within the tradition, are also used and are worn in front of the performer. These drum dances are not limited to Okinawa and have appeared in places containing Okinawan communities such as in São Paulo, Hawaii, and large cities on the Japanese mainland.
Hachijō-daiko (八丈太鼓, trans. "Hachijō-style taiko") is a taiko tradition originating on the island of Hachijō-jima. Two styles of Hachijō-daiko emerged and have been popularized among residents: an older tradition based on a historical account, and a newer tradition influenced by mainland groups and practiced by the majority of the islanders.
The Hachijō-daiko tradition was documented as early as 1849 based on a journal kept by an exile named Kakuso Kizan. He mentioned some of its unique features, such as "a taiko is suspended from a tree while women and children gathered around", and observed that a player used either side of the drum while performing. Illustrations from Kizan's journal show features of Hachijō-daiko. These illustrations also featured women performing, which is unusual as taiko performance elsewhere during this period was typically reserved for men. Teachers of the tradition have noted that the majority of its performers were women; one estimate asserts that female performers outnumbered males by three to one.
The first style of Hachijō-daiko is thought to descend directly from the style reported by Kizan. This style is called Kumaoji-daiko, named after its creator Okuyama Kumaoji, a central performer of the style. Kumaoji-daiko has two players on a single drum, one of whom, called the shita-byōshi (下拍子, "lower beat"), provides the underlying beat. The other player, called the uwa-byōshi (上拍子, "upper beat"), builds on this rhythmical foundation with unique and typically improvised rhythms. While there are specific types of underlying rhythms, the accompanying player is free to express an original musical beat. Kumaoji-daiko also features an unusual positioning for taiko: the drums are sometimes suspended from ropes, and historically, sometimes drums were suspended from trees.
The contemporary style of Hachijō-daiko is called shin-daiko (新太鼓, "new taiko"), which differs from Kumaoji-daiko in multiple ways. For instance, while the lead and accompanying roles are still present, shin-daiko performances use larger drums exclusively on stands. Shin-daiko emphasizes a more powerful sound, and consequently, performers use larger bachi made out of stronger wood. Looser clothing is worn by shin-daiko performers compared to kimono worn by Kumaoji-daiko performers; the looser clothing in shin-daiko allow performers to adopt more open stances and larger movements with the legs and arms. Rhythms used for the accompanying shita-byōshi role can also differ. One type of rhythm, called yūkichi, consists of the following:
This rhythm is found in both styles, but is always played faster in shin-daiko. Another type of rhythm, called honbadaki, is unique to shin-daiko and also contains a song which is performed in standard Japanese.
Miyake-daiko (三宅太鼓, trans. "Miyake-style taiko") is a style that has spread amongst groups through Kodo, and is formally known as Miyake-jima Kamitsuki mikoshi-daiko (三宅島神着神輿太鼓). The word miyake comes from Miyake-jima, part of the Izu Islands, and the word Kamitsuki refers to the village where the tradition came from. Miyake-style taiko came out of performances for Gozu Tennō Sai (牛頭天王祭, "Gozu Tennō Festival")— a traditional festival held annually in July on Miyake Island since 1820 honoring the deity Gozu Tennō. In this festival, players perform on taiko while portable shrines are carried around town. The style itself is characterized in a number of ways. A nagadō-daiko is typically set low to the ground and played by two performers, one on each side; instead of sitting, performers stand and hold a stance that is also very low to the ground, almost to the point of kneeling.
Taiko groups in Australia began forming in the 1990s. The first group, called Ataru Taru Taiko, was formed in 1995 by Paulene Thomas, Harold Gent, and Kaomori Kamei. TaikOz was later formed by percussionist Ian Cleworth and Riley Lee, a former Ondekoza member, and has been performing in Australia since 1997. They are known for their work in generating interest in performing taiko among Australian audiences, such as by developing a complete education program with both formal and informal classes, and have a strong fan base. Cleworth and other members of the group have developed several original pieces.
The introduction of kumi-daiko performance in Brazil can be traced back to the 1970s and 1980s in São Paulo. Tangue Setsuko founded an eponymous taiko dojo and was Brazil's first taiko group; Setsuo Kinoshita later formed the group Wadaiko Sho. Brazilian groups have combined native and African drumming techniques with taiko performance. One such piece developed by Kinoshita is called Taiko de Samba, which emphasizes both Brazilian and Japanese aesthetics in percussion traditions. Taiko was also popularized in Brazil from 2002 through the work of Yukihisa Oda, a Japanese native who visited Brazil several times through the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
The Brazilian Association of Taiko (ABT) suggests that there are about 150 taiko groups in Brazil and that about 10–15% of players are non-Japanese; Izumo Honda, coordinator of a large annual festival in São Paulo, estimated that about 60% of all taiko performers in Brazil are women.
Taiko emerged in the United States in the late 1960s. The first group, San Francisco Taiko Dojo, was formed in 1968 by Seiichi Tanaka, a postwar immigrant who studied taiko in Japan and brought the styles and teachings to the US. A year later, a few members of Senshin Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles led by its minister Masao Kodani initiated another group called Kinnara Taiko. San Jose Taiko later formed in 1973 in Japantown, San Jose, under Roy and PJ Hirabayashi. Taiko started to branch out to the eastern US in the late 1970s. This included formation of Denver Taiko in 1976, and Soh Daiko in New York City in 1979. Many of these early groups lacked the resources to equip each member with a drum and resorted to makeshift percussion materials such as rubber tires or creating taiko out of wine barrels.
Japanese-Canadian taiko began in 1979 with Katari Taiko, and was inspired by the San Jose Taiko group. Its early membership was predominantly female. Katari Taiko and future groups were thought to represent an opportunity for younger, third-generation Japanese Canadians to explore their roots, redevelop a sense of ethnic community, and expand taiko into other musical traditions.
There are no official counts or estimates of the number of active taiko groups in the United States or Canada, as there is no governing body for taiko groups in either country. Unofficial estimates have been made. In 1989, there were as many as 30 groups in the US and Canada, seven of which were in California. One estimate suggested that around 120 groups were active in the US and Canada as of 2001, many of which could be traced to the San Francisco Taiko Dojo; later estimates in 2005 and 2006 suggested there were about 200 groups in the United States alone.
The Cirque du Soleil shows Mystère in Las Vegas and Dralion have featured taiko performance. Taiko performance has also been featured in commercial productions such as the 2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse ad campaign, and in events such as the 2009 Academy Awards and 2011 Grammy Awards.
From 2005 to 2006, the Japanese American National Museum held an exhibition called Big Drum: Taiko in the United States. The exhibition covered several topics related to taiko in the United States, such as the formation of performance groups, their construction using available materials, and social movements. Visitors were able to play smaller drums.
North America hosts the North American Taiko Conference (NATC) which has been ongoing since its inaugural conference in Los Angeles in 1997. In 2013, the Taiko Community Alliance (TCA) formed as virtual nonprofit 501(c)3 organization with a mission to empower the people and advance the art of taiko. The Taiko Community Alliance has been responsible for helping organize the NATC conferences to help further its mission of educating and raising awareness of taiko through the taiko community.
The first group, called Quelli del Taiko, was formed in 2000 by Pietro Notarnicola. They played in World Premiere - 2017 - "On Western Terror 8" - Concerto for Taiko Ensemble and Orchestra of the Italian composed Luigi Morleo
Certain peoples have used taiko to advance social or cultural movements, both within Japan and elsewhere in the world.
Taiko performance has frequently been viewed as an art form dominated by men. Historians of taiko argue that its performance comes from masculine traditions. Those who developed ensemble-style taiko in Japan were men, and through the influence of Ondekoza, the ideal taiko player was epitomized in images of the masculine peasant class, particularly through the character Muhōmatsu in the 1958 film Rickshaw Man. Masculine roots have also been attributed to perceived capacity for "spectacular bodily performance" where women's bodies are sometimes judged as unable to meet the physical demands of playing.
Before the 1980s, it was uncommon for Japanese women to perform on traditional instruments, including taiko, as their participation had been systematically restricted; an exception was the San Francisco Taiko Dojo under the guidance of Grand master Seiichi Tanaka, who was the first to admit females to the art form. In Ondekoza and in the early performances of Kodo, women performed only dance routines either during or between taiko performances. Thereafter, female participation in kumi-daiko started to rise dramatically, and by the 1990s, women equaled and possibly exceeded representation by men. While the proportion of women in taiko has become substantial, some have expressed concern that women still do not perform in the same roles as their male counterparts and that taiko performance continues to be a male-dominated profession. For instance, a member of Kodo was informed by the director of the group's apprentice program that women were permitted to play, but could only play "as women". Other women in the apprentice program recognized a gender disparity in performance roles, such as what pieces they were allowed to perform, or in physical terms based on a male standard.
Female taiko performance has also served as a response to gendered stereotypes of Japanese women as being quiet, subservient, or a femme fatale. Through performance, some groups believe they are helping to redefine not only the role of women in taiko, but how women are perceived more generally.
Those involved in the construction of taiko are usually considered part of the burakumin, a marginalized minority class in Japanese society, particularly those working with leather or animal skins. Prejudice against this class dates back to the Tokugawa period in terms of legal discrimination and treatment as social outcasts. Although official discrimination ended with the Tokugawa era, the burakumin have continued to face social discrimination, such as scrutiny by employers or in marriage arrangements. Drum makers have used their trade and success as a means to advocate for an end to discriminatory practices against their class.
The Taiko Road (人権太鼓ロード, "Taiko Road of Human Rights"), representing the contributions of burakumin, is found in Naniwa Ward in Osaka, home to a large proportion of burakumin. Among other features, the road contains taiko-shaped benches representing their traditions in taiko manufacturing and leatherworking, and their influence on national culture. The road ends at the Osaka Human Rights Museum, which exhibits the history of systematic discrimination against the burakumin. The road and museum were developed in part due an advocacy campaign led by the Buraku Liberation League and a taiko group of younger performers called Taiko Ikari (太鼓怒り, "taiko rage").
Taiko performance was an important part of cultural development by third-generation Japanese residents in North America, who are called sansei. During World War II, second-generation Japanese residents, called nisei faced internment in the United States and in Canada on the basis of their race. During and after the war, Japanese residents were discouraged from activities such as speaking Japanese or forming ethnic communities. Subsequently, sansei could not engage in Japanese culture and instead were raised to assimilate into more normative activities. There were also prevailing stereotypes of Japanese people, which sansei sought to escape or subvert. During the 1960s in the United States, the civil rights movement influenced sansei to reexamine their heritage by engaging in Japanese culture in their communities; one such approach was through taiko performance. Groups such as San Jose Taiko were organized to fulfill a need for solidarity and to have a medium to express their experiences as Japanese-Americans. Later generations have adopted taiko in programs or workshops established by sansei; social scientist Hideyo Konagaya remarks that this attraction to taiko among other Japanese art forms may be due to its accessibility and energetic nature. Konagaya has also argued that the resurgence of taiko in the United States and Japan are differently motivated: in Japan, performance was meant to represent the need to recapture sacred traditions, while in the United States it was meant to be an explicit representation of masculinity and power in Japanese-American men.
A number of performers and groups, including several early leaders, have been recognized for their contributions to taiko performance. Daihachi Oguchi was best known for developing kumi-daiko performance. Oguchi founded the first kumi-daiko group called Osuwa Daiko in 1951, and facilitated the popularization of taiko performance groups in Japan.
Seidō Kobayashi is the leader of the Tokyo-based taiko group Oedo Sukeroku Taiko as of December 2014. Kobayashi founded the group in 1959 and was the first group to tour professionally. Kobayashi is considered a master performer of taiko. He is also known for asserting intellectual control of the group's performance style, which has influenced performance for many groups, particularly in North America.
In 1968, Seiichi Tanaka founded the San Francisco Taiko Dojo and is regarded as the Grandfather of Taiko and primary developer of taiko performance in the United States. He was a recipient of a 2001 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts and since 2013 is the only taiko professional presented with the Order of the Rising Sun 5th Order: Gold and Silver Rays by Emperor Akihito of Japan, in recognition of Grandmaster Seiichi Tanaka's contributions to the fostering of US-Japan relations as well as the promotion of Japanese cultural understanding in the United States.
In 1969, Den Tagayasu (田耕, Den Tagayasu) founded Ondekoza, a group well known for making taiko performance internationally visible and for its artistic contributions to the tradition. Den was also known for developing a communal living and training facility for Ondekoza on Sado Island in Japan, which had a reputation for its intensity and broad education programs in folklore and music.
Performers and groups beyond the early practitioners have also been noted. Eitetsu Hayashi is best known for his solo performance work. When he was 19, Hayashi joined Ondekoza, a group later expanded and re-founded as Kodo, one of the best known and most influential taiko performance groups in the world. Hayashi soon left the group to begin a solo career and has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall in 1984, the first featured taiko performer there. He was awarded the 47th Education Minister's Art Encouragement Prize, a national award, in 1997 as well as the 8th Award for the Promotion of Traditional Japanese Culture from the Japan Arts Foundation in 2001. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Taiko (太鼓) are a broad range of Japanese percussion instruments. In Japanese, the term taiko refers to any kind of drum, but outside Japan, it is used specifically to refer to any of the various Japanese drums called wadaiko (和太鼓, lit. 'Japanese drums') and to the form of ensemble taiko drumming more specifically called kumi-daiko (組太鼓, lit. 'set of drums'). The process of constructing taiko varies between manufacturers, and the preparation of both the drum body and skin can take several years depending on the method.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Taiko have a mythological origin in Japanese folklore, but historical records suggest that taiko were introduced to Japan through Chinese and Korean cultural influence as early as the 6th century CE; pottery from the Haniwa period depicting taiko drums has also been found. Some taiko are similar to instruments originating from India. Archaeological evidence also supports the view that taiko were present in Japan during the 6th century in the Kofun period. Their function has varied throughout history, ranging from communication, military action, theatrical accompaniment, religious ceremony and concert performances. In modern times, taiko have also played a central role in social movements for minorities both within and outside Japan.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kumi-daiko performance, characterized by an ensemble playing on different drums, was developed in 1951 through the work of Daihachi Oguchi and later in 1961 by the Ondekoza, and taiko was made later popular with many other groups copying the format of Ondekoza such as Kodo, Yamato, Tao, Taikoza, Fuun No Kai, Sukeroku Taiko, etc. Other performance styles, such as hachijō-daiko, have also emerged from specific communities in Japan. Kumi-daiko performance groups are active not only in Japan, but also in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe, Taiwan, and Brazil. Taiko performance consists of many components in technical rhythm, form, stick grip, clothing, and the particular instrumentation. Ensembles typically use different types of barrel-shaped nagadō-daiko as well as smaller shime-daiko. Many groups accompany the drums with vocals, strings, and woodwind instruments.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The origin of the taiko and its variants is unclear, though there have been many suggestions. Historical accounts, of which the earliest date from 588 CE, note that young Japanese men traveled to Korea to study the kakko, a drum that originated in South China. This study and appropriation of Chinese instruments may have influenced the emergence of taiko. Certain court music styles, especially gigaku and gagaku, arrived in Japan through both China and Korea. In both traditions, dancers were accompanied by several instruments that included drums similar to taiko. Certain percussive patterns and terminology in togaku, an early dance and music style in Japan, in addition to physical features of the kakko, also reflect influence from both China and India on drum use in gagaku performance.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Archaeological evidence shows that taiko were used in Japan as early as the 6th century CE, during the latter part of the Kofun period, and were likely used for communication, in festivals, and in other rituals. This evidence was substantiated by the discovery of haniwa statues in the Sawa District of Gunma Prefecture. Two of these figures are depicted playing drums; one of them, wearing skins, is equipped with a barrel-shaped drum hung from his shoulder and uses a stick to play the drum at hip height. This statue is titled \"Man Beating the Taiko\" and is considered the oldest evidence of taiko performance in Japan. Similarities between the playing style demonstrated by this haniwa and known music traditions in China and Korea further suggest influences from these regions.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Nihon Shoki, the second-oldest book of Japanese classical history, contains a mythological story describing the origin of taiko. The myth tells how Amaterasu, who had sealed herself inside a cave in anger, was beckoned out by an elder goddess Ame-no-Uzume when others had failed. Ame-no-Uzume accomplished this by emptying out a barrel of sake and dancing furiously on top of it. Historians regard her performance as the mythological creation of taiko music.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In feudal Japan, taiko were often used to motivate troops, call out orders or announcements, and set a marching pace; marches were usually set to six paces per beat of the drum. During the 16th-century Warring States period, specific drum calls were used to communicate orders for retreating and advancing. Other rhythms and techniques were detailed in period texts. According to the war chronicle Gunji Yoshū, nine sets of five beats would summon an ally to battle, while nine sets of three beats, sped up three or four times, was the call to advance and pursue an enemy. Folklore from the 16th century on the legendary 6th-century Emperor Keitai offers a story that he obtained a large drum from China, which he named Senjin-daiko (線陣太鼓, \"front drum\"). The Emperor was thought to have used it to both encourage his own army and intimidate his enemies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Taiko have been incorporated in Japanese theatre for rhythmic needs, general atmosphere, and in certain settings decoration. In the kabuki play The Tale of Shiroishi and the Taihei Chronicles, scenes in the pleasure quarters are accompanied by taiko to create dramatic tension. Noh theatre also features taiko music, where performance consists of highly specific rhythmic patterns. The Konparu (金春流) school of drumming, for example, contains 65 basic patterns in addition to 25 special patterns; these patterns are categorized in several classes. Differences between these patterns include changes in tempo, accent, dynamics, pitch, and function in the theatrical performance. Patterns are also often connected together in progressions.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Taiko continue to be used in gagaku, a classical music tradition typically performed at the Tokyo Imperial Palace in addition to local temples and shrines. In gagaku, one component of the art form is traditional dance, which is guided in part by the rhythm set by the taiko.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Taiko have played an important role in many local festivals across Japan. They are also used to accompany religious ritual music. In kagura, a category of music and dances stemming from Shinto practices, taiko frequently appear alongside other performers during local festivals. In Buddhist traditions, taiko are used for ritual dances as part of the Bon Festival. Taiko, along with other instruments, are featured atop towers that are adorned with red-and-white cloth and serve to provide rhythms for the dancers who are encircled around the performers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In addition to the instruments, the term taiko also refers to the performance itself, and commonly to one style called kumi-daiko, or ensemble-style playing (as opposed to festival performances, rituals, or theatrical use of the drums). Kumi-daiko was developed by Daihachi Oguchi in 1951. He is considered a master performer and helped transform taiko performance from its roots in traditional settings in festivals and shrines. Oguchi was trained as a jazz musician in Nagano, and at one point, a relative gave him an old piece of written taiko music. Unable to read the traditional and esoteric notation, Oguchi found help to transcribe the piece, and on his own added rhythms and transformed the work to accommodate multiple taiko players on different-sized instruments. Each instrument served a specific purpose that established present-day conventions in kumi-daiko performance.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Oguchi's ensemble, Osuwa Daiko, incorporated these alterations and other drums into their performances. They also devised novel pieces that were intended for non-religious performances. Several other groups emerged in Japan through the 1950s and 1960s. Oedo Sukeroku Daiko was formed in Tokyo in 1959 under Seidō Kobayashi, and has been referred to as the first taiko group who toured professionally. Globally, kumi-daiko performance became more visible during the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, when it was featured during the Festival of Arts event.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Kumi-daiko was also developed through the leadership of Den Tagayasu (田耕), who gathered young men who were willing to devote their entire lifestyle to taiko playing and took them to Sado Island for training where Den and his family had settled in 1968. Den chose the island based on a desire to reinvigorate the folk arts in Japan, particularly taiko; he became inspired by a drumming tradition unique to Sado called ondeko (鬼太鼓, \"demon drumming\" in the Sado dialect) that required considerable strength to play well. Den called the group \"Za Ondekoza\" or Ondekoza for short, and implemented a rigorous set of exercises for its members including long-distance running. In 1975, Ondekoza was the first taiko group to tour in the United States. Their first performance occurred just after the group finished running the Boston Marathon while wearing their traditional uniforms. In 1981, some members of Ondekoza split from Den and formed another group called Kodo under the leadership of Eitetsu Hayashi. Kodo continued to use Sado Island for rigorous training and communal living, and went on to popularize taiko through frequent touring and collaborations with other musical performers. Kodo is one of the most recognized taiko groups both in Japan and worldwide.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Estimates of the number of taiko groups in Japan vary to up to 5,000 active groups in Japan, but more conservative assessments place the number closer to 800 based on membership in the Nippon Taiko Foundation, the largest national organization of taiko groups. Some pieces that have emerged from early kumi-daiko groups that continue to be performed include Yatai-bayashi from Ondekoza, Isami-goma (勇み駒, lit. \"galloping horse\") from Osuwa Daiko, and Zoku (族, lit. \"tribe\") from Kodo.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Taiko have been developed into a broad range of percussion instruments that are used in both Japanese folk and classical musical traditions. An early classification system based on shape and tension was advanced by Francis Taylor Piggott in 1909. Taiko are generally classified based on the construction process, or the specific context in which the drum is used, but some are not classified, such as the toy den-den daiko.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "With few exceptions, taiko have a drum shell with heads on both sides of the body, and a sealed resonating cavity. The head may be fastened to the shell using a number of different systems, such as using ropes. Taiko may be either tunable or non-tunable depending on the system used.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Taiko are categorized into three types based on construction process. Byō-uchi-daiko are constructed with the drumhead nailed to the body. Shime-daiko are classically constructed with the skin placed over iron or steel rings, which are then tightened with ropes. Contemporary shime-daiko are tensioned using bolts or turnbuckles systems attached to the drum body. Tsuzumi are also rope-tensioned drums, but have a distinct hourglass shape and their skins are made using deerskin.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Byō-uchi-daiko were historically made only using a single piece of wood; they continue to be made in this manner, but are also constructed from staves of wood. Larger drums can be made using a single piece of wood, but at a much greater cost due to the difficulty in finding appropriate trees. The preferred wood is the Japanese zelkova or keyaki, but a number of other woods, and even wine barrels, have been used to create taiko. Byō-uchi-daiko cannot be tuned.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The typical byō-uchi-daiko is the nagadō-daiko, an elongated drum that is roughly shaped like a wine barrel. Nagadō-daiko are available in a variety of sizes, and their head diameter is traditionally measured in shaku (units of roughly 30 cm). Head diameters range from 1 to 6 shaku (30 to 182 cm; 12 to 72 in). Ko-daiko (小太鼓) are the smallest of these drums and are usually about 1 shaku (30 cm; 12 in) in diameter. The chū-daiko (中太鼓) is a medium-sized nagadō-daiko ranging from 1.6 to 2.8 shaku (48 to 85 cm; 19 to 33 in), and weighing about 27 kilograms (60 lb). Ō-daiko (大太鼓) vary in size, and are often as large as 6 shaku (180 cm; 72 in) in diameter. Some ō-daiko are difficult to move due to their size, and therefore permanently remain inside the performance space, such as temple or shrine. Ō-daiko means \"large drum\" and for a given ensemble, the term refers to their largest drum. The other type of byō-uchi-daiko is called a hira-daiko (平太鼓, \"flat drum\") and can be any drum constructed such that the head diameter is greater than the length of the body.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Shime-daiko are a set of smaller, roughly snare drum-sized instrument that are tunable. The tensioning system usually consists of hemp cords or rope, but bolt or turnbuckle systems have been used as well. Nagauta shime-daiko (長唄締め太鼓), sometimes referred to as \"taiko\" in the context of theater, have thinner heads than other kinds of shime-daiko. The head includes a patch of deerskin placed in the center, and in performance, drum strokes are generally restricted to this area. The tsukeshime-daiko (付け締め太鼓) is a heavier type of shime-daiko. They are available in sizes 1–5, and are named according to their number: namitsuke (1), nichō-gakke (2), sanchō-gakke (3), yonchō-gakke (4), and gochō-gakke (5). The namitsuke has the thinnest skins and the shortest body in terms of height; thickness and tension of skins, as well as body height, increase toward the gochō-gakke. The head diameters of all shime-daiko sizes are around 27 cm (10.6 in).",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Uchiwa-daiko (団扇太鼓, literally, fan drum) is a type of racket-shaped Japanese drum. It is the only Japanese traditional drum without a sound box and only one skin. It is played with a drumstick while hanging it with the other hand.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Okedō-daiko or simply okedō, are a type of shime-daiko that are stave-constructed using narrower strips of wood, have a tube-shaped frame. Like other shime-daiko, drum heads are attached by metal hoops and fastened by rope or cords. Okedō can be played using the same drumsticks (called bachi) as shime-daiko, but can also be hand-played. Okedō come in short- and long-bodied types.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Tsuzumi are a class of hourglass-shaped drums. The drum body is shaped on a spool and the inner body carved by hand. Their skins can be made from cowhide, horsehide, or deerskin. While the ō-tsuzumi skins are made from cowhide, ko-tsuzumi are made from horsehide. While some classify tsuzumi as a type of taiko, others have described them as a drum entirely separate from taiko.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Taiko can also be categorized by the context in which they are used. The miya-daiko, for instance, is constructed in the same manner as other byō-uchi-daiko, but is distinguished by an ornamental stand and is used for ceremonial purposes at Buddhist temples. The Sumō-daiko (相撲太鼓) (a ko-daiko) and sairei-nagadō (祭礼長胴) (a nagadō-daiko with a cigar-shaped body) are used in sumo and festivals respectively.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Several drums, categorized as gagakki, are used in the Japanese theatrical form, gagaku. The lead instrument of the ensemble is the kakko, which is a smaller shime-daiko with heads made of deerskin, and is placed horizontally on a stand during performance. A tsuzumi, called the san-no-tsuzumi is another small drum in gagaku that is placed horizontally and struck with a thin stick. Dadaiko (鼉太鼓) are the largest drums of the ensemble, and have heads that are about 127 cm (50 in) in diameter. During performance, the drum is placed on a tall pedestals and surrounded by a rim decoratively painted with flames and adorned with mystical figures such as wyverns. Dadaiko are played while standing, and are usually only played on the downbeat of the music. The tsuri-daiko (釣太鼓, \"suspended drum\") is a smaller drum that produces a lower sound, its head measuring about 55 cm (22 in) in diameter. It is used in ensembles that accompany bugaku, a traditional dance performed at the Tokyo Imperial Palace and in religious contexts. Tsuri-daiko are suspended on a small stand, and are played sitting down. Tsuri-daiko performers typically use shorter mallets covered in leather knobs instead of bachi. They can be played simultaneously by two performers; while one performer plays on the head, another performer uses bachi on the body of the drum.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The larger ō-tsuzumi and smaller ko-tsuzumi are used in the opening and dances of Noh theater. Both drums are struck using the fingers; players can also adjust pitch by manually applying pressure to the ropes on the drum. The color of the cords of these drums also indicates the skill of the musician: Orange and red for amateur players, light blue for performers with expertise, and lilac for masters of the instrument. Nagauta-shime daiko or uta daiko are also featured in Noh performance.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Many taiko in Noh are also featured in kabuki performance and are used in a similar manner. In addition to the ō-tsuzumi, ko-tsuzumi, and nagauta-shime daiko, Kabuki performances make use of the larger ō-daiko offstage to help set the atmosphere for different scenes.",
"title": "Categorization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Taiko construction has several stages, including making and shaping of the drum body (or shell), preparing the drum skin, and tuning the skin to the drumhead. Variations in the construction process often occur in the latter two parts of this process. Historically, byō-uchi-daiko were crafted from trunks of the Japanese zelkova tree that were dried out over years, using techniques to prevent splitting. A master carpenter then carved out the rough shape of the drum body with a chisel; the texture of the wood after carving softened the tone of the drum. In contemporary times, taiko are carved out on a large lathe using wood staves or logs that can be shaped to fit drum bodies of various sizes. Drumheads can be left to air-dry over a period of years, but some companies use large, smoke-filled warehouses to hasten the drying process. After drying is complete, the inside of the drum is worked with a deep-grooved chisel and sanded. Lastly, handles are placed onto the drum. These are used to carry smaller drums and they serve an ornamental purpose for larger drums.",
"title": "Construction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The skins or heads of taiko are generally made from cowhide from Holstein cows aged about three or four years. Skins also come from horses, and bull skin is preferred for larger drums. Thinner skins are preferred for smaller taiko, and thicker skins are used for larger ones. On some drumheads, a patch of deer skin placed in the center serves as the target for many strokes during performance. Before fitting it to the drum body the hair is removed from the hide by soaking it in a river or stream for about a month; winter months are preferred as colder temperatures better facilitate hair removal. To stretch the skin over the drum properly, one process requires the body to be held on a platform with several hydraulic jacks underneath it. The edges of the cowhide are secured to an apparatus below the jacks, and the jacks stretch the skin incrementally to precisely apply tension across the drumhead. Other forms of stretching use rope or cords with wooden dowels or an iron wheel to create appropriate tension. Small tension adjustments can be made during this process using small pieces of bamboo that twist around the ropes. Particularly large drumheads are sometimes stretched by having several workers, clad in stockings, hop rhythmically atop it, forming a circle along the edge. After the skin has dried, tacks, called byō, are added to the appropriate drums to secure it; chū-daiko require about 300 of them for each side. After the body and skin have been finished, excess hide is cut off and the drum can be stained as needed.",
"title": "Construction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Several companies specialize in the production of taiko. One such company that created drums exclusively for the Emperor of Japan, Miyamoto Unosuke Shoten in Tokyo, has been making taiko since 1861. The Asano Taiko Corporation is another major taiko-producing organization, and has been producing taiko for over 400 years. The family-owned business started in Mattō, Ishikawa, and, aside from military equipment, made taiko for Noh theater and later expanded to creating instruments for festivals during the Meiji period. Asano currently maintains an entire complex of large buildings referred to as Asano Taiko Village, and the company reports producing up to 8000 drums each year. As of 2012, there is approximately one major taiko production company in each prefecture of Japan, with some regions having several companies. Of the manufacturers in Naniwa, Taikoya Matabē is one of the most successful and is thought to have brought considerable recognition to the community and attracted many drum makers there. Umetsu Daiko, a company that operates in Hakata, has been producing taiko since 1821.",
"title": "Construction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Taiko performance styles vary widely across groups in terms of the number of performers, repertoire, instrument choices, and stage techniques. Nevertheless, a number of early groups have had broad influence on the tradition. For instance, many pieces developed by Ondekoza and Kodo are considered standard in many taiko groups.",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Kata is the posture and movement associated with taiko performance. The notion is similar to that of kata in martial arts: for example, both traditions include the idea that the hara is the center of being. Author Shawn Bender argues that kata is the primary feature that distinguishes different taiko groups from one another and is a key factor in judging the quality of performance. For this reason, many practice rooms intended for taiko contain mirrors to provide visual feedback to players. An important part of kata in taiko is keeping the body stabilized while performing and can be accomplished by keeping a wide, low stance with the legs, with the left knee bent over the toes and keeping the right leg straight. It is important that the hips face the drum and the shoulders are relaxed. Some teachers note a tendency to rely on the upper body while playing and emphasize the importance of the holistic use of the body during performance.",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Some groups in Japan, particularly those active in Tokyo, also emphasize the importance of the lively and spirited iki aesthetic. In taiko, it refers to very specific kinds of movement while performing that evoke the sophistication stemming from the mercantile and artisan classes active during the Edo period (1603–1868).",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The sticks for playing taiko are called bachi, and are made in various sizes and from different kinds of wood such as white oak, bamboo, and Japanese magnolia. Bachi are also held in a number of different styles. In kumi-daiko, it is common for a player to hold their sticks in a relaxed manner between the V-shape of the index finger and thumb, which points to the player. There are other grips that allow performers to play much more technically difficult rhythms, such as the shime grip, which is similar to a matched grip: the bachi are gripped at the back end, and the fulcrum rests between the performer's index finger and thumb, while the other fingers remain relaxed and slightly curled around the stick.",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Performance in some groups is also guided by principles based on Zen Buddhism. For instance, among other concepts, the San Francisco Taiko Dojo is guided by rei (礼) emphasizing communication, respect, and harmony. The way the bachi are held can also be significant; for some groups, bachi represent a spiritual link between the body and the sky. Some physical parts of taiko, like the drum body, its skin, and the tacks also hold symbolic significance in Buddhism.",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Kumi-daiko groups consist primarily of percussive instruments where each of the drums plays a specific role. Of the different kinds of taiko, the most common in groups is the nagadō-daiko. Chū-daiko are common in taiko groups and represent the main rhythm of the group, whereas shime-daiko set and change tempo. A shime-daiko often plays the Jiuchi, a base rhythm holding together the ensemble. Ō-daiko provide a steady, underlying pulse and serve as a counter-rhythm to the other parts. It is common for performances to begin with a single stroke roll called an oroshi (颪, \"wind blowing down from mountains\"). The player starts slowly, leaving considerable space between strikes, gradually shortening the interval between hits, until the drummer is playing a rapid roll of hits. Oroshi are also played as a part of theatrical performance, such as in Noh theater.",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Drums are not the only instruments played in the ensemble; other Japanese instruments are also used. Other kinds of percussion instruments include the atarigane (当り鉦), a hand-sized gong played with a small mallet. In kabuki, the shamisen, a plucked string instrument, often accompanies taiko during the theatrical performance. Kumi-daiko performances can also feature woodwinds such as the shakuhachi and the shinobue.",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Voiced calls or shouts called kakegoe and kiai are also common in taiko performance. They are used as encouragement to other players or cues for transition or change in dynamics such as an increase in tempo. In contrast, the philosophical concept of ma, or the space between drum strikes, is also important in shaping rhythmic phrases and creating appropriate contrast.",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "There is a wide variety of traditional clothing that players wear during taiko performance. Common in many kumi-daiko groups is the use of the happi, a decorative, thin-fabric coat, and traditional headbands called hachimaki. Tabi, momohiki (もも引き, \"loose-fitting pants\"), and haragake (腹掛け, \"working aprons\") are also typical. During his time with the group Ondekoza, Eitetsu Hayashi suggested that a loincloth called a fundoshi be worn when performing for French fashion designer Pierre Cardin, who saw Ondekoza perform for him in 1975. The Japanese group Kodo has sometimes worn fundoshi for its performances.",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Taiko performance is generally taught orally and through demonstration. Historically, general patterns for taiko were written down, such as in the 1512 encyclopedia called the Taigensho, but written scores for taiko pieces are generally unavailable. One reason for the adherence to an oral tradition is that, from group to group, the rhythmic patterns in a given piece are often performed differently. Furthermore, ethnomusicologist William P. Malm observed that Japanese players within a group could not usefully predict one another using written notation, and instead did so through listening. In Japan, printed parts are not used during lessons.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Orally, patterns of onomatopoeia called kuchi shōga are taught from teacher to student that convey the rhythm and timbre of drum strikes for a particular piece. For example, don (どん) represents a single strike to the center of the drum, where as do-ko (どこ) represents two successive strikes, first by the right and then the left, and lasts the same amount of time as one don strike. Some taiko pieces, such as Yatai-bayashi, include patterns that are difficult to represent in Western musical notation. The exact words used can also differ from region to region.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "More recently, Japanese publications have emerged in an attempt to standardize taiko performance. The Nippon Taiko Foundation was formed in 1979; its primary goals were to foster good relations among taiko groups in Japan and to both publicize and teach how to perform taiko. Daihachi Oguchi, the leader of the Foundation, wrote Japan Taiko with other teachers in 1994 out of concern that correct form in performance would degrade over time. The instructional publication described the different drums used in kumi-daiko performance, methods of gripping, correct form, and suggestions on instrumentation. The book also contains practice exercises and transcribed pieces from Oguchi's group, Osuwa Daiko. While there were similar textbooks published before 1994, this publication had much more visibility due to the Foundation's scope.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The system of fundamentals Japan Taiko put forward was not widely adopted because taiko performance varied substantially across Japan. An updated 2001 publication from the Foundation, called the Nihon Taiko Kyōhon (日本太鼓教本, \"Japan Taiko Textbook\"), describes regional variations that depart from the main techniques taught in the textbook. The creators of the text maintained that mastering a set of prescribed basics should be compatible with learning local traditions.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Aside from kumi-daiko performance, a number of folk traditions that use taiko have been recognized in different regions in Japan. Some of these include ondeko (鬼太鼓, \"demon drumming\") from Sado Island, gion-daiko [ja] from the town of Kokura, and sansa-odori [ja] from Iwate Prefecture.",
"title": "Regional styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "A variety of folk dances originating from Okinawa, known collectively as eisa, often make use of the taiko. Some performers use drums while dancing, and generally speaking, perform in one of two styles: groups on the Yokatsu Peninsula and on Hamahiga Island use small, single-sided drums called pāranku (パーランク) whereas groups near the city of Okinawa generally use shime-daiko. Use of shime-daiko over pāranku has spread throughout the island, and is considered the dominant style. Small nagadō-daiko, referred to as ō-daiko within the tradition, are also used and are worn in front of the performer. These drum dances are not limited to Okinawa and have appeared in places containing Okinawan communities such as in São Paulo, Hawaii, and large cities on the Japanese mainland.",
"title": "Regional styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Hachijō-daiko (八丈太鼓, trans. \"Hachijō-style taiko\") is a taiko tradition originating on the island of Hachijō-jima. Two styles of Hachijō-daiko emerged and have been popularized among residents: an older tradition based on a historical account, and a newer tradition influenced by mainland groups and practiced by the majority of the islanders.",
"title": "Regional styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Hachijō-daiko tradition was documented as early as 1849 based on a journal kept by an exile named Kakuso Kizan. He mentioned some of its unique features, such as \"a taiko is suspended from a tree while women and children gathered around\", and observed that a player used either side of the drum while performing. Illustrations from Kizan's journal show features of Hachijō-daiko. These illustrations also featured women performing, which is unusual as taiko performance elsewhere during this period was typically reserved for men. Teachers of the tradition have noted that the majority of its performers were women; one estimate asserts that female performers outnumbered males by three to one.",
"title": "Regional styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The first style of Hachijō-daiko is thought to descend directly from the style reported by Kizan. This style is called Kumaoji-daiko, named after its creator Okuyama Kumaoji, a central performer of the style. Kumaoji-daiko has two players on a single drum, one of whom, called the shita-byōshi (下拍子, \"lower beat\"), provides the underlying beat. The other player, called the uwa-byōshi (上拍子, \"upper beat\"), builds on this rhythmical foundation with unique and typically improvised rhythms. While there are specific types of underlying rhythms, the accompanying player is free to express an original musical beat. Kumaoji-daiko also features an unusual positioning for taiko: the drums are sometimes suspended from ropes, and historically, sometimes drums were suspended from trees.",
"title": "Regional styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The contemporary style of Hachijō-daiko is called shin-daiko (新太鼓, \"new taiko\"), which differs from Kumaoji-daiko in multiple ways. For instance, while the lead and accompanying roles are still present, shin-daiko performances use larger drums exclusively on stands. Shin-daiko emphasizes a more powerful sound, and consequently, performers use larger bachi made out of stronger wood. Looser clothing is worn by shin-daiko performers compared to kimono worn by Kumaoji-daiko performers; the looser clothing in shin-daiko allow performers to adopt more open stances and larger movements with the legs and arms. Rhythms used for the accompanying shita-byōshi role can also differ. One type of rhythm, called yūkichi, consists of the following:",
"title": "Regional styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "This rhythm is found in both styles, but is always played faster in shin-daiko. Another type of rhythm, called honbadaki, is unique to shin-daiko and also contains a song which is performed in standard Japanese.",
"title": "Regional styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Miyake-daiko (三宅太鼓, trans. \"Miyake-style taiko\") is a style that has spread amongst groups through Kodo, and is formally known as Miyake-jima Kamitsuki mikoshi-daiko (三宅島神着神輿太鼓). The word miyake comes from Miyake-jima, part of the Izu Islands, and the word Kamitsuki refers to the village where the tradition came from. Miyake-style taiko came out of performances for Gozu Tennō Sai (牛頭天王祭, \"Gozu Tennō Festival\")— a traditional festival held annually in July on Miyake Island since 1820 honoring the deity Gozu Tennō. In this festival, players perform on taiko while portable shrines are carried around town. The style itself is characterized in a number of ways. A nagadō-daiko is typically set low to the ground and played by two performers, one on each side; instead of sitting, performers stand and hold a stance that is also very low to the ground, almost to the point of kneeling.",
"title": "Regional styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Taiko groups in Australia began forming in the 1990s. The first group, called Ataru Taru Taiko, was formed in 1995 by Paulene Thomas, Harold Gent, and Kaomori Kamei. TaikOz was later formed by percussionist Ian Cleworth and Riley Lee, a former Ondekoza member, and has been performing in Australia since 1997. They are known for their work in generating interest in performing taiko among Australian audiences, such as by developing a complete education program with both formal and informal classes, and have a strong fan base. Cleworth and other members of the group have developed several original pieces.",
"title": "Outside Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The introduction of kumi-daiko performance in Brazil can be traced back to the 1970s and 1980s in São Paulo. Tangue Setsuko founded an eponymous taiko dojo and was Brazil's first taiko group; Setsuo Kinoshita later formed the group Wadaiko Sho. Brazilian groups have combined native and African drumming techniques with taiko performance. One such piece developed by Kinoshita is called Taiko de Samba, which emphasizes both Brazilian and Japanese aesthetics in percussion traditions. Taiko was also popularized in Brazil from 2002 through the work of Yukihisa Oda, a Japanese native who visited Brazil several times through the Japan International Cooperation Agency.",
"title": "Outside Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Brazilian Association of Taiko (ABT) suggests that there are about 150 taiko groups in Brazil and that about 10–15% of players are non-Japanese; Izumo Honda, coordinator of a large annual festival in São Paulo, estimated that about 60% of all taiko performers in Brazil are women.",
"title": "Outside Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Taiko emerged in the United States in the late 1960s. The first group, San Francisco Taiko Dojo, was formed in 1968 by Seiichi Tanaka, a postwar immigrant who studied taiko in Japan and brought the styles and teachings to the US. A year later, a few members of Senshin Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles led by its minister Masao Kodani initiated another group called Kinnara Taiko. San Jose Taiko later formed in 1973 in Japantown, San Jose, under Roy and PJ Hirabayashi. Taiko started to branch out to the eastern US in the late 1970s. This included formation of Denver Taiko in 1976, and Soh Daiko in New York City in 1979. Many of these early groups lacked the resources to equip each member with a drum and resorted to makeshift percussion materials such as rubber tires or creating taiko out of wine barrels.",
"title": "Outside Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Japanese-Canadian taiko began in 1979 with Katari Taiko, and was inspired by the San Jose Taiko group. Its early membership was predominantly female. Katari Taiko and future groups were thought to represent an opportunity for younger, third-generation Japanese Canadians to explore their roots, redevelop a sense of ethnic community, and expand taiko into other musical traditions.",
"title": "Outside Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "There are no official counts or estimates of the number of active taiko groups in the United States or Canada, as there is no governing body for taiko groups in either country. Unofficial estimates have been made. In 1989, there were as many as 30 groups in the US and Canada, seven of which were in California. One estimate suggested that around 120 groups were active in the US and Canada as of 2001, many of which could be traced to the San Francisco Taiko Dojo; later estimates in 2005 and 2006 suggested there were about 200 groups in the United States alone.",
"title": "Outside Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Cirque du Soleil shows Mystère in Las Vegas and Dralion have featured taiko performance. Taiko performance has also been featured in commercial productions such as the 2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse ad campaign, and in events such as the 2009 Academy Awards and 2011 Grammy Awards.",
"title": "Outside Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "From 2005 to 2006, the Japanese American National Museum held an exhibition called Big Drum: Taiko in the United States. The exhibition covered several topics related to taiko in the United States, such as the formation of performance groups, their construction using available materials, and social movements. Visitors were able to play smaller drums.",
"title": "Outside Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "North America hosts the North American Taiko Conference (NATC) which has been ongoing since its inaugural conference in Los Angeles in 1997. In 2013, the Taiko Community Alliance (TCA) formed as virtual nonprofit 501(c)3 organization with a mission to empower the people and advance the art of taiko. The Taiko Community Alliance has been responsible for helping organize the NATC conferences to help further its mission of educating and raising awareness of taiko through the taiko community.",
"title": "Outside Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The first group, called Quelli del Taiko, was formed in 2000 by Pietro Notarnicola. They played in World Premiere - 2017 - \"On Western Terror 8\" - Concerto for Taiko Ensemble and Orchestra of the Italian composed Luigi Morleo",
"title": "Outside Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Certain peoples have used taiko to advance social or cultural movements, both within Japan and elsewhere in the world.",
"title": "Related cultural and social movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Taiko performance has frequently been viewed as an art form dominated by men. Historians of taiko argue that its performance comes from masculine traditions. Those who developed ensemble-style taiko in Japan were men, and through the influence of Ondekoza, the ideal taiko player was epitomized in images of the masculine peasant class, particularly through the character Muhōmatsu in the 1958 film Rickshaw Man. Masculine roots have also been attributed to perceived capacity for \"spectacular bodily performance\" where women's bodies are sometimes judged as unable to meet the physical demands of playing.",
"title": "Related cultural and social movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Before the 1980s, it was uncommon for Japanese women to perform on traditional instruments, including taiko, as their participation had been systematically restricted; an exception was the San Francisco Taiko Dojo under the guidance of Grand master Seiichi Tanaka, who was the first to admit females to the art form. In Ondekoza and in the early performances of Kodo, women performed only dance routines either during or between taiko performances. Thereafter, female participation in kumi-daiko started to rise dramatically, and by the 1990s, women equaled and possibly exceeded representation by men. While the proportion of women in taiko has become substantial, some have expressed concern that women still do not perform in the same roles as their male counterparts and that taiko performance continues to be a male-dominated profession. For instance, a member of Kodo was informed by the director of the group's apprentice program that women were permitted to play, but could only play \"as women\". Other women in the apprentice program recognized a gender disparity in performance roles, such as what pieces they were allowed to perform, or in physical terms based on a male standard.",
"title": "Related cultural and social movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Female taiko performance has also served as a response to gendered stereotypes of Japanese women as being quiet, subservient, or a femme fatale. Through performance, some groups believe they are helping to redefine not only the role of women in taiko, but how women are perceived more generally.",
"title": "Related cultural and social movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Those involved in the construction of taiko are usually considered part of the burakumin, a marginalized minority class in Japanese society, particularly those working with leather or animal skins. Prejudice against this class dates back to the Tokugawa period in terms of legal discrimination and treatment as social outcasts. Although official discrimination ended with the Tokugawa era, the burakumin have continued to face social discrimination, such as scrutiny by employers or in marriage arrangements. Drum makers have used their trade and success as a means to advocate for an end to discriminatory practices against their class.",
"title": "Related cultural and social movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The Taiko Road (人権太鼓ロード, \"Taiko Road of Human Rights\"), representing the contributions of burakumin, is found in Naniwa Ward in Osaka, home to a large proportion of burakumin. Among other features, the road contains taiko-shaped benches representing their traditions in taiko manufacturing and leatherworking, and their influence on national culture. The road ends at the Osaka Human Rights Museum, which exhibits the history of systematic discrimination against the burakumin. The road and museum were developed in part due an advocacy campaign led by the Buraku Liberation League and a taiko group of younger performers called Taiko Ikari (太鼓怒り, \"taiko rage\").",
"title": "Related cultural and social movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Taiko performance was an important part of cultural development by third-generation Japanese residents in North America, who are called sansei. During World War II, second-generation Japanese residents, called nisei faced internment in the United States and in Canada on the basis of their race. During and after the war, Japanese residents were discouraged from activities such as speaking Japanese or forming ethnic communities. Subsequently, sansei could not engage in Japanese culture and instead were raised to assimilate into more normative activities. There were also prevailing stereotypes of Japanese people, which sansei sought to escape or subvert. During the 1960s in the United States, the civil rights movement influenced sansei to reexamine their heritage by engaging in Japanese culture in their communities; one such approach was through taiko performance. Groups such as San Jose Taiko were organized to fulfill a need for solidarity and to have a medium to express their experiences as Japanese-Americans. Later generations have adopted taiko in programs or workshops established by sansei; social scientist Hideyo Konagaya remarks that this attraction to taiko among other Japanese art forms may be due to its accessibility and energetic nature. Konagaya has also argued that the resurgence of taiko in the United States and Japan are differently motivated: in Japan, performance was meant to represent the need to recapture sacred traditions, while in the United States it was meant to be an explicit representation of masculinity and power in Japanese-American men.",
"title": "Related cultural and social movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "A number of performers and groups, including several early leaders, have been recognized for their contributions to taiko performance. Daihachi Oguchi was best known for developing kumi-daiko performance. Oguchi founded the first kumi-daiko group called Osuwa Daiko in 1951, and facilitated the popularization of taiko performance groups in Japan.",
"title": "Notable performers and groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Seidō Kobayashi is the leader of the Tokyo-based taiko group Oedo Sukeroku Taiko as of December 2014. Kobayashi founded the group in 1959 and was the first group to tour professionally. Kobayashi is considered a master performer of taiko. He is also known for asserting intellectual control of the group's performance style, which has influenced performance for many groups, particularly in North America.",
"title": "Notable performers and groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In 1968, Seiichi Tanaka founded the San Francisco Taiko Dojo and is regarded as the Grandfather of Taiko and primary developer of taiko performance in the United States. He was a recipient of a 2001 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts and since 2013 is the only taiko professional presented with the Order of the Rising Sun 5th Order: Gold and Silver Rays by Emperor Akihito of Japan, in recognition of Grandmaster Seiichi Tanaka's contributions to the fostering of US-Japan relations as well as the promotion of Japanese cultural understanding in the United States.",
"title": "Notable performers and groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In 1969, Den Tagayasu (田耕, Den Tagayasu) founded Ondekoza, a group well known for making taiko performance internationally visible and for its artistic contributions to the tradition. Den was also known for developing a communal living and training facility for Ondekoza on Sado Island in Japan, which had a reputation for its intensity and broad education programs in folklore and music.",
"title": "Notable performers and groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Performers and groups beyond the early practitioners have also been noted. Eitetsu Hayashi is best known for his solo performance work. When he was 19, Hayashi joined Ondekoza, a group later expanded and re-founded as Kodo, one of the best known and most influential taiko performance groups in the world. Hayashi soon left the group to begin a solo career and has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall in 1984, the first featured taiko performer there. He was awarded the 47th Education Minister's Art Encouragement Prize, a national award, in 1997 as well as the 8th Award for the Promotion of Traditional Japanese Culture from the Japan Arts Foundation in 2001.",
"title": "Notable performers and groups"
}
]
| Taiko (太鼓) are a broad range of Japanese percussion instruments. In Japanese, the term taiko refers to any kind of drum, but outside Japan, it is used specifically to refer to any of the various Japanese drums called wadaiko and to the form of ensemble taiko drumming more specifically called kumi-daiko. The process of constructing taiko varies between manufacturers, and the preparation of both the drum body and skin can take several years depending on the method. Taiko have a mythological origin in Japanese folklore, but historical records suggest that taiko were introduced to Japan through Chinese and Korean cultural influence as early as the 6th century CE; pottery from the Haniwa period depicting taiko drums has also been found. Some taiko are similar to instruments originating from India. Archaeological evidence also supports the view that taiko were present in Japan during the 6th century in the Kofun period. Their function has varied throughout history, ranging from communication, military action, theatrical accompaniment, religious ceremony and concert performances. In modern times, taiko have also played a central role in social movements for minorities both within and outside Japan. Kumi-daiko performance, characterized by an ensemble playing on different drums, was developed in 1951 through the work of Daihachi Oguchi and later in 1961 by the Ondekoza, and taiko was made later popular with many other groups copying the format of Ondekoza such as Kodo, Yamato, Tao, Taikoza, Fuun No Kai, Sukeroku Taiko, etc. Other performance styles, such as hachijō-daiko, have also emerged from specific communities in Japan. Kumi-daiko performance groups are active not only in Japan, but also in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe, Taiwan, and Brazil. Taiko performance consists of many components in technical rhythm, form, stick grip, clothing, and the particular instrumentation. Ensembles typically use different types of barrel-shaped nagadō-daiko as well as smaller shime-daiko. Many groups accompany the drums with vocals, strings, and woodwind instruments. | 2001-10-27T02:04:52Z | 2023-11-05T22:15:03Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiko |
8,716 | Dolly Parton | Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She is known for her decades-long career in country music. After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Parton made her album debut in 1967 with Hello, I'm Dolly, which led to success during the remainder of the 1960s (both as a solo artist and with a series of duet albums with Porter Wagoner), before her sales and chart peak came during the 1970s and continued into the 1980s. Some of Parton's albums in the 1990s did not sell as well, but she achieved commercial success again in the new millennium and has released albums on various independent labels since 2000, including her own label, Dolly Records.
With a career spanning over fifty years, Parton has been described as a "country music legend" and has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling artists of all time. Parton's music includes Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)-certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards. She has had 25 singles reach no. 1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist (tied with Reba McEntire). She has 44 career Top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, and she has 110 career-charted singles over the past 40 years. She has composed over 3,000 songs, including "I Will Always Love You" (a two-time U.S. country chart-topper, and an international hit for Whitney Houston), "Jolene", "Coat of Many Colors", and "9 to 5". As an actress, she has starred in films including 9 to 5 (1980) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), for which she earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress, and Rhinestone (1984), Steel Magnolias (1989), Straight Talk (1992) and Joyful Noise (2012).
She has received 11 Grammy Awards out of 50 nominations, including the Lifetime Achievement Award; ten Country Music Association Awards, including Entertainer of the Year and is one of only seven female artists to win the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year Award; five Academy of Country Music Awards, also including Entertainer of the Year; four People's Choice Awards; and three American Music Awards. She is also in a select group to have received at least one nomination from the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Tony Awards, and Emmy Awards. In 1999, Parton was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received the National Medal of Arts and in 2022, she was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a nomination she had initially declined but ultimately accepted, and was subsequently inducted.
Outside of her work in the music industry, she also co-owns The Dollywood Company, which manages a number of entertainment venues including the Dollywood theme park, the Splash Country water park, and a number of dinner theatre venues such as The Dolly Parton Stampede and Pirates Voyage. She has founded a number of charitable and philanthropic organizations, chief among them is the Dollywood Foundation, which manages a number of projects to bring education and poverty relief to East Tennessee where she grew up.
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946, in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Pittman Center, Tennessee. She is the fourth of twelve children born to Avie Lee Caroline (née Owens; 1923–2003) and Robert Lee Parton Sr. (1921–2000). Parton's middle name comes from her maternal great-great-grandmother Rebecca (Dunn) Whitted. Parton's father, known as "Lee", worked in the mountains of East Tennessee, first as a sharecropper and later tending his own small tobacco farm and acreage. He also worked construction jobs to supplement the farm's small income. Despite her father's illiteracy, Parton has often commented that he was one of the smartest people she had ever known in regards to business and making a profit.
Parton's mother cared for their large family. Her 11 pregnancies (the tenth being twins) in 20 years made her a mother of 12 by age 35. Parton credits her musical abilities to her mother; often in poor health, she still managed to keep house and entertain her children with Smoky Mountain folklore and ancient ballads. Having Welsh ancestors, Avie Lee knew many old ballads that immigrants from the British Isles brought to southern Appalachia in the 18th and 19th century. Avie Lee's father, Jake Owens, was a Pentecostal preacher, and Parton and her siblings all attended church regularly. Parton has long credited her father for her business savvy, and her mother's family for her musical abilities. When Parton was a young girl, her family moved from the Pittman Center area to a farm up on nearby Locust Ridge. Most of her cherished memories of youth happened there. Today, a replica of the Locust Ridge cabin resides at Parton's namesake theme park Dollywood. The farm acreage and surrounding woodland inspired her to write the song "My Tennessee Mountain Home" in the 1970s. Years after the farm was sold, Parton bought it back in the late 1980s. Her brother Bobby helped with building restoration and new construction.
Parton has described her family as being "dirt poor". Parton's father paid missionary Dr. Robert F. Thomas with a sack of cornmeal for delivering her. Parton would write a song about Dr. Thomas when she was grown. She also outlined her family's poverty in her early songs "Coat of Many Colors" and "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)". For six or seven years, Parton and her family lived in their rustic, one-bedroom cabin on their small subsistence farm on Locust Ridge. This was a predominantly Pentecostal area located north of the Greenbrier Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains. Music played an important role in her early life. She was brought up in the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), in a congregation her grandfather, Jake Robert Owens, pastored. Her earliest public performances were in the church, beginning at age six. At seven, she started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight, her uncle bought her first real guitar.
Parton began performing as a child, singing on local radio and television programs in the East Tennessee area. By ten, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee. At 13, she was recording (the single "Puppy Love") on a small Louisiana label, Goldband Records, and appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, where she first met Johnny Cash, who encouraged her to follow her own instincts regarding her career.
After graduating from Sevier County High School in 1964, Parton moved to Nashville the next day. Her initial success came as a songwriter, having signed with Combine Publishing shortly after her arrival; with her frequent songwriting partner, her uncle Bill Owens, she wrote several charting singles during this time, including two Top 10 hits for Bill Phillips: "Put It Off Until Tomorrow," and "The Company You Keep" (1966), and Skeeter Davis's number 11 hit "Fuel to the Flame" (1967). Her songs were recorded by many other artists during this period, including Kitty Wells and Hank Williams Jr. She signed with Monument Records in 1965, at age 19; she initially was pitched as a bubblegum pop singer. She released a string of singles, but the only one that charted, "Happy, Happy Birthday Baby", did not crack the Billboard Hot 100. Although she expressed a desire to record country material, Monument resisted, thinking her unique, high soprano voice was not suited to the genre.
After her composition "Put It Off Until Tomorrow", as recorded by Bill Phillips (with Parton, uncredited, on harmony), went to number six on the country chart in 1966, the label relented and allowed her to record country. Her first country single, "Dumb Blonde" (composed by Curly Putman, one of the few songs during this era that she recorded but did not write), reached number 24 on the country chart in 1967, followed by "Something Fishy", which went to number 17. The two songs appeared on her first full-length album, Hello, I'm Dolly.
In 1967, musician and country music entertainer Porter Wagoner invited Parton to join his organization, offering her a regular spot on his weekly syndicated television program The Porter Wagoner Show, and in his road show. As documented in her 1994 autobiography, initially, much of Wagoner's audience was unhappy that Norma Jean, the performer whom Parton had replaced, had left the show, and was reluctant to accept Parton (sometimes chanting loudly for Norma Jean from the audience). With Wagoner's assistance, however, Parton was eventually accepted. Wagoner convinced his label, RCA Victor, to sign her. RCA decided to protect their investment by releasing her first single as a duet with Wagoner. That song, a remake of Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind", released in late 1967, reached the country Top 10 in January 1968, launching a six-year streak of virtually uninterrupted Top 10 singles for the pair.
Parton's first solo single for RCA Victor, "Just Because I'm a Woman", was released in the summer of 1968 and was a moderate chart hit, reaching number 17. For the next two years, none of her solo efforts – even "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)", which later became a standard – were as successful as her duets with Wagoner. The duo was named Vocal Group of the Year in 1968 by the Country Music Association, but Parton's solo records were continually ignored. Wagoner had a significant financial stake in her future; as of 1969, he was her co-producer and owned nearly half of Owe-Par, the publishing company Parton had founded with Bill Owens.
By 1970, both Parton and Wagoner had grown frustrated by her lack of solo chart success. Wagoner persuaded Parton to record Jimmie Rodgers' "Mule Skinner Blues", a gimmick that worked. The record shot to number three, followed closely, in February 1971, by her first number-one single, "Joshua". For the next two years, she had numerous solo hits – including her signature song "Coat of Many Colors" (number four, 1971) – in addition to her duets. Top 20 singles included "The Right Combination" and "Burning the Midnight Oil" (both duets with Wagoner, 1971); "Lost Forever in Your Kiss" (with Wagoner), "Touch Your Woman" (1972), "My Tennessee Mountain Home" and "Travelin' Man" (1973).
Although her solo singles and the Wagoner duets were successful, her biggest hit of this period was "Jolene". Released in late 1973, the song topped the country chart in February 1974 and reached the lower regions of the Hot 100 (it eventually also charted in the U.K., reaching number seven in 1976, representing Parton's first U.K. success). Parton, who had always envisioned a solo career, made the decision to leave Wagoner's organization; the pair performed their last duet concert in April 1974, and she stopped appearing on his TV show in mid-1974, although they remained affiliated. He helped produce her records through 1975. The pair continued to release duet albums, their final release being 1975's Say Forever You'll Be Mine.
In 1974, her song, "I Will Always Love You", written about her professional break from Wagoner, went to number one on the country chart. Around the same time, Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to record the song. Parton was interested until Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song recorded by Presley. Parton refused. That decision has been credited with helping to make her many millions of dollars in royalties from the song over the years. Parton had three solo singles reach number one on the country chart in 1974 ("Jolene", "I Will Always Love You" and "Love Is Like a Butterfly"), as well as the duet with Porter Wagoner, "Please Don't Stop Loving Me". In a 2019 episode of the Sky Arts music series Brian Johnson: A Life on the Road, Parton described finding old cassette tapes and realizing that she had composed both "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" in the same songwriting session, telling Johnson "Buddy, that was a good night." Parton again topped the singles chart in 1975 with "The Bargain Store".
Between 1974 and 1980 Parton had a series of country hits, with eight singles reaching number one. Her influence on pop culture is reflected by the many performers covering her songs, including mainstream and crossover artists such as Olivia Newton-John, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt.
Parton began to embark on a high-profile crossover campaign, attempting to aim her music in a more mainstream direction and increase her visibility outside of the confines of country music. In 1976, she began working closely with Sandy Gallin, who served as her personal manager for the next 25 years. With her 1976 album All I Can Do, which she co-produced with Porter Wagoner, Parton began taking more of an active role in production, and began specifically aiming her music in a more mainstream, pop direction. Her first entirely self-produced effort, New Harvest...First Gathering (1977), highlighted her pop sensibilities, both in terms of choice of songs – the album contained covers of the pop and R&B classics "My Girl" and "Higher and Higher" – and production. Though the album was well received and topped the U.S. country albums chart, neither it nor its single "Light of a Clear Blue Morning" made much of an impression on the pop charts.
After New Harvest's disappointing crossover performance, Parton turned to high-profile pop producer Gary Klein for her next album. The result, 1977's Here You Come Again, became her first million-seller, topping the country album chart and reaching number 20 on the pop chart. The Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil-penned title track topped the country singles chart, and became Parton's first Top 10 single on the pop chart (no. 3). A second single, the double A-sided "Two Doors Down"/"It's All Wrong, But It's All Right" topped the country chart and crossed over to the pop Top 20. For the remainder of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, many of her subsequent singles moved up on both charts simultaneously. Her albums during this period were developed specifically for pop-crossover success.
In 1978, Parton won a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for her Here You Come Again album. She continued to have hits with "Heartbreaker" (1978), "Baby I'm Burning" (1979) and "You're the Only One" (1979) all of which charted in the pop Top 40 and topped the country chart. "Sweet Summer Lovin'" (1979) became the first Parton single in two years to not top the country chart (though it did reach the Top 10). During this period, her visibility continued to increase, with multiple television appearances. A highly publicized candid interview on a Barbara Walters Special in 1977 (timed to coincide with Here You Come Again's release) was followed by appearances in 1978 on Cher's ABC television special, and her own joint special with Carol Burnett on CBS, Dolly & Carol in Nashville.
Parton served as one of three co-hosts (along with Roy Clark and Glen Campbell) on the CBS special Fifty Years of Country Music. In 1979, Parton hosted the NBC special The Seventies: An Explosion of Country Music, performed live at the Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C., and whose audience included President Jimmy Carter. Her commercial success grew in 1980, with three consecutive country chart number-one hits: the Donna Summer-written "Starting Over Again", "Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You", and "9 to 5", which topped the country and pop charts in early 1981. She had another Top 10 single that year with "Making Plans", a single released from a 1980 album with Porter Wagoner, released as part of a lawsuit settlement between the pair.
The theme song to the 1980 feature film 9 to 5, in which she starred along with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, not only reached number one on the country chart – in February 1981 it reached number one on the pop and the adult-contemporary charts, giving her a triple number-one hit. Parton became one of the few female country singers to have a number-one single on the country and pop charts simultaneously. It also received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Her singles continued to appear consistently in the country Top 10. Between 1981 and 1985, she had twelve Top 10 hits; half of them hit number one. She continued to make inroads on the pop chart as well. A re-recorded version of "I Will Always Love You", from the feature film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) scraped the Top 50 that year and her duet with Kenny Rogers, "Islands in the Stream" (written by the Bee Gees and produced by Barry Gibb), spent two weeks at number one in 1983.
In the mid-1980s, her record sales were still relatively strong, with "Save the Last Dance for Me", "Tennessee Homesick Blues", "God Won't Get You" (1984), "Real Love" (another duet with Kenny Rogers), "Don't Call It Love" (1985) and "Think About Love" (1986) all reaching the country Top 10 ("Tennessee Homesick Blues" and "Think About Love" reached number one; "Real Love" also reached number one on the country chart and became a modest crossover hit). However, RCA Records did not renew her contract after it expired in 1986, and she signed with Columbia Records in 1987.
Along with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, she released Trio (1987) to critical acclaim. The album revitalized Parton's music career, spending five weeks at number one on Billboard's Country Albums chart, and also reached the Top 10 on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart. It sold several million copies and produced four Top 10 country hits, including Phil Spector's "To Know Him Is to Love Him", which went to number one. Trio won the Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. After a further attempt at pop success with Rainbow (1987), including the single "The River Unbroken", it ended up a commercial let-down, causing Parton to focus on recording country material. White Limozeen (1989) produced two number one hits in "Why'd You Come in Here Lookin' Like That" and "Yellow Roses". Although Parton's career appeared to be revived, it was actually just a brief revival before contemporary country music came in the early 1990s and moved most veteran artists off the charts.
A duet with Ricky Van Shelton, "Rockin' Years" (1991) reached number one, though Parton's greatest commercial fortune of the decade came when Whitney Houston recorded "I Will Always Love You" for the soundtrack of the feature film The Bodyguard (1992). Both the single and the album were massively successful. Parton's soundtrack album from the 1992 film, Straight Talk, however, was less successful. But her 1993 album Slow Dancing with the Moon won critical acclaim and did well on the charts, reaching number four on the country albums chart, and number 16 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It would also become Platinum certified. She recorded "The Day I Fall in Love" as a duet with James Ingram for the feature film Beethoven's 2nd (1993). The songwriters (Ingram, Carole Bayer Sager, and Clif Magness) were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Parton and Ingram performed the song at the awards telecast. Similar to her earlier collaborative album with Harris and Ronstadt, Parton released Honky Tonk Angels in the fall of 1993 with Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. It was certified as a gold album by the Recording Industry Association of America and helped revive both Wynette and Lynn's careers. Also in 1994, Parton contributed the song "You Gotta Be My Baby" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. A live acoustic album, Heartsongs: Live from Home, featuring stripped-down versions of some of her hits, as well as some traditional songs, was released in late 1994.
Parton's recorded music during the mid-to-late-1990s remained steady and somewhat eclectic. Her 1995 re-recording of "I Will Always Love You" (performed as a duet with Vince Gill), from her album Something Special won the Country Music Association's Vocal Event of the Year Award. The following year, Treasures, an album of covers of 1960s/70s hits was released, and featured a diverse collection of material, including songs by Mac Davis, Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson, Cat Stevens, and Neil Young. Her recording of Stevens' "Peace Train" was later re-mixed and released as a dance single, reaching Billboard's dance singles chart. Her 1998 country-rock album Hungry Again was made up entirely of her own compositions. Although neither of the album's two singles, "(Why Don't More Women Sing) Honky Tonk Songs" and "Salt in my Tears", charted, videos for both songs received significant airplay on CMT. A second and more contemporary collaboration with Harris and Ronstadt, Trio II, was released in early 1999. Its cover of Neil Young's song "After the Gold Rush" won a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. Parton also was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999.
Parton recorded a series of bluegrass-inspired albums, beginning with The Grass Is Blue (1999), winning a Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album; and Little Sparrow (2001), with its cover of Collective Soul's "Shine" winning a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. The third, Halos & Horns (2002) included a bluegrass version of the Led Zeppelin song "Stairway to Heaven". In 2005, she released Those Were The Days consisting of her interpretations of hits from the folk-rock era of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including "Imagine", "Where Do the Children Play?", "Crimson and Clover", and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"
Parton earned her second Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for "Travelin' Thru", which she wrote specifically for the feature film Transamerica. (2005) Due to the song's (and film's) acceptance of a transgender woman, Parton received death threats. She returned to number one on the country chart later in 2005 by lending her distinctive harmonies to the Brad Paisley ballad, "When I Get Where I'm Going". In September 2007, Parton released her first single from her own record company, Dolly Records, titled, "Better Get to Livin'", which eventually peaked at number 48 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. It was followed by the studio album Backwoods Barbie, which was released on February 26, 2008, and reached number two on the country chart. The album's debut at number 17 on the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart was the highest in her career. Backwoods Barbie produced four additional singles, including the title track, written as part of her score for 9 to 5: The Musical, an adaptation of her feature film. After the death of Michael Jackson, whom Parton knew personally, she released a video in which she somberly told of her feelings on Jackson and his death.
On October 27, 2009, Parton released a four-CD box set, Dolly, which featured 99 songs and spanned most of her career. She released her second live DVD and album, Live From London in October 2009, which was filmed during her sold-out 2008 concerts at London's The O2 Arena. On August 10, 2010, with longtime friend Billy Ray Cyrus, Parton released the album Brother Clyde. Parton is featured on "The Right Time", which she co-wrote with Cyrus and Morris Joseph Tancredi. On January 6, 2011, Parton announced that her new album would be titled Better Day. In February 2011, she announced that she would embark on the Better Day World Tour on July 17, 2011, with shows in northern Europe and the U.S. The album's lead-off single, "Together You and I", was released on May 23, 2011, and Better Day was released on June 28, 2011. In 2011, Parton voiced the character Dolly Gnome in the animated film Gnomeo & Juliet. On February 11, 2012, after the sudden death of Whitney Houston, Parton stated, "Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston. I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.'"
In 2013, Parton joined Lulu Roman for a re-recording of "I Will Always Love You" for Roman's album, At Last. In 2013, Parton and Kenny Rogers reunited for the title song of his album You Can't Make Old Friends. For their performance, they were nominated at the 2014 Grammy Awards for Grammy Award for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. In 2014, Parton embarked on the Blue Smoke World Tour in support of her 42nd studio album, Blue Smoke. The album was first released in Australia and New Zealand on January 31 to coincide with tour dates there in February, and reached the Top 10 in both countries. It was released in the United States on May 13, and debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 chart, making it her first Top 10 album and her highest-charting solo album ever; it also reached the number two on the U.S. country chart. The album was released in Europe on June 9, and reached number two on the UK album chart. On June 29, 2014, Parton performed for the first time at the UK Glastonbury Festival, singing songs such as "Jolene", "9 to 5" and "Coat of Many Colors" to a crowd of more than 180,000. On March 6, 2016, Parton announced that she would be embarking on a tour in support of her new album, Pure & Simple. The tour was one of Parton's biggest tours within the United States in more than 25 years. 64 dates were planned in the United States and Canada, visiting the most requested markets missed on previous tours.
In the fall of 2016 she released "Jolene" as a single with the a cappella group Pentatonix and performed on The Voice with Pentatonix and Miley Cyrus in November 2016. Also in 2016, Parton was one of thirty artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up of the songs, "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "On the Road Again" and her own "I Will Always Love You". The song celebrates fifty years of the CMA Awards. At the ceremony itself, Parton was honored with the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented by Lily Tomlin and preceded by a tribute featuring Jennifer Nettles, Pentatonix, Reba McEntire, Kacey Musgraves, Carrie Underwood and Martina McBride. In 2017, Parton appeared on Rainbow, the third studio album by Kesha performing a duet of "Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You". The track had been co-written by Kesha's mother Pebe Sebert. It was previously a hit for Parton and was included on her 1980 album Dolly, Dolly, Dolly. She also co-wrote and provided featuring vocals on the song "Rainbowland" on Younger Now, the sixth album by her goddaughter Miley Cyrus.
In July 2019, Parton made an unannounced appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, and performed several songs accompanied by the Highwomen and Linda Perry. In 2020, Parton received worldwide attention after posting four pictures, in which she showed how she would present herself on social media platforms LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The original post on Instagram went viral after celebrities posted their own versions of the so-called Dolly Parton challenge on social media. On April 10, 2020, Parton re-released 93 songs from six of her classic albums: Little Sparrow, Halos & Horns, For God and Country, Better Day, Those Were The Days, and Live and Well. On May 27, 2020, Parton released a brand new song called "When Life Is Good Again". This song was released to help keep the spirits up of those affected by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. She also released a music video for "When Life Is Good Again", which premiered on Time 100 talks on May 28, 2020.
In October 2020, Parton was featured on the single "Pink" alongside Monica, Jordin Sparks, Sara Evans and Rita Wilson. The single was released in aid of Breast Cancer Research.
Parton released A Holly Dolly Christmas in October 2020. On December 6, CBS aired a Christmas special, "A Holly Dolly Christmas", where Parton performed songs from her album.
In early 2022, Parton was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Parton initially declined the nomination believing that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was "for the people in rock music", but after learning that this was not the case Parton said she would accept her induction if she were chosen for the honor. In May her induction was announced, and finally on November 5, 2022, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In October 2022 Parton stated in an interview that she would no longer tour, but would continue to play live shows occasionally. On December 31, 2022, Parton co-hosted NBC's New Year's special Miley's New Year's Eve Party.
On January 17, 2023, Parton announced she would release her first rock album, titled Rockstar, later that year, during an interview on The View. It was released on November 17, 2023, and features collaborations with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Elton John, Sheryl Crow, Miley Cyrus, and Lizzo, amongst others.
The way I look and the way I looked then was a country girl's idea of glam, just like I wrote in my "Backwoods Barbie" song. People wanted me to change, they thought I looked cheap. But I patterned my look after the town tramp. Everybody said, "She's trash." And in my little girl mind, I thought, "Well, that's what I'm going to be when I grow up." It was really like a look I was after. I wasn't a natural beauty. So, I just like to look the way I look. I'm so outgoing inside in my personality, that I need the way I look to match all of that.
Dolly Parton, 2022
Parton had turned down several offers to pose nude for Playboy magazine, but did appear on the cover of the October 1978 issue wearing a Playboy bunny outfit, complete with ears (the issue featured Lawrence Grobel's extensive and candid interview with Parton, representing one of her earliest high-profile interviews with the mainstream press). The association of breasts with Parton's public image is illustrated in the naming of Dolly the sheep after her, since the sheep was cloned from a cell taken from an adult ewe's mammary gland. In Mobile, Alabama, the General W.K. Wilson Jr. Bridge is commonly called "the Dolly Parton Bridge" due to its arches resembling her bust. The thickened appearance of the turret frontal armor of the T-72A main battle tank led to the unofficial Army nickname "Dolly Parton" - and later the T-72BIs got the "Super Dolly Parton" nickname.
Parton is known for having undergone considerable plastic surgery. On a 2003 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Winfrey asked what kind of cosmetic surgery Parton had undergone. Parton replied that cosmetic surgery was imperative in keeping with her famous image. Parton has repeatedly joked about her physical image and surgeries, saying, "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap." Her breasts have garnered her mentions in several songs, including "Dolly Parton's Hits" by Bobby Braddock, "Marty Feldman Eyes" by Bruce Baum (a parody of "Bette Davis Eyes"), "No Show Jones" by George Jones and Merle Haggard, and "Make Me Proud" by Drake, featuring Nicki Minaj. When asked about future plastic surgeries, she famously said, "If I see something sagging, bagging or dragging, I'll get it nipped, tucked or sucked." Parton's feminine escapism is acknowledged in her words, "Womanhood was a difficult thing to get a grip on in those hills, unless you were a man." Parton said in 2012 that she had entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest and lost.
Parton, though influenced by big name stars, often credits much of her inspiration to her family and community. On her own mother Parton, in her 2020 book Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, wrote "So it was just natural for my mom to always be singing. My mother had that old-timey voice, and she used to sing all these songs that were brought over from the Old World. They were English, Irish, Welsh, folk songs where people tell stories." Parton calls her mother's voice "haunting". "Lord you would feel it", she wrote. Her biggest influence however was her Aunt Dorothy Jo: "People often ask me who my influences were, they think I'm going to say some big names, and there were a few 'stars' I was impressed with. But my hero was my aunt Dorothy Jo. Mama's baby sister. She was not only an evangelist, she played banjo, she played guitar, and she wrote some great songs." Of course, fellow singers also had an impact on Parton, describing George Jones as her "all time favorite singer", and recognizing her love for other artists such as Kitty Wells, Roy Acuff, and Rose Maddox.
Though unable to read sheet music, Parton can play many instruments, including: the dulcimer, autoharp, banjo, guitar, electric guitar, fiddle, piano, recorder, and the saxophone. Reflecting on her multi-instrumental abilities, Parton said, "I play some of everything. I ain't that good at none of it, but I try to sell it. I really try to lay into it." Parton has also used her fingernails as an instrument, most evident on her 1980 song "9 to 5", which she derived the beat for from clacking her nails together while backstage on the set of the film of the same name.
In 1998, Nashville Business ranked her the wealthiest country music star. As of 2017, her net worth is estimated at $500 million.
Parton is a prolific songwriter, having begun by writing country music songs with strong elements of folk music, based on her upbringing in humble mountain surroundings and reflecting her family's Christian background. Her songs "Coat of Many Colors", "I Will Always Love You", and "Jolene", among others, have become classics. On November 4, 2003, Parton was honored as a BMI Icon at the 2003 BMI Country Awards. Parton has earned over 35 BMI Pop and Country Awards. In 2001, she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In a 2009 interview on CNN's Larry King Live, she said she had written "at least 3,000" songs, having written seriously since the age of seven. Parton also said she writes something every day, be it a song or an idea.
Parton's songwriting has been featured prominently in several films. In addition to the title song for 9 to 5, she also recorded a second version of "I Will Always Love You" for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). The second version was a number one country hit and also reached number 53 on the pop charts. "I Will Always Love You" has been covered by many country artists, including Ronstadt on Prisoner In Disguise (1975), Kenny Rogers on Vote for Love (1996), and LeAnn Rimes on Unchained Melody: The Early Years (1997). Whitney Houston performed it on The Bodyguard soundtrack and her version became the best-selling hit both written and performed by a female vocalist, with worldwide sales of over twelve million copies. In addition, the song has been translated into Italian and performed by the Welsh opera singer Katherine Jenkins.
As a songwriter, Parton has twice been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, for "9 to 5" and "Travelin' Thru" (2005) from the film Transamerica. "Travelin' Thru" won Best Original Song at the 2005 Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards. It was also nominated for both the 2005 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and the 2005 Broadcast Film Critics Association Award (also known as the Critics' Choice Awards) for Best Song. A cover of "Love Is Like A Butterfly" by Clare Torry was used as the theme music for the British TV show Butterflies.
Parton wrote the score (and Patricia Resnick the book) for 9 to 5: The Musical, a musical-theater adaptation of Parton's feature film 9 to 5 (1980). The musical ran at the Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, in late 2008. It opened on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre in New York on April 30, 2009, to mixed reviews. The title track of her 2008 album Backwoods Barbie was written for the musical's character Doralee. Although her score (as well as the musical debut of actress Allison Janney) was praised, the show struggled, closing on September 6, 2009, after 24 previews and 148 performances. Parton received nominations for Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics as well as a nomination for Tony Award for Best Original Score. Developing the musical was not a quick process. According to the public-radio program Studio 360 (October 29, 2005), in October 2005 Parton was in the midst of composing songs for a Broadway musical theater adaptation of the film. In late June 2007, 9 to 5: The Musical was read for industry presentations. The readings starred Megan Hilty, Allison Janney, Stephanie J. Block, Bebe Neuwirth, and Marc Kudisch. Ambassador Theatre Group announced a 2012 UK tour for Dolly Parton's 9 to 5: The Musical, commencing at Manchester Opera House, on October 12, 2012.
Parton invested much of her earnings into business ventures in her native East Tennessee, notably Pigeon Forge. She is a co-owner of The Dollywood Company, which operates the theme park Dollywood (a former Silver Dollar City), a dinner theater, Dolly Parton's Stampede, the waterpark Dollywood's Splash Country, and the Dream More Resort and Spa, all in Pigeon Forge. Dollywood is the 24th-most-popular theme park in the United States, with three million visitors per year. The Dolly Parton's Stampede business has venues in Branson, Missouri, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A former location in Orlando, Florida, closed in January 2008 after the land and building were sold to a developer. Starting in June 2011, the Myrtle Beach location became Pirates Voyage Fun, Feast and Adventure; Parton appeared for the opening, and the South Carolina General Assembly declared June 3, 2011, as Dolly Parton Day.
On January 19, 2012, Parton's 66th birthday, Gaylord Opryland and Dollywood announced plans to open a $50 million water and snow park, a family-friendly destination in Nashville that is open all year. On September 29, 2012, Parton officially withdrew her support for the Nashville park due to the restructuring of Gaylord Entertainment Company after its merger with Marriott International. On June 12, 2015, it was announced that the Dollywood Company had purchased the Lumberjack Feud Dinner Show in Pigeon Forge. The show, which opened in June 2011, was owned and operated by Rob Scheer until the close of the 2015 season. The new, renovated show by the Dollywood Company opened in 2016.
Parton was a co-owner of Sandollar Productions, with Sandy Gallin, her former manager. A film and television production company, it produced the documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989), which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; the television series Babes (1990–91) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003); and the feature films Father of the Bride (1991), Father of the Bride: Part II (1995) Straight Talk (1992) (in which Parton starred), and Sabrina (1995), among other shows. In a 2009 interview, singer Connie Francis revealed that Parton had been contacting her for years in an attempt to film the singer's life story. Francis turned down Parton's offers, as she was already in negotiations with singer Gloria Estefan to produce the film, a collaboration now ended. After the retirement of her partner, Sandy Gallin, Parton briefly operated Dolly Parton's Southern Light Productions and in 2015 she announced her new production company would be called Dixie Pixie Productions and produce the movies-of-week in development with NBC Television and Magnolia Hill Productions.
In addition to her performing appearances on The Porter Wagoner Show in the 1960s and into the 1970s, her two self-titled television variety shows in the 1970s and 1980s, and on American Idol in 2008 and other guest appearances, Parton has had television roles. In 1979, she received an Emmy award nomination as "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Variety Program" for her guest appearance in a Cher special. During the mid-1970s, Parton wanted to expand her audience base. Although her first attempt, the television variety show Dolly! (1976–77), had high ratings, it lasted only one season, with Parton requesting to be released from her contract because of the stress it was causing on her vocal cords. (She later tried a second television variety show, also titled Dolly (1987–88); it too lasted only one season).
In her first feature film, Parton portrayed a secretary in a leading role with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in the comedy film 9 to 5 (1980). The movie highlights discrimination against women in the workplace and created awareness of the National Association of Working Women (9–5). She received nominations for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress. Parton wrote and recorded the film's title song. It received nominations for an Academy Award for Best Song and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. Released as a single, the song won both the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance and the Grammy Award for Best Country Song. It also reached no. 1 on the Hot 100 chart and it was no. 78 on the "AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs" list released by the American Film Institute in 2004. 9 to 5 became a major box office success, grossing over $3.9 million its opening weekend, and over $103 million worldwide. Parton was named Top Female Box Office Star by the Motion Picture Herald in both 1981 and 1982 due to the film's success.
In late 1981, Parton began filming her second film, the musical film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). The film earned her a second nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The film was greeted with positive critical reviews and became a commercial success, earning over $69 million worldwide. After a two-year hiatus from films, Parton was teamed with Sylvester Stallone for Rhinestone (1984). A comedy film about a country music star's efforts to mould an unknown into a music sensation, the film was a critical and financial failure, making just over $21 million on a $28 million budget.
In 1989, Parton returned to film acting in Steel Magnolias (1989), based on the play of the same name by Robert Harling. The film was popular with critics and audiences, grossing over $95 million in the U.S. Parton starred in the television movies A Smoky Mountain Christmas (1986), Wild Texas Wind (1991), Unlikely Angel (1996), portraying an angel sent back to earth after a deadly car crash, and Blue Valley Songbird (1999), where her character lives through her music. She starred with James Woods in Straight Talk (1992), which received mixed reviews, and grossed a mild $21 million at the box office.
Parton's 1987 variety show Dolly lasted only one season. She made a cameo appearance as herself in The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), an adaptation of the long-running TV sitcom of the same name (1962–1971). Parton has done voice work for animation for television series, playing herself in Alvin and the Chipmunks (episode "Urban Chipmunk", 1983) and the character Katrina Eloise "Murph" Murphy (Ms. Frizzle's first cousin) in The Magic School Bus (episode "The Family Holiday Special", 1994). She also has guest-starred in several sitcoms, including a 1990 episode of Designing Women (episode "The First Day of the Last Decade of the Entire Twentieth Century") as herself, the guardian movie star of Charlene's baby. She made a guest appearance on Reba (episode "Reba's Rules of Real Estate") portraying a real-estate agency owner and on The Simpsons (episode "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday", 1999). She appeared as herself in 2000 on the Halloween episode of Bette Midler's short-lived sitcom Bette, and on episode 14 of Babes (produced by Sandollar Productions, Parton and Sandy Gallin's joint production company). She made cameo appearances on the Disney Channel as "Aunt Dolly", visiting Hannah and her family in fellow Tennessean and real-life goddaughter Miley Cyrus's series Hannah Montana (episodes "Good Golly, Miss Dolly", 2006, "I Will Always Loathe You", 2007, and "Kiss It All Goodbye", 2010). She was nominated for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
Parton appeared as an overprotective mother in the comedy Frank McKlusky, C.I.. (2002) She made a cameo appearance in the comedy film Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, starring Sandra Bullock. She was featured in The Book Lady (2008), a documentary about her campaign for children's literacy. Parton expected to reprise her television role as Hannah's godmother in the musical comedy film Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009), but the character was omitted from the screenplay.
Parton had a voice role in the comedy family film Gnomeo & Juliet (2011), a computer-animated film with garden gnomes about William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. She co-starred with Queen Latifah in the musical film Joyful Noise (2012), playing a choir director's widow who joins forces with Latifah's character, a mother of two teens, to save a small Georgia town's gospel choir.
Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors, a made-for-TV film based on Parton's song of the same name, and featuring narration by Parton, aired on NBC in December 2015, with child actress Alyvia Alyn Lind portraying the young Parton. Parton also had a cameo in the sequel, which aired in November 2016.
In June 2018, Parton announced an eight-part Netflix series, featuring her music career. She is its executive producer and co-star. The series, called Dolly Parton's Heartstrings, aired in November 2019.
Parton is the subject of the NPR podcast Dolly Parton's America. It is hosted by Jad Abumrad, who also hosts Radiolab.
In December 2019, the biographical documentary Here I Am was added to the catalog of the Netflix streaming service. The documentary, a co-production of Netflix and the BBC, takes its name from Parton's 1971 song.
In November 2020, Parton produced and starred in the Netflix musical film Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square, which won her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie.
In November 2021, Parton was confirmed to be appearing in the final season of Grace and Frankie in a guest-starring role, reuniting with her 9 to 5 co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda.
In July 2022, Parton appeared as a simulation of herself on sci-fi show The Orville in the episode "Midnight Blue".
In December 2022, Parton appeared in an NBC special titled Dolly Parton's Mountain Magic Christmas.
On Thanksgiving 2023, Parton performed songs during halftime at the Washington Commanders and Dallas Cowboys NFL football game.
Parton is the fourth of 12 children. Her siblings are Willadeene, David Wilburn, Coy Denver, Robert Lee, Stella Mae, Cassie Nan, Randel Huston (deceased), Larry Gerald (deceased), twins Floyd Estel (deceased) and Frieda Estelle, and Rachel Ann.
On May 30, 1966, Parton and Carl Thomas Dean (born July 20, 1942, in Nashville, Tennessee) were married in Ringgold, Georgia. Although Parton does not use Dean's surname professionally, she has stated that her passport reads "Dolly Parton Dean", and she sometimes uses Dean when signing contracts. Dean, who is retired from running an asphalt road-paving business in Nashville, has always shunned publicity, and rarely accompanies his wife to any events. Parton has jokingly said that he has only seen her perform once. She also has said in interviews that even though it appears they spend little time together, it is simply that nobody sees him publicly. She has commented on Dean's romantic side, saying that he does spontaneous things to surprise her, and sometimes even writes poems for her. In 2011, Parton said, "We're really very proud of our marriage. It's the first for both of us. And the last."
On May 6, 2016, Parton announced that she and Dean would renew their vows in honor of their 50th wedding anniversary later in the month.
While Parton has never had children, she and Dean helped raise several of her younger siblings in Nashville, leading her nieces and nephews to refer to them as "Uncle Peepaw" and "Aunt Granny"; the latter a moniker that later lent its name to one of Parton's Dollywood restaurants. Parton is also the godmother of singer-songwriter and actress Miley Cyrus.
Parton says that she is a committed Christian, which has influenced many of her musical releases.
Since the mid-1980s, Parton has supported many charitable efforts, particularly in the area of literacy, primarily through her Dollywood Foundation. Her literacy program, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which is a part of the Dollywood Foundation, was founded in honor of her father, who never learned to read or write. It mails one book per month to each enrolled child from the time of their birth until they enter kindergarten. Currently, over 1600 local communities provide the Imagination Library to almost 850,000 children each month across the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, and the Republic of Ireland. In February 2018, she donated her 100 millionth free book, a copy of Parton's children's picture book Coat of Many Colors, to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and was honored by the Library of Congress on account of the "charity sending out its 100 millionth book".
For her work in literacy, Parton has received various awards, including Association of American Publishers Honors Award (2000), Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval (2001) (the first time the seal had been awarded to a person), American Association of School Administrators – Galaxy Award (2002), National State Teachers of the Year – Chasing Rainbows Award (2002), and Parents as Teachers National Center – Child and Family Advocacy Award (2003).
On May 8, 2009, Parton gave the commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for the University of Tennessee, Knoxville's College of Arts and Sciences. During the ceremony, she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the university. It was only the second honorary degree given by the university, and in presenting the degree, the university's Chancellor, Jimmy Cheek, said, "Because of her career not just as a musician and entertainer, but for her role as a cultural ambassador, philanthropist and lifelong advocate for education, it is fitting that she be honored with an honorary degree from the flagship educational institution of her home state."
In 2006, Parton published a cookbook, Dolly's Dixie Fixin's: Love, Laughter and Lots of Good Food.
The Dollywood Foundation, funded from Parton's profits, has been noted for bringing jobs and tax revenues to a previously depressed region. Parton also has worked to raise money for several other causes, including the American Red Cross and HIV/AIDS-related charities.
In December 2006, Parton pledged $500,000 toward a proposed $90 million hospital and cancer center to be constructed in Sevierville in the name of Robert F. Thomas, the physician who delivered her. She announced a benefit concert to raise additional funds for the project. The concert played to about 8,000 people. That same year, Parton and Emmylou Harris allowed use of their music in a PETA ad campaign that encouraged pet owners to keep their dogs indoors rather than chained outside.
In 2003, her efforts to preserve the bald eagle through the American Eagle Foundation's sanctuary at Dollywood earned her the Partnership Award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Parton received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution at a ceremony in Nashville on November 8, 2007.
In response to the 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires, Parton was one of a number of country music artists who participated in a telethon to raise money for victims of the fires. This was held in Nashville on December 9. In addition, Parton hosted her own telethon for the victims on December 13 and reportedly raised around $9 million. Her fund, the "My People Fund", provided $1,000 a month for six months to over 900 families affected by the wildfires, finally culminating with $5,000 to each home in the final month due to increased fundraising, for a total of $10,000 per family. In 2018, the FBI honored Parton for her wildfire aid work, awarding her the 2018 Director's Community Leadership Award at a ceremony at FBI Headquarters in Washington. The honor was bestowed by Director Christopher Wray and was accepted on the Parton's behalf by David Dotson, the CEO of the Dollywood Foundation.
The impact of the fund's financial relief for the 2016 wildfire victims was studied by University of Tennessee College of Social Work professor Stacia West, who examined the impact of cash transfers in poverty alleviation. West surveyed 100 recipients of the emergency relief funds in April 2017 on topics including questions on housing, financial impact, physical and emotional health, and sources of support, with a follow-up survey conducted in December 2017. West found that the "My People Fund", in tandem with traditional disaster response, gave families the ability to make decisions that were most beneficial to them, and concluded that unconditional cash support may be more beneficial for disaster relief than conditional financial support. The report cited the impact of the monthly financial disbursements from the "My People Fund" on residents' emergency savings: "Following the monthly disbursements of unconditional cash assistance, participants were able to return to baseline financial stability reported prior to the wildfire, and improve their ability to set aside savings for hypothetical future emergencies."
Parton has been a generous donor to Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). Among her gifts was a contribution to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt Pediatric Cancer Program in honor of a friend, Professor Naji Abumrad, and her niece, Hannah Dennison, who was successfully treated for leukemia as a child at Children's Hospital.
Though often politically neutral, Parton is known for her long history of openly supporting LGBTQ rights. LGBTQ+ magazines LGBTQ Nation and The Advocate have described her as an "LGBTQ+ icon," and it was noted that she first publicly showed support for LGBTQ families in her 1991 song Family. She also publicly came out in support of same-sex marriage in 2009.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Parton donated $1 million towards research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and encouraged those who can afford it to make similar donations. She said "I'm a very proud girl today to know I had anything at all to do with something that's going to help us through this crazy pandemic." Her donation funded the critical early stages of development of the Moderna vaccine. In March 2021, Parton was vaccinated against COVID-19 at Vanderbilt University. She labeled social media accounts of the occasion "Dolly gets a dose of her own medicine." Parton strongly encouraged everyone to get vaccinated when eligible and performed a song celebrating her vaccination, set to the tune of her song "Jolene". The song included the lines "Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine/I'm begging of you please don't hesitate/Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine/'Cos once you're dead, then that's a bit too late."
Dolly Parton is one of the most-honored female country performers of all time. The Record Industry Association of America has certified 25 of her single or album releases as either Gold Record, Platinum Record or Multi-Platinum Record. She has had 26 songs reach no. 1 on the Billboard country charts, a record for a female artist. She has 42 career Top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, and 110 career-charted singles over the past forty years. As of 2012 she had written more than 3,000 songs and sold more than 100 million records, making her one of the best-selling female artists of all time. As of 2021, she had appeared on the country music charts in each of seven decades, the most of any artist.
Dolly Parton has earned eleven Grammy Awards (including her 2011 Lifetime Achievement Grammy) and a total of fifty Grammy Award nominations, the second-most nominations of any female artist in the history of the prestigious awards.
At the American Music Awards, she has won three awards out of 18 nominations. At the Country Music Association, she has won ten awards out of 42 nominations. At the Academy of Country Music, she has won seven awards and 39 nominations. She is one of only six female artists (including Reba McEntire, Barbara Mandrell, Shania Twain, Loretta Lynn, and Taylor Swift), to win the Country Music Association's highest honor, Entertainer of the Year (1978). She also has been nominated for two Academy Awards and a Tony Award. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her appearance in a 1978 Cher television special. She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her music in 1984, located at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California; a star on the Nashville StarWalk for Grammy winners; and a bronze sculpture on the courthouse lawn in Sevierville. She has called that statue of herself in her hometown "the greatest honor", because it came from the people who knew her. Parton was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1969, and in 1986 was named one of Ms. Magazine's Women of the Year. In 1986, she was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
In 1999, Parton received country music's highest honor, an induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. She received an honorary doctorate degree from Carson-Newman College (Jefferson City, Tennessee) in 1990. This was followed by induction into the National Academy of Popular Music/Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2002, she ranked no. 4 in CMT's 40 Greatest Women of Country Music.
Parton was honored in 2003 with a tribute album called Just Because I'm a Woman: Songs of Dolly Parton. The artists who recorded versions of Parton's songs included Melissa Etheridge ("I Will Always Love You"), Alison Krauss ("9 to 5"), Shania Twain ("Coat of Many Colors"), Meshell Ndegeocello ("Two Doors Down"), Norah Jones ("The Grass is Blue"), and Sinéad O'Connor ("Dagger Through the Heart"). Parton herself contributed a re-recording of the title song, originally the title song for her first RCA album in 1968. Parton was awarded the Living Legend Medal by the U.S. Library of Congress on April 14, 2004, for her contributions to the cultural heritage of the United States. She is also the focus of a Library of Congress collection exploring the influences of country music on her life and career. The collection contains images, articles, sheet music, and more.
In 2005, she was honored with the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given by the U.S. government for excellence in the arts. The award is presented by the U.S. President. On December 3, 2006, Parton received the Kennedy Center Honors from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for her lifetime of contributions to the arts. During the show, some of country music's biggest names came to show their admiration. Carrie Underwood performed "Islands in the Stream" with Rogers, Parton's original duet partner. Krauss performed "Jolene" and duetted "Coat of Many Colors" with Twain. McEntire and Reese Witherspoon also came to pay tribute. On November 16, 2010, Parton accepted the Liseberg Applause Award, the theme park industry's most prestigious honor, on behalf of Dollywood theme park during a ceremony held at IAAPA Attractions Expo 2010 in Orlando, Florida.
In 2015, a newly discovered species of lichen found growing in the southern Appalachians was named Japewiella dollypartoniana in honor of Parton's music and her efforts to bring national and global attention to that region. In 2018, Parton received a second star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, inducted alongside Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris in recognition of their work as a trio. Parton was also recognized in the Guinness World Records 2018 Edition for holding records for the Most Decades with a Top 20 hit on Billboard's Hot Country Songs Chart and Most Hits on Billboard's Hot Country Songs Chart by a Female Artist. In 2020, Parton received a Grammy award for her collaboration with For King & Country on their song, "God Only Knows". In 2021, she was included on the Time 100, Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The New York Times called her among the three of America's Most Beloved Divas (alongside Patti LaBelle and Barbra Streisand).
Parton has turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice due to her husband's illness and the ongoing pandemic. In response to a 2021 proposal by the Tennessee legislature to erect a statue of Parton, she released a statement asking the legislature to remove the bill from consideration, saying "Given all that is going on in the world, I don't think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time."
In late 2022, Parton received a $100-million Courage and Civility Award from the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. According to Bezos, the award was given to Parton because of her charity work focused on improving children's literacy around the world.
In 2023, Parton was named an Honorary Member of the American Library Association. She was ranked at No. 27 on Rolling Stone′s 2023 list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
During her career, Parton has gained induction into numerous Halls of Fame. Those honors include:
Solo studio albums
Collaborative studio albums
Theatrical releases | [
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"text": "Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She is known for her decades-long career in country music. After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Parton made her album debut in 1967 with Hello, I'm Dolly, which led to success during the remainder of the 1960s (both as a solo artist and with a series of duet albums with Porter Wagoner), before her sales and chart peak came during the 1970s and continued into the 1980s. Some of Parton's albums in the 1990s did not sell as well, but she achieved commercial success again in the new millennium and has released albums on various independent labels since 2000, including her own label, Dolly Records.",
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"text": "With a career spanning over fifty years, Parton has been described as a \"country music legend\" and has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling artists of all time. Parton's music includes Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)-certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards. She has had 25 singles reach no. 1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist (tied with Reba McEntire). She has 44 career Top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, and she has 110 career-charted singles over the past 40 years. She has composed over 3,000 songs, including \"I Will Always Love You\" (a two-time U.S. country chart-topper, and an international hit for Whitney Houston), \"Jolene\", \"Coat of Many Colors\", and \"9 to 5\". As an actress, she has starred in films including 9 to 5 (1980) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), for which she earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress, and Rhinestone (1984), Steel Magnolias (1989), Straight Talk (1992) and Joyful Noise (2012).",
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"text": "She has received 11 Grammy Awards out of 50 nominations, including the Lifetime Achievement Award; ten Country Music Association Awards, including Entertainer of the Year and is one of only seven female artists to win the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year Award; five Academy of Country Music Awards, also including Entertainer of the Year; four People's Choice Awards; and three American Music Awards. She is also in a select group to have received at least one nomination from the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Tony Awards, and Emmy Awards. In 1999, Parton was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received the National Medal of Arts and in 2022, she was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a nomination she had initially declined but ultimately accepted, and was subsequently inducted.",
"title": ""
},
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"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Outside of her work in the music industry, she also co-owns The Dollywood Company, which manages a number of entertainment venues including the Dollywood theme park, the Splash Country water park, and a number of dinner theatre venues such as The Dolly Parton Stampede and Pirates Voyage. She has founded a number of charitable and philanthropic organizations, chief among them is the Dollywood Foundation, which manages a number of projects to bring education and poverty relief to East Tennessee where she grew up.",
"title": ""
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"text": "Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946, in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Pittman Center, Tennessee. She is the fourth of twelve children born to Avie Lee Caroline (née Owens; 1923–2003) and Robert Lee Parton Sr. (1921–2000). Parton's middle name comes from her maternal great-great-grandmother Rebecca (Dunn) Whitted. Parton's father, known as \"Lee\", worked in the mountains of East Tennessee, first as a sharecropper and later tending his own small tobacco farm and acreage. He also worked construction jobs to supplement the farm's small income. Despite her father's illiteracy, Parton has often commented that he was one of the smartest people she had ever known in regards to business and making a profit.",
"title": "Early life and career"
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"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Parton's mother cared for their large family. Her 11 pregnancies (the tenth being twins) in 20 years made her a mother of 12 by age 35. Parton credits her musical abilities to her mother; often in poor health, she still managed to keep house and entertain her children with Smoky Mountain folklore and ancient ballads. Having Welsh ancestors, Avie Lee knew many old ballads that immigrants from the British Isles brought to southern Appalachia in the 18th and 19th century. Avie Lee's father, Jake Owens, was a Pentecostal preacher, and Parton and her siblings all attended church regularly. Parton has long credited her father for her business savvy, and her mother's family for her musical abilities. When Parton was a young girl, her family moved from the Pittman Center area to a farm up on nearby Locust Ridge. Most of her cherished memories of youth happened there. Today, a replica of the Locust Ridge cabin resides at Parton's namesake theme park Dollywood. The farm acreage and surrounding woodland inspired her to write the song \"My Tennessee Mountain Home\" in the 1970s. Years after the farm was sold, Parton bought it back in the late 1980s. Her brother Bobby helped with building restoration and new construction.",
"title": "Early life and career"
},
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"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Parton has described her family as being \"dirt poor\". Parton's father paid missionary Dr. Robert F. Thomas with a sack of cornmeal for delivering her. Parton would write a song about Dr. Thomas when she was grown. She also outlined her family's poverty in her early songs \"Coat of Many Colors\" and \"In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)\". For six or seven years, Parton and her family lived in their rustic, one-bedroom cabin on their small subsistence farm on Locust Ridge. This was a predominantly Pentecostal area located north of the Greenbrier Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains. Music played an important role in her early life. She was brought up in the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), in a congregation her grandfather, Jake Robert Owens, pastored. Her earliest public performances were in the church, beginning at age six. At seven, she started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight, her uncle bought her first real guitar.",
"title": "Early life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Parton began performing as a child, singing on local radio and television programs in the East Tennessee area. By ten, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee. At 13, she was recording (the single \"Puppy Love\") on a small Louisiana label, Goldband Records, and appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, where she first met Johnny Cash, who encouraged her to follow her own instincts regarding her career.",
"title": "Early life and career"
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{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "After graduating from Sevier County High School in 1964, Parton moved to Nashville the next day. Her initial success came as a songwriter, having signed with Combine Publishing shortly after her arrival; with her frequent songwriting partner, her uncle Bill Owens, she wrote several charting singles during this time, including two Top 10 hits for Bill Phillips: \"Put It Off Until Tomorrow,\" and \"The Company You Keep\" (1966), and Skeeter Davis's number 11 hit \"Fuel to the Flame\" (1967). Her songs were recorded by many other artists during this period, including Kitty Wells and Hank Williams Jr. She signed with Monument Records in 1965, at age 19; she initially was pitched as a bubblegum pop singer. She released a string of singles, but the only one that charted, \"Happy, Happy Birthday Baby\", did not crack the Billboard Hot 100. Although she expressed a desire to record country material, Monument resisted, thinking her unique, high soprano voice was not suited to the genre.",
"title": "Early life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "After her composition \"Put It Off Until Tomorrow\", as recorded by Bill Phillips (with Parton, uncredited, on harmony), went to number six on the country chart in 1966, the label relented and allowed her to record country. Her first country single, \"Dumb Blonde\" (composed by Curly Putman, one of the few songs during this era that she recorded but did not write), reached number 24 on the country chart in 1967, followed by \"Something Fishy\", which went to number 17. The two songs appeared on her first full-length album, Hello, I'm Dolly.",
"title": "Early life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1967, musician and country music entertainer Porter Wagoner invited Parton to join his organization, offering her a regular spot on his weekly syndicated television program The Porter Wagoner Show, and in his road show. As documented in her 1994 autobiography, initially, much of Wagoner's audience was unhappy that Norma Jean, the performer whom Parton had replaced, had left the show, and was reluctant to accept Parton (sometimes chanting loudly for Norma Jean from the audience). With Wagoner's assistance, however, Parton was eventually accepted. Wagoner convinced his label, RCA Victor, to sign her. RCA decided to protect their investment by releasing her first single as a duet with Wagoner. That song, a remake of Tom Paxton's \"The Last Thing on My Mind\", released in late 1967, reached the country Top 10 in January 1968, launching a six-year streak of virtually uninterrupted Top 10 singles for the pair.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Parton's first solo single for RCA Victor, \"Just Because I'm a Woman\", was released in the summer of 1968 and was a moderate chart hit, reaching number 17. For the next two years, none of her solo efforts – even \"In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)\", which later became a standard – were as successful as her duets with Wagoner. The duo was named Vocal Group of the Year in 1968 by the Country Music Association, but Parton's solo records were continually ignored. Wagoner had a significant financial stake in her future; as of 1969, he was her co-producer and owned nearly half of Owe-Par, the publishing company Parton had founded with Bill Owens.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "By 1970, both Parton and Wagoner had grown frustrated by her lack of solo chart success. Wagoner persuaded Parton to record Jimmie Rodgers' \"Mule Skinner Blues\", a gimmick that worked. The record shot to number three, followed closely, in February 1971, by her first number-one single, \"Joshua\". For the next two years, she had numerous solo hits – including her signature song \"Coat of Many Colors\" (number four, 1971) – in addition to her duets. Top 20 singles included \"The Right Combination\" and \"Burning the Midnight Oil\" (both duets with Wagoner, 1971); \"Lost Forever in Your Kiss\" (with Wagoner), \"Touch Your Woman\" (1972), \"My Tennessee Mountain Home\" and \"Travelin' Man\" (1973).",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Although her solo singles and the Wagoner duets were successful, her biggest hit of this period was \"Jolene\". Released in late 1973, the song topped the country chart in February 1974 and reached the lower regions of the Hot 100 (it eventually also charted in the U.K., reaching number seven in 1976, representing Parton's first U.K. success). Parton, who had always envisioned a solo career, made the decision to leave Wagoner's organization; the pair performed their last duet concert in April 1974, and she stopped appearing on his TV show in mid-1974, although they remained affiliated. He helped produce her records through 1975. The pair continued to release duet albums, their final release being 1975's Say Forever You'll Be Mine.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1974, her song, \"I Will Always Love You\", written about her professional break from Wagoner, went to number one on the country chart. Around the same time, Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to record the song. Parton was interested until Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song recorded by Presley. Parton refused. That decision has been credited with helping to make her many millions of dollars in royalties from the song over the years. Parton had three solo singles reach number one on the country chart in 1974 (\"Jolene\", \"I Will Always Love You\" and \"Love Is Like a Butterfly\"), as well as the duet with Porter Wagoner, \"Please Don't Stop Loving Me\". In a 2019 episode of the Sky Arts music series Brian Johnson: A Life on the Road, Parton described finding old cassette tapes and realizing that she had composed both \"Jolene\" and \"I Will Always Love You\" in the same songwriting session, telling Johnson \"Buddy, that was a good night.\" Parton again topped the singles chart in 1975 with \"The Bargain Store\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Between 1974 and 1980 Parton had a series of country hits, with eight singles reaching number one. Her influence on pop culture is reflected by the many performers covering her songs, including mainstream and crossover artists such as Olivia Newton-John, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Parton began to embark on a high-profile crossover campaign, attempting to aim her music in a more mainstream direction and increase her visibility outside of the confines of country music. In 1976, she began working closely with Sandy Gallin, who served as her personal manager for the next 25 years. With her 1976 album All I Can Do, which she co-produced with Porter Wagoner, Parton began taking more of an active role in production, and began specifically aiming her music in a more mainstream, pop direction. Her first entirely self-produced effort, New Harvest...First Gathering (1977), highlighted her pop sensibilities, both in terms of choice of songs – the album contained covers of the pop and R&B classics \"My Girl\" and \"Higher and Higher\" – and production. Though the album was well received and topped the U.S. country albums chart, neither it nor its single \"Light of a Clear Blue Morning\" made much of an impression on the pop charts.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "After New Harvest's disappointing crossover performance, Parton turned to high-profile pop producer Gary Klein for her next album. The result, 1977's Here You Come Again, became her first million-seller, topping the country album chart and reaching number 20 on the pop chart. The Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil-penned title track topped the country singles chart, and became Parton's first Top 10 single on the pop chart (no. 3). A second single, the double A-sided \"Two Doors Down\"/\"It's All Wrong, But It's All Right\" topped the country chart and crossed over to the pop Top 20. For the remainder of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, many of her subsequent singles moved up on both charts simultaneously. Her albums during this period were developed specifically for pop-crossover success.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1978, Parton won a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for her Here You Come Again album. She continued to have hits with \"Heartbreaker\" (1978), \"Baby I'm Burning\" (1979) and \"You're the Only One\" (1979) all of which charted in the pop Top 40 and topped the country chart. \"Sweet Summer Lovin'\" (1979) became the first Parton single in two years to not top the country chart (though it did reach the Top 10). During this period, her visibility continued to increase, with multiple television appearances. A highly publicized candid interview on a Barbara Walters Special in 1977 (timed to coincide with Here You Come Again's release) was followed by appearances in 1978 on Cher's ABC television special, and her own joint special with Carol Burnett on CBS, Dolly & Carol in Nashville.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Parton served as one of three co-hosts (along with Roy Clark and Glen Campbell) on the CBS special Fifty Years of Country Music. In 1979, Parton hosted the NBC special The Seventies: An Explosion of Country Music, performed live at the Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C., and whose audience included President Jimmy Carter. Her commercial success grew in 1980, with three consecutive country chart number-one hits: the Donna Summer-written \"Starting Over Again\", \"Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You\", and \"9 to 5\", which topped the country and pop charts in early 1981. She had another Top 10 single that year with \"Making Plans\", a single released from a 1980 album with Porter Wagoner, released as part of a lawsuit settlement between the pair.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The theme song to the 1980 feature film 9 to 5, in which she starred along with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, not only reached number one on the country chart – in February 1981 it reached number one on the pop and the adult-contemporary charts, giving her a triple number-one hit. Parton became one of the few female country singers to have a number-one single on the country and pop charts simultaneously. It also received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Her singles continued to appear consistently in the country Top 10. Between 1981 and 1985, she had twelve Top 10 hits; half of them hit number one. She continued to make inroads on the pop chart as well. A re-recorded version of \"I Will Always Love You\", from the feature film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) scraped the Top 50 that year and her duet with Kenny Rogers, \"Islands in the Stream\" (written by the Bee Gees and produced by Barry Gibb), spent two weeks at number one in 1983.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the mid-1980s, her record sales were still relatively strong, with \"Save the Last Dance for Me\", \"Tennessee Homesick Blues\", \"God Won't Get You\" (1984), \"Real Love\" (another duet with Kenny Rogers), \"Don't Call It Love\" (1985) and \"Think About Love\" (1986) all reaching the country Top 10 (\"Tennessee Homesick Blues\" and \"Think About Love\" reached number one; \"Real Love\" also reached number one on the country chart and became a modest crossover hit). However, RCA Records did not renew her contract after it expired in 1986, and she signed with Columbia Records in 1987.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Along with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, she released Trio (1987) to critical acclaim. The album revitalized Parton's music career, spending five weeks at number one on Billboard's Country Albums chart, and also reached the Top 10 on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart. It sold several million copies and produced four Top 10 country hits, including Phil Spector's \"To Know Him Is to Love Him\", which went to number one. Trio won the Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. After a further attempt at pop success with Rainbow (1987), including the single \"The River Unbroken\", it ended up a commercial let-down, causing Parton to focus on recording country material. White Limozeen (1989) produced two number one hits in \"Why'd You Come in Here Lookin' Like That\" and \"Yellow Roses\". Although Parton's career appeared to be revived, it was actually just a brief revival before contemporary country music came in the early 1990s and moved most veteran artists off the charts.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "A duet with Ricky Van Shelton, \"Rockin' Years\" (1991) reached number one, though Parton's greatest commercial fortune of the decade came when Whitney Houston recorded \"I Will Always Love You\" for the soundtrack of the feature film The Bodyguard (1992). Both the single and the album were massively successful. Parton's soundtrack album from the 1992 film, Straight Talk, however, was less successful. But her 1993 album Slow Dancing with the Moon won critical acclaim and did well on the charts, reaching number four on the country albums chart, and number 16 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It would also become Platinum certified. She recorded \"The Day I Fall in Love\" as a duet with James Ingram for the feature film Beethoven's 2nd (1993). The songwriters (Ingram, Carole Bayer Sager, and Clif Magness) were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Parton and Ingram performed the song at the awards telecast. Similar to her earlier collaborative album with Harris and Ronstadt, Parton released Honky Tonk Angels in the fall of 1993 with Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. It was certified as a gold album by the Recording Industry Association of America and helped revive both Wynette and Lynn's careers. Also in 1994, Parton contributed the song \"You Gotta Be My Baby\" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. A live acoustic album, Heartsongs: Live from Home, featuring stripped-down versions of some of her hits, as well as some traditional songs, was released in late 1994.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Parton's recorded music during the mid-to-late-1990s remained steady and somewhat eclectic. Her 1995 re-recording of \"I Will Always Love You\" (performed as a duet with Vince Gill), from her album Something Special won the Country Music Association's Vocal Event of the Year Award. The following year, Treasures, an album of covers of 1960s/70s hits was released, and featured a diverse collection of material, including songs by Mac Davis, Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson, Cat Stevens, and Neil Young. Her recording of Stevens' \"Peace Train\" was later re-mixed and released as a dance single, reaching Billboard's dance singles chart. Her 1998 country-rock album Hungry Again was made up entirely of her own compositions. Although neither of the album's two singles, \"(Why Don't More Women Sing) Honky Tonk Songs\" and \"Salt in my Tears\", charted, videos for both songs received significant airplay on CMT. A second and more contemporary collaboration with Harris and Ronstadt, Trio II, was released in early 1999. Its cover of Neil Young's song \"After the Gold Rush\" won a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. Parton also was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Parton recorded a series of bluegrass-inspired albums, beginning with The Grass Is Blue (1999), winning a Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album; and Little Sparrow (2001), with its cover of Collective Soul's \"Shine\" winning a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. The third, Halos & Horns (2002) included a bluegrass version of the Led Zeppelin song \"Stairway to Heaven\". In 2005, she released Those Were The Days consisting of her interpretations of hits from the folk-rock era of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including \"Imagine\", \"Where Do the Children Play?\", \"Crimson and Clover\", and \"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?\"",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Parton earned her second Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for \"Travelin' Thru\", which she wrote specifically for the feature film Transamerica. (2005) Due to the song's (and film's) acceptance of a transgender woman, Parton received death threats. She returned to number one on the country chart later in 2005 by lending her distinctive harmonies to the Brad Paisley ballad, \"When I Get Where I'm Going\". In September 2007, Parton released her first single from her own record company, Dolly Records, titled, \"Better Get to Livin'\", which eventually peaked at number 48 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. It was followed by the studio album Backwoods Barbie, which was released on February 26, 2008, and reached number two on the country chart. The album's debut at number 17 on the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart was the highest in her career. Backwoods Barbie produced four additional singles, including the title track, written as part of her score for 9 to 5: The Musical, an adaptation of her feature film. After the death of Michael Jackson, whom Parton knew personally, she released a video in which she somberly told of her feelings on Jackson and his death.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On October 27, 2009, Parton released a four-CD box set, Dolly, which featured 99 songs and spanned most of her career. She released her second live DVD and album, Live From London in October 2009, which was filmed during her sold-out 2008 concerts at London's The O2 Arena. On August 10, 2010, with longtime friend Billy Ray Cyrus, Parton released the album Brother Clyde. Parton is featured on \"The Right Time\", which she co-wrote with Cyrus and Morris Joseph Tancredi. On January 6, 2011, Parton announced that her new album would be titled Better Day. In February 2011, she announced that she would embark on the Better Day World Tour on July 17, 2011, with shows in northern Europe and the U.S. The album's lead-off single, \"Together You and I\", was released on May 23, 2011, and Better Day was released on June 28, 2011. In 2011, Parton voiced the character Dolly Gnome in the animated film Gnomeo & Juliet. On February 11, 2012, after the sudden death of Whitney Houston, Parton stated, \"Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston. I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.'\"",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 2013, Parton joined Lulu Roman for a re-recording of \"I Will Always Love You\" for Roman's album, At Last. In 2013, Parton and Kenny Rogers reunited for the title song of his album You Can't Make Old Friends. For their performance, they were nominated at the 2014 Grammy Awards for Grammy Award for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. In 2014, Parton embarked on the Blue Smoke World Tour in support of her 42nd studio album, Blue Smoke. The album was first released in Australia and New Zealand on January 31 to coincide with tour dates there in February, and reached the Top 10 in both countries. It was released in the United States on May 13, and debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 chart, making it her first Top 10 album and her highest-charting solo album ever; it also reached the number two on the U.S. country chart. The album was released in Europe on June 9, and reached number two on the UK album chart. On June 29, 2014, Parton performed for the first time at the UK Glastonbury Festival, singing songs such as \"Jolene\", \"9 to 5\" and \"Coat of Many Colors\" to a crowd of more than 180,000. On March 6, 2016, Parton announced that she would be embarking on a tour in support of her new album, Pure & Simple. The tour was one of Parton's biggest tours within the United States in more than 25 years. 64 dates were planned in the United States and Canada, visiting the most requested markets missed on previous tours.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In the fall of 2016 she released \"Jolene\" as a single with the a cappella group Pentatonix and performed on The Voice with Pentatonix and Miley Cyrus in November 2016. Also in 2016, Parton was one of thirty artists to perform on \"Forever Country\", a mash-up of the songs, \"Take Me Home, Country Roads\", \"On the Road Again\" and her own \"I Will Always Love You\". The song celebrates fifty years of the CMA Awards. At the ceremony itself, Parton was honored with the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented by Lily Tomlin and preceded by a tribute featuring Jennifer Nettles, Pentatonix, Reba McEntire, Kacey Musgraves, Carrie Underwood and Martina McBride. In 2017, Parton appeared on Rainbow, the third studio album by Kesha performing a duet of \"Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You\". The track had been co-written by Kesha's mother Pebe Sebert. It was previously a hit for Parton and was included on her 1980 album Dolly, Dolly, Dolly. She also co-wrote and provided featuring vocals on the song \"Rainbowland\" on Younger Now, the sixth album by her goddaughter Miley Cyrus.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In July 2019, Parton made an unannounced appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, and performed several songs accompanied by the Highwomen and Linda Perry. In 2020, Parton received worldwide attention after posting four pictures, in which she showed how she would present herself on social media platforms LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The original post on Instagram went viral after celebrities posted their own versions of the so-called Dolly Parton challenge on social media. On April 10, 2020, Parton re-released 93 songs from six of her classic albums: Little Sparrow, Halos & Horns, For God and Country, Better Day, Those Were The Days, and Live and Well. On May 27, 2020, Parton released a brand new song called \"When Life Is Good Again\". This song was released to help keep the spirits up of those affected by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. She also released a music video for \"When Life Is Good Again\", which premiered on Time 100 talks on May 28, 2020.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In October 2020, Parton was featured on the single \"Pink\" alongside Monica, Jordin Sparks, Sara Evans and Rita Wilson. The single was released in aid of Breast Cancer Research.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Parton released A Holly Dolly Christmas in October 2020. On December 6, CBS aired a Christmas special, \"A Holly Dolly Christmas\", where Parton performed songs from her album.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In early 2022, Parton was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Parton initially declined the nomination believing that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was \"for the people in rock music\", but after learning that this was not the case Parton said she would accept her induction if she were chosen for the honor. In May her induction was announced, and finally on November 5, 2022, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In October 2022 Parton stated in an interview that she would no longer tour, but would continue to play live shows occasionally. On December 31, 2022, Parton co-hosted NBC's New Year's special Miley's New Year's Eve Party.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "On January 17, 2023, Parton announced she would release her first rock album, titled Rockstar, later that year, during an interview on The View. It was released on November 17, 2023, and features collaborations with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Elton John, Sheryl Crow, Miley Cyrus, and Lizzo, amongst others.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The way I look and the way I looked then was a country girl's idea of glam, just like I wrote in my \"Backwoods Barbie\" song. People wanted me to change, they thought I looked cheap. But I patterned my look after the town tramp. Everybody said, \"She's trash.\" And in my little girl mind, I thought, \"Well, that's what I'm going to be when I grow up.\" It was really like a look I was after. I wasn't a natural beauty. So, I just like to look the way I look. I'm so outgoing inside in my personality, that I need the way I look to match all of that.",
"title": "Public image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Dolly Parton, 2022",
"title": "Public image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Parton had turned down several offers to pose nude for Playboy magazine, but did appear on the cover of the October 1978 issue wearing a Playboy bunny outfit, complete with ears (the issue featured Lawrence Grobel's extensive and candid interview with Parton, representing one of her earliest high-profile interviews with the mainstream press). The association of breasts with Parton's public image is illustrated in the naming of Dolly the sheep after her, since the sheep was cloned from a cell taken from an adult ewe's mammary gland. In Mobile, Alabama, the General W.K. Wilson Jr. Bridge is commonly called \"the Dolly Parton Bridge\" due to its arches resembling her bust. The thickened appearance of the turret frontal armor of the T-72A main battle tank led to the unofficial Army nickname \"Dolly Parton\" - and later the T-72BIs got the \"Super Dolly Parton\" nickname.",
"title": "Public image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Parton is known for having undergone considerable plastic surgery. On a 2003 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Winfrey asked what kind of cosmetic surgery Parton had undergone. Parton replied that cosmetic surgery was imperative in keeping with her famous image. Parton has repeatedly joked about her physical image and surgeries, saying, \"It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.\" Her breasts have garnered her mentions in several songs, including \"Dolly Parton's Hits\" by Bobby Braddock, \"Marty Feldman Eyes\" by Bruce Baum (a parody of \"Bette Davis Eyes\"), \"No Show Jones\" by George Jones and Merle Haggard, and \"Make Me Proud\" by Drake, featuring Nicki Minaj. When asked about future plastic surgeries, she famously said, \"If I see something sagging, bagging or dragging, I'll get it nipped, tucked or sucked.\" Parton's feminine escapism is acknowledged in her words, \"Womanhood was a difficult thing to get a grip on in those hills, unless you were a man.\" Parton said in 2012 that she had entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest and lost.",
"title": "Public image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Parton, though influenced by big name stars, often credits much of her inspiration to her family and community. On her own mother Parton, in her 2020 book Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, wrote \"So it was just natural for my mom to always be singing. My mother had that old-timey voice, and she used to sing all these songs that were brought over from the Old World. They were English, Irish, Welsh, folk songs where people tell stories.\" Parton calls her mother's voice \"haunting\". \"Lord you would feel it\", she wrote. Her biggest influence however was her Aunt Dorothy Jo: \"People often ask me who my influences were, they think I'm going to say some big names, and there were a few 'stars' I was impressed with. But my hero was my aunt Dorothy Jo. Mama's baby sister. She was not only an evangelist, she played banjo, she played guitar, and she wrote some great songs.\" Of course, fellow singers also had an impact on Parton, describing George Jones as her \"all time favorite singer\", and recognizing her love for other artists such as Kitty Wells, Roy Acuff, and Rose Maddox.",
"title": "Artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Though unable to read sheet music, Parton can play many instruments, including: the dulcimer, autoharp, banjo, guitar, electric guitar, fiddle, piano, recorder, and the saxophone. Reflecting on her multi-instrumental abilities, Parton said, \"I play some of everything. I ain't that good at none of it, but I try to sell it. I really try to lay into it.\" Parton has also used her fingernails as an instrument, most evident on her 1980 song \"9 to 5\", which she derived the beat for from clacking her nails together while backstage on the set of the film of the same name.",
"title": "Artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 1998, Nashville Business ranked her the wealthiest country music star. As of 2017, her net worth is estimated at $500 million.",
"title": "Other ventures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Parton is a prolific songwriter, having begun by writing country music songs with strong elements of folk music, based on her upbringing in humble mountain surroundings and reflecting her family's Christian background. Her songs \"Coat of Many Colors\", \"I Will Always Love You\", and \"Jolene\", among others, have become classics. On November 4, 2003, Parton was honored as a BMI Icon at the 2003 BMI Country Awards. Parton has earned over 35 BMI Pop and Country Awards. In 2001, she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In a 2009 interview on CNN's Larry King Live, she said she had written \"at least 3,000\" songs, having written seriously since the age of seven. Parton also said she writes something every day, be it a song or an idea.",
"title": "Other ventures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Parton's songwriting has been featured prominently in several films. In addition to the title song for 9 to 5, she also recorded a second version of \"I Will Always Love You\" for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). The second version was a number one country hit and also reached number 53 on the pop charts. \"I Will Always Love You\" has been covered by many country artists, including Ronstadt on Prisoner In Disguise (1975), Kenny Rogers on Vote for Love (1996), and LeAnn Rimes on Unchained Melody: The Early Years (1997). Whitney Houston performed it on The Bodyguard soundtrack and her version became the best-selling hit both written and performed by a female vocalist, with worldwide sales of over twelve million copies. In addition, the song has been translated into Italian and performed by the Welsh opera singer Katherine Jenkins.",
"title": "Other ventures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "As a songwriter, Parton has twice been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, for \"9 to 5\" and \"Travelin' Thru\" (2005) from the film Transamerica. \"Travelin' Thru\" won Best Original Song at the 2005 Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards. It was also nominated for both the 2005 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and the 2005 Broadcast Film Critics Association Award (also known as the Critics' Choice Awards) for Best Song. A cover of \"Love Is Like A Butterfly\" by Clare Torry was used as the theme music for the British TV show Butterflies.",
"title": "Other ventures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Parton wrote the score (and Patricia Resnick the book) for 9 to 5: The Musical, a musical-theater adaptation of Parton's feature film 9 to 5 (1980). The musical ran at the Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, in late 2008. It opened on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre in New York on April 30, 2009, to mixed reviews. The title track of her 2008 album Backwoods Barbie was written for the musical's character Doralee. Although her score (as well as the musical debut of actress Allison Janney) was praised, the show struggled, closing on September 6, 2009, after 24 previews and 148 performances. Parton received nominations for Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics as well as a nomination for Tony Award for Best Original Score. Developing the musical was not a quick process. According to the public-radio program Studio 360 (October 29, 2005), in October 2005 Parton was in the midst of composing songs for a Broadway musical theater adaptation of the film. In late June 2007, 9 to 5: The Musical was read for industry presentations. The readings starred Megan Hilty, Allison Janney, Stephanie J. Block, Bebe Neuwirth, and Marc Kudisch. Ambassador Theatre Group announced a 2012 UK tour for Dolly Parton's 9 to 5: The Musical, commencing at Manchester Opera House, on October 12, 2012.",
"title": "Other ventures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Parton invested much of her earnings into business ventures in her native East Tennessee, notably Pigeon Forge. She is a co-owner of The Dollywood Company, which operates the theme park Dollywood (a former Silver Dollar City), a dinner theater, Dolly Parton's Stampede, the waterpark Dollywood's Splash Country, and the Dream More Resort and Spa, all in Pigeon Forge. Dollywood is the 24th-most-popular theme park in the United States, with three million visitors per year. The Dolly Parton's Stampede business has venues in Branson, Missouri, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A former location in Orlando, Florida, closed in January 2008 after the land and building were sold to a developer. Starting in June 2011, the Myrtle Beach location became Pirates Voyage Fun, Feast and Adventure; Parton appeared for the opening, and the South Carolina General Assembly declared June 3, 2011, as Dolly Parton Day.",
"title": "Other ventures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On January 19, 2012, Parton's 66th birthday, Gaylord Opryland and Dollywood announced plans to open a $50 million water and snow park, a family-friendly destination in Nashville that is open all year. On September 29, 2012, Parton officially withdrew her support for the Nashville park due to the restructuring of Gaylord Entertainment Company after its merger with Marriott International. On June 12, 2015, it was announced that the Dollywood Company had purchased the Lumberjack Feud Dinner Show in Pigeon Forge. The show, which opened in June 2011, was owned and operated by Rob Scheer until the close of the 2015 season. The new, renovated show by the Dollywood Company opened in 2016.",
"title": "Other ventures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Parton was a co-owner of Sandollar Productions, with Sandy Gallin, her former manager. A film and television production company, it produced the documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989), which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; the television series Babes (1990–91) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003); and the feature films Father of the Bride (1991), Father of the Bride: Part II (1995) Straight Talk (1992) (in which Parton starred), and Sabrina (1995), among other shows. In a 2009 interview, singer Connie Francis revealed that Parton had been contacting her for years in an attempt to film the singer's life story. Francis turned down Parton's offers, as she was already in negotiations with singer Gloria Estefan to produce the film, a collaboration now ended. After the retirement of her partner, Sandy Gallin, Parton briefly operated Dolly Parton's Southern Light Productions and in 2015 she announced her new production company would be called Dixie Pixie Productions and produce the movies-of-week in development with NBC Television and Magnolia Hill Productions.",
"title": "Other ventures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In addition to her performing appearances on The Porter Wagoner Show in the 1960s and into the 1970s, her two self-titled television variety shows in the 1970s and 1980s, and on American Idol in 2008 and other guest appearances, Parton has had television roles. In 1979, she received an Emmy award nomination as \"Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Variety Program\" for her guest appearance in a Cher special. During the mid-1970s, Parton wanted to expand her audience base. Although her first attempt, the television variety show Dolly! (1976–77), had high ratings, it lasted only one season, with Parton requesting to be released from her contract because of the stress it was causing on her vocal cords. (She later tried a second television variety show, also titled Dolly (1987–88); it too lasted only one season).",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In her first feature film, Parton portrayed a secretary in a leading role with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in the comedy film 9 to 5 (1980). The movie highlights discrimination against women in the workplace and created awareness of the National Association of Working Women (9–5). She received nominations for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress. Parton wrote and recorded the film's title song. It received nominations for an Academy Award for Best Song and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. Released as a single, the song won both the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance and the Grammy Award for Best Country Song. It also reached no. 1 on the Hot 100 chart and it was no. 78 on the \"AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs\" list released by the American Film Institute in 2004. 9 to 5 became a major box office success, grossing over $3.9 million its opening weekend, and over $103 million worldwide. Parton was named Top Female Box Office Star by the Motion Picture Herald in both 1981 and 1982 due to the film's success.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In late 1981, Parton began filming her second film, the musical film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). The film earned her a second nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The film was greeted with positive critical reviews and became a commercial success, earning over $69 million worldwide. After a two-year hiatus from films, Parton was teamed with Sylvester Stallone for Rhinestone (1984). A comedy film about a country music star's efforts to mould an unknown into a music sensation, the film was a critical and financial failure, making just over $21 million on a $28 million budget.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In 1989, Parton returned to film acting in Steel Magnolias (1989), based on the play of the same name by Robert Harling. The film was popular with critics and audiences, grossing over $95 million in the U.S. Parton starred in the television movies A Smoky Mountain Christmas (1986), Wild Texas Wind (1991), Unlikely Angel (1996), portraying an angel sent back to earth after a deadly car crash, and Blue Valley Songbird (1999), where her character lives through her music. She starred with James Woods in Straight Talk (1992), which received mixed reviews, and grossed a mild $21 million at the box office.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Parton's 1987 variety show Dolly lasted only one season. She made a cameo appearance as herself in The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), an adaptation of the long-running TV sitcom of the same name (1962–1971). Parton has done voice work for animation for television series, playing herself in Alvin and the Chipmunks (episode \"Urban Chipmunk\", 1983) and the character Katrina Eloise \"Murph\" Murphy (Ms. Frizzle's first cousin) in The Magic School Bus (episode \"The Family Holiday Special\", 1994). She also has guest-starred in several sitcoms, including a 1990 episode of Designing Women (episode \"The First Day of the Last Decade of the Entire Twentieth Century\") as herself, the guardian movie star of Charlene's baby. She made a guest appearance on Reba (episode \"Reba's Rules of Real Estate\") portraying a real-estate agency owner and on The Simpsons (episode \"Sunday, Cruddy Sunday\", 1999). She appeared as herself in 2000 on the Halloween episode of Bette Midler's short-lived sitcom Bette, and on episode 14 of Babes (produced by Sandollar Productions, Parton and Sandy Gallin's joint production company). She made cameo appearances on the Disney Channel as \"Aunt Dolly\", visiting Hannah and her family in fellow Tennessean and real-life goddaughter Miley Cyrus's series Hannah Montana (episodes \"Good Golly, Miss Dolly\", 2006, \"I Will Always Loathe You\", 2007, and \"Kiss It All Goodbye\", 2010). She was nominated for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Parton appeared as an overprotective mother in the comedy Frank McKlusky, C.I.. (2002) She made a cameo appearance in the comedy film Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, starring Sandra Bullock. She was featured in The Book Lady (2008), a documentary about her campaign for children's literacy. Parton expected to reprise her television role as Hannah's godmother in the musical comedy film Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009), but the character was omitted from the screenplay.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Parton had a voice role in the comedy family film Gnomeo & Juliet (2011), a computer-animated film with garden gnomes about William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. She co-starred with Queen Latifah in the musical film Joyful Noise (2012), playing a choir director's widow who joins forces with Latifah's character, a mother of two teens, to save a small Georgia town's gospel choir.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors, a made-for-TV film based on Parton's song of the same name, and featuring narration by Parton, aired on NBC in December 2015, with child actress Alyvia Alyn Lind portraying the young Parton. Parton also had a cameo in the sequel, which aired in November 2016.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In June 2018, Parton announced an eight-part Netflix series, featuring her music career. She is its executive producer and co-star. The series, called Dolly Parton's Heartstrings, aired in November 2019.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Parton is the subject of the NPR podcast Dolly Parton's America. It is hosted by Jad Abumrad, who also hosts Radiolab.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In December 2019, the biographical documentary Here I Am was added to the catalog of the Netflix streaming service. The documentary, a co-production of Netflix and the BBC, takes its name from Parton's 1971 song.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In November 2020, Parton produced and starred in the Netflix musical film Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square, which won her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In November 2021, Parton was confirmed to be appearing in the final season of Grace and Frankie in a guest-starring role, reuniting with her 9 to 5 co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In July 2022, Parton appeared as a simulation of herself on sci-fi show The Orville in the episode \"Midnight Blue\".",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In December 2022, Parton appeared in an NBC special titled Dolly Parton's Mountain Magic Christmas.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "On Thanksgiving 2023, Parton performed songs during halftime at the Washington Commanders and Dallas Cowboys NFL football game.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Parton is the fourth of 12 children. Her siblings are Willadeene, David Wilburn, Coy Denver, Robert Lee, Stella Mae, Cassie Nan, Randel Huston (deceased), Larry Gerald (deceased), twins Floyd Estel (deceased) and Frieda Estelle, and Rachel Ann.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "On May 30, 1966, Parton and Carl Thomas Dean (born July 20, 1942, in Nashville, Tennessee) were married in Ringgold, Georgia. Although Parton does not use Dean's surname professionally, she has stated that her passport reads \"Dolly Parton Dean\", and she sometimes uses Dean when signing contracts. Dean, who is retired from running an asphalt road-paving business in Nashville, has always shunned publicity, and rarely accompanies his wife to any events. Parton has jokingly said that he has only seen her perform once. She also has said in interviews that even though it appears they spend little time together, it is simply that nobody sees him publicly. She has commented on Dean's romantic side, saying that he does spontaneous things to surprise her, and sometimes even writes poems for her. In 2011, Parton said, \"We're really very proud of our marriage. It's the first for both of us. And the last.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "On May 6, 2016, Parton announced that she and Dean would renew their vows in honor of their 50th wedding anniversary later in the month.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "While Parton has never had children, she and Dean helped raise several of her younger siblings in Nashville, leading her nieces and nephews to refer to them as \"Uncle Peepaw\" and \"Aunt Granny\"; the latter a moniker that later lent its name to one of Parton's Dollywood restaurants. Parton is also the godmother of singer-songwriter and actress Miley Cyrus.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Parton says that she is a committed Christian, which has influenced many of her musical releases.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Since the mid-1980s, Parton has supported many charitable efforts, particularly in the area of literacy, primarily through her Dollywood Foundation. Her literacy program, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which is a part of the Dollywood Foundation, was founded in honor of her father, who never learned to read or write. It mails one book per month to each enrolled child from the time of their birth until they enter kindergarten. Currently, over 1600 local communities provide the Imagination Library to almost 850,000 children each month across the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, and the Republic of Ireland. In February 2018, she donated her 100 millionth free book, a copy of Parton's children's picture book Coat of Many Colors, to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and was honored by the Library of Congress on account of the \"charity sending out its 100 millionth book\".",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "For her work in literacy, Parton has received various awards, including Association of American Publishers Honors Award (2000), Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval (2001) (the first time the seal had been awarded to a person), American Association of School Administrators – Galaxy Award (2002), National State Teachers of the Year – Chasing Rainbows Award (2002), and Parents as Teachers National Center – Child and Family Advocacy Award (2003).",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "On May 8, 2009, Parton gave the commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for the University of Tennessee, Knoxville's College of Arts and Sciences. During the ceremony, she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the university. It was only the second honorary degree given by the university, and in presenting the degree, the university's Chancellor, Jimmy Cheek, said, \"Because of her career not just as a musician and entertainer, but for her role as a cultural ambassador, philanthropist and lifelong advocate for education, it is fitting that she be honored with an honorary degree from the flagship educational institution of her home state.\"",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In 2006, Parton published a cookbook, Dolly's Dixie Fixin's: Love, Laughter and Lots of Good Food.",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The Dollywood Foundation, funded from Parton's profits, has been noted for bringing jobs and tax revenues to a previously depressed region. Parton also has worked to raise money for several other causes, including the American Red Cross and HIV/AIDS-related charities.",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In December 2006, Parton pledged $500,000 toward a proposed $90 million hospital and cancer center to be constructed in Sevierville in the name of Robert F. Thomas, the physician who delivered her. She announced a benefit concert to raise additional funds for the project. The concert played to about 8,000 people. That same year, Parton and Emmylou Harris allowed use of their music in a PETA ad campaign that encouraged pet owners to keep their dogs indoors rather than chained outside.",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In 2003, her efforts to preserve the bald eagle through the American Eagle Foundation's sanctuary at Dollywood earned her the Partnership Award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Parton received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution at a ceremony in Nashville on November 8, 2007.",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "In response to the 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires, Parton was one of a number of country music artists who participated in a telethon to raise money for victims of the fires. This was held in Nashville on December 9. In addition, Parton hosted her own telethon for the victims on December 13 and reportedly raised around $9 million. Her fund, the \"My People Fund\", provided $1,000 a month for six months to over 900 families affected by the wildfires, finally culminating with $5,000 to each home in the final month due to increased fundraising, for a total of $10,000 per family. In 2018, the FBI honored Parton for her wildfire aid work, awarding her the 2018 Director's Community Leadership Award at a ceremony at FBI Headquarters in Washington. The honor was bestowed by Director Christopher Wray and was accepted on the Parton's behalf by David Dotson, the CEO of the Dollywood Foundation.",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The impact of the fund's financial relief for the 2016 wildfire victims was studied by University of Tennessee College of Social Work professor Stacia West, who examined the impact of cash transfers in poverty alleviation. West surveyed 100 recipients of the emergency relief funds in April 2017 on topics including questions on housing, financial impact, physical and emotional health, and sources of support, with a follow-up survey conducted in December 2017. West found that the \"My People Fund\", in tandem with traditional disaster response, gave families the ability to make decisions that were most beneficial to them, and concluded that unconditional cash support may be more beneficial for disaster relief than conditional financial support. The report cited the impact of the monthly financial disbursements from the \"My People Fund\" on residents' emergency savings: \"Following the monthly disbursements of unconditional cash assistance, participants were able to return to baseline financial stability reported prior to the wildfire, and improve their ability to set aside savings for hypothetical future emergencies.\"",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Parton has been a generous donor to Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). Among her gifts was a contribution to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt Pediatric Cancer Program in honor of a friend, Professor Naji Abumrad, and her niece, Hannah Dennison, who was successfully treated for leukemia as a child at Children's Hospital.",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Though often politically neutral, Parton is known for her long history of openly supporting LGBTQ rights. LGBTQ+ magazines LGBTQ Nation and The Advocate have described her as an \"LGBTQ+ icon,\" and it was noted that she first publicly showed support for LGBTQ families in her 1991 song Family. She also publicly came out in support of same-sex marriage in 2009.",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Parton donated $1 million towards research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and encouraged those who can afford it to make similar donations. She said \"I'm a very proud girl today to know I had anything at all to do with something that's going to help us through this crazy pandemic.\" Her donation funded the critical early stages of development of the Moderna vaccine. In March 2021, Parton was vaccinated against COVID-19 at Vanderbilt University. She labeled social media accounts of the occasion \"Dolly gets a dose of her own medicine.\" Parton strongly encouraged everyone to get vaccinated when eligible and performed a song celebrating her vaccination, set to the tune of her song \"Jolene\". The song included the lines \"Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine/I'm begging of you please don't hesitate/Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine/'Cos once you're dead, then that's a bit too late.\"",
"title": "Philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Dolly Parton is one of the most-honored female country performers of all time. The Record Industry Association of America has certified 25 of her single or album releases as either Gold Record, Platinum Record or Multi-Platinum Record. She has had 26 songs reach no. 1 on the Billboard country charts, a record for a female artist. She has 42 career Top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, and 110 career-charted singles over the past forty years. As of 2012 she had written more than 3,000 songs and sold more than 100 million records, making her one of the best-selling female artists of all time. As of 2021, she had appeared on the country music charts in each of seven decades, the most of any artist.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Dolly Parton has earned eleven Grammy Awards (including her 2011 Lifetime Achievement Grammy) and a total of fifty Grammy Award nominations, the second-most nominations of any female artist in the history of the prestigious awards.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "At the American Music Awards, she has won three awards out of 18 nominations. At the Country Music Association, she has won ten awards out of 42 nominations. At the Academy of Country Music, she has won seven awards and 39 nominations. She is one of only six female artists (including Reba McEntire, Barbara Mandrell, Shania Twain, Loretta Lynn, and Taylor Swift), to win the Country Music Association's highest honor, Entertainer of the Year (1978). She also has been nominated for two Academy Awards and a Tony Award. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her appearance in a 1978 Cher television special. She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her music in 1984, located at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California; a star on the Nashville StarWalk for Grammy winners; and a bronze sculpture on the courthouse lawn in Sevierville. She has called that statue of herself in her hometown \"the greatest honor\", because it came from the people who knew her. Parton was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1969, and in 1986 was named one of Ms. Magazine's Women of the Year. In 1986, she was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In 1999, Parton received country music's highest honor, an induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. She received an honorary doctorate degree from Carson-Newman College (Jefferson City, Tennessee) in 1990. This was followed by induction into the National Academy of Popular Music/Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2002, she ranked no. 4 in CMT's 40 Greatest Women of Country Music.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Parton was honored in 2003 with a tribute album called Just Because I'm a Woman: Songs of Dolly Parton. The artists who recorded versions of Parton's songs included Melissa Etheridge (\"I Will Always Love You\"), Alison Krauss (\"9 to 5\"), Shania Twain (\"Coat of Many Colors\"), Meshell Ndegeocello (\"Two Doors Down\"), Norah Jones (\"The Grass is Blue\"), and Sinéad O'Connor (\"Dagger Through the Heart\"). Parton herself contributed a re-recording of the title song, originally the title song for her first RCA album in 1968. Parton was awarded the Living Legend Medal by the U.S. Library of Congress on April 14, 2004, for her contributions to the cultural heritage of the United States. She is also the focus of a Library of Congress collection exploring the influences of country music on her life and career. The collection contains images, articles, sheet music, and more.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In 2005, she was honored with the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given by the U.S. government for excellence in the arts. The award is presented by the U.S. President. On December 3, 2006, Parton received the Kennedy Center Honors from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for her lifetime of contributions to the arts. During the show, some of country music's biggest names came to show their admiration. Carrie Underwood performed \"Islands in the Stream\" with Rogers, Parton's original duet partner. Krauss performed \"Jolene\" and duetted \"Coat of Many Colors\" with Twain. McEntire and Reese Witherspoon also came to pay tribute. On November 16, 2010, Parton accepted the Liseberg Applause Award, the theme park industry's most prestigious honor, on behalf of Dollywood theme park during a ceremony held at IAAPA Attractions Expo 2010 in Orlando, Florida.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "In 2015, a newly discovered species of lichen found growing in the southern Appalachians was named Japewiella dollypartoniana in honor of Parton's music and her efforts to bring national and global attention to that region. In 2018, Parton received a second star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, inducted alongside Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris in recognition of their work as a trio. Parton was also recognized in the Guinness World Records 2018 Edition for holding records for the Most Decades with a Top 20 hit on Billboard's Hot Country Songs Chart and Most Hits on Billboard's Hot Country Songs Chart by a Female Artist. In 2020, Parton received a Grammy award for her collaboration with For King & Country on their song, \"God Only Knows\". In 2021, she was included on the Time 100, Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The New York Times called her among the three of America's Most Beloved Divas (alongside Patti LaBelle and Barbra Streisand).",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Parton has turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice due to her husband's illness and the ongoing pandemic. In response to a 2021 proposal by the Tennessee legislature to erect a statue of Parton, she released a statement asking the legislature to remove the bill from consideration, saying \"Given all that is going on in the world, I don't think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time.\"",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In late 2022, Parton received a $100-million Courage and Civility Award from the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. According to Bezos, the award was given to Parton because of her charity work focused on improving children's literacy around the world.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "In 2023, Parton was named an Honorary Member of the American Library Association. She was ranked at No. 27 on Rolling Stone′s 2023 list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "During her career, Parton has gained induction into numerous Halls of Fame. Those honors include:",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Solo studio albums",
"title": "Discography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Collaborative studio albums",
"title": "Discography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Theatrical releases",
"title": "Filmography"
}
]
| Dolly Rebecca Parton is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She is known for her decades-long career in country music. After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Parton made her album debut in 1967 with Hello, I'm Dolly, which led to success during the remainder of the 1960s, before her sales and chart peak came during the 1970s and continued into the 1980s. Some of Parton's albums in the 1990s did not sell as well, but she achieved commercial success again in the new millennium and has released albums on various independent labels since 2000, including her own label, Dolly Records. With a career spanning over fifty years, Parton has been described as a "country music legend" and has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling artists of all time. Parton's music includes Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)-certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards. She has had 25 singles reach no. 1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist. She has 44 career Top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, and she has 110 career-charted singles over the past 40 years. She has composed over 3,000 songs, including "I Will Always Love You", "Jolene", "Coat of Many Colors", and "9 to 5". As an actress, she has starred in films including 9 to 5 (1980) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), for which she earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress, and Rhinestone (1984), Steel Magnolias (1989), Straight Talk (1992) and Joyful Noise (2012). She has received 11 Grammy Awards out of 50 nominations, including the Lifetime Achievement Award; ten Country Music Association Awards, including Entertainer of the Year and is one of only seven female artists to win the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year Award; five Academy of Country Music Awards, also including Entertainer of the Year; four People's Choice Awards; and three American Music Awards. She is also in a select group to have received at least one nomination from the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Tony Awards, and Emmy Awards. In 1999, Parton was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received the National Medal of Arts and in 2022, she was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a nomination she had initially declined but ultimately accepted, and was subsequently inducted. Outside of her work in the music industry, she also co-owns The Dollywood Company, which manages a number of entertainment venues including the Dollywood theme park, the Splash Country water park, and a number of dinner theatre venues such as The Dolly Parton Stampede and Pirates Voyage. She has founded a number of charitable and philanthropic organizations, chief among them is the Dollywood Foundation, which manages a number of projects to bring education and poverty relief to East Tennessee where she grew up. | 2001-10-27T17:46:42Z | 2023-12-31T19:49:36Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_Parton |
8,717 | Diprotodon | Diprotodon (Ancient Greek: "two protruding front teeth") is an extinct genus of marsupial from the Pleistocene of Australia containing one species, D. optatum. The earliest finds date to 1.77 million to 780,000 years ago but most specimens are dated to after 110,000 years ago. Its remains were first unearthed in 1830 in Wellington Caves, New South Wales, and contemporaneous paleontologists guessed they belonged to rhinos, elephants, hippos or dugongs. Diprotodon was formally described by English naturalist Richard Owen in 1838, and was the first named Australian fossil mammal, and led Owen to become the foremost authority of his time on other marsupials and Australian megafauna, which were enigmatic to European science.
Diprotodon is the largest-known marsupial to have ever lived, it greatly exceeds the size of its closest living relatives wombats and koalas. It is a member of the extinct family Diprotodontidae, which includes other large quadrupedal herbivores. It grew as large as 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) at the shoulders, over 4 m (13 ft) from head to tail, and possibly weighed almost 3,500 kg (7,700 lb). Females were much smaller than males. Diprotodon supported itself on elephant-like legs to travel long distances, and inhabited most of Australia. The digits were weak; most of the weight was probably borne on the wrists and ankles. The hindpaws angled inward at 130°. Its jaws may have produced a strong bite force of 2,300 newtons (520 pounds-force) at the long and ever-growing incisor teeth, and over 11,000 newtons (2,500 lbf) at the last molar. Such powerful jaws would have allowed it to eat vegetation in bulk, crunching and grinding plant materials such as twigs, buds and leaves of woody plants with its bilophodont teeth.
It is the only marsupial and metatherian that is known to have made seasonal migrations. Large herds, usually of females, seem to have marched through a wide range of habitats to find food and water, walking at around 6 km/h (3.7 mph). Diprotodon may have formed polygynous societies, possibly using its powerful incisors to fight for mates or fend off predators, such as the largest-known marsupial carnivore Thylacoleo carnifex. Being a marsupial, the mother may have raised her joey in a pouch on her belly, probably with one of these facing backwards, as in wombats.
Diprotodon went extinct about 40,000 years ago during the Quaternary extinction event, along with every other Australian animal over 100 kg (220 lb); the extinction was possibly caused by extreme drought conditions and predation pressure from the first Aboriginal Australians, who had co-existed with the megafauna for about 10,000–20,000 years. There is little direct evidence of interactions between Aboriginal Australians and Diprotodon—or any Pleistocene mammalian megafauna. Diprotodon has been conjectured by some authors to have been the origin of some aboriginal mythological figures—most notably the bunyip—and aboriginal rock artworks but these ideas are unconfirmable.
In 1830, farmer George Ranken found a diverse fossil assemblage while exploring Wellington Caves, New South Wales, Australia. This was the first major site of extinct Australian megafauna. Remains of Diprotodon were excavated when Ranken later returned as part of a formal expedition that was headed by explorer Major Thomas Mitchell.
At the time these massive fossils were discovered, it was generally thought they were remains of rhinos, elephants, hippos. or dugongs. They fossils were not formally described until Mitchell took them in 1837 to his former colleague English naturalist Richard Owen while in England publishing his journal. In 1838, while studying a piece of a right mandible with an incisor, Owen compared the tooth to those of wombats and hippos; he wrote to Mitchell designating it as a new genus Diprotodon. Mitchell published the correspondence in his journal. Owen formally described Diprotodon in Volume 2 without mentioning a species; in Volume 1, however, he listed the name Diprotodon optatum, making that the type species. Diprotodon means "two protruding front teeth" in Ancient Greek and optatum is Latin for "desire" or "wish". It was the first-ever Australian fossil mammal to be described. In 1844, Owen replaced the name D. optatum with "D. australis". Owen only once used the name optatum and the acceptance of its apparent replacement "australis" has historically varied widely but optatum is now standard.
In 1843, Mitchell was sent more Diprotodon fossils from the recently settled Darling Downs and relayed them to Owen. Owen, having interpreted the incisors as tusks, as well as comparing the flattening (anteroposterior compression) of the femur to the condition in elephants and rhinos, and the raised ridges of the molar to the grinding surfaces of elephant teeth, believed Diprotodon was an elephant related to or synonymous with Mastodon or Deinotherium. Later that year, he formally synonymised Diprotodon with Deinotherium as Dinotherium Australe, which he recanted in 1844 after German naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt pointed out that the incisors clearly belong to a marsupial. Owen still classified the molars from Wellington as Mastodon australis and continued to describe Diprotodon as likely elephantine. In 1847, a nearly complete skull and skeleton was recovered from the Darling Downs, the latter confirming this characterisation. The massive skeleton attracted a large audience while on public display in Sydney. Leichhardt believed the animal was aquatic and in 1844, he said it might still be alive in an undiscovered tropical area nearer the interior but as the European land exploration of Australia progressed, he became certain it was extinct. Owen later become the foremost authority of Australian palaeontology of his time, mostly working with marsupials.
Huge assemblages of mostly complete Diprotodon fossils have been unearthed in dry lakes and riverbeds; the largest assemblage came from Lake Callabonna, South Australia. Fossils were first noticed here by an aboriginal stockman working on a sheep property to the east. The owners, the Ragless brothers, notified the South Australian Museum, which hired Australian geologist Henry Hurst, who reported an enormous wealth of fossil material and was paid £250 in 1893 to excavate the site. Hurst found up to 360 Diprotodon individuals over a few acres; excavation was restarted in the 1970s and more were uncovered. American palaeontologist Richard H. Tedford said multiple herds of these animals had at different times become stuck in mud while crossing bodies of water while water levels were low during dry seasons.
In addition to D. optatum, several other species were erected in the 19th century, often from single specimens, on the basis of subtle anatomical variations. Among the variations was size difference: adult Diprotodon specimens have two distinct size ranges. In their 1975 review of Australian fossil mammals, Australian palaeontologists J. A. Mahoney and William David Lindsay Ride did not ascribe this to sexual dimorphism because males and females of modern wombat and koala species—its closest living relatives—are skeletally indistinguishable, so they assumed the same would have been true for extinct relatives, including Diprotodon. These other species are:
In 2008, Australian palaeontologist Gilbert Price opted to recognise only one species D. optatum based most-notably on a lack of dental differences among these supposed species, and said it was likely Diprotodon was indeed sexually dimorphic, with the male probably being the larger form.
Diprotodon is a marsupial in the order Diprotodontia, suborder Vombatiformes (wombats and koalas), and infraorder Vombatomorphia (wombats and allies). It is unclear how different groups of vombatiformes are related to each other because the most-completely known members—living or extinct—are exceptionally derived (highly specialised forms that are quite different from their last common ancestor).
In 1872, American mammalogist Theodore Gill erected the superfamily Diprotodontoidea and family Diprotodontidae to house Diprotodon. New species were later added to both groups; by the 1960s, the first diprotodontoids dating to before the Pliocene were discovered, better clarifying their relationship to each other. Because of this, in 1967, American palaeontologist Ruben A. Stirton subdivided Diprotodontoidea into one family, Diprotodontidae, with four subfamilies; Diprotodontinae (containing Diprotodon among others), Nototheriinae, Zygomaturinae, and Palorchestinae. In 1977, Australian palaeontologist Michael Archer synonymised Nototheriinae with Diprotodontinae and in 1978, Archer and Australian palaeontologist Alan Bartholomai elevated Palorchestinae to family level as Palorchestidae, leaving Diprotodontoidea with families Diprotodontidae and Palorchestidae; and Diprotodontidae with subfamilies Diprotodontinae and Zygomaturinae.
Below is the Diprotodontoidea family tree according to Australian palaeontologists Karen H. Black and Brian Mackness, 1999 (top), and Vombatiformes family tree according to Beck et al. 2020 (bottom):
Diprotodontidae is the most diverse family in Vombatomorphia; it was better adapted to the spreading dry, open landscapes over the last tens of millions of years than other groups in the infraorder, living or extinct. Diprotodon has been found in every Australian state, making it the most-widespread Australian megafauna in the fossil record. The oldest vombatomorph (and vombatiform) is Mukupirna, which was identified in 2020 from Oligocene deposits of the South Australian Namba Formation dating to 26–25 million years ago. The group probably evolved much earlier; Mukupirna was already differentiated as a closer relative to wombats than other vombatiformes, and attained a massive size of roughly 150 kg (330 lb), whereas the last common ancestor of vombatiformes was probably a small, 1–5.5 kg (2.2–12.1 lb) creature.
Both diprotodontines and zygomaturines were both apparently quite diverse over the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene, roughly 23 million years ago, though the familial and subfamilial classifications of diprotodontoids from this period is debated. Compared to zygomaturines, diprotodontines were rare during the Miocene, the only identified genus being Pyramios. By the Late Miocene, diprotodontians became the commonest marsupial order in fossil sites, a dominance that endures to the present day; at this point, the most-prolific diprotodontians were diprotodontids and kangaroos. Diprotodontidae also began a gigantism trend, along with several other marsupials, probably in response to the lower-quality plant foods available in a drying climate, requiring them to consume much more. Gigantism appears to have evolved independently six times among the vombatiform lineages. Diprotodontine diversity returned in the Pliocene; Diprotodontidae reached peak diversity with seven genera, coinciding with the spread of open forests. In 1977, Archer said Diprotodon directly evolved from the smaller Euryzygoma, which has been discovered in Pliocene deposits of eastern Australia predating 2.5 million years ago.
In general, there is poor resolution on the ages of Australian fossil sites. While the geochronology of Diprotodon is one of best for Australian megafauna, it is still incomplete and the majority of remains are undated. Price and Australian palaeontologist Katarzyna Piper reported the earliest, indirectly dated Diprotodon fossils from the Nelson Bay Formation at Nelson Bay, New South Wales, which dates to 1.77 million to 780,000 years ago during the Early Pleistocene. These remains are 8–17% smaller than those of Late Pleistocene Diprotodon but are otherwise indistinguishable. The oldest directly dated Diprotodon fossils come from the Boney Bite site at Floraville, New South Wales; they were deposited approximately 340,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene based on U-series dating and luminescence dating of quartz and orthoclase. Floraville is the only-identified Middle Pleistocene site in tropical northern Australia. Beyond these, almost all dated Diprotodon material comes from Marine Isotope Stage 5 (MIS5) or younger—after 110,000 years ago during the Late Pleistocene.
Diprotodon has a long, narrow skull. Like other marsupials, the top of the skull of Diprotodon is flat or depressed over the small braincase and the sinuses of the frontal bone. Like many other giant vombatiformes, the frontal sinuses are extensive; in a specimen from Bacchus Marsh, they take up 2,675 cc (163.2 cu in)—roughly 25% of skull volume—whereas the brain occupies 477 cc (29.1 cu in)—only 4% of the skull volume. Marsupials tend to have smaller brain-to-body mass ratios than placental mammals, becoming more disparate the bigger the animal, which could be a response to a need to conserve energy because the brain is a calorically expensive organ, or is proportional to the maternal metabolic rate, which is much less in marsupials due to the shorter gestation period. The expanded sinuses increase the surface area available for the temporalis muscle to attach, which is important for biting and chewing, to compensate for a deflated braincase as a result of a proportionally smaller brain. They may also have helped dissipate stresses produced by biting more efficiently across the skull.
The occipital bone, the back of the skull, slopes forward at 45 degrees unlike most modern marsupials, where it is vertical. The base of the occipital is significantly thickened. The occipital condyles, a pair of bones that connect the skull with the vertebral column, are semi-circular and the bottom half is narrower than the top. The inner border, which forms the foramen magnum where the spinal cord feeds through, is thin and well-defined. The top margin of the foramen magnum is somewhat flattened rather than arched. The foramen expands backwards towards the inlet, especially vertically, and is more-reminiscent of a short neural canal—the tube running through a vertebral centrum where the spinal cord passes through—than a foramen magnum.
A sagittal crest extends across the midline of the skull from the supraoccipital—the top of the occipital bone—to the region between the eyes on the top of the head. The orbit (eye socket) is small and vertically oval-shaped. The nasal bones slightly curve upwards until near their endpoint, where they begin to curve down, giving the bones a somewhat S-shaped profile. Like many marsupials, most of the nasal septum is made of bone rather than cartilage. The nose would have been quite mobile. The height of the skull from the peak of the occipital bone to the end of the nasals is strikingly almost uniform; the end of the nasals is the tallest point. The zygomatic arch (cheek bone) is strong and deep as in kangaroos but unlike those of koalas and wombats, and extends all the way from the supraoccipital.
As in kangaroos and wombats, there is a gap between the jointing of the palate (roof of the mouth) and the maxilla (upper jaw) behind the last molar, which is filled by the medial pterygoid plate. This would have been the insertion for the medial pterygoid muscle that was involved in closing the jaw. Like many grazers, the masseter muscle, which is also responsible for closing the jaw, seems to have been the dominant jaw muscle. A probable large temporal muscle compared to the lateral pterygoid muscle may indicate, unlike in wombats, a limited range of side-to-side jaw motion means Diprotodon would have been better at crushing rather than grinding food. The insertion of the masseter is placed forwards, in front of the orbits, which could have allowed better control over the incisors. Diprotodon's chewing strategy appears to align more with kangaroos than wombats: a powerful vertical crunch was followed by a transverse grinding motion.
As in other marsupials, the ramus of the mandible, the portion that goes up to connect with the skull, angles inward. The condyloid process, which connects the jaw to the skull, is similar to that of a koala. The ramus is straight and extends almost vertically, thickening as it approaches the body of the mandible where the teeth are. The depth of the body of the mandible increases from the last molar to the first. The strong mandibular symphysis, which fuses the two halves of the mandible, begins at the front-most end of the third molar; this would prevent either half of the mandible from moving independently of the other, unlike in kangaroos which use this ability to better control their incisors.
The dental formula of Diprotodon is 3.0.1.41.0.1.4. In each half of either jaw are three incisors in the upper jaw and one in the lower jaw; there are one premolar and four molars in both jaws but no canines. A long diastema (gap) separates the incisors from the molars.
The incisors are scalpriform (chisel-like). Like those of wombats and rodents, the first incisors in both jaws continuously grew throughout the animal's life but the other two upper incisors did not. This combination is not seen in any living marsupial. The cross-section of the upper incisors is circular. In one old male specimen, the first upper incisor measures 280 mm (11 in) of which 220 mm (8.5 in) is within the tooth socket; the second is 100 mm (4 in) and 25 mm (1 in) is in the socket; and the exposed part of the third is 66 mm (2.6 in). The first incisor is convex and curves outwards but the other two are concave. The lower incisor has a faint upward curve but is otherwise straight and has an oval cross-section. In the same old male specimen, the lower incisor measures 250 mm (10 in), of which 2⁄3 is inside the socket.
The premolars and molars are bilophodont, each having two distinct lophs (ridges). The premolar is triangular and about half the size of the molars. As in kangaroos, the necks of the lophs are coated in cementum. Unlike in kangaroos, there is no connecting ridge between the lophs. The peaks of these lophs have a thick enamel coating that thins towards the base; this could wear away with use and expose the dentine layer, and beneath that osteodentine. Like the first premolar of other marsupials, the first molar of Diprotodon and wombats is the only tooth that is replaced.
Diprotodon had five cervical (neck) vertebrae. The atlas, the first cervical (C1), has a pair of deep cavities for insertion of the occipital condyles. The diaphophyses of the atlas, an upward-angled projection on either the side of the vertebra, are relatively short and thick, and resemble those of wombats and koalas. The articular surface of the axis (C2), the part that joints to another vertebra, is slightly concave on the front side and flat on the back side. As in kangaroos, the axis has a low subtriangular hypophysis projecting vertically from the underside of the vertebra and a proportionally long odontoid—a projection from the axis which fits into the atlas—but the neural spine, which projects vertically the topside of the vertebra, is more forwards. The remaining cervicals lack a hypophysis. As in kangaroos, C3 and C4 have a shorter and more-compressed neural spine, which is supported by a low ridge along its midline in the front and the back. The neural spine of C5 is narrower but thicker, and is supported by stronger-but-shorter ridges.
Diprotodon probably had 13 dorsal vertebrae and 14 pairs of closely spaced ribs. Like many other mammals, the dorsals initially decrease in breadth and then expand before connecting to the lumbar vertebrae. Unusually, the front dorsals match the short proportions of the cervicals, and the articular surface is flat. At the beginning of the series, the neural spine is broad and angled forward, and is also supported by a low ridge along its midline in the front and the back. In later examples, the neural spine is angled backwards and bifurcates (splits into two). Among mammals, bifurcation of the neural spine is only seen in elephants and humans, and only in a few of the cervicals and not in the dorsals. Compared to those of wombats and kangaroos, the neural arch is proportionally taller. As in elephants, the epiphysial plates (growth plates) and the neural arch, to which the neural spine is attached, are anchylosed—very rigid in regard to the vertebral centrum—which served to support the animal's immense weight.
Like most marsupials, Diprotodon likely had six lumbar vertebrae. They retain a proportionally tall neural arch but not the diapophyses, though L1 can retain a small protuberance on one side where a diapophysis would be in a dorsal vertebra; this has been documented in kangaroos and other mammals. The length of each vertebra increases along the series so the lumbar series may have bent downward.
Like other marsupials, Diprotodon had two sacral vertebrae. The base of the neural spines of these two were ossified (fused) together.
The general proportions of the scapula (shoulder blade) align more closely with more-basal vertebrates such as monotremes, birds, reptiles, and fish rather than marsupials and placental mammals. It is triangular and proportionally narrow but unlike most mammals with a triangular scapula, the arm attaches to top of the scapula and the subspinous fossa (the fossa, a depression below the spine of the scapula, increases towards the arm joint rather than decreasing. The glenoid cavity where the arm connects is oval shaped as in most mammals.
Unlike other marsupials, the ilia, the large wings of the pelvis, are lamelliform (short and broad, with a flat surface instead of an iliac fossa). Lamelliform ilia have only been recorded in elephants, sloths, and apes, though these groups all have a much-longer sacral vertebra series whereas marsupials are restricted to two sacral vertebrae. The ilia provided strong muscle attachments that were probably oriented and used much the same as those in an elephant. The sacroiliac joint where the pelvis connects to the spine is at 35 degrees in reference to the long axis of the ilium. The ischia, which form part of the hip socket, are thick and rounded tailwards but taper and diverge towards the socket, unlike those in kangaroos, where the ischia proceed almost parallel to each other. They were not connected to the vertebra. The hip socket itself is well-rounded and almost hemispherical.
Unlike those of most marsupials, the humerus of Diprotodon is almost straight rather than S-shaped, and the trochlea of the humerus at the elbow joint is not perforated. The ridges for muscle attachments are poorly developed, which seems to have been compensated for by the powerful forearms. Similarly, the condyles where the radius and ulna (the forearm bones) connect maintain their rounded shape and are quite-similarly sized, and unusually reminiscent of the condyles between the femur and the tibia and fibula in the leg of a kangaroo.
Like elephants, the femur of Diprotodon is straight and compressed anteroposteriorly (from headside to tailside). The walls of the femur are prodigiously thickened, strongly constricting the medullary cavity where the bone marrow is located. The proximal end (part closest to the hip joint) is notably long, broad, and deep. The femoral head projects up far from the greater trochanter. As in kangaroos, the greater trochanter is split into two lobes. The femoral neck is roughly the same diameter as the femoral head. Also as in kangaroos, the condyle for the fibula is excavated out but the condyle for the tibia is well-rounded and hemispherical. Like those of many other marsupials, the tibia is twisted and the tibial malleolus (on the ankle) is reduced.
Diprotodon has five digits on either paw. Like other plantigrade walkers, where the paws were flat on the ground, the wrist and ankle would have been largely rigid and inflexible. The digits are proportionally weak so the paws probably had a lot of padding. Similarly, the digits do not seem to have been much engaged in weight bearing.
The forepaw was strong and the shape of the wrist bones is quite similar to those of kangaroos. Like other vombatiformes, the metacarpals, which connect the fingers to the wrist, are broadly similar to those of kangaroos and allies. The enlarged pisiform bone takes up half the jointing surface of the ulna. The fifth digit on the forepaw is the largest.
The digits of the hindpaws turn inwards from the ankle at 130 degrees. The second and third metatarsals (the metatarsals connect the toes to the ankle) are significantly reduced, which may mean these digits were syndactylous (fused) like those of all modern diprotodontians. The first, fourth, and fifth digits are enlarged. The toes are each about the same length, except the fifth which is much stouter.
Diprotodon is the largest-known marsupial to ever have lived. In life, adult Diprotodon could have reached 160–180 cm (5 ft 3 in – 5 ft 11 in) at the shoulders and 275–340 cm (9–11 ft) from head to tail. Accounting for cartilaginous intervertebral discs, Diprotodon may have been 20% longer than reconstructed skeletons, exceeding 400 cm (13 ft 1 in).
As researchers were formulating predictive body-mass equations for fossil species, efforts were largely constrained to eutherian mammals rather than marsupials. The first person to attempt to estimate the living weight of Diprotodon was Peter Murray in his 1991 review of the megafauna of Pleistocene Australia; Murray made an estimate of 1,150 kg (2,540 lb) using cranial and dental measurements, which he said was probably not a very precise figure. This made Diprotodon the largest herbivore in Australia. In 2001, Canadian biologist Gary Burness and colleagues did a linear regression between the largest herbivores and carnivores—living or extinct—from every continent (for Australia: Diprotodon, Varanus priscus, and Thylacoleo carnifex) against the landmass area of their continent, and another regression between the daily food intake of living creatures against the landmass of their continents. He calculated the food requirement of Diprotodon was 50–60% smaller than expected for Australia's landmass, which he believed was a result of a generally lower metabolism in marsupials compared to placentals—up to 20% lower—and sparser nutritious vegetation than other continents. The maximum-attainable body size is capped much lower than those for other continents.
In 2003, Australian palaeontologist Stephen Wroe and colleagues took a more-sophisticated approach to body mass than Murray's estimate. They made a regression between the minimum circumference of the femora and humeri of 18 quadrupedal marsupials and 32 placentals against body mass, and then inputted 17 Diprotodon long bones into their predictive model. The results ranged from 2,272–3,417 kg (5,009–7,533 lb), for a mean of 2,786 kg (6,142 lb), though Wroe said reconstructing the weight of extinct creatures that far outweighed living counterparts is problematic. For comparison, an American bison they used in their study weighed 1,179 kg (2,599 lb) and a hippo weighed 1,950 kg (4,300 lb).
Like modern megaherbivores, most evidently the African elephant, Pleistocene Australian megafauna likely had a profound effect on the vegetation, limiting the spread of forest cover and woody plants. Carbon isotope analysis suggests Diprotodon fed on a broad range of foods and, like kangaroos, was consuming both C3—well-watered trees, shrubs, and grasses—and C4 plants—arid grasses. Carbon isotope analyses on Diprotodon excavated from the Cuddie Springs site in units SU6 (possibly 45,000 years old) and SU9 (350,000 to 570,000 years old) indicate Diprotodon adopted a somewhat-more-varied seasonal diet as Australia's climate dried but any change was subtle. In contrast, contemporary kangaroos and wombats underwent major dietary shifts or specialisations towards, respectively, C3 and C4 plants. The fossilised, incompletely digested gut contents of one 53,000-year-old individual from Lake Callabonna show its last meal consisted of young leaves, stalks, and twigs.
The molars of Diprotodon are a simple bilophodont shape. Kangaroos use their bilophodont teeth to grind tender, low-fibre plants as a browser as well as grass as a grazer. Kangaroos that predominantly graze have specialised molars to resist the abrasiveness of grass but such adaptations are not exhibited in Diprotodon, which may have had a mixed diet similar to that of a browsing wallaby. It may also have chewed like wallabies, beginning with a vertical crunch before grinding transversely, as opposed to wombats, which only grind transversely. Similarly to many large ungulates (hoofed mammals), the jaws of Diprotodon were better suited for crushing rather than grinding, which would have permitted it to process vegetation in bulk.
In 2016, Australian biologists Alana Sharpe and Thomas Rich estimated the maximum-possible bite force of Diprotodon using finite element analysis. They calculated 2,374 N (534 lbf) at the incisors and 4,118 to 11,134 N (926 to 2,503 lbf) across the molar series. For reference, the American alligator can produce forces upwards of 9,500 N (2,100 lbf). Though these are likely overestimates, the jaws of Diprotodon were exceptionally strong, which would have allowed it to consume a broad range of plants, including tough, fibrous grasses.
In 2017, by measuring the strontium isotope ratio (Sr/Sr) at various points along the Diprotodon incisor QMF3452 from the Darling Downs, and matching those ratios to the ratios of sites across that region, Price and colleagues determined Diprotodon made seasonal migrations, probably in search of food or watering holes. This individual appears to have been following the Condamine River and, while apparently keeping to the Darling Downs during the three years this tooth had been growing, it would have been annually making a 200 km (120 mi) northwest-southeast round trip. This trek parallels the mammalian mass migrations of modern-day East Africa.
Diprotodon is the only identified metatherian that seasonally migrated between two places. A few modern marsupials, such as the red kangaroo, have been documented making migrations when necessary but it is not a seasonal occurrence. Because Diprotodon could do it, it is likely other Pleistocene Australian megafauna also had seasonal migrations.
Diprotodon apparently moved in large herds. Possible fossilised herds, which are most-commonly unearthed in south-eastern Australia, seem to be mostly or entirely female, and sometimes travelled with juveniles. Such sexual segregation is normally seen in polygynous species; it is a common social organisation among modern megaherbivores involving an entirely female herd save for their young and the dominant male, with which the herd exclusinvely breeds. Similarly, the skull is adapted to handling much-higher stresses than that which resulted from bite alone so Diprotodon may have subjected its teeth or jaws to more-strenuous activities than chewing, such as fighting other Diprotodon for mates or fending off predators, using the incisors. Like modern red and grey kangaroos, which also sexually segregate, bachelor herds of Diprotodon seem to have been less tolerant to drought conditions than female herds due to their larger size and nutritional requirements.
The locomotion of an extinct animal can be inferred using fossil trackways, which seldom preserve in Australia over the Cenozoic. Only the trackways of humans, kangaroos, vombatids, Diprotodon, and the diprotodontid Euowenia have been identified. Diprotodon trackways have been found at Lake Callabonna and the Victorian Volcanic Plain grasslands. The diprotodontid manus (forepaw) print is semi-circular and the pes (hindpaw) is reniform (kidney-shaped). Owing to proportionally small digits, most of the weight was borne on the carpus and tarsus—the bones connecting to respectively the wrist and the ankle. Diprotodontines seem to have had a much-more-erect gait, an adaptation to long-distance travel that is similar to that of elephants, rather than the more-sprawling posture of wombats and zygomaturines, though there are no fossil trackways of the latter to verify their reconstructed standing posture.
At Lake Callabonna, the single Diprotodon responsible for the impressions had an average stride length of 1,500 mm (4 ft 11 in), trackway width of 430 mm (1 ft 5 in), and track dimensions 295 mm × 202 mm (11.6 in × 8.0 in) in length x width. The gleno-acetabular length—the distance between the shoulders and pelvis—could have been about 1,125 mm (3 ft 8 in); assuming a hip height of 900 mm (2 ft 11 in), the maker of these tracks was probably moving at around 6.3 km/h (3.9 mph).
The single Diprotodon responsible for the impressions at the volcanic plain had an average stride length of 1,310 mm (4 ft 4 in), trackway width of 660 mm (2 ft 2 in), and pes length of 450 mm (1 ft 6 in). The gleno-acetabular length may have been about 1,080 mm (3 ft 7 in) and assuming a hip height of 830 mm (2 ft 9 in), the maker of the tracks was probably moving at around 5.5 km/h (3.4 mph). Its posture was much-more-sprawled than the example from Callabonna, aligning more with what might be expected of Zygomaturus. The animal may have been a female carrying a large joey in her pouch, the added weight on the stomach altering the gait. The first trackway continues for 62.8 m (206 ft) in a south-easterly direction towards a palaeo-lake. The animal seems to have hesitated while stepping down from the first sand bar on its path with the right pes making three overlapping prints here while shuffling around. The trackway vanishes for a 20 m (66 ft) stretch and reappears while the animal seemingly is stepping on wet sediment. Another diprotodontid trackway appears 50 m (160 ft) away, moving southerly, which may have been left by the same individual.
The marsupial metabolic rate is about 30% lower than that of placentals due to a lower body temperature of 34 to 36 °C (93 to 97 °F). Marsupials give birth at an earlier point in foetal development, relying on lactation to facilitate most of the joey's development; because pregnancy is much-more-energetically expensive, investing in lactation rather than longer gestation can be advantageous in a highly seasonal and unpredictable climate to minimise maternal nutritional requirements. Consequently, marsupials cannot support as large a litter size or as short a generation time.
Based on the relationship between female body size and life history in kangaroos, a 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) Diprotodon female would have gestated for six-to-eight weeks, and given birth to a single 5 g (0.18 oz) joey. Given its massive size, Diprotodon may not have sat down to give birth as do smaller marsupials, possibly standing instead. Like koalas and wombats, the pouch may have faced backwards so the joey could crawl down across its mother's abdomen to enter and attach itself to a teat until it could see—perhaps 260 days—and thermoregulate. It would have permanently left the pouch after 860 days and suckled until reaching 270 kg (600 lb) after four or five years.
In large kangaroos, females usually reach sexual maturity and enter oestrus soon after weaning, and males need double the time to reach sexual maturity. A similar pattern could have been exhibited in Diprotodon. Assuming a lifespan of up to 50 years, a female Diprotodon could have given birth eight times.
Diprotodon was present across the entire Australian continent by the Late Pleistocene, especially following MIS5 approximately 110,000 years ago. The onset of the Quaternary glaciation, with the continuous advance and retreat of glaciers at the poles, created extreme climatic variability elsewhere. In Australia, the warmer, wetter interglacial periods were received by forests and woodlands; colder, dryer glacial periods were more conducive to grasslands and deserts. The continent progressively became dryer as the Asian monsoons became less influential over Australia: the vast interior had become arid and sandy by 500,000 years ago; the mega-lakes that were once prominent, especially during interglacials in north-western Australia, dried up; and the rainforests of eastern Australia gradually retreated. Aridity has hastened over the last 100,000 years, especially after 60,000 years ago with surging El Niño–Southern Oscillations.
The continent-wide distribution of Diprotodon indicates herds trekked across almost any habitat, much like modern African elephants south of the Sahara. Diprotodon was a member of a diverse assemblage of megafauna that were endemic to Pleistocene Australia; these also included the thylacine, modern kangaroos, sthenurines (giant short-faced kangaroos), a diversity of modern and giant koala and wombat species, the tapir-like Palorchestes, the giant turtle Meiolania, and the giant bird Genyornis. Diprotodon coexisted with the diprotodontid Zygomaturus trilobus, which appears to have remained in the forests, whereas Diprotodon foraged the expanding grasslands and woodlands. Other contemporaneous dipotodontids (Hulitherium, Z. nimborensia, and Maokopia) were insular forms that were restricted to the forests of New Guinea.
Due to its massive size, Diprotodon would have been a tough adversary for native carnivores. It contended with the largest-known marsupial predator Thylacoleo carnifex; while Diprotodon remains that were gnawed or bitten by T. carnifex have been identified, it is unclear if the 100–130 kg (220–290 lb) marsupial predator was powerful enough to kill an animal surpassing 2,000 kg (4,400 lb). The modern jaguar, at half the size of T. carnifex, can kill a 500 kg (1,100 lb) bull so it is possible T. carnifex could have killed small Diprotodon. Similar to recent kangaroos with thylacines or quolls, juvenile Diprotodon may have been at high risk of predation by T. carnifex; it and fossils of juvenile Diprotodon have been recovered from the same caves.
The largest predators of Australia were reptiles, most notably the saltwater crocodile, the now-extinct crocodiles Paludirex and Quinkana, and the giant lizard megalania (Varanus priscus). At 7 m (23 ft) in length, megalania was the largest carnivore of Pleistocene Australia.
As part of the Quaternary extinction event, Diprotodon and every other Australian land animal heavier than 100 kg (220 lb) became extinct. The timing and the exact cause are unclear because there is poor resolution on the ages of Australian fossil sites. Since their discovery, the extinction of the Australian megafauna has usually been blamed on the changing climate or overhunting by the first Aboriginal Australians. In 2001, Australian palaeontologist Richard Roberts and colleagues dated 28 major fossil sites across the continent, and were able to provide a precise date for megafaunal extinction. They found most disappear from the fossil record by 80,000 years ago but Diprotodon; the giant wombat Phascolonus; Thylacoleo; and the short-faced kangaroos Procoptodon, Protemnodon, and Simosthenurus was identified at Ned's Gully, Queensland, and Kudjal Yolgah Cave, Western Australia, which they dated to respectively 47,000 and 46,000 years ago. Thus, all of the Australian megafauna died out probably between about 50,000 and 41,000 years ago. There also seems to have been a diverse assemblage of megafauna just before their extinction, and all populations across at least western and eastern Australia died out at about the same time. As of 2021, there is still no solid evidence of megafauna surviving past approximately 40,000 years ago; their latest occurrence, including Diprotodon, is recorded at South Walker Creek mine in the north-east at about 40,100 ± 1,700 years ago.
At the time Roberts et al. published their paper, the earliest evidence of human activity in Australia was 56±4 thousand years old, which is close to their calculated date for the megafauna extinction; they hypothesised human hunting had eradicated the last megafauna within about 10,000 years of coexistence. Human hunting had earlier been blamed for the extinction of North American and New Zealand megafauna. Human activity was then generally regarded as the main driver of Australian megafaunal extinction, especially because the megafauna had survived multiple extreme drought periods during glacial periods. At the time, there did not seem to be any evidence of unusually extreme climate during this period. Due to the slowness of marsupial reproduction, even limited megafaunal hunting may have severely weakened the population.
In 2005, American geologist Gifford Miller noticed fire abruptly becomes more common about 45,000 years ago; he ascribed this increase to aboriginal fire-stick farmers, who would have regularly started controlled burns to clear highly productive forests and grasslands. Miller said this radically altered the vegetational landscape and promulgated the expanse of the modern-day fire-resilient scrub at the expense of the megafauna. Subsequent studies had difficulty firmly linking controlled burns with major ecological collapse. The frequency of fire could have also increased as a consequence of megafaunal extinction because total plant consumption rapidly fell, leading to faster fuel buildup.
In 2017, the human-occupied Madjedbebe rock shelter on the northern Australian coast was dated to about 65,000 years ago, which if correct would mean humans and megafauna had coexisted for over 20,000 years. Other authors have considered this dating questionable. In the 2010s, several ecological studies were published in support of major drought conditions coinciding with the final megafaunal extinctions. Their demise may have been the result of a combination of climatic change, human hunting, and human-driven landscape changes.
Despite the role the first Aboriginal Australians are speculated to have had in the extinction of Diprotodon and other mammalian megafauna in Australia, there is little evidence humans used them at all in the 20,000 years of coexistence. No fossils of mammalian megafauna suggestive of human butchery or cooking have been found.
In 1984, Gail Paton discovered an upper-right Diprotodon incisor (I) bearing 28 visible cut marks in Spring Creek, south-western Victoria; Ron Vanderwald and Richard Fullager studied the incisor, which was split in half longitudinally, seemingly while the bone was still fresh but it was glued together before Vanderwald and Fullager could inspect it. Each piece measures 40 cm (16 in) in length. The marks are aligned in a straight line, and measure 0.91–4.1 mm (0.036–0.161 in) in length, 0.14–0.8 mm (0.0055–0.0315 in) in width, and 0.02–0.24 mm (0.00079–0.00945 in) in depth. They determined it was inconsistent with bite marks from scavenging Thylacoleo or mice, and concluded it was incised by humans with flint as a counting system or a random doodle. This specimen became one of the most-cited pieces of evidence humans and megafauna directly interacted until a 2020 re-analysis by Australian palaeoanthropologist Michelle Langley identified the engraver as most-likely a tiger quoll.
In 2016, Australian archaeologist Giles Hamm and colleagues unearthed a partial right radius belonging to a young Diprotodon in the Warratyi rock shelter. Because it lacks carnivore damage and the rock shelter is up a sheer face Diprotodon is unlikely to have climbed, they said humans were responsible for taking the bone to the site.
When the first massive fossils in Australia were dug up, it was not clear what animals they might have represented because there were no serious scientists on the continent. Local residents guessed some may have been the remains of rhinos or elephants. European settlers, the most-vocal of whom was Reverend John Dunmore Lang, forwarded these fossils as evidence of the Genesis flood narrative. Aboriginal Australians also attempted to fit the finds into their own religious ideas, quickly associating Diprotodon with the bunyip, a large, carnivorous, lake monster. Many ethnologists and palaeontologists of the time believed the bunyip to be a tribal memory of the lumbering giant creature that probably frequented marshlands, though at the time it was uncertain whether Diprotodon and other megafauna were still extant because the Australian continent had not yet been fully explored by Europeans. Scientific investigation into the bunyip was stigmatised after a purported bunyip skull was sensationalised in 1846, and was put on display at the Australian Museum. The following year, however, Owen recognised it as the skull of a foal, and was surprised the burgeoning Australian scientific community could have erred so egregiously.
In 1892, Canadian geologist Henry Yorke Lyell Brown reported Aboriginal Australians identified Diprotodon fossils from Lake Eyre as those of the Rainbow Serpent, which he thought was a giant, bottom-dwelling fish. This notion became somewhat popularised after English geologist John Walter Gregory, who believed the god was a horned, scaly creature, conjectured it was a chimaera of Diprotodon—which he believed had a horn—and a crocodile. Later workers continued to report some link between the Rainbow Serpent and either Diprotodon or crocodiles.
These kinds of suppositions are not testable and require stories to survive in oral tradition for tens of thousands of years. If Pleistocene megafauna are the basis of some aboriginal mythology, it is unclear if the stories were based on the creatures when they were alive or their fossils being discovered long after their extinction.
Aboriginal Australians decorated caves with paintings and drawings of several creatures but the identities of the subjects are often unclear. In 1907, Australian anthropologist Herbert Basedow found footprint petroglyphs in Yunta Springs and Wilkindinna, South Australia, which he believed were those of Diprotodon. In 1988, Australian historian Percy Trezise presented what he thought was a Quinkan depiction of Diprotodon to the First Congress of the Australian Rock Art Research Association. Both of these claims have their faults because the depictions bear several features that are inconsistent with what is known about Diprotodon. Unlike the more-naturalistic artwork of Early European modern humans, which are more easily identifiable as various animals, aboriginal artwork is much more stylistic and is mostly uninterpretable by an outsider. The subjects of aboriginal paintings can be mythological beings from the Dreaming rather than a corporeal subject. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Diprotodon (Ancient Greek: \"two protruding front teeth\") is an extinct genus of marsupial from the Pleistocene of Australia containing one species, D. optatum. The earliest finds date to 1.77 million to 780,000 years ago but most specimens are dated to after 110,000 years ago. Its remains were first unearthed in 1830 in Wellington Caves, New South Wales, and contemporaneous paleontologists guessed they belonged to rhinos, elephants, hippos or dugongs. Diprotodon was formally described by English naturalist Richard Owen in 1838, and was the first named Australian fossil mammal, and led Owen to become the foremost authority of his time on other marsupials and Australian megafauna, which were enigmatic to European science.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Diprotodon is the largest-known marsupial to have ever lived, it greatly exceeds the size of its closest living relatives wombats and koalas. It is a member of the extinct family Diprotodontidae, which includes other large quadrupedal herbivores. It grew as large as 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) at the shoulders, over 4 m (13 ft) from head to tail, and possibly weighed almost 3,500 kg (7,700 lb). Females were much smaller than males. Diprotodon supported itself on elephant-like legs to travel long distances, and inhabited most of Australia. The digits were weak; most of the weight was probably borne on the wrists and ankles. The hindpaws angled inward at 130°. Its jaws may have produced a strong bite force of 2,300 newtons (520 pounds-force) at the long and ever-growing incisor teeth, and over 11,000 newtons (2,500 lbf) at the last molar. Such powerful jaws would have allowed it to eat vegetation in bulk, crunching and grinding plant materials such as twigs, buds and leaves of woody plants with its bilophodont teeth.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "It is the only marsupial and metatherian that is known to have made seasonal migrations. Large herds, usually of females, seem to have marched through a wide range of habitats to find food and water, walking at around 6 km/h (3.7 mph). Diprotodon may have formed polygynous societies, possibly using its powerful incisors to fight for mates or fend off predators, such as the largest-known marsupial carnivore Thylacoleo carnifex. Being a marsupial, the mother may have raised her joey in a pouch on her belly, probably with one of these facing backwards, as in wombats.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Diprotodon went extinct about 40,000 years ago during the Quaternary extinction event, along with every other Australian animal over 100 kg (220 lb); the extinction was possibly caused by extreme drought conditions and predation pressure from the first Aboriginal Australians, who had co-existed with the megafauna for about 10,000–20,000 years. There is little direct evidence of interactions between Aboriginal Australians and Diprotodon—or any Pleistocene mammalian megafauna. Diprotodon has been conjectured by some authors to have been the origin of some aboriginal mythological figures—most notably the bunyip—and aboriginal rock artworks but these ideas are unconfirmable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1830, farmer George Ranken found a diverse fossil assemblage while exploring Wellington Caves, New South Wales, Australia. This was the first major site of extinct Australian megafauna. Remains of Diprotodon were excavated when Ranken later returned as part of a formal expedition that was headed by explorer Major Thomas Mitchell.",
"title": "Research history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "At the time these massive fossils were discovered, it was generally thought they were remains of rhinos, elephants, hippos. or dugongs. They fossils were not formally described until Mitchell took them in 1837 to his former colleague English naturalist Richard Owen while in England publishing his journal. In 1838, while studying a piece of a right mandible with an incisor, Owen compared the tooth to those of wombats and hippos; he wrote to Mitchell designating it as a new genus Diprotodon. Mitchell published the correspondence in his journal. Owen formally described Diprotodon in Volume 2 without mentioning a species; in Volume 1, however, he listed the name Diprotodon optatum, making that the type species. Diprotodon means \"two protruding front teeth\" in Ancient Greek and optatum is Latin for \"desire\" or \"wish\". It was the first-ever Australian fossil mammal to be described. In 1844, Owen replaced the name D. optatum with \"D. australis\". Owen only once used the name optatum and the acceptance of its apparent replacement \"australis\" has historically varied widely but optatum is now standard.",
"title": "Research history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1843, Mitchell was sent more Diprotodon fossils from the recently settled Darling Downs and relayed them to Owen. Owen, having interpreted the incisors as tusks, as well as comparing the flattening (anteroposterior compression) of the femur to the condition in elephants and rhinos, and the raised ridges of the molar to the grinding surfaces of elephant teeth, believed Diprotodon was an elephant related to or synonymous with Mastodon or Deinotherium. Later that year, he formally synonymised Diprotodon with Deinotherium as Dinotherium Australe, which he recanted in 1844 after German naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt pointed out that the incisors clearly belong to a marsupial. Owen still classified the molars from Wellington as Mastodon australis and continued to describe Diprotodon as likely elephantine. In 1847, a nearly complete skull and skeleton was recovered from the Darling Downs, the latter confirming this characterisation. The massive skeleton attracted a large audience while on public display in Sydney. Leichhardt believed the animal was aquatic and in 1844, he said it might still be alive in an undiscovered tropical area nearer the interior but as the European land exploration of Australia progressed, he became certain it was extinct. Owen later become the foremost authority of Australian palaeontology of his time, mostly working with marsupials.",
"title": "Research history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Huge assemblages of mostly complete Diprotodon fossils have been unearthed in dry lakes and riverbeds; the largest assemblage came from Lake Callabonna, South Australia. Fossils were first noticed here by an aboriginal stockman working on a sheep property to the east. The owners, the Ragless brothers, notified the South Australian Museum, which hired Australian geologist Henry Hurst, who reported an enormous wealth of fossil material and was paid £250 in 1893 to excavate the site. Hurst found up to 360 Diprotodon individuals over a few acres; excavation was restarted in the 1970s and more were uncovered. American palaeontologist Richard H. Tedford said multiple herds of these animals had at different times become stuck in mud while crossing bodies of water while water levels were low during dry seasons.",
"title": "Research history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In addition to D. optatum, several other species were erected in the 19th century, often from single specimens, on the basis of subtle anatomical variations. Among the variations was size difference: adult Diprotodon specimens have two distinct size ranges. In their 1975 review of Australian fossil mammals, Australian palaeontologists J. A. Mahoney and William David Lindsay Ride did not ascribe this to sexual dimorphism because males and females of modern wombat and koala species—its closest living relatives—are skeletally indistinguishable, so they assumed the same would have been true for extinct relatives, including Diprotodon. These other species are:",
"title": "Research history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 2008, Australian palaeontologist Gilbert Price opted to recognise only one species D. optatum based most-notably on a lack of dental differences among these supposed species, and said it was likely Diprotodon was indeed sexually dimorphic, with the male probably being the larger form.",
"title": "Research history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Diprotodon is a marsupial in the order Diprotodontia, suborder Vombatiformes (wombats and koalas), and infraorder Vombatomorphia (wombats and allies). It is unclear how different groups of vombatiformes are related to each other because the most-completely known members—living or extinct—are exceptionally derived (highly specialised forms that are quite different from their last common ancestor).",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1872, American mammalogist Theodore Gill erected the superfamily Diprotodontoidea and family Diprotodontidae to house Diprotodon. New species were later added to both groups; by the 1960s, the first diprotodontoids dating to before the Pliocene were discovered, better clarifying their relationship to each other. Because of this, in 1967, American palaeontologist Ruben A. Stirton subdivided Diprotodontoidea into one family, Diprotodontidae, with four subfamilies; Diprotodontinae (containing Diprotodon among others), Nototheriinae, Zygomaturinae, and Palorchestinae. In 1977, Australian palaeontologist Michael Archer synonymised Nototheriinae with Diprotodontinae and in 1978, Archer and Australian palaeontologist Alan Bartholomai elevated Palorchestinae to family level as Palorchestidae, leaving Diprotodontoidea with families Diprotodontidae and Palorchestidae; and Diprotodontidae with subfamilies Diprotodontinae and Zygomaturinae.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Below is the Diprotodontoidea family tree according to Australian palaeontologists Karen H. Black and Brian Mackness, 1999 (top), and Vombatiformes family tree according to Beck et al. 2020 (bottom):",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Diprotodontidae is the most diverse family in Vombatomorphia; it was better adapted to the spreading dry, open landscapes over the last tens of millions of years than other groups in the infraorder, living or extinct. Diprotodon has been found in every Australian state, making it the most-widespread Australian megafauna in the fossil record. The oldest vombatomorph (and vombatiform) is Mukupirna, which was identified in 2020 from Oligocene deposits of the South Australian Namba Formation dating to 26–25 million years ago. The group probably evolved much earlier; Mukupirna was already differentiated as a closer relative to wombats than other vombatiformes, and attained a massive size of roughly 150 kg (330 lb), whereas the last common ancestor of vombatiformes was probably a small, 1–5.5 kg (2.2–12.1 lb) creature.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Both diprotodontines and zygomaturines were both apparently quite diverse over the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene, roughly 23 million years ago, though the familial and subfamilial classifications of diprotodontoids from this period is debated. Compared to zygomaturines, diprotodontines were rare during the Miocene, the only identified genus being Pyramios. By the Late Miocene, diprotodontians became the commonest marsupial order in fossil sites, a dominance that endures to the present day; at this point, the most-prolific diprotodontians were diprotodontids and kangaroos. Diprotodontidae also began a gigantism trend, along with several other marsupials, probably in response to the lower-quality plant foods available in a drying climate, requiring them to consume much more. Gigantism appears to have evolved independently six times among the vombatiform lineages. Diprotodontine diversity returned in the Pliocene; Diprotodontidae reached peak diversity with seven genera, coinciding with the spread of open forests. In 1977, Archer said Diprotodon directly evolved from the smaller Euryzygoma, which has been discovered in Pliocene deposits of eastern Australia predating 2.5 million years ago.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In general, there is poor resolution on the ages of Australian fossil sites. While the geochronology of Diprotodon is one of best for Australian megafauna, it is still incomplete and the majority of remains are undated. Price and Australian palaeontologist Katarzyna Piper reported the earliest, indirectly dated Diprotodon fossils from the Nelson Bay Formation at Nelson Bay, New South Wales, which dates to 1.77 million to 780,000 years ago during the Early Pleistocene. These remains are 8–17% smaller than those of Late Pleistocene Diprotodon but are otherwise indistinguishable. The oldest directly dated Diprotodon fossils come from the Boney Bite site at Floraville, New South Wales; they were deposited approximately 340,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene based on U-series dating and luminescence dating of quartz and orthoclase. Floraville is the only-identified Middle Pleistocene site in tropical northern Australia. Beyond these, almost all dated Diprotodon material comes from Marine Isotope Stage 5 (MIS5) or younger—after 110,000 years ago during the Late Pleistocene.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Diprotodon has a long, narrow skull. Like other marsupials, the top of the skull of Diprotodon is flat or depressed over the small braincase and the sinuses of the frontal bone. Like many other giant vombatiformes, the frontal sinuses are extensive; in a specimen from Bacchus Marsh, they take up 2,675 cc (163.2 cu in)—roughly 25% of skull volume—whereas the brain occupies 477 cc (29.1 cu in)—only 4% of the skull volume. Marsupials tend to have smaller brain-to-body mass ratios than placental mammals, becoming more disparate the bigger the animal, which could be a response to a need to conserve energy because the brain is a calorically expensive organ, or is proportional to the maternal metabolic rate, which is much less in marsupials due to the shorter gestation period. The expanded sinuses increase the surface area available for the temporalis muscle to attach, which is important for biting and chewing, to compensate for a deflated braincase as a result of a proportionally smaller brain. They may also have helped dissipate stresses produced by biting more efficiently across the skull.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The occipital bone, the back of the skull, slopes forward at 45 degrees unlike most modern marsupials, where it is vertical. The base of the occipital is significantly thickened. The occipital condyles, a pair of bones that connect the skull with the vertebral column, are semi-circular and the bottom half is narrower than the top. The inner border, which forms the foramen magnum where the spinal cord feeds through, is thin and well-defined. The top margin of the foramen magnum is somewhat flattened rather than arched. The foramen expands backwards towards the inlet, especially vertically, and is more-reminiscent of a short neural canal—the tube running through a vertebral centrum where the spinal cord passes through—than a foramen magnum.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "A sagittal crest extends across the midline of the skull from the supraoccipital—the top of the occipital bone—to the region between the eyes on the top of the head. The orbit (eye socket) is small and vertically oval-shaped. The nasal bones slightly curve upwards until near their endpoint, where they begin to curve down, giving the bones a somewhat S-shaped profile. Like many marsupials, most of the nasal septum is made of bone rather than cartilage. The nose would have been quite mobile. The height of the skull from the peak of the occipital bone to the end of the nasals is strikingly almost uniform; the end of the nasals is the tallest point. The zygomatic arch (cheek bone) is strong and deep as in kangaroos but unlike those of koalas and wombats, and extends all the way from the supraoccipital.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "As in kangaroos and wombats, there is a gap between the jointing of the palate (roof of the mouth) and the maxilla (upper jaw) behind the last molar, which is filled by the medial pterygoid plate. This would have been the insertion for the medial pterygoid muscle that was involved in closing the jaw. Like many grazers, the masseter muscle, which is also responsible for closing the jaw, seems to have been the dominant jaw muscle. A probable large temporal muscle compared to the lateral pterygoid muscle may indicate, unlike in wombats, a limited range of side-to-side jaw motion means Diprotodon would have been better at crushing rather than grinding food. The insertion of the masseter is placed forwards, in front of the orbits, which could have allowed better control over the incisors. Diprotodon's chewing strategy appears to align more with kangaroos than wombats: a powerful vertical crunch was followed by a transverse grinding motion.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "As in other marsupials, the ramus of the mandible, the portion that goes up to connect with the skull, angles inward. The condyloid process, which connects the jaw to the skull, is similar to that of a koala. The ramus is straight and extends almost vertically, thickening as it approaches the body of the mandible where the teeth are. The depth of the body of the mandible increases from the last molar to the first. The strong mandibular symphysis, which fuses the two halves of the mandible, begins at the front-most end of the third molar; this would prevent either half of the mandible from moving independently of the other, unlike in kangaroos which use this ability to better control their incisors.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The dental formula of Diprotodon is 3.0.1.41.0.1.4. In each half of either jaw are three incisors in the upper jaw and one in the lower jaw; there are one premolar and four molars in both jaws but no canines. A long diastema (gap) separates the incisors from the molars.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The incisors are scalpriform (chisel-like). Like those of wombats and rodents, the first incisors in both jaws continuously grew throughout the animal's life but the other two upper incisors did not. This combination is not seen in any living marsupial. The cross-section of the upper incisors is circular. In one old male specimen, the first upper incisor measures 280 mm (11 in) of which 220 mm (8.5 in) is within the tooth socket; the second is 100 mm (4 in) and 25 mm (1 in) is in the socket; and the exposed part of the third is 66 mm (2.6 in). The first incisor is convex and curves outwards but the other two are concave. The lower incisor has a faint upward curve but is otherwise straight and has an oval cross-section. In the same old male specimen, the lower incisor measures 250 mm (10 in), of which 2⁄3 is inside the socket.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The premolars and molars are bilophodont, each having two distinct lophs (ridges). The premolar is triangular and about half the size of the molars. As in kangaroos, the necks of the lophs are coated in cementum. Unlike in kangaroos, there is no connecting ridge between the lophs. The peaks of these lophs have a thick enamel coating that thins towards the base; this could wear away with use and expose the dentine layer, and beneath that osteodentine. Like the first premolar of other marsupials, the first molar of Diprotodon and wombats is the only tooth that is replaced.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Diprotodon had five cervical (neck) vertebrae. The atlas, the first cervical (C1), has a pair of deep cavities for insertion of the occipital condyles. The diaphophyses of the atlas, an upward-angled projection on either the side of the vertebra, are relatively short and thick, and resemble those of wombats and koalas. The articular surface of the axis (C2), the part that joints to another vertebra, is slightly concave on the front side and flat on the back side. As in kangaroos, the axis has a low subtriangular hypophysis projecting vertically from the underside of the vertebra and a proportionally long odontoid—a projection from the axis which fits into the atlas—but the neural spine, which projects vertically the topside of the vertebra, is more forwards. The remaining cervicals lack a hypophysis. As in kangaroos, C3 and C4 have a shorter and more-compressed neural spine, which is supported by a low ridge along its midline in the front and the back. The neural spine of C5 is narrower but thicker, and is supported by stronger-but-shorter ridges.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Diprotodon probably had 13 dorsal vertebrae and 14 pairs of closely spaced ribs. Like many other mammals, the dorsals initially decrease in breadth and then expand before connecting to the lumbar vertebrae. Unusually, the front dorsals match the short proportions of the cervicals, and the articular surface is flat. At the beginning of the series, the neural spine is broad and angled forward, and is also supported by a low ridge along its midline in the front and the back. In later examples, the neural spine is angled backwards and bifurcates (splits into two). Among mammals, bifurcation of the neural spine is only seen in elephants and humans, and only in a few of the cervicals and not in the dorsals. Compared to those of wombats and kangaroos, the neural arch is proportionally taller. As in elephants, the epiphysial plates (growth plates) and the neural arch, to which the neural spine is attached, are anchylosed—very rigid in regard to the vertebral centrum—which served to support the animal's immense weight.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Like most marsupials, Diprotodon likely had six lumbar vertebrae. They retain a proportionally tall neural arch but not the diapophyses, though L1 can retain a small protuberance on one side where a diapophysis would be in a dorsal vertebra; this has been documented in kangaroos and other mammals. The length of each vertebra increases along the series so the lumbar series may have bent downward.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Like other marsupials, Diprotodon had two sacral vertebrae. The base of the neural spines of these two were ossified (fused) together.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The general proportions of the scapula (shoulder blade) align more closely with more-basal vertebrates such as monotremes, birds, reptiles, and fish rather than marsupials and placental mammals. It is triangular and proportionally narrow but unlike most mammals with a triangular scapula, the arm attaches to top of the scapula and the subspinous fossa (the fossa, a depression below the spine of the scapula, increases towards the arm joint rather than decreasing. The glenoid cavity where the arm connects is oval shaped as in most mammals.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Unlike other marsupials, the ilia, the large wings of the pelvis, are lamelliform (short and broad, with a flat surface instead of an iliac fossa). Lamelliform ilia have only been recorded in elephants, sloths, and apes, though these groups all have a much-longer sacral vertebra series whereas marsupials are restricted to two sacral vertebrae. The ilia provided strong muscle attachments that were probably oriented and used much the same as those in an elephant. The sacroiliac joint where the pelvis connects to the spine is at 35 degrees in reference to the long axis of the ilium. The ischia, which form part of the hip socket, are thick and rounded tailwards but taper and diverge towards the socket, unlike those in kangaroos, where the ischia proceed almost parallel to each other. They were not connected to the vertebra. The hip socket itself is well-rounded and almost hemispherical.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Unlike those of most marsupials, the humerus of Diprotodon is almost straight rather than S-shaped, and the trochlea of the humerus at the elbow joint is not perforated. The ridges for muscle attachments are poorly developed, which seems to have been compensated for by the powerful forearms. Similarly, the condyles where the radius and ulna (the forearm bones) connect maintain their rounded shape and are quite-similarly sized, and unusually reminiscent of the condyles between the femur and the tibia and fibula in the leg of a kangaroo.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Like elephants, the femur of Diprotodon is straight and compressed anteroposteriorly (from headside to tailside). The walls of the femur are prodigiously thickened, strongly constricting the medullary cavity where the bone marrow is located. The proximal end (part closest to the hip joint) is notably long, broad, and deep. The femoral head projects up far from the greater trochanter. As in kangaroos, the greater trochanter is split into two lobes. The femoral neck is roughly the same diameter as the femoral head. Also as in kangaroos, the condyle for the fibula is excavated out but the condyle for the tibia is well-rounded and hemispherical. Like those of many other marsupials, the tibia is twisted and the tibial malleolus (on the ankle) is reduced.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Diprotodon has five digits on either paw. Like other plantigrade walkers, where the paws were flat on the ground, the wrist and ankle would have been largely rigid and inflexible. The digits are proportionally weak so the paws probably had a lot of padding. Similarly, the digits do not seem to have been much engaged in weight bearing.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The forepaw was strong and the shape of the wrist bones is quite similar to those of kangaroos. Like other vombatiformes, the metacarpals, which connect the fingers to the wrist, are broadly similar to those of kangaroos and allies. The enlarged pisiform bone takes up half the jointing surface of the ulna. The fifth digit on the forepaw is the largest.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The digits of the hindpaws turn inwards from the ankle at 130 degrees. The second and third metatarsals (the metatarsals connect the toes to the ankle) are significantly reduced, which may mean these digits were syndactylous (fused) like those of all modern diprotodontians. The first, fourth, and fifth digits are enlarged. The toes are each about the same length, except the fifth which is much stouter.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Diprotodon is the largest-known marsupial to ever have lived. In life, adult Diprotodon could have reached 160–180 cm (5 ft 3 in – 5 ft 11 in) at the shoulders and 275–340 cm (9–11 ft) from head to tail. Accounting for cartilaginous intervertebral discs, Diprotodon may have been 20% longer than reconstructed skeletons, exceeding 400 cm (13 ft 1 in).",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "As researchers were formulating predictive body-mass equations for fossil species, efforts were largely constrained to eutherian mammals rather than marsupials. The first person to attempt to estimate the living weight of Diprotodon was Peter Murray in his 1991 review of the megafauna of Pleistocene Australia; Murray made an estimate of 1,150 kg (2,540 lb) using cranial and dental measurements, which he said was probably not a very precise figure. This made Diprotodon the largest herbivore in Australia. In 2001, Canadian biologist Gary Burness and colleagues did a linear regression between the largest herbivores and carnivores—living or extinct—from every continent (for Australia: Diprotodon, Varanus priscus, and Thylacoleo carnifex) against the landmass area of their continent, and another regression between the daily food intake of living creatures against the landmass of their continents. He calculated the food requirement of Diprotodon was 50–60% smaller than expected for Australia's landmass, which he believed was a result of a generally lower metabolism in marsupials compared to placentals—up to 20% lower—and sparser nutritious vegetation than other continents. The maximum-attainable body size is capped much lower than those for other continents.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 2003, Australian palaeontologist Stephen Wroe and colleagues took a more-sophisticated approach to body mass than Murray's estimate. They made a regression between the minimum circumference of the femora and humeri of 18 quadrupedal marsupials and 32 placentals against body mass, and then inputted 17 Diprotodon long bones into their predictive model. The results ranged from 2,272–3,417 kg (5,009–7,533 lb), for a mean of 2,786 kg (6,142 lb), though Wroe said reconstructing the weight of extinct creatures that far outweighed living counterparts is problematic. For comparison, an American bison they used in their study weighed 1,179 kg (2,599 lb) and a hippo weighed 1,950 kg (4,300 lb).",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Like modern megaherbivores, most evidently the African elephant, Pleistocene Australian megafauna likely had a profound effect on the vegetation, limiting the spread of forest cover and woody plants. Carbon isotope analysis suggests Diprotodon fed on a broad range of foods and, like kangaroos, was consuming both C3—well-watered trees, shrubs, and grasses—and C4 plants—arid grasses. Carbon isotope analyses on Diprotodon excavated from the Cuddie Springs site in units SU6 (possibly 45,000 years old) and SU9 (350,000 to 570,000 years old) indicate Diprotodon adopted a somewhat-more-varied seasonal diet as Australia's climate dried but any change was subtle. In contrast, contemporary kangaroos and wombats underwent major dietary shifts or specialisations towards, respectively, C3 and C4 plants. The fossilised, incompletely digested gut contents of one 53,000-year-old individual from Lake Callabonna show its last meal consisted of young leaves, stalks, and twigs.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The molars of Diprotodon are a simple bilophodont shape. Kangaroos use their bilophodont teeth to grind tender, low-fibre plants as a browser as well as grass as a grazer. Kangaroos that predominantly graze have specialised molars to resist the abrasiveness of grass but such adaptations are not exhibited in Diprotodon, which may have had a mixed diet similar to that of a browsing wallaby. It may also have chewed like wallabies, beginning with a vertical crunch before grinding transversely, as opposed to wombats, which only grind transversely. Similarly to many large ungulates (hoofed mammals), the jaws of Diprotodon were better suited for crushing rather than grinding, which would have permitted it to process vegetation in bulk.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 2016, Australian biologists Alana Sharpe and Thomas Rich estimated the maximum-possible bite force of Diprotodon using finite element analysis. They calculated 2,374 N (534 lbf) at the incisors and 4,118 to 11,134 N (926 to 2,503 lbf) across the molar series. For reference, the American alligator can produce forces upwards of 9,500 N (2,100 lbf). Though these are likely overestimates, the jaws of Diprotodon were exceptionally strong, which would have allowed it to consume a broad range of plants, including tough, fibrous grasses.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 2017, by measuring the strontium isotope ratio (Sr/Sr) at various points along the Diprotodon incisor QMF3452 from the Darling Downs, and matching those ratios to the ratios of sites across that region, Price and colleagues determined Diprotodon made seasonal migrations, probably in search of food or watering holes. This individual appears to have been following the Condamine River and, while apparently keeping to the Darling Downs during the three years this tooth had been growing, it would have been annually making a 200 km (120 mi) northwest-southeast round trip. This trek parallels the mammalian mass migrations of modern-day East Africa.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Diprotodon is the only identified metatherian that seasonally migrated between two places. A few modern marsupials, such as the red kangaroo, have been documented making migrations when necessary but it is not a seasonal occurrence. Because Diprotodon could do it, it is likely other Pleistocene Australian megafauna also had seasonal migrations.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Diprotodon apparently moved in large herds. Possible fossilised herds, which are most-commonly unearthed in south-eastern Australia, seem to be mostly or entirely female, and sometimes travelled with juveniles. Such sexual segregation is normally seen in polygynous species; it is a common social organisation among modern megaherbivores involving an entirely female herd save for their young and the dominant male, with which the herd exclusinvely breeds. Similarly, the skull is adapted to handling much-higher stresses than that which resulted from bite alone so Diprotodon may have subjected its teeth or jaws to more-strenuous activities than chewing, such as fighting other Diprotodon for mates or fending off predators, using the incisors. Like modern red and grey kangaroos, which also sexually segregate, bachelor herds of Diprotodon seem to have been less tolerant to drought conditions than female herds due to their larger size and nutritional requirements.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The locomotion of an extinct animal can be inferred using fossil trackways, which seldom preserve in Australia over the Cenozoic. Only the trackways of humans, kangaroos, vombatids, Diprotodon, and the diprotodontid Euowenia have been identified. Diprotodon trackways have been found at Lake Callabonna and the Victorian Volcanic Plain grasslands. The diprotodontid manus (forepaw) print is semi-circular and the pes (hindpaw) is reniform (kidney-shaped). Owing to proportionally small digits, most of the weight was borne on the carpus and tarsus—the bones connecting to respectively the wrist and the ankle. Diprotodontines seem to have had a much-more-erect gait, an adaptation to long-distance travel that is similar to that of elephants, rather than the more-sprawling posture of wombats and zygomaturines, though there are no fossil trackways of the latter to verify their reconstructed standing posture.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "At Lake Callabonna, the single Diprotodon responsible for the impressions had an average stride length of 1,500 mm (4 ft 11 in), trackway width of 430 mm (1 ft 5 in), and track dimensions 295 mm × 202 mm (11.6 in × 8.0 in) in length x width. The gleno-acetabular length—the distance between the shoulders and pelvis—could have been about 1,125 mm (3 ft 8 in); assuming a hip height of 900 mm (2 ft 11 in), the maker of these tracks was probably moving at around 6.3 km/h (3.9 mph).",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The single Diprotodon responsible for the impressions at the volcanic plain had an average stride length of 1,310 mm (4 ft 4 in), trackway width of 660 mm (2 ft 2 in), and pes length of 450 mm (1 ft 6 in). The gleno-acetabular length may have been about 1,080 mm (3 ft 7 in) and assuming a hip height of 830 mm (2 ft 9 in), the maker of the tracks was probably moving at around 5.5 km/h (3.4 mph). Its posture was much-more-sprawled than the example from Callabonna, aligning more with what might be expected of Zygomaturus. The animal may have been a female carrying a large joey in her pouch, the added weight on the stomach altering the gait. The first trackway continues for 62.8 m (206 ft) in a south-easterly direction towards a palaeo-lake. The animal seems to have hesitated while stepping down from the first sand bar on its path with the right pes making three overlapping prints here while shuffling around. The trackway vanishes for a 20 m (66 ft) stretch and reappears while the animal seemingly is stepping on wet sediment. Another diprotodontid trackway appears 50 m (160 ft) away, moving southerly, which may have been left by the same individual.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The marsupial metabolic rate is about 30% lower than that of placentals due to a lower body temperature of 34 to 36 °C (93 to 97 °F). Marsupials give birth at an earlier point in foetal development, relying on lactation to facilitate most of the joey's development; because pregnancy is much-more-energetically expensive, investing in lactation rather than longer gestation can be advantageous in a highly seasonal and unpredictable climate to minimise maternal nutritional requirements. Consequently, marsupials cannot support as large a litter size or as short a generation time.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Based on the relationship between female body size and life history in kangaroos, a 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) Diprotodon female would have gestated for six-to-eight weeks, and given birth to a single 5 g (0.18 oz) joey. Given its massive size, Diprotodon may not have sat down to give birth as do smaller marsupials, possibly standing instead. Like koalas and wombats, the pouch may have faced backwards so the joey could crawl down across its mother's abdomen to enter and attach itself to a teat until it could see—perhaps 260 days—and thermoregulate. It would have permanently left the pouch after 860 days and suckled until reaching 270 kg (600 lb) after four or five years.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In large kangaroos, females usually reach sexual maturity and enter oestrus soon after weaning, and males need double the time to reach sexual maturity. A similar pattern could have been exhibited in Diprotodon. Assuming a lifespan of up to 50 years, a female Diprotodon could have given birth eight times.",
"title": "Paleobiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Diprotodon was present across the entire Australian continent by the Late Pleistocene, especially following MIS5 approximately 110,000 years ago. The onset of the Quaternary glaciation, with the continuous advance and retreat of glaciers at the poles, created extreme climatic variability elsewhere. In Australia, the warmer, wetter interglacial periods were received by forests and woodlands; colder, dryer glacial periods were more conducive to grasslands and deserts. The continent progressively became dryer as the Asian monsoons became less influential over Australia: the vast interior had become arid and sandy by 500,000 years ago; the mega-lakes that were once prominent, especially during interglacials in north-western Australia, dried up; and the rainforests of eastern Australia gradually retreated. Aridity has hastened over the last 100,000 years, especially after 60,000 years ago with surging El Niño–Southern Oscillations.",
"title": "Palaeoecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The continent-wide distribution of Diprotodon indicates herds trekked across almost any habitat, much like modern African elephants south of the Sahara. Diprotodon was a member of a diverse assemblage of megafauna that were endemic to Pleistocene Australia; these also included the thylacine, modern kangaroos, sthenurines (giant short-faced kangaroos), a diversity of modern and giant koala and wombat species, the tapir-like Palorchestes, the giant turtle Meiolania, and the giant bird Genyornis. Diprotodon coexisted with the diprotodontid Zygomaturus trilobus, which appears to have remained in the forests, whereas Diprotodon foraged the expanding grasslands and woodlands. Other contemporaneous dipotodontids (Hulitherium, Z. nimborensia, and Maokopia) were insular forms that were restricted to the forests of New Guinea.",
"title": "Palaeoecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Due to its massive size, Diprotodon would have been a tough adversary for native carnivores. It contended with the largest-known marsupial predator Thylacoleo carnifex; while Diprotodon remains that were gnawed or bitten by T. carnifex have been identified, it is unclear if the 100–130 kg (220–290 lb) marsupial predator was powerful enough to kill an animal surpassing 2,000 kg (4,400 lb). The modern jaguar, at half the size of T. carnifex, can kill a 500 kg (1,100 lb) bull so it is possible T. carnifex could have killed small Diprotodon. Similar to recent kangaroos with thylacines or quolls, juvenile Diprotodon may have been at high risk of predation by T. carnifex; it and fossils of juvenile Diprotodon have been recovered from the same caves.",
"title": "Palaeoecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The largest predators of Australia were reptiles, most notably the saltwater crocodile, the now-extinct crocodiles Paludirex and Quinkana, and the giant lizard megalania (Varanus priscus). At 7 m (23 ft) in length, megalania was the largest carnivore of Pleistocene Australia.",
"title": "Palaeoecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "As part of the Quaternary extinction event, Diprotodon and every other Australian land animal heavier than 100 kg (220 lb) became extinct. The timing and the exact cause are unclear because there is poor resolution on the ages of Australian fossil sites. Since their discovery, the extinction of the Australian megafauna has usually been blamed on the changing climate or overhunting by the first Aboriginal Australians. In 2001, Australian palaeontologist Richard Roberts and colleagues dated 28 major fossil sites across the continent, and were able to provide a precise date for megafaunal extinction. They found most disappear from the fossil record by 80,000 years ago but Diprotodon; the giant wombat Phascolonus; Thylacoleo; and the short-faced kangaroos Procoptodon, Protemnodon, and Simosthenurus was identified at Ned's Gully, Queensland, and Kudjal Yolgah Cave, Western Australia, which they dated to respectively 47,000 and 46,000 years ago. Thus, all of the Australian megafauna died out probably between about 50,000 and 41,000 years ago. There also seems to have been a diverse assemblage of megafauna just before their extinction, and all populations across at least western and eastern Australia died out at about the same time. As of 2021, there is still no solid evidence of megafauna surviving past approximately 40,000 years ago; their latest occurrence, including Diprotodon, is recorded at South Walker Creek mine in the north-east at about 40,100 ± 1,700 years ago.",
"title": "Palaeoecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "At the time Roberts et al. published their paper, the earliest evidence of human activity in Australia was 56±4 thousand years old, which is close to their calculated date for the megafauna extinction; they hypothesised human hunting had eradicated the last megafauna within about 10,000 years of coexistence. Human hunting had earlier been blamed for the extinction of North American and New Zealand megafauna. Human activity was then generally regarded as the main driver of Australian megafaunal extinction, especially because the megafauna had survived multiple extreme drought periods during glacial periods. At the time, there did not seem to be any evidence of unusually extreme climate during this period. Due to the slowness of marsupial reproduction, even limited megafaunal hunting may have severely weakened the population.",
"title": "Palaeoecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In 2005, American geologist Gifford Miller noticed fire abruptly becomes more common about 45,000 years ago; he ascribed this increase to aboriginal fire-stick farmers, who would have regularly started controlled burns to clear highly productive forests and grasslands. Miller said this radically altered the vegetational landscape and promulgated the expanse of the modern-day fire-resilient scrub at the expense of the megafauna. Subsequent studies had difficulty firmly linking controlled burns with major ecological collapse. The frequency of fire could have also increased as a consequence of megafaunal extinction because total plant consumption rapidly fell, leading to faster fuel buildup.",
"title": "Palaeoecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In 2017, the human-occupied Madjedbebe rock shelter on the northern Australian coast was dated to about 65,000 years ago, which if correct would mean humans and megafauna had coexisted for over 20,000 years. Other authors have considered this dating questionable. In the 2010s, several ecological studies were published in support of major drought conditions coinciding with the final megafaunal extinctions. Their demise may have been the result of a combination of climatic change, human hunting, and human-driven landscape changes.",
"title": "Palaeoecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Despite the role the first Aboriginal Australians are speculated to have had in the extinction of Diprotodon and other mammalian megafauna in Australia, there is little evidence humans used them at all in the 20,000 years of coexistence. No fossils of mammalian megafauna suggestive of human butchery or cooking have been found.",
"title": "Cultural significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In 1984, Gail Paton discovered an upper-right Diprotodon incisor (I) bearing 28 visible cut marks in Spring Creek, south-western Victoria; Ron Vanderwald and Richard Fullager studied the incisor, which was split in half longitudinally, seemingly while the bone was still fresh but it was glued together before Vanderwald and Fullager could inspect it. Each piece measures 40 cm (16 in) in length. The marks are aligned in a straight line, and measure 0.91–4.1 mm (0.036–0.161 in) in length, 0.14–0.8 mm (0.0055–0.0315 in) in width, and 0.02–0.24 mm (0.00079–0.00945 in) in depth. They determined it was inconsistent with bite marks from scavenging Thylacoleo or mice, and concluded it was incised by humans with flint as a counting system or a random doodle. This specimen became one of the most-cited pieces of evidence humans and megafauna directly interacted until a 2020 re-analysis by Australian palaeoanthropologist Michelle Langley identified the engraver as most-likely a tiger quoll.",
"title": "Cultural significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In 2016, Australian archaeologist Giles Hamm and colleagues unearthed a partial right radius belonging to a young Diprotodon in the Warratyi rock shelter. Because it lacks carnivore damage and the rock shelter is up a sheer face Diprotodon is unlikely to have climbed, they said humans were responsible for taking the bone to the site.",
"title": "Cultural significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "When the first massive fossils in Australia were dug up, it was not clear what animals they might have represented because there were no serious scientists on the continent. Local residents guessed some may have been the remains of rhinos or elephants. European settlers, the most-vocal of whom was Reverend John Dunmore Lang, forwarded these fossils as evidence of the Genesis flood narrative. Aboriginal Australians also attempted to fit the finds into their own religious ideas, quickly associating Diprotodon with the bunyip, a large, carnivorous, lake monster. Many ethnologists and palaeontologists of the time believed the bunyip to be a tribal memory of the lumbering giant creature that probably frequented marshlands, though at the time it was uncertain whether Diprotodon and other megafauna were still extant because the Australian continent had not yet been fully explored by Europeans. Scientific investigation into the bunyip was stigmatised after a purported bunyip skull was sensationalised in 1846, and was put on display at the Australian Museum. The following year, however, Owen recognised it as the skull of a foal, and was surprised the burgeoning Australian scientific community could have erred so egregiously.",
"title": "Cultural significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In 1892, Canadian geologist Henry Yorke Lyell Brown reported Aboriginal Australians identified Diprotodon fossils from Lake Eyre as those of the Rainbow Serpent, which he thought was a giant, bottom-dwelling fish. This notion became somewhat popularised after English geologist John Walter Gregory, who believed the god was a horned, scaly creature, conjectured it was a chimaera of Diprotodon—which he believed had a horn—and a crocodile. Later workers continued to report some link between the Rainbow Serpent and either Diprotodon or crocodiles.",
"title": "Cultural significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "These kinds of suppositions are not testable and require stories to survive in oral tradition for tens of thousands of years. If Pleistocene megafauna are the basis of some aboriginal mythology, it is unclear if the stories were based on the creatures when they were alive or their fossils being discovered long after their extinction.",
"title": "Cultural significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Aboriginal Australians decorated caves with paintings and drawings of several creatures but the identities of the subjects are often unclear. In 1907, Australian anthropologist Herbert Basedow found footprint petroglyphs in Yunta Springs and Wilkindinna, South Australia, which he believed were those of Diprotodon. In 1988, Australian historian Percy Trezise presented what he thought was a Quinkan depiction of Diprotodon to the First Congress of the Australian Rock Art Research Association. Both of these claims have their faults because the depictions bear several features that are inconsistent with what is known about Diprotodon. Unlike the more-naturalistic artwork of Early European modern humans, which are more easily identifiable as various animals, aboriginal artwork is much more stylistic and is mostly uninterpretable by an outsider. The subjects of aboriginal paintings can be mythological beings from the Dreaming rather than a corporeal subject.",
"title": "Cultural significance"
}
]
| Diprotodon is an extinct genus of marsupial from the Pleistocene of Australia containing one species, D. optatum. The earliest finds date to 1.77 million to 780,000 years ago but most specimens are dated to after 110,000 years ago. Its remains were first unearthed in 1830 in Wellington Caves, New South Wales, and contemporaneous paleontologists guessed they belonged to rhinos, elephants, hippos or dugongs. Diprotodon was formally described by English naturalist Richard Owen in 1838, and was the first named Australian fossil mammal, and led Owen to become the foremost authority of his time on other marsupials and Australian megafauna, which were enigmatic to European science. Diprotodon is the largest-known marsupial to have ever lived, it greatly exceeds the size of its closest living relatives wombats and koalas. It is a member of the extinct family Diprotodontidae, which includes other large quadrupedal herbivores. It grew as large as 1.8 m at the shoulders, over 4 m (13 ft) from head to tail, and possibly weighed almost 3,500 kg (7,700 lb). Females were much smaller than males. Diprotodon supported itself on elephant-like legs to travel long distances, and inhabited most of Australia. The digits were weak; most of the weight was probably borne on the wrists and ankles. The hindpaws angled inward at 130°. Its jaws may have produced a strong bite force of 2,300 newtons at the long and ever-growing incisor teeth, and over 11,000 newtons (2,500 lbf) at the last molar. Such powerful jaws would have allowed it to eat vegetation in bulk, crunching and grinding plant materials such as twigs, buds and leaves of woody plants with its bilophodont teeth. It is the only marsupial and metatherian that is known to have made seasonal migrations. Large herds, usually of females, seem to have marched through a wide range of habitats to find food and water, walking at around 6 km/h (3.7 mph). Diprotodon may have formed polygynous societies, possibly using its powerful incisors to fight for mates or fend off predators, such as the largest-known marsupial carnivore Thylacoleo carnifex. Being a marsupial, the mother may have raised her joey in a pouch on her belly, probably with one of these facing backwards, as in wombats. Diprotodon went extinct about 40,000 years ago during the Quaternary extinction event, along with every other Australian animal over 100 kg (220 lb); the extinction was possibly caused by extreme drought conditions and predation pressure from the first Aboriginal Australians, who had co-existed with the megafauna for about 10,000–20,000 years. There is little direct evidence of interactions between Aboriginal Australians and Diprotodon—or any Pleistocene mammalian megafauna. Diprotodon has been conjectured by some authors to have been the origin of some aboriginal mythological figures—most notably the bunyip—and aboriginal rock artworks but these ideas are unconfirmable. | 2001-10-27T20:37:55Z | 2023-12-14T00:16:17Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diprotodon |
8,718 | Dirk Benedict | Dirk Benedict (born Dirk Niewoehner; March 1, 1945) is an American film, television and stage actor, and author. He is best known for playing the characters Lieutenant Starbuck in the original Battlestar Galactica film and television series and Templeton "Faceman" Peck in The A-Team television series. He is the author of Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy and And Then We Went Fishing.
Benedict was born Dirk Niewoehner in Helena, Montana, the son of George Edward Niewoehner, a lawyer, and his wife Priscilla Mella (née Metzger), an accountant. He grew up in White Sulphur Springs, Montana. He graduated from Whitman College in 1967. Benedict allegedly chose his stage name from a serving of Eggs Benedict he had prior to his acting career. He is of German extraction.
Benedict's film debut was in the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia. When the New York run for Butterflies Are Free ended, he received an offer to repeat his performance in Hawaii, opposite Barbara Rush. While there, he appeared as a guest lead on Hawaii Five-O. The producers of a horror film called Sssssss (1973) saw Benedict's performance in Hawaii Five-O and promptly cast him as the lead in that movie. He next played the psychotic wife-beating husband of Twiggy in her American film debut, W (1974). Benedict starred in the television series Chopper One, which aired for one season in 1974. He made two appearances in Charlie's Angels. He also appeared on the Donny & Marie variety show.
Benedict's career break came in 1978 when he appeared as Lieutenant Starbuck in the movie and television series Battlestar Galactica. The same year Benedict starred in the TV film Cruise into Terror, and appeared in the ensemble movie Scavenger Hunt the following year.
In 1980, Benedict starred alongside Linda Blair in an action-comedy movie called Ruckus. In 1983, Dirk gained further popularity as con man Templeton "Faceman" Peck in 1980s action television series The A-Team. He played "Face" from 1982 (1982) to 1986 (1986), although the series didn't air until January 1983, and the final episode wasn't shown until 1987 rebroadcasts. The second season episode "Steel" includes a scene at Universal Studios where Face is seen looking bemused as a Cylon walks by him as an in-joke to his previous role in Battlestar Galactica. The clip is incorporated into the series' opening credit sequence from season 3 onward.
In 1986, Benedict starred as low-life band manager Harry Smilac in the movie Body Slam along with Lou Albano, Roddy Piper, and cameo appearances by Freddie Blassie, Ric Flair, and Bruno Sammartino. His character Smilac ends up managing the pro-wrestler "Quick Rick" Roberts (Piper) and faces opposition by Captain Lou and his wrestling tag-team "the Cannibals".
In 1987, Benedict took the title role of Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Abbey Theatre in Manhattan. Both his performance and the entire production were lambasted by critics. Benedict starred in the 1989 TV film Trenchcoat in Paradise.
In 1991, Benedict starred in Blue Tornado, playing Alex, call sign Fireball, an Italian Air Force fighter pilot. Benedict published an autobiography, Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy: A True Story of Discovery, Acting, Health, Illness, Recovery, and Life (Avery Publishing ISBN 0895294796). In 1993, Benedict starred in Shadow Force.
Benedict also appeared as Jake Barnes in the 1996 action-adventure film Alaska.
In 2000, Benedict wrote and directed his first screenplay, Cahoots. Benedict appeared in the 2006 German film Goldene Zeiten ("Golden Times") in a dual role, playing an American former TV star as well as a German lookalike who impersonates him.
In 2006, he wrote an online essay criticizing the then-airing Battlestar Galactica re-imagined series and, especially, its casting of a woman as his character, Starbuck, writing that "the war against masculinity has been won" and that "a television show based on hope, spiritual faith, and family is unimagined and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction".
He appeared as a contestant on the 2007 UK series of Celebrity Big Brother 5, which he placed 3rd. He arrived on launch night in a replica of the A-Team van, smoking a cigar and accompanied by the A-Team theme tune.
In 2010, Benedict starred in a stage production of Prescription: Murder playing Lieutenant Columbo for the Middle Ground Theatre Company in the UK. Benedict also made a cameo appearance in the 2010 film adaptation of The A-Team as Pensacola Prisoner Milt.
In 2019, Benedict took on the role of Jack Strange in the B movie Space Ninjas, written and directed by Scott McQuaid. Dirk plays an eccentric TV host of a show called Stranger Than Fiction, which is like a hybrid of The Twilight Zone and The X-Files. The movie is a sci-fi comedy horror that follows a bunch of high school students trying to survive the night of a Space Ninja invasion.
In the 1970s, Benedict survived a prostate tumor, which he refused to have tested for malignancy. Having rejected conventional medical treatment, he credited his survival to the adoption of a macrobiotic diet recommended to him by actress Gloria Swanson.
In 1986, he married Toni Hudson, an actress with whom he has two sons, George and Roland. Hudson had previously appeared as Dana in the fourth season A-Team episode titled "Blood, Sweat and Cheers". They divorced in 1995.
In 1998, Benedict learned that he also has another son, John Talbert (born 1968), from an earlier relationship, who had been placed for adoption. With the help of his adoptive parents, Talbert discovered and contacted his birth parents. | [
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"title": "Career"
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"text": "Benedict's career break came in 1978 when he appeared as Lieutenant Starbuck in the movie and television series Battlestar Galactica. The same year Benedict starred in the TV film Cruise into Terror, and appeared in the ensemble movie Scavenger Hunt the following year.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1980, Benedict starred alongside Linda Blair in an action-comedy movie called Ruckus. In 1983, Dirk gained further popularity as con man Templeton \"Faceman\" Peck in 1980s action television series The A-Team. He played \"Face\" from 1982 (1982) to 1986 (1986), although the series didn't air until January 1983, and the final episode wasn't shown until 1987 rebroadcasts. The second season episode \"Steel\" includes a scene at Universal Studios where Face is seen looking bemused as a Cylon walks by him as an in-joke to his previous role in Battlestar Galactica. The clip is incorporated into the series' opening credit sequence from season 3 onward.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
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"text": "In 1986, Benedict starred as low-life band manager Harry Smilac in the movie Body Slam along with Lou Albano, Roddy Piper, and cameo appearances by Freddie Blassie, Ric Flair, and Bruno Sammartino. His character Smilac ends up managing the pro-wrestler \"Quick Rick\" Roberts (Piper) and faces opposition by Captain Lou and his wrestling tag-team \"the Cannibals\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1987, Benedict took the title role of Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Abbey Theatre in Manhattan. Both his performance and the entire production were lambasted by critics. Benedict starred in the 1989 TV film Trenchcoat in Paradise.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1991, Benedict starred in Blue Tornado, playing Alex, call sign Fireball, an Italian Air Force fighter pilot. Benedict published an autobiography, Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy: A True Story of Discovery, Acting, Health, Illness, Recovery, and Life (Avery Publishing ISBN 0895294796). In 1993, Benedict starred in Shadow Force.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Benedict also appeared as Jake Barnes in the 1996 action-adventure film Alaska.",
"title": "Career"
},
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"text": "In 2000, Benedict wrote and directed his first screenplay, Cahoots. Benedict appeared in the 2006 German film Goldene Zeiten (\"Golden Times\") in a dual role, playing an American former TV star as well as a German lookalike who impersonates him.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 2006, he wrote an online essay criticizing the then-airing Battlestar Galactica re-imagined series and, especially, its casting of a woman as his character, Starbuck, writing that \"the war against masculinity has been won\" and that \"a television show based on hope, spiritual faith, and family is unimagined and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "He appeared as a contestant on the 2007 UK series of Celebrity Big Brother 5, which he placed 3rd. He arrived on launch night in a replica of the A-Team van, smoking a cigar and accompanied by the A-Team theme tune.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
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"text": "In 2010, Benedict starred in a stage production of Prescription: Murder playing Lieutenant Columbo for the Middle Ground Theatre Company in the UK. Benedict also made a cameo appearance in the 2010 film adaptation of The A-Team as Pensacola Prisoner Milt.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
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"text": "In 2019, Benedict took on the role of Jack Strange in the B movie Space Ninjas, written and directed by Scott McQuaid. Dirk plays an eccentric TV host of a show called Stranger Than Fiction, which is like a hybrid of The Twilight Zone and The X-Files. The movie is a sci-fi comedy horror that follows a bunch of high school students trying to survive the night of a Space Ninja invasion.",
"title": "Career"
},
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"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In the 1970s, Benedict survived a prostate tumor, which he refused to have tested for malignancy. Having rejected conventional medical treatment, he credited his survival to the adoption of a macrobiotic diet recommended to him by actress Gloria Swanson.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1986, he married Toni Hudson, an actress with whom he has two sons, George and Roland. Hudson had previously appeared as Dana in the fourth season A-Team episode titled \"Blood, Sweat and Cheers\". They divorced in 1995.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1998, Benedict learned that he also has another son, John Talbert (born 1968), from an earlier relationship, who had been placed for adoption. With the help of his adoptive parents, Talbert discovered and contacted his birth parents.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| Dirk Benedict is an American film, television and stage actor, and author. He is best known for playing the characters Lieutenant Starbuck in the original Battlestar Galactica film and television series and Templeton "Faceman" Peck in The A-Team television series. He is the author of Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy and And Then We Went Fishing. | 2001-10-27T23:08:39Z | 2023-12-29T14:47:51Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Benedict |
8,724 | Doppler effect | The Doppler effect (also Doppler shift) is the change in the frequency of a wave in relation to an observer who is moving relative to the source of the wave. The Doppler effect is named after the physicist Christian Doppler, who described the phenomenon in 1842. A common example of Doppler shift is the change of pitch heard when a vehicle sounding a horn approaches and recedes from an observer. Compared to the emitted frequency, the received frequency is higher during the approach, identical at the instant of passing by, and lower during the recession.
When the source of the sound wave is moving towards the observer, each successive cycle of the wave is emitted from a position closer to the observer than the previous cycle. Hence, the time between cycles is reduced, meaning the frequency is increased. Conversely, if the source of the sound wave is moving away from the observer, each cycle of the wave is emitted from a position farther from the observer than the previous cycle, so the arrival time between successive cycles is increased, thus reducing the frequency.
For waves that propagate in a medium, such as sound waves, the velocity of the observer and of the source are relative to the medium in which the waves are transmitted. The total Doppler effect may therefore result from motion of the source, motion of the observer, motion of the medium, or any combination thereof. For waves propagating in vacuum, such as electromagnetic waves or gravitational waves, only the difference in velocity between the observer and the source needs to be considered. If this relative speed is not negligible compared to the speed of light, a more complicated relativistic Doppler effect arises.
Doppler first proposed this effect in 1842 in his treatise "Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne und einiger anderer Gestirne des Himmels" (On the coloured light of the binary stars and some other stars of the heavens). The hypothesis was tested for sound waves by Buys Ballot in 1845. He confirmed that the sound's pitch was higher than the emitted frequency when the sound source approached him, and lower than the emitted frequency when the sound source receded from him. Hippolyte Fizeau discovered independently the same phenomenon on electromagnetic waves in 1848 (in France, the effect is sometimes called "effet Doppler-Fizeau" but that name was not adopted by the rest of the world as Fizeau's discovery was six years after Doppler's proposal). In Britain, John Scott Russell made an experimental study of the Doppler effect (1848).
In classical physics, where the speeds of source and the receiver relative to the medium are lower than the speed of waves in the medium, the relationship between observed frequency f {\displaystyle f} and emitted frequency f 0 {\displaystyle f_{\text{0}}} is given by:
where
Note this relationship predicts that the frequency will decrease if either source or receiver is moving away from the other.
Equivalently, under the assumption that the source is either directly approaching or receding from the observer:
where
If the source approaches the observer at an angle (but still with a constant speed), the observed frequency that is first heard is higher than the object's emitted frequency. Thereafter, there is a monotonic decrease in the observed frequency as it gets closer to the observer, through equality when it is coming from a direction perpendicular to the relative motion (and was emitted at the point of closest approach; but when the wave is received, the source and observer will no longer be at their closest), and a continued monotonic decrease as it recedes from the observer. When the observer is very close to the path of the object, the transition from high to low frequency is very abrupt. When the observer is far from the path of the object, the transition from high to low frequency is gradual.
If the speeds v s {\displaystyle v_{\text{s}}} and v r {\displaystyle v_{\text{r}}\,} are small compared to the speed of the wave, the relationship between observed frequency f {\displaystyle f} and emitted frequency f 0 {\displaystyle f_{\text{0}}} is approximately
where
Given f = ( c + v r c + v s ) f 0 {\displaystyle f=\left({\frac {c+v_{\text{r}}}{c+v_{\text{s}}}}\right)f_{0}}
we divide for c {\displaystyle c}
Since v s c ≪ 1 {\displaystyle {\frac {v_{\text{s}}}{c}}\ll 1} we can substitute using the Taylor's series expansion of 1 1 + x {\displaystyle {\frac {1}{1+x}}} truncating all x 2 {\displaystyle x^{2}} and higher terms:
With an observer stationary relative to the medium, if a moving source is emitting waves with an actual frequency f 0 {\displaystyle f_{0}} (in this case, the wavelength is changed, the transmission velocity of the wave keeps constant; note that the transmission velocity of the wave does not depend on the velocity of the source), then the observer detects waves with a frequency f {\displaystyle f} given by
A similar analysis for a moving observer and a stationary source (in this case, the wavelength keeps constant, but due to the motion, the rate at which the observer receives waves and hence the transmission velocity of the wave [with respect to the observer] is changed) yields the observed frequency:
Assuming a stationary observer and a source moving at the speed of sound, the Doppler equation predicts a perceived momentary infinite frequency by an observer in front of a source that is traveling at the speed of sound. All the peaks are at the same place, so the wavelength is zero and the frequency is infinite. This overlay of all the waves produces a shock wave which for sound waves is known as a sonic boom.
When the source moves faster than the wave speed the source outruns the wave. The equation gives negative frequency values, which have no physical sense in this context (no sound at all will be heard by the observer until the source passes past them).
Lord Rayleigh predicted the following effect in his classic book on sound: if the observer were moving from the (stationary) source at twice the speed of sound, a musical piece previously emitted by that source would be heard in correct tempo and pitch, but as if played backwards.
An acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) is a hydroacoustic current meter similar to a sonar, used to measure water current velocities over a depth range using the Doppler effect of sound waves scattered back from particles within the water column. The term ADCP is a generic term for all acoustic current profilers, although the abbreviation originates from an instrument series introduced by RD Instruments in the 1980s. The working frequencies range of ADCPs range from 38 kHz to several Megahertz. The device used in the air for wind speed profiling using sound is known as SODAR and works with the same underlying principles.
Dynamic real-time path planning in robotics to aid the movement of robots in a sophisticated environment with moving obstacles often take help of Doppler effect. Such applications are specially used for competitive robotics where the environment is constantly changing, such as robosoccer.
A siren on a passing emergency vehicle will start out higher than its stationary pitch, slide down as it passes, and continue lower than its stationary pitch as it recedes from the observer. Astronomer John Dobson explained the effect thus:
The reason the siren slides is because it doesn't hit you.
In other words, if the siren approached the observer directly, the pitch would remain constant, at a higher than stationary pitch, until the vehicle hit him, and then immediately jump to a new lower pitch. Because the vehicle passes by the observer, the radial speed does not remain constant, but instead varies as a function of the angle between his line of sight and the siren's velocity:
where θ {\displaystyle \theta } is the angle between the object's forward velocity and the line of sight from the object to the observer.
The Doppler effect for electromagnetic waves such as light is of widespread use in astronomy to measure the speed at which stars and galaxies are approaching or receding from us, resulting in so called blueshift or redshift, respectively. This may be used to detect if an apparently single star is, in reality, a close binary, to measure the rotational speed of stars and galaxies, or to detect exoplanets. This effect typically happens on a very small scale; there would not be a noticeable difference in visible light to the unaided eye. The use of the Doppler effect in astronomy depends on knowledge of precise frequencies of discrete lines in the spectra of stars.
Among the nearby stars, the largest radial velocities with respect to the Sun are +308 km/s (BD-15°4041, also known as LHS 52, 81.7 light-years away) and −260 km/s (Woolley 9722, also known as Wolf 1106 and LHS 64, 78.2 light-years away). Positive radial speed means the star is receding from the Sun, negative that it is approaching.
Redshift is also used to measure the expansion of the universe. It is sometimes claimed that this is not truly a Doppler effect but instead arises from the expansion of space. However, this picture can be misleading because the expansion of space is only a mathematical convention, corresponding to a choice of coordinates. The most natural interpretation of the cosmological redshift is that it is indeed a Doppler shift.
Distant galaxies also exhibit peculiar motion distinct from their cosmological recession speeds. If redshifts are used to determine distances in accordance with Hubble's law, then these peculiar motions give rise to redshift-space distortions.
The Doppler effect is used in some types of radar, to measure the velocity of detected objects. A radar beam is fired at a moving target — e.g. a motor car, as police use radar to detect speeding motorists — as it approaches or recedes from the radar source. Each successive radar wave has to travel farther to reach the car, before being reflected and re-detected near the source. As each wave has to move farther, the gap between each wave increases, increasing the wavelength. In some situations, the radar beam is fired at the moving car as it approaches, in which case each successive wave travels a lesser distance, decreasing the wavelength. In either situation, calculations from the Doppler effect accurately determine the car's speed. Moreover, the proximity fuze, developed during World War II, relies upon Doppler radar to detonate explosives at the correct time, height, distance, etc.
Because the Doppler shift affects the wave incident upon the target as well as the wave reflected back to the radar, the change in frequency observed by a radar due to a target moving at relative speed Δ v {\displaystyle \Delta v} is twice that from the same target emitting a wave:
An echocardiogram can, within certain limits, produce an accurate assessment of the direction of blood flow and the velocity of blood and cardiac tissue at any arbitrary point using the Doppler effect. One of the limitations is that the ultrasound beam should be as parallel to the blood flow as possible. Velocity measurements allow assessment of cardiac valve areas and function, abnormal communications between the left and right side of the heart, leaking of blood through the valves (valvular regurgitation), and calculation of the cardiac output. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound using gas-filled microbubble contrast media can be used to improve velocity or other flow-related medical measurements.
Although "Doppler" has become synonymous with "velocity measurement" in medical imaging, in many cases it is not the frequency shift (Doppler shift) of the received signal that is measured, but the phase shift (when the received signal arrives).
Velocity measurements of blood flow are also used in other fields of medical ultrasonography, such as obstetric ultrasonography and neurology. Velocity measurement of blood flow in arteries and veins based on Doppler effect is an effective tool for diagnosis of vascular problems like stenosis.
Instruments such as the laser Doppler velocimeter (LDV), and acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) have been developed to measure velocities in a fluid flow. The LDV emits a light beam and the ADV emits an ultrasonic acoustic burst, and measure the Doppler shift in wavelengths of reflections from particles moving with the flow. The actual flow is computed as a function of the water velocity and phase. This technique allows non-intrusive flow measurements, at high precision and high frequency.
Developed originally for velocity measurements in medical applications (blood flow), Ultrasonic Doppler Velocimetry (UDV) can measure in real time complete velocity profile in almost any liquids containing particles in suspension such as dust, gas bubbles, emulsions. Flows can be pulsating, oscillating, laminar or turbulent, stationary or transient. This technique is fully non-invasive.
The Doppler shift can be exploited for satellite navigation such as in Transit and DORIS.
Doppler also needs to be compensated in satellite communication. Fast moving satellites can have a Doppler shift of dozens of kilohertz relative to a ground station. The speed, thus magnitude of Doppler effect, changes due to earth curvature. Dynamic Doppler compensation, where the frequency of a signal is changed progressively during transmission, is used so the satellite receives a constant frequency signal. After realizing that the Doppler shift had not been considered before launch of the Huygens probe of the 2005 Cassini–Huygens mission, the probe trajectory was altered to approach Titan in such a way that its transmissions traveled perpendicular to its direction of motion relative to Cassini, greatly reducing the Doppler shift.
Doppler shift of the direct path can be estimated by the following formula:
where v mob {\displaystyle v_{\text{mob}}} is the speed of the mobile station, λ c {\displaystyle \lambda _{\rm {c}}} is the wavelength of the carrier, ϕ {\displaystyle \phi } is the elevation angle of the satellite and θ {\displaystyle \theta } is the driving direction with respect to the satellite.
The additional Doppler shift due to the satellite moving can be described as:
where v r e l , s a t {\displaystyle v_{\rm {rel,sat}}} is the relative speed of the satellite.
The Leslie speaker, most commonly associated with and predominantly used with the famous Hammond organ, takes advantage of the Doppler effect by using an electric motor to rotate an acoustic horn around a loudspeaker, sending its sound in a circle. This results at the listener's ear in rapidly fluctuating frequencies of a keyboard note.
A laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) is a non-contact instrument for measuring vibration. The laser beam from the LDV is directed at the surface of interest, and the vibration amplitude and frequency are extracted from the Doppler shift of the laser beam frequency due to the motion of the surface.
During the segmentation of vertebrate embryos, waves of gene expression sweep across the presomitic mesoderm, the tissue from which the precursors of the vertebrae (somites) are formed. A new somite is formed upon arrival of a wave at the anterior end of the presomitic mesoderm. In zebrafish, it has been shown that the shortening of the presomitic mesoderm during segmentation leads to a Doppler-like effect as the anterior end of the tissue moves into the waves. This effect contributes to the period of segmentation.
Since 1968 scientists such as Victor Veselago have speculated about the possibility of an inverse Doppler effect. The size of the Doppler shift depends on the refractive index of the medium a wave is traveling through. Some materials are capable of negative refraction, which should lead to a Doppler shift that works in a direction opposite that of a conventional Doppler shift. The first experiment that detected this effect was conducted by Nigel Seddon and Trevor Bearpark in Bristol, United Kingdom in 2003. Later, the inverse Doppler effect was observed in some inhomogeneous materials, and predicted inside a Vavilov–Cherenkov cone. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Doppler effect (also Doppler shift) is the change in the frequency of a wave in relation to an observer who is moving relative to the source of the wave. The Doppler effect is named after the physicist Christian Doppler, who described the phenomenon in 1842. A common example of Doppler shift is the change of pitch heard when a vehicle sounding a horn approaches and recedes from an observer. Compared to the emitted frequency, the received frequency is higher during the approach, identical at the instant of passing by, and lower during the recession.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "When the source of the sound wave is moving towards the observer, each successive cycle of the wave is emitted from a position closer to the observer than the previous cycle. Hence, the time between cycles is reduced, meaning the frequency is increased. Conversely, if the source of the sound wave is moving away from the observer, each cycle of the wave is emitted from a position farther from the observer than the previous cycle, so the arrival time between successive cycles is increased, thus reducing the frequency.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "For waves that propagate in a medium, such as sound waves, the velocity of the observer and of the source are relative to the medium in which the waves are transmitted. The total Doppler effect may therefore result from motion of the source, motion of the observer, motion of the medium, or any combination thereof. For waves propagating in vacuum, such as electromagnetic waves or gravitational waves, only the difference in velocity between the observer and the source needs to be considered. If this relative speed is not negligible compared to the speed of light, a more complicated relativistic Doppler effect arises.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Doppler first proposed this effect in 1842 in his treatise \"Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne und einiger anderer Gestirne des Himmels\" (On the coloured light of the binary stars and some other stars of the heavens). The hypothesis was tested for sound waves by Buys Ballot in 1845. He confirmed that the sound's pitch was higher than the emitted frequency when the sound source approached him, and lower than the emitted frequency when the sound source receded from him. Hippolyte Fizeau discovered independently the same phenomenon on electromagnetic waves in 1848 (in France, the effect is sometimes called \"effet Doppler-Fizeau\" but that name was not adopted by the rest of the world as Fizeau's discovery was six years after Doppler's proposal). In Britain, John Scott Russell made an experimental study of the Doppler effect (1848).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In classical physics, where the speeds of source and the receiver relative to the medium are lower than the speed of waves in the medium, the relationship between observed frequency f {\\displaystyle f} and emitted frequency f 0 {\\displaystyle f_{\\text{0}}} is given by:",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "where",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Note this relationship predicts that the frequency will decrease if either source or receiver is moving away from the other.",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Equivalently, under the assumption that the source is either directly approaching or receding from the observer:",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "where",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "If the source approaches the observer at an angle (but still with a constant speed), the observed frequency that is first heard is higher than the object's emitted frequency. Thereafter, there is a monotonic decrease in the observed frequency as it gets closer to the observer, through equality when it is coming from a direction perpendicular to the relative motion (and was emitted at the point of closest approach; but when the wave is received, the source and observer will no longer be at their closest), and a continued monotonic decrease as it recedes from the observer. When the observer is very close to the path of the object, the transition from high to low frequency is very abrupt. When the observer is far from the path of the object, the transition from high to low frequency is gradual.",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "If the speeds v s {\\displaystyle v_{\\text{s}}} and v r {\\displaystyle v_{\\text{r}}\\,} are small compared to the speed of the wave, the relationship between observed frequency f {\\displaystyle f} and emitted frequency f 0 {\\displaystyle f_{\\text{0}}} is approximately",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "where",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Given f = ( c + v r c + v s ) f 0 {\\displaystyle f=\\left({\\frac {c+v_{\\text{r}}}{c+v_{\\text{s}}}}\\right)f_{0}}",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "we divide for c {\\displaystyle c}",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Since v s c ≪ 1 {\\displaystyle {\\frac {v_{\\text{s}}}{c}}\\ll 1} we can substitute using the Taylor's series expansion of 1 1 + x {\\displaystyle {\\frac {1}{1+x}}} truncating all x 2 {\\displaystyle x^{2}} and higher terms:",
"title": "General"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "With an observer stationary relative to the medium, if a moving source is emitting waves with an actual frequency f 0 {\\displaystyle f_{0}} (in this case, the wavelength is changed, the transmission velocity of the wave keeps constant; note that the transmission velocity of the wave does not depend on the velocity of the source), then the observer detects waves with a frequency f {\\displaystyle f} given by",
"title": "Consequences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A similar analysis for a moving observer and a stationary source (in this case, the wavelength keeps constant, but due to the motion, the rate at which the observer receives waves and hence the transmission velocity of the wave [with respect to the observer] is changed) yields the observed frequency:",
"title": "Consequences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Assuming a stationary observer and a source moving at the speed of sound, the Doppler equation predicts a perceived momentary infinite frequency by an observer in front of a source that is traveling at the speed of sound. All the peaks are at the same place, so the wavelength is zero and the frequency is infinite. This overlay of all the waves produces a shock wave which for sound waves is known as a sonic boom.",
"title": "Consequences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "When the source moves faster than the wave speed the source outruns the wave. The equation gives negative frequency values, which have no physical sense in this context (no sound at all will be heard by the observer until the source passes past them).",
"title": "Consequences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Lord Rayleigh predicted the following effect in his classic book on sound: if the observer were moving from the (stationary) source at twice the speed of sound, a musical piece previously emitted by that source would be heard in correct tempo and pitch, but as if played backwards.",
"title": "Consequences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "An acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) is a hydroacoustic current meter similar to a sonar, used to measure water current velocities over a depth range using the Doppler effect of sound waves scattered back from particles within the water column. The term ADCP is a generic term for all acoustic current profilers, although the abbreviation originates from an instrument series introduced by RD Instruments in the 1980s. The working frequencies range of ADCPs range from 38 kHz to several Megahertz. The device used in the air for wind speed profiling using sound is known as SODAR and works with the same underlying principles.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Dynamic real-time path planning in robotics to aid the movement of robots in a sophisticated environment with moving obstacles often take help of Doppler effect. Such applications are specially used for competitive robotics where the environment is constantly changing, such as robosoccer.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "A siren on a passing emergency vehicle will start out higher than its stationary pitch, slide down as it passes, and continue lower than its stationary pitch as it recedes from the observer. Astronomer John Dobson explained the effect thus:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The reason the siren slides is because it doesn't hit you.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In other words, if the siren approached the observer directly, the pitch would remain constant, at a higher than stationary pitch, until the vehicle hit him, and then immediately jump to a new lower pitch. Because the vehicle passes by the observer, the radial speed does not remain constant, but instead varies as a function of the angle between his line of sight and the siren's velocity:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "where θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } is the angle between the object's forward velocity and the line of sight from the object to the observer.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Doppler effect for electromagnetic waves such as light is of widespread use in astronomy to measure the speed at which stars and galaxies are approaching or receding from us, resulting in so called blueshift or redshift, respectively. This may be used to detect if an apparently single star is, in reality, a close binary, to measure the rotational speed of stars and galaxies, or to detect exoplanets. This effect typically happens on a very small scale; there would not be a noticeable difference in visible light to the unaided eye. The use of the Doppler effect in astronomy depends on knowledge of precise frequencies of discrete lines in the spectra of stars.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Among the nearby stars, the largest radial velocities with respect to the Sun are +308 km/s (BD-15°4041, also known as LHS 52, 81.7 light-years away) and −260 km/s (Woolley 9722, also known as Wolf 1106 and LHS 64, 78.2 light-years away). Positive radial speed means the star is receding from the Sun, negative that it is approaching.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Redshift is also used to measure the expansion of the universe. It is sometimes claimed that this is not truly a Doppler effect but instead arises from the expansion of space. However, this picture can be misleading because the expansion of space is only a mathematical convention, corresponding to a choice of coordinates. The most natural interpretation of the cosmological redshift is that it is indeed a Doppler shift.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Distant galaxies also exhibit peculiar motion distinct from their cosmological recession speeds. If redshifts are used to determine distances in accordance with Hubble's law, then these peculiar motions give rise to redshift-space distortions.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The Doppler effect is used in some types of radar, to measure the velocity of detected objects. A radar beam is fired at a moving target — e.g. a motor car, as police use radar to detect speeding motorists — as it approaches or recedes from the radar source. Each successive radar wave has to travel farther to reach the car, before being reflected and re-detected near the source. As each wave has to move farther, the gap between each wave increases, increasing the wavelength. In some situations, the radar beam is fired at the moving car as it approaches, in which case each successive wave travels a lesser distance, decreasing the wavelength. In either situation, calculations from the Doppler effect accurately determine the car's speed. Moreover, the proximity fuze, developed during World War II, relies upon Doppler radar to detonate explosives at the correct time, height, distance, etc.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Because the Doppler shift affects the wave incident upon the target as well as the wave reflected back to the radar, the change in frequency observed by a radar due to a target moving at relative speed Δ v {\\displaystyle \\Delta v} is twice that from the same target emitting a wave:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "An echocardiogram can, within certain limits, produce an accurate assessment of the direction of blood flow and the velocity of blood and cardiac tissue at any arbitrary point using the Doppler effect. One of the limitations is that the ultrasound beam should be as parallel to the blood flow as possible. Velocity measurements allow assessment of cardiac valve areas and function, abnormal communications between the left and right side of the heart, leaking of blood through the valves (valvular regurgitation), and calculation of the cardiac output. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound using gas-filled microbubble contrast media can be used to improve velocity or other flow-related medical measurements.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Although \"Doppler\" has become synonymous with \"velocity measurement\" in medical imaging, in many cases it is not the frequency shift (Doppler shift) of the received signal that is measured, but the phase shift (when the received signal arrives).",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Velocity measurements of blood flow are also used in other fields of medical ultrasonography, such as obstetric ultrasonography and neurology. Velocity measurement of blood flow in arteries and veins based on Doppler effect is an effective tool for diagnosis of vascular problems like stenosis.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Instruments such as the laser Doppler velocimeter (LDV), and acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) have been developed to measure velocities in a fluid flow. The LDV emits a light beam and the ADV emits an ultrasonic acoustic burst, and measure the Doppler shift in wavelengths of reflections from particles moving with the flow. The actual flow is computed as a function of the water velocity and phase. This technique allows non-intrusive flow measurements, at high precision and high frequency.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Developed originally for velocity measurements in medical applications (blood flow), Ultrasonic Doppler Velocimetry (UDV) can measure in real time complete velocity profile in almost any liquids containing particles in suspension such as dust, gas bubbles, emulsions. Flows can be pulsating, oscillating, laminar or turbulent, stationary or transient. This technique is fully non-invasive.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Doppler shift can be exploited for satellite navigation such as in Transit and DORIS.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Doppler also needs to be compensated in satellite communication. Fast moving satellites can have a Doppler shift of dozens of kilohertz relative to a ground station. The speed, thus magnitude of Doppler effect, changes due to earth curvature. Dynamic Doppler compensation, where the frequency of a signal is changed progressively during transmission, is used so the satellite receives a constant frequency signal. After realizing that the Doppler shift had not been considered before launch of the Huygens probe of the 2005 Cassini–Huygens mission, the probe trajectory was altered to approach Titan in such a way that its transmissions traveled perpendicular to its direction of motion relative to Cassini, greatly reducing the Doppler shift.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Doppler shift of the direct path can be estimated by the following formula:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "where v mob {\\displaystyle v_{\\text{mob}}} is the speed of the mobile station, λ c {\\displaystyle \\lambda _{\\rm {c}}} is the wavelength of the carrier, ϕ {\\displaystyle \\phi } is the elevation angle of the satellite and θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } is the driving direction with respect to the satellite.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The additional Doppler shift due to the satellite moving can be described as:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "where v r e l , s a t {\\displaystyle v_{\\rm {rel,sat}}} is the relative speed of the satellite.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Leslie speaker, most commonly associated with and predominantly used with the famous Hammond organ, takes advantage of the Doppler effect by using an electric motor to rotate an acoustic horn around a loudspeaker, sending its sound in a circle. This results at the listener's ear in rapidly fluctuating frequencies of a keyboard note.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "A laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) is a non-contact instrument for measuring vibration. The laser beam from the LDV is directed at the surface of interest, and the vibration amplitude and frequency are extracted from the Doppler shift of the laser beam frequency due to the motion of the surface.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "During the segmentation of vertebrate embryos, waves of gene expression sweep across the presomitic mesoderm, the tissue from which the precursors of the vertebrae (somites) are formed. A new somite is formed upon arrival of a wave at the anterior end of the presomitic mesoderm. In zebrafish, it has been shown that the shortening of the presomitic mesoderm during segmentation leads to a Doppler-like effect as the anterior end of the tissue moves into the waves. This effect contributes to the period of segmentation.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Since 1968 scientists such as Victor Veselago have speculated about the possibility of an inverse Doppler effect. The size of the Doppler shift depends on the refractive index of the medium a wave is traveling through. Some materials are capable of negative refraction, which should lead to a Doppler shift that works in a direction opposite that of a conventional Doppler shift. The first experiment that detected this effect was conducted by Nigel Seddon and Trevor Bearpark in Bristol, United Kingdom in 2003. Later, the inverse Doppler effect was observed in some inhomogeneous materials, and predicted inside a Vavilov–Cherenkov cone.",
"title": "Inverse Doppler effect"
}
]
| The Doppler effect is the change in the frequency of a wave in relation to an observer who is moving relative to the source of the wave. The Doppler effect is named after the physicist Christian Doppler, who described the phenomenon in 1842. A common example of Doppler shift is the change of pitch heard when a vehicle sounding a horn approaches and recedes from an observer. Compared to the emitted frequency, the received frequency is higher during the approach, identical at the instant of passing by, and lower during the recession. When the source of the sound wave is moving towards the observer, each successive cycle of the wave is emitted from a position closer to the observer than the previous cycle. Hence, the time between cycles is reduced, meaning the frequency is increased. Conversely, if the source of the sound wave is moving away from the observer, each cycle of the wave is emitted from a position farther from the observer than the previous cycle, so the arrival time between successive cycles is increased, thus reducing the frequency. For waves that propagate in a medium, such as sound waves, the velocity of the observer and of the source are relative to the medium in which the waves are transmitted. The total Doppler effect may therefore result from motion of the source, motion of the observer, motion of the medium, or any combination thereof. For waves propagating in vacuum, such as electromagnetic waves or gravitational waves, only the difference in velocity between the observer and the source needs to be considered. If this relative speed is not negligible compared to the speed of light, a more complicated relativistic Doppler effect arises. | 2001-10-29T21:15:48Z | 2023-12-12T17:11:46Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect |
8,727 | ΔT (timekeeping) | In precise timekeeping, ΔT (Delta T, delta-T, deltaT, or DT) is a measure of the cumulative effect of the departure of the Earth's rotation period from the fixed-length day of International Atomic Time (86,400 seconds). Formally, ΔT is the time difference ΔT = TT − UT between Universal Time (UT, defined by Earth's rotation) and Terrestrial Time (TT, independent of Earth's rotation). The value of ΔT for the start of 1902 was approximately zero; for 2002 it was about 64 seconds. So Earth's rotations over that century took about 64 seconds longer than would be required for days of atomic time. As well as this long-term drift in the length of the day there are short-term fluctuations in the length of day (Δτ) which are dealt with separately.
Since 2017, the length of the day has happened to be very close to the conventional value, and ΔT has remained within a second of 69 seconds.
Earth's rotational speed is ν = 1/2π dθ/dt, and a day corresponds to one period P = 1/ν. A rotational acceleration dν/dt gives a rate of change of the period of dP/dt = −1/ν dν/dt, which is usually expressed as α = ν dP/dt = −1/ν dν/dt. This has units of 1/time, and is commonly quoted as milliseconds-per-day per century (written as ms/day/cy, understood as (ms/day)/cy). Integrating α gives an expression for ΔT against time.
Universal Time is a time scale based on the Earth's rotation, which is somewhat irregular over short periods (days up to a century), thus any time based on it cannot have an accuracy better than 1 in 10. However, a larger, more consistent effect has been observed over many centuries: Earth's rate of rotation is inexorably slowing down. This observed change in the rate of rotation is attributable to two primary forces, one decreasing and one increasing the Earth's rate of rotation. Over the long term, the dominating force is tidal friction, which is slowing the rate of rotation, contributing about α = +2.3 ms/day/cy or dP/dt = +2.3 ms/cy, which is equal to the very small fractional change +7.3×10 day/day. The most important force acting in the opposite direction, to speed up the rate, is believed to be a result of the melting of continental ice sheets at the end of the last glacial period. This removed their tremendous weight, allowing the land under them to begin to rebound upward in the polar regions, an effect that is still occurring today and will continue until isostatic equilibrium is reached. This "post-glacial rebound" brings mass closer to the rotational axis of the Earth, which makes the Earth spin faster, according to the law of conservation of angular momentum, similar to an ice skater pulling their arms in to spin faster. Models estimate this effect to contribute about −0.6 ms/day/cy. Combining these two effects, the net acceleration (actually a deceleration) of the rotation of the Earth, or the change in the length of the mean solar day (LOD), is +1.7 ms/day/cy or +62 s/cy or +46.5 ns/day. This matches the average rate derived from astronomical records over the past 27 centuries.
Terrestrial Time is a theoretical uniform time scale, defined to provide continuity with the former Ephemeris Time (ET). ET was an independent time-variable, proposed (and its adoption agreed) in the period 1948–52 with the intent of forming a gravitationally uniform time scale as far as was feasible at that time, and depending for its definition on Simon Newcomb's Tables of the Sun (1895), interpreted in a new way to accommodate certain observed discrepancies. Newcomb's tables formed the basis of all astronomical ephemerides of the Sun from 1900 through 1983: they were originally expressed (and published) in terms of Greenwich Mean Time and the mean solar day, but later, in respect of the period 1960–1983, they were treated as expressed in terms of ET, in accordance with the adopted ET proposal of 1948–52. ET, in turn, can now be seen (in light of modern results) as close to the average mean solar time between 1750 and 1890 (centered on 1820), because that was the period during which the observations on which Newcomb's tables were based were performed. While TT is strictly uniform (being based on the SI second, every second is the same as every other second), it is in practice realised by International Atomic Time (TAI) with an accuracy of about 1 part in 10.
Earth's rate of rotation must be integrated to obtain time, which is Earth's angular position (specifically, the orientation of the meridian of Greenwich relative to the fictitious mean sun). Integrating +1.7 ms/d/cy and centering the resulting parabola on the year 1820 yields (to a first approximation) 32 × (year − 1820/100) - 20 seconds for ΔT. Smoothed historical measurements of ΔT using total solar eclipses are about +17190 s in the year −500 (501 BC), +10580 s in 0 (1 BC), +5710 s in 500, +1570 s in 1000, and +200 s in 1500. After the invention of the telescope, measurements were made by observing occultations of stars by the Moon, which allowed the derivation of more closely spaced and more accurate values for ΔT. ΔT continued to decrease until it reached a plateau of +11 ± 6 s between 1680 and 1866. For about three decades immediately before 1902 it was negative, reaching −6.64 s. Then it increased to +63.83 s in January 2000 and +68.97 s in January 2018 and +69.361 s in January 2020, after even a slight decrease from 69.358 s in July 2019 to 69.338 s in September and October 2019 and a new increase in November and December 2019. This will require the addition of an ever-greater number of leap seconds to UTC as long as UTC tracks UT1 with one-second adjustments. (The SI second as now used for UTC, when adopted, was already a little shorter than the current value of the second of mean solar time.) Physically, the meridian of Greenwich in Universal Time is almost always to the east of the meridian in Terrestrial Time, both in the past and in the future. +17190 s or about 4+3⁄4 h corresponds to 71.625°E. This means that in the year −500 (501 BC), Earth's faster rotation would cause a total solar eclipse to occur 71.625° to the east of the location calculated using the uniform TT.
All values of ΔT before 1955 depend on observations of the Moon, either via eclipses or occultations. The angular momentum lost by the Earth due to friction induced by the Moon's tidal effect is transferred to the Moon, increasing its angular momentum, which means that its moment arm (approximately its distance from the Earth, i.e. precisely the semi-major axis of the Moon's orbit) is increased (for the time being about +3.8 cm/year), which via Kepler's laws of planetary motion causes the Moon to revolve around the Earth at a slower rate. The cited values of ΔT assume that the lunar acceleration (actually a deceleration, that is a negative acceleration) due to this effect is dn/dt = −26″/cy, where n is the mean sidereal angular motion of the Moon. This is close to the best estimate for dn/dt as of 2002 of −25.858 ± 0.003″/cy, so ΔT need not be recalculated given the uncertainties and smoothing applied to its current values. Nowadays, UT is the observed orientation of the Earth relative to an inertial reference frame formed by extra-galactic radio sources, modified by an adopted ratio between sidereal time and solar time. Its measurement by several observatories is coordinated by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS).
Tidal deceleration rates have varied over the history of the Earth-Moon system. Analysis of layering in fossil mollusc shells from 70 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period, shows that there were 372 days a year, and thus that the day was about 23.5 hours long then. Based on geological studies of tidal rhythmites, the day was 21.9±0.4 hours long 620 million years ago and there were 13.1±0.1 synodic months/year and 400±7 solar days/year. The average recession rate of the Moon between then and now has been 2.17±0.31 cm/year, which is about half the present rate. The present high rate may be due to near resonance between natural ocean frequencies and tidal frequencies. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In precise timekeeping, ΔT (Delta T, delta-T, deltaT, or DT) is a measure of the cumulative effect of the departure of the Earth's rotation period from the fixed-length day of International Atomic Time (86,400 seconds). Formally, ΔT is the time difference ΔT = TT − UT between Universal Time (UT, defined by Earth's rotation) and Terrestrial Time (TT, independent of Earth's rotation). The value of ΔT for the start of 1902 was approximately zero; for 2002 it was about 64 seconds. So Earth's rotations over that century took about 64 seconds longer than would be required for days of atomic time. As well as this long-term drift in the length of the day there are short-term fluctuations in the length of day (Δτ) which are dealt with separately.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Since 2017, the length of the day has happened to be very close to the conventional value, and ΔT has remained within a second of 69 seconds.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Earth's rotational speed is ν = 1/2π dθ/dt, and a day corresponds to one period P = 1/ν. A rotational acceleration dν/dt gives a rate of change of the period of dP/dt = −1/ν dν/dt, which is usually expressed as α = ν dP/dt = −1/ν dν/dt. This has units of 1/time, and is commonly quoted as milliseconds-per-day per century (written as ms/day/cy, understood as (ms/day)/cy). Integrating α gives an expression for ΔT against time.",
"title": "Calculation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Universal Time is a time scale based on the Earth's rotation, which is somewhat irregular over short periods (days up to a century), thus any time based on it cannot have an accuracy better than 1 in 10. However, a larger, more consistent effect has been observed over many centuries: Earth's rate of rotation is inexorably slowing down. This observed change in the rate of rotation is attributable to two primary forces, one decreasing and one increasing the Earth's rate of rotation. Over the long term, the dominating force is tidal friction, which is slowing the rate of rotation, contributing about α = +2.3 ms/day/cy or dP/dt = +2.3 ms/cy, which is equal to the very small fractional change +7.3×10 day/day. The most important force acting in the opposite direction, to speed up the rate, is believed to be a result of the melting of continental ice sheets at the end of the last glacial period. This removed their tremendous weight, allowing the land under them to begin to rebound upward in the polar regions, an effect that is still occurring today and will continue until isostatic equilibrium is reached. This \"post-glacial rebound\" brings mass closer to the rotational axis of the Earth, which makes the Earth spin faster, according to the law of conservation of angular momentum, similar to an ice skater pulling their arms in to spin faster. Models estimate this effect to contribute about −0.6 ms/day/cy. Combining these two effects, the net acceleration (actually a deceleration) of the rotation of the Earth, or the change in the length of the mean solar day (LOD), is +1.7 ms/day/cy or +62 s/cy or +46.5 ns/day. This matches the average rate derived from astronomical records over the past 27 centuries.",
"title": "Calculation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Terrestrial Time is a theoretical uniform time scale, defined to provide continuity with the former Ephemeris Time (ET). ET was an independent time-variable, proposed (and its adoption agreed) in the period 1948–52 with the intent of forming a gravitationally uniform time scale as far as was feasible at that time, and depending for its definition on Simon Newcomb's Tables of the Sun (1895), interpreted in a new way to accommodate certain observed discrepancies. Newcomb's tables formed the basis of all astronomical ephemerides of the Sun from 1900 through 1983: they were originally expressed (and published) in terms of Greenwich Mean Time and the mean solar day, but later, in respect of the period 1960–1983, they were treated as expressed in terms of ET, in accordance with the adopted ET proposal of 1948–52. ET, in turn, can now be seen (in light of modern results) as close to the average mean solar time between 1750 and 1890 (centered on 1820), because that was the period during which the observations on which Newcomb's tables were based were performed. While TT is strictly uniform (being based on the SI second, every second is the same as every other second), it is in practice realised by International Atomic Time (TAI) with an accuracy of about 1 part in 10.",
"title": "Calculation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Earth's rate of rotation must be integrated to obtain time, which is Earth's angular position (specifically, the orientation of the meridian of Greenwich relative to the fictitious mean sun). Integrating +1.7 ms/d/cy and centering the resulting parabola on the year 1820 yields (to a first approximation) 32 × (year − 1820/100) - 20 seconds for ΔT. Smoothed historical measurements of ΔT using total solar eclipses are about +17190 s in the year −500 (501 BC), +10580 s in 0 (1 BC), +5710 s in 500, +1570 s in 1000, and +200 s in 1500. After the invention of the telescope, measurements were made by observing occultations of stars by the Moon, which allowed the derivation of more closely spaced and more accurate values for ΔT. ΔT continued to decrease until it reached a plateau of +11 ± 6 s between 1680 and 1866. For about three decades immediately before 1902 it was negative, reaching −6.64 s. Then it increased to +63.83 s in January 2000 and +68.97 s in January 2018 and +69.361 s in January 2020, after even a slight decrease from 69.358 s in July 2019 to 69.338 s in September and October 2019 and a new increase in November and December 2019. This will require the addition of an ever-greater number of leap seconds to UTC as long as UTC tracks UT1 with one-second adjustments. (The SI second as now used for UTC, when adopted, was already a little shorter than the current value of the second of mean solar time.) Physically, the meridian of Greenwich in Universal Time is almost always to the east of the meridian in Terrestrial Time, both in the past and in the future. +17190 s or about 4+3⁄4 h corresponds to 71.625°E. This means that in the year −500 (501 BC), Earth's faster rotation would cause a total solar eclipse to occur 71.625° to the east of the location calculated using the uniform TT.",
"title": "Earth's rate of rotation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "All values of ΔT before 1955 depend on observations of the Moon, either via eclipses or occultations. The angular momentum lost by the Earth due to friction induced by the Moon's tidal effect is transferred to the Moon, increasing its angular momentum, which means that its moment arm (approximately its distance from the Earth, i.e. precisely the semi-major axis of the Moon's orbit) is increased (for the time being about +3.8 cm/year), which via Kepler's laws of planetary motion causes the Moon to revolve around the Earth at a slower rate. The cited values of ΔT assume that the lunar acceleration (actually a deceleration, that is a negative acceleration) due to this effect is dn/dt = −26″/cy, where n is the mean sidereal angular motion of the Moon. This is close to the best estimate for dn/dt as of 2002 of −25.858 ± 0.003″/cy, so ΔT need not be recalculated given the uncertainties and smoothing applied to its current values. Nowadays, UT is the observed orientation of the Earth relative to an inertial reference frame formed by extra-galactic radio sources, modified by an adopted ratio between sidereal time and solar time. Its measurement by several observatories is coordinated by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS).",
"title": "Values prior to 1955"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Tidal deceleration rates have varied over the history of the Earth-Moon system. Analysis of layering in fossil mollusc shells from 70 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period, shows that there were 372 days a year, and thus that the day was about 23.5 hours long then. Based on geological studies of tidal rhythmites, the day was 21.9±0.4 hours long 620 million years ago and there were 13.1±0.1 synodic months/year and 400±7 solar days/year. The average recession rate of the Moon between then and now has been 2.17±0.31 cm/year, which is about half the present rate. The present high rate may be due to near resonance between natural ocean frequencies and tidal frequencies.",
"title": "Geological evidence"
}
]
| In precise timekeeping, ΔT is a measure of the cumulative effect of the departure of the Earth's rotation period from the fixed-length day of International Atomic Time. Formally, ΔT is the time difference ΔT = TT − UT between Universal Time and Terrestrial Time. The value of ΔT for the start of 1902 was approximately zero; for 2002 it was about 64 seconds. So Earth's rotations over that century took about 64 seconds longer than would be required for days of atomic time. As well as this long-term drift in the length of the day there are short-term fluctuations in the length of day (Δτ) which are dealt with separately. Since 2017, the length of the day has happened to be very close to the conventional value, and ΔT has remained within a second of 69 seconds. | 2001-10-31T15:30:33Z | 2023-10-06T20:21:25Z | [
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8,728 | December 22 | December 22 is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; nine days remain until the end of the year. | [
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| December 22 is the 356th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; nine days remain until the end of the year. | 2001-10-29T12:23:21Z | 2023-12-23T07:12:49Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_22 |
8,729 | David Deutsch | David Elieser Deutsch FRS (/dɔɪtʃ/ DOYTCH; born 18 May 1953) is a British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a visiting professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by formulating a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer. He has also proposed the use of entangled states and Bell's theorem for quantum key distribution and is a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Deutsch was born into a Jewish family in Haifa, Israel on 18 May 1953, the son of Oskar and Tikva Deutsch. In London, David attended Geneva House school in Cricklewood (his parents owned and ran the Alma restaurant on Cricklewood Broadway), followed by William Ellis School in Highgate (then a voluntary aided school in north London) before reading Natural Sciences at Clare College, Cambridge and taking Part III of the Mathematical Tripos. He went on to Wolfson College, Oxford for his doctorate in theoretical physics and wrote his thesis on quantum field theory in curved space-time supervised by Dennis Sciama and Philip Candelas.
His work on quantum algorithms began with a 1985 paper, later expanded in 1992 along with Richard Jozsa to produce the Deutsch–Jozsa algorithm, one of the first examples of a quantum algorithm that is exponentially faster than any possible deterministic classical algorithm. In his 1985 paper, he also suggests the use of entangled states and Bell's theorem for quantum key distribution. In his nomination for election as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2008, his contributions were described as:
[having] laid the foundations of the quantum theory of computation, and has subsequently made or participated in many of the most important advances in the field, including the discovery of the first quantum algorithms, the theory of quantum logic gates and quantum computational networks, the first quantum error-correction scheme, and several fundamental quantum universality results. He has set the agenda for worldwide research efforts in this new, interdisciplinary field, made progress in understanding its philosophical implications (via a variant of the many-universes interpretation) and made it comprehensible to the general public, notably in his book The Fabric of Reality.
Since 2012, he has been working on constructor theory, an attempt at generalizing the quantum theory of computation to cover not just computation but all physical processes. Together with Chiara Marletto, he published a paper in December 2014 entitled Constructor theory of information, that conjectures that information can be expressed solely in terms of which transformations of physical systems are possible and which are impossible.
In his 1997 book The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch details his "Theory of Everything". It aims not at the reduction of everything to particle physics, but rather mutual support among multiversal, computational, epistemological, and evolutionary principles. His theory of everything is somewhat emergentist rather than reductive. There are four strands to his theory:
In a 2009 TED talk, Deutsch expounded a criterion for scientific explanation, which is to formulate invariants: "State an explanation [publicly, so that it can be dated and verified by others later] that remains invariant [in the face of apparent change, new information, or unexpected conditions]".
Invariance as a fundamental aspect of a scientific account of reality had long been part of philosophy of science: for example, Friedel Weinert's book The Scientist as Philosopher (2004) noted the presence of the theme in many writings from around 1900 onward, such as works by Henri Poincaré (1902), Ernst Cassirer (1920), Max Born (1949 and 1953), Paul Dirac (1958), Olivier Costa de Beauregard (1966), Eugene Wigner (1967), Lawrence Sklar (1974), Michael Friedman (1983), John D. Norton (1992), Nicholas Maxwell (1993), Alan Cook (1994), Alistair Cameron Crombie (1994), Margaret Morrison (1995), Richard Feynman (1997), Robert Nozick (2001), and Tim Maudlin (2002).
Deutsch's second book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World, was published on 31 March 2011. In this book, he views the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries as near the beginning of a potentially unending sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. He examines the nature of knowledge, memes, and how and why creativity evolved in humans.
The Fabric of Reality was shortlisted for the Rhone-Poulenc science book award in 1998. Deutsch was awarded the Dirac Prize of the Institute of Physics in 1998, and the Edge of Computation Science Prize in 2005. In 2017, he received the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). Deutsch is linked to Paul Dirac through his doctoral advisor Dennis Sciama, whose doctoral advisor was Dirac. Deutsch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2008. In 2020 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Cybernetics Society. In 2018, he received the Micius Quantum Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the Isaac Newton Medal and Prize.
On 22 September 2022, he was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (sharing it with 3 others).
Deutsch is a founding member of the parenting and educational method Taking Children Seriously. Deutsch supported Brexit, with his advocacy regularly being quoted by the then government adviser, Dominic Cummings. | [
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"title": "Career and research"
},
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"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Invariance as a fundamental aspect of a scientific account of reality had long been part of philosophy of science: for example, Friedel Weinert's book The Scientist as Philosopher (2004) noted the presence of the theme in many writings from around 1900 onward, such as works by Henri Poincaré (1902), Ernst Cassirer (1920), Max Born (1949 and 1953), Paul Dirac (1958), Olivier Costa de Beauregard (1966), Eugene Wigner (1967), Lawrence Sklar (1974), Michael Friedman (1983), John D. Norton (1992), Nicholas Maxwell (1993), Alan Cook (1994), Alistair Cameron Crombie (1994), Margaret Morrison (1995), Richard Feynman (1997), Robert Nozick (2001), and Tim Maudlin (2002).",
"title": "Career and research"
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"text": "Deutsch's second book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World, was published on 31 March 2011. In this book, he views the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries as near the beginning of a potentially unending sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. He examines the nature of knowledge, memes, and how and why creativity evolved in humans.",
"title": "Career and research"
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"text": "The Fabric of Reality was shortlisted for the Rhone-Poulenc science book award in 1998. Deutsch was awarded the Dirac Prize of the Institute of Physics in 1998, and the Edge of Computation Science Prize in 2005. In 2017, he received the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). Deutsch is linked to Paul Dirac through his doctoral advisor Dennis Sciama, whose doctoral advisor was Dirac. Deutsch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2008. In 2020 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Cybernetics Society. In 2018, he received the Micius Quantum Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the Isaac Newton Medal and Prize.",
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| David Elieser Deutsch is a British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a visiting professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by formulating a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer. He has also proposed the use of entangled states and Bell's theorem for quantum key distribution and is a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. | 2001-10-29T21:23:36Z | 2023-11-05T01:26:54Z | [
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8,730 | Volkssturm | The Volkssturm (German pronunciation: [ˈfɔlksʃtʊʁm]; "people's storm") was a levée en masse national militia established by Nazi Germany during the last months of World War II. It was set up by the Nazi Party on the orders of Adolf Hitler and established on 25 September 1944. It was staffed by conscripting males between the ages of 16 and 60 years, who were not already serving in some military unit. The Volkssturm comprised one of the final components of the total war promulgated by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, part of a Nazi endeavor to overcome their enemies' military strength through force of will. Volkssturm units fought unsuccessful battles against the Allied forces at the end of the war and on several occasions, its members participated in atrocities accompanied by German civilians and the Hitler Youth, which were overseen by members of the SS or Gaue leaders.
The Volkssturm drew inspiration from the Prussian Landsturm of 1813–1815, that fought in the liberation wars against Napoleon, mainly as guerrilla forces. Plans to form a Landsturm national militia in eastern Germany as a last resort to boost fighting strength were first proposed in 1944 by General Heinz Guderian, chief of the German General Staff. The Army did not have enough men to resist the Soviet onslaught. So, additional categories of men were called into service, including those in non-essential jobs, those previously deemed unfit, over-age, or under-age, and those recovering from wounds. The Volkssturm had existed, on paper, since around 1925, but it was only after Hitler ordered Martin Bormann to recruit six million men for this militia that the group became a physical reality. While the regime formally established the Volkssturm on 25 September, it was not announced to the public until 16 October 1944. The official launch date was two days later, 18 October 1944 and was chosen by Heinrich Himmler to evoke parallels with the popular uprising which, according to popular legend, ended French rule over Germany and culminated in the Battle of Leipzig on the same date in 1813. Despite the appeal for this last-ditch effort, the intended strength of "six million" members was never attained.
Joseph Goebbels and other propagandists depicted the Volkssturm as an outburst of enthusiasm and the will to resist. Historian Daniel Blatman writes that the Volkssturm was portrayed as the "incarnation" of the greater Volksgemeinschaft, whereby "all differences in social status, origin, or age vanish and unite all people on the basis of race. It was the service framework for members of the local community, who had been raised together and lived side by side, and now bore arms together in order to defend the community." In some regards, the Volkssturm was the culmination of Goebbels' "total war" speech of February 1943 and its formation was "given a big build-up" in the November 1944 newsreel episode of Die Deutsche Wochenschau. Consistent messages of final victory from various Nazi media outlets accompanying the Volkssturm's creation provided a psychological rallying point for the civilian population. While it had some marginal effect on morale, it was undermined by the recruits' visible lack of uniforms and weaponry. Nazi themes of death, transcendence, and commemoration were given full play to encourage the fight. Many German civilians realized that this was a desperate attempt to turn the course of the war. Sardonic old men would remark, "We old monkeys are the Führer’s newest weapon" (in German this rhymes: "Wir alten Affen sind des Führers neue Waffen"). A popular joke about the Volkssturm went "Why is the Volkssturm Germany's most precious resource? Because its members have silver in their hair, gold in their mouths, and lead in their bones."
For these militia units to be effective, they needed not only strength in numbers, but also fanaticism. During the early stages of Volkssturm planning, it became apparent that units lacking morale would lack combat effectiveness. To generate fanaticism, Volkssturm units were placed under direct command of the local Nazi party officials, the Gauleiter and Kreisleiter. The new Volkssturm was also to become a nationwide organization, with Heinrich Himmler as Replacement Army commander, responsible for armament and training. Though nominally under party control, Volkssturm units were placed under Heer command when engaged in action. At the Reich level, the SS and the Party Chancellery agreed to share responsibility between them. Himmler retained responsibility for military equipment and training while Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery, was charged with oversight of administration and political indoctrination. Aware that a "people's army" would not be able to withstand the onslaught of the modern army wielded by the Allies, Hitler issued the following order towards the end of 1944:
Experience in the East has shown that Volkssturm, emergency and reserve units have little fighting value when left to themselves, and can be quickly destroyed. The fighting value of these units, which are for the most part strong in numbers, but weak in the armaments required for modern battle, is immeasurably higher when they go into action with troops of the regular army in the field. I, therefore, order: where Volkssturm, emergency, and reserve units are available, together with regular units, in any battle sector, mixed battle-groups (brigades) will be formed under unified command, so as to give the Volkssturm, emergency, and reserve units stiffening and support.
With the Nazi Party in charge of organizing the Volkssturm, each Gauleiter, or Nazi Party District Leader, was charged with the leadership, enrollment, and organization of the Volkssturm in their district. The largest Volkssturm unit seems to have corresponded to the next smaller territorial subdivision of the Nazi Party organization—the Kreis. The basic unit was a battalion of 642 men. Units were mostly composed of members of the Hitler Youth, invalids, the elderly, or men who had previously been considered unfit for military service. On 12 February 1945, the Nazis conscripted German women and girls into the auxiliaries of the Volkssturm. Correspondingly, girls as young as 14 years were trained in the use of small arms, Panzerfausts, machine guns, and hand grenades from December 1944 through May 1945.
Municipal organization:
Each Gauleiter and Kreisleiter had a Volkssturm Chief of Staff.
From the militia's inception until the spring of 1945, Himmler and Bormann engaged in a power-struggle over the jurisdictional control over the Volkssturm regarding security and police powers in Germany and the occupied territories; a contest which Himmler and his SS more or less won on one level (police and security), but lost to Bormann on another (mobilizing reserve forces). Historian David Yelton described the situation as two ranking officers at the helm of a sinking ship fighting over command.
Benito Mussolini suggested, through his son Vittorio, then general secretary of the Republican Fascist Party's German branch, that 30,000 Italians should be added to the Volkssturm in defense of Germany. However, no evidence exists that this offer was implemented.
The Volkssturm "uniform" was only a black armband with the German words Deutscher Volkssturm Wehrmacht ("German People's Storm Armed Forces"). The German government tried to issue as many of its members as possible with military uniforms of all sorts, ranging from Feldgrau to camouflage types. An example of the Volkssturm's piecemeal outfitting occurred in the Rhineland, where one unit was provided with "pre-war black SS uniforms, brown Organization Todt coats, blue Air Force auxiliary caps, and French steel helmets." Most members of the Volkssturm, especially elderly members, had no uniform and were not supplied, so they generally wore either work uniforms (including railway workers, policemen and firemen), Hitler Youth uniforms, old uniforms or their parts from the time of the First World War or their civilian clothing and usually carried with them their own personal rucksacks, blankets, cooking-equipment, etc.
The simple paramilitary insignia of the Volkssturm were as follows:
Typically, members of the Volkssturm received only very basic military training. It included a brief indoctrination and training on the use of basic weapons such as the Karabiner 98k rifle and Panzerfaust. Because of continuous fighting and weapon shortages, weapon training was often minimal. There was also a lack of instructors, meaning that weapons training was sometimes done by World War I veterans drafted into service themselves. Often Volkssturm members were only able to familiarize themselves with their weapons when in actual combat.
There was no standardization of any kind and units were issued only what equipment was available. This was true of every form of equipment—Volkssturm members were required to bring their own uniforms and culinary equipment etc. This resulted in the units looking very ragged and, instead of boosting civilian morale, it often reminded people of Germany's desperate state. Armament was equally haphazard: though some Karabiner 98ks were on hand, members were also issued older Gewehr 98s, Steyr-Mannlicher M1895s, 19th-century Gewehr 71s, and Steyr-Mannlicher M1888s, as well as Dreyse M1907 pistols. In addition there was a plethora of Soviet, British, Belgian, French, Italian, and other weapons that had been captured by German forces during the war. The Germans had also developed cheap but reasonably effective Volkssturm weapons, such as MP 3008 machine pistols and Volkssturmgewehr rifles. These were completely stamped and machine-pressed constructions (in the 1940s, industrial processes were much cruder than today, so a firearm needed great amounts of semi-artisanal work to be actually reliable). The Volkssturm troops were nominally supplied when and where possible by both the Wehrmacht and the SS. By the end of January 1945, the Volkssturm had only accumulated 40,500 rifles and 2,900 machine guns amid this mish-mash of foreign and outdated assemblage of weapons.
When units had completed their training and received armament, members took a customary oath to Hitler and were then dispatched into combat. Teenagers and middle-aged men were sent to separate training camps, some of whom received as little as ten to fourteen days of training before being sent to fight. Unlike most English-speaking countries, Germany had universal military service for all young men for several generations, so many of the older members would have had at least basic military training from when they served in the German Army and many would have been veterans of the First World War. Volkssturm units were supposed to be used only in their own districts, but many were sent directly to the front lines. Ultimately, it was their charge to confront the overwhelming power of the British, Canadian, Soviet, American, and French armies alongside Wehrmacht forces to either turn the tide of the war or set a shining example for future generations of Germans and expunge the defeat of 1918 by fighting to the last, dying before surrendering. It was an apocalyptic goal which some of those assigned to the Volkssturm took to heart. Unremittingly fanatical members of the Volkssturm refused to abandon the Nazi ethos unto the dying days of Nazi Germany, and in a number of instances took brutal "police actions" against German civilians deemed defeatists or cowards.
Losses were high among the Volkssturm – battalion 25/235 for instance, started out with 400 men but fought on until there were only 10 men remaining. Fighting at Küstrin between 30 January to 29 March 1945, militia units made up mostly of the Volkssturm resisted for nearly two months. Losses were upwards of 60 percent for the Volkssturm at Kolberg, roughly 1,900 of them died at Breslau, and during the Battle of Königsberg (Kaliningrad), another 2,400 members of the Volkssturm were killed. At other times along the western front particularly, Volkssturm troops would cast their arms aside and disappear into the chaos.
Many units lost their enthusiasm for the fight when it became clear that the Allies had won, prompting them to lay down their weapons and surrender – they also feared being captured by Allied forces and tortured or executed as partisans. Duty to their communities also played a part in their capitulation, as did self-preservation.
Their most extensive use was during the Battle of Berlin, where Volkssturm units fought in many parts of the city. This battle was particularly devastating to its formations; however, many members fought to the death out of fear of being captured by the Soviets. The Volkssturm had a strength of about 60,000 in the Berlin area, formed into 92 battalions, of which about 30 battalions of Volkssturm I (those with some weapons) were sent to forward positions, while those of Volkssturm II (those without weapons) remained in the inner city. One of the few substantive fighting units left to defend Berlin was the LVI Panzer Corps, which occupied the southeastern sector of the town, whereas the remaining parts of the city were being defended by what remained of the SS, the Volkssturm, and the Hitler Youth formations. Nonetheless, a force of over 2.5 million Soviet troops, equipped with 6,250 tanks and over 40,000 artillery pieces were assigned to capture the city, and the diminished remnants of the Wehrmacht were no match for them. Meanwhile, Hitler denounced every perceived "betrayal" to the inhabitants of the Führerbunker. Not eager to die what was thought to be a pointless death, many older members of the Volkssturm looked for places to hide from the approaching Soviet Army.
One notable and unusual Volkssturm unit in the Battle for Berlin was the 3/115 Siemensstadt Battalion. It comprised 770 men, mainly First World War veterans in their 50s who were reasonably fit factory workers, with experienced officers. Unlike most Volkssturm units it was quite well equipped and trained. It was formed into three rifle companies, a support company (with two infantry support guns, four infantry mortars and heavy machine guns), and a heavy weapons company (with four Soviet M-20 howitzers and a French De Bange 220 mm mortar). The battalion first engaged Soviet troops at Friedrichsfelde on 21 April and saw the heaviest fighting over the following two days. It held out until 2 May, by which time it was down to just 50 rifles and two light machine guns. The survivors fell back to join other Volkssturm units. 26 men from the battalion were awarded the Iron Cross. Allied bombing and Soviet artillery had reduced Berlin to rubble; meanwhile the final stand in Berlin dwindled to fighting against highly trained, battle-hardened Soviet troops on the brink of final victory, who viewed resistance fighters like the Volkssturm as terrorists in much the same way the Wehrmacht once had viewed potential partisans during Operation Barbarossa. Red Army soldiers called the Hitler Youth formations and members of the Volkssturm still fighting to the end in Berlin "totals" for being part of Germany's total mobilization effort.
On several occasions, members of the Volkssturm participated in atrocities. During January 1945, thousands of prisoners were evacuated and force-marched from several smaller concentrations camps—which included Jesau, Seerappen, Schippenbeil, Gerdauen, and Helgenbeil—near Königsberg, many dying along the way. Upon reaching Palmnicken, some 2,500 to 3,000 prisoners of the 5,000 that originally began the journey were lodged in a factory. Mayor and local Nazi party chief, Kurt Friedrichs wanted the SS to send these prisoners on their way since the Red Army was not far away. When local Volkssturm leader Hans Feyerabend was ordered to transport the suffering prisoners out of the town, he refused to carry out the order and was heard exclaiming that he would not permit a massacre like the one at Katyn forest. Feyerabend even assigned Volkssturm guards to keep watch on the local Nazi party members, but this proved fruitless when Friedrich armed a group of Hitler Youth and likewise summoned the local SD elements, whose leaders then commanded the Volkssturm to help evacuate the prisoners. On 30 January 1945, after the Volkssturm left with Friedrich in charge, Feyerabend committed suicide; then between 30 January and 1 February the prisoners were murdered by the remaining assemblage of SS guards, Hitler Youth, and the local Volkssturm unit.
When prisoners fell sick with typhus in the Styria Gau during February–March 1945, SS men, Hitler Youth, and Volkssturm units systematically murdered them. Under the orders of Loeben-district Kreisleiter, Otto Christandl, Volkssturm units in nearby Graz and Eisenerz assisted the Gestapo and Ukrainian Waffen-SS men in evacuating between 6,000 and 8,000 prisoners—being marched towards Mauthausen—from their region, many of whom were murdered during the journey when they collapsed from exhaustion.
Sometime in early April 1945 as Allied forces approached the Mittelwerk facilities—where V2 rockets were being produced—the slave laborers from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp were force-marched from the western Harz by a collection of guards drawn from the military, the Hitler Youth, and the Volkssturm. Approximately 40 kilometers north of Magdeburg in the village of Mieste, this motley assemblage of guards locked a thousand of these prisoners in a barn and burned them alive at the instruction of a local Nazi Party leader; this event came to be known as the Gardelegen massacre. At the town of Celle in Lower Saxony around the same time, members of the SS, SA, local police, Hitler Youth, and Volkssturm were aided by locals to "hunt down and shoot" prisoners who had fled into the local woodland after their transport train was bombed.
Interrogated members of the Volkssturm—when questioned as to where the regular forces had gone—revealed that German soldiers surrendered to the Americans and British instead of the Red Army for fear of reprisals related to the atrocities they had committed in the Soviet Union.
While Iron Crosses were being handed out in places like Berlin, other cities and towns like Parchim and Mecklenburg witnessed old elites, acting as military commandants over the Hitler Youth and Volkssturm, asserting themselves and demanding that the defensive fighting stop so as to spare lives and property. Despite their efforts, the last four months of the war were an exercise in futility for the Volkssturm, and the Nazi leadership's insistence to continue the fight to the bitter end contributed to an additional 1.23 million (approximated) deaths, half of them German military personnel and the other half from the Volkssturm.
In many small towns, when leading members of the Volkssturm refused to fight on against the superior forces of the Allies—part of an attempt to circumvent the "total destruction" of their home regions—they were tried and "summarily hanged" by party activists. Thousands were killed like this in Franken during the spring of 1945.
Other nations: | [
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{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Volkssturm drew inspiration from the Prussian Landsturm of 1813–1815, that fought in the liberation wars against Napoleon, mainly as guerrilla forces. Plans to form a Landsturm national militia in eastern Germany as a last resort to boost fighting strength were first proposed in 1944 by General Heinz Guderian, chief of the German General Staff. The Army did not have enough men to resist the Soviet onslaught. So, additional categories of men were called into service, including those in non-essential jobs, those previously deemed unfit, over-age, or under-age, and those recovering from wounds. The Volkssturm had existed, on paper, since around 1925, but it was only after Hitler ordered Martin Bormann to recruit six million men for this militia that the group became a physical reality. While the regime formally established the Volkssturm on 25 September, it was not announced to the public until 16 October 1944. The official launch date was two days later, 18 October 1944 and was chosen by Heinrich Himmler to evoke parallels with the popular uprising which, according to popular legend, ended French rule over Germany and culminated in the Battle of Leipzig on the same date in 1813. Despite the appeal for this last-ditch effort, the intended strength of \"six million\" members was never attained.",
"title": "Origins and organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Joseph Goebbels and other propagandists depicted the Volkssturm as an outburst of enthusiasm and the will to resist. Historian Daniel Blatman writes that the Volkssturm was portrayed as the \"incarnation\" of the greater Volksgemeinschaft, whereby \"all differences in social status, origin, or age vanish and unite all people on the basis of race. It was the service framework for members of the local community, who had been raised together and lived side by side, and now bore arms together in order to defend the community.\" In some regards, the Volkssturm was the culmination of Goebbels' \"total war\" speech of February 1943 and its formation was \"given a big build-up\" in the November 1944 newsreel episode of Die Deutsche Wochenschau. Consistent messages of final victory from various Nazi media outlets accompanying the Volkssturm's creation provided a psychological rallying point for the civilian population. While it had some marginal effect on morale, it was undermined by the recruits' visible lack of uniforms and weaponry. Nazi themes of death, transcendence, and commemoration were given full play to encourage the fight. Many German civilians realized that this was a desperate attempt to turn the course of the war. Sardonic old men would remark, \"We old monkeys are the Führer’s newest weapon\" (in German this rhymes: \"Wir alten Affen sind des Führers neue Waffen\"). A popular joke about the Volkssturm went \"Why is the Volkssturm Germany's most precious resource? Because its members have silver in their hair, gold in their mouths, and lead in their bones.\"",
"title": "Origins and organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "For these militia units to be effective, they needed not only strength in numbers, but also fanaticism. During the early stages of Volkssturm planning, it became apparent that units lacking morale would lack combat effectiveness. To generate fanaticism, Volkssturm units were placed under direct command of the local Nazi party officials, the Gauleiter and Kreisleiter. The new Volkssturm was also to become a nationwide organization, with Heinrich Himmler as Replacement Army commander, responsible for armament and training. Though nominally under party control, Volkssturm units were placed under Heer command when engaged in action. At the Reich level, the SS and the Party Chancellery agreed to share responsibility between them. Himmler retained responsibility for military equipment and training while Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery, was charged with oversight of administration and political indoctrination. Aware that a \"people's army\" would not be able to withstand the onslaught of the modern army wielded by the Allies, Hitler issued the following order towards the end of 1944:",
"title": "Origins and organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Experience in the East has shown that Volkssturm, emergency and reserve units have little fighting value when left to themselves, and can be quickly destroyed. The fighting value of these units, which are for the most part strong in numbers, but weak in the armaments required for modern battle, is immeasurably higher when they go into action with troops of the regular army in the field. I, therefore, order: where Volkssturm, emergency, and reserve units are available, together with regular units, in any battle sector, mixed battle-groups (brigades) will be formed under unified command, so as to give the Volkssturm, emergency, and reserve units stiffening and support.",
"title": "Origins and organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "With the Nazi Party in charge of organizing the Volkssturm, each Gauleiter, or Nazi Party District Leader, was charged with the leadership, enrollment, and organization of the Volkssturm in their district. The largest Volkssturm unit seems to have corresponded to the next smaller territorial subdivision of the Nazi Party organization—the Kreis. The basic unit was a battalion of 642 men. Units were mostly composed of members of the Hitler Youth, invalids, the elderly, or men who had previously been considered unfit for military service. On 12 February 1945, the Nazis conscripted German women and girls into the auxiliaries of the Volkssturm. Correspondingly, girls as young as 14 years were trained in the use of small arms, Panzerfausts, machine guns, and hand grenades from December 1944 through May 1945.",
"title": "Origins and organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Municipal organization:",
"title": "Origins and organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Each Gauleiter and Kreisleiter had a Volkssturm Chief of Staff.",
"title": "Origins and organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "From the militia's inception until the spring of 1945, Himmler and Bormann engaged in a power-struggle over the jurisdictional control over the Volkssturm regarding security and police powers in Germany and the occupied territories; a contest which Himmler and his SS more or less won on one level (police and security), but lost to Bormann on another (mobilizing reserve forces). Historian David Yelton described the situation as two ranking officers at the helm of a sinking ship fighting over command.",
"title": "Origins and organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Benito Mussolini suggested, through his son Vittorio, then general secretary of the Republican Fascist Party's German branch, that 30,000 Italians should be added to the Volkssturm in defense of Germany. However, no evidence exists that this offer was implemented.",
"title": "Origins and organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Volkssturm \"uniform\" was only a black armband with the German words Deutscher Volkssturm Wehrmacht (\"German People's Storm Armed Forces\"). The German government tried to issue as many of its members as possible with military uniforms of all sorts, ranging from Feldgrau to camouflage types. An example of the Volkssturm's piecemeal outfitting occurred in the Rhineland, where one unit was provided with \"pre-war black SS uniforms, brown Organization Todt coats, blue Air Force auxiliary caps, and French steel helmets.\" Most members of the Volkssturm, especially elderly members, had no uniform and were not supplied, so they generally wore either work uniforms (including railway workers, policemen and firemen), Hitler Youth uniforms, old uniforms or their parts from the time of the First World War or their civilian clothing and usually carried with them their own personal rucksacks, blankets, cooking-equipment, etc.",
"title": "Uniforms and insignia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The simple paramilitary insignia of the Volkssturm were as follows:",
"title": "Ranks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Typically, members of the Volkssturm received only very basic military training. It included a brief indoctrination and training on the use of basic weapons such as the Karabiner 98k rifle and Panzerfaust. Because of continuous fighting and weapon shortages, weapon training was often minimal. There was also a lack of instructors, meaning that weapons training was sometimes done by World War I veterans drafted into service themselves. Often Volkssturm members were only able to familiarize themselves with their weapons when in actual combat.",
"title": "Training and impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "There was no standardization of any kind and units were issued only what equipment was available. This was true of every form of equipment—Volkssturm members were required to bring their own uniforms and culinary equipment etc. This resulted in the units looking very ragged and, instead of boosting civilian morale, it often reminded people of Germany's desperate state. Armament was equally haphazard: though some Karabiner 98ks were on hand, members were also issued older Gewehr 98s, Steyr-Mannlicher M1895s, 19th-century Gewehr 71s, and Steyr-Mannlicher M1888s, as well as Dreyse M1907 pistols. In addition there was a plethora of Soviet, British, Belgian, French, Italian, and other weapons that had been captured by German forces during the war. The Germans had also developed cheap but reasonably effective Volkssturm weapons, such as MP 3008 machine pistols and Volkssturmgewehr rifles. These were completely stamped and machine-pressed constructions (in the 1940s, industrial processes were much cruder than today, so a firearm needed great amounts of semi-artisanal work to be actually reliable). The Volkssturm troops were nominally supplied when and where possible by both the Wehrmacht and the SS. By the end of January 1945, the Volkssturm had only accumulated 40,500 rifles and 2,900 machine guns amid this mish-mash of foreign and outdated assemblage of weapons.",
"title": "Training and impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "When units had completed their training and received armament, members took a customary oath to Hitler and were then dispatched into combat. Teenagers and middle-aged men were sent to separate training camps, some of whom received as little as ten to fourteen days of training before being sent to fight. Unlike most English-speaking countries, Germany had universal military service for all young men for several generations, so many of the older members would have had at least basic military training from when they served in the German Army and many would have been veterans of the First World War. Volkssturm units were supposed to be used only in their own districts, but many were sent directly to the front lines. Ultimately, it was their charge to confront the overwhelming power of the British, Canadian, Soviet, American, and French armies alongside Wehrmacht forces to either turn the tide of the war or set a shining example for future generations of Germans and expunge the defeat of 1918 by fighting to the last, dying before surrendering. It was an apocalyptic goal which some of those assigned to the Volkssturm took to heart. Unremittingly fanatical members of the Volkssturm refused to abandon the Nazi ethos unto the dying days of Nazi Germany, and in a number of instances took brutal \"police actions\" against German civilians deemed defeatists or cowards.",
"title": "Training and impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Losses were high among the Volkssturm – battalion 25/235 for instance, started out with 400 men but fought on until there were only 10 men remaining. Fighting at Küstrin between 30 January to 29 March 1945, militia units made up mostly of the Volkssturm resisted for nearly two months. Losses were upwards of 60 percent for the Volkssturm at Kolberg, roughly 1,900 of them died at Breslau, and during the Battle of Königsberg (Kaliningrad), another 2,400 members of the Volkssturm were killed. At other times along the western front particularly, Volkssturm troops would cast their arms aside and disappear into the chaos.",
"title": "Training and impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Many units lost their enthusiasm for the fight when it became clear that the Allies had won, prompting them to lay down their weapons and surrender – they also feared being captured by Allied forces and tortured or executed as partisans. Duty to their communities also played a part in their capitulation, as did self-preservation.",
"title": "Training and impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Their most extensive use was during the Battle of Berlin, where Volkssturm units fought in many parts of the city. This battle was particularly devastating to its formations; however, many members fought to the death out of fear of being captured by the Soviets. The Volkssturm had a strength of about 60,000 in the Berlin area, formed into 92 battalions, of which about 30 battalions of Volkssturm I (those with some weapons) were sent to forward positions, while those of Volkssturm II (those without weapons) remained in the inner city. One of the few substantive fighting units left to defend Berlin was the LVI Panzer Corps, which occupied the southeastern sector of the town, whereas the remaining parts of the city were being defended by what remained of the SS, the Volkssturm, and the Hitler Youth formations. Nonetheless, a force of over 2.5 million Soviet troops, equipped with 6,250 tanks and over 40,000 artillery pieces were assigned to capture the city, and the diminished remnants of the Wehrmacht were no match for them. Meanwhile, Hitler denounced every perceived \"betrayal\" to the inhabitants of the Führerbunker. Not eager to die what was thought to be a pointless death, many older members of the Volkssturm looked for places to hide from the approaching Soviet Army.",
"title": "Battle for Berlin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "One notable and unusual Volkssturm unit in the Battle for Berlin was the 3/115 Siemensstadt Battalion. It comprised 770 men, mainly First World War veterans in their 50s who were reasonably fit factory workers, with experienced officers. Unlike most Volkssturm units it was quite well equipped and trained. It was formed into three rifle companies, a support company (with two infantry support guns, four infantry mortars and heavy machine guns), and a heavy weapons company (with four Soviet M-20 howitzers and a French De Bange 220 mm mortar). The battalion first engaged Soviet troops at Friedrichsfelde on 21 April and saw the heaviest fighting over the following two days. It held out until 2 May, by which time it was down to just 50 rifles and two light machine guns. The survivors fell back to join other Volkssturm units. 26 men from the battalion were awarded the Iron Cross. Allied bombing and Soviet artillery had reduced Berlin to rubble; meanwhile the final stand in Berlin dwindled to fighting against highly trained, battle-hardened Soviet troops on the brink of final victory, who viewed resistance fighters like the Volkssturm as terrorists in much the same way the Wehrmacht once had viewed potential partisans during Operation Barbarossa. Red Army soldiers called the Hitler Youth formations and members of the Volkssturm still fighting to the end in Berlin \"totals\" for being part of Germany's total mobilization effort.",
"title": "Battle for Berlin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "On several occasions, members of the Volkssturm participated in atrocities. During January 1945, thousands of prisoners were evacuated and force-marched from several smaller concentrations camps—which included Jesau, Seerappen, Schippenbeil, Gerdauen, and Helgenbeil—near Königsberg, many dying along the way. Upon reaching Palmnicken, some 2,500 to 3,000 prisoners of the 5,000 that originally began the journey were lodged in a factory. Mayor and local Nazi party chief, Kurt Friedrichs wanted the SS to send these prisoners on their way since the Red Army was not far away. When local Volkssturm leader Hans Feyerabend was ordered to transport the suffering prisoners out of the town, he refused to carry out the order and was heard exclaiming that he would not permit a massacre like the one at Katyn forest. Feyerabend even assigned Volkssturm guards to keep watch on the local Nazi party members, but this proved fruitless when Friedrich armed a group of Hitler Youth and likewise summoned the local SD elements, whose leaders then commanded the Volkssturm to help evacuate the prisoners. On 30 January 1945, after the Volkssturm left with Friedrich in charge, Feyerabend committed suicide; then between 30 January and 1 February the prisoners were murdered by the remaining assemblage of SS guards, Hitler Youth, and the local Volkssturm unit.",
"title": "Role in atrocities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "When prisoners fell sick with typhus in the Styria Gau during February–March 1945, SS men, Hitler Youth, and Volkssturm units systematically murdered them. Under the orders of Loeben-district Kreisleiter, Otto Christandl, Volkssturm units in nearby Graz and Eisenerz assisted the Gestapo and Ukrainian Waffen-SS men in evacuating between 6,000 and 8,000 prisoners—being marched towards Mauthausen—from their region, many of whom were murdered during the journey when they collapsed from exhaustion.",
"title": "Role in atrocities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Sometime in early April 1945 as Allied forces approached the Mittelwerk facilities—where V2 rockets were being produced—the slave laborers from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp were force-marched from the western Harz by a collection of guards drawn from the military, the Hitler Youth, and the Volkssturm. Approximately 40 kilometers north of Magdeburg in the village of Mieste, this motley assemblage of guards locked a thousand of these prisoners in a barn and burned them alive at the instruction of a local Nazi Party leader; this event came to be known as the Gardelegen massacre. At the town of Celle in Lower Saxony around the same time, members of the SS, SA, local police, Hitler Youth, and Volkssturm were aided by locals to \"hunt down and shoot\" prisoners who had fled into the local woodland after their transport train was bombed.",
"title": "Role in atrocities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Interrogated members of the Volkssturm—when questioned as to where the regular forces had gone—revealed that German soldiers surrendered to the Americans and British instead of the Red Army for fear of reprisals related to the atrocities they had committed in the Soviet Union.",
"title": "Role in atrocities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "While Iron Crosses were being handed out in places like Berlin, other cities and towns like Parchim and Mecklenburg witnessed old elites, acting as military commandants over the Hitler Youth and Volkssturm, asserting themselves and demanding that the defensive fighting stop so as to spare lives and property. Despite their efforts, the last four months of the war were an exercise in futility for the Volkssturm, and the Nazi leadership's insistence to continue the fight to the bitter end contributed to an additional 1.23 million (approximated) deaths, half of them German military personnel and the other half from the Volkssturm.",
"title": "Final phase"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In many small towns, when leading members of the Volkssturm refused to fight on against the superior forces of the Allies—part of an attempt to circumvent the \"total destruction\" of their home regions—they were tried and \"summarily hanged\" by party activists. Thousands were killed like this in Franken during the spring of 1945.",
"title": "Final phase"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Other nations:",
"title": "See also"
}
]
| The Volkssturm was a levée en masse national militia established by Nazi Germany during the last months of World War II. It was set up by the Nazi Party on the orders of Adolf Hitler and established on 25 September 1944. It was staffed by conscripting males between the ages of 16 and 60 years, who were not already serving in some military unit. The Volkssturm comprised one of the final components of the total war promulgated by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, part of a Nazi endeavor to overcome their enemies' military strength through force of will. Volkssturm units fought unsuccessful battles against the Allied forces at the end of the war and on several occasions, its members participated in atrocities accompanied by German civilians and the Hitler Youth, which were overseen by members of the SS or Gaue leaders. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-22T14:49:02Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkssturm |
8,731 | Director's cut | A director's cut is an edited version of a film (or video game, television episode, music video, or commercial) that is supposed to represent the director's own approved edit in contrast to the theatrical release. "Cut" explicitly refers to the process of film and game editing; in preparing a film for release, the director's cut is preceded by the assembly and rough editor's cut and usually followed by the final cut meant for the public film release and video game release.
Director's cuts of film are not generally released to the public because on most films the director does not have the final cut privilege. Those with money invested in the film, such as the production companies, distributors, or studios, may make changes intended to make the film more profitable at the box office. This sometimes means a happier ending or less ambiguity, or excluding scenes that would earn a more audience-restricting rating, but more often means that the film is simply shortened to provide more screenings per day.
With the rise of home video, the phrase became more generically used as a marketing term (including media such as comic books and music albums, neither of which actually have directors), and the most commonly seen form of director's cut is a cut where extra scenes and characters are added in, often making the director's cut considerably longer than the final cut.
Traditionally, the "director's cut" is not, by definition, the director's ideal or preferred cut. The editing process of a film is broken into stages: First is the assembly/rough cut, where all selected takes are put together in the order in which they should appear in the film. Next, the editor's cut is reduced from the rough cut; the editor may be guided by their own choices or following notes from the director or producers. Eventually is the final cut, which actually gets released or broadcast. In between the editor's cut and the final cut can come any number of fine cuts, including the director's cut. The director's cut may include unsatisfactory takes, a preliminary soundtrack, a lack of desired pick-up shots etc., which the director would not like to be shown but uses as a placeholder until satisfactory replacements can be inserted. This is still how the term is used within the film industry, as well as commercials, television, and music videos.
The trend of releasing alternate cuts of films for artistic reasons became prominent in the 1970s; in 1974, the "director's cut" of The Wild Bunch was shown theatrically in Los Angeles to sold-out audiences. The theatrical release of the film had cut 10 minutes to get an R rating, but this cut was hailed as superior and has now become the definitive one. Other early examples include George Lucas's first two films being re-released following the success of Star Wars, in cuts which more closely resembled his vision, or Peter Bogdanovich re-cutting The Last Picture Show several times. Charlie Chaplin also re-released all of his films in the 1970s, several of which were re-cut (Chaplin's re-release of The Gold Rush in the 1940s is almost certainly the earliest prominent example of a director's re-cut film being released to the public). A theatrical re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind used the phrase "Special Edition" to describe a cut which was closer to Spielberg's intent but had a compromised ending demanded by the studio.
As the home video industry rose in the early 1980s, video releases of director's cuts were sometimes created for the small but dedicated cult fan market. Los Angeles cable station Z Channel is also cited as significant in the popularization of alternate cuts. Early examples of films released in this manner include Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, where a longer cut was recalled from theatres but subsequently shown on cable and eventually released to home video; James Cameron's Aliens, where a video release restored 20 minutes the studio had insisted on cutting; James Cameron's The Abyss, where Cameron voluntarily made cuts to the theatrical version for pacing but restored them for a video release, and most famously, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, where an alternate workprint version was released to fan acclaim, ultimately resulting in the 1992 recut. Scott later recut the film once more, releasing a version dubbed "The Final Cut" in 2007. This was the final re-cut and the first in which Scott maintained creative control over the final product, leading to The Final Cut being considered the definitive version of the film.
Once distributors discovered that consumers would buy alternate versions of films, it became common for films to receive multiple releases. There is no standardization for labelling, leading to so-called "director's cuts" of films despite where the director prefers the theatrically released version, or when the director had actual final cut privilege. These were often assembled by simply restoring deleted scenes, sometimes adding as much as a half-hour to the length of the film without regard to pacing and storytelling.
As a result, the "director's cut" is often considered a mixed bag, with an equal share of supporters and detractors (including Peter Jackson and James Cameron for the latter; each preferring the phrases "special" and "extended" edition). Roger Ebert approved of the use of the label in unsuccessful films that had been tampered with by studio executives, such as Sergio Leone's original cut of Once Upon a Time in America, and the moderately successful theatrical version of Daredevil, which were altered by studio interference for their theatrical release. Other well-received director's cuts include Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven (with Empire magazine stating: "The added 45 minutes in the Director’s Cut are like pieces missing from a beautiful but incomplete puzzle"), or Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, where the restored 115-minute cut is closer to the director's intent than the theatrical 105-minute cut (the actual director's cut was 122 minutes; it was never completed to Peckinpah's satisfaction, but was used as a guide for the restoration that was done after his death).
Sometimes the term is used a marketing ploy. For example, Ridley Scott states on the director's commentary track of Alien that the original theatrical release was his "director's cut", and that the new version was released as a marketing ploy. Director Peter Bogdanovich, no stranger to director's cuts himself, cites Red River as an example where
MGM have a version of Howard Hawks's Red River that they're calling the Director's Cut and it is absolutely not the director's cut. It's a cut the director didn't want, an earlier cut that was junked. They assume because it was longer that it's a director's cut. Capra cut two reels off Lost Horizon because it didn't work and then someone tried to put it back. There are certainly mistakes and stupidities in reconstructing pictures.
In some instances, such as Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, Robert Wise's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, John Cassavetes's The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Blake Edwards's Darling Lili, Sylvester Stallone's Rocky IV, and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Coda, changes made to a director's cut resulted in a very similar runtime or a shorter, more compact cut. This generally happens when a distributor insists that a film be completed to meet a release date, but sometimes it is the result of removing scenes that the distributor insisted on inserting, as opposed to restoring scenes they insisted on cutting.
Another way that released director's cuts can be compromised is when directors were never allowed to even shoot their vision, and thus when the film is re-cut, they must make do with the footage that exists. Examples of this include Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa, Brian Helgeland's Payback, and most notably the Richard Donner re-cut of Superman II. Donner completed about 75 per cent of the shooting of the sequel during the shooting of the first one but was fired from the project. His director's cut of the film includes, among other things, screen test footage of stars Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, footage used in the first film, and entire scenes that were shot by replacement director Richard Lester which Donner dislikes but were required for story purposes.
(See Changes in Star Wars re-releases and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The 20th Anniversary)
Separate to director's cuts are alternate cuts released as "special editions" or "extended cuts". These versions are often put together for home video for fans, and should not be confused with 'director's cuts'. For example, despite releasing extended versions of his The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson told IGN in 2019 that “the theatrical versions are the definitive versions, I regard the extended cuts as being a novelty for the fans that really want to see the extra material.”
"The traditional definition of the term 'Director's Cut' suggests the restoration of a director's original vision, free of any creative limitations. It suggests that the filmmaker has finally overcome the interference of heavy-handed studio executives, and that the film has been restored to its original, untampered form. Such is not the case with Alien: The Director's Cut. It's a completely different beast."
—Ridley Scott
James Cameron has shared similar sentiments regarding the special editions of his films, "What I put into theaters is the Director's Cut. Nothing was cut that I didn't want cut. All the extra scenes we've added back in are just a bonus for the fans." Similar statements were made by Ridley Scott for the 2003 'director's cut' of Alien.
Such alternate versions sometimes include changes to the special effects in addition to different editing, such as George Lucas's Star Wars films, and Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Extended or special editions can also apply to films that have been extended for television or cut out to fill time slots and long advertisement breaks, against the explicit wishes of the director, such as the TV versions of Dune (1984), The Warriors (1979), Superman (1978) and the Harry Potter films.
The Lord of the Rings film series directed by Peter Jackson saw an "Extended Edition" release for each of the three films The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003) featuring an additional 30 minutes, 47 minutes and 51 minutes respectively of new scenes, special effects and music alongside fan-club credits.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice directed by Zack Snyder had an "Ultimate Edition," which added back 31 minutes of footage cut for the theatrical release and received an R rating, released digitally on 28 June 2016, and on Blu-ray on 19 July 2016. The extended director's cut received more positive critical reviews than the theatrically released film.
The film Justice League which suffered a very troubled production, was begun by Snyder, who completed a pre-postproduction director's cut but had to step down before completing the project due to his daughter's death. Joss Whedon was hired by the films' distributor Warner Bros to complete the film, which was however heavily re-shot, re-edited and released in 2017 with Snyder retaining the directorial credit, to negative reception from general audience, fans and critics alike and a box office failure. Following a global fan campaign to which the director and members of the cast and crew showed support, Snyder was allowed to return and complete the project the way he intended it and a 4-hour version of the film dubbed Zack Snyder's Justice League with some additionally shot scenes at the end was released on March 18, 2021 on HBO Max to much favorable reviews and acclaim. Snyder originally teased a 214-minute cut of the film that was supposed to be the theatrical version released in 2017 if he did not step down from the project.
The film Caligula exists in at least 10 different officially released versions, ranging from a sub-90-minute television edit version of TV-14 (later TV-MA) for cable television to an unrated full pornographic version exceeding 3.5 hours. This is believed to be the largest amount of distinct versions of a single film. Among major studio films, the record is believed to be held by Blade Runner; the magazine Video Watchdog counted no less than seven distinct versions in a 1993 issue, before director Ridley Scott later released a "Final Cut" in 2007 to acclaim from critics including Roger Ebert who included it on his great movies list, The release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut brings the supposed grand total to eight differing versions of Blade Runner.
Upon its release on DVD and Blu-ray in 2019, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald featured an extended cut with seven minutes of additional footage. This is the first time since Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that a Wizarding World film has had one.
An animated example of an extended cut without the approval of the director was 1983's Twice Upon a Time, which was extended to have more profanity (supervised by co-writer and producer Bill Couturié) as opposed to co-director John Korty's original.
The Coen Brothers' Blood Simple is one of few examples that demonstrate director's cuts are not necessarily longer.
The music video for the 2006 Academy Award-nominated song "Listen", performed by Beyoncé, received a director's cut by Diane Martel. This version of the video was later included on Knowles' B'Day Anthology Video Album (2007). Linkin Park has a director's cut version for their music video "Faint" (directed by Mark Romanek) in which one of the band members spray paints the words "En Proceso" on a wall, as well as Hoobastank also having one for 2004's "The Reason" which omits the woman getting hit by the car. Britney Spears' music video for 2007's "Gimme More" was first released as a director's cut on iTunes, with the official video released 3 days later. Many other director's cut music videos contain sexual content that can't be shown on TV thus creating alternative scenes, such as Thirty Seconds to Mars's "Hurricane", and in some cases, alternative videos, such as in the case of Spears' 2008 video for "Womanizer".
As the trend became more widely recognized, the term director's cut became increasingly used as a colloquialism to refer to an expanded version of other things, including video games, music, and comic books. This confusing usage only served to further reduce the artistic value of a director's cut, and it is currently rarely used in those ways.
For video games, these expanded versions, also referred as "complete editions", will have additions to the gameplay or additional game modes and features outside the main portion of the game.
As is the case with certain high-profile Japanese-produced games, the game designers may take the liberty to revise their product for the overseas market with additional features during the localization process. These features are later added back to the native market in a re-release of a game in what is often referred as the international version of the game. This was the case with the overseas versions of Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid and Rogue Galaxy, which contained additional features (such as new difficulty settings for Metal Gear Solid), resulting in re-released versions of those respective games in Japan (Final Fantasy VII International, Metal Gear Solid: Integral and Rogue Galaxy: Director's Cut).In the case of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the American versions were released first, followed by the Japanese versions and then the European versions, with each regional release offering new content not found in the previous one. All of the added content from the Japanese and European versions of those games were included in the expanded editions titled Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.
They also, similar to movies, will occasionally include extra, uncensored or alternate versions of cutscenes, as was the case with Resident Evil: Code Veronica X. In markets with strict censorship, a later relaxing of those laws occasional will result in the game being rereleased with the "Special/Uncut Edition" tag added to differentiate between the originally released censored version and the current uncensored edition.
Several of the Pokémon games have also received director's cuts and have used the term "extension", though "remake" and "third version" are also often used by many fans. These include Pocket Monsters: Blue (Japan only), Pokémon Yellow (for Pokémon Red and Green/Blue), Pokémon Crystal (for Pokémon Gold and Silver), Pokémon Emerald (for Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire), Pokémon Platinum (for Pokémon Diamond and Pearl) and Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.
For their PlayStation 5 "Director's Cut" releases, PlayStation 4-first games Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding both received expanded features on both games.
"Director's cuts" in music are rarely released. A few exceptions include Guided by Voices' 1994 album Bee Thousand, which was re-released as a three disc vinyl LP director's cut in 2004, and Fall Out Boy's 2003 album Take This to Your Grave, which was re-released as a Director's cut in 2005 with two extra tracks.
In 2011 British singer Kate Bush released the album titled Director's Cut. It is made up of songs from her earlier albums The Sensual World and The Red Shoes which have been remixed and restructured, three of which were re-recorded completely. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A director's cut is an edited version of a film (or video game, television episode, music video, or commercial) that is supposed to represent the director's own approved edit in contrast to the theatrical release. \"Cut\" explicitly refers to the process of film and game editing; in preparing a film for release, the director's cut is preceded by the assembly and rough editor's cut and usually followed by the final cut meant for the public film release and video game release.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Director's cuts of film are not generally released to the public because on most films the director does not have the final cut privilege. Those with money invested in the film, such as the production companies, distributors, or studios, may make changes intended to make the film more profitable at the box office. This sometimes means a happier ending or less ambiguity, or excluding scenes that would earn a more audience-restricting rating, but more often means that the film is simply shortened to provide more screenings per day.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "With the rise of home video, the phrase became more generically used as a marketing term (including media such as comic books and music albums, neither of which actually have directors), and the most commonly seen form of director's cut is a cut where extra scenes and characters are added in, often making the director's cut considerably longer than the final cut.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Traditionally, the \"director's cut\" is not, by definition, the director's ideal or preferred cut. The editing process of a film is broken into stages: First is the assembly/rough cut, where all selected takes are put together in the order in which they should appear in the film. Next, the editor's cut is reduced from the rough cut; the editor may be guided by their own choices or following notes from the director or producers. Eventually is the final cut, which actually gets released or broadcast. In between the editor's cut and the final cut can come any number of fine cuts, including the director's cut. The director's cut may include unsatisfactory takes, a preliminary soundtrack, a lack of desired pick-up shots etc., which the director would not like to be shown but uses as a placeholder until satisfactory replacements can be inserted. This is still how the term is used within the film industry, as well as commercials, television, and music videos.",
"title": "Origin of the phrase"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The trend of releasing alternate cuts of films for artistic reasons became prominent in the 1970s; in 1974, the \"director's cut\" of The Wild Bunch was shown theatrically in Los Angeles to sold-out audiences. The theatrical release of the film had cut 10 minutes to get an R rating, but this cut was hailed as superior and has now become the definitive one. Other early examples include George Lucas's first two films being re-released following the success of Star Wars, in cuts which more closely resembled his vision, or Peter Bogdanovich re-cutting The Last Picture Show several times. Charlie Chaplin also re-released all of his films in the 1970s, several of which were re-cut (Chaplin's re-release of The Gold Rush in the 1940s is almost certainly the earliest prominent example of a director's re-cut film being released to the public). A theatrical re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind used the phrase \"Special Edition\" to describe a cut which was closer to Spielberg's intent but had a compromised ending demanded by the studio.",
"title": "Inception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "As the home video industry rose in the early 1980s, video releases of director's cuts were sometimes created for the small but dedicated cult fan market. Los Angeles cable station Z Channel is also cited as significant in the popularization of alternate cuts. Early examples of films released in this manner include Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, where a longer cut was recalled from theatres but subsequently shown on cable and eventually released to home video; James Cameron's Aliens, where a video release restored 20 minutes the studio had insisted on cutting; James Cameron's The Abyss, where Cameron voluntarily made cuts to the theatrical version for pacing but restored them for a video release, and most famously, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, where an alternate workprint version was released to fan acclaim, ultimately resulting in the 1992 recut. Scott later recut the film once more, releasing a version dubbed \"The Final Cut\" in 2007. This was the final re-cut and the first in which Scott maintained creative control over the final product, leading to The Final Cut being considered the definitive version of the film.",
"title": "Inception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Once distributors discovered that consumers would buy alternate versions of films, it became common for films to receive multiple releases. There is no standardization for labelling, leading to so-called \"director's cuts\" of films despite where the director prefers the theatrically released version, or when the director had actual final cut privilege. These were often assembled by simply restoring deleted scenes, sometimes adding as much as a half-hour to the length of the film without regard to pacing and storytelling.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "As a result, the \"director's cut\" is often considered a mixed bag, with an equal share of supporters and detractors (including Peter Jackson and James Cameron for the latter; each preferring the phrases \"special\" and \"extended\" edition). Roger Ebert approved of the use of the label in unsuccessful films that had been tampered with by studio executives, such as Sergio Leone's original cut of Once Upon a Time in America, and the moderately successful theatrical version of Daredevil, which were altered by studio interference for their theatrical release. Other well-received director's cuts include Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven (with Empire magazine stating: \"The added 45 minutes in the Director’s Cut are like pieces missing from a beautiful but incomplete puzzle\"), or Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, where the restored 115-minute cut is closer to the director's intent than the theatrical 105-minute cut (the actual director's cut was 122 minutes; it was never completed to Peckinpah's satisfaction, but was used as a guide for the restoration that was done after his death).",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Sometimes the term is used a marketing ploy. For example, Ridley Scott states on the director's commentary track of Alien that the original theatrical release was his \"director's cut\", and that the new version was released as a marketing ploy. Director Peter Bogdanovich, no stranger to director's cuts himself, cites Red River as an example where",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "MGM have a version of Howard Hawks's Red River that they're calling the Director's Cut and it is absolutely not the director's cut. It's a cut the director didn't want, an earlier cut that was junked. They assume because it was longer that it's a director's cut. Capra cut two reels off Lost Horizon because it didn't work and then someone tried to put it back. There are certainly mistakes and stupidities in reconstructing pictures.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In some instances, such as Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, Robert Wise's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, John Cassavetes's The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Blake Edwards's Darling Lili, Sylvester Stallone's Rocky IV, and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Coda, changes made to a director's cut resulted in a very similar runtime or a shorter, more compact cut. This generally happens when a distributor insists that a film be completed to meet a release date, but sometimes it is the result of removing scenes that the distributor insisted on inserting, as opposed to restoring scenes they insisted on cutting.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Another way that released director's cuts can be compromised is when directors were never allowed to even shoot their vision, and thus when the film is re-cut, they must make do with the footage that exists. Examples of this include Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa, Brian Helgeland's Payback, and most notably the Richard Donner re-cut of Superman II. Donner completed about 75 per cent of the shooting of the sequel during the shooting of the first one but was fired from the project. His director's cut of the film includes, among other things, screen test footage of stars Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, footage used in the first film, and entire scenes that were shot by replacement director Richard Lester which Donner dislikes but were required for story purposes.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "(See Changes in Star Wars re-releases and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The 20th Anniversary)",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Separate to director's cuts are alternate cuts released as \"special editions\" or \"extended cuts\". These versions are often put together for home video for fans, and should not be confused with 'director's cuts'. For example, despite releasing extended versions of his The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson told IGN in 2019 that “the theatrical versions are the definitive versions, I regard the extended cuts as being a novelty for the fans that really want to see the extra material.”",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "\"The traditional definition of the term 'Director's Cut' suggests the restoration of a director's original vision, free of any creative limitations. It suggests that the filmmaker has finally overcome the interference of heavy-handed studio executives, and that the film has been restored to its original, untampered form. Such is not the case with Alien: The Director's Cut. It's a completely different beast.\"",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "—Ridley Scott",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "James Cameron has shared similar sentiments regarding the special editions of his films, \"What I put into theaters is the Director's Cut. Nothing was cut that I didn't want cut. All the extra scenes we've added back in are just a bonus for the fans.\" Similar statements were made by Ridley Scott for the 2003 'director's cut' of Alien.",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Such alternate versions sometimes include changes to the special effects in addition to different editing, such as George Lucas's Star Wars films, and Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Extended or special editions can also apply to films that have been extended for television or cut out to fill time slots and long advertisement breaks, against the explicit wishes of the director, such as the TV versions of Dune (1984), The Warriors (1979), Superman (1978) and the Harry Potter films.",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Lord of the Rings film series directed by Peter Jackson saw an \"Extended Edition\" release for each of the three films The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003) featuring an additional 30 minutes, 47 minutes and 51 minutes respectively of new scenes, special effects and music alongside fan-club credits.",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice directed by Zack Snyder had an \"Ultimate Edition,\" which added back 31 minutes of footage cut for the theatrical release and received an R rating, released digitally on 28 June 2016, and on Blu-ray on 19 July 2016. The extended director's cut received more positive critical reviews than the theatrically released film.",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The film Justice League which suffered a very troubled production, was begun by Snyder, who completed a pre-postproduction director's cut but had to step down before completing the project due to his daughter's death. Joss Whedon was hired by the films' distributor Warner Bros to complete the film, which was however heavily re-shot, re-edited and released in 2017 with Snyder retaining the directorial credit, to negative reception from general audience, fans and critics alike and a box office failure. Following a global fan campaign to which the director and members of the cast and crew showed support, Snyder was allowed to return and complete the project the way he intended it and a 4-hour version of the film dubbed Zack Snyder's Justice League with some additionally shot scenes at the end was released on March 18, 2021 on HBO Max to much favorable reviews and acclaim. Snyder originally teased a 214-minute cut of the film that was supposed to be the theatrical version released in 2017 if he did not step down from the project.",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The film Caligula exists in at least 10 different officially released versions, ranging from a sub-90-minute television edit version of TV-14 (later TV-MA) for cable television to an unrated full pornographic version exceeding 3.5 hours. This is believed to be the largest amount of distinct versions of a single film. Among major studio films, the record is believed to be held by Blade Runner; the magazine Video Watchdog counted no less than seven distinct versions in a 1993 issue, before director Ridley Scott later released a \"Final Cut\" in 2007 to acclaim from critics including Roger Ebert who included it on his great movies list, The release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut brings the supposed grand total to eight differing versions of Blade Runner.",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Upon its release on DVD and Blu-ray in 2019, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald featured an extended cut with seven minutes of additional footage. This is the first time since Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that a Wizarding World film has had one.",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "An animated example of an extended cut without the approval of the director was 1983's Twice Upon a Time, which was extended to have more profanity (supervised by co-writer and producer Bill Couturié) as opposed to co-director John Korty's original.",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Coen Brothers' Blood Simple is one of few examples that demonstrate director's cuts are not necessarily longer.",
"title": "Extended cuts and special editions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The music video for the 2006 Academy Award-nominated song \"Listen\", performed by Beyoncé, received a director's cut by Diane Martel. This version of the video was later included on Knowles' B'Day Anthology Video Album (2007). Linkin Park has a director's cut version for their music video \"Faint\" (directed by Mark Romanek) in which one of the band members spray paints the words \"En Proceso\" on a wall, as well as Hoobastank also having one for 2004's \"The Reason\" which omits the woman getting hit by the car. Britney Spears' music video for 2007's \"Gimme More\" was first released as a director's cut on iTunes, with the official video released 3 days later. Many other director's cut music videos contain sexual content that can't be shown on TV thus creating alternative scenes, such as Thirty Seconds to Mars's \"Hurricane\", and in some cases, alternative videos, such as in the case of Spears' 2008 video for \"Womanizer\".",
"title": "Music videos"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "As the trend became more widely recognized, the term director's cut became increasingly used as a colloquialism to refer to an expanded version of other things, including video games, music, and comic books. This confusing usage only served to further reduce the artistic value of a director's cut, and it is currently rarely used in those ways.",
"title": "Expanded usage in pop culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "For video games, these expanded versions, also referred as \"complete editions\", will have additions to the gameplay or additional game modes and features outside the main portion of the game.",
"title": "Expanded usage in pop culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "As is the case with certain high-profile Japanese-produced games, the game designers may take the liberty to revise their product for the overseas market with additional features during the localization process. These features are later added back to the native market in a re-release of a game in what is often referred as the international version of the game. This was the case with the overseas versions of Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid and Rogue Galaxy, which contained additional features (such as new difficulty settings for Metal Gear Solid), resulting in re-released versions of those respective games in Japan (Final Fantasy VII International, Metal Gear Solid: Integral and Rogue Galaxy: Director's Cut).In the case of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the American versions were released first, followed by the Japanese versions and then the European versions, with each regional release offering new content not found in the previous one. All of the added content from the Japanese and European versions of those games were included in the expanded editions titled Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.",
"title": "Expanded usage in pop culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "They also, similar to movies, will occasionally include extra, uncensored or alternate versions of cutscenes, as was the case with Resident Evil: Code Veronica X. In markets with strict censorship, a later relaxing of those laws occasional will result in the game being rereleased with the \"Special/Uncut Edition\" tag added to differentiate between the originally released censored version and the current uncensored edition.",
"title": "Expanded usage in pop culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Several of the Pokémon games have also received director's cuts and have used the term \"extension\", though \"remake\" and \"third version\" are also often used by many fans. These include Pocket Monsters: Blue (Japan only), Pokémon Yellow (for Pokémon Red and Green/Blue), Pokémon Crystal (for Pokémon Gold and Silver), Pokémon Emerald (for Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire), Pokémon Platinum (for Pokémon Diamond and Pearl) and Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.",
"title": "Expanded usage in pop culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "For their PlayStation 5 \"Director's Cut\" releases, PlayStation 4-first games Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding both received expanded features on both games.",
"title": "Expanded usage in pop culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "\"Director's cuts\" in music are rarely released. A few exceptions include Guided by Voices' 1994 album Bee Thousand, which was re-released as a three disc vinyl LP director's cut in 2004, and Fall Out Boy's 2003 album Take This to Your Grave, which was re-released as a Director's cut in 2005 with two extra tracks.",
"title": "Expanded usage in pop culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 2011 British singer Kate Bush released the album titled Director's Cut. It is made up of songs from her earlier albums The Sensual World and The Red Shoes which have been remixed and restructured, three of which were re-recorded completely.",
"title": "Expanded usage in pop culture"
}
]
| A director's cut is an edited version of a film that is supposed to represent the director's own approved edit in contrast to the theatrical release. "Cut" explicitly refers to the process of film and game editing; in preparing a film for release, the director's cut is preceded by the assembly and rough editor's cut and usually followed by the final cut meant for the public film release and video game release. Director's cuts of film are not generally released to the public because on most films the director does not have the final cut privilege. Those with money invested in the film, such as the production companies, distributors, or studios, may make changes intended to make the film more profitable at the box office. This sometimes means a happier ending or less ambiguity, or excluding scenes that would earn a more audience-restricting rating, but more often means that the film is simply shortened to provide more screenings per day. With the rise of home video, the phrase became more generically used as a marketing term, and the most commonly seen form of director's cut is a cut where extra scenes and characters are added in, often making the director's cut considerably longer than the final cut. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-18T16:31:38Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director%27s_cut |
8,733 | Digital video | Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises a series of digital images displayed in rapid succession, usually at 24, 30, or 60 frames per second. Digital video has many advantages such as easy copying, multicasting, sharing and storage.
Digital video was first introduced commercially in 1986 with the Sony D1 format, which recorded an uncompressed standard-definition component video signal in digital form. In addition to uncompressed formats, popular compressed digital video formats today include H.264 and MPEG-4. Modern interconnect standards used for playback of digital video include HDMI, DisplayPort, Digital Visual Interface (DVI) and serial digital interface (SDI).
Digital video can be copied and reproduced with no degradation in quality. In contrast, when analog sources are copied, they experience generation loss. Digital video can be stored on digital media such as Blu-ray Disc, on computer data storage, or streamed over the Internet to end users who watch content on a personal computer or mobile device screen or a digital smart TV. Today, digital video content such as TV shows and movies also includes a digital audio soundtrack.
The basis for digital video cameras is metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) image sensors. The first practical semiconductor image sensor was the charge-coupled device (CCD), invented in 1969 by Willard S. Boyle, who won a Nobel Prize for his work in physics. Following the commercialization of CCD sensors during the late 1970s to early 1980s, the entertainment industry slowly began transitioning to digital imaging and digital video from analog video over the next two decades. The CCD was followed by the CMOS active-pixel sensor (CMOS sensor), developed in the 1990s.
Major films shot on digital video overtook those shot on film in 2013. Since 2016 over 90% of major films were shot on digital video. As of 2017, 92% of films are shot on digital. Only 24 major films released in 2018 were shot on 35mm. Today, cameras from companies like Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Canon offer a variety of choices for shooting high-definition video. At the high end of the market, there has been an emergence of cameras aimed specifically at the digital cinema market. These cameras from Sony, Vision Research, Arri, Silicon Imaging, Panavision, Grass Valley and Red offer resolution and dynamic range that exceeds that of traditional video cameras, which are designed for the limited needs of broadcast television.
In the 1970s, pulse-code modulation (PCM) induced the birth of digital video coding, demanding high bit rates of 45-140 Mbps for standard-definition (SD) content. By the 1980s, the discrete cosine transform (DCT) became the standard for digital video compression.
The first digital video coding standard was H.120, created by the (International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee) or CCITT (now ITU-T) in 1984. H.120 was not practical due to weak performance. H.120 was based on differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM), a compression algorithm that was inefficient for video coding. During the late 1980s, a number of companies began experimenting with DCT, a much more efficient form of compression for video coding. The CCITT received 14 proposals for DCT-based video compression formats, in contrast to a single proposal based on vector quantization (VQ) compression. The H.261 standard was developed based on DCT compression, becoming first practical video coding standard. Since H.261, DCT compression has been adopted by all the major video coding standards that followed.
MPEG-1, developed by the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG), followed in 1991, and it was designed to compress VHS-quality video. It was succeeded in 1994 by MPEG-2/H.262, which became the standard video format for DVD and SD digital television. It was followed by MPEG-4 in 1999, and then in 2003 it was followed by H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, which has become the most widely used video coding standard.
The current-generation video coding format is HEVC (H.265), introduced in 2013. While AVC uses the integer DCT with 4x4 and 8x8 block sizes, HEVC uses integer DCT and DST transforms with varied block sizes between 4x4 and 32x32. HEVC is heavily patented, with the majority of patents belonging to Samsung Electronics, GE, NTT and JVC Kenwood. It is currently being challenged by the aiming-to-be-freely-licensed AV1 format. As of 2019, AVC is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression and distribution of video content, used by 91% of video developers, followed by HEVC which is used by 43% of developers.
Starting in the late 1970s to the early 1980s, video production equipment that was digital in its internal workings was introduced. These included time base correctors (TBC) and digital video effects (DVE) units. They operated by taking a standard analog composite video input and digitizing it internally. This made it easier to either correct or enhance the video signal, as in the case of a TBC, or to manipulate and add effects to the video, in the case of a DVE unit. The digitized and processed video information was then converted back to standard analog video for output.
Later on in the 1970s, manufacturers of professional video broadcast equipment, such as Bosch (through their Fernseh division) and Ampex developed prototype digital videotape recorders (VTR) in their research and development labs. Bosch's machine used a modified 1-inch type B videotape transport and recorded an early form of CCIR 601 digital video. Ampex's prototype digital video recorder used a modified 2-inch quadruplex videotape VTR (an Ampex AVR-3) fitted with custom digital video electronics and a special octaplex 8-head headwheel (regular analog 2" quad machines only used 4 heads). Like standard 2" quad, the audio on the Ampex prototype digital machine, nicknamed Annie by its developers, still recorded the audio in analog as linear tracks on the tape. None of these machines from these manufacturers were ever marketed commercially.
Digital video was first introduced commercially in 1986 with the Sony D1 format, which recorded an uncompressed standard definition component video signal in digital form. Component video connections required 3 cables, but most television facilities were wired for composite NTSC or PAL video using one cable. Due to this incompatibility the cost of the recorder, D1 was used primarily by large television networks and other component-video capable video studios.
In 1988, Sony and Ampex co-developed and released the D2 digital videocassette format, which recorded video digitally without compression in ITU-601 format, much like D1. In comparison, D2 had the major difference of encoding the video in composite form to the NTSC standard, thereby only requiring single-cable composite video connections to and from a D2 VCR. This made it a perfect fit for the majority of television facilities at the time. D2 was a successful format in the television broadcast industry throughout the late '80s and the '90s. D2 was also widely used in that era as the master tape format for mastering laserdiscs.
D1 & D2 would eventually be replaced by cheaper systems using video compression, most notably Sony's Digital Betacam, that were introduced into the network's television studios. Other examples of digital video formats utilizing compression were Ampex's DCT (the first to employ such when introduced in 1992), the industry-standard DV and MiniDV and its professional variations, Sony's DVCAM and Panasonic's DVCPRO, and Betacam SX, a lower-cost variant of Digital Betacam using MPEG-2 compression.
One of the first digital video products to run on personal computers was PACo: The PICS Animation Compiler from The Company of Science & Art in Providence, RI. It was developed starting in 1990 and first shipped in May 1991. PACo could stream unlimited-length video with synchronized sound from a single file (with the .CAV file extension) on CD-ROM. Creation required a Mac, and playback was possible on Macs, PCs, and Sun SPARCstations.
QuickTime, Apple Computer's multimedia framework, was released in June 1991. Audio Video Interleave from Microsoft followed in 1992. Initial consumer-level content creation tools were crude, requiring an analog video source to be digitized to a computer-readable format. While low-quality at first, consumer digital video increased rapidly in quality, first with the introduction of playback standards such as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 (adopted for use in television transmission and DVD media), and the introduction of the DV tape format allowing recordings in the format to be transferred directly to digital video files using a FireWire port on an editing computer. This simplified the process, allowing non-linear editing systems (NLE) to be deployed cheaply and widely on desktop computers with no external playback or recording equipment needed.
The widespread adoption of digital video and accompanying compression formats has reduced the bandwidth needed for a high-definition video signal (with HDV and AVCHD, as well as several commercial variants such as DVCPRO-HD, all using less bandwidth than a standard definition analog signal). These savings have increased the number of channels available on cable television and direct broadcast satellite systems, created opportunities for spectrum reallocation of terrestrial television broadcast frequencies, and made tapeless camcorders based on flash memory possible, among other innovations and efficiencies.
Culturally, digital video has allowed video and film to become widely available and popular, beneficial to entertainment, education, and research. Digital video is increasingly common in schools, with students and teachers taking an interest in learning how to use it in relevant ways. Digital video also has healthcare applications, allowing doctors to track infant heart rates and oxygen levels.
In addition, the switch from analog to digital video impacted media in various ways, such as in how businesses use cameras for surveillance. Closed circuit television (CCTV) switched to using digital video recorders (DVR), presenting the issue of how to store recordings for evidence collection. Today, digital video is able to be compressed in order to save storage space.
Digital television (DTV) is the production and transmission of digital video from networks to consumers. This technique uses digital encoding instead of analog signals used prior to the 1950s. As compared to analog methods, DTV is faster and provides more capabilities and options for data to be transmitted and shared.
Digital television's roots are tied to the availability of inexpensive, high-performance computers. It was not until the 1990s that digital TV became a real possibility. Digital television was previously not practically feasible due to the impractically high bandwidth requirements of uncompressed video, requiring around 200 Mbit/s for a standard-definition television (SDTV) signal, and over 1 Gbit/s for high-definition television (HDTV).
Digital video comprises a series of digital images displayed in rapid succession. In the context of video, these images are called frames. The rate at which frames are displayed is known as the frame rate and is measured in frames per second. Every frame is a digital image and so comprises a formation of pixels. The color of a pixel is represented by a fixed number of bits of that color where the information of the color is stored within the image. For example, 8-bit captures 256 levels per channel, and 10-bit captures 1,024 levels per channel. The more bits, the more subtle variations of colors can be reproduced. This is called the color depth, or bit depth, of the video.
In interlaced video each frame is composed of two halves of an image. The first half contains only the odd-numbered lines of a full frame. The second half contains only the even-numbered lines. These halves are referred to individually as fields. Two consecutive fields compose a full frame. If an interlaced video has a frame rate of 30 frames per second the field rate is 60 fields per second, though both part of interlaced video, frames per second and fields per second are separate numbers.
By definition, bit rate is a measurement of the rate of information content from the digital video stream. In the case of uncompressed video, bit rate corresponds directly to the quality of the video because bit rate is proportional to every property that affects the video quality. Bit rate is an important property when transmitting video because the transmission link must be capable of supporting that bit rate. Bit rate is also important when dealing with the storage of video because, as shown above, the video size is proportional to the bit rate and the duration. Video compression is used to greatly reduce the bit rate while having little effect on quality.
Bits per pixel (BPP) is a measure of the efficiency of compression. A true-color video with no compression at all may have a BPP of 24 bits/pixel. Chroma subsampling can reduce the BPP to 16 or 12 bits/pixel. Applying JPEG compression on every frame can reduce the BPP to 8 or even 1 bits/pixel. Applying video compression algorithms like MPEG1, MPEG2 or MPEG4 allows for fractional BPP values to exist.
BPP represents the average bits per pixel. There are compression algorithms that keep the BPP almost constant throughout the entire duration of the video. In this case, we also get video output with a constant bitrate (CBR). This CBR video is suitable for real-time, non-buffered, fixed bandwidth video streaming (e.g. in videoconferencing). Since not all frames can be compressed at the same level, because quality is more severely impacted for scenes of high complexity, some algorithms try to constantly adjust the BPP. They keep the BPP high while compressing complex scenes and low for less demanding scenes. This way, it provides the best quality at the smallest average bit rate (and the smallest file size, accordingly). This method produces a variable bitrate because it tracks the variations of the BPP.
Standard film stocks typically record at 24 frames per second. For video, there are two frame rate standards: NTSC, at 30/1.001 (about 29.97) frames per second (about 59.94 fields per second), and PAL, 25 frames per second (50 fields per second). Digital video cameras come in two different image capture formats: interlaced and progressive scan. Interlaced cameras record the image in alternating sets of lines: the odd-numbered lines are scanned, and then the even-numbered lines are scanned, then the odd-numbered lines are scanned again, and so on.
One set of odd or even lines is referred to as a field, and a consecutive pairing of two fields of opposite parity is called a frame. Progressive scan cameras record all lines in each frame as a single unit. Thus, interlaced video captures the scene motion twice as often as progressive video does for the same frame rate. Progressive scan generally produces a slightly sharper image, however, motion may not be as smooth as interlaced video.
Digital video can be copied with no generation loss; which degrades quality in analog systems. However, a change in parameters like frame size, or a change of the digital format can decrease the quality of the video due to image scaling and transcoding losses. Digital video can be manipulated and edited on non-linear editing systems.
Digital video has a significantly lower cost than 35 mm film. In comparison to the high cost of film stock, the digital media used for digital video recording, such as flash memory or hard disk drive is very inexpensive. Digital video also allows footage to be viewed on location without the expensive and time-consuming chemical processing required by film. Network transfer of digital video makes physical deliveries of tapes and film reels unnecessary.
Digital television (including higher quality HDTV) was introduced in most developed countries in early 2000s. Today, digital video is used in modern mobile phones and video conferencing systems. Digital video is used for Internet distribution of media, including streaming video and peer-to-peer movie distribution.
Many types of video compression exist for serving digital video over the internet and on optical disks. The file sizes of digital video used for professional editing are generally not practical for these purposes, and the video requires further compression with codecs to be used for recreational purposes.
As of 2017, the highest image resolution demonstrated for digital video generation is 132.7 megapixels (15360 x 8640 pixels). The highest speed is attained in industrial and scientific high-speed cameras that are capable of filming 1024x1024 video at up to 1 million frames per second for brief periods of recording.
Live digital video consumes bandwidth. Recorded digital video consumes data storage. The amount of bandwidth or storage required is determined by the frame size, color depth and frame rate. Each pixel consumes a number of bits determined by the color depth. The data required to represent a frame of data is determined by multiplying by the number of pixels in the image. The bandwidth is determined by multiplying the storage requirement for a frame by the frame rate. The overall storage requirements for a program can then be determined by multiplying bandwidth by the duration of the program.
These calculations are accurate for uncompressed video, but due to the relatively high bit rate of uncompressed video, video compression is extensively used. In the case of compressed video, each frame requires only a small percentage of the original bits. This reduces the data or bandwidth consumption by a factor of 5 to 12 times when using lossless compression, but more commonly, lossy compression is used due to its reduction of data consumption by factors of 20 to 200. Note that it is not necessary that all frames are equally compressed by the same percentage. Instead, consider the average factor of compression for all the frames taken together.
Purpose-built digital video interfaces
General-purpose interfaces use to carry digital video
The following interface has been designed for carrying MPEG-Transport compressed video:
Compressed video is also carried using UDP-IP over Ethernet. Two approaches exist for this:
Other methods of carrying video over IP | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises a series of digital images displayed in rapid succession, usually at 24, 30, or 60 frames per second. Digital video has many advantages such as easy copying, multicasting, sharing and storage.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Digital video was first introduced commercially in 1986 with the Sony D1 format, which recorded an uncompressed standard-definition component video signal in digital form. In addition to uncompressed formats, popular compressed digital video formats today include H.264 and MPEG-4. Modern interconnect standards used for playback of digital video include HDMI, DisplayPort, Digital Visual Interface (DVI) and serial digital interface (SDI).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Digital video can be copied and reproduced with no degradation in quality. In contrast, when analog sources are copied, they experience generation loss. Digital video can be stored on digital media such as Blu-ray Disc, on computer data storage, or streamed over the Internet to end users who watch content on a personal computer or mobile device screen or a digital smart TV. Today, digital video content such as TV shows and movies also includes a digital audio soundtrack.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The basis for digital video cameras is metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) image sensors. The first practical semiconductor image sensor was the charge-coupled device (CCD), invented in 1969 by Willard S. Boyle, who won a Nobel Prize for his work in physics. Following the commercialization of CCD sensors during the late 1970s to early 1980s, the entertainment industry slowly began transitioning to digital imaging and digital video from analog video over the next two decades. The CCD was followed by the CMOS active-pixel sensor (CMOS sensor), developed in the 1990s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Major films shot on digital video overtook those shot on film in 2013. Since 2016 over 90% of major films were shot on digital video. As of 2017, 92% of films are shot on digital. Only 24 major films released in 2018 were shot on 35mm. Today, cameras from companies like Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Canon offer a variety of choices for shooting high-definition video. At the high end of the market, there has been an emergence of cameras aimed specifically at the digital cinema market. These cameras from Sony, Vision Research, Arri, Silicon Imaging, Panavision, Grass Valley and Red offer resolution and dynamic range that exceeds that of traditional video cameras, which are designed for the limited needs of broadcast television.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the 1970s, pulse-code modulation (PCM) induced the birth of digital video coding, demanding high bit rates of 45-140 Mbps for standard-definition (SD) content. By the 1980s, the discrete cosine transform (DCT) became the standard for digital video compression.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The first digital video coding standard was H.120, created by the (International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee) or CCITT (now ITU-T) in 1984. H.120 was not practical due to weak performance. H.120 was based on differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM), a compression algorithm that was inefficient for video coding. During the late 1980s, a number of companies began experimenting with DCT, a much more efficient form of compression for video coding. The CCITT received 14 proposals for DCT-based video compression formats, in contrast to a single proposal based on vector quantization (VQ) compression. The H.261 standard was developed based on DCT compression, becoming first practical video coding standard. Since H.261, DCT compression has been adopted by all the major video coding standards that followed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "MPEG-1, developed by the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG), followed in 1991, and it was designed to compress VHS-quality video. It was succeeded in 1994 by MPEG-2/H.262, which became the standard video format for DVD and SD digital television. It was followed by MPEG-4 in 1999, and then in 2003 it was followed by H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, which has become the most widely used video coding standard.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The current-generation video coding format is HEVC (H.265), introduced in 2013. While AVC uses the integer DCT with 4x4 and 8x8 block sizes, HEVC uses integer DCT and DST transforms with varied block sizes between 4x4 and 32x32. HEVC is heavily patented, with the majority of patents belonging to Samsung Electronics, GE, NTT and JVC Kenwood. It is currently being challenged by the aiming-to-be-freely-licensed AV1 format. As of 2019, AVC is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression and distribution of video content, used by 91% of video developers, followed by HEVC which is used by 43% of developers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Starting in the late 1970s to the early 1980s, video production equipment that was digital in its internal workings was introduced. These included time base correctors (TBC) and digital video effects (DVE) units. They operated by taking a standard analog composite video input and digitizing it internally. This made it easier to either correct or enhance the video signal, as in the case of a TBC, or to manipulate and add effects to the video, in the case of a DVE unit. The digitized and processed video information was then converted back to standard analog video for output.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Later on in the 1970s, manufacturers of professional video broadcast equipment, such as Bosch (through their Fernseh division) and Ampex developed prototype digital videotape recorders (VTR) in their research and development labs. Bosch's machine used a modified 1-inch type B videotape transport and recorded an early form of CCIR 601 digital video. Ampex's prototype digital video recorder used a modified 2-inch quadruplex videotape VTR (an Ampex AVR-3) fitted with custom digital video electronics and a special octaplex 8-head headwheel (regular analog 2\" quad machines only used 4 heads). Like standard 2\" quad, the audio on the Ampex prototype digital machine, nicknamed Annie by its developers, still recorded the audio in analog as linear tracks on the tape. None of these machines from these manufacturers were ever marketed commercially.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Digital video was first introduced commercially in 1986 with the Sony D1 format, which recorded an uncompressed standard definition component video signal in digital form. Component video connections required 3 cables, but most television facilities were wired for composite NTSC or PAL video using one cable. Due to this incompatibility the cost of the recorder, D1 was used primarily by large television networks and other component-video capable video studios.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1988, Sony and Ampex co-developed and released the D2 digital videocassette format, which recorded video digitally without compression in ITU-601 format, much like D1. In comparison, D2 had the major difference of encoding the video in composite form to the NTSC standard, thereby only requiring single-cable composite video connections to and from a D2 VCR. This made it a perfect fit for the majority of television facilities at the time. D2 was a successful format in the television broadcast industry throughout the late '80s and the '90s. D2 was also widely used in that era as the master tape format for mastering laserdiscs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "D1 & D2 would eventually be replaced by cheaper systems using video compression, most notably Sony's Digital Betacam, that were introduced into the network's television studios. Other examples of digital video formats utilizing compression were Ampex's DCT (the first to employ such when introduced in 1992), the industry-standard DV and MiniDV and its professional variations, Sony's DVCAM and Panasonic's DVCPRO, and Betacam SX, a lower-cost variant of Digital Betacam using MPEG-2 compression.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "One of the first digital video products to run on personal computers was PACo: The PICS Animation Compiler from The Company of Science & Art in Providence, RI. It was developed starting in 1990 and first shipped in May 1991. PACo could stream unlimited-length video with synchronized sound from a single file (with the .CAV file extension) on CD-ROM. Creation required a Mac, and playback was possible on Macs, PCs, and Sun SPARCstations.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "QuickTime, Apple Computer's multimedia framework, was released in June 1991. Audio Video Interleave from Microsoft followed in 1992. Initial consumer-level content creation tools were crude, requiring an analog video source to be digitized to a computer-readable format. While low-quality at first, consumer digital video increased rapidly in quality, first with the introduction of playback standards such as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 (adopted for use in television transmission and DVD media), and the introduction of the DV tape format allowing recordings in the format to be transferred directly to digital video files using a FireWire port on an editing computer. This simplified the process, allowing non-linear editing systems (NLE) to be deployed cheaply and widely on desktop computers with no external playback or recording equipment needed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The widespread adoption of digital video and accompanying compression formats has reduced the bandwidth needed for a high-definition video signal (with HDV and AVCHD, as well as several commercial variants such as DVCPRO-HD, all using less bandwidth than a standard definition analog signal). These savings have increased the number of channels available on cable television and direct broadcast satellite systems, created opportunities for spectrum reallocation of terrestrial television broadcast frequencies, and made tapeless camcorders based on flash memory possible, among other innovations and efficiencies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Culturally, digital video has allowed video and film to become widely available and popular, beneficial to entertainment, education, and research. Digital video is increasingly common in schools, with students and teachers taking an interest in learning how to use it in relevant ways. Digital video also has healthcare applications, allowing doctors to track infant heart rates and oxygen levels.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In addition, the switch from analog to digital video impacted media in various ways, such as in how businesses use cameras for surveillance. Closed circuit television (CCTV) switched to using digital video recorders (DVR), presenting the issue of how to store recordings for evidence collection. Today, digital video is able to be compressed in order to save storage space.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Digital television (DTV) is the production and transmission of digital video from networks to consumers. This technique uses digital encoding instead of analog signals used prior to the 1950s. As compared to analog methods, DTV is faster and provides more capabilities and options for data to be transmitted and shared.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Digital television's roots are tied to the availability of inexpensive, high-performance computers. It was not until the 1990s that digital TV became a real possibility. Digital television was previously not practically feasible due to the impractically high bandwidth requirements of uncompressed video, requiring around 200 Mbit/s for a standard-definition television (SDTV) signal, and over 1 Gbit/s for high-definition television (HDTV).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Digital video comprises a series of digital images displayed in rapid succession. In the context of video, these images are called frames. The rate at which frames are displayed is known as the frame rate and is measured in frames per second. Every frame is a digital image and so comprises a formation of pixels. The color of a pixel is represented by a fixed number of bits of that color where the information of the color is stored within the image. For example, 8-bit captures 256 levels per channel, and 10-bit captures 1,024 levels per channel. The more bits, the more subtle variations of colors can be reproduced. This is called the color depth, or bit depth, of the video.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In interlaced video each frame is composed of two halves of an image. The first half contains only the odd-numbered lines of a full frame. The second half contains only the even-numbered lines. These halves are referred to individually as fields. Two consecutive fields compose a full frame. If an interlaced video has a frame rate of 30 frames per second the field rate is 60 fields per second, though both part of interlaced video, frames per second and fields per second are separate numbers.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "By definition, bit rate is a measurement of the rate of information content from the digital video stream. In the case of uncompressed video, bit rate corresponds directly to the quality of the video because bit rate is proportional to every property that affects the video quality. Bit rate is an important property when transmitting video because the transmission link must be capable of supporting that bit rate. Bit rate is also important when dealing with the storage of video because, as shown above, the video size is proportional to the bit rate and the duration. Video compression is used to greatly reduce the bit rate while having little effect on quality.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Bits per pixel (BPP) is a measure of the efficiency of compression. A true-color video with no compression at all may have a BPP of 24 bits/pixel. Chroma subsampling can reduce the BPP to 16 or 12 bits/pixel. Applying JPEG compression on every frame can reduce the BPP to 8 or even 1 bits/pixel. Applying video compression algorithms like MPEG1, MPEG2 or MPEG4 allows for fractional BPP values to exist.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "BPP represents the average bits per pixel. There are compression algorithms that keep the BPP almost constant throughout the entire duration of the video. In this case, we also get video output with a constant bitrate (CBR). This CBR video is suitable for real-time, non-buffered, fixed bandwidth video streaming (e.g. in videoconferencing). Since not all frames can be compressed at the same level, because quality is more severely impacted for scenes of high complexity, some algorithms try to constantly adjust the BPP. They keep the BPP high while compressing complex scenes and low for less demanding scenes. This way, it provides the best quality at the smallest average bit rate (and the smallest file size, accordingly). This method produces a variable bitrate because it tracks the variations of the BPP.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Standard film stocks typically record at 24 frames per second. For video, there are two frame rate standards: NTSC, at 30/1.001 (about 29.97) frames per second (about 59.94 fields per second), and PAL, 25 frames per second (50 fields per second). Digital video cameras come in two different image capture formats: interlaced and progressive scan. Interlaced cameras record the image in alternating sets of lines: the odd-numbered lines are scanned, and then the even-numbered lines are scanned, then the odd-numbered lines are scanned again, and so on.",
"title": "Technical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "One set of odd or even lines is referred to as a field, and a consecutive pairing of two fields of opposite parity is called a frame. Progressive scan cameras record all lines in each frame as a single unit. Thus, interlaced video captures the scene motion twice as often as progressive video does for the same frame rate. Progressive scan generally produces a slightly sharper image, however, motion may not be as smooth as interlaced video.",
"title": "Technical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Digital video can be copied with no generation loss; which degrades quality in analog systems. However, a change in parameters like frame size, or a change of the digital format can decrease the quality of the video due to image scaling and transcoding losses. Digital video can be manipulated and edited on non-linear editing systems.",
"title": "Technical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Digital video has a significantly lower cost than 35 mm film. In comparison to the high cost of film stock, the digital media used for digital video recording, such as flash memory or hard disk drive is very inexpensive. Digital video also allows footage to be viewed on location without the expensive and time-consuming chemical processing required by film. Network transfer of digital video makes physical deliveries of tapes and film reels unnecessary.",
"title": "Technical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Digital television (including higher quality HDTV) was introduced in most developed countries in early 2000s. Today, digital video is used in modern mobile phones and video conferencing systems. Digital video is used for Internet distribution of media, including streaming video and peer-to-peer movie distribution.",
"title": "Technical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Many types of video compression exist for serving digital video over the internet and on optical disks. The file sizes of digital video used for professional editing are generally not practical for these purposes, and the video requires further compression with codecs to be used for recreational purposes.",
"title": "Technical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "As of 2017, the highest image resolution demonstrated for digital video generation is 132.7 megapixels (15360 x 8640 pixels). The highest speed is attained in industrial and scientific high-speed cameras that are capable of filming 1024x1024 video at up to 1 million frames per second for brief periods of recording.",
"title": "Technical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Live digital video consumes bandwidth. Recorded digital video consumes data storage. The amount of bandwidth or storage required is determined by the frame size, color depth and frame rate. Each pixel consumes a number of bits determined by the color depth. The data required to represent a frame of data is determined by multiplying by the number of pixels in the image. The bandwidth is determined by multiplying the storage requirement for a frame by the frame rate. The overall storage requirements for a program can then be determined by multiplying bandwidth by the duration of the program.",
"title": "Technical properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "These calculations are accurate for uncompressed video, but due to the relatively high bit rate of uncompressed video, video compression is extensively used. In the case of compressed video, each frame requires only a small percentage of the original bits. This reduces the data or bandwidth consumption by a factor of 5 to 12 times when using lossless compression, but more commonly, lossy compression is used due to its reduction of data consumption by factors of 20 to 200. Note that it is not necessary that all frames are equally compressed by the same percentage. Instead, consider the average factor of compression for all the frames taken together.",
"title": "Technical properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Purpose-built digital video interfaces",
"title": "Interfaces and cables"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "General-purpose interfaces use to carry digital video",
"title": "Interfaces and cables"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The following interface has been designed for carrying MPEG-Transport compressed video:",
"title": "Interfaces and cables"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Compressed video is also carried using UDP-IP over Ethernet. Two approaches exist for this:",
"title": "Interfaces and cables"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Other methods of carrying video over IP",
"title": "Interfaces and cables"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises a series of digital images displayed in rapid succession, usually at 24, 30, or 60 frames per second. Digital video has many advantages such as easy copying, multicasting, sharing and storage. Digital video was first introduced commercially in 1986 with the Sony D1 format, which recorded an uncompressed standard-definition component video signal in digital form. In addition to uncompressed formats, popular compressed digital video formats today include H.264 and MPEG-4. Modern interconnect standards used for playback of digital video include HDMI, DisplayPort, Digital Visual Interface (DVI) and serial digital interface (SDI). Digital video can be copied and reproduced with no degradation in quality. In contrast, when analog sources are copied, they experience generation loss. Digital video can be stored on digital media such as Blu-ray Disc, on computer data storage, or streamed over the Internet to end users who watch content on a personal computer or mobile device screen or a digital smart TV. Today, digital video content such as TV shows and movies also includes a digital audio soundtrack. | 2001-10-30T10:57:56Z | 2023-12-30T15:41:49Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_video |
8,735 | BIND | BIND (/ˈbaɪnd/) is a suite of software for interacting with the Domain Name System (DNS). Its most prominent component, named (pronounced name-dee: /ˈneɪmdiː/, short for name daemon), performs both of the main DNS server roles, acting as an authoritative name server for DNS zones and as a recursive resolver in the network. As of 2015, it is the most widely used domain name server software, and is the de facto standard on Unix-like operating systems. Also contained in the suite are various administration tools such as nsupdate and dig, and a DNS resolver interface library.
The software was originally designed at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) in the early 1980s. The name originates as an acronym of Berkeley Internet Name Domain, reflecting the application's use within UCB. The latest version is BIND 9, first released in 2000 and still actively maintained by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) with new releases issued several times a year.
BIND 9 is intended to be fully compliant with the IETF DNS standards and draft standards. Important features of BIND 9 include: TSIG, nsupdate, IPv6, RNDC (remote name daemon control), views, multiprocessor support, Response Rate Limiting (RRL), DNSSEC, and broad portability. RNDC enables remote configuration updates, using a shared secret to provide encryption for local and remote terminals during each session.
While earlier versions of BIND offered no mechanism to store and retrieve zone data in anything other than flat text files, in 2007 BIND 9.4 DLZ provided a compile-time option for zone storage in a variety of database formats including LDAP, Berkeley DB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and ODBC.
BIND 10 planned to make the data store modular, so that a variety of databases may be connected. In 2016 ISC added support for the 'dyndb' interface, contributed by RedHat, with BIND version 9.11.0.
Security issues that are discovered in BIND 9 are patched and publicly disclosed in keeping with common principles of open source software. A complete list of security defects that have been discovered and disclosed in BIND9 is maintained by Internet Systems Consortium, the current authors of the software.
The BIND 4 and BIND 8 releases both had serious security vulnerabilities. Use of these ancient versions, or any un-maintained, non-supported version is strongly discouraged. BIND 9 was a complete rewrite, in part to mitigate these ongoing security issues. The downloads page on the ISC web site clearly shows which versions are currently maintained and which are end of life.
BIND was originally written by four graduate students at the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, David Riggle and Songnian Zhou, in the early 1980s as a result of a DARPA grant. The acronym BIND is for Berkeley Internet Name Domain, from a technical paper published in 1984. It was first released with Berkeley Software Distribution 4.3BSD.
Versions of BIND through 4.8.3 were maintained by the CSRG.
Paul Vixie of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) took over BIND development in 1988, releasing versions 4.9 and 4.9.1. Vixie continued to work on BIND after leaving DEC. BIND Version 4.9.2 was sponsored by Vixie Enterprises. Vixie eventually founded the Internet Software Consortium (ISC), which became the entity responsible for BIND versions starting with 4.9.3.
BIND 8 was released by ISC in May 1997.
Version 9 was developed by Nominum, Inc. under an ISC outsourcing contract, and the first version was released 9 October 2000. It was written from scratch in part to address the architectural difficulties with auditing the earlier BIND code bases, and also to support DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions). The development of BIND 9 took place under a combination of commercial and military contracts. Most of the features of BIND 9 were funded by UNIX vendors who wanted to ensure that BIND stayed competitive with Microsoft's DNS offerings; the DNSSEC features were funded by the US military, which regarded DNS security as important. BIND 9 was released in September 2000.
In 2009, ISC started an effort to develop a new version of the software suite, initially called BIND10. In addition to DNS service, the BIND10 suite also included IPv4 and IPv6 DHCP server components. In April 2014, with BIND10 release 1.2.0 the ISC concluded its involvement in the project and renamed it to Bundy, moving the source code repository to GitHub for further development by outside public efforts. ISC discontinued its involvement in the project due to cost-cutting measures. The development of DHCP components was split off to become a new Kea project. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "BIND (/ˈbaɪnd/) is a suite of software for interacting with the Domain Name System (DNS). Its most prominent component, named (pronounced name-dee: /ˈneɪmdiː/, short for name daemon), performs both of the main DNS server roles, acting as an authoritative name server for DNS zones and as a recursive resolver in the network. As of 2015, it is the most widely used domain name server software, and is the de facto standard on Unix-like operating systems. Also contained in the suite are various administration tools such as nsupdate and dig, and a DNS resolver interface library.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The software was originally designed at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) in the early 1980s. The name originates as an acronym of Berkeley Internet Name Domain, reflecting the application's use within UCB. The latest version is BIND 9, first released in 2000 and still actively maintained by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) with new releases issued several times a year.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "BIND 9 is intended to be fully compliant with the IETF DNS standards and draft standards. Important features of BIND 9 include: TSIG, nsupdate, IPv6, RNDC (remote name daemon control), views, multiprocessor support, Response Rate Limiting (RRL), DNSSEC, and broad portability. RNDC enables remote configuration updates, using a shared secret to provide encryption for local and remote terminals during each session.",
"title": "Key features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "While earlier versions of BIND offered no mechanism to store and retrieve zone data in anything other than flat text files, in 2007 BIND 9.4 DLZ provided a compile-time option for zone storage in a variety of database formats including LDAP, Berkeley DB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and ODBC.",
"title": "Database support"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "BIND 10 planned to make the data store modular, so that a variety of databases may be connected. In 2016 ISC added support for the 'dyndb' interface, contributed by RedHat, with BIND version 9.11.0.",
"title": "Database support"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Security issues that are discovered in BIND 9 are patched and publicly disclosed in keeping with common principles of open source software. A complete list of security defects that have been discovered and disclosed in BIND9 is maintained by Internet Systems Consortium, the current authors of the software.",
"title": "Security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The BIND 4 and BIND 8 releases both had serious security vulnerabilities. Use of these ancient versions, or any un-maintained, non-supported version is strongly discouraged. BIND 9 was a complete rewrite, in part to mitigate these ongoing security issues. The downloads page on the ISC web site clearly shows which versions are currently maintained and which are end of life.",
"title": "Security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "BIND was originally written by four graduate students at the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, David Riggle and Songnian Zhou, in the early 1980s as a result of a DARPA grant. The acronym BIND is for Berkeley Internet Name Domain, from a technical paper published in 1984. It was first released with Berkeley Software Distribution 4.3BSD.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Versions of BIND through 4.8.3 were maintained by the CSRG.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Paul Vixie of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) took over BIND development in 1988, releasing versions 4.9 and 4.9.1. Vixie continued to work on BIND after leaving DEC. BIND Version 4.9.2 was sponsored by Vixie Enterprises. Vixie eventually founded the Internet Software Consortium (ISC), which became the entity responsible for BIND versions starting with 4.9.3.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "BIND 8 was released by ISC in May 1997.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Version 9 was developed by Nominum, Inc. under an ISC outsourcing contract, and the first version was released 9 October 2000. It was written from scratch in part to address the architectural difficulties with auditing the earlier BIND code bases, and also to support DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions). The development of BIND 9 took place under a combination of commercial and military contracts. Most of the features of BIND 9 were funded by UNIX vendors who wanted to ensure that BIND stayed competitive with Microsoft's DNS offerings; the DNSSEC features were funded by the US military, which regarded DNS security as important. BIND 9 was released in September 2000.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 2009, ISC started an effort to develop a new version of the software suite, initially called BIND10. In addition to DNS service, the BIND10 suite also included IPv4 and IPv6 DHCP server components. In April 2014, with BIND10 release 1.2.0 the ISC concluded its involvement in the project and renamed it to Bundy, moving the source code repository to GitHub for further development by outside public efforts. ISC discontinued its involvement in the project due to cost-cutting measures. The development of DHCP components was split off to become a new Kea project.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| BIND is a suite of software for interacting with the Domain Name System (DNS). Its most prominent component, named, performs both of the main DNS server roles, acting as an authoritative name server for DNS zones and as a recursive resolver in the network. As of 2015, it is the most widely used domain name server software, and is the de facto standard on Unix-like operating systems. Also contained in the suite are various administration tools such as nsupdate and dig, and a DNS resolver interface library. The software was originally designed at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) in the early 1980s. The name originates as an acronym of Berkeley Internet Name Domain, reflecting the application's use within UCB. The latest version is BIND 9, first released in 2000 and still actively maintained by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) with new releases issued several times a year. | 2001-12-04T11:14:13Z | 2023-12-20T14:35:44Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIND |
8,736 | Djbdns | The djbdns software package is a DNS implementation. It was created by Daniel J. Bernstein in response to his frustrations with repeated security holes in the widely used BIND DNS software. As a challenge, Bernstein offered a $1000 prize for the first person to find a security hole in djbdns, which was awarded in March 2009 to Matthew Dempsky.
As of 2004, djbdns's tinydns component was the second most popular DNS server in terms of the number of domains for which it was the authoritative server, and third most popular in terms of the number of DNS hosts running it.
djbdns has never been vulnerable to the widespread cache poisoning vulnerability reported in July 2008, but it has been discovered that it is vulnerable to a related attack.
The source code has not been centrally managed since its release in 2001, and was released into the public domain in 2007. As of March 2009, there are a number of forks, one of which is dbndns (part of the Debian Project), and more than a dozen patches to modify the released version.
While djbdns does not directly support DNSSEC, there are third party patches to add DNSSEC support to djbdns' authoritative-only tinydns component.
The djbdns software consists of servers, clients, and miscellaneous configuration tools.
In djbdns, different features and services are split off into separate programs. For example, zone transfers, zone file parsing, caching, and recursive resolving are implemented as separate programs. The result of these design decisions is a reduction in code size and complexity of the daemon program that provides the core function of answering lookup requests. Bernstein asserts that this is true to the spirit of the Unix operating system, and makes security verification much simpler.
On December 28, 2007, Bernstein released djbdns into the public domain. Previously the package was distributed free of charge as license-free software. However this did not permit the distribution of modified versions of djbdns, which was one of the core principles of open-source software. Consequently, it was not included in those Linux distributions which required all components to be open-source. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The djbdns software package is a DNS implementation. It was created by Daniel J. Bernstein in response to his frustrations with repeated security holes in the widely used BIND DNS software. As a challenge, Bernstein offered a $1000 prize for the first person to find a security hole in djbdns, which was awarded in March 2009 to Matthew Dempsky.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "As of 2004, djbdns's tinydns component was the second most popular DNS server in terms of the number of domains for which it was the authoritative server, and third most popular in terms of the number of DNS hosts running it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "djbdns has never been vulnerable to the widespread cache poisoning vulnerability reported in July 2008, but it has been discovered that it is vulnerable to a related attack.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The source code has not been centrally managed since its release in 2001, and was released into the public domain in 2007. As of March 2009, there are a number of forks, one of which is dbndns (part of the Debian Project), and more than a dozen patches to modify the released version.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "While djbdns does not directly support DNSSEC, there are third party patches to add DNSSEC support to djbdns' authoritative-only tinydns component.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The djbdns software consists of servers, clients, and miscellaneous configuration tools.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In djbdns, different features and services are split off into separate programs. For example, zone transfers, zone file parsing, caching, and recursive resolving are implemented as separate programs. The result of these design decisions is a reduction in code size and complexity of the daemon program that provides the core function of answering lookup requests. Bernstein asserts that this is true to the spirit of the Unix operating system, and makes security verification much simpler.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "On December 28, 2007, Bernstein released djbdns into the public domain. Previously the package was distributed free of charge as license-free software. However this did not permit the distribution of modified versions of djbdns, which was one of the core principles of open-source software. Consequently, it was not included in those Linux distributions which required all components to be open-source.",
"title": "Copyright status"
}
]
| The djbdns software package is a DNS implementation. It was created by Daniel J. Bernstein in response to his frustrations with repeated security holes in the widely used BIND DNS software. As a challenge, Bernstein offered a $1000 prize for the first person to find a security hole in djbdns, which was awarded in March 2009 to Matthew Dempsky. As of 2004, djbdns's tinydns component was the second most popular DNS server in terms of the number of domains for which it was the authoritative server, and third most popular in terms of the number of DNS hosts running it. djbdns has never been vulnerable to the widespread cache poisoning vulnerability reported in July 2008, but it has been discovered that it is vulnerable to a related attack. The source code has not been centrally managed since its release in 2001, and was released into the public domain in 2007. As of March 2009, there are a number of forks, one of which is dbndns, and more than a dozen patches to modify the released version. While djbdns does not directly support DNSSEC, there are third party patches to add DNSSEC support to djbdns' authoritative-only tinydns component. | 2022-10-02T20:37:26Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djbdns |
|
8,741 | Dylan (programming language) | Dylan is a multi-paradigm programming language that includes support for functional and object-oriented programming (OOP), and is dynamic and reflective while providing a programming model designed to support generating efficient machine code, including fine-grained control over dynamic and static behaviors. It was created in the early 1990s by a group led by Apple Computer.
Dylan derives from Scheme and Common Lisp and adds an integrated object system derived from the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS). In Dylan, all values (including numbers, characters, functions, and classes) are first-class objects. Dylan supports multiple inheritance, polymorphism, multiple dispatch, keyword arguments, object introspection, pattern-based syntax extension macros, and many other advanced features. Programs can express fine-grained control over dynamism, admitting programs that occupy a continuum between dynamic and static programming and supporting evolutionary development (allowing for rapid prototyping followed by incremental refinement and optimization).
Dylan's main design goal is to be a dynamic language well-suited for developing commercial software. Dylan attempts to address potential performance issues by introducing "natural" limits to the full flexibility of Lisp systems, allowing the compiler to clearly understand compilable units, such as libraries.
Dylan derives much of its semantics from Scheme and other Lisps; some Dylan implementations were initially built within extant Lisp systems. However, Dylan has an ALGOL-like syntax instead of a Lisp-like prefix syntax.
Dylan was created in the early 1990s by a group led by Apple Computer. At one time in its development, it was intended for use with the Apple Newton computer, but the Dylan implementation did not reach sufficient maturity in time, and Newton instead used a mix of C and the NewtonScript developed by Walter Smith. Apple ended their Dylan development effort in 1995, though they made a "technology release" version available (Apple Dylan TR1) that included an advanced integrated development environment (IDE).
Two other groups contributed to the design of the language and developed implementations: Harlequin released a commercial IDE for Microsoft Windows and Carnegie Mellon University released an open source compiler for Unix systems called Gwydion Dylan. Both of these implementations are now open source. The Harlequin implementation is now named Open Dylan and is maintained by a group of volunteers, the Dylan Hackers.
The Dylan language was code-named Ralph. James Joaquin chose the name Dylan for "DYnamic LANguage."
Many of Dylan's syntax features come from its Lisp heritage. Originally, Dylan used a Lisp-like prefix syntax, which was based on s-expressions. By the time the language design was completed, the syntax was changed to an ALGOL-like syntax, with the expectation that it would be more familiar to a wider audience of programmers. The syntax was designed by Michael Kahl. It is described in great detail in the Dylan Reference Manual.
Dylan is not case sensitive. Dylan's lexical syntax allows the use of a naming convention where hyphen (minus) signs are used to connect the parts of multiple-word identifiers (sometimes called "lisp-case" or "kebab case"). This convention is common in Lisp languages.
Besides alphanumeric characters and hyphen-minus signs, Dylan allows a variety of non-alphanumeric characters as part of identifiers. Identifiers may not consist of these non-alphanumeric characters alone. If there is any ambiguity, whitespace is used.
A simple class with several slots:
By convention, classes are named with less-than and greater-than signs used as angle brackets, e.g. the class named <point> in the code example.
In end class <point> both class and <point> are optional. This is true for all end clauses. For example, you may write end if or just end to terminate an if statement.
To make an instance of <point>:
The same class, rewritten in the most minimal way possible:
The slots are now both typed as <object>. The slots must be initialized manually:
By convention, constant names begin with "$":
A factorial function:
Here, n! and <integer> are just normal identifiers.
There is no explicit return statement. The result of a method or function is the last expression evaluated. It is a common style to leave off the semicolon after an expression in return position.
In many object-oriented languages, classes are the main means of encapsulation and modularity; each class defines a namespace and controls which definitions are externally visible. Further, classes in many languages define an indivisible unit that must be used as a whole. For example, using a String concatenation function requires importing and compiling against all of String.
Some languages, including Dylan, also include a separate, explicit namespace or module system that performs encapsulation in a more general way.
In Dylan, the concepts of compile-unit and import-unit are separated, and classes have nothing specifically to do with either. A library defines items that should be compiled and handled together, while a module defines a namespace. Classes can be placed together in modules, or cut across them, as the programmer wishes. Often the complete definition for a class does not exist in a single module, but is spread across several that are optionally collected together. Different programs can have different definitions of the same class, including only what they need.
For example, consider an add-on library for regex support on String. In some languages, for the functionality to be included in strings, the functionality must be added to the String namespace. As soon as this occurs, the String class becomes larger, and functions that don't need to use regex still must "pay" for it in increased library size. For this reason, these sorts of add-ons are typically placed in their own namespaces and objects. The downside to this approach is that the new functions are no longer a part of String; instead, it is isolated in its own set of functions that must be called separately. Instead of myString.parseWith(myPattern), which would be the natural organization from an OO viewpoint, something like myPattern.parseString(myString) is used, which effectively reverses the ordering.
Under Dylan, many interfaces can be defined for the same code, for instance the String concatenation method could be placed in both the String interface, and the "concat" interface which collects together all of the different concatenation functions from various classes. This is more commonly used in math libraries, where functions tend to be applicable to widely differing object types.
A more practical use of the interface construct is to build public and private versions of a module, something that other languages include as a bolt on feature that invariably causes problems and adds syntax. Under Dylan, every function call can be simply placed in the "Private" or "Development" interface, and collect up publicly accessible functions in Public. Under Java or C++ the visibility of an object is defined in the code, meaning that to support a similar change, a programmer would be forced to rewrite the definitions fully, and could not have two versions at the same time.
Classes in Dylan describe slots (data members, fields, ivars, etc.) of objects in a fashion similar to most OO languages. All access to slots is via methods, as in Smalltalk. Default getter and setter methods are automatically generated based on the slot names. In contrast with most other OO languages, other methods applicable to the class are often defined outside of the class, and thus class definitions in Dylan typically include the definition of the storage only. For instance:
In this example, the class "<window>" is defined. The <class name> syntax is convention only, to make the class names stand out—the angle brackets are merely part of the class name. In contrast, in some languages the convention is to capitalize the first letter of the class name or to prefix the name with a C or T (for example). <window> inherits from a single class, <view>, and contains two slots, title holding a string for the window title, and position holding an X-Y point for a corner of the window. In this example, the title has been given a default value, while the position has not. The optional init-keyword syntax allows the programmer to specify the initial value of the slot when instantiating an object of the class.
In languages such as C++ or Java, the class would also define its interface. In this case the definition above has no explicit instructions, so in both languages access to the slots and methods is considered protected, meaning they can be used only by subclasses. To allow unrelated code to use the window instances, they must be declared public.
In Dylan, these sorts of visibility rules are not considered part of the code, but of the module/interface system. This adds considerable flexibility. For instance, one interface used during early development could declare everything public, whereas one used in testing and deployment could limit this. With C++ or Java these changes would require changes to the source code, so people won't do it, whereas in Dylan this is a fully unrelated concept.
Although this example does not use it, Dylan also supports multiple inheritance.
In Dylan, methods are not intrinsically associated with any specific class; methods can be thought of as existing outside of classes. Like CLOS, Dylan is based on multiple dispatch (multimethods), where the specific method to be called is chosen based on the types of all its arguments. The method need not be known at compile time, the understanding being that the required function may be available, or not, based on a user's preferences.
Under Java the same methods would be isolated in a specific class. To use that functionality the programmer is forced to import that class and refer to it explicitly to call the method. If that class is unavailable, or unknown at compile time, the application simply won't compile.
In Dylan, code is isolated from storage in functions. Many classes have methods that call their own functions, thereby looking and feeling like most other OO languages. However code may also be located in generic functions, meaning they are not attached to a specific class, and can be called natively by anyone. Linking a specific generic function to a method in a class is accomplished thusly:
This definition is similar to those in other languages, and would likely be encapsulated within the <window> class. Note the := setter call, which is syntactic sugar for color-setter($blue, w).
The utility of generic methods comes into its own when you consider more "generic" examples. For instance, one common function in most languages is the to-string, which returns some human-readable form for the object. For instance, a window might return its title and its position in parens, while a string would return itself. In Dylan these methods could all be collected into a single module called "to-string", thereby removing this code from the definition of the class itself. If a specific object did not support a to-string, it could be easily added in the to-string module.
This whole concept might strike some readers as very odd. The code to handle to-string for a window isn't defined in <window>? This might not make any sense until you consider how Dylan handles the call of the to-string. In most languages when the program is compiled the to-string for <window> is looked up and replaced with a pointer (more or less) to the method. In Dylan this occurs when the program is first run; the runtime builds a table of method-name/parameters details and looks up methods dynamically via this table. That means that a function for a specific method can be located anywhere, not just in the compile-time unit. In the end the programmer is given considerable flexibility in terms of where to place their code, collecting it along class lines where appropriate, and functional lines where it's not.
The implication here is that a programmer can add functionality to existing classes by defining functions in a separate file. For instance, you might wish to add spell checking to all <string>s, which in C++ or Java would require access to the source code of the string class—and such basic classes are rarely given out in source form. In Dylan (and other "extensible languages") the spell checking method could be added in the spell-check module, defining all of the classes on which it can be applied via the define method construct. In this case the actual functionality might be defined in a single generic function, which takes a string and returns the errors. When the spell-check module is compiled into your program, all strings (and other objects) will get the added functionality.
Apple Dylan is the implementation of Dylan produced by Apple Computer. It was originally developed for the Apple Newton product. | [
{
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"text": "Dylan is a multi-paradigm programming language that includes support for functional and object-oriented programming (OOP), and is dynamic and reflective while providing a programming model designed to support generating efficient machine code, including fine-grained control over dynamic and static behaviors. It was created in the early 1990s by a group led by Apple Computer.",
"title": ""
},
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"text": "Dylan derives from Scheme and Common Lisp and adds an integrated object system derived from the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS). In Dylan, all values (including numbers, characters, functions, and classes) are first-class objects. Dylan supports multiple inheritance, polymorphism, multiple dispatch, keyword arguments, object introspection, pattern-based syntax extension macros, and many other advanced features. Programs can express fine-grained control over dynamism, admitting programs that occupy a continuum between dynamic and static programming and supporting evolutionary development (allowing for rapid prototyping followed by incremental refinement and optimization).",
"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "Dylan's main design goal is to be a dynamic language well-suited for developing commercial software. Dylan attempts to address potential performance issues by introducing \"natural\" limits to the full flexibility of Lisp systems, allowing the compiler to clearly understand compilable units, such as libraries.",
"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "Dylan derives much of its semantics from Scheme and other Lisps; some Dylan implementations were initially built within extant Lisp systems. However, Dylan has an ALGOL-like syntax instead of a Lisp-like prefix syntax.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Dylan was created in the early 1990s by a group led by Apple Computer. At one time in its development, it was intended for use with the Apple Newton computer, but the Dylan implementation did not reach sufficient maturity in time, and Newton instead used a mix of C and the NewtonScript developed by Walter Smith. Apple ended their Dylan development effort in 1995, though they made a \"technology release\" version available (Apple Dylan TR1) that included an advanced integrated development environment (IDE).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Two other groups contributed to the design of the language and developed implementations: Harlequin released a commercial IDE for Microsoft Windows and Carnegie Mellon University released an open source compiler for Unix systems called Gwydion Dylan. Both of these implementations are now open source. The Harlequin implementation is now named Open Dylan and is maintained by a group of volunteers, the Dylan Hackers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Dylan language was code-named Ralph. James Joaquin chose the name Dylan for \"DYnamic LANguage.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Many of Dylan's syntax features come from its Lisp heritage. Originally, Dylan used a Lisp-like prefix syntax, which was based on s-expressions. By the time the language design was completed, the syntax was changed to an ALGOL-like syntax, with the expectation that it would be more familiar to a wider audience of programmers. The syntax was designed by Michael Kahl. It is described in great detail in the Dylan Reference Manual.",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Dylan is not case sensitive. Dylan's lexical syntax allows the use of a naming convention where hyphen (minus) signs are used to connect the parts of multiple-word identifiers (sometimes called \"lisp-case\" or \"kebab case\"). This convention is common in Lisp languages.",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Besides alphanumeric characters and hyphen-minus signs, Dylan allows a variety of non-alphanumeric characters as part of identifiers. Identifiers may not consist of these non-alphanumeric characters alone. If there is any ambiguity, whitespace is used.",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "A simple class with several slots:",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "By convention, classes are named with less-than and greater-than signs used as angle brackets, e.g. the class named <point> in the code example.",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In end class <point> both class and <point> are optional. This is true for all end clauses. For example, you may write end if or just end to terminate an if statement.",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "To make an instance of <point>:",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The same class, rewritten in the most minimal way possible:",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The slots are now both typed as <object>. The slots must be initialized manually:",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "By convention, constant names begin with \"$\":",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "A factorial function:",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Here, n! and <integer> are just normal identifiers.",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "There is no explicit return statement. The result of a method or function is the last expression evaluated. It is a common style to leave off the semicolon after an expression in return position.",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In many object-oriented languages, classes are the main means of encapsulation and modularity; each class defines a namespace and controls which definitions are externally visible. Further, classes in many languages define an indivisible unit that must be used as a whole. For example, using a String concatenation function requires importing and compiling against all of String.",
"title": "Modules vs. namespace"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Some languages, including Dylan, also include a separate, explicit namespace or module system that performs encapsulation in a more general way.",
"title": "Modules vs. namespace"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In Dylan, the concepts of compile-unit and import-unit are separated, and classes have nothing specifically to do with either. A library defines items that should be compiled and handled together, while a module defines a namespace. Classes can be placed together in modules, or cut across them, as the programmer wishes. Often the complete definition for a class does not exist in a single module, but is spread across several that are optionally collected together. Different programs can have different definitions of the same class, including only what they need.",
"title": "Modules vs. namespace"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "For example, consider an add-on library for regex support on String. In some languages, for the functionality to be included in strings, the functionality must be added to the String namespace. As soon as this occurs, the String class becomes larger, and functions that don't need to use regex still must \"pay\" for it in increased library size. For this reason, these sorts of add-ons are typically placed in their own namespaces and objects. The downside to this approach is that the new functions are no longer a part of String; instead, it is isolated in its own set of functions that must be called separately. Instead of myString.parseWith(myPattern), which would be the natural organization from an OO viewpoint, something like myPattern.parseString(myString) is used, which effectively reverses the ordering.",
"title": "Modules vs. namespace"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Under Dylan, many interfaces can be defined for the same code, for instance the String concatenation method could be placed in both the String interface, and the \"concat\" interface which collects together all of the different concatenation functions from various classes. This is more commonly used in math libraries, where functions tend to be applicable to widely differing object types.",
"title": "Modules vs. namespace"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "A more practical use of the interface construct is to build public and private versions of a module, something that other languages include as a bolt on feature that invariably causes problems and adds syntax. Under Dylan, every function call can be simply placed in the \"Private\" or \"Development\" interface, and collect up publicly accessible functions in Public. Under Java or C++ the visibility of an object is defined in the code, meaning that to support a similar change, a programmer would be forced to rewrite the definitions fully, and could not have two versions at the same time.",
"title": "Modules vs. namespace"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Classes in Dylan describe slots (data members, fields, ivars, etc.) of objects in a fashion similar to most OO languages. All access to slots is via methods, as in Smalltalk. Default getter and setter methods are automatically generated based on the slot names. In contrast with most other OO languages, other methods applicable to the class are often defined outside of the class, and thus class definitions in Dylan typically include the definition of the storage only. For instance:",
"title": "Classes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In this example, the class \"<window>\" is defined. The <class name> syntax is convention only, to make the class names stand out—the angle brackets are merely part of the class name. In contrast, in some languages the convention is to capitalize the first letter of the class name or to prefix the name with a C or T (for example). <window> inherits from a single class, <view>, and contains two slots, title holding a string for the window title, and position holding an X-Y point for a corner of the window. In this example, the title has been given a default value, while the position has not. The optional init-keyword syntax allows the programmer to specify the initial value of the slot when instantiating an object of the class.",
"title": "Classes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In languages such as C++ or Java, the class would also define its interface. In this case the definition above has no explicit instructions, so in both languages access to the slots and methods is considered protected, meaning they can be used only by subclasses. To allow unrelated code to use the window instances, they must be declared public.",
"title": "Classes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In Dylan, these sorts of visibility rules are not considered part of the code, but of the module/interface system. This adds considerable flexibility. For instance, one interface used during early development could declare everything public, whereas one used in testing and deployment could limit this. With C++ or Java these changes would require changes to the source code, so people won't do it, whereas in Dylan this is a fully unrelated concept.",
"title": "Classes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Although this example does not use it, Dylan also supports multiple inheritance.",
"title": "Classes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In Dylan, methods are not intrinsically associated with any specific class; methods can be thought of as existing outside of classes. Like CLOS, Dylan is based on multiple dispatch (multimethods), where the specific method to be called is chosen based on the types of all its arguments. The method need not be known at compile time, the understanding being that the required function may be available, or not, based on a user's preferences.",
"title": "Methods and generic functions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Under Java the same methods would be isolated in a specific class. To use that functionality the programmer is forced to import that class and refer to it explicitly to call the method. If that class is unavailable, or unknown at compile time, the application simply won't compile.",
"title": "Methods and generic functions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In Dylan, code is isolated from storage in functions. Many classes have methods that call their own functions, thereby looking and feeling like most other OO languages. However code may also be located in generic functions, meaning they are not attached to a specific class, and can be called natively by anyone. Linking a specific generic function to a method in a class is accomplished thusly:",
"title": "Methods and generic functions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "This definition is similar to those in other languages, and would likely be encapsulated within the <window> class. Note the := setter call, which is syntactic sugar for color-setter($blue, w).",
"title": "Methods and generic functions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The utility of generic methods comes into its own when you consider more \"generic\" examples. For instance, one common function in most languages is the to-string, which returns some human-readable form for the object. For instance, a window might return its title and its position in parens, while a string would return itself. In Dylan these methods could all be collected into a single module called \"to-string\", thereby removing this code from the definition of the class itself. If a specific object did not support a to-string, it could be easily added in the to-string module.",
"title": "Methods and generic functions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "This whole concept might strike some readers as very odd. The code to handle to-string for a window isn't defined in <window>? This might not make any sense until you consider how Dylan handles the call of the to-string. In most languages when the program is compiled the to-string for <window> is looked up and replaced with a pointer (more or less) to the method. In Dylan this occurs when the program is first run; the runtime builds a table of method-name/parameters details and looks up methods dynamically via this table. That means that a function for a specific method can be located anywhere, not just in the compile-time unit. In the end the programmer is given considerable flexibility in terms of where to place their code, collecting it along class lines where appropriate, and functional lines where it's not.",
"title": "Extensibility"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The implication here is that a programmer can add functionality to existing classes by defining functions in a separate file. For instance, you might wish to add spell checking to all <string>s, which in C++ or Java would require access to the source code of the string class—and such basic classes are rarely given out in source form. In Dylan (and other \"extensible languages\") the spell checking method could be added in the spell-check module, defining all of the classes on which it can be applied via the define method construct. In this case the actual functionality might be defined in a single generic function, which takes a string and returns the errors. When the spell-check module is compiled into your program, all strings (and other objects) will get the added functionality.",
"title": "Extensibility"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Apple Dylan is the implementation of Dylan produced by Apple Computer. It was originally developed for the Apple Newton product.",
"title": "Apple Dylan"
}
]
| Dylan is a multi-paradigm programming language that includes support for functional and object-oriented programming (OOP), and is dynamic and reflective while providing a programming model designed to support generating efficient machine code, including fine-grained control over dynamic and static behaviors. It was created in the early 1990s by a group led by Apple Computer. Dylan derives from Scheme and Common Lisp and adds an integrated object system derived from the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS). In Dylan, all values are first-class objects. Dylan supports multiple inheritance, polymorphism, multiple dispatch, keyword arguments, object introspection, pattern-based syntax extension macros, and many other advanced features. Programs can express fine-grained control over dynamism, admitting programs that occupy a continuum between dynamic and static programming and supporting evolutionary development. Dylan's main design goal is to be a dynamic language well-suited for developing commercial software. Dylan attempts to address potential performance issues by introducing "natural" limits to the full flexibility of Lisp systems, allowing the compiler to clearly understand compilable units, such as libraries. Dylan derives much of its semantics from Scheme and other Lisps; some Dylan implementations were initially built within extant Lisp systems. However, Dylan has an ALGOL-like syntax instead of a Lisp-like prefix syntax. | 2023-02-15T21:27:21Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_(programming_language) |
|
8,742 | Dublin Core | The Dublin Core, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is a set of fifteen main metadata items for describing digital or physical resources. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is responsible for formulating the Dublin Core; DCMI is a project of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), a non-profit organization.
Dublin Core has been formally standardized internationally as ISO 15836 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and as IETF RFC 5013 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), as well as in the U.S. as ANSI/NISO Z39.85 by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO).
The core properties are part of a larger set of DCMI Metadata Terms. "Dublin Core" is also used as an adjective for Dublin Core metadata, a style of metadata that draws on multiple Resource Description Framework (RDF) vocabularies, packaged and constrained in Dublin Core application profiles.
The resources described using the Dublin Core may be digital resources (video, images, web pages, etc.) as well as physical resources such as books or works of art. Dublin Core metadata may be used for multiple purposes, from simple resource description to combining metadata vocabularies of different metadata standards, to providing interoperability for metadata vocabularies in the linked data cloud and Semantic Web implementations.
"Dublin" refers to Dublin, Ohio, USA where the schema originated during the 1995 invitational OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop, hosted by the OCLC (known at that time as Online Computer Library Center), a library consortium based in Dublin, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). "Core" refers to the metadata terms as "broad and generic being usable for describing a wide range of resources". The semantics of Dublin Core were established and are maintained by an international, cross-disciplinary group of professionals from librarianship, computer science, text encoding, museums, and other related fields of scholarship and practice.
In 1999, the first Dublin Core encoding standard was expressed in terms of HTML 'meta' tagging. Starting in 2000, the Dublin Core community focused on "application profiles" – the idea that metadata records would use Dublin Core together with other specialized vocabularies to meet particular implementation requirements. During that time, the World Wide Web Consortium's work on a generic data model for metadata, the Resource Description Framework (RDF), was maturing. As part of an extended set of DCMI metadata terms, Dublin Core became one of the most popular vocabularies for use with RDF, more recently in the context of the linked data movement.
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) provides an open forum for the development of interoperable online metadata standards for a broad range of purposes and of business models. DCMI's activities include consensus-driven working groups, global conferences and workshops, standards liaison, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and practices. In 2008, DCMI separated from OCLC and incorporated as an independent entity.
Currently, any and all changes that are made to the Dublin Core standard, are reviewed by a DCMI Usage Board within the context of a DCMI Namespace Policy (DCMI-NAMESPACE). This policy describes how terms are assigned and also sets limits on the amount of editorial changes allowed to the labels, definitions, and usage comments.
The Dublin Core standard originally included two levels: Simple and Qualified. Simple Dublin Core comprised 15 elements; Qualified Dublin Core included three additional elements (Audience, Provenance and RightsHolder), as well as a group of element refinements (also called qualifiers) that could refine the semantics of the elements in ways that may be useful in resource discovery.
Since 2012, the two have been incorporated into the DCMI Metadata Terms as a single set of terms using the RDF data model. The full set of elements is found under the namespace http://purl.org/dc/terms/. Because the definition of the terms often contains domains and ranges, which may not be compatible with the pre-RDF definitions used for the original 15 Dublin Core elements, there is a separate namespace for the original 15 elements as previously defined: http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/.
The original DCMES Version 1.1 consists of 15 metadata elements, defined this way in the original specification:
Each Dublin Core element is optional and may be repeated. The DCMI has established standard ways to refine elements and encourage the use of encoding and vocabulary schemes. There is no prescribed order in Dublin Core for presenting or using the elements. The Dublin Core became a NISO standards, Z39.85, and IETF RFC 5013 in 2007, ISO 15836 standard in 2009 and is used as a base-level data element set for the description of learning resources in the ISO/IEC 19788-2 Metadata for learning resources (MLR) – Part 2: Dublin Core elements, prepared by the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36.
Full information on element definitions and term relationships can be found in the Dublin Core Metadata Registry.
On the "archive form" web page for WebCite it says, in part: "Metadata (optional): These are Dublin Core elements. [...]".
(Superseded in 2008 by the DCMI Metadata Terms.) Subsequent to the specification of the original 15 elements, an ongoing process to develop exemplary terms extending or refining the DCMES was begun. The additional terms were identified, generally in working groups of the DCMI, and judged by the DCMI Usage Board to be in conformance with principles of good practice for the qualification of Dublin Core metadata elements.
Element refinements make the meaning of an element narrower or more specific. A refined element shares the meaning of the unqualified element, but with a more restricted scope. The guiding principle for the qualification of Dublin Core elements, colloquially known as the Dumb-Down Principle, states that an application that does not understand a specific element refinement term should be able to ignore the qualifier and treat the metadata value as if it were an unqualified (broader) element. While this may result in some loss of specificity, the remaining element value (without the qualifier) should continue to be generally correct and useful for discovery.
In addition to element refinements, Qualified Dublin Core includes a set of recommended encoding schemes, designed to aid in the interpretation of an element value. These schemes include controlled vocabularies and formal notations or parsing rules. A value expressed using an encoding scheme may thus be a token selected from a controlled vocabulary (for example, a term from a classification system or set of subject headings) or a string formatted in accordance with a formal notation, for example, "2000-12-31" as the ISO standard expression of a date. If an encoding scheme is not understood by an application, the value may still be useful to a human reader.
Audience, Provenance and RightsHolder are elements, but not part of the Simple Dublin Core 15 elements. Use Audience, Provenance and RightsHolder only when using Qualified Dublin Core. DCMI also maintains a small, general vocabulary recommended for use within the element Type. This vocabulary currently consists of 12 terms.
The DCMI Metadata Terms lists the current set of the Dublin Core vocabulary. This set includes the fifteen terms of the DCMES (in italic), as well as the qualified terms. Each term has a unique URI in the namespace http://purl.org/dc/terms, and all are defined as RDF properties.
Syntax choices for metadata expressed with the Dublin Core elements depend on context. Dublin Core concepts and semantics are designed to be syntax independent and apply to a variety of contexts, as long as the metadata is in a form suitable for interpretation by both machines and people.
The Dublin Core Abstract Model provides a reference model against which particular Dublin Core encoding guidelines can be compared, independent of any particular encoding syntax. Such a reference model helps implementers get a better understanding of the kinds of descriptions they are trying to encode and facilitates the development of better mappings and translations between different syntaxes.
One Document Type Definition based on Dublin Core is the Open Source Metadata Framework (OMF) specification. OMF is in turn used by Rarian (superseding ScrollKeeper), which is used by the GNOME desktop and KDE help browsers and the ScrollServer documentation server.
PBCore is also based on Dublin Core. The Zope CMF's Metadata products, used by the Plone, ERP5, the Nuxeo CPS Content management systems, SimpleDL, and Fedora Commons also implement Dublin Core. The EPUB e-book format uses Dublin Core metadata in the OPF file.
The Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata standard is an application profile of Dublin Core. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Dublin Core, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is a set of fifteen main metadata items for describing digital or physical resources. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is responsible for formulating the Dublin Core; DCMI is a project of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), a non-profit organization.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Dublin Core has been formally standardized internationally as ISO 15836 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and as IETF RFC 5013 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), as well as in the U.S. as ANSI/NISO Z39.85 by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The core properties are part of a larger set of DCMI Metadata Terms. \"Dublin Core\" is also used as an adjective for Dublin Core metadata, a style of metadata that draws on multiple Resource Description Framework (RDF) vocabularies, packaged and constrained in Dublin Core application profiles.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The resources described using the Dublin Core may be digital resources (video, images, web pages, etc.) as well as physical resources such as books or works of art. Dublin Core metadata may be used for multiple purposes, from simple resource description to combining metadata vocabularies of different metadata standards, to providing interoperability for metadata vocabularies in the linked data cloud and Semantic Web implementations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "\"Dublin\" refers to Dublin, Ohio, USA where the schema originated during the 1995 invitational OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop, hosted by the OCLC (known at that time as Online Computer Library Center), a library consortium based in Dublin, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). \"Core\" refers to the metadata terms as \"broad and generic being usable for describing a wide range of resources\". The semantics of Dublin Core were established and are maintained by an international, cross-disciplinary group of professionals from librarianship, computer science, text encoding, museums, and other related fields of scholarship and practice.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1999, the first Dublin Core encoding standard was expressed in terms of HTML 'meta' tagging. Starting in 2000, the Dublin Core community focused on \"application profiles\" – the idea that metadata records would use Dublin Core together with other specialized vocabularies to meet particular implementation requirements. During that time, the World Wide Web Consortium's work on a generic data model for metadata, the Resource Description Framework (RDF), was maturing. As part of an extended set of DCMI metadata terms, Dublin Core became one of the most popular vocabularies for use with RDF, more recently in the context of the linked data movement.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) provides an open forum for the development of interoperable online metadata standards for a broad range of purposes and of business models. DCMI's activities include consensus-driven working groups, global conferences and workshops, standards liaison, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and practices. In 2008, DCMI separated from OCLC and incorporated as an independent entity.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Currently, any and all changes that are made to the Dublin Core standard, are reviewed by a DCMI Usage Board within the context of a DCMI Namespace Policy (DCMI-NAMESPACE). This policy describes how terms are assigned and also sets limits on the amount of editorial changes allowed to the labels, definitions, and usage comments.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Dublin Core standard originally included two levels: Simple and Qualified. Simple Dublin Core comprised 15 elements; Qualified Dublin Core included three additional elements (Audience, Provenance and RightsHolder), as well as a group of element refinements (also called qualifiers) that could refine the semantics of the elements in ways that may be useful in resource discovery.",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Since 2012, the two have been incorporated into the DCMI Metadata Terms as a single set of terms using the RDF data model. The full set of elements is found under the namespace http://purl.org/dc/terms/. Because the definition of the terms often contains domains and ranges, which may not be compatible with the pre-RDF definitions used for the original 15 Dublin Core elements, there is a separate namespace for the original 15 elements as previously defined: http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/.",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The original DCMES Version 1.1 consists of 15 metadata elements, defined this way in the original specification:",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Each Dublin Core element is optional and may be repeated. The DCMI has established standard ways to refine elements and encourage the use of encoding and vocabulary schemes. There is no prescribed order in Dublin Core for presenting or using the elements. The Dublin Core became a NISO standards, Z39.85, and IETF RFC 5013 in 2007, ISO 15836 standard in 2009 and is used as a base-level data element set for the description of learning resources in the ISO/IEC 19788-2 Metadata for learning resources (MLR) – Part 2: Dublin Core elements, prepared by the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36.",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Full information on element definitions and term relationships can be found in the Dublin Core Metadata Registry.",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "On the \"archive form\" web page for WebCite it says, in part: \"Metadata (optional): These are Dublin Core elements. [...]\".",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "(Superseded in 2008 by the DCMI Metadata Terms.) Subsequent to the specification of the original 15 elements, an ongoing process to develop exemplary terms extending or refining the DCMES was begun. The additional terms were identified, generally in working groups of the DCMI, and judged by the DCMI Usage Board to be in conformance with principles of good practice for the qualification of Dublin Core metadata elements.",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Element refinements make the meaning of an element narrower or more specific. A refined element shares the meaning of the unqualified element, but with a more restricted scope. The guiding principle for the qualification of Dublin Core elements, colloquially known as the Dumb-Down Principle, states that an application that does not understand a specific element refinement term should be able to ignore the qualifier and treat the metadata value as if it were an unqualified (broader) element. While this may result in some loss of specificity, the remaining element value (without the qualifier) should continue to be generally correct and useful for discovery.",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In addition to element refinements, Qualified Dublin Core includes a set of recommended encoding schemes, designed to aid in the interpretation of an element value. These schemes include controlled vocabularies and formal notations or parsing rules. A value expressed using an encoding scheme may thus be a token selected from a controlled vocabulary (for example, a term from a classification system or set of subject headings) or a string formatted in accordance with a formal notation, for example, \"2000-12-31\" as the ISO standard expression of a date. If an encoding scheme is not understood by an application, the value may still be useful to a human reader.",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Audience, Provenance and RightsHolder are elements, but not part of the Simple Dublin Core 15 elements. Use Audience, Provenance and RightsHolder only when using Qualified Dublin Core. DCMI also maintains a small, general vocabulary recommended for use within the element Type. This vocabulary currently consists of 12 terms.",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The DCMI Metadata Terms lists the current set of the Dublin Core vocabulary. This set includes the fifteen terms of the DCMES (in italic), as well as the qualified terms. Each term has a unique URI in the namespace http://purl.org/dc/terms, and all are defined as RDF properties.",
"title": "Levels of the standard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Syntax choices for metadata expressed with the Dublin Core elements depend on context. Dublin Core concepts and semantics are designed to be syntax independent and apply to a variety of contexts, as long as the metadata is in a form suitable for interpretation by both machines and people.",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Dublin Core Abstract Model provides a reference model against which particular Dublin Core encoding guidelines can be compared, independent of any particular encoding syntax. Such a reference model helps implementers get a better understanding of the kinds of descriptions they are trying to encode and facilitates the development of better mappings and translations between different syntaxes.",
"title": "Syntax"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "One Document Type Definition based on Dublin Core is the Open Source Metadata Framework (OMF) specification. OMF is in turn used by Rarian (superseding ScrollKeeper), which is used by the GNOME desktop and KDE help browsers and the ScrollServer documentation server.",
"title": "Notable applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "PBCore is also based on Dublin Core. The Zope CMF's Metadata products, used by the Plone, ERP5, the Nuxeo CPS Content management systems, SimpleDL, and Fedora Commons also implement Dublin Core. The EPUB e-book format uses Dublin Core metadata in the OPF file.",
"title": "Notable applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata standard is an application profile of Dublin Core.",
"title": "Notable applications"
}
]
| The Dublin Core, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is a set of fifteen main metadata items for describing digital or physical resources. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is responsible for formulating the Dublin Core; DCMI is a project of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), a non-profit organization. Dublin Core has been formally standardized internationally as ISO 15836 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and as IETF RFC 5013 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), as well as in the U.S. as ANSI/NISO Z39.85 by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO). The core properties are part of a larger set of DCMI Metadata Terms. "Dublin Core" is also used as an adjective for Dublin Core metadata, a style of metadata that draws on multiple Resource Description Framework (RDF) vocabularies, packaged and constrained in Dublin Core application profiles. The resources described using the Dublin Core may be digital resources as well as physical resources such as books or works of art.
Dublin Core metadata may be used for multiple purposes, from simple resource description to combining metadata vocabularies of different metadata standards, to providing interoperability for metadata vocabularies in the linked data cloud and Semantic Web implementations. | 2001-10-31T06:17:02Z | 2023-12-08T17:13:33Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Core |
8,743 | Document Object Model | The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent interface that treats an HTML or XML document as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a part of the document. The DOM represents a document with a logical tree. Each branch of the tree ends in a node, and each node contains objects. DOM methods allow programmatic access to the tree; with them one can change the structure, style or content of a document. Nodes can have event handlers (also known as event listeners) attached to them. Once an event is triggered, the event handlers get executed.
The principal standardization of the DOM was handled by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which last developed a recommendation in 2004. WHATWG took over the development of the standard, publishing it as a living document. The W3C now publishes stable snapshots of the WHATWG standard.
In HTML DOM (Document Object Model), every element is a node:
The history of the Document Object Model is intertwined with the history of the "browser wars" of the late 1990s between Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, as well as with that of JavaScript and JScript, the first scripting languages to be widely implemented in the JavaScript engines of web browsers.
JavaScript was released by Netscape Communications in 1995 within Netscape Navigator 2.0. Netscape's competitor, Microsoft, released Internet Explorer 3.0 the following year with a reimplementation of JavaScript called JScript. JavaScript and JScript let web developers create web pages with client-side interactivity. The limited facilities for detecting user-generated events and modifying the HTML document in the first generation of these languages eventually became known as "DOM Level 0" or "Legacy DOM." No independent standard was developed for DOM Level 0, but it was partly described in the specifications for HTML 4.
Legacy DOM was limited in the kinds of elements that could be accessed. Form, link and image elements could be referenced with a hierarchical name that began with the root document object. A hierarchical name could make use of either the names or the sequential index of the traversed elements. For example, a form input element could be accessed as either document.myForm.myInput or document.forms[0].elements[0].
The Legacy DOM enabled client-side form validation and simple interface interactivity like creating tooltips.
In 1997, Netscape and Microsoft released version 4.0 of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer respectively, adding support for Dynamic HTML (DHTML) functionality enabling changes to a loaded HTML document. DHTML required extensions to the rudimentary document object that was available in the Legacy DOM implementations. Although the Legacy DOM implementations were largely compatible since JScript was based on JavaScript, the DHTML DOM extensions were developed in parallel by each browser maker and remained incompatible. These versions of the DOM became known as the "Intermediate DOM".
After the standardization of ECMAScript, the W3C DOM Working Group began drafting a standard DOM specification. The completed specification, known as "DOM Level 1", became a W3C Recommendation in late 1998. By 2005, large parts of W3C DOM were well-supported by common ECMAScript-enabled browsers, including Internet Explorer 6 (from 2001), Opera, Safari and Gecko-based browsers (like Mozilla, Firefox, SeaMonkey and Camino).
The W3C DOM Working Group published its final recommendation and subsequently disbanded in 2004. Development efforts migrated to the WHATWG, which continues to maintain a living standard. In 2009, the Web Applications group reorganized DOM activities at the W3C. In 2013, due to a lack of progress and the impending release of HTML5, the DOM Level 4 specification was reassigned to the HTML Working Group to expedite its completion. Meanwhile, in 2015, the Web Applications group was disbanded and DOM stewardship passed to the Web Platform group. Beginning with the publication of DOM Level 4 in 2015, the W3C creates new recommendations based on snapshots of the WHATWG standard.
To render a document such as a HTML page, most web browsers use an internal model similar to the DOM. The nodes of every document are organized in a tree structure, called the DOM tree, with the topmost node named as "Document object". When an HTML page is rendered in browsers, the browser downloads the HTML into local memory and automatically parses it to display the page on screen. However, the DOM does not necessarily need to be represented as a tree, and some browsers have used other internal models.
When a web page is loaded, the browser creates a Document Object Model of the page, which is an object oriented representation of an HTML document that acts as an interface between JavaScript and the document itself. This allows the creation of dynamic web pages, because within a page JavaScript can:
A Document Object Model (DOM) tree is a hierarchical representation of an HTML or XML document. It consists of a root node, which is the document itself, and a series of child nodes that represent the elements, attributes, and text content of the document. Each node in the tree has a parent node, except for the root node, and can have multiple child nodes.
Elements in an HTML or XML document are represented as nodes in the DOM tree. Each element node has a tag name, attributes, and can contain other element nodes or text nodes as children. For example, an HTML document with the following structure:
will be represented in the DOM tree as:
Text content within an element is represented as a text node in the DOM tree. Text nodes do not have attributes or child nodes, and are always leaf nodes in the tree. For example, the text content "My Website" in the title element and "Welcome" in the h1 element in the above example are both represented as text nodes.
Attributes of an element are represented as properties of the element node in the DOM tree. For example, an element with the following HTML:
will be represented in the DOM tree as:
The DOM tree can be manipulated using JavaScript or other programming languages. Common tasks include navigating the tree, adding, removing, and modifying nodes, and getting and setting the properties of nodes. The DOM API provides a set of methods and properties to perform these operations, such as getElementById, createElement, appendChild, and innerHTML.
Another way to create a DOM structure is using the innerHTML property to insert HTML code as a string, creating the elements and children in the process. For example:
Another method is to use a JavaScript library or framework such as jQuery, AngularJS, React, Vue.js, etc. These libraries provide a more convenient and efficient way to create, manipulate and interact with the DOM.
It's also possible to create a DOM structure from an XML or JSON data, using JavaScript methods to parse the data and create the nodes accordingly.
It's important to note that creating a DOM structure does not necessarily mean that it will be displayed in the web page, it only exists in memory and should be appended to the document body or a specific container to be rendered.
In summary, creating a DOM structure involves creating individual nodes and organizing them in a hierarchical structure using JavaScript or other programming languages, and it can be done using several methods depending on the use case and the developer's preference.
Because the DOM supports navigation in any direction (e.g., parent and previous sibling) and allows for arbitrary modifications, an implementation must at least buffer the document that has been read so far (or some parsed form of it).
Web browsers rely on layout engines to parse HTML into a DOM. Some layout engines, such as Trident/MSHTML, are associated primarily or exclusively with a particular browser, such as Internet Explorer. Others, including Blink, WebKit, and Gecko, are shared by a number of browsers, such as Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Firefox. The different layout engines implement the DOM standards to varying degrees of compliance.
DOM implementations:
APIs that expose DOM implementations:
Inspection tools: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent interface that treats an HTML or XML document as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a part of the document. The DOM represents a document with a logical tree. Each branch of the tree ends in a node, and each node contains objects. DOM methods allow programmatic access to the tree; with them one can change the structure, style or content of a document. Nodes can have event handlers (also known as event listeners) attached to them. Once an event is triggered, the event handlers get executed.",
"title": ""
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"text": "The principal standardization of the DOM was handled by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which last developed a recommendation in 2004. WHATWG took over the development of the standard, publishing it as a living document. The W3C now publishes stable snapshots of the WHATWG standard.",
"title": ""
},
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"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In HTML DOM (Document Object Model), every element is a node:",
"title": ""
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"text": "The history of the Document Object Model is intertwined with the history of the \"browser wars\" of the late 1990s between Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, as well as with that of JavaScript and JScript, the first scripting languages to be widely implemented in the JavaScript engines of web browsers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "JavaScript was released by Netscape Communications in 1995 within Netscape Navigator 2.0. Netscape's competitor, Microsoft, released Internet Explorer 3.0 the following year with a reimplementation of JavaScript called JScript. JavaScript and JScript let web developers create web pages with client-side interactivity. The limited facilities for detecting user-generated events and modifying the HTML document in the first generation of these languages eventually became known as \"DOM Level 0\" or \"Legacy DOM.\" No independent standard was developed for DOM Level 0, but it was partly described in the specifications for HTML 4.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Legacy DOM was limited in the kinds of elements that could be accessed. Form, link and image elements could be referenced with a hierarchical name that began with the root document object. A hierarchical name could make use of either the names or the sequential index of the traversed elements. For example, a form input element could be accessed as either document.myForm.myInput or document.forms[0].elements[0].",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Legacy DOM enabled client-side form validation and simple interface interactivity like creating tooltips.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1997, Netscape and Microsoft released version 4.0 of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer respectively, adding support for Dynamic HTML (DHTML) functionality enabling changes to a loaded HTML document. DHTML required extensions to the rudimentary document object that was available in the Legacy DOM implementations. Although the Legacy DOM implementations were largely compatible since JScript was based on JavaScript, the DHTML DOM extensions were developed in parallel by each browser maker and remained incompatible. These versions of the DOM became known as the \"Intermediate DOM\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "After the standardization of ECMAScript, the W3C DOM Working Group began drafting a standard DOM specification. The completed specification, known as \"DOM Level 1\", became a W3C Recommendation in late 1998. By 2005, large parts of W3C DOM were well-supported by common ECMAScript-enabled browsers, including Internet Explorer 6 (from 2001), Opera, Safari and Gecko-based browsers (like Mozilla, Firefox, SeaMonkey and Camino).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The W3C DOM Working Group published its final recommendation and subsequently disbanded in 2004. Development efforts migrated to the WHATWG, which continues to maintain a living standard. In 2009, the Web Applications group reorganized DOM activities at the W3C. In 2013, due to a lack of progress and the impending release of HTML5, the DOM Level 4 specification was reassigned to the HTML Working Group to expedite its completion. Meanwhile, in 2015, the Web Applications group was disbanded and DOM stewardship passed to the Web Platform group. Beginning with the publication of DOM Level 4 in 2015, the W3C creates new recommendations based on snapshots of the WHATWG standard.",
"title": "Standards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "To render a document such as a HTML page, most web browsers use an internal model similar to the DOM. The nodes of every document are organized in a tree structure, called the DOM tree, with the topmost node named as \"Document object\". When an HTML page is rendered in browsers, the browser downloads the HTML into local memory and automatically parses it to display the page on screen. However, the DOM does not necessarily need to be represented as a tree, and some browsers have used other internal models.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "When a web page is loaded, the browser creates a Document Object Model of the page, which is an object oriented representation of an HTML document that acts as an interface between JavaScript and the document itself. This allows the creation of dynamic web pages, because within a page JavaScript can:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "A Document Object Model (DOM) tree is a hierarchical representation of an HTML or XML document. It consists of a root node, which is the document itself, and a series of child nodes that represent the elements, attributes, and text content of the document. Each node in the tree has a parent node, except for the root node, and can have multiple child nodes.",
"title": "DOM tree structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Elements in an HTML or XML document are represented as nodes in the DOM tree. Each element node has a tag name, attributes, and can contain other element nodes or text nodes as children. For example, an HTML document with the following structure:",
"title": "DOM tree structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "will be represented in the DOM tree as:",
"title": "DOM tree structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Text content within an element is represented as a text node in the DOM tree. Text nodes do not have attributes or child nodes, and are always leaf nodes in the tree. For example, the text content \"My Website\" in the title element and \"Welcome\" in the h1 element in the above example are both represented as text nodes.",
"title": "DOM tree structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Attributes of an element are represented as properties of the element node in the DOM tree. For example, an element with the following HTML:",
"title": "DOM tree structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "will be represented in the DOM tree as:",
"title": "DOM tree structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The DOM tree can be manipulated using JavaScript or other programming languages. Common tasks include navigating the tree, adding, removing, and modifying nodes, and getting and setting the properties of nodes. The DOM API provides a set of methods and properties to perform these operations, such as getElementById, createElement, appendChild, and innerHTML.",
"title": "Manipulating the DOM tree"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Another way to create a DOM structure is using the innerHTML property to insert HTML code as a string, creating the elements and children in the process. For example:",
"title": "Manipulating the DOM tree"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Another method is to use a JavaScript library or framework such as jQuery, AngularJS, React, Vue.js, etc. These libraries provide a more convenient and efficient way to create, manipulate and interact with the DOM.",
"title": "Manipulating the DOM tree"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "It's also possible to create a DOM structure from an XML or JSON data, using JavaScript methods to parse the data and create the nodes accordingly.",
"title": "Manipulating the DOM tree"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "It's important to note that creating a DOM structure does not necessarily mean that it will be displayed in the web page, it only exists in memory and should be appended to the document body or a specific container to be rendered.",
"title": "Manipulating the DOM tree"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In summary, creating a DOM structure involves creating individual nodes and organizing them in a hierarchical structure using JavaScript or other programming languages, and it can be done using several methods depending on the use case and the developer's preference.",
"title": "Manipulating the DOM tree"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Because the DOM supports navigation in any direction (e.g., parent and previous sibling) and allows for arbitrary modifications, an implementation must at least buffer the document that has been read so far (or some parsed form of it).",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Web browsers rely on layout engines to parse HTML into a DOM. Some layout engines, such as Trident/MSHTML, are associated primarily or exclusively with a particular browser, such as Internet Explorer. Others, including Blink, WebKit, and Gecko, are shared by a number of browsers, such as Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Firefox. The different layout engines implement the DOM standards to varying degrees of compliance.",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "DOM implementations:",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "APIs that expose DOM implementations:",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Inspection tools:",
"title": "Implementations"
}
]
| The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent interface that treats an HTML or XML document as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a part of the document. The DOM represents a document with a logical tree. Each branch of the tree ends in a node, and each node contains objects. DOM methods allow programmatic access to the tree; with them one can change the structure, style or content of a document. Nodes can have event handlers attached to them. Once an event is triggered, the event handlers get executed. The principal standardization of the DOM was handled by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which last developed a recommendation in 2004. WHATWG took over the development of the standard, publishing it as a living document. The W3C now publishes stable snapshots of the WHATWG standard. In HTML DOM, every element is a node: A document is a document node.
All HTML elements are element nodes.
All HTML attributes are attribute nodes.
Text inserted into HTML elements are text nodes.
Comments are comment nodes. | 2001-10-31T01:00:41Z | 2023-12-16T11:26:32Z | [
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"Template:Authority control",
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"Template:Infobox technology standard"
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Object_Model |
8,745 | Design pattern | A design pattern is the re-usable form of a solution to a design problem. The idea was introduced by the architect Christopher Alexander and has been adapted for various other disciplines, particularly software engineering.
An organized collection of design patterns that relate to a particular field is called a pattern language. This language gives a common terminology for discussing the situations designers are faced with.
The elements of this language are entities called patterns. Each pattern describes a problem that occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.
Documenting a pattern requires explaining why a particular situation causes problems, and how the components of the pattern relate to each other to give the solution. Christopher Alexander describes common design problems as arising from "conflicting forces"—such as the conflict between wanting a room to be sunny and wanting it not to overheat on summer afternoons. A pattern would not tell the designer how many windows to put in the room; instead, it would propose a set of values to guide the designer toward a decision that is best for their particular application. Alexander, for example, suggests that enough windows should be included to direct light all around the room. He considers this a good solution because he believes it increases the enjoyment of the room by its occupants. Other authors might come to different conclusions, if they place higher value on heating costs, or material costs. These values, used by the pattern's author to determine which solution is "best", must also be documented within the pattern.
Pattern documentation should also explain when it is applicable. Since two houses may be very different from one another, a design pattern for houses must be broad enough to apply to both of them, but not so vague that it doesn't help the designer make decisions. The range of situations in which a pattern can be used is called its context. Some examples might be "all houses", "all two-story houses", or "all places where people spend time".
For instance, in Christopher Alexander's work, bus stops and waiting rooms in a surgery center are both within the context for the pattern "A PLACE TO WAIT".
Business models also have design patterns. See Business model § Examples. | [
{
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"text": "A design pattern is the re-usable form of a solution to a design problem. The idea was introduced by the architect Christopher Alexander and has been adapted for various other disciplines, particularly software engineering.",
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"text": "The elements of this language are entities called patterns. Each pattern describes a problem that occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.",
"title": "Details"
},
{
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"text": "Documenting a pattern requires explaining why a particular situation causes problems, and how the components of the pattern relate to each other to give the solution. Christopher Alexander describes common design problems as arising from \"conflicting forces\"—such as the conflict between wanting a room to be sunny and wanting it not to overheat on summer afternoons. A pattern would not tell the designer how many windows to put in the room; instead, it would propose a set of values to guide the designer toward a decision that is best for their particular application. Alexander, for example, suggests that enough windows should be included to direct light all around the room. He considers this a good solution because he believes it increases the enjoyment of the room by its occupants. Other authors might come to different conclusions, if they place higher value on heating costs, or material costs. These values, used by the pattern's author to determine which solution is \"best\", must also be documented within the pattern.",
"title": "Details"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Pattern documentation should also explain when it is applicable. Since two houses may be very different from one another, a design pattern for houses must be broad enough to apply to both of them, but not so vague that it doesn't help the designer make decisions. The range of situations in which a pattern can be used is called its context. Some examples might be \"all houses\", \"all two-story houses\", or \"all places where people spend time\".",
"title": "Details"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "For instance, in Christopher Alexander's work, bus stops and waiting rooms in a surgery center are both within the context for the pattern \"A PLACE TO WAIT\".",
"title": "Details"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Business models also have design patterns. See Business model § Examples.",
"title": "Examples"
}
]
| A design pattern is the re-usable form of a solution to a design problem. The idea was introduced by the architect Christopher Alexander and has been adapted for various other disciplines, particularly software engineering. | 2001-10-31T03:23:00Z | 2023-12-28T12:29:08Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_pattern |
8,748 | N,N-Dimethyltryptamine | N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT or N,N-DMT) is a substituted tryptamine that occurs in many plants and animals, including humans, and which is both a derivative and a structural analog of tryptamine. DMT is used as a psychedelic drug and prepared by various cultures for ritual purposes as an entheogen.
DMT has a rapid onset, intense effects, and a relatively short duration of action. For those reasons, DMT was known as the "businessman's trip" during the 1960s in the United States, as a user could access the full depth of a psychedelic experience in considerably less time than with other substances such as LSD or psilocybin mushrooms. DMT can be inhaled, ingested, or injected and its effects depend on the dose, as well as the mode of administration. When inhaled or injected, the effects last a short period of time: about five to 15 minutes. Effects can last three hours or more when orally ingested along with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), such as the ayahuasca brew of many native Amazonian tribes. DMT can produce vivid "projections" of mystical experiences involving euphoria and dynamic pseudohallucinations of geometric forms.
DMT is a functional analog and structural analog of other psychedelic tryptamines such as O-acetylpsilocin (4-AcO-DMT), psilocybin (4-PO-DMT), psilocin (4-HO-DMT), O-methylbufotenin (5-MeO-DMT), and bufotenin (5-HO-DMT). Parts of the structure of DMT occur within some important biomolecules like serotonin and melatonin, making them structural analogs of DMT.
DMT is produced in many species of plants often in conjunction with its close chemical relatives 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) and bufotenin (5-OH-DMT). DMT-containing plants are commonly used in indigenous Amazonian shamanic practices. It is usually one of the main active constituents of the drink ayahuasca; however, ayahuasca is sometimes brewed with plants that do not produce DMT. It occurs as the primary psychoactive alkaloid in several plants including Mimosa tenuiflora, Diplopterys cabrerana, and Psychotria viridis. DMT is found as a minor alkaloid in snuff made from Virola bark resin in which 5-MeO-DMT is the main active alkaloid. DMT is also found as a minor alkaloid in bark, pods, and beans of Anadenanthera peregrina and Anadenanthera colubrina used to make Yopo and Vilca snuff, in which bufotenin is the main active alkaloid. Psilocin and psilocybin, the main psychoactive compounds in psilocybin mushrooms, are structurally similar to DMT.
The psychotropic effects of DMT were first studied scientifically by the Hungarian chemist and psychologist Stephen Szára, who performed research with volunteers in the mid-1950s. Szára, who later worked for the United States National Institutes of Health, had turned his attention to DMT after his order for LSD from the Swiss company Sandoz Laboratories was rejected on the grounds that the powerful psychotropic could be dangerous in the hands of a communist country.
DMT is generally not active orally unless it is combined with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor such as a reversible inhibitor of monoamine oxidase A (RIMA), for example, harmaline. Without a MAOI, the body quickly metabolizes orally administered DMT, and it therefore has no hallucinogenic effect unless the dose exceeds the body's monoamine oxidase's metabolic capacity. Other means of consumption such as vaporizing, injecting, or insufflating the drug can produce powerful hallucinations for a short time (usually less than half an hour), as the DMT reaches the brain before it can be metabolized by the body's natural monoamine oxidase. Taking an MAOI prior to vaporizing or injecting DMT prolongs and enhances the effects.
Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), an endogenous ligand of sigma-1 receptors (Sig-1Rs), acts against systemic hypoxia. Research demonstrates DMT reduces the number of apoptotic and ferroptotic cells in mammalian forebrain and supports astrocyte survival in an ischemic environment. According to these data, DMT may be considered as adjuvant pharmacological therapy in the management of acute cerebral ischemia.
DMT is studied as a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial.
SPL026 (DMT fumarate) is currently undergoing phase II clinical trials investigating its use alongside supportive psychotherapy as a potential treatment Major Depressive Disorder. Additionally, a safety study is underway to investigate the effects of combining SSRIs with SPL026.
Recently, researchers discovered that N,N-dimethyltryptamine is a potent psychoplastogen, a compound capable of promoting rapid and sustained neuroplasticity that may have wide-ranging therapeutic benefit.
Quantities of dimethyltryptamine and O-methylbufotenin were found present in the cerebrospinal fluid of humans in a psychiatric study.
Subjective experiences of DMT includes profound time-dilatory, visual, auditory, tactile, and proprioceptive distortions and hallucinations, and other experiences that, by most firsthand accounts, defy verbal or visual description. Examples include perceiving hyperbolic geometry or seeing Escher-like impossible objects.
Several scientific experimental studies have tried to measure subjective experiences of altered states of consciousness induced by drugs under highly controlled and safe conditions.
Rick Strassman and his colleagues conducted a five-year-long DMT study at the University of New Mexico in the 1990s. The results provided insight about the quality of subjective psychedelic experiences. In this study participants received the DMT dosage via intravenous injection and the findings suggested that different psychedelic experiences can occur, depending on the level of dosage. Lower doses (0.01 and 0.05 mg/kg) produced some aesthetic and emotional responses, but not hallucinogenic experiences (e.g., 0.05 mg/kg had mild mood elevating and calming properties). In contrast, responses produced by higher doses (0.2 and 0.4 mg/kg) researchers labeled as "hallucinogenic" that elicited "intensely colored, rapidly moving display of visual images, formed, abstract or both". Comparing to other sensory modalities the most affected was the visual. Participants reported visual hallucinations, fewer auditory hallucinations and specific physical sensations progressing to a sense of bodily dissociation, as well as to experiences of euphoria, calm, fear, and anxiety. These dose-dependent effects match well with anonymously posted "trip reports" online, where users report "breakthroughs" above certain doses.
Strassman also stressed the importance of the context where the drug has been taken. He claimed that DMT has no beneficial effects of itself, rather the context when and where people take it plays an important role.
It appears that DMT can induce a state or feeling where the person believes to "communicate with other intelligent lifeforms" (see "machine elves"). High doses of DMT produce a state that involves a sense of "another intelligence" that people sometimes describe as "super-intelligent", but "emotionally detached".
A 1995 study by Adolf Dittrich and Daniel Lamparter found that the DMT-induced altered state of consciousness (ASC) is strongly influenced by habitual rather than situative factors. In the study, researchers used three dimensions of the APZ questionnaire to examine ASC. The first dimension, oceanic boundlessness (OB), refers to dissolution of ego boundaries and is mostly associated with positive emotions. The second dimension, anxious ego-dissolution (AED), represents a disordering of thoughts and decreases in autonomy and self-control. Last, visionary restructuralization (VR) refers to auditory/visual illusions and hallucinations. Results showed strong effects within the first and third dimensions for all conditions, especially with DMT, and suggested strong intrastability of elicited reactions independently of the condition for the OB and VR scales.
Entities perceived during DMT inebriation have been represented in diverse forms of psychedelic art. The term machine elf was coined by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna for the entities he encountered in DMT "hyperspace", also using terms like fractal elves, or self-transforming machine elves. McKenna first encountered the "machine elves" after smoking DMT in Berkeley in 1965. His subsequent speculations regarding the hyperdimensional space in which they were encountered have inspired a great many artists and musicians, and the meaning of DMT entities has been a subject of considerable debate among participants in a networked cultural underground, enthused by McKenna's effusive accounts of DMT hyperspace. Cliff Pickover has also written about the "machine elf" experience, in the book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves. Strassman noted similarities between self-reports of his DMT study participants' encounters with these "entities", and mythological descriptions of figures such as Ḥayyot haq-Qodesh in ancient religions, including both angels and demons. Strassman also argues for a similarity in his study participants' descriptions of mechanized wheels, gears and machinery in these encounters, with those described in visions of encounters with the Living Creatures and Ophanim of the Hebrew Bible, noting they may stem from a common neuropsychopharmacological experience.
Strassman argues that the more positive of the "external entities" encountered in DMT experiences should be understood as analogous to certain forms of angels:
The medieval Jewish philosophers whom I rely upon for understanding the Hebrew Bible text and its concept of prophecy portray angels as God's intermediaries. That is, they perform a certain function for God. Within the context of my DMT research, I believe that the beings that volunteers see could be conceived of as angelic – that is, previously invisible, incorporeal spiritual forces that are engarbed or enclothed in a particular form – determined by the psychological and spiritual development of the volunteers – bringing a particular message or experience to that volunteer.
Strassman's experimental participants also note that some other entities can subjectively resemble creatures more like insects and aliens. As a result, Strassman writes these experiences among his experimental participants "also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was getting in over my head with this research."
Hallucinations of strange creatures had been reported by Stephen Szara in a 1958 study in psychotic patients, in which he described how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced "strange creatures, dwarves or something" at the beginning of a DMT trip.
Other researchers of the entities seemingly encountered by DMT users describe them as "entities" or "beings" in humanoid as well as animal form, with descriptions of "little people" being common (non-human gnomes, elves, imps, etc.). Strassman and others have speculated that this form of hallucination may be the cause of alien abduction and extraterrestrial encounter experiences, which may occur through endogenously-occurring DMT.
Likening them to descriptions of rattling and chattering auditory phenomena described in encounters with the Hayyoth in the Book of Ezekiel, Rick Strassman notes that participants in his studies, when reporting encounters with the alleged entities, have also described loud auditory hallucinations, such as one subject reporting typically "the elves laughing or talking at high volume, chattering, twittering".
A 2018 study found significant relationships between a DMT experience and a near-death experience. A 2019 large-scale study pointed that ketamine, Salvia divinorum, and DMT (and other classical psychedelic substances) may be linked to near-death experiences due to the semantic similarity of reports associated with the use of psychoactive compounds and NDE narratives, but the study concluded that with the current data it is neither possible to corroborate nor refute the hypothesis that the release of an endogenous ketamine-like neuroprotective agent underlies NDE phenomenology.
According to a dose-response study in human subjects, dimethyltryptamine administered intravenously slightly elevated blood pressure, heart rate, pupil diameter, and rectal temperature, in addition to elevating blood concentrations of beta-endorphin, corticotropin, cortisol, and prolactin; growth hormone blood levels rise equally in response to all doses of DMT, and melatonin levels were unaffected."
In the 1950s, the endogenous production of psychoactive agents was considered to be a potential explanation for the hallucinatory symptoms of some psychiatric diseases; this is known as the transmethylation hypothesis. Several speculative and yet untested hypotheses suggest that endogenous DMT is produced in the human brain and is involved in certain psychological and neurological states. DMT is naturally occurring in small amounts in rat brain, human cerebrospinal fluid, and other tissues of humans and other mammals. Further, mRNA for the enzyme necessary for the production of DMT, INMT, are expressed in the human cerebral cortex, choroid plexus, and pineal gland, suggesting an endogenous role in the human brain. In 2011, Nicholas V. Cozzi, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, concluded that INMT, an enzyme that is associated with the biosynthesis of DMT and endogenous hallucinogens, is present in the primate (rhesus macaque) pineal gland, retinal ganglion neurons, and spinal cord. Neurobiologist Andrew Gallimore (2013) suggested that while DMT might not have a modern neural function, it may have been an ancestral neuromodulator once secreted in psychedelic concentrations during REM sleep, a function now lost.
DMT may trigger adverse psychological reactions, known colloquially as a "bad trip", such as intense fear, paranoia, anxiety, panic attacks, and substance-induced psychosis, particularly in predisposed individuals.
DMT, like other serotonergic psychedelics, is considered to be non-addictive with low abuse potential. A study examining substance use disorder for DSM-IV reported that almost no hallucinogens produced dependence, unlike psychoactive drugs of other classes such as stimulants and depressants. At present, there have been no studies that report abstinence syndrome with termination of DMT, and dependence potential of DMT and the risk of sustained psychological disturbance may be minimal when used infrequently; however, the physiological dependence potential of DMT and ayahuasca has not yet been documented convincingly.
Unlike other classical psychedelics, studies report that DMT did not exhibit tolerance upon repeated administration of twice a day sessions, separated by 5 hours, for 5 consecutive days; field reports suggests a refractory period of only 15 to 30 minutes, while the plasma levels of DMT was nearly undetectable 30 minutes after intravenous administration. Another study of four closely spaced DMT infusion sessions with 30 minute intervals also suggests no tolerance buildup to the psychological effects of the compound, while heart rate responses and neuroendocrine effects were diminished with repeated administration. A fully hallucinogenic dose of DMT did not demonstrate cross-tolerance to human subjects who are highly tolerant to LSD; researches suggest that DMT exhibits unique pharmacological properties compared to other classical psychedelics.
There have been no serious adverse effects reported on long-term use of DMT, apart from acute cardiovascular events. Repeated and one-time administration of DMT produces marked changes in the cardiovascular system, with an increase in systolic and diastolic blood pressure; although the changes were not statistically significant, a robust trend towards significance was observed for systolic blood pressure at high doses.
DMT is inactive when ingested orally due to metabolism by MAO, and beta-Carbolines in DMT-containing drinks such as ayahuasca have been found to contain MAOIs, in particular, harmine and harmaline. Life-threatening lethalities such as serotonin syndrome (SS) may occur when MAOIs are combined with certain serotonergic medications such as SSRI antidepressants. Serotonin syndrome has also been reported with tricyclic antidepressants, opiates, analgesic, and antimigraine drugs; it is advised to exercise caution when an individual had used dextromethorphan (DXM), MDMA, ginseng, or St. John’s wort recently.
Chronic use of SSRIs, TCAs, and MAOIs diminish subjective effects of psychedelics due to presumed SSRI-induced 5-HT2A receptors downregulation and MAOI-induced 5-HT2A receptor desensitization. The interaction between psychedelics and antipsychotics and anticonvulsant are not well documented, however reports reveal that co-use of psychedelics with mood stabilizers such as lithium may provoke seizure and dissociative effects in individuals with bipolar disorder.
A standard dose for vaporized DMT is 20–60 milligrams, depending highly on the efficiency of vaporization as well as body weight and personal variation. In general, this is inhaled in a few successive breaths, but lower doses can be used if the user can inhale it in fewer breaths (ideally one). The effects last for a short period of time, usually 5 to 15 minutes, dependent on the dose. The onset after inhalation is very fast (less than 45 seconds) and peak effects are reached within a minute. In the 1960s, DMT was known as a "businessman's trip" in the US because of the relatively short duration (and rapid onset) of action when inhaled. DMT can be inhaled using a bong, typically when sandwiched between layers of plant matter, using a specially designed pipe, or by using an e-cigarette once it has been dissolved in propylene glycol and/or vegetable glycerin. Some users have also started using vaporizers meant for cannabis extracts ("wax pens") for ease of temperature control when vaporizing crystals. A DMT-infused smoking blend is called Changa, and is typically used in pipes or other utensils meant for smoking dried plant matter.
In a study conducted from 1990 through 1995, University of New Mexico psychiatrist Rick Strassman found that some volunteers injected with high doses of DMT reported experiences with perceived alien entities. Usually, the reported entities were experienced as the inhabitants of a perceived independent reality that the subjects reported visiting while under the influence of DMT.
DMT is broken down by the enzyme monoamine oxidase through a process called deamination, and is quickly inactivated orally unless combined with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI). The traditional South American beverage ayahuasca is derived by boiling Banisteriopsis caapi with leaves of one or more plants containing DMT, such as Psychotria viridis, Psychotria carthagenensis, or Diplopterys cabrerana. The Banisteriopsis caapi contains harmala alkaloids, a highly active reversible inihibitors of monoamine oxidase A (RIMAs), rendering the DMT orally active by protecting it from deamination. A variety of different recipes are used to make the brew depending on the purpose of the ayahuasca session, or local availability of ingredients. Two common sources of DMT in the western US are reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) and Harding grass (Phalaris aquatica). These invasive grasses contain low levels of DMT and other alkaloids but also contain gramine, which is toxic and difficult to separate. In addition, Jurema (Mimosa tenuiflora) shows evidence of DMT content: the pink layer in the inner rootbark of this small tree contains a high concentration of N,N-DMT.
Taken orally with an RIMA, DMT produces a long-lasting (over three hours), slow, deep metaphysical experience similar to that of psilocybin mushrooms, but more intense.
The intensity of orally administered DMT depends on the type and dose of MAOI administered alongside it. When ingested with 120mg of harmine (a RIMA and member of the harmala alkaloids), 20mg of DMT was reported to have psychoactive effects by author and ethnobotanist Jonathan Ott. Ott reported that to produce a visionary state, the threshold oral dose was 30mg DMT alongside 120mg harmine. This is not necessarily indicative of a standard dose, as dose-dependent effects may vary due to individual variations in drug metabolism.
Naturally occurring substances (of both vegetable and animal origin) containing DMT have been used in South America since pre-Columbian times.
DMT was first synthesized in 1931 by Canadian chemist Richard Helmuth Fredrick Manske. In general, its discovery as a natural product is credited to Brazilian chemist and microbiologist Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima, who isolated an alkaloid he named nigerina (nigerine) from the root bark of Mimosa tenuiflora in 1946. However, in a careful review of the case Jonathan Ott shows that the empirical formula for nigerine determined by Gonçalves de Lima, which notably contains an atom of oxygen, can match only a partial, "impure" or "contaminated" form of DMT. It was only in 1959, when Gonçalves de Lima provided American chemists a sample of Mimosa tenuiflora roots, that DMT was unequivocally identified in this plant material. Less ambiguous is the case of isolation and formal identification of DMT in 1955 in seeds and pods of Anadenanthera peregrina by a team of American chemists led by Evan Horning (1916–1993). Since 1955, DMT has been found in a host of organisms: in at least fifty plant species belonging to ten families, and in at least four animal species, including one gorgonian and three mammalian species (including humans).
In terms of a scientific understanding, the hallucinogenic properties of DMT were not uncovered until 1956 by Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist Stephen Szara. In his paper “Dimethyltryptamin: Its Metabolism in Man; the Relation of its Psychotic Effect to the Serotonin Metabolism”, Szara employed synthetic DMT, synthesized by the method of Speeter and Anthony, which was then administered to 20 volunteers by intramuscular injection. Urine samples were collected from these volunteers for the identification of DMT metabolites. This is considered to be the converging link between the chemical structure DMT to its cultural consumption as a psychoactive and religious sacrament.
Another historical milestone is the discovery of DMT in plants frequently used by Amazonian natives as additive to the vine Banisteriopsis caapi to make ayahuasca decoctions. In 1957, American chemists Francis Hochstein and Anita Paradies identified DMT in an "aqueous extract" of leaves of a plant they named Prestonia amazonicum [sic] and described as "commonly mixed" with B. caapi. The lack of a proper botanical identification of Prestonia amazonica in this study led American ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes (1915–2001) and other scientists to raise serious doubts about the claimed plant identity. The mistake likely led the writer William Burroughs to regard the DMT he experimented with in Tangier in 1961 as "Prestonia". Better evidence was produced in 1965 by French pharmacologist Jacques Poisson, who isolated DMT as a sole alkaloid from leaves, provided and used by Aguaruna Indians, identified as having come from the vine Diplopterys cabrerana (then known as Banisteriopsis rusbyana). Published in 1970, the first identification of DMT in the plant Psychotria viridis, another common additive of ayahuasca, was made by a team of American researchers led by pharmacologist Ara der Marderosian. Not only did they detect DMT in leaves of P. viridis obtained from Kaxinawá indigenous people, but they also were the first to identify it in a sample of an ayahuasca decoction, prepared by the same indigenous people.
Internationally DMT is illegal, but ayahuasca and DMT brews and preparations are lawful. DMT is controlled by the Convention on Psychotropic Substances at the international level. The Convention makes it illegal to possess, buy, purchase, sell, to retail and to dispense without a licence.
In some countries ayahuasca is a forbidden or controlled or regulated substance while in other countries it is not a controlled substance or its production, consumption, and sale, is allowed to various degrees.
In December 2004, the Supreme Court lifted a stay, thereby allowing the Brazil-based União do Vegetal (UDV) church to use a decoction containing DMT in their Christmas services that year. This decoction is a tea made from boiled leaves and vines, known as hoasca within the UDV, and ayahuasca in different cultures. In Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, the Supreme Court heard arguments on 1 November 2005, and unanimously ruled in February 2006 that the U.S. federal government must allow the UDV to import and consume the tea for religious ceremonies under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
In September 2008, the three Santo Daime churches filed suit in federal court to gain legal status to import DMT-containing ayahuasca tea. The case, Church of the Holy Light of the Queen v. Mukasey, presided over by Judge Owen M. Panner, was ruled in favor of the Santo Daime church. As of 21 March 2009, a federal judge says members of the church in Ashland can import, distribute and brew ayahuasca. U.S. District Judge Owen Panner issued a permanent injunction barring the government from prohibiting or penalizing the sacramental use of "Daime tea". Panner's order said activities of The Church of the Holy Light of the Queen are legal and protected under freedom of religion. His order prohibits the federal government from interfering with and prosecuting church members who follow a list of regulations set out in his order.
DMT is commonly handled and stored as a hemifumarate, as other DMT acid salts are extremely hygroscopic and will not readily crystallize. Its freebase form, although less stable than DMT hemifumarate, is favored by recreational users choosing to vaporize the chemical as it has a lower boiling point.
Dimethyltryptamine is an indole alkaloid derived from the shikimate pathway. Its biosynthesis is relatively simple and summarized in the adjacent picture. In plants, the parent amino acid L-tryptophan is produced endogenously where in animals L-tryptophan is an essential amino acid coming from diet. No matter the source of L-tryptophan, the biosynthesis begins with its decarboxylation by an aromatic amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) enzyme (step 1). The resulting decarboxylated tryptophan analog is tryptamine. Tryptamine then undergoes a transmethylation (step 2): the enzyme indolethylamine-N-methyltransferase (INMT) catalyzes the transfer of a methyl group from cofactor S-adenosylmethionine (SAM), via nucleophilic attack, to tryptamine. This reaction transforms SAM into S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH), and gives the intermediate product N-methyltryptamine (NMT). NMT is in turn transmethylated by the same process (step 3) to form the end product N,N-dimethyltryptamine. Tryptamine transmethylation is regulated by two products of the reaction: SAH, and DMT were shown ex vivo to be among the most potent inhibitors of rabbit INMT activity.
This transmethylation mechanism has been repeatedly and consistently proven by radiolabeling of SAM methyl group with carbon-14 (C-CH3)SAM.
DMT can be synthesized through several possible pathways from different starting materials. The two most commonly encountered synthetic routes are through the reaction of indole with oxalyl chloride followed by reaction with dimethylamine and reduction of the carbonyl functionalities with lithium aluminium hydride to form DMT. The second commonly encountered route is through the N,N-dimethylation of tryptamine using formaldehyde followed by reduction with sodium cyanoborohydride or sodium triacetoxyborohydride. Sodium borohydride can be used but requires a larger excess of reagents and lower temperatures due to it having a higher selectivity for carbonyl groups as opposed to imines. Procedures using sodium cyanoborohydride and sodium triacetoxyborohydride (presumably created in situ from cyanoborohydride though this may not be the case due to the presence of water or methanol) also result in the creation of cyanated tryptamine and beta-carboline byproducts of unknown toxicity while using sodium borohydride in absence of acid does not. Bufotenine, a plant extract, can also be synthesized into DMT.
Alternatively, an excess methyl iodide or methyl tosylate (methyl p-toluenesulfonate) and sodium carbonate can be used to over-methylate tryptamine, resulting in the creation of a quaternary ammonium salt, which is then dequaternized (demethylated) in ethanolamine to yield DMT. The same two-step procedure is used to synthesize other N-dimethylated compounds, such as 5-MeO-DMT.
In a clandestine setting, DMT is not typically synthesized due to the lack of availability of the starting materials, namely tryptamine and oxalyl chloride. Instead, it is more often extracted from plant sources using a nonpolar hydrocarbon solvent such as naphtha or heptane, and a base such as sodium hydroxide.
Alternatively, an acid-base extraction is sometimes used instead.
A variety of plants contain DMT at sufficient levels for being viable sources, but specific plants such as Mimosa tenuiflora, Acacia acuminata and Acacia confusa are most often used.
The chemicals involved in the extraction are commonly available. The plant material may be illegal to procure in some countries. The end product (DMT) is illegal in most countries.
Published in Science in 1961, Julius Axelrod found an N-methyltransferase enzyme capable of mediating biotransformation of tryptamine into DMT in a rabbit's lung. This finding initiated a still ongoing scientific interest in endogenous DMT production in humans and other mammals. From then on, two major complementary lines of evidence have been investigated: localization and further characterization of the N-methyltransferase enzyme, and analytical studies looking for endogenously produced DMT in body fluids and tissues.
In 2013, researchers reported DMT in the pineal gland microdialysate of rodents.
A study published in 2014 reported the biosynthesis of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in the human melanoma cell line SK-Mel-147 including details on its metabolism by peroxidases. It is assumed that more than half of the amount of DMT produced by the acidophilic cells of the pineal gland is secreted before and during death, the amount being 2.5–3.4 mg/kg. However, this claim by Strassman has been criticized by David Nichols who notes that DMT does not appear to be produced in any meaningful amount by the pineal gland. Removal or calcification of the pineal gland does not induce any of the symptoms caused by removal of DMT. The symptoms presented are consistent solely with reduction in melatonin, which is the pineal gland's known function. Nichols instead suggests that dynorphin and other endorphins are responsible for the reported euphoria experienced by patients during a near-death experience. In 2014, researchers demonstrated the immunomodulatory potential of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT through the Sigma-1 receptor of human immune cells. This immunomodulatory activity may contribute to significant anti-inflammatory effects and tissue regeneration.
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a psychedelic compound identified endogenously in mammals, is biosynthesized by aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) and indolethylamine-N-methyltransferase (INMT). Studies have investigated brain expression of INMT transcript in rats and humans, coexpression of INMT and AADC mRNA in rat brain and periphery, and brain concentrations of DMT in rats. INMT transcripts were identified in the cerebral cortex, pineal gland, and choroid plexus of both rats and humans via in situ hybridization. Notably, INMT mRNA was colocalized with AADC transcript in rat brain tissues, in contrast to rat peripheral tissues where there existed little overlapping expression of INMT with AADC transcripts. Additionally, extracellular concentrations of DMT in the cerebral cortex of normal behaving rats, with or without the pineal gland, were similar to those of canonical monoamine neurotransmitters including serotonin. A significant increase of DMT levels in the rat visual cortex was observed following induction of experimental cardiac arrest, a finding independent of an intact pineal gland. These results show for the first time that the rat brain is capable of synthesizing and releasing DMT at concentrations comparable to known monoamine neurotransmitters and raise the possibility that this phenomenon may occur similarly in human brains.
The first claimed detection of mammalian endogenous DMT was published in June 1965: German researchers F. Franzen and H. Gross report to have evidenced and quantified DMT, along with its structural analog bufotenin (5-HO-DMT), in human blood and urine. In an article published four months later, the method used in their study was strongly criticized, and the credibility of their results challenged.
Few of the analytical methods used prior to 2001 to measure levels of endogenously formed DMT had enough sensitivity and selectivity to produce reliable results. Gas chromatography, preferably coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS), is considered a minimum requirement. A study published in 2005 implements the most sensitive and selective method ever used to measure endogenous DMT: liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry with electrospray ionization (LC-ESI-MS/MS) allows for reaching limits of detection (LODs) 12 to 200 fold lower than those attained by the best methods employed in the 1970s. The data summarized in the table below are from studies conforming to the abovementioned requirements (abbreviations used: CSF = cerebrospinal fluid; LOD = limit of detection; n = number of samples; ng/L and ng/kg = nanograms (10 g) per litre, and nanograms per kilogram, respectively):
A 2013 study found DMT in microdialysate obtained from a rat's pineal gland, providing evidence of endogenous DMT in the mammalian brain. In 2019 experiments showed that the rat brain is capable of synthesizing and releasing DMT. These results raise the possibility that this phenomenon may occur similarly in human brains.
DMT may be measured in blood, plasma or urine using chromatographic techniques as a diagnostic tool in clinical poisoning situations or to aid in the medicolegal investigation of suspicious deaths. In general, blood or plasma DMT levels in recreational users of the drug are in the 10–30 μg/L range during the first several hours post-ingestion. Less than 0.1% of an oral dose is eliminated unchanged in the 24-hour urine of humans.
Before techniques of molecular biology were used to localize indolethylamine N-methyltransferase (INMT), characterization and localization went on a par: samples of the biological material where INMT is hypothesized to be active are subject to enzyme assay. Those enzyme assays are performed either with a radiolabeled methyl donor like (C-CH3)SAM to which known amounts of unlabeled substrates like tryptamine are added or with addition of a radiolabeled substrate like (C)NMT to demonstrate in vivo formation. As qualitative determination of the radioactively tagged product of the enzymatic reaction is sufficient to characterize INMT existence and activity (or lack of), analytical methods used in INMT assays are not required to be as sensitive as those needed to directly detect and quantify the minute amounts of endogenously formed DMT (see DMT subsection below). The essentially qualitative method thin layer chromatography (TLC) was thus used in a vast majority of studies. Also, robust evidence that INMT can catalyze transmethylation of tryptamine into NMT and DMT could be provided with reverse isotope dilution analysis coupled to mass spectrometry for rabbit and human lung during the early 1970s.
Selectivity rather than sensitivity proved to be an Achilles' heel for some TLC methods with the discovery in 1974–1975 that incubating rat blood cells or brain tissue with (C-CH3)SAM and NMT as substrate mostly yields tetrahydro-β-carboline derivatives, and negligible amounts of DMT in brain tissue. It is indeed simultaneously realized that the TLC methods used thus far in almost all published studies on INMT and DMT biosynthesis are incapable to resolve DMT from those tetrahydro-β-carbolines. These findings are a blow for all previous claims of evidence of INMT activity and DMT biosynthesis in avian and mammalian brain, including in vivo, as they all relied upon use of the problematic TLC methods: their validity is doubted in replication studies that make use of improved TLC methods, and fail to evidence DMT-producing INMT activity in rat and human brain tissues. Published in 1978, the last study attempting to evidence in vivo INMT activity and DMT production in brain (rat) with TLC methods finds biotransformation of radiolabeled tryptamine into DMT to be real but "insignificant". Capability of the method used in this latter study to resolve DMT from tetrahydro-β-carbolines is questioned later. To localize INMT, a qualitative leap is accomplished with use of modern techniques of molecular biology, and of immunohistochemistry. In humans, a gene encoding INMT is determined to be located on chromosome 7. Northern blot analyses reveal INMT messenger RNA (mRNA) to be highly expressed in rabbit lung, and in human thyroid, adrenal gland, and lung. Intermediate levels of expression are found in human heart, skeletal muscle, trachea, stomach, small intestine, pancreas, testis, prostate, placenta, lymph node, and spinal cord. Low to very low levels of expression are noted in rabbit brain, and human thymus, liver, spleen, kidney, colon, ovary, and bone marrow. INMT mRNA expression is absent in human peripheral blood leukocytes, whole brain, and in tissue from 7 specific brain regions (thalamus, subthalamic nucleus, caudate nucleus, hippocampus, amygdala, substantia nigra, and corpus callosum). Immunohistochemistry showed INMT to be present in large amounts in glandular epithelial cells of small and large intestines. In 2011, immunohistochemistry revealed the presence of INMT in primate nervous tissue including retina, spinal cord motor neurons, and pineal gland. A 2020 study using in-situ hybridization, a far more accurate tool than the northern blot analysis, found mRNA coding for INMT expressed in the human cerebral cortex, choroid plexus, and pineal gland.
DMT peak level concentrations (Cmax) measured in whole blood after intramuscular (IM) injection (0.7 mg/kg, n = 11) and in plasma following intravenous (IV) administration (0.4 mg/kg, n = 10) of fully psychedelic doses are in the range of around 14 to 154 μg/L and 32 to 204 μg/L, respectively. The corresponding molar concentrations of DMT are therefore in the range of 0.074–0.818 μmol/L in whole blood and 0.170–1.08 μmol in plasma. However, several studies have described active transport and accumulation of DMT into rat and dog brain following peripheral administration. Similar active transport, and accumulation processes likely occur in human brain and may concentrate DMT in brain by several-fold or more (relatively to blood), resulting in local concentrations in the micromolar or higher range. Such concentrations would be commensurate with serotonin brain tissue concentrations, which have been consistently determined to be in the 1.5–4 μmol/L range.
Closely coextending with peak psychedelic effects, mean time to reach peak concentrations (Tmax) was determined to be 10–15 minutes in whole blood after IM injection, and 2 minutes in plasma after IV administration. When taken orally mixed in an ayahuasca decoction, and in freeze-dried ayahuasca gel caps, DMT Tmax is considerably delayed: 107.59 ± 32.5 minutes, and 90–120 minutes, respectively. The pharmacokinetics for vaporizing DMT have not been studied or reported.
In September 2020, an in vitro and in vivo study showed that DMT present in the ayahuasca infusion promotes neurogenesis.
DMT binds non-selectively with affinities below 0.6 μmol/L to the following serotonin receptors: 5-HT1A, 5-HT1B, 5-HT1D, 5-HT2A, 5-HT2B, 5-HT2C, 5-HT6, and 5-HT7. An agonist action has been determined at 5-HT1A, 5-HT2A and 5-HT2C. Its efficacies at other serotonin receptors remain to be determined. Of special interest will be the determination of its efficacy at human 5-HT2B receptor as two in vitro assays evidenced DMT's high affinity for this receptor: 0.108 µmol/L and 0.184 µmol/L. This may be of importance because chronic or frequent uses of serotonergic drugs showing preferential high affinity and clear agonism at 5-HT2B receptor have been causally linked to valvular heart disease.
It has also been shown to possess affinity for the dopamine D1, α1-adrenergic, α2-adrenergic, imidazoline-1, and σ1 receptors. Converging lines of evidence established activation of the σ1 receptor at concentrations of 50–100 μmol/L. Its efficacies at the other receptor binding sites are unclear. It has also been shown in vitro to be a substrate for the cell-surface serotonin transporter (SERT) expressed in human platelets, and the rat vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), which was transiently expressed in fall armyworm Sf9 cells. DMT inhibited SERT-mediated serotonin uptake into platelets at an average concentration of 4.00 ± 0.70 µmol/L and VMAT2-mediated serotonin uptake at an average concentration of 93 ± 6.8 µmol/L.
As with other so-called "classical hallucinogens", a large part of DMT psychedelic effects can be attributed to a functionally selective activation of the 5-HT2A receptor. DMT concentrations eliciting 50% of its maximal effect (half maximal effective concentration = EC50) at the human 5-HT2A receptor in vitro are in the 0.118–0.983 µmol/L range. This range of values coincides well with the range of concentrations measured in blood and plasma after administration of a fully psychedelic dose (see Pharmacokinetics).
As DMT has been shown to have slightly better efficacy (EC50) at human serotonin 2C receptor than at the 2A receptor, 5-HT2C is also likely implicated in DMT's overall effects. Other receptors, such as 5-HT1A σ1, may also play a role.
In 2009, it was hypothesized that DMT may be an endogenous ligand for the σ1 receptor. The concentration of DMT needed for σ1 activation in vitro (50–100 µmol/L) is similar to the behaviorally active concentration measured in mouse brain of approximately 106 µmol/L This is minimally 4 orders of magnitude higher than the average concentrations measured in rat brain tissue or human plasma under basal conditions (see Endogenous DMT), so σ1 receptors are likely to be activated only under conditions of high local DMT concentrations. If DMT is stored in synaptic vesicles, such concentrations might occur during vesicular release. To illustrate, while the average concentration of serotonin in brain tissue is in the 1.5–4 µmol/L range, the concentration of serotonin in synaptic vesicles was measured at 270 mM. Following vesicular release, the resulting concentration of serotonin in the synaptic cleft, to which serotonin receptors are exposed, is estimated to be about 300 µmol/L. Thus, while in vitro receptor binding affinities, efficacies, and average concentrations in tissue or plasma are useful, they are not likely to predict DMT concentrations in the vesicles or at synaptic or intracellular receptors. Under these conditions, notions of receptor selectivity are moot, and it seems probable that most of the receptors identified as targets for DMT (see above) participate in producing its psychedelic effects.
Electronic cigarette cartridges filled with DMT started to be sold on the black market in 2018. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT or N,N-DMT) is a substituted tryptamine that occurs in many plants and animals, including humans, and which is both a derivative and a structural analog of tryptamine. DMT is used as a psychedelic drug and prepared by various cultures for ritual purposes as an entheogen.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "DMT has a rapid onset, intense effects, and a relatively short duration of action. For those reasons, DMT was known as the \"businessman's trip\" during the 1960s in the United States, as a user could access the full depth of a psychedelic experience in considerably less time than with other substances such as LSD or psilocybin mushrooms. DMT can be inhaled, ingested, or injected and its effects depend on the dose, as well as the mode of administration. When inhaled or injected, the effects last a short period of time: about five to 15 minutes. Effects can last three hours or more when orally ingested along with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), such as the ayahuasca brew of many native Amazonian tribes. DMT can produce vivid \"projections\" of mystical experiences involving euphoria and dynamic pseudohallucinations of geometric forms.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "DMT is a functional analog and structural analog of other psychedelic tryptamines such as O-acetylpsilocin (4-AcO-DMT), psilocybin (4-PO-DMT), psilocin (4-HO-DMT), O-methylbufotenin (5-MeO-DMT), and bufotenin (5-HO-DMT). Parts of the structure of DMT occur within some important biomolecules like serotonin and melatonin, making them structural analogs of DMT.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "DMT is produced in many species of plants often in conjunction with its close chemical relatives 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) and bufotenin (5-OH-DMT). DMT-containing plants are commonly used in indigenous Amazonian shamanic practices. It is usually one of the main active constituents of the drink ayahuasca; however, ayahuasca is sometimes brewed with plants that do not produce DMT. It occurs as the primary psychoactive alkaloid in several plants including Mimosa tenuiflora, Diplopterys cabrerana, and Psychotria viridis. DMT is found as a minor alkaloid in snuff made from Virola bark resin in which 5-MeO-DMT is the main active alkaloid. DMT is also found as a minor alkaloid in bark, pods, and beans of Anadenanthera peregrina and Anadenanthera colubrina used to make Yopo and Vilca snuff, in which bufotenin is the main active alkaloid. Psilocin and psilocybin, the main psychoactive compounds in psilocybin mushrooms, are structurally similar to DMT.",
"title": "Human consumption"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The psychotropic effects of DMT were first studied scientifically by the Hungarian chemist and psychologist Stephen Szára, who performed research with volunteers in the mid-1950s. Szára, who later worked for the United States National Institutes of Health, had turned his attention to DMT after his order for LSD from the Swiss company Sandoz Laboratories was rejected on the grounds that the powerful psychotropic could be dangerous in the hands of a communist country.",
"title": "Human consumption"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "DMT is generally not active orally unless it is combined with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor such as a reversible inhibitor of monoamine oxidase A (RIMA), for example, harmaline. Without a MAOI, the body quickly metabolizes orally administered DMT, and it therefore has no hallucinogenic effect unless the dose exceeds the body's monoamine oxidase's metabolic capacity. Other means of consumption such as vaporizing, injecting, or insufflating the drug can produce powerful hallucinations for a short time (usually less than half an hour), as the DMT reaches the brain before it can be metabolized by the body's natural monoamine oxidase. Taking an MAOI prior to vaporizing or injecting DMT prolongs and enhances the effects.",
"title": "Human consumption"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), an endogenous ligand of sigma-1 receptors (Sig-1Rs), acts against systemic hypoxia. Research demonstrates DMT reduces the number of apoptotic and ferroptotic cells in mammalian forebrain and supports astrocyte survival in an ischemic environment. According to these data, DMT may be considered as adjuvant pharmacological therapy in the management of acute cerebral ischemia.",
"title": "Human consumption"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "DMT is studied as a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial.",
"title": "Human consumption"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "SPL026 (DMT fumarate) is currently undergoing phase II clinical trials investigating its use alongside supportive psychotherapy as a potential treatment Major Depressive Disorder. Additionally, a safety study is underway to investigate the effects of combining SSRIs with SPL026.",
"title": "Human consumption"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Recently, researchers discovered that N,N-dimethyltryptamine is a potent psychoplastogen, a compound capable of promoting rapid and sustained neuroplasticity that may have wide-ranging therapeutic benefit.",
"title": "Human consumption"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Quantities of dimethyltryptamine and O-methylbufotenin were found present in the cerebrospinal fluid of humans in a psychiatric study.",
"title": "Human consumption"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Subjective experiences of DMT includes profound time-dilatory, visual, auditory, tactile, and proprioceptive distortions and hallucinations, and other experiences that, by most firsthand accounts, defy verbal or visual description. Examples include perceiving hyperbolic geometry or seeing Escher-like impossible objects.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Several scientific experimental studies have tried to measure subjective experiences of altered states of consciousness induced by drugs under highly controlled and safe conditions.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Rick Strassman and his colleagues conducted a five-year-long DMT study at the University of New Mexico in the 1990s. The results provided insight about the quality of subjective psychedelic experiences. In this study participants received the DMT dosage via intravenous injection and the findings suggested that different psychedelic experiences can occur, depending on the level of dosage. Lower doses (0.01 and 0.05 mg/kg) produced some aesthetic and emotional responses, but not hallucinogenic experiences (e.g., 0.05 mg/kg had mild mood elevating and calming properties). In contrast, responses produced by higher doses (0.2 and 0.4 mg/kg) researchers labeled as \"hallucinogenic\" that elicited \"intensely colored, rapidly moving display of visual images, formed, abstract or both\". Comparing to other sensory modalities the most affected was the visual. Participants reported visual hallucinations, fewer auditory hallucinations and specific physical sensations progressing to a sense of bodily dissociation, as well as to experiences of euphoria, calm, fear, and anxiety. These dose-dependent effects match well with anonymously posted \"trip reports\" online, where users report \"breakthroughs\" above certain doses.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Strassman also stressed the importance of the context where the drug has been taken. He claimed that DMT has no beneficial effects of itself, rather the context when and where people take it plays an important role.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "It appears that DMT can induce a state or feeling where the person believes to \"communicate with other intelligent lifeforms\" (see \"machine elves\"). High doses of DMT produce a state that involves a sense of \"another intelligence\" that people sometimes describe as \"super-intelligent\", but \"emotionally detached\".",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A 1995 study by Adolf Dittrich and Daniel Lamparter found that the DMT-induced altered state of consciousness (ASC) is strongly influenced by habitual rather than situative factors. In the study, researchers used three dimensions of the APZ questionnaire to examine ASC. The first dimension, oceanic boundlessness (OB), refers to dissolution of ego boundaries and is mostly associated with positive emotions. The second dimension, anxious ego-dissolution (AED), represents a disordering of thoughts and decreases in autonomy and self-control. Last, visionary restructuralization (VR) refers to auditory/visual illusions and hallucinations. Results showed strong effects within the first and third dimensions for all conditions, especially with DMT, and suggested strong intrastability of elicited reactions independently of the condition for the OB and VR scales.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Entities perceived during DMT inebriation have been represented in diverse forms of psychedelic art. The term machine elf was coined by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna for the entities he encountered in DMT \"hyperspace\", also using terms like fractal elves, or self-transforming machine elves. McKenna first encountered the \"machine elves\" after smoking DMT in Berkeley in 1965. His subsequent speculations regarding the hyperdimensional space in which they were encountered have inspired a great many artists and musicians, and the meaning of DMT entities has been a subject of considerable debate among participants in a networked cultural underground, enthused by McKenna's effusive accounts of DMT hyperspace. Cliff Pickover has also written about the \"machine elf\" experience, in the book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves. Strassman noted similarities between self-reports of his DMT study participants' encounters with these \"entities\", and mythological descriptions of figures such as Ḥayyot haq-Qodesh in ancient religions, including both angels and demons. Strassman also argues for a similarity in his study participants' descriptions of mechanized wheels, gears and machinery in these encounters, with those described in visions of encounters with the Living Creatures and Ophanim of the Hebrew Bible, noting they may stem from a common neuropsychopharmacological experience.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Strassman argues that the more positive of the \"external entities\" encountered in DMT experiences should be understood as analogous to certain forms of angels:",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The medieval Jewish philosophers whom I rely upon for understanding the Hebrew Bible text and its concept of prophecy portray angels as God's intermediaries. That is, they perform a certain function for God. Within the context of my DMT research, I believe that the beings that volunteers see could be conceived of as angelic – that is, previously invisible, incorporeal spiritual forces that are engarbed or enclothed in a particular form – determined by the psychological and spiritual development of the volunteers – bringing a particular message or experience to that volunteer.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Strassman's experimental participants also note that some other entities can subjectively resemble creatures more like insects and aliens. As a result, Strassman writes these experiences among his experimental participants \"also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was getting in over my head with this research.\"",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Hallucinations of strange creatures had been reported by Stephen Szara in a 1958 study in psychotic patients, in which he described how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced \"strange creatures, dwarves or something\" at the beginning of a DMT trip.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Other researchers of the entities seemingly encountered by DMT users describe them as \"entities\" or \"beings\" in humanoid as well as animal form, with descriptions of \"little people\" being common (non-human gnomes, elves, imps, etc.). Strassman and others have speculated that this form of hallucination may be the cause of alien abduction and extraterrestrial encounter experiences, which may occur through endogenously-occurring DMT.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Likening them to descriptions of rattling and chattering auditory phenomena described in encounters with the Hayyoth in the Book of Ezekiel, Rick Strassman notes that participants in his studies, when reporting encounters with the alleged entities, have also described loud auditory hallucinations, such as one subject reporting typically \"the elves laughing or talking at high volume, chattering, twittering\".",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "A 2018 study found significant relationships between a DMT experience and a near-death experience. A 2019 large-scale study pointed that ketamine, Salvia divinorum, and DMT (and other classical psychedelic substances) may be linked to near-death experiences due to the semantic similarity of reports associated with the use of psychoactive compounds and NDE narratives, but the study concluded that with the current data it is neither possible to corroborate nor refute the hypothesis that the release of an endogenous ketamine-like neuroprotective agent underlies NDE phenomenology.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "According to a dose-response study in human subjects, dimethyltryptamine administered intravenously slightly elevated blood pressure, heart rate, pupil diameter, and rectal temperature, in addition to elevating blood concentrations of beta-endorphin, corticotropin, cortisol, and prolactin; growth hormone blood levels rise equally in response to all doses of DMT, and melatonin levels were unaffected.\"",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In the 1950s, the endogenous production of psychoactive agents was considered to be a potential explanation for the hallucinatory symptoms of some psychiatric diseases; this is known as the transmethylation hypothesis. Several speculative and yet untested hypotheses suggest that endogenous DMT is produced in the human brain and is involved in certain psychological and neurological states. DMT is naturally occurring in small amounts in rat brain, human cerebrospinal fluid, and other tissues of humans and other mammals. Further, mRNA for the enzyme necessary for the production of DMT, INMT, are expressed in the human cerebral cortex, choroid plexus, and pineal gland, suggesting an endogenous role in the human brain. In 2011, Nicholas V. Cozzi, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, concluded that INMT, an enzyme that is associated with the biosynthesis of DMT and endogenous hallucinogens, is present in the primate (rhesus macaque) pineal gland, retinal ganglion neurons, and spinal cord. Neurobiologist Andrew Gallimore (2013) suggested that while DMT might not have a modern neural function, it may have been an ancestral neuromodulator once secreted in psychedelic concentrations during REM sleep, a function now lost.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "DMT may trigger adverse psychological reactions, known colloquially as a \"bad trip\", such as intense fear, paranoia, anxiety, panic attacks, and substance-induced psychosis, particularly in predisposed individuals.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "DMT, like other serotonergic psychedelics, is considered to be non-addictive with low abuse potential. A study examining substance use disorder for DSM-IV reported that almost no hallucinogens produced dependence, unlike psychoactive drugs of other classes such as stimulants and depressants. At present, there have been no studies that report abstinence syndrome with termination of DMT, and dependence potential of DMT and the risk of sustained psychological disturbance may be minimal when used infrequently; however, the physiological dependence potential of DMT and ayahuasca has not yet been documented convincingly.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Unlike other classical psychedelics, studies report that DMT did not exhibit tolerance upon repeated administration of twice a day sessions, separated by 5 hours, for 5 consecutive days; field reports suggests a refractory period of only 15 to 30 minutes, while the plasma levels of DMT was nearly undetectable 30 minutes after intravenous administration. Another study of four closely spaced DMT infusion sessions with 30 minute intervals also suggests no tolerance buildup to the psychological effects of the compound, while heart rate responses and neuroendocrine effects were diminished with repeated administration. A fully hallucinogenic dose of DMT did not demonstrate cross-tolerance to human subjects who are highly tolerant to LSD; researches suggest that DMT exhibits unique pharmacological properties compared to other classical psychedelics.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "There have been no serious adverse effects reported on long-term use of DMT, apart from acute cardiovascular events. Repeated and one-time administration of DMT produces marked changes in the cardiovascular system, with an increase in systolic and diastolic blood pressure; although the changes were not statistically significant, a robust trend towards significance was observed for systolic blood pressure at high doses.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "DMT is inactive when ingested orally due to metabolism by MAO, and beta-Carbolines in DMT-containing drinks such as ayahuasca have been found to contain MAOIs, in particular, harmine and harmaline. Life-threatening lethalities such as serotonin syndrome (SS) may occur when MAOIs are combined with certain serotonergic medications such as SSRI antidepressants. Serotonin syndrome has also been reported with tricyclic antidepressants, opiates, analgesic, and antimigraine drugs; it is advised to exercise caution when an individual had used dextromethorphan (DXM), MDMA, ginseng, or St. John’s wort recently.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Chronic use of SSRIs, TCAs, and MAOIs diminish subjective effects of psychedelics due to presumed SSRI-induced 5-HT2A receptors downregulation and MAOI-induced 5-HT2A receptor desensitization. The interaction between psychedelics and antipsychotics and anticonvulsant are not well documented, however reports reveal that co-use of psychedelics with mood stabilizers such as lithium may provoke seizure and dissociative effects in individuals with bipolar disorder.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "A standard dose for vaporized DMT is 20–60 milligrams, depending highly on the efficiency of vaporization as well as body weight and personal variation. In general, this is inhaled in a few successive breaths, but lower doses can be used if the user can inhale it in fewer breaths (ideally one). The effects last for a short period of time, usually 5 to 15 minutes, dependent on the dose. The onset after inhalation is very fast (less than 45 seconds) and peak effects are reached within a minute. In the 1960s, DMT was known as a \"businessman's trip\" in the US because of the relatively short duration (and rapid onset) of action when inhaled. DMT can be inhaled using a bong, typically when sandwiched between layers of plant matter, using a specially designed pipe, or by using an e-cigarette once it has been dissolved in propylene glycol and/or vegetable glycerin. Some users have also started using vaporizers meant for cannabis extracts (\"wax pens\") for ease of temperature control when vaporizing crystals. A DMT-infused smoking blend is called Changa, and is typically used in pipes or other utensils meant for smoking dried plant matter.",
"title": "Routes of administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In a study conducted from 1990 through 1995, University of New Mexico psychiatrist Rick Strassman found that some volunteers injected with high doses of DMT reported experiences with perceived alien entities. Usually, the reported entities were experienced as the inhabitants of a perceived independent reality that the subjects reported visiting while under the influence of DMT.",
"title": "Routes of administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "DMT is broken down by the enzyme monoamine oxidase through a process called deamination, and is quickly inactivated orally unless combined with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI). The traditional South American beverage ayahuasca is derived by boiling Banisteriopsis caapi with leaves of one or more plants containing DMT, such as Psychotria viridis, Psychotria carthagenensis, or Diplopterys cabrerana. The Banisteriopsis caapi contains harmala alkaloids, a highly active reversible inihibitors of monoamine oxidase A (RIMAs), rendering the DMT orally active by protecting it from deamination. A variety of different recipes are used to make the brew depending on the purpose of the ayahuasca session, or local availability of ingredients. Two common sources of DMT in the western US are reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) and Harding grass (Phalaris aquatica). These invasive grasses contain low levels of DMT and other alkaloids but also contain gramine, which is toxic and difficult to separate. In addition, Jurema (Mimosa tenuiflora) shows evidence of DMT content: the pink layer in the inner rootbark of this small tree contains a high concentration of N,N-DMT.",
"title": "Routes of administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Taken orally with an RIMA, DMT produces a long-lasting (over three hours), slow, deep metaphysical experience similar to that of psilocybin mushrooms, but more intense.",
"title": "Routes of administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The intensity of orally administered DMT depends on the type and dose of MAOI administered alongside it. When ingested with 120mg of harmine (a RIMA and member of the harmala alkaloids), 20mg of DMT was reported to have psychoactive effects by author and ethnobotanist Jonathan Ott. Ott reported that to produce a visionary state, the threshold oral dose was 30mg DMT alongside 120mg harmine. This is not necessarily indicative of a standard dose, as dose-dependent effects may vary due to individual variations in drug metabolism.",
"title": "Routes of administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Naturally occurring substances (of both vegetable and animal origin) containing DMT have been used in South America since pre-Columbian times.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "DMT was first synthesized in 1931 by Canadian chemist Richard Helmuth Fredrick Manske. In general, its discovery as a natural product is credited to Brazilian chemist and microbiologist Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima, who isolated an alkaloid he named nigerina (nigerine) from the root bark of Mimosa tenuiflora in 1946. However, in a careful review of the case Jonathan Ott shows that the empirical formula for nigerine determined by Gonçalves de Lima, which notably contains an atom of oxygen, can match only a partial, \"impure\" or \"contaminated\" form of DMT. It was only in 1959, when Gonçalves de Lima provided American chemists a sample of Mimosa tenuiflora roots, that DMT was unequivocally identified in this plant material. Less ambiguous is the case of isolation and formal identification of DMT in 1955 in seeds and pods of Anadenanthera peregrina by a team of American chemists led by Evan Horning (1916–1993). Since 1955, DMT has been found in a host of organisms: in at least fifty plant species belonging to ten families, and in at least four animal species, including one gorgonian and three mammalian species (including humans).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In terms of a scientific understanding, the hallucinogenic properties of DMT were not uncovered until 1956 by Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist Stephen Szara. In his paper “Dimethyltryptamin: Its Metabolism in Man; the Relation of its Psychotic Effect to the Serotonin Metabolism”, Szara employed synthetic DMT, synthesized by the method of Speeter and Anthony, which was then administered to 20 volunteers by intramuscular injection. Urine samples were collected from these volunteers for the identification of DMT metabolites. This is considered to be the converging link between the chemical structure DMT to its cultural consumption as a psychoactive and religious sacrament.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Another historical milestone is the discovery of DMT in plants frequently used by Amazonian natives as additive to the vine Banisteriopsis caapi to make ayahuasca decoctions. In 1957, American chemists Francis Hochstein and Anita Paradies identified DMT in an \"aqueous extract\" of leaves of a plant they named Prestonia amazonicum [sic] and described as \"commonly mixed\" with B. caapi. The lack of a proper botanical identification of Prestonia amazonica in this study led American ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes (1915–2001) and other scientists to raise serious doubts about the claimed plant identity. The mistake likely led the writer William Burroughs to regard the DMT he experimented with in Tangier in 1961 as \"Prestonia\". Better evidence was produced in 1965 by French pharmacologist Jacques Poisson, who isolated DMT as a sole alkaloid from leaves, provided and used by Aguaruna Indians, identified as having come from the vine Diplopterys cabrerana (then known as Banisteriopsis rusbyana). Published in 1970, the first identification of DMT in the plant Psychotria viridis, another common additive of ayahuasca, was made by a team of American researchers led by pharmacologist Ara der Marderosian. Not only did they detect DMT in leaves of P. viridis obtained from Kaxinawá indigenous people, but they also were the first to identify it in a sample of an ayahuasca decoction, prepared by the same indigenous people.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Internationally DMT is illegal, but ayahuasca and DMT brews and preparations are lawful. DMT is controlled by the Convention on Psychotropic Substances at the international level. The Convention makes it illegal to possess, buy, purchase, sell, to retail and to dispense without a licence.",
"title": "Legal status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In some countries ayahuasca is a forbidden or controlled or regulated substance while in other countries it is not a controlled substance or its production, consumption, and sale, is allowed to various degrees.",
"title": "Legal status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In December 2004, the Supreme Court lifted a stay, thereby allowing the Brazil-based União do Vegetal (UDV) church to use a decoction containing DMT in their Christmas services that year. This decoction is a tea made from boiled leaves and vines, known as hoasca within the UDV, and ayahuasca in different cultures. In Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, the Supreme Court heard arguments on 1 November 2005, and unanimously ruled in February 2006 that the U.S. federal government must allow the UDV to import and consume the tea for religious ceremonies under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.",
"title": "Legal status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In September 2008, the three Santo Daime churches filed suit in federal court to gain legal status to import DMT-containing ayahuasca tea. The case, Church of the Holy Light of the Queen v. Mukasey, presided over by Judge Owen M. Panner, was ruled in favor of the Santo Daime church. As of 21 March 2009, a federal judge says members of the church in Ashland can import, distribute and brew ayahuasca. U.S. District Judge Owen Panner issued a permanent injunction barring the government from prohibiting or penalizing the sacramental use of \"Daime tea\". Panner's order said activities of The Church of the Holy Light of the Queen are legal and protected under freedom of religion. His order prohibits the federal government from interfering with and prosecuting church members who follow a list of regulations set out in his order.",
"title": "Legal status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "DMT is commonly handled and stored as a hemifumarate, as other DMT acid salts are extremely hygroscopic and will not readily crystallize. Its freebase form, although less stable than DMT hemifumarate, is favored by recreational users choosing to vaporize the chemical as it has a lower boiling point.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Dimethyltryptamine is an indole alkaloid derived from the shikimate pathway. Its biosynthesis is relatively simple and summarized in the adjacent picture. In plants, the parent amino acid L-tryptophan is produced endogenously where in animals L-tryptophan is an essential amino acid coming from diet. No matter the source of L-tryptophan, the biosynthesis begins with its decarboxylation by an aromatic amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) enzyme (step 1). The resulting decarboxylated tryptophan analog is tryptamine. Tryptamine then undergoes a transmethylation (step 2): the enzyme indolethylamine-N-methyltransferase (INMT) catalyzes the transfer of a methyl group from cofactor S-adenosylmethionine (SAM), via nucleophilic attack, to tryptamine. This reaction transforms SAM into S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH), and gives the intermediate product N-methyltryptamine (NMT). NMT is in turn transmethylated by the same process (step 3) to form the end product N,N-dimethyltryptamine. Tryptamine transmethylation is regulated by two products of the reaction: SAH, and DMT were shown ex vivo to be among the most potent inhibitors of rabbit INMT activity.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "This transmethylation mechanism has been repeatedly and consistently proven by radiolabeling of SAM methyl group with carbon-14 (C-CH3)SAM.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "DMT can be synthesized through several possible pathways from different starting materials. The two most commonly encountered synthetic routes are through the reaction of indole with oxalyl chloride followed by reaction with dimethylamine and reduction of the carbonyl functionalities with lithium aluminium hydride to form DMT. The second commonly encountered route is through the N,N-dimethylation of tryptamine using formaldehyde followed by reduction with sodium cyanoborohydride or sodium triacetoxyborohydride. Sodium borohydride can be used but requires a larger excess of reagents and lower temperatures due to it having a higher selectivity for carbonyl groups as opposed to imines. Procedures using sodium cyanoborohydride and sodium triacetoxyborohydride (presumably created in situ from cyanoborohydride though this may not be the case due to the presence of water or methanol) also result in the creation of cyanated tryptamine and beta-carboline byproducts of unknown toxicity while using sodium borohydride in absence of acid does not. Bufotenine, a plant extract, can also be synthesized into DMT.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Alternatively, an excess methyl iodide or methyl tosylate (methyl p-toluenesulfonate) and sodium carbonate can be used to over-methylate tryptamine, resulting in the creation of a quaternary ammonium salt, which is then dequaternized (demethylated) in ethanolamine to yield DMT. The same two-step procedure is used to synthesize other N-dimethylated compounds, such as 5-MeO-DMT.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In a clandestine setting, DMT is not typically synthesized due to the lack of availability of the starting materials, namely tryptamine and oxalyl chloride. Instead, it is more often extracted from plant sources using a nonpolar hydrocarbon solvent such as naphtha or heptane, and a base such as sodium hydroxide.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Alternatively, an acid-base extraction is sometimes used instead.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "A variety of plants contain DMT at sufficient levels for being viable sources, but specific plants such as Mimosa tenuiflora, Acacia acuminata and Acacia confusa are most often used.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The chemicals involved in the extraction are commonly available. The plant material may be illegal to procure in some countries. The end product (DMT) is illegal in most countries.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Published in Science in 1961, Julius Axelrod found an N-methyltransferase enzyme capable of mediating biotransformation of tryptamine into DMT in a rabbit's lung. This finding initiated a still ongoing scientific interest in endogenous DMT production in humans and other mammals. From then on, two major complementary lines of evidence have been investigated: localization and further characterization of the N-methyltransferase enzyme, and analytical studies looking for endogenously produced DMT in body fluids and tissues.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In 2013, researchers reported DMT in the pineal gland microdialysate of rodents.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "A study published in 2014 reported the biosynthesis of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in the human melanoma cell line SK-Mel-147 including details on its metabolism by peroxidases. It is assumed that more than half of the amount of DMT produced by the acidophilic cells of the pineal gland is secreted before and during death, the amount being 2.5–3.4 mg/kg. However, this claim by Strassman has been criticized by David Nichols who notes that DMT does not appear to be produced in any meaningful amount by the pineal gland. Removal or calcification of the pineal gland does not induce any of the symptoms caused by removal of DMT. The symptoms presented are consistent solely with reduction in melatonin, which is the pineal gland's known function. Nichols instead suggests that dynorphin and other endorphins are responsible for the reported euphoria experienced by patients during a near-death experience. In 2014, researchers demonstrated the immunomodulatory potential of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT through the Sigma-1 receptor of human immune cells. This immunomodulatory activity may contribute to significant anti-inflammatory effects and tissue regeneration.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a psychedelic compound identified endogenously in mammals, is biosynthesized by aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) and indolethylamine-N-methyltransferase (INMT). Studies have investigated brain expression of INMT transcript in rats and humans, coexpression of INMT and AADC mRNA in rat brain and periphery, and brain concentrations of DMT in rats. INMT transcripts were identified in the cerebral cortex, pineal gland, and choroid plexus of both rats and humans via in situ hybridization. Notably, INMT mRNA was colocalized with AADC transcript in rat brain tissues, in contrast to rat peripheral tissues where there existed little overlapping expression of INMT with AADC transcripts. Additionally, extracellular concentrations of DMT in the cerebral cortex of normal behaving rats, with or without the pineal gland, were similar to those of canonical monoamine neurotransmitters including serotonin. A significant increase of DMT levels in the rat visual cortex was observed following induction of experimental cardiac arrest, a finding independent of an intact pineal gland. These results show for the first time that the rat brain is capable of synthesizing and releasing DMT at concentrations comparable to known monoamine neurotransmitters and raise the possibility that this phenomenon may occur similarly in human brains.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The first claimed detection of mammalian endogenous DMT was published in June 1965: German researchers F. Franzen and H. Gross report to have evidenced and quantified DMT, along with its structural analog bufotenin (5-HO-DMT), in human blood and urine. In an article published four months later, the method used in their study was strongly criticized, and the credibility of their results challenged.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Few of the analytical methods used prior to 2001 to measure levels of endogenously formed DMT had enough sensitivity and selectivity to produce reliable results. Gas chromatography, preferably coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS), is considered a minimum requirement. A study published in 2005 implements the most sensitive and selective method ever used to measure endogenous DMT: liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry with electrospray ionization (LC-ESI-MS/MS) allows for reaching limits of detection (LODs) 12 to 200 fold lower than those attained by the best methods employed in the 1970s. The data summarized in the table below are from studies conforming to the abovementioned requirements (abbreviations used: CSF = cerebrospinal fluid; LOD = limit of detection; n = number of samples; ng/L and ng/kg = nanograms (10 g) per litre, and nanograms per kilogram, respectively):",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "A 2013 study found DMT in microdialysate obtained from a rat's pineal gland, providing evidence of endogenous DMT in the mammalian brain. In 2019 experiments showed that the rat brain is capable of synthesizing and releasing DMT. These results raise the possibility that this phenomenon may occur similarly in human brains.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "DMT may be measured in blood, plasma or urine using chromatographic techniques as a diagnostic tool in clinical poisoning situations or to aid in the medicolegal investigation of suspicious deaths. In general, blood or plasma DMT levels in recreational users of the drug are in the 10–30 μg/L range during the first several hours post-ingestion. Less than 0.1% of an oral dose is eliminated unchanged in the 24-hour urine of humans.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Before techniques of molecular biology were used to localize indolethylamine N-methyltransferase (INMT), characterization and localization went on a par: samples of the biological material where INMT is hypothesized to be active are subject to enzyme assay. Those enzyme assays are performed either with a radiolabeled methyl donor like (C-CH3)SAM to which known amounts of unlabeled substrates like tryptamine are added or with addition of a radiolabeled substrate like (C)NMT to demonstrate in vivo formation. As qualitative determination of the radioactively tagged product of the enzymatic reaction is sufficient to characterize INMT existence and activity (or lack of), analytical methods used in INMT assays are not required to be as sensitive as those needed to directly detect and quantify the minute amounts of endogenously formed DMT (see DMT subsection below). The essentially qualitative method thin layer chromatography (TLC) was thus used in a vast majority of studies. Also, robust evidence that INMT can catalyze transmethylation of tryptamine into NMT and DMT could be provided with reverse isotope dilution analysis coupled to mass spectrometry for rabbit and human lung during the early 1970s.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Selectivity rather than sensitivity proved to be an Achilles' heel for some TLC methods with the discovery in 1974–1975 that incubating rat blood cells or brain tissue with (C-CH3)SAM and NMT as substrate mostly yields tetrahydro-β-carboline derivatives, and negligible amounts of DMT in brain tissue. It is indeed simultaneously realized that the TLC methods used thus far in almost all published studies on INMT and DMT biosynthesis are incapable to resolve DMT from those tetrahydro-β-carbolines. These findings are a blow for all previous claims of evidence of INMT activity and DMT biosynthesis in avian and mammalian brain, including in vivo, as they all relied upon use of the problematic TLC methods: their validity is doubted in replication studies that make use of improved TLC methods, and fail to evidence DMT-producing INMT activity in rat and human brain tissues. Published in 1978, the last study attempting to evidence in vivo INMT activity and DMT production in brain (rat) with TLC methods finds biotransformation of radiolabeled tryptamine into DMT to be real but \"insignificant\". Capability of the method used in this latter study to resolve DMT from tetrahydro-β-carbolines is questioned later. To localize INMT, a qualitative leap is accomplished with use of modern techniques of molecular biology, and of immunohistochemistry. In humans, a gene encoding INMT is determined to be located on chromosome 7. Northern blot analyses reveal INMT messenger RNA (mRNA) to be highly expressed in rabbit lung, and in human thyroid, adrenal gland, and lung. Intermediate levels of expression are found in human heart, skeletal muscle, trachea, stomach, small intestine, pancreas, testis, prostate, placenta, lymph node, and spinal cord. Low to very low levels of expression are noted in rabbit brain, and human thymus, liver, spleen, kidney, colon, ovary, and bone marrow. INMT mRNA expression is absent in human peripheral blood leukocytes, whole brain, and in tissue from 7 specific brain regions (thalamus, subthalamic nucleus, caudate nucleus, hippocampus, amygdala, substantia nigra, and corpus callosum). Immunohistochemistry showed INMT to be present in large amounts in glandular epithelial cells of small and large intestines. In 2011, immunohistochemistry revealed the presence of INMT in primate nervous tissue including retina, spinal cord motor neurons, and pineal gland. A 2020 study using in-situ hybridization, a far more accurate tool than the northern blot analysis, found mRNA coding for INMT expressed in the human cerebral cortex, choroid plexus, and pineal gland.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "DMT peak level concentrations (Cmax) measured in whole blood after intramuscular (IM) injection (0.7 mg/kg, n = 11) and in plasma following intravenous (IV) administration (0.4 mg/kg, n = 10) of fully psychedelic doses are in the range of around 14 to 154 μg/L and 32 to 204 μg/L, respectively. The corresponding molar concentrations of DMT are therefore in the range of 0.074–0.818 μmol/L in whole blood and 0.170–1.08 μmol in plasma. However, several studies have described active transport and accumulation of DMT into rat and dog brain following peripheral administration. Similar active transport, and accumulation processes likely occur in human brain and may concentrate DMT in brain by several-fold or more (relatively to blood), resulting in local concentrations in the micromolar or higher range. Such concentrations would be commensurate with serotonin brain tissue concentrations, which have been consistently determined to be in the 1.5–4 μmol/L range.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Closely coextending with peak psychedelic effects, mean time to reach peak concentrations (Tmax) was determined to be 10–15 minutes in whole blood after IM injection, and 2 minutes in plasma after IV administration. When taken orally mixed in an ayahuasca decoction, and in freeze-dried ayahuasca gel caps, DMT Tmax is considerably delayed: 107.59 ± 32.5 minutes, and 90–120 minutes, respectively. The pharmacokinetics for vaporizing DMT have not been studied or reported.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In September 2020, an in vitro and in vivo study showed that DMT present in the ayahuasca infusion promotes neurogenesis.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "DMT binds non-selectively with affinities below 0.6 μmol/L to the following serotonin receptors: 5-HT1A, 5-HT1B, 5-HT1D, 5-HT2A, 5-HT2B, 5-HT2C, 5-HT6, and 5-HT7. An agonist action has been determined at 5-HT1A, 5-HT2A and 5-HT2C. Its efficacies at other serotonin receptors remain to be determined. Of special interest will be the determination of its efficacy at human 5-HT2B receptor as two in vitro assays evidenced DMT's high affinity for this receptor: 0.108 µmol/L and 0.184 µmol/L. This may be of importance because chronic or frequent uses of serotonergic drugs showing preferential high affinity and clear agonism at 5-HT2B receptor have been causally linked to valvular heart disease.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "It has also been shown to possess affinity for the dopamine D1, α1-adrenergic, α2-adrenergic, imidazoline-1, and σ1 receptors. Converging lines of evidence established activation of the σ1 receptor at concentrations of 50–100 μmol/L. Its efficacies at the other receptor binding sites are unclear. It has also been shown in vitro to be a substrate for the cell-surface serotonin transporter (SERT) expressed in human platelets, and the rat vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), which was transiently expressed in fall armyworm Sf9 cells. DMT inhibited SERT-mediated serotonin uptake into platelets at an average concentration of 4.00 ± 0.70 µmol/L and VMAT2-mediated serotonin uptake at an average concentration of 93 ± 6.8 µmol/L.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "As with other so-called \"classical hallucinogens\", a large part of DMT psychedelic effects can be attributed to a functionally selective activation of the 5-HT2A receptor. DMT concentrations eliciting 50% of its maximal effect (half maximal effective concentration = EC50) at the human 5-HT2A receptor in vitro are in the 0.118–0.983 µmol/L range. This range of values coincides well with the range of concentrations measured in blood and plasma after administration of a fully psychedelic dose (see Pharmacokinetics).",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "As DMT has been shown to have slightly better efficacy (EC50) at human serotonin 2C receptor than at the 2A receptor, 5-HT2C is also likely implicated in DMT's overall effects. Other receptors, such as 5-HT1A σ1, may also play a role.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In 2009, it was hypothesized that DMT may be an endogenous ligand for the σ1 receptor. The concentration of DMT needed for σ1 activation in vitro (50–100 µmol/L) is similar to the behaviorally active concentration measured in mouse brain of approximately 106 µmol/L This is minimally 4 orders of magnitude higher than the average concentrations measured in rat brain tissue or human plasma under basal conditions (see Endogenous DMT), so σ1 receptors are likely to be activated only under conditions of high local DMT concentrations. If DMT is stored in synaptic vesicles, such concentrations might occur during vesicular release. To illustrate, while the average concentration of serotonin in brain tissue is in the 1.5–4 µmol/L range, the concentration of serotonin in synaptic vesicles was measured at 270 mM. Following vesicular release, the resulting concentration of serotonin in the synaptic cleft, to which serotonin receptors are exposed, is estimated to be about 300 µmol/L. Thus, while in vitro receptor binding affinities, efficacies, and average concentrations in tissue or plasma are useful, they are not likely to predict DMT concentrations in the vesicles or at synaptic or intracellular receptors. Under these conditions, notions of receptor selectivity are moot, and it seems probable that most of the receptors identified as targets for DMT (see above) participate in producing its psychedelic effects.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Electronic cigarette cartridges filled with DMT started to be sold on the black market in 2018.",
"title": "Society and culture"
}
]
| N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is a substituted tryptamine that occurs in many plants and animals, including humans, and which is both a derivative and a structural analog of tryptamine. DMT is used as a psychedelic drug and prepared by various cultures for ritual purposes as an entheogen. DMT has a rapid onset, intense effects, and a relatively short duration of action. For those reasons, DMT was known as the "businessman's trip" during the 1960s in the United States, as a user could access the full depth of a psychedelic experience in considerably less time than with other substances such as LSD or psilocybin mushrooms. DMT can be inhaled, ingested, or injected and its effects depend on the dose, as well as the mode of administration. When inhaled or injected, the effects last a short period of time: about five to 15 minutes. Effects can last three hours or more when orally ingested along with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), such as the ayahuasca brew of many native Amazonian tribes. DMT can produce vivid "projections" of mystical experiences involving euphoria and dynamic pseudohallucinations of geometric forms. DMT is a functional analog and structural analog of other psychedelic tryptamines such as O-acetylpsilocin (4-AcO-DMT), psilocybin (4-PO-DMT), psilocin (4-HO-DMT), O-methylbufotenin (5-MeO-DMT), and bufotenin (5-HO-DMT). Parts of the structure of DMT occur within some important biomolecules like serotonin and melatonin, making them structural analogs of DMT. | 2001-10-31T12:04:30Z | 2023-12-26T22:10:09Z | [
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8,750 | Da capo | Da capo (English: /dɑː ˈkɑːpoʊ/, also US: /də -/, Italian: [da (k)ˈkaːpo]) is an Italian musical term that means "from the beginning" (literally, "from the head"). It is often abbreviated as D.C. The term is a directive to repeat the previous part of music, often used to save space, and thus is an easier way of saying to repeat the music from the beginning.
In small pieces, this might be the same thing as a repeat. But in larger works, D.C. might occur after one or more repeats of small sections, indicating a return to the very beginning. The resulting structure of the piece is generally in ternary form. Sometimes, the composer describes the part to be repeated, for example: Menuet da capo. In opera, where an aria of this structure is called a da capo aria, the repeated section is often adorned with grace notes.
The word Fine (Ital. 'end') is generally placed above the stave at the point where the movement ceases after a 'Da capo' repetition. Its place is occasionally taken by a pause (see fermata)." | [
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"text": "Da capo (English: /dɑː ˈkɑːpoʊ/, also US: /də -/, Italian: [da (k)ˈkaːpo]) is an Italian musical term that means \"from the beginning\" (literally, \"from the head\"). It is often abbreviated as D.C. The term is a directive to repeat the previous part of music, often used to save space, and thus is an easier way of saying to repeat the music from the beginning.",
"title": ""
},
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"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In small pieces, this might be the same thing as a repeat. But in larger works, D.C. might occur after one or more repeats of small sections, indicating a return to the very beginning. The resulting structure of the piece is generally in ternary form. Sometimes, the composer describes the part to be repeated, for example: Menuet da capo. In opera, where an aria of this structure is called a da capo aria, the repeated section is often adorned with grace notes.",
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"text": "The word Fine (Ital. 'end') is generally placed above the stave at the point where the movement ceases after a 'Da capo' repetition. Its place is occasionally taken by a pause (see fermata).\"",
"title": ""
}
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| Da capo is an Italian musical term that means "from the beginning". It is often abbreviated as D.C. The term is a directive to repeat the previous part of music, often used to save space, and thus is an easier way of saying to repeat the music from the beginning. In small pieces, this might be the same thing as a repeat. But in larger works, D.C. might occur after one or more repeats of small sections, indicating a return to the very beginning. The resulting structure of the piece is generally in ternary form. Sometimes, the composer describes the part to be repeated, for example: Menuet da capo. In opera, where an aria of this structure is called a da capo aria, the repeated section is often adorned with grace notes. The word Fine is generally placed above the stave at the point where the movement ceases after a 'Da capo' repetition. Its place is occasionally taken by a pause." | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-10-04T08:33:39Z | [
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8,751 | Dominatrix | A dominatrix (/ˌdɒmɪˈneɪtrɪks/; pl. dominatrixes or dominatrices /-ˈneɪtrɪsiːz, ˌdɒmɪnəˈtraɪ-/), or domme, is a woman who takes the dominant role in BDSM activities. A dominatrix can be of any sexual orientation, but this does not necessarily limit the genders of her submissive partners. Dominatrices are popularly known for inflicting physical pain on their submissive subjects, but this is not done in every case. In some instances erotic humiliation is used, such as verbal humiliation or the assignment of humiliating tasks. Dominatrices also make use of other forms of servitude. Practices of domination common to many BDSM and other various sexual relationships are also prevalent. A dominatrix is typically a paid professional (pro-domme) as the term dominatrix is little-used within the non-professional BDSM scene.
Dominatrix is the feminine form of the Latin dominator, a ruler or lord, and was originally used in a non-sexual sense. Its use in English dates back to at least 1561. Its earliest recorded use in the prevalent modern sense, as a female dominant in sadomasochism, dates to 1961. It was initially coined to describe a woman who provides punishment-for-pay as one of the case studies within Bruce Roger's pulp paperback The Bizarre Lovemakers. The term was taken up shortly after by the Myron Kosloff title Dominatrix (with art by Eric Stanton) in 1968, and entered more popular mainstream knowledge following the 1976 film Dominatrix Without Mercy.
The term domme is likely a coined pseudo-French feminine inflection of the slang dom (short for dominant). The use of domme, dominatrix, dom, or dominant by any woman in a dominant role is chosen mostly by personal preference and the conventions of the local BDSM scene. The term mistress or dominant mistress is sometimes also used. Female dominance (also known as female domination or femdom) is a BDSM activity in which the dominant partner is female. However, while the term mistress is often used in the media, members of the BDSM community often avoid it, as it can be confused with mistress in the sense of a woman who has an illicit relationship with a married man, a term which has the negative implication of cheating on a partner. Since there is a large overlap between the BDSM and polyamory communities, where ethical conduct is a prime concern, any such relationship is a source of disapproval.
Although the term dominatrix was not used, the classic example in literature of the female dominant-male submissive relationship is portrayed in the 1870 novella Venus in Furs by Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. The term masochism was later derived from the author's name by Richard von Krafft-Ebing in the latter's 1886 forensic study Psychopathia Sexualis.
The history of the dominatrix is argued to date back to rituals of the Goddess Inanna (or Ishtar as she was known in Akkadian), in ancient Mesopotamia. Ancient cuneiform texts consisting of "Hymns to Inanna" have been cited as examples of the archetype of powerful, sexual female displaying dominating behaviors and forcing gods and men into submission to her. The pseudonymous archaeologist and BDSM historian Anne O. Nomis notes that Inanna's rituals included cross-dressing of cult personnel, and rituals "imbued with pain and ecstasy, bringing about initiation and journeys of altered consciousness; punishment, moaning, ecstasy, lament and song, participants exhausting themselves with weeping and grief."
The fictional tale of Phyllis and Aristotle, which became popular and gained numerous versions from the 12th century onwards, tells the story of a dominant woman who seduced and dominated the male intellect of the greatest philosopher. In the story, Phyllis forces Aristotle to kneel on the ground so that she rides on his back while whipping and verbally humiliating him.
The profession appears to have originated as a specialization within brothels, before becoming its own unique craft. As far back as the 1590s, flagellation within an erotic setting is recorded. The profession features in erotic prints of the era, such as the British Museum mezzotint "The Cully Flaug'd" (c. 1674–1702), and in accounts of forbidden books which record the flogging schools and the activities practised.
Within the 18th century, female "Birch Disciplinarians" advertised their services in a book masked as a collection of lectures or theatrical plays, entitled "Fashionable Lectures" (c. 1761). This included the names of 57 women, some actresses and courtesans, who catered to birch discipline fantasies, keeping a room with rods and cat o' nine tails, and charging their clients a Guinea for a "lecture".
The 19th century is characterised by what Nomis characterises as the "Golden Age of the Governess". No fewer than twenty establishments were documented as having existed by the 1840s, supported entirely by flagellation practices and known as "Houses of Discipline" distinct from brothels. Amongst the well-known "dominatrix governesses" were Mrs Chalmers, Mrs Noyeau, the late Mrs Jones of Hertford Street and London Street, the late Mrs Theresa Berkley, Bessy Burgess of York Square and Mrs Pyree of Burton Crescent. The most famous of these Governess "female flagellants" was Theresa Berkley, who operated her establishment on Charlotte Street in the central London district of Marylebone. She is recorded to have used implements such as whips, canes and birches, to chastise and punish her male clients, as well as the Berkley Horse, a specially designed flogging machine, and a pulley suspension system for lifting them off the floor. Such historical use of corporal punishment and suspension, in a setting of domination roleplay, connects very closely to the practices of modern-day professional dominatrices.
The "bizarre style" (as it came to be called) of leather catsuits, claws, tail whips, and latex rubber only came about in the 20th century, initially within commercial fetish photography, and taken up by dominatrices. Within the mid-20th century, dominatrices operated in a very discreet and underground manner, which has made them difficult to trace within the historical record. A few photographs still exist of the women who ran their domination businesses in London, New York, The Hague and Hamburg's Herbertstraße, predominantly in sepia and black-and-white photographs, and scans from magazine articles, copied and re-copied. Amongst these were Miss Doreen of London who was acquainted with John Sutcliffe of AtomAge fame, whose clients reportedly included Britain's top politicians and businessmen. In New York, the dominatrix Anne Laurence was known within the underground circle of acquaintances during the 1950s, with Monique Von Cleef arriving in the early 1960s, and hitting national headlines when her home was raided by police detectives on 22 December 1965. Von Cleef went on to set up her "House of Pain" in The Hague in the 1970s, which became one of the world capitals for dominatrices, reportedly with visiting lawyers, ambassadors, diplomats and politicians. Domenica Niehoff worked as a dominatrix in Hamburg and appeared on talk shows on German television from the 1970s onwards, campaigning for sex workers' rights. Mistress Raven, founder and manager of Pandora's Box, one of New York's best known BDSM studios, was featured in Nick Broomfield's 1996 documentary film Fetishes.
The term dominatrix is mostly used to describe a female professional dominant (or "pro-domme") who is paid to engage in BDSM play with a submissive. Professional dominatrices are not prostitutes, despite the sensual and erotic interactions they have. An appointment or roleplay is referred to as a "session", and is often conducted in a dedicated professional play space which has been set up with specialist equipment, known as a "dungeon". Sessions may also be conducted remotely by letter or telephone, or in the contemporary era of technological connectivity by email, online chat or platforms such as OnlyFans. Most, but not all, clients of female professional dominants are men. Male professional dominants also exist, catering predominantly to the gay male market.
Women who engage in female domination typically promote and title themselves under the terms "dominatrix", "mistress", "lady", "madame", "herrin" (German for "mistress") or "goddess". In a study of German dominatrices, Andrew Wilson said that the trend for dominatrices choosing names aimed at creating and maintaining an atmosphere in which class, femininity and mystery are key elements of their self-constructed identity.
Some professional dominatrices set minimum age limits for their clients. Popular requests from clients are for dungeon play including bondage, spanking and cock and ball torture, or for medical play using hoods, gas masks and urethral sounding. Verbal erotic humiliation, such as small penis humiliation, is also popular. There are some professional dominatrices that engage in sexual contact activities such as facesitting, handjobs or fellatio but others disapprove of this. Other BDSM activities can include various forms of body worship, such as foot worship, ass worship, breast worship and pussy worship; tease and denial; corporal punishment including breast torture, caning, whipping; orgasm denial; and as well as face slapping, hair pulling, dripping hot wax on the genitals, spitting, golden showers, "forced" chastity, cock and ball torture, and pussy torture.
It is not unusual for a dominatrix to consider her profession different from that of an escort and not perform tie and tease or "happy endings". Typically professional dominatrices do not have sexual intercourse with their clients, do not become naked with their clients and do not allow their clients to touch them. The Canadian dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, who was one of three women who initiated an application in the Ontario Superior Court seeking invalidation of Canada's laws regarding brothels, sought to differentiate for clarity her occupation as a dominatrix rather than a prostitute to the media, due to frequent misunderstanding and conflation by the public of the two terms.
That being said, it is now generally accepted that a professional dominatrix is a sex worker, and many of the acts conducted during a session may be interpreted as equally sexual to the participants.
While dominatrices come from many different backgrounds, it has been shown that a considerable number are well-educated. Research into US dominatrices published in 2012 indicated that 39% of the sample studied had received some sort of graduate training.
A 1985 study suggested that about 30 percent of participants in BDSM subculture were female. A 1994 report indicated that around a quarter of the women who took part in BDSM subculture did so professionally. In a 1995 study of Internet discussion group messages, the preference for the dominant-initiator role was expressed by 11% of messages by heterosexual women, compared to 71% of messages by heterosexual men.
Professional dominatrices can be seen advertising their services online and in print publications which carry erotic services advertising, such as contact magazines and fetish magazines that specialise in female domination. The precise number of women actively offering professional domination services is unknown. Most professional dominatrices practice in large metropolitan cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and London, with as many as 200 women working as dominatrices in Los Angeles.
Professional dominatrices may take pride or differentiation in their psychological insight into their clients' fetishes and desires, as well as their technical ability to perform complex BDSM practices, such as Japanese shibari, head-scissoring, and other forms of bondage, suspension, torture roleplay, and corporal punishment, and other such practices which require a high degree of knowledge and competency to safely oversee. From a sociological point of view, Danielle Lindemann has stated the "embattled purity regime" in which many pro-dommes emphasise their specialist knowledge and professional skills, while distancing themselves from economic criteria for success, in a way which is comparable to avant-garde artists.
Some dominatrices practice financial domination, or findom, a fetish in which a submissive is aroused by sending money or gifts to a dominatrix at her instruction. In some cases the dominatrix is given control of the submissive's finances or a "blackmail" scenario is acted out. In the majority of cases the dominatrix and the submissive do not physically meet. The interactions are typically performed using the Internet, which is also where such services are advertised. Findom was originally a niche service that a traditional dominatrix would offer, but it has become popular with less-experienced online practitioners.
To differentiate women who identify as a dominatrix but do not offer paid services, non-professional dominants are occasionally referred to as a "lifestyle" dominatrix or Mistress. The term "lifestyle" to signify BDSM is occasionally a contention topic in the BDSM community and that some dominatrices may dislike the term. Some professional dominatrices are also "lifestyle" dominatrices—i.e., in addition to paid sessions with submissive clients they engage in unpaid recreational sessions or may incorporate power exchange within their own private lives and relationships. However, the term has fallen out of general usage with respect to women who are dominant in their private relationships, and has taken on more and more the connotation of "professional". Nathalie Lugand in her 2023 book "A Psychodynamic Approach to Female Domination in BDSM Relationships" describes this strict separation as artificial.
Catherine Robbe-Grillet is a lifestyle dominatrix. Born in Paris on September 24, 1930, she then became France's most famous lifestyle dominatrix. She is also a writer and actress, the widow of nouveau roman pioneer and sadist Alain Robbe-Grillet. She currently lives with Beverly Charpentier, a 51-year-old South African woman who is her submissive companion. Although being such a famous dominatrix, she has never accepted payment for her "ceremonies". She's quoted as saying "If someone pays, then they are in charge. I need to remain free. It is important that everyone involved knows that I do it solely for my pleasure." "Catherine is my secret garden," Charpentier says. "I have given myself to her, body and soul. She does whatever she wants, whenever she wants, with either or both, according to her pleasure—and her pleasure is also my pleasure." Robbe-Grillet has been criticised for writing about S/M stories. She identifies as a "pro-sex feminist" and "the kind of feminist who supports the right of any man or woman to work as a prostitute, if it is their free choice."
Simone Justice is a BDSM educator who teaches Dommecraft based on her experience as a dominatrix and psychotherapist.
Miss Lila Sage is an international dominatrix, hypnotherapist, and immersive experience producer. Sage is the creator and host of Fétische, a live theatrical experience and "BDSM tasting".
The dominatrix is a symbolic female archetype. In popular culture, the conception of the dominatrix is generally associated with specialized clothing and props used to signify her role as a strong, dominant, sexualised woman. This role is linked to but distinct from images of sexual fetish. During the twentieth century, dominatrix imagery was developed by the work of a number of artists including the costume designer and photographer Charles Guyette, the publisher and film director Irving Klaw, and the illustrators Eric Stanton and Gene Bilbrew who drew for the fetish magazine Exotique.
Modern day artists such as Sardax and Michael Manning work with professional and lifestyle dominatrices on specially commisioned artworks.
One of the garments associated with the dominatrix is the catsuit. The black leather female catsuit entered dominant fetish culture in the 1950s with the AtomAge magazine and its connections to fetish fashion designer John Sutcliffe. Its appearance in mainstream culture began when catsuits were worn by strong female protagonists in popular 1960s TV programs like The Avengers and by comic super-heroines such as Catwoman. The catsuit represented the independence of a woman capable of "kick-ass" moves and action, giving complete freedom of movement. At the same time, the one-piece catsuit accentuated and exaggerated the sexualized female form, providing visual access to a woman's body, while simultaneously obstructing physical penetrative access. "You can look but you can't touch" is the message, which plays upon the BDSM practice known as "tease and denial".
Another common image is that of a dominatrix wearing thigh-high boots in leather or shiny PVC, which have long held a fetishistic status and are sometimes called kinky boots, along with very high stiletto heels. Fishnet stockings, seamed hosiery, stockings and garter belts (suspenders) are also used in the representation and attire of dominatrices, to emphasize the form and length of the legs with erotic connotation.
Tight leather corsets are another popular dominatrix garment. Gloves, whether long opera gloves or fingerless gloves, are often a further accessory to emphasize the feminine role. Neck corsets are also sometimes worn.
Dominatrices frequently wear clothing made from fetish fashion materials. Examples include PVC clothing, latex clothing and garments drawn from the leather subculture. In some cases elements of dominatrix attire, such as leather boots and peaked cap, are drawn from Nazi chic, particularly the black SS officer's uniform which has been widely adopted and fetishized by underground gay and BDSM lifestyle groups to satisfy a uniform fetish.
A dominatrix often uses strong, dominant body language which is comparable to dominant posturing in the animal world. The props she brandishes signify her role as dominatrix, such as a flogger, whip or riding crop as illustrated in the artwork of Bruno Zach in the early 20th century.
Another often-depicted characteristic of the dominatrix character is of smoking, either of tobacco cigarettes or cannabis products. While smoking tobacco has been in rapid decline worldwide, depiction of it in BDSM literature and media is increasing, as the negative image of smoking reinforces the "bad girl" stereotype associated with a dominatrix.
Practicing professional dominatrices may draw their attire from the conventional imagery associated with the role, or adapt it to create their own individual style. There is a potential conflict between meeting conventional expectations and a desire for dominant independent self-expression. Some contemporary dominatrices draw upon an eclectic range of strong female archetypes, including the goddess, the female superheroine, the femme fatale, the priestess, the empress, the queen, the governess and the KGB secret agent.
Themes associated with the dominatrix character have appeared in literature since the 10th century. Canoness Hroswitha, in her manuscript Maria, uses the word Dominatrix for the main character. She is portrayed as an unattainable woman who is too good for any of the men who are in love with her. The theme of "the unattainable woman" has been used thoroughly in medieval literature as well, although it differs from a dominatrix. Medieval themes surrounding the unattainable woman concerned issues of social classes and structure, with chivalry being a prime part of a relationship between a man and woman. There are some exceptions to this trend during medieval times. In Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605), Celadon is imprisoned by Galatea. Celadon complains that his "mistress . . . Galatea keeps me on such a short leash". In Robert Herrick's Hesperides, a book of poems published in 1648, there were three revealing poems An Hymne to Love, The Dream, and To Love which showcase masculine longing for domination, restraint, discipline. In Ulysses by James Joyce, the character Leopold Bloom has many fantasies of submission to a lady and to receive whippings by her.
There have been a number of depictions of dominatrices in film and television, almost always featuring a professional dominatrix. Depictions of dominatrices in popular culture include: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A dominatrix (/ˌdɒmɪˈneɪtrɪks/; pl. dominatrixes or dominatrices /-ˈneɪtrɪsiːz, ˌdɒmɪnəˈtraɪ-/), or domme, is a woman who takes the dominant role in BDSM activities. A dominatrix can be of any sexual orientation, but this does not necessarily limit the genders of her submissive partners. Dominatrices are popularly known for inflicting physical pain on their submissive subjects, but this is not done in every case. In some instances erotic humiliation is used, such as verbal humiliation or the assignment of humiliating tasks. Dominatrices also make use of other forms of servitude. Practices of domination common to many BDSM and other various sexual relationships are also prevalent. A dominatrix is typically a paid professional (pro-domme) as the term dominatrix is little-used within the non-professional BDSM scene.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Dominatrix is the feminine form of the Latin dominator, a ruler or lord, and was originally used in a non-sexual sense. Its use in English dates back to at least 1561. Its earliest recorded use in the prevalent modern sense, as a female dominant in sadomasochism, dates to 1961. It was initially coined to describe a woman who provides punishment-for-pay as one of the case studies within Bruce Roger's pulp paperback The Bizarre Lovemakers. The term was taken up shortly after by the Myron Kosloff title Dominatrix (with art by Eric Stanton) in 1968, and entered more popular mainstream knowledge following the 1976 film Dominatrix Without Mercy.",
"title": "Terminology and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The term domme is likely a coined pseudo-French feminine inflection of the slang dom (short for dominant). The use of domme, dominatrix, dom, or dominant by any woman in a dominant role is chosen mostly by personal preference and the conventions of the local BDSM scene. The term mistress or dominant mistress is sometimes also used. Female dominance (also known as female domination or femdom) is a BDSM activity in which the dominant partner is female. However, while the term mistress is often used in the media, members of the BDSM community often avoid it, as it can be confused with mistress in the sense of a woman who has an illicit relationship with a married man, a term which has the negative implication of cheating on a partner. Since there is a large overlap between the BDSM and polyamory communities, where ethical conduct is a prime concern, any such relationship is a source of disapproval.",
"title": "Terminology and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Although the term dominatrix was not used, the classic example in literature of the female dominant-male submissive relationship is portrayed in the 1870 novella Venus in Furs by Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. The term masochism was later derived from the author's name by Richard von Krafft-Ebing in the latter's 1886 forensic study Psychopathia Sexualis.",
"title": "Terminology and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The history of the dominatrix is argued to date back to rituals of the Goddess Inanna (or Ishtar as she was known in Akkadian), in ancient Mesopotamia. Ancient cuneiform texts consisting of \"Hymns to Inanna\" have been cited as examples of the archetype of powerful, sexual female displaying dominating behaviors and forcing gods and men into submission to her. The pseudonymous archaeologist and BDSM historian Anne O. Nomis notes that Inanna's rituals included cross-dressing of cult personnel, and rituals \"imbued with pain and ecstasy, bringing about initiation and journeys of altered consciousness; punishment, moaning, ecstasy, lament and song, participants exhausting themselves with weeping and grief.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The fictional tale of Phyllis and Aristotle, which became popular and gained numerous versions from the 12th century onwards, tells the story of a dominant woman who seduced and dominated the male intellect of the greatest philosopher. In the story, Phyllis forces Aristotle to kneel on the ground so that she rides on his back while whipping and verbally humiliating him.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The profession appears to have originated as a specialization within brothels, before becoming its own unique craft. As far back as the 1590s, flagellation within an erotic setting is recorded. The profession features in erotic prints of the era, such as the British Museum mezzotint \"The Cully Flaug'd\" (c. 1674–1702), and in accounts of forbidden books which record the flogging schools and the activities practised.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Within the 18th century, female \"Birch Disciplinarians\" advertised their services in a book masked as a collection of lectures or theatrical plays, entitled \"Fashionable Lectures\" (c. 1761). This included the names of 57 women, some actresses and courtesans, who catered to birch discipline fantasies, keeping a room with rods and cat o' nine tails, and charging their clients a Guinea for a \"lecture\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The 19th century is characterised by what Nomis characterises as the \"Golden Age of the Governess\". No fewer than twenty establishments were documented as having existed by the 1840s, supported entirely by flagellation practices and known as \"Houses of Discipline\" distinct from brothels. Amongst the well-known \"dominatrix governesses\" were Mrs Chalmers, Mrs Noyeau, the late Mrs Jones of Hertford Street and London Street, the late Mrs Theresa Berkley, Bessy Burgess of York Square and Mrs Pyree of Burton Crescent. The most famous of these Governess \"female flagellants\" was Theresa Berkley, who operated her establishment on Charlotte Street in the central London district of Marylebone. She is recorded to have used implements such as whips, canes and birches, to chastise and punish her male clients, as well as the Berkley Horse, a specially designed flogging machine, and a pulley suspension system for lifting them off the floor. Such historical use of corporal punishment and suspension, in a setting of domination roleplay, connects very closely to the practices of modern-day professional dominatrices.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The \"bizarre style\" (as it came to be called) of leather catsuits, claws, tail whips, and latex rubber only came about in the 20th century, initially within commercial fetish photography, and taken up by dominatrices. Within the mid-20th century, dominatrices operated in a very discreet and underground manner, which has made them difficult to trace within the historical record. A few photographs still exist of the women who ran their domination businesses in London, New York, The Hague and Hamburg's Herbertstraße, predominantly in sepia and black-and-white photographs, and scans from magazine articles, copied and re-copied. Amongst these were Miss Doreen of London who was acquainted with John Sutcliffe of AtomAge fame, whose clients reportedly included Britain's top politicians and businessmen. In New York, the dominatrix Anne Laurence was known within the underground circle of acquaintances during the 1950s, with Monique Von Cleef arriving in the early 1960s, and hitting national headlines when her home was raided by police detectives on 22 December 1965. Von Cleef went on to set up her \"House of Pain\" in The Hague in the 1970s, which became one of the world capitals for dominatrices, reportedly with visiting lawyers, ambassadors, diplomats and politicians. Domenica Niehoff worked as a dominatrix in Hamburg and appeared on talk shows on German television from the 1970s onwards, campaigning for sex workers' rights. Mistress Raven, founder and manager of Pandora's Box, one of New York's best known BDSM studios, was featured in Nick Broomfield's 1996 documentary film Fetishes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The term dominatrix is mostly used to describe a female professional dominant (or \"pro-domme\") who is paid to engage in BDSM play with a submissive. Professional dominatrices are not prostitutes, despite the sensual and erotic interactions they have. An appointment or roleplay is referred to as a \"session\", and is often conducted in a dedicated professional play space which has been set up with specialist equipment, known as a \"dungeon\". Sessions may also be conducted remotely by letter or telephone, or in the contemporary era of technological connectivity by email, online chat or platforms such as OnlyFans. Most, but not all, clients of female professional dominants are men. Male professional dominants also exist, catering predominantly to the gay male market.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Women who engage in female domination typically promote and title themselves under the terms \"dominatrix\", \"mistress\", \"lady\", \"madame\", \"herrin\" (German for \"mistress\") or \"goddess\". In a study of German dominatrices, Andrew Wilson said that the trend for dominatrices choosing names aimed at creating and maintaining an atmosphere in which class, femininity and mystery are key elements of their self-constructed identity.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Some professional dominatrices set minimum age limits for their clients. Popular requests from clients are for dungeon play including bondage, spanking and cock and ball torture, or for medical play using hoods, gas masks and urethral sounding. Verbal erotic humiliation, such as small penis humiliation, is also popular. There are some professional dominatrices that engage in sexual contact activities such as facesitting, handjobs or fellatio but others disapprove of this. Other BDSM activities can include various forms of body worship, such as foot worship, ass worship, breast worship and pussy worship; tease and denial; corporal punishment including breast torture, caning, whipping; orgasm denial; and as well as face slapping, hair pulling, dripping hot wax on the genitals, spitting, golden showers, \"forced\" chastity, cock and ball torture, and pussy torture.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "It is not unusual for a dominatrix to consider her profession different from that of an escort and not perform tie and tease or \"happy endings\". Typically professional dominatrices do not have sexual intercourse with their clients, do not become naked with their clients and do not allow their clients to touch them. The Canadian dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, who was one of three women who initiated an application in the Ontario Superior Court seeking invalidation of Canada's laws regarding brothels, sought to differentiate for clarity her occupation as a dominatrix rather than a prostitute to the media, due to frequent misunderstanding and conflation by the public of the two terms.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "That being said, it is now generally accepted that a professional dominatrix is a sex worker, and many of the acts conducted during a session may be interpreted as equally sexual to the participants.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "While dominatrices come from many different backgrounds, it has been shown that a considerable number are well-educated. Research into US dominatrices published in 2012 indicated that 39% of the sample studied had received some sort of graduate training.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "A 1985 study suggested that about 30 percent of participants in BDSM subculture were female. A 1994 report indicated that around a quarter of the women who took part in BDSM subculture did so professionally. In a 1995 study of Internet discussion group messages, the preference for the dominant-initiator role was expressed by 11% of messages by heterosexual women, compared to 71% of messages by heterosexual men.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Professional dominatrices can be seen advertising their services online and in print publications which carry erotic services advertising, such as contact magazines and fetish magazines that specialise in female domination. The precise number of women actively offering professional domination services is unknown. Most professional dominatrices practice in large metropolitan cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and London, with as many as 200 women working as dominatrices in Los Angeles.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Professional dominatrices may take pride or differentiation in their psychological insight into their clients' fetishes and desires, as well as their technical ability to perform complex BDSM practices, such as Japanese shibari, head-scissoring, and other forms of bondage, suspension, torture roleplay, and corporal punishment, and other such practices which require a high degree of knowledge and competency to safely oversee. From a sociological point of view, Danielle Lindemann has stated the \"embattled purity regime\" in which many pro-dommes emphasise their specialist knowledge and professional skills, while distancing themselves from economic criteria for success, in a way which is comparable to avant-garde artists.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Some dominatrices practice financial domination, or findom, a fetish in which a submissive is aroused by sending money or gifts to a dominatrix at her instruction. In some cases the dominatrix is given control of the submissive's finances or a \"blackmail\" scenario is acted out. In the majority of cases the dominatrix and the submissive do not physically meet. The interactions are typically performed using the Internet, which is also where such services are advertised. Findom was originally a niche service that a traditional dominatrix would offer, but it has become popular with less-experienced online practitioners.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "To differentiate women who identify as a dominatrix but do not offer paid services, non-professional dominants are occasionally referred to as a \"lifestyle\" dominatrix or Mistress. The term \"lifestyle\" to signify BDSM is occasionally a contention topic in the BDSM community and that some dominatrices may dislike the term. Some professional dominatrices are also \"lifestyle\" dominatrices—i.e., in addition to paid sessions with submissive clients they engage in unpaid recreational sessions or may incorporate power exchange within their own private lives and relationships. However, the term has fallen out of general usage with respect to women who are dominant in their private relationships, and has taken on more and more the connotation of \"professional\". Nathalie Lugand in her 2023 book \"A Psychodynamic Approach to Female Domination in BDSM Relationships\" describes this strict separation as artificial.",
"title": "Professional dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Catherine Robbe-Grillet is a lifestyle dominatrix. Born in Paris on September 24, 1930, she then became France's most famous lifestyle dominatrix. She is also a writer and actress, the widow of nouveau roman pioneer and sadist Alain Robbe-Grillet. She currently lives with Beverly Charpentier, a 51-year-old South African woman who is her submissive companion. Although being such a famous dominatrix, she has never accepted payment for her \"ceremonies\". She's quoted as saying \"If someone pays, then they are in charge. I need to remain free. It is important that everyone involved knows that I do it solely for my pleasure.\" \"Catherine is my secret garden,\" Charpentier says. \"I have given myself to her, body and soul. She does whatever she wants, whenever she wants, with either or both, according to her pleasure—and her pleasure is also my pleasure.\" Robbe-Grillet has been criticised for writing about S/M stories. She identifies as a \"pro-sex feminist\" and \"the kind of feminist who supports the right of any man or woman to work as a prostitute, if it is their free choice.\"",
"title": "Notable dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Simone Justice is a BDSM educator who teaches Dommecraft based on her experience as a dominatrix and psychotherapist.",
"title": "Notable dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Miss Lila Sage is an international dominatrix, hypnotherapist, and immersive experience producer. Sage is the creator and host of Fétische, a live theatrical experience and \"BDSM tasting\".",
"title": "Notable dominatrices"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The dominatrix is a symbolic female archetype. In popular culture, the conception of the dominatrix is generally associated with specialized clothing and props used to signify her role as a strong, dominant, sexualised woman. This role is linked to but distinct from images of sexual fetish. During the twentieth century, dominatrix imagery was developed by the work of a number of artists including the costume designer and photographer Charles Guyette, the publisher and film director Irving Klaw, and the illustrators Eric Stanton and Gene Bilbrew who drew for the fetish magazine Exotique.",
"title": "Imagery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Modern day artists such as Sardax and Michael Manning work with professional and lifestyle dominatrices on specially commisioned artworks.",
"title": "Imagery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "One of the garments associated with the dominatrix is the catsuit. The black leather female catsuit entered dominant fetish culture in the 1950s with the AtomAge magazine and its connections to fetish fashion designer John Sutcliffe. Its appearance in mainstream culture began when catsuits were worn by strong female protagonists in popular 1960s TV programs like The Avengers and by comic super-heroines such as Catwoman. The catsuit represented the independence of a woman capable of \"kick-ass\" moves and action, giving complete freedom of movement. At the same time, the one-piece catsuit accentuated and exaggerated the sexualized female form, providing visual access to a woman's body, while simultaneously obstructing physical penetrative access. \"You can look but you can't touch\" is the message, which plays upon the BDSM practice known as \"tease and denial\".",
"title": "Imagery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Another common image is that of a dominatrix wearing thigh-high boots in leather or shiny PVC, which have long held a fetishistic status and are sometimes called kinky boots, along with very high stiletto heels. Fishnet stockings, seamed hosiery, stockings and garter belts (suspenders) are also used in the representation and attire of dominatrices, to emphasize the form and length of the legs with erotic connotation.",
"title": "Imagery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Tight leather corsets are another popular dominatrix garment. Gloves, whether long opera gloves or fingerless gloves, are often a further accessory to emphasize the feminine role. Neck corsets are also sometimes worn.",
"title": "Imagery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Dominatrices frequently wear clothing made from fetish fashion materials. Examples include PVC clothing, latex clothing and garments drawn from the leather subculture. In some cases elements of dominatrix attire, such as leather boots and peaked cap, are drawn from Nazi chic, particularly the black SS officer's uniform which has been widely adopted and fetishized by underground gay and BDSM lifestyle groups to satisfy a uniform fetish.",
"title": "Imagery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "A dominatrix often uses strong, dominant body language which is comparable to dominant posturing in the animal world. The props she brandishes signify her role as dominatrix, such as a flogger, whip or riding crop as illustrated in the artwork of Bruno Zach in the early 20th century.",
"title": "Imagery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Another often-depicted characteristic of the dominatrix character is of smoking, either of tobacco cigarettes or cannabis products. While smoking tobacco has been in rapid decline worldwide, depiction of it in BDSM literature and media is increasing, as the negative image of smoking reinforces the \"bad girl\" stereotype associated with a dominatrix.",
"title": "Imagery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Practicing professional dominatrices may draw their attire from the conventional imagery associated with the role, or adapt it to create their own individual style. There is a potential conflict between meeting conventional expectations and a desire for dominant independent self-expression. Some contemporary dominatrices draw upon an eclectic range of strong female archetypes, including the goddess, the female superheroine, the femme fatale, the priestess, the empress, the queen, the governess and the KGB secret agent.",
"title": "Imagery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Themes associated with the dominatrix character have appeared in literature since the 10th century. Canoness Hroswitha, in her manuscript Maria, uses the word Dominatrix for the main character. She is portrayed as an unattainable woman who is too good for any of the men who are in love with her. The theme of \"the unattainable woman\" has been used thoroughly in medieval literature as well, although it differs from a dominatrix. Medieval themes surrounding the unattainable woman concerned issues of social classes and structure, with chivalry being a prime part of a relationship between a man and woman. There are some exceptions to this trend during medieval times. In Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605), Celadon is imprisoned by Galatea. Celadon complains that his \"mistress . . . Galatea keeps me on such a short leash\". In Robert Herrick's Hesperides, a book of poems published in 1648, there were three revealing poems An Hymne to Love, The Dream, and To Love which showcase masculine longing for domination, restraint, discipline. In Ulysses by James Joyce, the character Leopold Bloom has many fantasies of submission to a lady and to receive whippings by her.",
"title": "In literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "There have been a number of depictions of dominatrices in film and television, almost always featuring a professional dominatrix. Depictions of dominatrices in popular culture include:",
"title": "In popular culture"
}
]
| A dominatrix, or domme, is a woman who takes the dominant role in BDSM activities. A dominatrix can be of any sexual orientation, but this does not necessarily limit the genders of her submissive partners. Dominatrices are popularly known for inflicting physical pain on their submissive subjects, but this is not done in every case. In some instances erotic humiliation is used, such as verbal humiliation or the assignment of humiliating tasks. Dominatrices also make use of other forms of servitude. Practices of domination common to many BDSM and other various sexual relationships are also prevalent. A dominatrix is typically a paid professional (pro-domme) as the term dominatrix is little-used within the non-professional BDSM scene. | 2001-11-01T09:23:41Z | 2023-12-11T12:38:31Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominatrix |
8,752 | Flag of Denmark | The national flag of Denmark (Danish: Dannebrog, pronounced [ˈtænəˌpʁoˀ]) is red with a white Nordic cross, which means that the cross extends to the edges of the flag and the vertical part of the cross is shifted to the hoist side.
A banner with a white-on-red cross is attested as having been used by the kings of Denmark since the 14th century. An origin legend with considerable impact on Danish national historiography connects the introduction of the flag to the Battle of Lindanise of 1219. The elongated Nordic cross, which represents Christianity, reflects its use as a maritime flag in the 18th century. The flag became popular as a national flag in the early 16th century. Its private use was outlawed in 1834 but again permitted by a regulation of 1854. The flag holds the world record of being the oldest continuously used national flag, that is since 1625.
In 1748, a regulation defined the correct lengths of the two last fields in the flag as 6⁄4. In May 1893 a new regulation to all chiefs of police stated that the police should not intervene, if the two last fields in the flag were longer than 6⁄4 as long as these did not exceed 7⁄4, and provided that this was the only rule violated. This regulation is still in effect today and thus the legal proportions of the National flag today are 3:1:3 in width and anywhere between 3:1:4.5 and 3:1:5.25 in length.
No official definition of "Dannebrog rød" exists. The private company Dansk Standard, regulation number 359 (2005), defines the red colour of the flag as Pantone 186c.
A tradition recorded in the 16th century traces the origin of the flag to the campaigns of Valdemar II of Denmark (r. 1202–1241). The oldest of them is in Christiern Pedersen's "Danske Krønike", which is a sequel to Saxo's Gesta Danorum, written 1520–23. Here, the flag falls from the sky during one of Valdemar's military campaigns overseas. Pedersen also states that the very same flag was taken into exile by Eric of Pomerania in 1440.
The second source is the writing of the Franciscan friar Petrus Olai (Peder Olsen) of Roskilde (died c. 1570). This record describes a battle in 1208 near Fellin during the Estonia campaign of King Valdemar II. The Danes were all but defeated when a lamb-skin banner depicting a white cross fell from the sky and miraculously led to a Danish victory. In a third account, also by Petrus Olai, in Danmarks Tolv Herligheder ("Twelve Splendours of Denmark"), in splendour number nine, the same story is re-told almost verbatim, with a paragraph inserted correcting the year to 1219. Now, the flag is falling from the sky in the Battle of Lindanise, also known as the Battle of Valdemar (Danish: Volmerslaget), near Lindanise (Tallinn) in Estonia, of 15 June 1219.
It is this third account that has been the most influential, and some historians have treated it as the primary account taken from a (lost) source dating to the first half of the 15th century.
In Olai's account, the battle was going badly, and defeat seemed imminent. However the Danish Bishop Anders Sunesen, on top of a hill overlooking the battle, prayed to God with his arms raised, and the Danes moved closer to victory the more he prayed. When he raised his arms the Danes surged forward but when his arms grew tired and he let them fall, the Estonians turned the Danes back. Attendants rushed forward to raise his arms once again and the Danes again surged forward. But for a second time he grew so tired that he dropped his arms and the Danes again lost the advantage and were moving closer to defeat. He needed two soldiers to keep his hands up. When the Danes were about to lose, 'Dannebrog' miraculously fell from the sky and the King took it, showed it to the troops, their hearts were filled with courage, and the Danes won the battle.
The possible historical nucleus behind this origin legend was extensively discussed by Danish historians in the 19th to 20th centuries. One such example is Adolf Ditlev Jørgensen, who argued that Bishop Theoderich was the original instigator of the 1218 inquiry from Bishop Albert of Buxhoeveden to King Valdemar II which led to the Danish participation in the Baltic crusades. Jørgensen speculates that Bishop Theoderich might have carried the Knight Hospitaller's banner in the 1219 battle and that "the enemy thought this was the King's symbol and mistakenly stormed Bishop Theoderich tent. He claims that the origin of the legend of the falling flag comes from this confusion in the battle."
The Danish church-historian L. P. Fabricius (1934) ascribes the origin to the 1208 Battle of Fellin, not the Battle of Lindanise in 1219, based on the earliest source available about the story. Fabricius speculated that it might have been Archbishop Andreas Sunesøn's personal ecclesiastical banner or perhaps even the flag of Archbishop Absalon, under whose initiative and supervision several smaller crusades had already been conducted in Estonia. The banner would then already be known in Estonia. Fabricius repeats Jørgensen's idea about the flag being planted in front of Bishop Theodorik's tent, which the enemy mistakenly attacked believing it to be the tent of the King.
A different theory is briefly discussed by Fabricius and elaborated more by Helge Bruhn (1949). Bruhn interprets the story in the context of the widespread tradition of the miraculous appearance of crosses in the sky in Christian legend, specifically comparing such an event attributed to a battle of 10 September 1217 near Alcazar, where it is said that a golden cross on white appeared in the sky, to bring victory to the Christians.
In Swedish national historiography of the 18th century, there is a tale paralleling the Danish legend, in which a golden cross appears in the blue sky during a Swedish battle in Finland in 1157.
The white-on-red cross emblem originates in the age of the Crusades. In the 12th century, it was also used as war flag by the Holy Roman Empire.
In the Gelre Armorial, dated c. 1340–1370, such a banner is shown alongside the coat of arms of the king of Denmark. This is the earliest known undisputed colour rendering of the Dannebrog. At about the same time, Valdemar IV of Denmark displays a cross in his coat of arms on his Danælog seal (Rettertingsseglet, dated 1356). The image from the Armorial Gelre is nearly identical to an image found in a 15th-century coat of arms book now located in the National Archives of Sweden (Riksarkivet). The seal of Eric of Pomerania (1398) as king of the Kalmar union displays the arms of Denmark's chief dexter, three lions. In this version, the lions are holding a Dannebrog banner.
The reason why the kings of Denmark in the 14th century began displaying the cross banner in their coats of arms is unknown. Caspar Paludan-Müller (1873) suggested that it may reflect a banner sent by the pope to support the Danish king during the Livonian Crusade. Adolf Ditlev Jørgensen (1875) identifies the banner as that of the Knights Hospitaller, which order had a presence in Denmark from the later 12th century.
Several coins, seals, and images exist, both foreign and domestic, from the 13th to 15th centuries and even earlier, showing heraldic designs similar to Dannebrog, alongside the royal coat of arms (three blue lions on a golden shield.)
There is a record suggesting that the Danish army had a "chief banner" (hoffuitbanner) in the early 16th century. Such a banner is mentioned in 1570 by Niels Hemmingsøn in the context of a 1520 battle between Danes and Swedes near Uppsala as nearly captured by the Swedes but saved by the heroic actions of the banner-carrier Mogens Gyldenstierne and Peder Skram. The legend attributing the miraculous origin of the flag to the campaigns of Valdemar II of Denmark (r. 1202–1241) was recorded by Christiern Pedersen and Petrus Olai in the 1520s.
Hans Svaning's History of King Hans from 1558 to 1559 and Johan Rantzau's History about the Last Dithmarschen War, from 1569, record the further fate of the Danish hoffuitbanner: According to this tradition, the original flag from the Battle of Lindanise was used in the small campaign of 1500 when King Hans tried to conquer Dithmarschen (in western Holstein in the north Germany). The flag was lost in a devastating defeat at the Battle of Hemmingstedt on 17 February 1500. In 1559, King Frederik II recaptured it during his own Dithmarschen campaign.
In 1576, the son of Johan Rantzau, Henrik Rantzau, also writes about the war and the fate of the flag, noting that the flag was in a poor condition when returned. He records that the flag after its return to Denmark was placed in the cathedral in Slesvig. Slesvig historian Ulrik Petersen (1656–1735) confirms the presence of such a banner in the cathedral in the early 17th century and records that it had crumbled away by about 1660.
Contemporary records describing the battle of Hemmingstedt make no reference to the loss of the original Dannebrog, although the capitulation state that all Danish banners lost in 1500 was to be returned. In a letter dated 22 February 1500 to Oluf Stigsøn, King John describes the battle but does not mention the loss of an important flag. In fact, the entire letter gives the impression that the lost battle was of limited importance. In 1598, Neocorus wrote that the banner captured in 1500 was brought to the church in Wöhrden and hung there for the next 59 years until it was returned to the Danes as part of the peace settlement in 1559.
Used as a maritime flag since the 16th century, the Dannebrog was introduced as a regimental flag in the Danish army in 1785, and for the militia (landeværn) in 1801. From 1842, it was used as the flag of the entire army.
During the first half of the 19th century, in parallel to the development of Romantic nationalism in other European countries, the military flag increasingly came to be seen as representing the nation itself. Poems of this period invoking the Dannebrog were written by B.S. Ingemann, N.F.S. Grundtvig, Oehlenschläger, Chr. Winther and H.C. Andersen. By the 1830s, the military flag had become popular as an unofficial national flag, and its use by private citizens was outlawed in a circular enacted on 7 January 1834.
In the national enthusiasm sparked by the First Schleswig War during 1848–1850, the flag was still very widely displayed, and the prohibition of private use was repealed in a regulation of 7 July 1854, for the first time allowing Danish citizens to display the Dannebrog (but not the swallow-tailed Splitflag variant). Special permission to use the Splitflag was given to individual institutions and private companies, especially after 1870. In 1886, the war ministry introduced a regulation indicating that the flag should be flown from military buildings on thirteen specified days, including royal birthdays, the date of the signing of the Constitution of 5 June 1849 and on days of remembrance for military battles. In 1913, the naval ministry issued its own list of flag days. On 10 April 1915, the hoisting of any other flag on Danish soil was prohibited. This prohibition has been lifted on 24 June 2023, after a Supreme Court ruling. From 1939 until 2012, the yearbook Hvem-Hvad-Hvor included a list of flag days. As of 2019 flag days can be viewed at the "Ministry of Justice (Justitsministeriet)" as well as "The Denmark Society (Danmarks-Samfundet)".
The size and shape of the civil ensign ("Koffardiflaget") for merchant ships is given in the regulation of 11 June 1748, which says: A red flag with a white cross with no split end. The white cross must be 1⁄7 of the flag's height. The two first fields must be square in form and the two outer fields must be 6⁄4 lengths of those. The proportions are thus: 3:1:3 vertically and 3:1:4.5 horizontally. This definition are the absolute proportions for the Danish national flag to this day, for both the civil version of the flag ("Stutflaget"), as well as the merchant flag ("Handelsflaget"). The civil flag and the merchant flag are identical in colour and design.
A regulation passed in 1758 required Danish ships sailing in the Mediterranean to carry the royal cypher in the center of the flag in order to distinguish them from Maltese ships, due to the similarity of the flag of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
According to the regulation of 11 June 1748 the colour was simply red, which is common known today as "Dannebrog rød" ("Dannebrog red"). The only available red fabric dye in 1748 was made of madder root, which can be processed to produce a brilliant red dye (used historically for British soldiers' jackets). A regulation of 4 May 1927 once again states that Danish merchant ships have to fly flags according to the regulation of 1748.
The first regulation regarding the Splitflag dates from 27 March 1630, in which King Christian IV orders that Norwegian Defensionskibe (armed merchants ships) may only use the Splitflag if they are in Danish war service. In 1685 an order, distributed to a number of cities in Slesvig, states that all ships must carry the Danish flag, and in 1690 all merchant ships are forbidden to use the Splitflag, with the exception of ships sailing in the East Indies, West Indies and along the coast of Africa. In 1741 it is confirmed that the regulation of 1690 is still very much in effect; that merchant ships may not use the Splitflag. At the same time the Danish East India Company is allowed to fly the Splitflag when past the equator.
Some confusion must have existed regarding the Splitflag. In 1696 the Admiralty presented the King with a proposal for a standard regulating both size and shape of the Splitflag. In the same year a royal resolution defines the proportions of the Splitflag, which in this resolution is called Kongeflaget (the King's flag), as follows: The cross must be 1⁄7 of the flags height. The two first fields must be square in form with the sides three times the cross width. The two outer fields are rectangular and 1+1⁄2 the length of the square fields. The tails are the length of the flag.
These numbers are the basic for the Splitflag, or Orlogsflag, today, though the numbers have been slightly altered. The term Orlogsflag dates from 1806 and denotes use in the Danish Navy.
From about 1750 to the early 19th century, a number of ships and companies which the government has interests in, received approval to use the Splitflag.
In the royal resolution of 25 October 1939 for the Danish Navy, it is stated that the Orlogsflag is a Splitflag with a deep red ("dybrød") or madder red ("kraprød") colour. Like the National flag, no nuance is given, but in modern days this is given as 195U. Furthermore, the size and shape is corrected in this resolution to be: "The cross must be 1⁄7 of the flag's height. The two first fields must be square in form with the height of 3⁄7 of the flag's height. The two outer fields are rectangular and 5⁄4 the length of the square fields. The tails are 6⁄4 the length of the rectangular fields". Thus, if compared to the standard of 1696, both the rectangular fields and the tails have decreased in size.
The Splitflag and Orlogsflag have similar shapes but different sizes and shades of red. Legally, they are two different flags. The Splitflag is a Danish flag ending in a swallow-tail, it is Dannebrog red, and is used on land. The Orlogsflag is an elongated Splitflag with a deeper red colour and is only used on sea.
The Orlogsflag with no markings, may only be used by the Royal Danish Navy. There are though a few exceptions to this. A few institutions have been allowed to fly the clean Orlogsflag. The same flag with markings has been approved for a few dozen companies and institutions over the years.
Furthermore, the Orlogsflag is only described as such if it has no additional markings. Any swallow-tail flag, no matter the colour, is called a Splitflag provided it bears additional markings.
The current version of the royal standard was introduced on 16 November 1972 when the Queen adopted a new version of her personal coat of arms. The royal standard is the flag of Denmark with a swallow-tail and charged with the monarch's coat of arms set in a white square. The centre square is 32 parts in a flag with the ratio 56:107.
Greenland and the Faroe Islands are autonomous territories within the Kingdom of Denmark. They have their own official flags.
Some areas in Denmark have unofficial flags. While they have no legal recognition or regulation, they can be used freely.
The regional flags of Bornholm and Ærø are occasionally used by locals of those islands and in tourist-related businesses.
The proposal for a flag of Jutland has hardly found any actual use, maybe in part due to its peculiar design.
The flag of Vendsyssel (Vendelbrog) is seen infrequently, but many locals recognise it. According to an article in the newspaper Nordjyske, the flag had been used in the former insignia of Flight Eskadrille 723 of Aalborg Air Base, in the 1980s. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The national flag of Denmark (Danish: Dannebrog, pronounced [ˈtænəˌpʁoˀ]) is red with a white Nordic cross, which means that the cross extends to the edges of the flag and the vertical part of the cross is shifted to the hoist side.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "A banner with a white-on-red cross is attested as having been used by the kings of Denmark since the 14th century. An origin legend with considerable impact on Danish national historiography connects the introduction of the flag to the Battle of Lindanise of 1219. The elongated Nordic cross, which represents Christianity, reflects its use as a maritime flag in the 18th century. The flag became popular as a national flag in the early 16th century. Its private use was outlawed in 1834 but again permitted by a regulation of 1854. The flag holds the world record of being the oldest continuously used national flag, that is since 1625.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 1748, a regulation defined the correct lengths of the two last fields in the flag as 6⁄4. In May 1893 a new regulation to all chiefs of police stated that the police should not intervene, if the two last fields in the flag were longer than 6⁄4 as long as these did not exceed 7⁄4, and provided that this was the only rule violated. This regulation is still in effect today and thus the legal proportions of the National flag today are 3:1:3 in width and anywhere between 3:1:4.5 and 3:1:5.25 in length.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "No official definition of \"Dannebrog rød\" exists. The private company Dansk Standard, regulation number 359 (2005), defines the red colour of the flag as Pantone 186c.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "A tradition recorded in the 16th century traces the origin of the flag to the campaigns of Valdemar II of Denmark (r. 1202–1241). The oldest of them is in Christiern Pedersen's \"Danske Krønike\", which is a sequel to Saxo's Gesta Danorum, written 1520–23. Here, the flag falls from the sky during one of Valdemar's military campaigns overseas. Pedersen also states that the very same flag was taken into exile by Eric of Pomerania in 1440.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The second source is the writing of the Franciscan friar Petrus Olai (Peder Olsen) of Roskilde (died c. 1570). This record describes a battle in 1208 near Fellin during the Estonia campaign of King Valdemar II. The Danes were all but defeated when a lamb-skin banner depicting a white cross fell from the sky and miraculously led to a Danish victory. In a third account, also by Petrus Olai, in Danmarks Tolv Herligheder (\"Twelve Splendours of Denmark\"), in splendour number nine, the same story is re-told almost verbatim, with a paragraph inserted correcting the year to 1219. Now, the flag is falling from the sky in the Battle of Lindanise, also known as the Battle of Valdemar (Danish: Volmerslaget), near Lindanise (Tallinn) in Estonia, of 15 June 1219.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "It is this third account that has been the most influential, and some historians have treated it as the primary account taken from a (lost) source dating to the first half of the 15th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In Olai's account, the battle was going badly, and defeat seemed imminent. However the Danish Bishop Anders Sunesen, on top of a hill overlooking the battle, prayed to God with his arms raised, and the Danes moved closer to victory the more he prayed. When he raised his arms the Danes surged forward but when his arms grew tired and he let them fall, the Estonians turned the Danes back. Attendants rushed forward to raise his arms once again and the Danes again surged forward. But for a second time he grew so tired that he dropped his arms and the Danes again lost the advantage and were moving closer to defeat. He needed two soldiers to keep his hands up. When the Danes were about to lose, 'Dannebrog' miraculously fell from the sky and the King took it, showed it to the troops, their hearts were filled with courage, and the Danes won the battle.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The possible historical nucleus behind this origin legend was extensively discussed by Danish historians in the 19th to 20th centuries. One such example is Adolf Ditlev Jørgensen, who argued that Bishop Theoderich was the original instigator of the 1218 inquiry from Bishop Albert of Buxhoeveden to King Valdemar II which led to the Danish participation in the Baltic crusades. Jørgensen speculates that Bishop Theoderich might have carried the Knight Hospitaller's banner in the 1219 battle and that \"the enemy thought this was the King's symbol and mistakenly stormed Bishop Theoderich tent. He claims that the origin of the legend of the falling flag comes from this confusion in the battle.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Danish church-historian L. P. Fabricius (1934) ascribes the origin to the 1208 Battle of Fellin, not the Battle of Lindanise in 1219, based on the earliest source available about the story. Fabricius speculated that it might have been Archbishop Andreas Sunesøn's personal ecclesiastical banner or perhaps even the flag of Archbishop Absalon, under whose initiative and supervision several smaller crusades had already been conducted in Estonia. The banner would then already be known in Estonia. Fabricius repeats Jørgensen's idea about the flag being planted in front of Bishop Theodorik's tent, which the enemy mistakenly attacked believing it to be the tent of the King.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "A different theory is briefly discussed by Fabricius and elaborated more by Helge Bruhn (1949). Bruhn interprets the story in the context of the widespread tradition of the miraculous appearance of crosses in the sky in Christian legend, specifically comparing such an event attributed to a battle of 10 September 1217 near Alcazar, where it is said that a golden cross on white appeared in the sky, to bring victory to the Christians.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In Swedish national historiography of the 18th century, there is a tale paralleling the Danish legend, in which a golden cross appears in the blue sky during a Swedish battle in Finland in 1157.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The white-on-red cross emblem originates in the age of the Crusades. In the 12th century, it was also used as war flag by the Holy Roman Empire.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In the Gelre Armorial, dated c. 1340–1370, such a banner is shown alongside the coat of arms of the king of Denmark. This is the earliest known undisputed colour rendering of the Dannebrog. At about the same time, Valdemar IV of Denmark displays a cross in his coat of arms on his Danælog seal (Rettertingsseglet, dated 1356). The image from the Armorial Gelre is nearly identical to an image found in a 15th-century coat of arms book now located in the National Archives of Sweden (Riksarkivet). The seal of Eric of Pomerania (1398) as king of the Kalmar union displays the arms of Denmark's chief dexter, three lions. In this version, the lions are holding a Dannebrog banner.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The reason why the kings of Denmark in the 14th century began displaying the cross banner in their coats of arms is unknown. Caspar Paludan-Müller (1873) suggested that it may reflect a banner sent by the pope to support the Danish king during the Livonian Crusade. Adolf Ditlev Jørgensen (1875) identifies the banner as that of the Knights Hospitaller, which order had a presence in Denmark from the later 12th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Several coins, seals, and images exist, both foreign and domestic, from the 13th to 15th centuries and even earlier, showing heraldic designs similar to Dannebrog, alongside the royal coat of arms (three blue lions on a golden shield.)",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "There is a record suggesting that the Danish army had a \"chief banner\" (hoffuitbanner) in the early 16th century. Such a banner is mentioned in 1570 by Niels Hemmingsøn in the context of a 1520 battle between Danes and Swedes near Uppsala as nearly captured by the Swedes but saved by the heroic actions of the banner-carrier Mogens Gyldenstierne and Peder Skram. The legend attributing the miraculous origin of the flag to the campaigns of Valdemar II of Denmark (r. 1202–1241) was recorded by Christiern Pedersen and Petrus Olai in the 1520s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Hans Svaning's History of King Hans from 1558 to 1559 and Johan Rantzau's History about the Last Dithmarschen War, from 1569, record the further fate of the Danish hoffuitbanner: According to this tradition, the original flag from the Battle of Lindanise was used in the small campaign of 1500 when King Hans tried to conquer Dithmarschen (in western Holstein in the north Germany). The flag was lost in a devastating defeat at the Battle of Hemmingstedt on 17 February 1500. In 1559, King Frederik II recaptured it during his own Dithmarschen campaign.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1576, the son of Johan Rantzau, Henrik Rantzau, also writes about the war and the fate of the flag, noting that the flag was in a poor condition when returned. He records that the flag after its return to Denmark was placed in the cathedral in Slesvig. Slesvig historian Ulrik Petersen (1656–1735) confirms the presence of such a banner in the cathedral in the early 17th century and records that it had crumbled away by about 1660.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Contemporary records describing the battle of Hemmingstedt make no reference to the loss of the original Dannebrog, although the capitulation state that all Danish banners lost in 1500 was to be returned. In a letter dated 22 February 1500 to Oluf Stigsøn, King John describes the battle but does not mention the loss of an important flag. In fact, the entire letter gives the impression that the lost battle was of limited importance. In 1598, Neocorus wrote that the banner captured in 1500 was brought to the church in Wöhrden and hung there for the next 59 years until it was returned to the Danes as part of the peace settlement in 1559.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Used as a maritime flag since the 16th century, the Dannebrog was introduced as a regimental flag in the Danish army in 1785, and for the militia (landeværn) in 1801. From 1842, it was used as the flag of the entire army.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "During the first half of the 19th century, in parallel to the development of Romantic nationalism in other European countries, the military flag increasingly came to be seen as representing the nation itself. Poems of this period invoking the Dannebrog were written by B.S. Ingemann, N.F.S. Grundtvig, Oehlenschläger, Chr. Winther and H.C. Andersen. By the 1830s, the military flag had become popular as an unofficial national flag, and its use by private citizens was outlawed in a circular enacted on 7 January 1834.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In the national enthusiasm sparked by the First Schleswig War during 1848–1850, the flag was still very widely displayed, and the prohibition of private use was repealed in a regulation of 7 July 1854, for the first time allowing Danish citizens to display the Dannebrog (but not the swallow-tailed Splitflag variant). Special permission to use the Splitflag was given to individual institutions and private companies, especially after 1870. In 1886, the war ministry introduced a regulation indicating that the flag should be flown from military buildings on thirteen specified days, including royal birthdays, the date of the signing of the Constitution of 5 June 1849 and on days of remembrance for military battles. In 1913, the naval ministry issued its own list of flag days. On 10 April 1915, the hoisting of any other flag on Danish soil was prohibited. This prohibition has been lifted on 24 June 2023, after a Supreme Court ruling. From 1939 until 2012, the yearbook Hvem-Hvad-Hvor included a list of flag days. As of 2019 flag days can be viewed at the \"Ministry of Justice (Justitsministeriet)\" as well as \"The Denmark Society (Danmarks-Samfundet)\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The size and shape of the civil ensign (\"Koffardiflaget\") for merchant ships is given in the regulation of 11 June 1748, which says: A red flag with a white cross with no split end. The white cross must be 1⁄7 of the flag's height. The two first fields must be square in form and the two outer fields must be 6⁄4 lengths of those. The proportions are thus: 3:1:3 vertically and 3:1:4.5 horizontally. This definition are the absolute proportions for the Danish national flag to this day, for both the civil version of the flag (\"Stutflaget\"), as well as the merchant flag (\"Handelsflaget\"). The civil flag and the merchant flag are identical in colour and design.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "A regulation passed in 1758 required Danish ships sailing in the Mediterranean to carry the royal cypher in the center of the flag in order to distinguish them from Maltese ships, due to the similarity of the flag of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "According to the regulation of 11 June 1748 the colour was simply red, which is common known today as \"Dannebrog rød\" (\"Dannebrog red\"). The only available red fabric dye in 1748 was made of madder root, which can be processed to produce a brilliant red dye (used historically for British soldiers' jackets). A regulation of 4 May 1927 once again states that Danish merchant ships have to fly flags according to the regulation of 1748.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The first regulation regarding the Splitflag dates from 27 March 1630, in which King Christian IV orders that Norwegian Defensionskibe (armed merchants ships) may only use the Splitflag if they are in Danish war service. In 1685 an order, distributed to a number of cities in Slesvig, states that all ships must carry the Danish flag, and in 1690 all merchant ships are forbidden to use the Splitflag, with the exception of ships sailing in the East Indies, West Indies and along the coast of Africa. In 1741 it is confirmed that the regulation of 1690 is still very much in effect; that merchant ships may not use the Splitflag. At the same time the Danish East India Company is allowed to fly the Splitflag when past the equator.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Some confusion must have existed regarding the Splitflag. In 1696 the Admiralty presented the King with a proposal for a standard regulating both size and shape of the Splitflag. In the same year a royal resolution defines the proportions of the Splitflag, which in this resolution is called Kongeflaget (the King's flag), as follows: The cross must be 1⁄7 of the flags height. The two first fields must be square in form with the sides three times the cross width. The two outer fields are rectangular and 1+1⁄2 the length of the square fields. The tails are the length of the flag.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "These numbers are the basic for the Splitflag, or Orlogsflag, today, though the numbers have been slightly altered. The term Orlogsflag dates from 1806 and denotes use in the Danish Navy.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "From about 1750 to the early 19th century, a number of ships and companies which the government has interests in, received approval to use the Splitflag.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In the royal resolution of 25 October 1939 for the Danish Navy, it is stated that the Orlogsflag is a Splitflag with a deep red (\"dybrød\") or madder red (\"kraprød\") colour. Like the National flag, no nuance is given, but in modern days this is given as 195U. Furthermore, the size and shape is corrected in this resolution to be: \"The cross must be 1⁄7 of the flag's height. The two first fields must be square in form with the height of 3⁄7 of the flag's height. The two outer fields are rectangular and 5⁄4 the length of the square fields. The tails are 6⁄4 the length of the rectangular fields\". Thus, if compared to the standard of 1696, both the rectangular fields and the tails have decreased in size.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The Splitflag and Orlogsflag have similar shapes but different sizes and shades of red. Legally, they are two different flags. The Splitflag is a Danish flag ending in a swallow-tail, it is Dannebrog red, and is used on land. The Orlogsflag is an elongated Splitflag with a deeper red colour and is only used on sea.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Orlogsflag with no markings, may only be used by the Royal Danish Navy. There are though a few exceptions to this. A few institutions have been allowed to fly the clean Orlogsflag. The same flag with markings has been approved for a few dozen companies and institutions over the years.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Furthermore, the Orlogsflag is only described as such if it has no additional markings. Any swallow-tail flag, no matter the colour, is called a Splitflag provided it bears additional markings.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The current version of the royal standard was introduced on 16 November 1972 when the Queen adopted a new version of her personal coat of arms. The royal standard is the flag of Denmark with a swallow-tail and charged with the monarch's coat of arms set in a white square. The centre square is 32 parts in a flag with the ratio 56:107.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Greenland and the Faroe Islands are autonomous territories within the Kingdom of Denmark. They have their own official flags.",
"title": "Other flags in the Kingdom of Denmark"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Some areas in Denmark have unofficial flags. While they have no legal recognition or regulation, they can be used freely.",
"title": "Other flags in the Kingdom of Denmark"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The regional flags of Bornholm and Ærø are occasionally used by locals of those islands and in tourist-related businesses.",
"title": "Other flags in the Kingdom of Denmark"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The proposal for a flag of Jutland has hardly found any actual use, maybe in part due to its peculiar design.",
"title": "Other flags in the Kingdom of Denmark"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
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| The national flag of Denmark is red with a white Nordic cross, which means that the cross extends to the edges of the flag and the vertical part of the cross is shifted to the hoist side. A banner with a white-on-red cross is attested as having been used by the kings of Denmark since the 14th century. An origin legend with considerable impact on Danish national historiography connects the introduction of the flag to the Battle of Lindanise of 1219. The elongated Nordic cross, which represents Christianity, reflects its use as a maritime flag in the 18th century. The flag became popular as a national flag in the early 16th century. Its private use was outlawed in 1834 but again permitted by a regulation of 1854. The flag holds the world record of being the oldest continuously used national flag, that is since 1625. | 2001-11-01T18:51:13Z | 2023-12-26T13:09:11Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Denmark |
8,753 | Dharma | Dharma (/ˈdɑːrmə/; Sanskrit: धर्म, romanized: Dharma, pronounced [dʱɐrmɐ] ) is a key concept with multiple meanings in the Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, among others. Although no single-word translation exists for dharma in English (or other European languages), the term is commonly understood as referring to behaviours that are in harmony with the "order and custom" that sustain life; "virtue", or "religious and moral duties".
In Hinduism, dharma denotes behaviours that are considered to be in accord with Ṛta—the "order and custom" that makes life and universe possible. This includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and "right way of living". The concept is believed to have a transtemporal validity, and is one of the four Puruṣārthas.
In Buddhism, dharma (Pali: Dhamma) refers to "cosmic law and order", as expressed by the teachings of the Buddha. In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is also the term for "phenomena". Dharma in Jainism refers to the teachings of Tirthankara (Jina) and the body of doctrine pertaining to the purification and moral transformation of humans. In Sikhism, dharma indicates the path of righteousness, proper religious practices, and performing one's own moral duties.
The concept of dharma was in use in the historical Vedic religion, and its meaning and conceptual scope has evolved over several millennia. The ancient Tamil text Tirukkuṟaḷ, despite being a collection of aphoristic teachings on dharma (aram), artha (porul), and kama (inpam), is completely and exclusively based on aṟam, the Tamil term for dharma. As with the other components of the Puruṣārtha, the concept of dharma is pan-Indian. The antonym of dharma is adharma.
The word dharma has roots in the Sanskrit dhr-, which means to hold or to support, and is related to Latin firmus (firm, stable). From this, it takes the meaning of "what is established or firm", and hence "law". It is derived from an older Vedic Sanskrit n-stem dharman-, with a literal meaning of "bearer, supporter", in a religious sense conceived as an aspect of Rta.
In the Rigveda, the word appears as an n-stem, dhárman-, with a range of meanings encompassing "something established or firm" (in the literal sense of prods or poles). Figuratively, it means "sustainer" and "supporter" (of deities). It is semantically similar to the Greek themis ("fixed decree, statute, law").
In Classical Sanskrit, and in the Vedic Sanskrit of the Atharvaveda, the stem is thematic: dhárma- (Devanagari: धर्म). In Prakrit and Pali, it is rendered dhamma. In some contemporary Indian languages and dialects it alternatively occurs as dharm.
In the 3rd century BCE the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka translated dharma into Greek and Aramaic and he used the Greek word eusebeia (εὐσέβεια, piety, spiritual maturity, or godliness) in the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription and the Kandahar Greek Edicts. In the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription he used the Aramaic word קשיטא (qšyṭ’; truth, rectitude).
Dharma is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion. It has multiple meanings in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. It is difficult to provide a single concise definition for dharma, as the word has a long and varied history and straddles a complex set of meanings and interpretations. There is no equivalent single-word synonym for dharma in western languages.
There have been numerous, conflicting attempts to translate ancient Sanskrit literature with the word dharma into German, English and French. The concept, claims Paul Horsch, has caused exceptional difficulties for modern commentators and translators. For example, while Grassmann's translation of Rig-Veda identifies seven different meanings of dharma, Karl Friedrich Geldner in his translation of the Rig-Veda employs 20 different translations for dharma, including meanings such as "law", "order", "duty", "custom", "quality", and "model", among others. However, the word dharma has become a widely accepted loanword in English, and is included in all modern unabridged English dictionaries.
The root of the word dharma is "dhr̥", which means "to support, hold, or bear". It is the thing that regulates the course of change by not participating in change, but that principle which remains constant. Monier-Williams, the widely cited resource for definitions and explanation of Sanskrit words and concepts of Hinduism, offers numerous definitions of the word dharma, such as that which is established or firm, steadfast decree, statute, law, practice, custom, duty, right, justice, virtue, morality, ethics, religion, religious merit, good works, nature, character, quality, property. Yet, each of these definitions is incomplete, while the combination of these translations does not convey the total sense of the word. In common parlance, dharma means "right way of living" and "path of rightness". Dharma also has connotations of order, and when combined with the word sanatana, it can also be described as eternal truth.
The meaning of the word dharma depends on the context, and its meaning has evolved as ideas of Hinduism have developed through history. In the earliest texts and ancient myths of Hinduism, dharma meant cosmic law, the rules that created the universe from chaos, as well as rituals; in later Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and the Epics, the meaning became refined, richer, and more complex, and the word was applied to diverse contexts. In certain contexts, dharma designates human behaviours considered necessary for order of things in the universe, principles that prevent chaos, behaviours and action necessary to all life in nature, society, family as well as at the individual level. Dharma encompasses ideas such as duty, rights, character, vocation, religion, customs and all behaviour considered appropriate, correct or morally upright. For further context, the word varnasramdharma is often used in its place, defined as dharma specifically related to the stage of life one is in.
The antonym of dharma is adharma (Sanskrit: अधर्म), meaning that which is "not dharma". As with dharma, the word adharma includes and implies many ideas; in common parlance, adharma means that which is against nature, immoral, unethical, wrong or unlawful.
In Buddhism, dharma incorporates the teachings and doctrines of the founder of Buddhism, the Buddha.
According to Pandurang Vaman Kane, author of the authoritative book History of Dharmaśāstra, the word dharma appears at least fifty-six times in the hymns of the Rigveda, as an adjective or noun. According to Paul Horsch, the word dharma has its origin in Vedic Hinduism. The hymns of the Rig Veda claim Brahman created the universe from chaos, they hold (dhar-) the earth and sun and stars apart, they support (dhar-) the sky away and distinct from earth, and they stabilise (dhar-) the quaking mountains and plains.
The gods, mainly Indra, then deliver and hold order from disorder, harmony from chaos, stability from instability – actions recited in the Veda with the root of word dharma. In hymns composed after the mythological verses, the word dharma takes expanded meaning as a cosmic principle and appears in verses independent of gods. It evolves into a concept, claims Paul Horsch, that has a dynamic functional sense in Atharvaveda for example, where it becomes the cosmic law that links cause and effect through a subject. Dharma, in these ancient texts, also takes a ritual meaning. The ritual is connected to the cosmic, and "dharmani" is equated to ceremonial devotion to the principles that gods used to create order from disorder, the world from chaos.
Past the ritual and cosmic sense of dharma that link the current world to mythical universe, the concept extends to an ethical-social sense that links human beings to each other and to other life forms. It is here that dharma as a concept of law emerges in Hinduism.
Dharma and related words are found in the oldest Vedic literature of Hinduism, in later Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, and the Epics; the word dharma also plays a central role in the literature of other Indian religions founded later, such as Buddhism and Jainism. According to Brereton, Dharman occurs 63 times in Rig-veda; in addition, words related to Dharman also appear in Rig-veda, for example once as dharmakrt, 6 times as satyadharman, and once as dharmavant, 4 times as dharman and twice as dhariman.
Indo-European parallels for "dharma" are known, but the only Iranian equivalent is Old Persian darmān "remedy", the meaning of which is rather removed from Indo-Aryan dhárman, suggesting that the word "dharma" did not have a major role in the Indo-Iranian period, and was principally developed more recently under the Vedic tradition.
However, it is thought that the Daena of Zoroastrianism, also meaning the "eternal Law" or "religion", is related to Sanskrit "dharma".
Ideas in parts overlapping to Dharma are found in other ancient cultures: such as Chinese Tao, Egyptian Maat, Sumerian Me.
In the mid-20th century, an inscription of the Indian Emperor Asoka from the year 258 BCE was discovered in Afghanistan, the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription. This rock inscription contains Greek and Aramaic text. According to Paul Hacker, on the rock appears a Greek rendering for the Sanskrit word dharma: the word eusebeia.
Scholars of Hellenistic Greece explain eusebeia as a complex concept. Eusebia means not only to venerate gods, but also spiritual maturity, a reverential attitude toward life, and includes the right conduct toward one's parents, siblings and children, the right conduct between husband and wife, and the conduct between biologically unrelated people. This rock inscription, concludes Paul Hacker, suggests dharma in India, about 2300 years ago, was a central concept and meant not only religious ideas, but ideas of right, of good, of one's duty toward the human community.
The evolving literature of Hinduism linked dharma to two other important concepts: Ṛta and Māyā. Ṛta in Vedas is the truth and cosmic principle which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it. Māyā in Rig-veda and later literature means illusion, fraud, deception, magic that misleads and creates disorder, thus is contrary to reality, laws and rules that establish order, predictability and harmony. Paul Horsch suggests Ṛta and dharma are parallel concepts, the former being a cosmic principle, the latter being of moral social sphere; while Māyā and dharma are also correlative concepts, the former being that which corrupts law and moral life, the later being that which strengthens law and moral life.
Day proposes dharma is a manifestation of Ṛta, but suggests Ṛta may have been subsumed into a more complex concept of dharma, as the idea developed in ancient India over time in a nonlinear manner. The following verse from the Rigveda is an example where rta and dharma are linked:
O Indra, lead us on the path of Rta, on the right path over all evils...
Dharma is an organising principle in Hinduism that applies to human beings in solitude, in their interaction with human beings and nature, as well as between inanimate objects, to all of cosmos and its parts. It refers to the order and customs which make life and universe possible, and includes behaviours, rituals, rules that govern society, and ethics. Hindu dharma includes the religious duties, moral rights and duties of each individual, as well as behaviours that enable social order, right conduct, and those that are virtuous. Dharma, according to Van Buitenen, is that which all existing beings must accept and respect to sustain harmony and order in the world. It is neither the act nor the result, but the natural laws that guide the act and create the result to prevent chaos in the world. It is innate characteristic, that makes the being what it is. It is, claims Van Buitenen, the pursuit and execution of one's nature and true calling, thus playing one's role in cosmic concert. In Hinduism, it is the dharma of the bee to make honey, of cow to give milk, of sun to radiate sunshine, of river to flow. In terms of humanity, dharma is the need for, the effect of and essence of service and interconnectedness of all life.
In its true essence, dharma means for a Hindu to "expand the mind". Furthermore, it represents the direct connection between the individual and the societal phenomena that bind the society together. In the way societal phenomena affect the conscience of the individual, similarly may the actions of an individual alter the course of the society, for better or for worse. This has been subtly echoed by the credo धर्मो धारयति प्रजा: meaning dharma is that which holds and provides support to the social construct.
In Hinduism, dharma generally includes various aspects:
The history section of this article discusses the development of dharma concept in Vedas. This development continued in the Upanishads and later ancient scripts of Hinduism. In Upanishads, the concept of dharma continues as universal principle of law, order, harmony, and truth. It acts as the regulatory moral principle of the Universe. It is explained as law of righteousness and equated to satya (Sanskrit: सत्यं, truth), in hymn 1.4.14 of Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, as follows:
धर्मः तस्माद्धर्मात् परं नास्त्य् अथो अबलीयान् बलीयाँसमाशँसते धर्मेण यथा राज्ञैवम् । यो वै स धर्मः सत्यं वै तत् तस्मात्सत्यं वदन्तमाहुर् धर्मं वदतीति धर्मं वा वदन्तँ सत्यं वदतीत्य् एतद्ध्येवैतदुभयं भवति ॥
Nothing is higher than dharma. The weak overcomes the stronger by dharma, as over a king. Truly that dharma is the Truth (Satya); Therefore, when a man speaks the Truth, they say, "He speaks the Dharma"; and if he speaks Dharma, they say, "He speaks the Truth!" For both are one.
The Hindu religion and philosophy, claims Daniel Ingalls, places major emphasis on individual practical morality. In the Sanskrit epics, this concern is omnipresent.
In the Second Book of Ramayana, for example, a peasant asks the King to do what dharma morally requires of him, the King agrees and does so even though his compliance with the law of dharma costs him dearly. Similarly, dharma is at the centre of all major events in the life of Rama, Sita, and Lakshman in Ramayana, claims Daniel Ingalls. Each episode of Ramayana presents life situations and ethical questions in symbolic terms. The issue is debated by the characters, finally the right prevails over wrong, the good over evil. For this reason, in Hindu Epics, the good, morally upright, law-abiding king is referred to as "dharmaraja".
In Mahabharata, the other major Indian epic, similarly, dharma is central, and it is presented with symbolism and metaphors. Near the end of the epic, the god Yama, referred to as dharma in the text, is portrayed as taking the form of a dog to test the compassion of Yudhishthira, who is told he may not enter paradise with such an animal, but refuses to abandon his companion, for which decision he is then praised by dharma. The value and appeal of the Mahabharata is not as much in its complex and rushed presentation of metaphysics in the 12th book, claims Ingalls, because Indian metaphysics is more eloquently presented in other Sanskrit scriptures; the appeal of Mahabharata, like Ramayana, is in its presentation of a series of moral problems and life situations, to which there are usually three answers given, according to Ingalls: one answer is of Bhima, which is the answer of brute force, an individual angle representing materialism, egoism, and self; the second answer is of Yudhishthira, which is always an appeal to piety and gods, of social virtue and of tradition; the third answer is of introspective Arjuna, which falls between the two extremes, and who, claims Ingalls, symbolically reveals the finest moral qualities of man. The Epics of Hinduism are a symbolic treatise about life, virtues, customs, morals, ethics, law, and other aspects of dharma. There is extensive discussion of dharma at the individual level in the Epics of Hinduism, observes Ingalls; for example, on free will versus destiny, when and why human beings believe in either, ultimately concluding that the strong and prosperous naturally uphold free will, while those facing grief or frustration naturally lean towards destiny. The Epics of Hinduism illustrate various aspects of dharma, they are a means of communicating dharma with metaphors.
According to Klaus Klostermaier, 4th-century CE Hindu scholar Vātsyāyana explained dharma by contrasting it with adharma. Vātsyāyana suggested that dharma is not merely in one's actions, but also in words one speaks or writes, and in thought. According to Vātsyāyana:
In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali the dharma is real; in the Vedanta it is unreal.
Dharma is part of yoga, suggests Patanjali; the elements of Hindu dharma are the attributes, qualities and aspects of yoga. Patanjali explained dharma in two categories: yamas (restraints) and niyamas (observances).
The five yamas, according to Patanjali, are: abstain from injury to all living creatures, abstain from falsehood (satya), abstain from unauthorised appropriation of things-of-value from another (acastrapurvaka), abstain from coveting or sexually cheating on your partner, and abstain from expecting or accepting gifts from others. The five yama apply in action, speech and mind. In explaining yama, Patanjali clarifies that certain professions and situations may require qualification in conduct. For example, a fisherman must injure a fish, but he must attempt to do this with least trauma to fish and the fisherman must try to injure no other creature as he fishes.
The five niyamas (observances) are cleanliness by eating pure food and removing impure thoughts (such as arrogance or jealousy or pride), contentment in one's means, meditation and silent reflection regardless of circumstances one faces, study and pursuit of historic knowledge, and devotion of all actions to the Supreme Teacher to achieve perfection of concentration.
Dharma is an empirical and experiential inquiry for every man and woman, according to some texts of Hinduism. For example, Apastamba Dharmasutra states:
Dharma and Adharma do not go around saying, "That is us." Neither do gods, nor gandharvas, nor ancestors declare what is Dharma and what is Adharma.
In other texts, three sources and means to discover dharma in Hinduism are described. These, according to Paul Hacker, are: First, learning historical knowledge such as Vedas, Upanishads, the Epics and other Sanskrit literature with the help of one's teacher. Second, observing the behaviour and example of good people. The third source applies when neither one's education nor example exemplary conduct is known. In this case, "atmatusti" is the source of dharma in Hinduism, that is the good person reflects and follows what satisfies his heart, his own inner feeling, what he feels driven to.
Some texts of Hinduism outline dharma for society and at the individual level. Of these, the most cited one is Manusmriti, which describes the four Varnas, their rights and duties. Most texts of Hinduism, however, discuss dharma with no mention of Varna (caste). Other dharma texts and Smritis differ from Manusmriti on the nature and structure of Varnas. Yet, other texts question the very existence of varna. Bhrigu, in the Epics, for example, presents the theory that dharma does not require any varnas. In practice, medieval India is widely believed to be a socially stratified society, with each social strata inheriting a profession and being endogamous. Varna was not absolute in Hindu dharma; individuals had the right to renounce and leave their Varna, as well as their asramas of life, in search of moksa. While neither Manusmriti nor succeeding Smritis of Hinduism ever use the word varnadharma (that is, the dharma of varnas), or varnasramadharma (that is, the dharma of varnas and asramas), the scholarly commentary on Manusmriti use these words, and thus associate dharma with varna system of India. In 6th century India, even Buddhist kings called themselves "protectors of varnasramadharma" – that is, dharma of varna and asramas of life.
At the individual level, some texts of Hinduism outline four āśramas, or stages of life as individual's dharma. These are: (1) brahmacārya, the life of preparation as a student, (2) gṛhastha, the life of the householder with family and other social roles, (3) vānprastha or aranyaka, the life of the forest-dweller, transitioning from worldly occupations to reflection and renunciation, and (4) sannyāsa, the life of giving away all property, becoming a recluse and devotion to moksa, spiritual matters.
The four stages of life complete the four human strivings in life, according to Hinduism. Dharma enables the individual to satisfy the striving for stability and order, a life that is lawful and harmonious, the striving to do the right thing, be good, be virtuous, earn religious merit, be helpful to others, interact successfully with society. The other three strivings are Artha – the striving for means of life such as food, shelter, power, security, material wealth, and so forth; Kama – the striving for sex, desire, pleasure, love, emotional fulfilment, and so forth; and Moksa – the striving for spiritual meaning, liberation from life-rebirth cycle, self-realisation in this life, and so forth. The four stages are neither independent nor exclusionary in Hindu dharma.
Dharma being necessary for individual and society, is dependent on poverty and prosperity in a society, according to Hindu dharma scriptures. For example, according to Adam Bowles, Shatapatha Brahmana 11.1.6.24 links social prosperity and dharma through water. Waters come from rains, it claims; when rains are abundant there is prosperity on the earth, and this prosperity enables people to follow Dharma – moral and lawful life. In times of distress, of drought, of poverty, everything suffers including relations between human beings and the human ability to live according to dharma.
In Rajadharmaparvan 91.34-8, the relationship between poverty and dharma reaches a full circle. A land with less moral and lawful life suffers distress, and as distress rises it causes more immoral and unlawful life, which further increases distress. Those in power must follow the raja dharma (that is, dharma of rulers), because this enables the society and the individual to follow dharma and achieve prosperity.
The notion of dharma as duty or propriety is found in India's ancient legal and religious texts. Common examples of such use are pitri dharma (meaning a person's duty as a father), putra dharma (a person's duty as a son), raj dharma (a person's duty as a king) and so forth. In Hindu philosophy, justice, social harmony, and happiness requires that people live per dharma. The Dharmashastra is a record of these guidelines and rules. The available evidence suggest India once had a large collection of dharma related literature (sutras, shastras); four of the sutras survive and these are now referred to as Dharmasutras. Along with laws of Manu in Dharmasutras, exist parallel and different compendium of laws, such as the laws of Narada and other ancient scholars. These different and conflicting law books are neither exclusive, nor do they supersede other sources of dharma in Hinduism. These Dharmasutras include instructions on education of the young, their rites of passage, customs, religious rites and rituals, marital rights and obligations, death and ancestral rites, laws and administration of justice, crimes, punishments, rules and types of evidence, duties of a king, as well as morality.
In Buddhism dharma means cosmic law and order, but is also applied to the teachings of the Buddha. In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is also the term for "phenomena".
For practising Buddhists, references to "dharma" (dhamma in Pali) particularly as "the dharma", generally means the teachings of the Buddha, commonly known throughout the East as Buddhadharma. It includes especially the discourses on the fundamental principles (such as the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path), as opposed to the parables and to the poems. The Buddha's teachings explain that in order to end suffering, dharma, or the right thoughts, understanding, actions and livelihood, should be cultivated.
The status of dharma is regarded variably by different Buddhist traditions. Some regard it as an ultimate truth, or as the fount of all things which lie beyond the "three realms" (Sanskrit: tridhatu) and the "wheel of becoming" (Sanskrit: bhavachakra). Others, who regard the Buddha as simply an enlightened human being, see the dharma as the essence of the "84,000 different aspects of the teaching" (Tibetan: chos-sgo brgyad-khri bzhi strong) that the Buddha gave to various types of people, based upon their individual propensities and capabilities.
Dharma refers not only to the sayings of the Buddha, but also to the later traditions of interpretation and addition that the various schools of Buddhism have developed to help explain and to expand upon the Buddha's teachings. For others still, they see the dharma as referring to the "truth", or the ultimate reality of "the way that things really are" (Tibetan: Chö).
The dharma is one of the Three Jewels of Buddhism in which practitioners of Buddhism seek refuge, or that upon which one relies for his or her lasting happiness. The Three Jewels of Buddhism are the Buddha, meaning the mind's perfection of enlightenment, the dharma, meaning the teachings and the methods of the Buddha, and the Sangha, meaning the community of practitioners who provide one another guidance and support.
Dharma is employed in Chan Buddhism in a specific context in relation to transmission of authentic doctrine, understanding and bodhi; recognised in dharma transmission.
In Theravada Buddhism obtaining ultimate realisation of the dhamma is achieved in three phases; learning, practising and realising.
In Pali
The word dharma in Jainism is found in all its key texts. It has a contextual meaning and refers to a number of ideas. In the broadest sense, it means the teachings of the Jinas, or teachings of any competing spiritual school, a supreme path, socio-religious duty, and that which is the highest mangala (holy).
The Tattvartha Sutra, a major Jain text, mentions daśa dharma (lit. 'ten dharmas') with referring to ten righteous virtues: forbearance, modesty, straightforwardness, purity, truthfulness, self-restraint, austerity, renunciation, non-attachment, and celibacy. Acārya Amṛtacandra, author of the Jain text, Puruṣārthasiddhyupāya writes:
A right believer should constantly meditate on virtues of dharma, like supreme modesty, in order to protect the Self from all contrary dispositions. He should also cover up the shortcomings of others.
The term dharmāstikāya (Sanskrit: धर्मास्तिकाय) also has a specific ontological and soteriological meaning in Jainism, as a part of its theory of six dravya (substance or a reality). In the Jain tradition, existence consists of jīva (soul, ātman) and ajīva (non-soul, anātman), the latter consisting of five categories: inert non-sentient atomic matter (pudgalāstikāya), space (ākāśa), time (kāla), principle of motion (dharmāstikāya), and principle of rest (adharmāstikāya). The use of the term dharmāstikāya to mean motion and to refer to an ontological sub-category is peculiar to Jainism, and not found in the metaphysics of Buddhism and various schools of Hinduism.
For Sikhs, the word dharam (Punjabi: ਧਰਮ, romanized: dharam) means the path of righteousness and proper religious practice. Guru Granth Sahib connotes dharma as duty and moral values. The 3HO movement in Western culture, which has incorporated certain Sikh beliefs, defines Sikh Dharma broadly as all that constitutes religion, moral duty and way of life.
Several works of the Sangam and post-Sangam period, many of which are of Hindu or Jain origin, emphasizes on dharma. Most of these texts are based on aṟam, the Tamil term for dharma. The ancient Tamil moral text of the Tirukkuṟaḷ or Kural, a text probably of Jain or Hindu origin, despite being a collection of aphoristic teachings on dharma (aram), artha (porul), and kama (inpam), is completely and exclusively based on aṟam. The Naladiyar, a Jain text of the post-Sangam period, follows a similar pattern as that of the Kural in emphasizing aṟam or dharma.
The importance of dharma to Indian civilization is illustrated by India's decision in 1947 to include the Ashoka Chakra, a depiction of the dharmachakra (the "wheel of dharma"), as the central motif on its flag. | [
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"text": "Dharma (/ˈdɑːrmə/; Sanskrit: धर्म, romanized: Dharma, pronounced [dʱɐrmɐ] ) is a key concept with multiple meanings in the Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, among others. Although no single-word translation exists for dharma in English (or other European languages), the term is commonly understood as referring to behaviours that are in harmony with the \"order and custom\" that sustain life; \"virtue\", or \"religious and moral duties\".",
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"text": "In Hinduism, dharma denotes behaviours that are considered to be in accord with Ṛta—the \"order and custom\" that makes life and universe possible. This includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and \"right way of living\". The concept is believed to have a transtemporal validity, and is one of the four Puruṣārthas.",
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"text": "In Buddhism, dharma (Pali: Dhamma) refers to \"cosmic law and order\", as expressed by the teachings of the Buddha. In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is also the term for \"phenomena\". Dharma in Jainism refers to the teachings of Tirthankara (Jina) and the body of doctrine pertaining to the purification and moral transformation of humans. In Sikhism, dharma indicates the path of righteousness, proper religious practices, and performing one's own moral duties.",
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"text": "The concept of dharma was in use in the historical Vedic religion, and its meaning and conceptual scope has evolved over several millennia. The ancient Tamil text Tirukkuṟaḷ, despite being a collection of aphoristic teachings on dharma (aram), artha (porul), and kama (inpam), is completely and exclusively based on aṟam, the Tamil term for dharma. As with the other components of the Puruṣārtha, the concept of dharma is pan-Indian. The antonym of dharma is adharma.",
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{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The word dharma has roots in the Sanskrit dhr-, which means to hold or to support, and is related to Latin firmus (firm, stable). From this, it takes the meaning of \"what is established or firm\", and hence \"law\". It is derived from an older Vedic Sanskrit n-stem dharman-, with a literal meaning of \"bearer, supporter\", in a religious sense conceived as an aspect of Rta.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the Rigveda, the word appears as an n-stem, dhárman-, with a range of meanings encompassing \"something established or firm\" (in the literal sense of prods or poles). Figuratively, it means \"sustainer\" and \"supporter\" (of deities). It is semantically similar to the Greek themis (\"fixed decree, statute, law\").",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In Classical Sanskrit, and in the Vedic Sanskrit of the Atharvaveda, the stem is thematic: dhárma- (Devanagari: धर्म). In Prakrit and Pali, it is rendered dhamma. In some contemporary Indian languages and dialects it alternatively occurs as dharm.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the 3rd century BCE the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka translated dharma into Greek and Aramaic and he used the Greek word eusebeia (εὐσέβεια, piety, spiritual maturity, or godliness) in the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription and the Kandahar Greek Edicts. In the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription he used the Aramaic word קשיטא (qšyṭ’; truth, rectitude).",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Dharma is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion. It has multiple meanings in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. It is difficult to provide a single concise definition for dharma, as the word has a long and varied history and straddles a complex set of meanings and interpretations. There is no equivalent single-word synonym for dharma in western languages.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "There have been numerous, conflicting attempts to translate ancient Sanskrit literature with the word dharma into German, English and French. The concept, claims Paul Horsch, has caused exceptional difficulties for modern commentators and translators. For example, while Grassmann's translation of Rig-Veda identifies seven different meanings of dharma, Karl Friedrich Geldner in his translation of the Rig-Veda employs 20 different translations for dharma, including meanings such as \"law\", \"order\", \"duty\", \"custom\", \"quality\", and \"model\", among others. However, the word dharma has become a widely accepted loanword in English, and is included in all modern unabridged English dictionaries.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The root of the word dharma is \"dhr̥\", which means \"to support, hold, or bear\". It is the thing that regulates the course of change by not participating in change, but that principle which remains constant. Monier-Williams, the widely cited resource for definitions and explanation of Sanskrit words and concepts of Hinduism, offers numerous definitions of the word dharma, such as that which is established or firm, steadfast decree, statute, law, practice, custom, duty, right, justice, virtue, morality, ethics, religion, religious merit, good works, nature, character, quality, property. Yet, each of these definitions is incomplete, while the combination of these translations does not convey the total sense of the word. In common parlance, dharma means \"right way of living\" and \"path of rightness\". Dharma also has connotations of order, and when combined with the word sanatana, it can also be described as eternal truth.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The meaning of the word dharma depends on the context, and its meaning has evolved as ideas of Hinduism have developed through history. In the earliest texts and ancient myths of Hinduism, dharma meant cosmic law, the rules that created the universe from chaos, as well as rituals; in later Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and the Epics, the meaning became refined, richer, and more complex, and the word was applied to diverse contexts. In certain contexts, dharma designates human behaviours considered necessary for order of things in the universe, principles that prevent chaos, behaviours and action necessary to all life in nature, society, family as well as at the individual level. Dharma encompasses ideas such as duty, rights, character, vocation, religion, customs and all behaviour considered appropriate, correct or morally upright. For further context, the word varnasramdharma is often used in its place, defined as dharma specifically related to the stage of life one is in.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The antonym of dharma is adharma (Sanskrit: अधर्म), meaning that which is \"not dharma\". As with dharma, the word adharma includes and implies many ideas; in common parlance, adharma means that which is against nature, immoral, unethical, wrong or unlawful.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In Buddhism, dharma incorporates the teachings and doctrines of the founder of Buddhism, the Buddha.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "According to Pandurang Vaman Kane, author of the authoritative book History of Dharmaśāstra, the word dharma appears at least fifty-six times in the hymns of the Rigveda, as an adjective or noun. According to Paul Horsch, the word dharma has its origin in Vedic Hinduism. The hymns of the Rig Veda claim Brahman created the universe from chaos, they hold (dhar-) the earth and sun and stars apart, they support (dhar-) the sky away and distinct from earth, and they stabilise (dhar-) the quaking mountains and plains.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The gods, mainly Indra, then deliver and hold order from disorder, harmony from chaos, stability from instability – actions recited in the Veda with the root of word dharma. In hymns composed after the mythological verses, the word dharma takes expanded meaning as a cosmic principle and appears in verses independent of gods. It evolves into a concept, claims Paul Horsch, that has a dynamic functional sense in Atharvaveda for example, where it becomes the cosmic law that links cause and effect through a subject. Dharma, in these ancient texts, also takes a ritual meaning. The ritual is connected to the cosmic, and \"dharmani\" is equated to ceremonial devotion to the principles that gods used to create order from disorder, the world from chaos.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Past the ritual and cosmic sense of dharma that link the current world to mythical universe, the concept extends to an ethical-social sense that links human beings to each other and to other life forms. It is here that dharma as a concept of law emerges in Hinduism.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Dharma and related words are found in the oldest Vedic literature of Hinduism, in later Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, and the Epics; the word dharma also plays a central role in the literature of other Indian religions founded later, such as Buddhism and Jainism. According to Brereton, Dharman occurs 63 times in Rig-veda; in addition, words related to Dharman also appear in Rig-veda, for example once as dharmakrt, 6 times as satyadharman, and once as dharmavant, 4 times as dharman and twice as dhariman.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Indo-European parallels for \"dharma\" are known, but the only Iranian equivalent is Old Persian darmān \"remedy\", the meaning of which is rather removed from Indo-Aryan dhárman, suggesting that the word \"dharma\" did not have a major role in the Indo-Iranian period, and was principally developed more recently under the Vedic tradition.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "However, it is thought that the Daena of Zoroastrianism, also meaning the \"eternal Law\" or \"religion\", is related to Sanskrit \"dharma\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Ideas in parts overlapping to Dharma are found in other ancient cultures: such as Chinese Tao, Egyptian Maat, Sumerian Me.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the mid-20th century, an inscription of the Indian Emperor Asoka from the year 258 BCE was discovered in Afghanistan, the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription. This rock inscription contains Greek and Aramaic text. According to Paul Hacker, on the rock appears a Greek rendering for the Sanskrit word dharma: the word eusebeia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Scholars of Hellenistic Greece explain eusebeia as a complex concept. Eusebia means not only to venerate gods, but also spiritual maturity, a reverential attitude toward life, and includes the right conduct toward one's parents, siblings and children, the right conduct between husband and wife, and the conduct between biologically unrelated people. This rock inscription, concludes Paul Hacker, suggests dharma in India, about 2300 years ago, was a central concept and meant not only religious ideas, but ideas of right, of good, of one's duty toward the human community.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The evolving literature of Hinduism linked dharma to two other important concepts: Ṛta and Māyā. Ṛta in Vedas is the truth and cosmic principle which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it. Māyā in Rig-veda and later literature means illusion, fraud, deception, magic that misleads and creates disorder, thus is contrary to reality, laws and rules that establish order, predictability and harmony. Paul Horsch suggests Ṛta and dharma are parallel concepts, the former being a cosmic principle, the latter being of moral social sphere; while Māyā and dharma are also correlative concepts, the former being that which corrupts law and moral life, the later being that which strengthens law and moral life.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Day proposes dharma is a manifestation of Ṛta, but suggests Ṛta may have been subsumed into a more complex concept of dharma, as the idea developed in ancient India over time in a nonlinear manner. The following verse from the Rigveda is an example where rta and dharma are linked:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "O Indra, lead us on the path of Rta, on the right path over all evils...",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Dharma is an organising principle in Hinduism that applies to human beings in solitude, in their interaction with human beings and nature, as well as between inanimate objects, to all of cosmos and its parts. It refers to the order and customs which make life and universe possible, and includes behaviours, rituals, rules that govern society, and ethics. Hindu dharma includes the religious duties, moral rights and duties of each individual, as well as behaviours that enable social order, right conduct, and those that are virtuous. Dharma, according to Van Buitenen, is that which all existing beings must accept and respect to sustain harmony and order in the world. It is neither the act nor the result, but the natural laws that guide the act and create the result to prevent chaos in the world. It is innate characteristic, that makes the being what it is. It is, claims Van Buitenen, the pursuit and execution of one's nature and true calling, thus playing one's role in cosmic concert. In Hinduism, it is the dharma of the bee to make honey, of cow to give milk, of sun to radiate sunshine, of river to flow. In terms of humanity, dharma is the need for, the effect of and essence of service and interconnectedness of all life.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In its true essence, dharma means for a Hindu to \"expand the mind\". Furthermore, it represents the direct connection between the individual and the societal phenomena that bind the society together. In the way societal phenomena affect the conscience of the individual, similarly may the actions of an individual alter the course of the society, for better or for worse. This has been subtly echoed by the credo धर्मो धारयति प्रजा: meaning dharma is that which holds and provides support to the social construct.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In Hinduism, dharma generally includes various aspects:",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The history section of this article discusses the development of dharma concept in Vedas. This development continued in the Upanishads and later ancient scripts of Hinduism. In Upanishads, the concept of dharma continues as universal principle of law, order, harmony, and truth. It acts as the regulatory moral principle of the Universe. It is explained as law of righteousness and equated to satya (Sanskrit: सत्यं, truth), in hymn 1.4.14 of Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, as follows:",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "धर्मः तस्माद्धर्मात् परं नास्त्य् अथो अबलीयान् बलीयाँसमाशँसते धर्मेण यथा राज्ञैवम् । यो वै स धर्मः सत्यं वै तत् तस्मात्सत्यं वदन्तमाहुर् धर्मं वदतीति धर्मं वा वदन्तँ सत्यं वदतीत्य् एतद्ध्येवैतदुभयं भवति ॥",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Nothing is higher than dharma. The weak overcomes the stronger by dharma, as over a king. Truly that dharma is the Truth (Satya); Therefore, when a man speaks the Truth, they say, \"He speaks the Dharma\"; and if he speaks Dharma, they say, \"He speaks the Truth!\" For both are one.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Hindu religion and philosophy, claims Daniel Ingalls, places major emphasis on individual practical morality. In the Sanskrit epics, this concern is omnipresent.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In the Second Book of Ramayana, for example, a peasant asks the King to do what dharma morally requires of him, the King agrees and does so even though his compliance with the law of dharma costs him dearly. Similarly, dharma is at the centre of all major events in the life of Rama, Sita, and Lakshman in Ramayana, claims Daniel Ingalls. Each episode of Ramayana presents life situations and ethical questions in symbolic terms. The issue is debated by the characters, finally the right prevails over wrong, the good over evil. For this reason, in Hindu Epics, the good, morally upright, law-abiding king is referred to as \"dharmaraja\".",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In Mahabharata, the other major Indian epic, similarly, dharma is central, and it is presented with symbolism and metaphors. Near the end of the epic, the god Yama, referred to as dharma in the text, is portrayed as taking the form of a dog to test the compassion of Yudhishthira, who is told he may not enter paradise with such an animal, but refuses to abandon his companion, for which decision he is then praised by dharma. The value and appeal of the Mahabharata is not as much in its complex and rushed presentation of metaphysics in the 12th book, claims Ingalls, because Indian metaphysics is more eloquently presented in other Sanskrit scriptures; the appeal of Mahabharata, like Ramayana, is in its presentation of a series of moral problems and life situations, to which there are usually three answers given, according to Ingalls: one answer is of Bhima, which is the answer of brute force, an individual angle representing materialism, egoism, and self; the second answer is of Yudhishthira, which is always an appeal to piety and gods, of social virtue and of tradition; the third answer is of introspective Arjuna, which falls between the two extremes, and who, claims Ingalls, symbolically reveals the finest moral qualities of man. The Epics of Hinduism are a symbolic treatise about life, virtues, customs, morals, ethics, law, and other aspects of dharma. There is extensive discussion of dharma at the individual level in the Epics of Hinduism, observes Ingalls; for example, on free will versus destiny, when and why human beings believe in either, ultimately concluding that the strong and prosperous naturally uphold free will, while those facing grief or frustration naturally lean towards destiny. The Epics of Hinduism illustrate various aspects of dharma, they are a means of communicating dharma with metaphors.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "According to Klaus Klostermaier, 4th-century CE Hindu scholar Vātsyāyana explained dharma by contrasting it with adharma. Vātsyāyana suggested that dharma is not merely in one's actions, but also in words one speaks or writes, and in thought. According to Vātsyāyana:",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali the dharma is real; in the Vedanta it is unreal.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Dharma is part of yoga, suggests Patanjali; the elements of Hindu dharma are the attributes, qualities and aspects of yoga. Patanjali explained dharma in two categories: yamas (restraints) and niyamas (observances).",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The five yamas, according to Patanjali, are: abstain from injury to all living creatures, abstain from falsehood (satya), abstain from unauthorised appropriation of things-of-value from another (acastrapurvaka), abstain from coveting or sexually cheating on your partner, and abstain from expecting or accepting gifts from others. The five yama apply in action, speech and mind. In explaining yama, Patanjali clarifies that certain professions and situations may require qualification in conduct. For example, a fisherman must injure a fish, but he must attempt to do this with least trauma to fish and the fisherman must try to injure no other creature as he fishes.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The five niyamas (observances) are cleanliness by eating pure food and removing impure thoughts (such as arrogance or jealousy or pride), contentment in one's means, meditation and silent reflection regardless of circumstances one faces, study and pursuit of historic knowledge, and devotion of all actions to the Supreme Teacher to achieve perfection of concentration.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Dharma is an empirical and experiential inquiry for every man and woman, according to some texts of Hinduism. For example, Apastamba Dharmasutra states:",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Dharma and Adharma do not go around saying, \"That is us.\" Neither do gods, nor gandharvas, nor ancestors declare what is Dharma and what is Adharma.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In other texts, three sources and means to discover dharma in Hinduism are described. These, according to Paul Hacker, are: First, learning historical knowledge such as Vedas, Upanishads, the Epics and other Sanskrit literature with the help of one's teacher. Second, observing the behaviour and example of good people. The third source applies when neither one's education nor example exemplary conduct is known. In this case, \"atmatusti\" is the source of dharma in Hinduism, that is the good person reflects and follows what satisfies his heart, his own inner feeling, what he feels driven to.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Some texts of Hinduism outline dharma for society and at the individual level. Of these, the most cited one is Manusmriti, which describes the four Varnas, their rights and duties. Most texts of Hinduism, however, discuss dharma with no mention of Varna (caste). Other dharma texts and Smritis differ from Manusmriti on the nature and structure of Varnas. Yet, other texts question the very existence of varna. Bhrigu, in the Epics, for example, presents the theory that dharma does not require any varnas. In practice, medieval India is widely believed to be a socially stratified society, with each social strata inheriting a profession and being endogamous. Varna was not absolute in Hindu dharma; individuals had the right to renounce and leave their Varna, as well as their asramas of life, in search of moksa. While neither Manusmriti nor succeeding Smritis of Hinduism ever use the word varnadharma (that is, the dharma of varnas), or varnasramadharma (that is, the dharma of varnas and asramas), the scholarly commentary on Manusmriti use these words, and thus associate dharma with varna system of India. In 6th century India, even Buddhist kings called themselves \"protectors of varnasramadharma\" – that is, dharma of varna and asramas of life.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "At the individual level, some texts of Hinduism outline four āśramas, or stages of life as individual's dharma. These are: (1) brahmacārya, the life of preparation as a student, (2) gṛhastha, the life of the householder with family and other social roles, (3) vānprastha or aranyaka, the life of the forest-dweller, transitioning from worldly occupations to reflection and renunciation, and (4) sannyāsa, the life of giving away all property, becoming a recluse and devotion to moksa, spiritual matters.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The four stages of life complete the four human strivings in life, according to Hinduism. Dharma enables the individual to satisfy the striving for stability and order, a life that is lawful and harmonious, the striving to do the right thing, be good, be virtuous, earn religious merit, be helpful to others, interact successfully with society. The other three strivings are Artha – the striving for means of life such as food, shelter, power, security, material wealth, and so forth; Kama – the striving for sex, desire, pleasure, love, emotional fulfilment, and so forth; and Moksa – the striving for spiritual meaning, liberation from life-rebirth cycle, self-realisation in this life, and so forth. The four stages are neither independent nor exclusionary in Hindu dharma.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Dharma being necessary for individual and society, is dependent on poverty and prosperity in a society, according to Hindu dharma scriptures. For example, according to Adam Bowles, Shatapatha Brahmana 11.1.6.24 links social prosperity and dharma through water. Waters come from rains, it claims; when rains are abundant there is prosperity on the earth, and this prosperity enables people to follow Dharma – moral and lawful life. In times of distress, of drought, of poverty, everything suffers including relations between human beings and the human ability to live according to dharma.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In Rajadharmaparvan 91.34-8, the relationship between poverty and dharma reaches a full circle. A land with less moral and lawful life suffers distress, and as distress rises it causes more immoral and unlawful life, which further increases distress. Those in power must follow the raja dharma (that is, dharma of rulers), because this enables the society and the individual to follow dharma and achieve prosperity.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The notion of dharma as duty or propriety is found in India's ancient legal and religious texts. Common examples of such use are pitri dharma (meaning a person's duty as a father), putra dharma (a person's duty as a son), raj dharma (a person's duty as a king) and so forth. In Hindu philosophy, justice, social harmony, and happiness requires that people live per dharma. The Dharmashastra is a record of these guidelines and rules. The available evidence suggest India once had a large collection of dharma related literature (sutras, shastras); four of the sutras survive and these are now referred to as Dharmasutras. Along with laws of Manu in Dharmasutras, exist parallel and different compendium of laws, such as the laws of Narada and other ancient scholars. These different and conflicting law books are neither exclusive, nor do they supersede other sources of dharma in Hinduism. These Dharmasutras include instructions on education of the young, their rites of passage, customs, religious rites and rituals, marital rights and obligations, death and ancestral rites, laws and administration of justice, crimes, punishments, rules and types of evidence, duties of a king, as well as morality.",
"title": "Hinduism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In Buddhism dharma means cosmic law and order, but is also applied to the teachings of the Buddha. In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is also the term for \"phenomena\".",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "For practising Buddhists, references to \"dharma\" (dhamma in Pali) particularly as \"the dharma\", generally means the teachings of the Buddha, commonly known throughout the East as Buddhadharma. It includes especially the discourses on the fundamental principles (such as the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path), as opposed to the parables and to the poems. The Buddha's teachings explain that in order to end suffering, dharma, or the right thoughts, understanding, actions and livelihood, should be cultivated.",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The status of dharma is regarded variably by different Buddhist traditions. Some regard it as an ultimate truth, or as the fount of all things which lie beyond the \"three realms\" (Sanskrit: tridhatu) and the \"wheel of becoming\" (Sanskrit: bhavachakra). Others, who regard the Buddha as simply an enlightened human being, see the dharma as the essence of the \"84,000 different aspects of the teaching\" (Tibetan: chos-sgo brgyad-khri bzhi strong) that the Buddha gave to various types of people, based upon their individual propensities and capabilities.",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Dharma refers not only to the sayings of the Buddha, but also to the later traditions of interpretation and addition that the various schools of Buddhism have developed to help explain and to expand upon the Buddha's teachings. For others still, they see the dharma as referring to the \"truth\", or the ultimate reality of \"the way that things really are\" (Tibetan: Chö).",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The dharma is one of the Three Jewels of Buddhism in which practitioners of Buddhism seek refuge, or that upon which one relies for his or her lasting happiness. The Three Jewels of Buddhism are the Buddha, meaning the mind's perfection of enlightenment, the dharma, meaning the teachings and the methods of the Buddha, and the Sangha, meaning the community of practitioners who provide one another guidance and support.",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Dharma is employed in Chan Buddhism in a specific context in relation to transmission of authentic doctrine, understanding and bodhi; recognised in dharma transmission.",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In Theravada Buddhism obtaining ultimate realisation of the dhamma is achieved in three phases; learning, practising and realising.",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In Pali",
"title": "Buddhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The word dharma in Jainism is found in all its key texts. It has a contextual meaning and refers to a number of ideas. In the broadest sense, it means the teachings of the Jinas, or teachings of any competing spiritual school, a supreme path, socio-religious duty, and that which is the highest mangala (holy).",
"title": "Jainism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The Tattvartha Sutra, a major Jain text, mentions daśa dharma (lit. 'ten dharmas') with referring to ten righteous virtues: forbearance, modesty, straightforwardness, purity, truthfulness, self-restraint, austerity, renunciation, non-attachment, and celibacy. Acārya Amṛtacandra, author of the Jain text, Puruṣārthasiddhyupāya writes:",
"title": "Jainism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "A right believer should constantly meditate on virtues of dharma, like supreme modesty, in order to protect the Self from all contrary dispositions. He should also cover up the shortcomings of others.",
"title": "Jainism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The term dharmāstikāya (Sanskrit: धर्मास्तिकाय) also has a specific ontological and soteriological meaning in Jainism, as a part of its theory of six dravya (substance or a reality). In the Jain tradition, existence consists of jīva (soul, ātman) and ajīva (non-soul, anātman), the latter consisting of five categories: inert non-sentient atomic matter (pudgalāstikāya), space (ākāśa), time (kāla), principle of motion (dharmāstikāya), and principle of rest (adharmāstikāya). The use of the term dharmāstikāya to mean motion and to refer to an ontological sub-category is peculiar to Jainism, and not found in the metaphysics of Buddhism and various schools of Hinduism.",
"title": "Jainism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "For Sikhs, the word dharam (Punjabi: ਧਰਮ, romanized: dharam) means the path of righteousness and proper religious practice. Guru Granth Sahib connotes dharma as duty and moral values. The 3HO movement in Western culture, which has incorporated certain Sikh beliefs, defines Sikh Dharma broadly as all that constitutes religion, moral duty and way of life.",
"title": "Sikhism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Several works of the Sangam and post-Sangam period, many of which are of Hindu or Jain origin, emphasizes on dharma. Most of these texts are based on aṟam, the Tamil term for dharma. The ancient Tamil moral text of the Tirukkuṟaḷ or Kural, a text probably of Jain or Hindu origin, despite being a collection of aphoristic teachings on dharma (aram), artha (porul), and kama (inpam), is completely and exclusively based on aṟam. The Naladiyar, a Jain text of the post-Sangam period, follows a similar pattern as that of the Kural in emphasizing aṟam or dharma.",
"title": "In Sangam literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The importance of dharma to Indian civilization is illustrated by India's decision in 1947 to include the Ashoka Chakra, a depiction of the dharmachakra (the \"wheel of dharma\"), as the central motif on its flag.",
"title": "Dharma in symbols"
}
]
| Dharma is a key concept with multiple meanings in the Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, among others. Although no single-word translation exists for dharma in English, the term is commonly understood as referring to behaviours that are in harmony with the "order and custom" that sustain life; "virtue", or "religious and moral duties". In Hinduism, dharma denotes behaviours that are considered to be in accord with Ṛta—the "order and custom" that makes life and universe possible. This includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and "right way of living". The concept is believed to have a transtemporal validity, and is one of the four Puruṣārthas. In Buddhism, dharma refers to "cosmic law and order", as expressed by the teachings of the Buddha. In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is also the term for "phenomena". Dharma in Jainism refers to the teachings of Tirthankara (Jina) and the body of doctrine pertaining to the purification and moral transformation of humans. In Sikhism, dharma indicates the path of righteousness, proper religious practices, and performing one's own moral duties. The concept of dharma was in use in the historical Vedic religion, and its meaning and conceptual scope has evolved over several millennia. The ancient Tamil text Tirukkuṟaḷ, despite being a collection of aphoristic teachings on dharma (aram), artha (porul), and kama (inpam), is completely and exclusively based on aṟam, the Tamil term for dharma. As with the other components of the Puruṣārtha, the concept of dharma is pan-Indian. The antonym of dharma is adharma. | 2001-11-01T19:32:40Z | 2023-12-26T18:11:33Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma |
8,756 | Daniel Dennett | Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.
As of 2017, he is the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Dennett is a member of the editorial board for The Rutherford Journal and a co-founder of The Clergy Project.
A vocal atheist and secularist, Dennett is referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism", along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens.
Daniel Clement Dennett III was born on March 28, 1942, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth Marjorie (née Leck; 1903–1971) and Daniel Clement Dennett Jr. (1910–1947). Dennett spent part of his childhood in Lebanon, where, during World War II, his father, who had a PhD in Islamic Studies from Harvard University, was a covert counter-intelligence agent with the Office of Strategic Services posing as a cultural attaché to the American Embassy in Beirut. His mother, an English major at Carleton College, went for a master's degree at the University of Minnesota before becoming an English teacher at the American Community School in Beirut. In 1947, his father was killed in a plane crash in Ethiopia. Shortly after, his mother took him back to Massachusetts. Dennett's sister is the investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett. Dennett says that he was first introduced to the notion of philosophy while attending summer camp at age 11, when a camp counselor said to him, "You know what you are, Daniel? You're a philosopher."
Dennett graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1959, and spent one year at Wesleyan University before receiving his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy at Harvard University in 1963. There, he was a student of W. V. Quine. In 1965, he received his Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he studied under Gilbert Ryle and was a member of Hertford College. His dissertation was entitled The Mind and the Brain: Introspective Description in the Light of Neurological Findings; Intentionality.
Dennett taught at the University of California, Irvine, from 1965 to 1971, before moving to Tufts University, where he settled in for many decades, aside from periods visiting at Harvard University and several other schools.
Dennett describes himself as "an autodidact—or, more properly, the beneficiary of hundreds of hours of informal tutorials on all the fields that interest me, from some of the world's leading scientists".
He is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. He was named 2004 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. In 2006, Dennett received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
In February 2010, he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.
In 2012, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize, an annual award for a person who has made an exceptional contribution to European culture, society or social science, "for his ability to translate the cultural significance of science and technology to a broad audience."
In 2018, he was awarded an honorary degree by Radboud University, located in Nijmegen, Netherlands, for his contributions to and influence on cross-disciplinary science.
While he is a confirmed compatibilist on free will, in "On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want"—chapter 15 of his 1978 book Brainstorms—Dennett articulated the case for a two-stage model of decision making in contrast to libertarian views.
The model of decision making I am proposing has the following feature: when we are faced with an important decision, a consideration-generator whose output is to some degree undetermined, produces a series of considerations, some of which may of course be immediately rejected as irrelevant by the agent (consciously or unconsciously). Those considerations that are selected by the agent as having a more than negligible bearing on the decision then figure in a reasoning process, and if the agent is in the main reasonable, those considerations ultimately serve as predictors and explicators of the agent's final decision.
While other philosophers have developed two-stage models, including William James, Henri Poincaré, Arthur Compton, and Henry Margenau, Dennett defends this model for the following reasons:
These prior and subsidiary decisions contribute, I think, to our sense of ourselves as responsible free agents, roughly in the following way: I am faced with an important decision to make, and after a certain amount of deliberation, I say to myself: "That's enough. I've considered this matter enough and now I'm going to act," in the full knowledge that I could have considered further, in the full knowledge that the eventualities may prove that I decided in error, but with the acceptance of responsibility in any case.
Leading libertarian philosophers such as Robert Kane have rejected Dennett's model, specifically that random chance is directly involved in a decision, on the basis that they believe this eliminates the agent's motives and reasons, character and values, and feelings and desires. They claim that, if chance is the primary cause of decisions, then agents cannot be liable for resultant actions. Kane says:
[As Dennett admits,] a causal indeterminist view of this deliberative kind does not give us everything libertarians have wanted from free will. For [the agent] does not have complete control over what chance images and other thoughts enter his mind or influence his deliberation. They simply come as they please. [The agent] does have some control after the chance considerations have occurred.
But then there is no more chance involved. What happens from then on, how he reacts, is determined by desires and beliefs he already has. So it appears that he does not have control in the libertarian sense of what happens after the chance considerations occur as well. Libertarians require more than this for full responsibility and free will.
Dennett has remarked in several places (such as "Self-portrait", in Brainchildren) that his overall philosophical project has remained largely the same since his time at Oxford. He is primarily concerned with providing a philosophy of mind that is grounded in empirical research. In his original dissertation, Content and Consciousness, he broke up the problem of explaining the mind into the need for a theory of content and for a theory of consciousness. His approach to this project has also stayed true to this distinction. Just as Content and Consciousness has a bipartite structure, he similarly divided Brainstorms into two sections. He would later collect several essays on content in The Intentional Stance and synthesize his views on consciousness into a unified theory in Consciousness Explained. These volumes respectively form the most extensive development of his views.
In chapter 5 of Consciousness Explained Dennett describes his multiple drafts model of consciousness. He states that, "all varieties of perception—indeed all varieties of thought or mental activity—are accomplished in the brain by parallel, multitrack processes of interpretation and elaboration of sensory inputs. Information entering the nervous system is under continuous 'editorial revision.'" (p. 111). Later he asserts, "These yield, over the course of time, something rather like a narrative stream or sequence, which can be thought of as subject to continual editing by many processes distributed around the brain, ..." (p. 135, emphasis in the original).
In this work, Dennett's interest in the ability of evolution to explain some of the content-producing features of consciousness is already apparent, and this has since become an integral part of his program. He states his view is materialist and scientific, and he presents an argument against qualia; he argues that the concept of qualia is so confused that it cannot be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore does not constitute a valid refutation of physicalism.
This view is rejected by neuroscientists Gerald Edelman, Antonio Damasio, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Giulio Tononi, and Rodolfo Llinás, all of whom state that qualia exist and that the desire to eliminate them is based on an erroneous interpretation on the part of some philosophers regarding what constitutes science.
Dennett's strategy mirrors his teacher Ryle's approach of redefining first person phenomena in third person terms, and denying the coherence of the concepts which this approach struggles with.
Dennett self-identifies with a few terms:
[Others] note that my "avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters" often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard time figuring out what I am saying and what I am denying. My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless—a major obstacle to progress since it consists of so many errors.
In Consciousness Explained, he affirms "I am a sort of 'teleofunctionalist', of course, perhaps the original teleofunctionalist". He goes on to say, "I am ready to come out of the closet as some sort of verificationist" (pp. 460–61).
Much of Dennett's work since the 1990s has been concerned with fleshing out his previous ideas by addressing the same topics from an evolutionary standpoint, from what distinguishes human minds from animal minds (Kinds of Minds), to how free will is compatible with a naturalist view of the world (Freedom Evolves).
Dennett sees evolution by natural selection as an algorithmic process (though he spells out that algorithms as simple as long division often incorporate a significant degree of randomness). This idea is in conflict with the evolutionary philosophy of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who preferred to stress the "pluralism" of evolution (i.e., its dependence on many crucial factors, of which natural selection is only one).
Dennett's views on evolution are identified as being strongly adaptationist, in line with his theory of the intentional stance, and the evolutionary views of biologist Richard Dawkins. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett showed himself even more willing than Dawkins to defend adaptationism in print, devoting an entire chapter to a criticism of the ideas of Gould. This stems from Gould's long-running public debate with E. O. Wilson and other evolutionary biologists over human sociobiology and its descendant evolutionary psychology, which Gould and Richard Lewontin opposed, but which Dennett advocated, together with Dawkins and Steven Pinker. Gould argued that Dennett overstated his claims and misrepresented Gould's, to reinforce what Gould describes as Dennett's "Darwinian fundamentalism".
Dennett's theories have had a significant influence on the work of evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller.
Dennett is a vocal atheist and secularist, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, and a member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, as well as an outspoken supporter of the Brights movement. Dennett is referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism", along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens.
In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett writes that evolution can account for the origin of morality. He rejects the idea that morality being natural to us implies that we should take a skeptical position regarding ethics, noting that what is fallacious in the naturalistic fallacy is not to support values per se, but rather to rush from facts to values.
In his 2006 book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Dennett attempts to account for religious belief naturalistically, explaining possible evolutionary reasons for the phenomenon of religious adherence. In this book he declares himself to be "a bright", and defends the term.
He has been doing research into clerics who are secretly atheists and how they rationalize their works. He found what he called a "don't ask, don't tell" conspiracy because believers did not want to hear of loss of faith. That made unbelieving preachers feel isolated but they did not want to lose their jobs and sometimes their church-supplied lodgings and generally consoled themselves that they were doing good in their pastoral roles by providing comfort and required ritual. The research, with Linda LaScola, was further extended to include other denominations and non-Christian clerics. The research and stories Dennett and LaScola accumulated during this project were published in their 2013 co-authored book, Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind.
Dennett wrote about and advocated the notion of memetics as a philosophically useful tool, most recently in his "Brains, Computers, and Minds", a three-part presentation through Harvard's MBB 2009 Distinguished Lecture Series.
Dennett has been critical of postmodernism, having said:
Postmodernism, the school of "thought" that proclaimed "There are no truths, only interpretations" has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for "conversations" in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.
Dennett adopted and somewhat redefined the term "deepity", originally coined by Miriam Weizenbaum. Dennett used "deepity" for a statement that is apparently profound, but is actually trivial on one level and meaningless on another. Generally, a deepity has two (or more) meanings: one that is true but trivial, and another that sounds profound and would be important if true, but is actually false or meaningless. Examples are "Que será será!", "Beauty is only skin deep!", "The power of intention can transform your life." The term has been cited many times.
While approving of the increase in efficiency that humans reap by using resources such as expert systems in medicine or GPS in navigation, Dennett sees a danger in machines performing an ever-increasing proportion of basic tasks in perception, memory, and algorithmic computation because people may tend to anthropomorphize such systems and attribute intellectual powers to them that they do not possess. He believes the relevant danger from artificial intelligence (AI) is that people will misunderstand the nature of basically "parasitic" AI systems, rather than employing them constructively to challenge and develop the human user's powers of comprehension.
As given in his most recent book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Dennett's views are contrary to those of Nick Bostrom. Although acknowledging that it is "possible in principle" to create AI with human-like comprehension and agency, Dennett maintains that the difficulties of any such "strong AI" project would be orders of magnitude greater than those raising concerns have realized. According to Dennett, the prospect of superintelligence (AI massively exceeding the cognitive performance of humans in all domains) is at least 50 years away, and of far less pressing significance than other problems the world faces.
Dennett is known for his nuanced stance on realism. While he supports scientific realism, advocating that entities and phenomena posited by scientific theories exist independently of our perceptions, he leans towards instrumentalism concerning certain theoretical entities, valuing their explanatory and predictive utility, as showing in his discussion of real patterns. Dennett's pragmatic realism underlines the entanglement of language, consciousness, and reality. He posits that our discourse about reality is mediated by our cognitive and linguistic capacities, marking a departure from naive realism.
Dennett's philosophical stance on realism is intricately connected to his views on instrumentalism and the theory of real patterns. He draws a distinction between illata, which are genuine theoretical entities like electrons, and abstracta, which are "calculation bound entities or logical constructs" such as centers of gravity and the equator, placing beliefs and the like among the latter. One of Dennett's principal arguments is an instrumentalistic construal of intentional attributions, asserting that such attributions are environment relative.
In discussing intentional states, Dennett posits that they should not be thought of as resembling theoretical entities, but rather as logical constructs, avoiding the pitfalls of intentional realism without lapsing into pure instrumentalism or even eliminativism. His instrumentalism and anti-realism are crucial aspects of his view on intentionality, emphasizing the centrality and indispensability of the intentional stance to our conceptual scheme.
Dennett married Susan Bell in 1962. They live in North Andover, Massachusetts, and have a daughter, a son, and five grandchildren. He is an avid sailor. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "As of 2017, he is the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Dennett is a member of the editorial board for The Rutherford Journal and a co-founder of The Clergy Project.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A vocal atheist and secularist, Dennett is referred to as one of the \"Four Horsemen of New Atheism\", along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Daniel Clement Dennett III was born on March 28, 1942, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth Marjorie (née Leck; 1903–1971) and Daniel Clement Dennett Jr. (1910–1947). Dennett spent part of his childhood in Lebanon, where, during World War II, his father, who had a PhD in Islamic Studies from Harvard University, was a covert counter-intelligence agent with the Office of Strategic Services posing as a cultural attaché to the American Embassy in Beirut. His mother, an English major at Carleton College, went for a master's degree at the University of Minnesota before becoming an English teacher at the American Community School in Beirut. In 1947, his father was killed in a plane crash in Ethiopia. Shortly after, his mother took him back to Massachusetts. Dennett's sister is the investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett. Dennett says that he was first introduced to the notion of philosophy while attending summer camp at age 11, when a camp counselor said to him, \"You know what you are, Daniel? You're a philosopher.\"",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Dennett graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1959, and spent one year at Wesleyan University before receiving his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy at Harvard University in 1963. There, he was a student of W. V. Quine. In 1965, he received his Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he studied under Gilbert Ryle and was a member of Hertford College. His dissertation was entitled The Mind and the Brain: Introspective Description in the Light of Neurological Findings; Intentionality.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Dennett taught at the University of California, Irvine, from 1965 to 1971, before moving to Tufts University, where he settled in for many decades, aside from periods visiting at Harvard University and several other schools.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Dennett describes himself as \"an autodidact—or, more properly, the beneficiary of hundreds of hours of informal tutorials on all the fields that interest me, from some of the world's leading scientists\".",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "He is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. He was named 2004 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. In 2006, Dennett received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In February 2010, he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 2012, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize, an annual award for a person who has made an exceptional contribution to European culture, society or social science, \"for his ability to translate the cultural significance of science and technology to a broad audience.\"",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 2018, he was awarded an honorary degree by Radboud University, located in Nijmegen, Netherlands, for his contributions to and influence on cross-disciplinary science.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "While he is a confirmed compatibilist on free will, in \"On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want\"—chapter 15 of his 1978 book Brainstorms—Dennett articulated the case for a two-stage model of decision making in contrast to libertarian views.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The model of decision making I am proposing has the following feature: when we are faced with an important decision, a consideration-generator whose output is to some degree undetermined, produces a series of considerations, some of which may of course be immediately rejected as irrelevant by the agent (consciously or unconsciously). Those considerations that are selected by the agent as having a more than negligible bearing on the decision then figure in a reasoning process, and if the agent is in the main reasonable, those considerations ultimately serve as predictors and explicators of the agent's final decision.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "While other philosophers have developed two-stage models, including William James, Henri Poincaré, Arthur Compton, and Henry Margenau, Dennett defends this model for the following reasons:",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "These prior and subsidiary decisions contribute, I think, to our sense of ourselves as responsible free agents, roughly in the following way: I am faced with an important decision to make, and after a certain amount of deliberation, I say to myself: \"That's enough. I've considered this matter enough and now I'm going to act,\" in the full knowledge that I could have considered further, in the full knowledge that the eventualities may prove that I decided in error, but with the acceptance of responsibility in any case.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Leading libertarian philosophers such as Robert Kane have rejected Dennett's model, specifically that random chance is directly involved in a decision, on the basis that they believe this eliminates the agent's motives and reasons, character and values, and feelings and desires. They claim that, if chance is the primary cause of decisions, then agents cannot be liable for resultant actions. Kane says:",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "[As Dennett admits,] a causal indeterminist view of this deliberative kind does not give us everything libertarians have wanted from free will. For [the agent] does not have complete control over what chance images and other thoughts enter his mind or influence his deliberation. They simply come as they please. [The agent] does have some control after the chance considerations have occurred.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "But then there is no more chance involved. What happens from then on, how he reacts, is determined by desires and beliefs he already has. So it appears that he does not have control in the libertarian sense of what happens after the chance considerations occur as well. Libertarians require more than this for full responsibility and free will.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Dennett has remarked in several places (such as \"Self-portrait\", in Brainchildren) that his overall philosophical project has remained largely the same since his time at Oxford. He is primarily concerned with providing a philosophy of mind that is grounded in empirical research. In his original dissertation, Content and Consciousness, he broke up the problem of explaining the mind into the need for a theory of content and for a theory of consciousness. His approach to this project has also stayed true to this distinction. Just as Content and Consciousness has a bipartite structure, he similarly divided Brainstorms into two sections. He would later collect several essays on content in The Intentional Stance and synthesize his views on consciousness into a unified theory in Consciousness Explained. These volumes respectively form the most extensive development of his views.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In chapter 5 of Consciousness Explained Dennett describes his multiple drafts model of consciousness. He states that, \"all varieties of perception—indeed all varieties of thought or mental activity—are accomplished in the brain by parallel, multitrack processes of interpretation and elaboration of sensory inputs. Information entering the nervous system is under continuous 'editorial revision.'\" (p. 111). Later he asserts, \"These yield, over the course of time, something rather like a narrative stream or sequence, which can be thought of as subject to continual editing by many processes distributed around the brain, ...\" (p. 135, emphasis in the original).",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In this work, Dennett's interest in the ability of evolution to explain some of the content-producing features of consciousness is already apparent, and this has since become an integral part of his program. He states his view is materialist and scientific, and he presents an argument against qualia; he argues that the concept of qualia is so confused that it cannot be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore does not constitute a valid refutation of physicalism.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "This view is rejected by neuroscientists Gerald Edelman, Antonio Damasio, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Giulio Tononi, and Rodolfo Llinás, all of whom state that qualia exist and that the desire to eliminate them is based on an erroneous interpretation on the part of some philosophers regarding what constitutes science.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Dennett's strategy mirrors his teacher Ryle's approach of redefining first person phenomena in third person terms, and denying the coherence of the concepts which this approach struggles with.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Dennett self-identifies with a few terms:",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "[Others] note that my \"avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters\" often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard time figuring out what I am saying and what I am denying. My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless—a major obstacle to progress since it consists of so many errors.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In Consciousness Explained, he affirms \"I am a sort of 'teleofunctionalist', of course, perhaps the original teleofunctionalist\". He goes on to say, \"I am ready to come out of the closet as some sort of verificationist\" (pp. 460–61).",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Much of Dennett's work since the 1990s has been concerned with fleshing out his previous ideas by addressing the same topics from an evolutionary standpoint, from what distinguishes human minds from animal minds (Kinds of Minds), to how free will is compatible with a naturalist view of the world (Freedom Evolves).",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Dennett sees evolution by natural selection as an algorithmic process (though he spells out that algorithms as simple as long division often incorporate a significant degree of randomness). This idea is in conflict with the evolutionary philosophy of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who preferred to stress the \"pluralism\" of evolution (i.e., its dependence on many crucial factors, of which natural selection is only one).",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Dennett's views on evolution are identified as being strongly adaptationist, in line with his theory of the intentional stance, and the evolutionary views of biologist Richard Dawkins. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett showed himself even more willing than Dawkins to defend adaptationism in print, devoting an entire chapter to a criticism of the ideas of Gould. This stems from Gould's long-running public debate with E. O. Wilson and other evolutionary biologists over human sociobiology and its descendant evolutionary psychology, which Gould and Richard Lewontin opposed, but which Dennett advocated, together with Dawkins and Steven Pinker. Gould argued that Dennett overstated his claims and misrepresented Gould's, to reinforce what Gould describes as Dennett's \"Darwinian fundamentalism\".",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Dennett's theories have had a significant influence on the work of evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Dennett is a vocal atheist and secularist, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, and a member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, as well as an outspoken supporter of the Brights movement. Dennett is referred to as one of the \"Four Horsemen of New Atheism\", along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett writes that evolution can account for the origin of morality. He rejects the idea that morality being natural to us implies that we should take a skeptical position regarding ethics, noting that what is fallacious in the naturalistic fallacy is not to support values per se, but rather to rush from facts to values.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In his 2006 book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Dennett attempts to account for religious belief naturalistically, explaining possible evolutionary reasons for the phenomenon of religious adherence. In this book he declares himself to be \"a bright\", and defends the term.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "He has been doing research into clerics who are secretly atheists and how they rationalize their works. He found what he called a \"don't ask, don't tell\" conspiracy because believers did not want to hear of loss of faith. That made unbelieving preachers feel isolated but they did not want to lose their jobs and sometimes their church-supplied lodgings and generally consoled themselves that they were doing good in their pastoral roles by providing comfort and required ritual. The research, with Linda LaScola, was further extended to include other denominations and non-Christian clerics. The research and stories Dennett and LaScola accumulated during this project were published in their 2013 co-authored book, Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Dennett wrote about and advocated the notion of memetics as a philosophically useful tool, most recently in his \"Brains, Computers, and Minds\", a three-part presentation through Harvard's MBB 2009 Distinguished Lecture Series.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Dennett has been critical of postmodernism, having said:",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Postmodernism, the school of \"thought\" that proclaimed \"There are no truths, only interpretations\" has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for \"conversations\" in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Dennett adopted and somewhat redefined the term \"deepity\", originally coined by Miriam Weizenbaum. Dennett used \"deepity\" for a statement that is apparently profound, but is actually trivial on one level and meaningless on another. Generally, a deepity has two (or more) meanings: one that is true but trivial, and another that sounds profound and would be important if true, but is actually false or meaningless. Examples are \"Que será será!\", \"Beauty is only skin deep!\", \"The power of intention can transform your life.\" The term has been cited many times.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "While approving of the increase in efficiency that humans reap by using resources such as expert systems in medicine or GPS in navigation, Dennett sees a danger in machines performing an ever-increasing proportion of basic tasks in perception, memory, and algorithmic computation because people may tend to anthropomorphize such systems and attribute intellectual powers to them that they do not possess. He believes the relevant danger from artificial intelligence (AI) is that people will misunderstand the nature of basically \"parasitic\" AI systems, rather than employing them constructively to challenge and develop the human user's powers of comprehension.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "As given in his most recent book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Dennett's views are contrary to those of Nick Bostrom. Although acknowledging that it is \"possible in principle\" to create AI with human-like comprehension and agency, Dennett maintains that the difficulties of any such \"strong AI\" project would be orders of magnitude greater than those raising concerns have realized. According to Dennett, the prospect of superintelligence (AI massively exceeding the cognitive performance of humans in all domains) is at least 50 years away, and of far less pressing significance than other problems the world faces.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Dennett is known for his nuanced stance on realism. While he supports scientific realism, advocating that entities and phenomena posited by scientific theories exist independently of our perceptions, he leans towards instrumentalism concerning certain theoretical entities, valuing their explanatory and predictive utility, as showing in his discussion of real patterns. Dennett's pragmatic realism underlines the entanglement of language, consciousness, and reality. He posits that our discourse about reality is mediated by our cognitive and linguistic capacities, marking a departure from naive realism.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Dennett's philosophical stance on realism is intricately connected to his views on instrumentalism and the theory of real patterns. He draws a distinction between illata, which are genuine theoretical entities like electrons, and abstracta, which are \"calculation bound entities or logical constructs\" such as centers of gravity and the equator, placing beliefs and the like among the latter. One of Dennett's principal arguments is an instrumentalistic construal of intentional attributions, asserting that such attributions are environment relative.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In discussing intentional states, Dennett posits that they should not be thought of as resembling theoretical entities, but rather as logical constructs, avoiding the pitfalls of intentional realism without lapsing into pure instrumentalism or even eliminativism. His instrumentalism and anti-realism are crucial aspects of his view on intentionality, emphasizing the centrality and indispensability of the intentional stance to our conceptual scheme.",
"title": "Philosophical views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Dennett married Susan Bell in 1962. They live in North Andover, Massachusetts, and have a daughter, a son, and five grandchildren. He is an avid sailor.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| Daniel Clement Dennett III is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. As of 2017, he is the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Dennett is a member of the editorial board for The Rutherford Journal and a co-founder of The Clergy Project. A vocal atheist and secularist, Dennett is referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism", along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens. | 2001-11-04T10:15:54Z | 2023-12-04T22:39:24Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett |
8,757 | Darwin's Dangerous Idea | Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life is a 1995 book by the philosopher Daniel Dennett, in which the author looks at some of the repercussions of Darwinian theory. The crux of the argument is that, whether or not Darwin's theories are overturned, there is no going back from the dangerous idea that design (purpose or what something is for) might not need a designer. Dennett makes this case on the basis that natural selection is a blind process, which is nevertheless sufficiently powerful to explain the evolution of life. Darwin's discovery was that the generation of life worked algorithmically, that processes behind it work in such a way that given these processes the results that they tend toward must be so.
Dennett says, for example, that by claiming that minds cannot be reduced to purely algorithmic processes, many of his eminent contemporaries are claiming that miracles can occur. These assertions have generated a great deal of debate and discussion in the general public. The book was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award in non-fiction and the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
Dennett's previous book was Consciousness Explained (1991). Dennett noted discomfort with Darwinism among not only lay people but also even academics and decided it was time to write a book dealing with the subject. Darwin's Dangerous Idea is not meant to be a work of science, but rather an interdisciplinary book; Dennett admits that he does not understand all of the scientific details himself. He goes into a moderate level of detail, but leaves it for the reader to go into greater depth if desired, providing references to this end.
In writing the book, Dennett wanted to "get thinkers in other disciplines to take evolutionary theory seriously, to show them how they have been underestimating it, and to show them why they have been listening to the wrong sirens". To do this he tells a story; one that is mainly original but includes some material from his previous work.
Dennett taught an undergraduate seminar at Tufts University on Darwin and philosophy, which included most of the ideas in the book. He also had the help of fellow staff and other academics, some of whom read drafts of the book. It is dedicated to W. V. O. Quine, "teacher and friend".
"Starting in the Middle", Part I of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, gets its name from a quote by Willard Van Orman Quine: "Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distance objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race."
The first chapter "Tell Me Why" is named after a song.
Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines, Tell me why the sky's so blue. Then I will tell you just why I love you.
Because God made the stars to shine, Because God made the ivy twine, Because God made the sky so blue.
Because God made you, that's why I love you.
Before Charles Darwin, and still today, a majority of people see God as the ultimate cause of all design, or the ultimate answer to 'why?' questions. John Locke argued for the primacy of mind before matter, and David Hume, while exposing problems with Locke's view, could not see any alternative.
Darwin provided just such an alternative: evolution. Besides providing evidence of common descent, he introduced a mechanism to explain it: natural selection. According to Dennett, natural selection is a mindless, mechanical and algorithmic process—Darwin's dangerous idea. The third chapter introduces the concept of "skyhooks" and "cranes" (see below). He suggests that resistance to Darwinism is based on a desire for skyhooks, which do not really exist. According to Dennett, good reductionists explain apparent design without skyhooks; greedy reductionists try to explain it without cranes.
Chapter 4 looks at the tree of life, such as how it can be visualized and some crucial events in life's history. The next chapter concerns the possible and the actual, using the 'Library of Mendel' (the space of all logically possible genomes) as a conceptual aid.
In the last chapter of part I, Dennett treats human artifacts and culture as a branch of a unified Design Space. Descent or homology can be detected by shared design features that would be unlikely to appear independently. However, there are also "Forced Moves" or "Good Tricks" that will be discovered repeatedly, either by natural selection (see convergent evolution) or human investigation.
The first chapter of part II, "Darwinian Thinking in Biology", asserts that life originated without any skyhooks, and the orderly world we know is the result of a blind and undirected shuffle through chaos.
The eighth chapter's message is conveyed by its title, "Biology is Engineering"; biology is the study of design, function, construction and operation. However, there are some important differences between biology and engineering. Related to the engineering concept of optimization, the next chapter deals with adaptationism, which Dennett endorses, calling Gould and Lewontin's "refutation" of it an illusion. Dennett thinks adaptationism is, in fact, the best way of uncovering constraints.
The tenth chapter, entitled "Bully for Brontosaurus", is an extended critique of Stephen Jay Gould, who Dennett feels has created a distorted view of evolution with his popular writings; his "self-styled revolutions" against adaptationism, gradualism and other orthodox Darwinism all being false alarms. The final chapter of part II dismisses directed mutation, the inheritance of acquired traits and Teilhard's "Omega Point", and insists that other controversies and hypotheses (like the unit of selection and Panspermia) have no dire consequences for orthodox Darwinism.
"Mind, Meaning, Mathematics and Morality" is the name of Part III, which begins with a quote from Nietzsche. Chapter 12, "The Cranes of Culture", discusses cultural evolution. It asserts that the meme has a role to play in our understanding of culture, and that it allows humans, alone among animals, to "transcend" our selfish genes. "Losing Our Minds to Darwin" follows, a chapter about the evolution of brains, minds and language. Dennett criticizes Noam Chomsky's perceived resistance to the evolution of language, its modeling by artificial intelligence, and reverse engineering.
The evolution of meaning is then discussed, and Dennett uses a series of thought experiments to persuade the reader that meaning is the product of meaningless, algorithmic processes.
Chapter 15 asserts that Gödel's Theorem does not make certain sorts of artificial intelligence impossible. Dennett extends his criticism to Roger Penrose. The subject then moves on to the origin and evolution of morality, beginning with Thomas Hobbes (who Dennett calls "the first sociobiologist") and Friedrich Nietzsche. He concludes that only an evolutionary analysis of ethics makes sense, though he cautions against some varieties of 'greedy ethical reductionism'. Before moving to the next chapter, he discusses some sociobiology controversies.
The penultimate chapter, entitled "Redesigning Morality", begins by asking if ethics can be 'naturalized'. Dennett does not believe there is much hope of discovering an algorithm for doing the right thing, but expresses optimism in our ability to design and redesign our approach to moral problems. In "The Future of an Idea", the book's last chapter, Dennett praises biodiversity, including cultural diversity. In closing, he uses Beauty and the Beast as an analogy; although Darwin's idea may seem dangerous, it is actually quite beautiful.
Dennett believes there is little or no principled difference between the naturally generated products of evolution and the man-made artifacts of human creativity and culture. For this reason he indicates deliberately that the complex fruits of the tree of life are in a very meaningful sense "designed"—even though he does not believe evolution was guided by a higher intelligence.
Dennett supports using the notion of memes to better understand cultural evolution. He also believes even human creativity might operate by the Darwinian mechanism. This leads him to propose that the "space" describing biological "design" is connected with the space describing human culture and technology.
A precise mathematical definition of Design Space is not given in Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Dennett acknowledges this and admits he is offering a philosophical idea rather than a scientific formulation.
Dennett describes natural selection as a substrate-neutral, mindless algorithm for moving through Design Space.
Dennett writes about the fantasy of a "universal acid" as a liquid that is so corrosive that it would eat through anything that it came into contact with, even a potential container. Such a powerful substance would transform everything it was applied to; leaving something very different in its wake. This is where Dennett draws parallels from the “universal acid” to Darwin's idea:
it eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.
While there are people who would like to see Darwin's idea contained within the field of biology, Dennett asserts that this dangerous idea inevitably “leaks” out to transform other fields as well.
Dennett uses the term "skyhook" to describe a source of design complexity that does not build on lower, simpler layers—in simple terms, a miracle.
In philosophical arguments concerning the reducibility (or otherwise) of the human mind, Dennett's concept pokes fun at the idea of intelligent design emanating from on high, either originating from one or more gods, or providing its own grounds in an absurd, Munchausen-like bootstrapping manner.
Dennett also accuses various competing neo-Darwinian ideas of making use of such supposedly unscientific skyhooks in explaining evolution, coming down particularly hard on the ideas of Stephen Jay Gould.
Dennett contrasts theories of complexity that require such miracles with those based on "cranes", structures that permit the construction of entities of greater complexity but are themselves founded solidly "on the ground" of physical science.
In The New York Review of Books, John Maynard Smith praised Darwin's Dangerous Idea:
It is therefore a pleasure to meet a philosopher who understands what Darwinism is about, and approves of it. Dennett goes well beyond biology. He sees Darwinism as a corrosive acid, capable of dissolving our earlier belief and forcing a reconsideration of much of sociology and philosophy. Although modestly written, this is not a modest book. Dennett argues that, if we understand Darwin's dangerous idea, we are forced to reject or modify much of our current intellectual baggage...
Writing in the same publication, Stephen Jay Gould criticised Darwin's Dangerous Idea for being an "influential but misguided ultra-Darwinian manifesto":
Daniel Dennett devotes the longest chapter in Darwin's Dangerous Idea to an excoriating caricature of my ideas, all in order to bolster his defense of Darwinian fundamentalism. If an argued case can be discerned at all amid the slurs and sneers, it would have to be described as an effort to claim that I have, thanks to some literary skill, tried to raise a few piddling, insignificant, and basically conventional ideas to "revolutionary" status, challenging what he takes to be the true Darwinian scripture. Since Dennett shows so little understanding of evolutionary theory beyond natural selection, his critique of my work amounts to little more than sniping at false targets of his own construction. He never deals with my ideas as such, but proceeds by hint, innuendo, false attribution, and error.
Gould was also a harsh critic of Dennett's idea of the "universal acid" of natural selection and of his subscription to the idea of memetics; Dennett responded, and the exchange between Dennett, Gould, and Robert Wright was printed in the New York Review of Books.
Biologist H. Allen Orr wrote a critical review emphasizing similar points in the Boston Review.
The book has also provoked a negative reaction from creationists; Frederick Crews writes that Darwin's Dangerous Idea "rivals Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker as the creationists' most cordially hated text." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life is a 1995 book by the philosopher Daniel Dennett, in which the author looks at some of the repercussions of Darwinian theory. The crux of the argument is that, whether or not Darwin's theories are overturned, there is no going back from the dangerous idea that design (purpose or what something is for) might not need a designer. Dennett makes this case on the basis that natural selection is a blind process, which is nevertheless sufficiently powerful to explain the evolution of life. Darwin's discovery was that the generation of life worked algorithmically, that processes behind it work in such a way that given these processes the results that they tend toward must be so.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Dennett says, for example, that by claiming that minds cannot be reduced to purely algorithmic processes, many of his eminent contemporaries are claiming that miracles can occur. These assertions have generated a great deal of debate and discussion in the general public. The book was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award in non-fiction and the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Dennett's previous book was Consciousness Explained (1991). Dennett noted discomfort with Darwinism among not only lay people but also even academics and decided it was time to write a book dealing with the subject. Darwin's Dangerous Idea is not meant to be a work of science, but rather an interdisciplinary book; Dennett admits that he does not understand all of the scientific details himself. He goes into a moderate level of detail, but leaves it for the reader to go into greater depth if desired, providing references to this end.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In writing the book, Dennett wanted to \"get thinkers in other disciplines to take evolutionary theory seriously, to show them how they have been underestimating it, and to show them why they have been listening to the wrong sirens\". To do this he tells a story; one that is mainly original but includes some material from his previous work.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Dennett taught an undergraduate seminar at Tufts University on Darwin and philosophy, which included most of the ideas in the book. He also had the help of fellow staff and other academics, some of whom read drafts of the book. It is dedicated to W. V. O. Quine, \"teacher and friend\".",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "\"Starting in the Middle\", Part I of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, gets its name from a quote by Willard Van Orman Quine: \"Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distance objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race.\"",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The first chapter \"Tell Me Why\" is named after a song.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Tell me why the stars do shine,",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Tell me why the ivy twines, Tell me why the sky's so blue. Then I will tell you just why I love you.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Because God made the stars to shine, Because God made the ivy twine, Because God made the sky so blue.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Because God made you, that's why I love you.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Before Charles Darwin, and still today, a majority of people see God as the ultimate cause of all design, or the ultimate answer to 'why?' questions. John Locke argued for the primacy of mind before matter, and David Hume, while exposing problems with Locke's view, could not see any alternative.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Darwin provided just such an alternative: evolution. Besides providing evidence of common descent, he introduced a mechanism to explain it: natural selection. According to Dennett, natural selection is a mindless, mechanical and algorithmic process—Darwin's dangerous idea. The third chapter introduces the concept of \"skyhooks\" and \"cranes\" (see below). He suggests that resistance to Darwinism is based on a desire for skyhooks, which do not really exist. According to Dennett, good reductionists explain apparent design without skyhooks; greedy reductionists try to explain it without cranes.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Chapter 4 looks at the tree of life, such as how it can be visualized and some crucial events in life's history. The next chapter concerns the possible and the actual, using the 'Library of Mendel' (the space of all logically possible genomes) as a conceptual aid.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In the last chapter of part I, Dennett treats human artifacts and culture as a branch of a unified Design Space. Descent or homology can be detected by shared design features that would be unlikely to appear independently. However, there are also \"Forced Moves\" or \"Good Tricks\" that will be discovered repeatedly, either by natural selection (see convergent evolution) or human investigation.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The first chapter of part II, \"Darwinian Thinking in Biology\", asserts that life originated without any skyhooks, and the orderly world we know is the result of a blind and undirected shuffle through chaos.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The eighth chapter's message is conveyed by its title, \"Biology is Engineering\"; biology is the study of design, function, construction and operation. However, there are some important differences between biology and engineering. Related to the engineering concept of optimization, the next chapter deals with adaptationism, which Dennett endorses, calling Gould and Lewontin's \"refutation\" of it an illusion. Dennett thinks adaptationism is, in fact, the best way of uncovering constraints.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The tenth chapter, entitled \"Bully for Brontosaurus\", is an extended critique of Stephen Jay Gould, who Dennett feels has created a distorted view of evolution with his popular writings; his \"self-styled revolutions\" against adaptationism, gradualism and other orthodox Darwinism all being false alarms. The final chapter of part II dismisses directed mutation, the inheritance of acquired traits and Teilhard's \"Omega Point\", and insists that other controversies and hypotheses (like the unit of selection and Panspermia) have no dire consequences for orthodox Darwinism.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "\"Mind, Meaning, Mathematics and Morality\" is the name of Part III, which begins with a quote from Nietzsche. Chapter 12, \"The Cranes of Culture\", discusses cultural evolution. It asserts that the meme has a role to play in our understanding of culture, and that it allows humans, alone among animals, to \"transcend\" our selfish genes. \"Losing Our Minds to Darwin\" follows, a chapter about the evolution of brains, minds and language. Dennett criticizes Noam Chomsky's perceived resistance to the evolution of language, its modeling by artificial intelligence, and reverse engineering.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The evolution of meaning is then discussed, and Dennett uses a series of thought experiments to persuade the reader that meaning is the product of meaningless, algorithmic processes.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Chapter 15 asserts that Gödel's Theorem does not make certain sorts of artificial intelligence impossible. Dennett extends his criticism to Roger Penrose. The subject then moves on to the origin and evolution of morality, beginning with Thomas Hobbes (who Dennett calls \"the first sociobiologist\") and Friedrich Nietzsche. He concludes that only an evolutionary analysis of ethics makes sense, though he cautions against some varieties of 'greedy ethical reductionism'. Before moving to the next chapter, he discusses some sociobiology controversies.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The penultimate chapter, entitled \"Redesigning Morality\", begins by asking if ethics can be 'naturalized'. Dennett does not believe there is much hope of discovering an algorithm for doing the right thing, but expresses optimism in our ability to design and redesign our approach to moral problems. In \"The Future of an Idea\", the book's last chapter, Dennett praises biodiversity, including cultural diversity. In closing, he uses Beauty and the Beast as an analogy; although Darwin's idea may seem dangerous, it is actually quite beautiful.",
"title": "Synopsis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Dennett believes there is little or no principled difference between the naturally generated products of evolution and the man-made artifacts of human creativity and culture. For this reason he indicates deliberately that the complex fruits of the tree of life are in a very meaningful sense \"designed\"—even though he does not believe evolution was guided by a higher intelligence.",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Dennett supports using the notion of memes to better understand cultural evolution. He also believes even human creativity might operate by the Darwinian mechanism. This leads him to propose that the \"space\" describing biological \"design\" is connected with the space describing human culture and technology.",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "A precise mathematical definition of Design Space is not given in Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Dennett acknowledges this and admits he is offering a philosophical idea rather than a scientific formulation.",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Dennett describes natural selection as a substrate-neutral, mindless algorithm for moving through Design Space.",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Dennett writes about the fantasy of a \"universal acid\" as a liquid that is so corrosive that it would eat through anything that it came into contact with, even a potential container. Such a powerful substance would transform everything it was applied to; leaving something very different in its wake. This is where Dennett draws parallels from the “universal acid” to Darwin's idea:",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "it eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "While there are people who would like to see Darwin's idea contained within the field of biology, Dennett asserts that this dangerous idea inevitably “leaks” out to transform other fields as well.",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Dennett uses the term \"skyhook\" to describe a source of design complexity that does not build on lower, simpler layers—in simple terms, a miracle.",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In philosophical arguments concerning the reducibility (or otherwise) of the human mind, Dennett's concept pokes fun at the idea of intelligent design emanating from on high, either originating from one or more gods, or providing its own grounds in an absurd, Munchausen-like bootstrapping manner.",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Dennett also accuses various competing neo-Darwinian ideas of making use of such supposedly unscientific skyhooks in explaining evolution, coming down particularly hard on the ideas of Stephen Jay Gould.",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Dennett contrasts theories of complexity that require such miracles with those based on \"cranes\", structures that permit the construction of entities of greater complexity but are themselves founded solidly \"on the ground\" of physical science.",
"title": "Central concepts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In The New York Review of Books, John Maynard Smith praised Darwin's Dangerous Idea:",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "It is therefore a pleasure to meet a philosopher who understands what Darwinism is about, and approves of it. Dennett goes well beyond biology. He sees Darwinism as a corrosive acid, capable of dissolving our earlier belief and forcing a reconsideration of much of sociology and philosophy. Although modestly written, this is not a modest book. Dennett argues that, if we understand Darwin's dangerous idea, we are forced to reject or modify much of our current intellectual baggage...",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Writing in the same publication, Stephen Jay Gould criticised Darwin's Dangerous Idea for being an \"influential but misguided ultra-Darwinian manifesto\":",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Daniel Dennett devotes the longest chapter in Darwin's Dangerous Idea to an excoriating caricature of my ideas, all in order to bolster his defense of Darwinian fundamentalism. If an argued case can be discerned at all amid the slurs and sneers, it would have to be described as an effort to claim that I have, thanks to some literary skill, tried to raise a few piddling, insignificant, and basically conventional ideas to \"revolutionary\" status, challenging what he takes to be the true Darwinian scripture. Since Dennett shows so little understanding of evolutionary theory beyond natural selection, his critique of my work amounts to little more than sniping at false targets of his own construction. He never deals with my ideas as such, but proceeds by hint, innuendo, false attribution, and error.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Gould was also a harsh critic of Dennett's idea of the \"universal acid\" of natural selection and of his subscription to the idea of memetics; Dennett responded, and the exchange between Dennett, Gould, and Robert Wright was printed in the New York Review of Books.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Biologist H. Allen Orr wrote a critical review emphasizing similar points in the Boston Review.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The book has also provoked a negative reaction from creationists; Frederick Crews writes that Darwin's Dangerous Idea \"rivals Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker as the creationists' most cordially hated text.\"",
"title": "Reception"
}
]
| Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life is a 1995 book by the philosopher Daniel Dennett, in which the author looks at some of the repercussions of Darwinian theory. The crux of the argument is that, whether or not Darwin's theories are overturned, there is no going back from the dangerous idea that design might not need a designer. Dennett makes this case on the basis that natural selection is a blind process, which is nevertheless sufficiently powerful to explain the evolution of life. Darwin's discovery was that the generation of life worked algorithmically, that processes behind it work in such a way that given these processes the results that they tend toward must be so. Dennett says, for example, that by claiming that minds cannot be reduced to purely algorithmic processes, many of his eminent contemporaries are claiming that miracles can occur. These assertions have generated a great deal of debate and discussion in the general public. The book was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award in non-fiction and the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. | 2023-07-08T23:13:41Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Dangerous_Idea |
|
8,758 | Douglas Hofstadter | Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and a National Book Award (at that time called The American Book Award) for Science. His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.
Hofstadter was born in New York City to future Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter and Nancy Givan Hofstadter. He grew up on the campus of Stanford University, where his father was a professor, and attended the International School of Geneva in 1958–59. He graduated with distinction in mathematics from Stanford University in 1965, and received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Oregon in 1975, where his study of the energy levels of Bloch electrons in a magnetic field led to his discovery of the fractal known as Hofstadter's butterfly.
Since 1988, Hofstadter has been the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition which consists of himself and his graduate students, forming the "Fluid Analogies Research Group" (FARG). He was initially appointed to the Indiana University's Computer Science Department faculty in 1977, and at that time he launched his research program in computer modeling of mental processes (which he called "artificial intelligence research", a label he has since dropped in favor of "cognitive science research"). In 1984, he moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he was hired as a professor of psychology and was also appointed to the Walgreen Chair for the Study of Human Understanding. In 1988 he returned to Bloomington as "College of Arts and Sciences Professor" in both cognitive science and computer science. He was also appointed adjunct professor of history and philosophy of science, philosophy, comparative literature, and psychology, but has said that his involvement with most of those departments is nominal. In 1988 Hofstadter received the In Praise of Reason award, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry's highest honor. In April 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2010 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden.
At the University of Michigan and Indiana University, he and Melanie Mitchell coauthored a computational model of "high-level perception"—Copycat—and several other models of analogy-making and cognition, including the Tabletop project, co-developed with Robert M. French. The Letter Spirit project, implemented by Gary McGraw and John Rehling, aims to model artistic creativity by designing stylistically uniform "gridfonts" (typefaces limited to a grid). Other more recent models include Phaeaco (implemented by Harry Foundalis) and SeqSee (Abhijit Mahabal), which model high-level perception and analogy-making in the microdomains of Bongard problems and number sequences, respectively, as well as George (Francisco Lara-Dammer), which models the processes of perception and discovery in triangle geometry.
Hofstadter has had several exhibitions of his artwork in various university galleries. These shows have featured large collections of his gridfonts, his ambigrams (pieces of calligraphy created with two readings, either of which is usually obtained from the other by rotating or reflecting the ambigram, but sometimes simply by "oscillation", like the Necker Cube or the rabbit/duck figure of Joseph Jastrow), and his "Whirly Art" (music-inspired visual patterns realized using shapes based on various alphabets from India). Hofstadter invented the term "ambigram" in 1984; many ambigrammists have since taken up the concept.
Hofstadter collects and studies cognitive errors (largely, but not solely, speech errors), "bon mots", and analogies of all sorts, and his longtime observation of these diverse products of cognition. His theories about the mechanisms that underlie them have exerted a powerful influence on the architectures of the computational models he and FARG members have developed.
Hofstadter's thesis about consciousness, first expressed in Gödel, Escher, Bach but also present in several of his later books, is that it is "an emergent consequence of seething lower-level activity in the brain". In Gödel, Escher, Bach he draws an analogy between the social organization of a colony of ants and the mind seen as a coherent "colony" of neurons. In particular, Hofstadter claims that our sense of having (or being) an "I" comes from the abstract pattern he terms a "strange loop", an abstract cousin of such concrete phenomena as audio and video feedback that Hofstadter has defined as "a level-crossing feedback loop". The prototypical example of a strange loop is the self-referential structure at the core of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Hofstadter's 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop carries his vision of consciousness considerably further, including the idea that each human "I" is distributed over numerous brains, rather than being limited to one. Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language is a long book devoted to language and translation, especially poetry translation, and one of its leitmotifs is a set of 88 translations of "Ma Mignonne", a highly constrained poem by 16th-century French poet Clément Marot. In this book, Hofstadter jokingly describes himself as "pilingual" (meaning that the sum total of the varying degrees of mastery of all the languages that he has studied comes to 3.14159 ...), as well as an "oligoglot" (someone who speaks "a few" languages).
In 1999, the bicentennial year of the Russian poet and writer Alexander Pushkin, Hofstadter published a verse translation of Pushkin's classic novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin. He has translated other poems and two novels: La Chamade (That Mad Ache) by Françoise Sagan, and La Scoperta dell'Alba (The Discovery of Dawn) by Walter Veltroni, the then-head of the Partito Democratico in Italy. The Discovery of Dawn was published in 2007, and That Mad Ache was published in 2009, bound together with Hofstadter's essay Translator, Trader: An Essay on the Pleasantly Pervasive Paradoxes of Translation.
Hofstadter's Law is "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." The law is stated in Gödel, Escher, Bach.
Hofstadter's former Ph.D. students include (with dissertation title):
Hofstadter has said that he feels "uncomfortable with the nerd culture that centers on computers". He admits that "a large fraction [of his audience] seems to be those who are fascinated by technology", but when it was suggested that his work "has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence" he replied that he was pleased about that, but that he himself has "no interest in computers". In that interview he also mentioned a course he has twice given at Indiana University, in which he took a "skeptical look at a number of highly touted AI projects and overall approaches". For example, upon the defeat of Garry Kasparov by Deep Blue, he commented that "It was a watershed event, but it doesn't have to do with computers becoming intelligent". In his book Metamagical Themas, he says that "in this day and age, how can anyone fascinated by creativity and beauty fail to see in computers the ultimate tool for exploring their essence?".
Provoked by predictions of a technological singularity (a hypothetical moment in the future of humanity when a self-reinforcing, runaway development of artificial intelligence causes a radical change in technology and culture), Hofstadter has both organized and participated in several public discussions of the topic. At Indiana University in 1999 he organized such a symposium, and in April 2000, he organized a larger symposium titled "Spiritual Robots" at Stanford University, in which he moderated a panel consisting of Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, Kevin Kelly, Ralph Merkle, Bill Joy, Frank Drake, John Holland and John Koza. Hofstadter was also an invited panelist at the first Singularity Summit, held at Stanford in May 2006. Hofstadter expressed doubt that the singularity will occur in the foreseeable future.
In 1988 Dutch director Piet Hoenderdos created a docudrama about Hofstadter and his ideas, Victim of the Brain, based on The Mind's I. It includes interviews with Hofstadter about his work.
When Martin Gardner retired from writing his "Mathematical Games" column for Scientific American magazine, Hofstadter succeeded him in 1981–83 with a column titled Metamagical Themas (an anagram of "Mathematical Games"). An idea he introduced in one of these columns was the concept of "Reviews of This Book", a book containing nothing but cross-referenced reviews of itself that has an online implementation. One of Hofstadter's columns in Scientific American concerned the damaging effects of sexist language, and two chapters of his book Metamagical Themas are devoted to that topic, one of which is a biting analogy-based satire, "A Person Paper on Purity in Language" (1985), in which the reader's presumed revulsion at racism and racist language is used as a lever to motivate an analogous revulsion at sexism and sexist language; Hofstadter published it under the pseudonym William Satire, an allusion to William Safire. Another column reported on the discoveries made by University of Michigan professor Robert Axelrod in his computer tournament pitting many iterated prisoner's dilemma strategies against each other, and a follow-up column discussed a similar tournament that Hofstadter and his graduate student Marek Lugowski organized. The "Metamagical Themas" columns ranged over many themes, including patterns in Frédéric Chopin's piano music (particularly his études), the concept of superrationality (choosing to cooperate when the other party/adversary is assumed to be equally intelligent as oneself), and the self-modifying game of Nomic, based on the way the legal system modifies itself, and developed by philosopher Peter Suber.
Hofstadter was married to Carol Ann Brush until her death. They met in Bloomington, and married in Ann Arbor in 1985. They had two children, Danny and Monica. Carol died in 1993 from the sudden onset of a brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme, when their children were 5 and 2. The Carol Ann Brush Hofstadter Memorial Scholarship for Bologna-bound Indiana University students was established in 1996 in her name. Hofstadter's book Le Ton beau de Marot is dedicated to their two children and its dedication reads "To M. & D., living sparks of their Mommy's soul".
In 2010, Hofstadter met Baofen Lin in a cha-cha-cha class, and they married in Bloomington in September 2012.
Hofstadter has composed pieces for piano and for piano and voice. He created an audio CD, DRH/JJ, of these compositions performed mostly by pianist Jane Jackson, with a few performed by Brian Jones, Dafna Barenboim, Gitanjali Mathur, and Hofstadter.
The dedication for I Am A Strange Loop is: "To my sister Laura, who can understand, and to our sister Molly, who cannot." Hofstadter explains in the preface that his younger sister Molly never developed the ability to speak or understand language.
As a consequence of his attitudes about consciousness and empathy, Hofstadter became a vegetarian in his teenage years, and has remained primarily so since that time.
In the 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two, Arthur C. Clarke's first sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 is described by the character "Dr. Chandra" as being caught in a "Hofstadter–Möbius loop". The movie uses the term "H. Möbius loop".
On April 3, 1995, Hofstadter's book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought was the first book sold by Amazon.com.
The books published by Hofstadter are (the ISBNs refer to paperback editions, where available):
Hofstadter has written, among many others, the following papers:
Hofstadter has also written over 50 papers that were published through the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition.
Hofstadter has written forewords for or edited the following books: | [
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"text": "Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and a National Book Award (at that time called The American Book Award) for Science. His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.",
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"text": "Hofstadter was born in New York City to future Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter and Nancy Givan Hofstadter. He grew up on the campus of Stanford University, where his father was a professor, and attended the International School of Geneva in 1958–59. He graduated with distinction in mathematics from Stanford University in 1965, and received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Oregon in 1975, where his study of the energy levels of Bloch electrons in a magnetic field led to his discovery of the fractal known as Hofstadter's butterfly.",
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{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Since 1988, Hofstadter has been the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition which consists of himself and his graduate students, forming the \"Fluid Analogies Research Group\" (FARG). He was initially appointed to the Indiana University's Computer Science Department faculty in 1977, and at that time he launched his research program in computer modeling of mental processes (which he called \"artificial intelligence research\", a label he has since dropped in favor of \"cognitive science research\"). In 1984, he moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he was hired as a professor of psychology and was also appointed to the Walgreen Chair for the Study of Human Understanding. In 1988 he returned to Bloomington as \"College of Arts and Sciences Professor\" in both cognitive science and computer science. He was also appointed adjunct professor of history and philosophy of science, philosophy, comparative literature, and psychology, but has said that his involvement with most of those departments is nominal. In 1988 Hofstadter received the In Praise of Reason award, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry's highest honor. In April 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2010 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "At the University of Michigan and Indiana University, he and Melanie Mitchell coauthored a computational model of \"high-level perception\"—Copycat—and several other models of analogy-making and cognition, including the Tabletop project, co-developed with Robert M. French. The Letter Spirit project, implemented by Gary McGraw and John Rehling, aims to model artistic creativity by designing stylistically uniform \"gridfonts\" (typefaces limited to a grid). Other more recent models include Phaeaco (implemented by Harry Foundalis) and SeqSee (Abhijit Mahabal), which model high-level perception and analogy-making in the microdomains of Bongard problems and number sequences, respectively, as well as George (Francisco Lara-Dammer), which models the processes of perception and discovery in triangle geometry.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Hofstadter has had several exhibitions of his artwork in various university galleries. These shows have featured large collections of his gridfonts, his ambigrams (pieces of calligraphy created with two readings, either of which is usually obtained from the other by rotating or reflecting the ambigram, but sometimes simply by \"oscillation\", like the Necker Cube or the rabbit/duck figure of Joseph Jastrow), and his \"Whirly Art\" (music-inspired visual patterns realized using shapes based on various alphabets from India). Hofstadter invented the term \"ambigram\" in 1984; many ambigrammists have since taken up the concept.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Hofstadter collects and studies cognitive errors (largely, but not solely, speech errors), \"bon mots\", and analogies of all sorts, and his longtime observation of these diverse products of cognition. His theories about the mechanisms that underlie them have exerted a powerful influence on the architectures of the computational models he and FARG members have developed.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Hofstadter's thesis about consciousness, first expressed in Gödel, Escher, Bach but also present in several of his later books, is that it is \"an emergent consequence of seething lower-level activity in the brain\". In Gödel, Escher, Bach he draws an analogy between the social organization of a colony of ants and the mind seen as a coherent \"colony\" of neurons. In particular, Hofstadter claims that our sense of having (or being) an \"I\" comes from the abstract pattern he terms a \"strange loop\", an abstract cousin of such concrete phenomena as audio and video feedback that Hofstadter has defined as \"a level-crossing feedback loop\". The prototypical example of a strange loop is the self-referential structure at the core of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Hofstadter's 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop carries his vision of consciousness considerably further, including the idea that each human \"I\" is distributed over numerous brains, rather than being limited to one. Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language is a long book devoted to language and translation, especially poetry translation, and one of its leitmotifs is a set of 88 translations of \"Ma Mignonne\", a highly constrained poem by 16th-century French poet Clément Marot. In this book, Hofstadter jokingly describes himself as \"pilingual\" (meaning that the sum total of the varying degrees of mastery of all the languages that he has studied comes to 3.14159 ...), as well as an \"oligoglot\" (someone who speaks \"a few\" languages).",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1999, the bicentennial year of the Russian poet and writer Alexander Pushkin, Hofstadter published a verse translation of Pushkin's classic novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin. He has translated other poems and two novels: La Chamade (That Mad Ache) by Françoise Sagan, and La Scoperta dell'Alba (The Discovery of Dawn) by Walter Veltroni, the then-head of the Partito Democratico in Italy. The Discovery of Dawn was published in 2007, and That Mad Ache was published in 2009, bound together with Hofstadter's essay Translator, Trader: An Essay on the Pleasantly Pervasive Paradoxes of Translation.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hofstadter's Law is \"It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.\" The law is stated in Gödel, Escher, Bach.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Hofstadter's former Ph.D. students include (with dissertation title):",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Hofstadter has said that he feels \"uncomfortable with the nerd culture that centers on computers\". He admits that \"a large fraction [of his audience] seems to be those who are fascinated by technology\", but when it was suggested that his work \"has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence\" he replied that he was pleased about that, but that he himself has \"no interest in computers\". In that interview he also mentioned a course he has twice given at Indiana University, in which he took a \"skeptical look at a number of highly touted AI projects and overall approaches\". For example, upon the defeat of Garry Kasparov by Deep Blue, he commented that \"It was a watershed event, but it doesn't have to do with computers becoming intelligent\". In his book Metamagical Themas, he says that \"in this day and age, how can anyone fascinated by creativity and beauty fail to see in computers the ultimate tool for exploring their essence?\".",
"title": "Public image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Provoked by predictions of a technological singularity (a hypothetical moment in the future of humanity when a self-reinforcing, runaway development of artificial intelligence causes a radical change in technology and culture), Hofstadter has both organized and participated in several public discussions of the topic. At Indiana University in 1999 he organized such a symposium, and in April 2000, he organized a larger symposium titled \"Spiritual Robots\" at Stanford University, in which he moderated a panel consisting of Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, Kevin Kelly, Ralph Merkle, Bill Joy, Frank Drake, John Holland and John Koza. Hofstadter was also an invited panelist at the first Singularity Summit, held at Stanford in May 2006. Hofstadter expressed doubt that the singularity will occur in the foreseeable future.",
"title": "Public image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1988 Dutch director Piet Hoenderdos created a docudrama about Hofstadter and his ideas, Victim of the Brain, based on The Mind's I. It includes interviews with Hofstadter about his work.",
"title": "Public image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "When Martin Gardner retired from writing his \"Mathematical Games\" column for Scientific American magazine, Hofstadter succeeded him in 1981–83 with a column titled Metamagical Themas (an anagram of \"Mathematical Games\"). An idea he introduced in one of these columns was the concept of \"Reviews of This Book\", a book containing nothing but cross-referenced reviews of itself that has an online implementation. One of Hofstadter's columns in Scientific American concerned the damaging effects of sexist language, and two chapters of his book Metamagical Themas are devoted to that topic, one of which is a biting analogy-based satire, \"A Person Paper on Purity in Language\" (1985), in which the reader's presumed revulsion at racism and racist language is used as a lever to motivate an analogous revulsion at sexism and sexist language; Hofstadter published it under the pseudonym William Satire, an allusion to William Safire. Another column reported on the discoveries made by University of Michigan professor Robert Axelrod in his computer tournament pitting many iterated prisoner's dilemma strategies against each other, and a follow-up column discussed a similar tournament that Hofstadter and his graduate student Marek Lugowski organized. The \"Metamagical Themas\" columns ranged over many themes, including patterns in Frédéric Chopin's piano music (particularly his études), the concept of superrationality (choosing to cooperate when the other party/adversary is assumed to be equally intelligent as oneself), and the self-modifying game of Nomic, based on the way the legal system modifies itself, and developed by philosopher Peter Suber.",
"title": "Columnist"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Hofstadter was married to Carol Ann Brush until her death. They met in Bloomington, and married in Ann Arbor in 1985. They had two children, Danny and Monica. Carol died in 1993 from the sudden onset of a brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme, when their children were 5 and 2. The Carol Ann Brush Hofstadter Memorial Scholarship for Bologna-bound Indiana University students was established in 1996 in her name. Hofstadter's book Le Ton beau de Marot is dedicated to their two children and its dedication reads \"To M. & D., living sparks of their Mommy's soul\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 2010, Hofstadter met Baofen Lin in a cha-cha-cha class, and they married in Bloomington in September 2012.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Hofstadter has composed pieces for piano and for piano and voice. He created an audio CD, DRH/JJ, of these compositions performed mostly by pianist Jane Jackson, with a few performed by Brian Jones, Dafna Barenboim, Gitanjali Mathur, and Hofstadter.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The dedication for I Am A Strange Loop is: \"To my sister Laura, who can understand, and to our sister Molly, who cannot.\" Hofstadter explains in the preface that his younger sister Molly never developed the ability to speak or understand language.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "As a consequence of his attitudes about consciousness and empathy, Hofstadter became a vegetarian in his teenage years, and has remained primarily so since that time.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In the 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two, Arthur C. Clarke's first sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 is described by the character \"Dr. Chandra\" as being caught in a \"Hofstadter–Möbius loop\". The movie uses the term \"H. Möbius loop\".",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "On April 3, 1995, Hofstadter's book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought was the first book sold by Amazon.com.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The books published by Hofstadter are (the ISBNs refer to paperback editions, where available):",
"title": "Published works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Hofstadter has written, among many others, the following papers:",
"title": "Published works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Hofstadter has also written over 50 papers that were published through the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition.",
"title": "Published works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Hofstadter has written forewords for or edited the following books:",
"title": "Published works"
}
]
| Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and a National Book Award for Science. His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology. | 2001-11-04T11:09:05Z | 2023-12-03T11:49:55Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter |
8,765 | Dahomey | The Kingdom of Dahomey (/dəˈhoʊmi/) was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by expanding south to conquer key cities like Whydah belonging to the Kingdom of Whydah on the Atlantic coast which granted it unhindered access to the tricontinental triangular trade.
For much of the middle 19th century, the Kingdom of Dahomey became a key regional state, after eventually ending tributary status to the Oyo Empire. European visitors extensively documented the kingdom, and it became one of the most familiar African nations known to Europeans. The Kingdom of Dahomey was an important regional power that had an organized domestic economy built on conquest and slave labor, significant international trade and diplomatic relations with Europeans, a centralized administration, taxation systems, and an organized military. Notable in the kingdom were significant artwork, an all-female military unit called the Dahomey Amazons by European observers, and the elaborate religious practices of Vodun.
The growth of Dahomey coincided with the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, and it became known to Europeans as a major supplier of slaves. Dahomey was a highly militaristic society constantly organised for warfare; it engaged in wars and raids against neighboring nations and sold captives into the Atlantic slave trade in exchange for European goods such as rifles, gunpowder, fabrics, cowrie shells, tobacco, pipes, and alcohol. Other captives became slaves in Dahomey, where they worked on royal plantations or were killed in human sacrifices during the festival celebrations known as the Annual Customs of Dahomey. The Annual Customs of Dahomey involved significant collection and distribution of gifts and tribute, religious Vodun ceremonies, military parades, and discussions by dignitaries about the future for the kingdom.
In the 1840s, Dahomey began to face decline with British pressure to abolish the slave trade, which included the British Royal Navy imposing a naval blockade against the kingdom and enforcing anti-slavery patrols near its coast. Dahomey was also weakened after failing to invade and capture slaves in Abeokuta, a Yoruba city-state which was founded by the Oyo Empire refugees migrating southwards. Dahomey later began experiencing territorial disputes with France which led to the First Franco-Dahomean War in 1890, resulting in French victory. The kingdom finally fell in 1894 when the last king, Béhanzin, was defeated by France in the Second Franco-Dahomean War, leading to the country being annexed into French West Africa as the colony of French Dahomey, later gaining independence in 1960 as the Republic of Dahomey, which would later rename itself Benin in 1975.
The Kingdom of Dahomey was referred to by many different names and has been written in a variety of ways, including Danxome, Danhome, and Fon. The name Fon relates to the dominant ethnic and language group, the Fon people, of the royal families of the kingdom and is how the kingdom first became known to Europeans. The names Dahomey, Danxome, and Danhome share an origin story, which historian Edna Bay says may be a false etymology.
The story goes that Dakodonu, considered the second king in modern kings lists, was granted permission by the Gedevi chiefs, the local rulers, to settle in the Abomey Plateau. Dakodonu requested additional land from a prominent chief named Dan (or Da) to which the chief responded sarcastically, "Should I open up my belly and build you a house in it?" For this insult, Dakodonu killed Dan and began the construction of his palace on the spot. The name of the kingdom was derived from the incident: Dan meaning "chief", xo meaning "belly" and me meaning "inside of".
The Kingdom of Dahomey was established around 1600 by the Fon people who had recently settled in the area (or were possibly a result of intermarriage between the Aja people and the local Gedevi). The foundational king for Dahomey is often considered to be Houegbadja (c. 1645–1685), who built the Royal Palaces of Abomey and began raiding and taking over towns outside of the Abomey Plateau.
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King Agaja, Houegbadja's grandson, came to the throne in 1708 and began significant expansion of the Kingdom of Dahomey. This expansion was made possible by the superior military force of King Agaja's Dahomey. In contrast to surrounding regions, Dahomey employed a professional standing army numbering around ten thousand. What the Dahomey lacked in numbers, they made up for in discipline and superior arms. In 1724, Agaja conquered Allada, the origin for the royal family according to oral tradition, and in 1727 he conquered Whydah. This increased size of the kingdom, particularly along the Atlantic coast, and increased power made Dahomey into a regional power. The result was near constant warfare with the main regional state, the Oyo Empire, from 1728 until 1740. The warfare with the Oyo empire resulted in Dahomey assuming a tributary status to the Oyo empire.
Tegbesu, also spelled as Tegbessou, was King of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, from 1740 until 1774. Tegbesu was not the oldest son of King Agaja (1708–1740), but was selected following his father's death after winning a succession struggle with a brother. King Agaja had significantly expanded the Kingdom of Dahomey during his reign, notably conquering Whydah in 1727. This increased the size of the kingdom and increased both domestic dissent and regional opposition. Tegbessou ruled over Dahomey at a point where it needed to increase its legitimacy over those whom it had recently conquered. As a result, Tegbesu is often credited with a number of administrative changes in the kingdom in order to establish the legitimacy of the kingdom.
The slave trade increased significantly during Tegbessou's reign and began to provide the largest part of the income for the king. In addition, Tegbesu's rule is the one with the first significant kpojito or mother of the leopard with Hwanjile in that role. The kpojito became a prominently important person in Dahomey royalty. Hwanjile, in particular, is said to have changed dramatically the religious practices of Dahomey by creating two new deities and more closely tying worship to that of the king. According to one oral tradition, as part of the tribute owed by Dahomey to Oyo, Agaja had to give to Oyo one of his sons. The story claims that only Hwanjile, of all of Agaja's wives, was willing to allow her son to go to Oyo. This act of sacrifice, according to the oral tradition made Tegbesu, was favored by Agaja. Agaja reportedly told Tegbesu that he was the future king, but his brother Zinga was still the official heir.
When King Ghezo ascended the throne in 1818, he was confronted by two immediate obstacles: the Kingdom of Dahomey was in political turmoil, and it was financially unstable. First, he needed to gain political independence by removing the tributary yoke that the Yoruba empire of Oyo had over the Dahomey since 1748. Secondly, he needed to revitalize the Dahomey economy. Both of these objectives relied on the slave trade. King Ghezo implemented new military strategies, which allowed them to take a physical stand against the Oyo, who were also a major competitor in the slave trade. He also put stipulations on Dahomey's participation in the slave trade. Under his reign, no longer would the Dahomey be traded, as they were under the leadership of his brother, Adandozan. Dahomey would focus on capturing their enemies and trading them instead. King Ghezo did, however, seek to eventually lead his people toward the "legitimate" trade of palm oil.
The Dahomey were soon met with victory when they brought down the Oyo Empire and its yoke at Paonignan in 1827. While Brazil's demand for slaves increased in 1830, the British started a campaign to abolish the slave trade in Africa. The British government began putting significant pressure on King Ghezo in the 1840s to end the slave trade in Dahomey. King Ghezo responded to these requests by emphasizing that he was unable to end the slave trade because of domestic pressure. He explained to them that the entire region had become dependent on the slave trading, so ending immediately would destabilize his kingdom and lead to anarchy. King William Dappa Pepple of Bonny and King Kosoko of Lagos took the same stance towards the British requests. Instead, King Ghezo proposed an expansion of the palm oil trade and gradual abolition of the slave trade.
King Ghezo's reign was marked by great battles and significant changes to the empire, including the elevation of the Agojie. These "Dahomey Amazon" were pivotal to the defeat of Oyo Empire. His reign also cemented the Kingdom of Dahomey as one of the most powerful African kingdoms that stood against British attempts, with Egba support, at converting people to Christianity, and maintained their traditional religion, known as Vodun. He abolished the human sacrifice of slaves and removed the death penalty for certain lesser offenses, such as adultery. Despite the kingdom's history of brutality, King Ghezo was often characterized as honorable and unconquerable, even by his enemies. British missionary Thomas Birch Freeman also depicted him as "one of the most remarkable men of his age, whether we consider him in his private capacity as a man, or as a warrior and a statesmen."
The kingdom fought the First Franco-Dahomean War and Second Franco-Dahomean War with France. The kingdom was reduced and made a French protectorate in 1894.
In 1904, the area became part of a French colony, French Dahomey.
In 1958, French Dahomey became the self-governing colony called the Republic of Dahomey and gained full independence in 1960. It was renamed in 1975 the People's Republic of Benin and in 1991 the Republic of Benin.
Today, the kingdom continues to exist as a constituent monarchy located within Benin. Its rulers no longer hold any official powers under Benin's constitution, but they retain some political and economic influence. Modern kings participate in important Vodun religious festivals and other traditional ceremonies.
Early writings often presented the kingdom as an absolute monarchy led by a despotic king. However, these depictions were often deployed as arguments by different sides in the slave trade debates, mainly in the United Kingdom, and as such were probably exaggerations. Recent historical work has emphasized the limits of monarchical power in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Historian John C. Yoder, with attention to the Great Council in the kingdom, argued that its activities do not "imply that Dahomey's government was democratic or even that her politics approximated those of nineteenth-century European monarchies. However, such evidence does support the thesis that governmental decisions were molded by conscious responses to internal political pressures as well as by executive fiat." The primary political divisions revolved around villages with chiefs and administrative posts appointed by the king and acting as his representatives to adjudicate disputes in the village.
The King of Dahomey (Ahosu in the Fon language) was the sovereign power of the kingdom. All of the kings claimed to be part of the Alladaxonou dynasty, claiming descent from the royal family in Allada. Much of the succession rules and administrative structures were created early by Kings Houegbadja, Akaba, and Agaja. Succession through the male members of the line was the norm, with the kingship typically (but not always) going to the oldest son. The king was selected largely through discussion and decision in the meetings of the Great Council, although how this operated was not always clear. The Great Council brought together a host of different dignitaries from throughout the kingdom yearly to meet at the Annual Customs of Dahomey. Discussions would be lengthy and included members, both men and women, from throughout the kingdom. At the end of the discussions, the king would declare the consensus of the group.
Key positions in the King's court included the migan (Prime Minister), the mehu (Finance Minister), the yovogan, the tokpo (Minister of Agriculture), the agan (general of the army), the kpojito (or queen mother), and later the chacha (or viceroy) of Whydah. Each of these cabinet positions—which, with the exception of the kpojito, were headed by men—had a female counterpart to complement them. The migan—a combination of mi (our) and gan (chief)—was a primary consul for the king, a key judicial figure, and served as the head executioner. The mehu was similarly a key administrative officer who managed the palaces and the affairs of the royal family, economic matters, and the areas to the south of Allada (making the position key to contact with Europeans).
The relations between Dahomey and other countries were complex and heavily impacted by the transatlantic slave trade.
In 1750, the Kingdom of Dahomey sent a diplomatic mission to Salvador, Portuguese colony of Brazil in order to strengthen diplomatic relations with this Portuguese colony following an incident which led to the expulsion of Portuguese-Brazilian diplomatic authorities in 1743.
Other Dahomey missions were sent to Portuguese colony of Brazil from 1795 to 1805 with the purpose of strengthening relations with Portuguese colonial authorities and slave buyers residing in Brazilian territory, ensuring that they maintained an interest in purchasing enslaved people supplied by Dahomey rather than rival kingdoms. It is also recorded that in 1823, the Kingdom of Dahomey formally recognized Brazil's independence, making it one of the first political entities in the world to do so.
The transatlantic slave trade between Brazil and Dahomey remained intense even under pressure from the United Kingdom for its abolition. Francisco Félix de Sousa, a former enslaved person and later a major slave trader in the Dahomey region, became a politically influential figure in that kingdom after the ascent of Guezo to the Dahomean throne. He was granted the honorary title of Chachá, vice-king of Ajudá, and a monopoly on the exportation of slaves.
In 1861, the kingdom of Porto-Novo, one of Dahomey's tributaries, was attacked by the British Royal Navy, which was participating in anti-slaving patrols. Porto-Novo asked for protection from France and became a French protectorate as a result in 1863. However, this status was rejected by King Behanzin, who still declared Porto-Novo to be a tributary of Dahomey. Another issue of contention was the status of Cotonou, a port the French believed was under their control because of a treaty signed by Dahomey's representative in Whydah. Dahomey ignored all French claims there as well and continued to collect customs from the port. These territorial disputes escalated into the First Franco-Dahomean War in 1890, resulting in French victory. Dahomey was forced to sign a treaty surrendering Porto-Novo and Cotonou to the French. However, Dahomey later returned to raiding the area and disregarded French complaints, triggering the Second Franco-Dahomean War in 1892. The kingdom was defeated in 1894, it was annexed into the French colonial empire as French Dahomey, and King Behanzin was exiled to Algeria.
The Portuguese fort at Ouidah was destroyed by the army of Dahomey in 1743 during its conquest of the city, so King Tegbesu desired to renew relations with Portugal. Dahomey sent at least five embassies to Portugal and Brazil during the years of 1750, 1795, 1805, 1811 and 1818, with the goal of negotiating the terms of the Atlantic slave trade. These missions created an official correspondence between the kings of Dahomey and the kings of Portugal, and gifts were exchanged between them. The Portuguese Crown paid for the expenses travel and accommodation expenses of Dahomey's ambassadors, who traveled between Lisbon and Salvador, Bahia. The embassies of 1805 and 1811 brought letters from King Adandozan, who had imprisoned Portuguese subjects in the Dahomean capital of Abomey and requested for Portugal to trade exclusively at Ouidah. Portugal promised to answer to his demands if he released the prisoners.
A long and detailed letter from King Adandonzan dated 9 October 1810 shows that he had knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent exile of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil, and he expressed remorse that he was not able to help the Portuguese royal family during their war against France.
Soon the news that Your Royal Majesty and all the Royal family were made prisoners of the French, who took Lisbon, as well as the King of Spain, started arriving. Some time passed and another vessel came and brought other news that Your Royal Majesty and Our Sovereign Mother Queen of Portugal had left for the City of Bahia, under the protection of the English and the Portuguese Navy. Then more time passed and another vessel brought news that you have moved to Rio de Janeiro, where we know that the Duke of Cadaval deceased, for which I feel sorry and give you my condolences...what I feel the most is to no longer be the neighbour of Our Majesty, and not being able to walk on firm land to give you a help with my arm, so my wish is big, as here I have also fought many wars in the backlands.
After detailing how he defeated the king of the Mahi nation, Adandonzan tells the Portuguese,
...Give me also news about the Wars, and also give me news about the wars with the French nation and the others, it will make me happy to know about it
Dahomey became a target of the British Empire's anti-slavery campaign during the 19th century. The British sent diplomatic missions to Dahomey in an effort to convince King Ghezo to abolish human sacrifice and slave trading. Ghezo did not immediately concede to British demands but attempted to maintain friendly relations with the British by encouraging the growth of new trade in palm oil instead. In 1851, the Royal Navy imposed a naval blockade against Dahomey, forcing Ghezo to sign a treaty in 1852 that immediately abolished the export of slaves. However, the treaty was broken and slave trading efforts resumed in 1857 and 1858. Historian Martin Meredith quotes Ghezo telling the British:
The slave trade has been the ruling principle of my people. It is the source of their glory and wealth. Their songs celebrate their victories and the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery.
During a diplomatic mission to Dahomey in 1849, Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy received an enslaved girl (later named Sara Forbes Bonetta) from King Ghezo as a "gift", who would later become a goddaughter to Queen Victoria.
During the American Revolution, the rebelling United Colonies prohibited the international slave trade for a variety of economic, political, and moral reasons depending on the colony. Following the end of the revolution, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807, which federally outlawed the international slave trade, though domestic slavery itself would persist until the American Civil War. Thus, the United States never established any formal diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Dahomey. However, the last known slave ship that sailed to the United States secretly and illegally imported a group of 110 slaves from Dahomey, purchased long after the abolition of the slave trade. The story was mentioned in the newspaper The Tarboro Southerner on July 14, 1860. On July 9, 1860, a schooner called Clotilda, captained by William Foster, arrived in the bay of Mobile, Alabama carrying the last known shipment of slaves to the U.S. In 1858, an American man named Timothy Meaher made a wager with acquaintances that despite the law banning the slave trade, he could safely bring a load of slaves from Africa. He built the Clotilda slave ship and sent William Foster to captain it and retrieve enslaved Africans.
Captain William Foster arrived in Ouidah, a coastal port of Dahomey, and retrieved 110 slaves. Describing how he came in possession of the slaves, he wrote in his journal in 1860,
From thence I went to see the King of Dahomey. Having agreeably transacted affairs with the Prince we went to the warehouse where they had in confinement four thousand captives in a state of nudity from which they gave me liberty to select one hundred and twenty-five as mine offering to brand them for me, from which I preemptorily [sic] forbid; commenced taking on cargo of negroes, successfully securing on board one hundred and ten.
Zora Neal Hurston wrote about her interviews with Oluale Kossola, the last survivor of the Clotilda, in her book Barracoon. A notable descendant of a slave from this ship is Ahmir Khalib Thompson, an American music artist known as Questlove. Mr. Thompson's story is depicted in the PBS Television show Finding Your Roots [Season 4, Episode 9].
The Oyo Empire engaged in frequent conflicts with the Kingdom of Dahomey and Dahomey became a tributary of the Oyo from 1732 until 1823. The city-state of Porto-Novo, under the protection of Oyo, and Dahomey had a long-standing rivalry largely over control of the slave trade along the coast. The rise of Abeokuta in the 1840s created another power rivaling Dahomey, largely by creating a safe haven for people from the slave trade.
Notable Yoruba people who were captured by Dahomey in slave raids following the collapse of the Oyo Empire include Sara Forbes Bonetta (Aina), Cudjoe Lewis (Oluale Kossola), Matilda McCrear (Abake), Redoshi, and Seriki Williams Abass (Ifaremilekun Fagbemi).
The military of the Kingdom of Dahomey was divided into two units: the right and the left. The right was controlled by the migan and the left was controlled by the mehu. At least by the time of Agaja, the kingdom had developed a standing army that remained encamped wherever the king was. Soldiers in the army were recruited as young as seven or eight years old, initially serving as shield carriers for regular soldiers. After years of apprenticeship and military experience, they were allowed to join the army as regular soldiers. To further incentivize the soldiers, each soldier received bonuses paid in cowry shells for each enemy they killed or captured in battle. This combination of lifelong military experience and monetary incentives resulted in a cohesive, well-disciplined military. One European said Agaja's standing army consisted of "elite troops, brave and well-disciplined, led by a prince full of valor and prudence, supported by a staff of experienced officers". The army consisted of 15,000 personnel which was divided into right, left, center and reserve; and in each of these was further divided into companies and platoons.
In addition to being well trained, the Dahomey army under Agaja was also very well armed. The Dahomey army favored imported European weapons as opposed to traditional weapons. For example, they used European flintlock muskets in long-range combat and imported steel swords and cutlasses in close combat. The Dahomey army also possessed twenty-five cannons. By the late 19th century, Dahomey had a large arsenal of weapons. These included the Chassepot Dreyse, Mauser, Snider Enfield, Wanzel, Werndl, Peabody action, Winchester, Spencer, Albini, Robert Jones carbine, French musketoon 1882 and the Mitrailleuse Reffye 1867. Along with firearms, Dahomey employed mortars.
When going into battle, the king would take a secondary position to the field commander with the reason given that if any spirit were to punish the commander for decisions it should not be the king. Dahomey units were drilled constantly. They fired on command, employed countermarch, and formed extended lines from deep columns. Tactics such as covering fire, frontal attacks and flanking movements were used in the warfare of Dahomey. The Dahomey Amazons, a unit of all-female soldiers, is one of the most unusual aspects of the military of the kingdom. Unlike other regional powers, the military of Dahomey did not have a significant cavalry (like the Oyo empire) or naval power (which prevented expansion along the coast). From the 18th century, the state could obtain naval support from Ardra where they had created a subordinate dynasty after conquering the state in the early 18th century. Dahomey enlisted the services of Ardra's navy against the Epe in 1778 and Badagry in 1783.
The Dahomean state became widely known for its corps of female soldiers. Their origins are debated; they may have formed from a palace guard or from gbetos (female hunting teams).
They were organized around 1729 to fill out the army and make it look larger in battle, armed only with banners. The women reportedly behaved so courageously they became a permanent corps. In the beginning, the soldiers were criminals pressed into service rather than being executed. Eventually, however, the corps became respected enough that King Ghezo ordered every family to send him their daughters, with the fittest being chosen as soldiers. European accounts clarified that seven distinct movements were required to load a Dane gun which took an Amazon 30 seconds in comparison to the 50 seconds it took a Dahomean male soldier to load.
In order to repress the navies of its neighbors, Dahomey built causeways starting from 1774. During a campaign against Whydah that year, Dahomey was able to force Whydah to fortify itself at an island called Foudou-Cong. Dahomey cut trees which were planted in the water to serve as a causeway and bridge the army's access to the fortified Whydah island. The causeway also obstructed the movement of a 700 canoe force belonging to Whydah. As a result, the Whydah army had to survive on the boats for months sustaining its forces with fish diet. According to Thornton, Dahomey used this strategy of siege causeways again in 1776 against another opponent state where it built 3 bridges to connect the island housing the opponent forces.
Coastal belligerents opposing Dahomey allied with European forts against the state. Dahomey was able to capture Dutch and Portuguese forts in the 18th century through the use of ladders and sappers. Thornton writes that in 1737, Dahomey used scale ladders against the Dutch fort in Keta simultaneously as its sappers built a tunnel under the fort's bastion causing it to collapse when its defenders fired an artillery round within the bastion. A similar tactic was employed against a Portuguese fort with 30 mounted guns at Whydah in 1743 as its bastions collapsed enabling the Dahomey infantry to enter the fort. In 1728, Dahomey forces captured and destroyed a French fort at Whydah by blowing up the magazine that held the fort's ammunition and gunpowder. Another tactic for attacking coastal forts was the burning of nearby villages during a land breeze in order for the wind to carry the flames towards the fort. This tactic was first revealed by a British commander at Whydah in 1728, who countered it by burning the nearby villages during a sea breeze to prevent the Dahomeyan army from burning the villages during a land breeze.
As a result of the threat posed by Oyo in the 18th century, the state built fortifications of its own with the help of a French officer from whom they learnt field fortification and artillery. According to a Dutch source in 1772, the king of Dahomey "has made deep ditches around his entire country as well as walls and batteries mounted with cannons he captured at Fida [Whydah]." Thornton suggests these fortifications were mostly built out of wood. Dahomey used a tactic of trench construction against Oyo where its forces withdrew into the trenches after confrontation with the Oyo force. Despite this, Dahomey was overwhelmed by an Oyo siege after the arrival of reinforcement. In the mid 18th century, Abomey was surrounded by a ditch accessible by bridges whiles in 1772 the royal residence was surrounded with a mud brick wall 20 feet high, "with blockhouses on each wall."
Dahomey also built underground chambers in Abomey which served varying functions including that of providing military installations for the army. These souterrains have been dated to the late 17th century. Wheeled vehicles are recorded to have been implemented in Dahomeyan warfare. In an operation against Abeokuta in 1864, Dahomey fielded three guns mounted on locally made carriages of which historian Robin Law adds that these weapons did not play an effective role in the battle. Some references exist about the possible production of guns and gunpowder in Dahomey. In 1880, king Béhanzin informed a French mission that firearms were manufactured in the state. Amid the war with France in 1892, a French expeditionary force discovered tools and resources such as cartridge cases, signal rockets and electric batteries which are necessary for making cartridges and repairing firearms.
The economic structure of the kingdom was highly intertwined with the political and religious systems and these developed together significantly. The main currency was cowry shells.
The domestic economy largely focused on agriculture and crafts for local consumption. Until the development of palm oil, very little agricultural or craft goods were traded outside of the kingdom. Markets served a key role in the kingdom and were organized around a rotating cycle of four days with a different market each day (the market type for the day was religiously sanctioned). Agriculture work was largely decentralized and done by most families. However, with the expansion of the kingdom, agricultural plantations began to be a common agricultural method in the kingdom. Craftwork was largely dominated by a formal guild system. Several wealthy citizens stored their cowrie wealth in a building called akueho (cowrie huts) located in the compounds of their houses. Such cowrie huts were designed to protect the cowries from fire and theft. Iroko argues that this was a form of banking in Dahomey because the owners of such akueho houses regularly kept the deposits of others in the storehouse which they used as a form of loans to 3rd parties. Guyer and Stiansen on the other hand, are skeptical of Iroko's theory.
Herskovits recounts a complex tax system in the kingdom, in which officials who represented the king, the tokpe, gathered data from each village regarding their harvest. Then the king set a tax based upon the level of production and village population. In addition, the king's own land and production were taxed. After significant road construction undertaken by the kingdom, toll booths were also established that collected yearly taxes based on the goods people carried and their occupation. Officials also sometimes imposed fines for public nuisance before allowing people to pass. Tax officials on road tolls were provided with armed guards.
Taxes were imposed on craft workers including blacksmiths, weavers and wood cutters for example. Kangaroo courts could be held at any place such as the market or on roads, presided over by officials recognized by the central government. Such courts could extract some form of tax from the litigants before judging the case. Since the 18th century, prostitution (Ko-si) was licensed by the king. Robert Norris and Archibald Dalzel documented in the late 18th century that the central government was responsible for distributing prostitutes throughout the state at a price set by civil decree. Taxes were derived from prostitutes during the annual customs.
An unpaved road system was developed from the port of Ouidah through Cana up to Abomey. Its purpose was to improve the transportation of the king between Cana and Abomey. The Royal Road dates to the 18th century but most primary sources about the road date to the century after. The road stretched over seven miles in a near straight line, between the gates of the two towns and its width was estimated to be 20–30 meters. The road was occasionally kept weeded and cleared with cutlass. Primary sources give varying accounts that the Royal Road was kept cleared every two or three months or even six weeks. The road was shaded by tall trees. The biggest specimen was that of a bombax tree species. Surrounding the road on both sides were intensive farms which Forbes stated in the mid 19th century, to have "rivaled that of the Chinese."
In addition, religious shrines were lined along the road and Forbes counted 60 of them en route to Abomey. A palace was built halfway along the road by Tegbesu (1740–1774) to host the king as a resting place during transport. There is a lack of information about security provided across the Royal Road. Primary sources from the mid 19th century indicate that a large pair of carronades was placed on each side of the road near Abomey, which pointed towards Cana. A large number of cannons with diverse calibers were also placed at the road's end before the gates of Cana. Historian Alpern, indicates that the cannons in front of Cana might have served a ceremonial purpose because they lacked carriages to utilize.
Both domestic slavery and the Atlantic slave trade were important to the economy of Dahomey. Men, women, and children captured by Dahomey in wars and slave raids were sold to European slave traders in exchange for various goods such as rifles, gunpowder, textiles, cowry shells, and alcohol. Dahomey used magical rituals for slave trading. Prior to being sold to Europeans, slaves were forced to march in circles around the "Tree of Forgetfulness" so they would lose memories of their culture, family, and homeland. The purpose of this ritual was to prevent the spirits of deceased slaves from returning and seeking revenge against the royalty of Dahomey.
Other war captives who were not intended to be sold to Europeans remained in Dahomey as slaves. There, they worked on royal plantations that supplied food for the army and royal court. Some historians such as Watson and Schellinger have argued that the shift from slave trading to a plantation economy in the 19th century worsened the social perception of slaves in Dahomey. They cite reasons that slaves before then were treated as members of their master's family and they could attain free status after a generation or two. Following the intensification of palm oil in the state, it became common for slaves to be abused and ill treated. To solve this issue, King Ghezo declared the trial of cases involving the murder of slaves at the Judicial Court in Abomey.
There was a history of large-scale human sacrifice using slaves.
The Kingdom of Dahomey shared many religious rituals with surrounding populations; however, it also developed unique ceremonies, beliefs, and religious stories for the kingdom. These included royal ancestor worship and the specific vodun practices of the kingdom.
Early kings established clear worship of royal ancestors and centralized their ceremonies in the Annual Customs of Dahomey. The spirits of the kings had an exalted position in the land of the dead and it was necessary to get their permission for many activities on earth. Ancestor worship pre-existed the kingdom of Dahomey; however, under King Agaja, a cycle of ritual was created centered on first celebrating the ancestors of the king and then celebrating a family lineage.
The Annual Customs of Dahomey (xwetanu or huetanu in Fon) involved multiple elaborate components and some aspects may have been added in the 19th century. In general, the celebration involved distribution of gifts, human sacrifice, military parades, and political councils. Its main religious aspect was to offer thanks and gain the approval for ancestors of the royal lineage. However, the custom also included military parades, public discussions, gift giving (the distribution of money to and from the king), and human sacrifice and the spilling of blood.
Human sacrifice was an important part of the practice. During the Annual Custom, 500 prisoners would be sacrificed. In addition, when a ruler died, hundreds, to thousands of prisoners would be sacrificed. In 1727, an English trader alleged that he witness the Dahomey massacre 400 people during a Vodun ceremony. The number is also often reported to be 4,000. Human sacrifice was often exaggerated, however, by contemporary anti-abolitionist Western authors, who sought to justify the continued need for slavery as a means to "rescue" Africans from a worse fate in Dahomey.
Dahomey had a unique form of West African Vodun that linked together preexisting animist traditions with vodun practices. Oral history recounted that Hwanjile, a wife of Agaja and mother of Tegbessou, brought Vodun to the kingdom and ensured its spread. The primary deity is the combined Mawu-Lisa (Mawu having female characteristics and Lisa having male characteristics) and it is claimed that this god took over the world that was created by their mother Nana-Buluku. Mawu-Lisa governs the sky and is the highest pantheon of gods, but other gods exist in the earth and in thunder. Religious practice organized different priesthoods and shrines for each different god and each different pantheon (sky, earth or thunder). Women made up a significant amount of the priest class and the chief priest was always a descendant of Dakodonou.
The arts in Dahomey were unique and distinct from the artistic traditions elsewhere in Africa. The arts were substantially supported by the king and his family, had non-religious traditions, assembled multiple different materials, and borrowed widely from other peoples in the region. Common art forms included wood and ivory carving, metalwork (including silver, iron and brass, appliqué cloth, and clay bas-reliefs).
The king was key in supporting the arts and many of them provided significant sums for artists resulting in the unique development, for the region, of a non-religious artistic tradition in the kingdom. Artists were not of a specific class but both royalty and commoners made important artistic contributions. Kings were often depicted in large zoomorphic forms with each king resembling a particular animal in multiple representations.
Suzanne Blier identifies two unique aspects of art in Dahomey: 1. Assemblage of different components and 2. Borrowing from other states. Assemblage of art, involving the combination of multiple components (often of different materials) combined in a single piece of art, was common in all forms and was the result of the various kings promoting finished products rather than particular styles. This assembling may have been a result of the second feature, which involved the wide borrowing of styles and techniques from other cultures and states. Clothing, cloth work, architecture, and the other forms of art all resemble other artistic representation from around the region.
Much of the artwork revolved around the royalty. Each of the palaces at the Royal Palaces of Abomey contained elaborate bas-reliefs (noundidė in Fon) providing a record of the king's accomplishments. Each king had his own palace within the palace complex and within the outer walls of their personal palace was a series of clay reliefs designed specific to that king. These were not solely designed for royalty and chiefs, temples, and other important buildings had similar reliefs. The reliefs would present Dahomey kings often in military battles against the Oyo or Mahi tribes to the north of Dahomey with their opponents depicted in various negative depictions (the king of Oyo is depicted in one as a baboon eating a cob of corn). Historical themes dominated representation and characters were basically designed and often assembled on top of each other or in close proximity creating an ensemble effect. In addition to the royal depictions in the reliefs, royal members were depicted in power sculptures known as bocio, which incorporated mixed materials (including metal, wood, beads, cloth, fur, feathers, and bone) onto a base forming a standing figure. The bocio are religiously designed to include different forces together to unlock powerful forces. In addition, the cloth appliqué of Dahomey depicted royalty often in similar zoomorphic representation and dealt with matters similar to the reliefs, often the kings leading during warfare.
Dahomey had a distinctive tradition of casting small brass figures of animals or people, which were worn as jewellery or displayed in the homes of the relatively well-off. These figures, which continue to be made for the tourist trade, were relatively unusual in traditional African art in having no religious aspect, being purely decorative, as well as indicative of some wealth. Also unusual, by being so early and clearly provenanced, is a carved wooden tray (not dissimilar to much more recent examples) in Ulm, Germany, which was brought to Europe before 1659, when it was described in a printed catalogue.
Wheeled carriages were used in Dahomey after their introduction into the region of modern Benin in the late 17th century. Some carriages were manufactured indigenously while most were obtained as gifts from European allies. The carriages were often used for ceremonial purposes and were drawn mostly by men due to the small number of horses in the state. Carriages in Dahomey came in varying sizes and shapes. Some were modelled after ships, elephants and horses. Burton noted that the road between Abomey and the town of Cana, which was about six to seven miles long, was regularly kept weeded for the convenience of the royal carriages.
The Kingdom of Dahomey has been depicted in a number of different works of fiction or creative nonfiction.
Dahomey has been depicted in some historical war strategy video games.
7°11′08″N 1°59′17″E / 7.18556°N 1.98806°E / 7.18556; 1.98806 | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Kingdom of Dahomey (/dəˈhoʊmi/) was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by expanding south to conquer key cities like Whydah belonging to the Kingdom of Whydah on the Atlantic coast which granted it unhindered access to the tricontinental triangular trade.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "For much of the middle 19th century, the Kingdom of Dahomey became a key regional state, after eventually ending tributary status to the Oyo Empire. European visitors extensively documented the kingdom, and it became one of the most familiar African nations known to Europeans. The Kingdom of Dahomey was an important regional power that had an organized domestic economy built on conquest and slave labor, significant international trade and diplomatic relations with Europeans, a centralized administration, taxation systems, and an organized military. Notable in the kingdom were significant artwork, an all-female military unit called the Dahomey Amazons by European observers, and the elaborate religious practices of Vodun.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The growth of Dahomey coincided with the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, and it became known to Europeans as a major supplier of slaves. Dahomey was a highly militaristic society constantly organised for warfare; it engaged in wars and raids against neighboring nations and sold captives into the Atlantic slave trade in exchange for European goods such as rifles, gunpowder, fabrics, cowrie shells, tobacco, pipes, and alcohol. Other captives became slaves in Dahomey, where they worked on royal plantations or were killed in human sacrifices during the festival celebrations known as the Annual Customs of Dahomey. The Annual Customs of Dahomey involved significant collection and distribution of gifts and tribute, religious Vodun ceremonies, military parades, and discussions by dignitaries about the future for the kingdom.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the 1840s, Dahomey began to face decline with British pressure to abolish the slave trade, which included the British Royal Navy imposing a naval blockade against the kingdom and enforcing anti-slavery patrols near its coast. Dahomey was also weakened after failing to invade and capture slaves in Abeokuta, a Yoruba city-state which was founded by the Oyo Empire refugees migrating southwards. Dahomey later began experiencing territorial disputes with France which led to the First Franco-Dahomean War in 1890, resulting in French victory. The kingdom finally fell in 1894 when the last king, Béhanzin, was defeated by France in the Second Franco-Dahomean War, leading to the country being annexed into French West Africa as the colony of French Dahomey, later gaining independence in 1960 as the Republic of Dahomey, which would later rename itself Benin in 1975.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Kingdom of Dahomey was referred to by many different names and has been written in a variety of ways, including Danxome, Danhome, and Fon. The name Fon relates to the dominant ethnic and language group, the Fon people, of the royal families of the kingdom and is how the kingdom first became known to Europeans. The names Dahomey, Danxome, and Danhome share an origin story, which historian Edna Bay says may be a false etymology.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The story goes that Dakodonu, considered the second king in modern kings lists, was granted permission by the Gedevi chiefs, the local rulers, to settle in the Abomey Plateau. Dakodonu requested additional land from a prominent chief named Dan (or Da) to which the chief responded sarcastically, \"Should I open up my belly and build you a house in it?\" For this insult, Dakodonu killed Dan and began the construction of his palace on the spot. The name of the kingdom was derived from the incident: Dan meaning \"chief\", xo meaning \"belly\" and me meaning \"inside of\".",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Kingdom of Dahomey was established around 1600 by the Fon people who had recently settled in the area (or were possibly a result of intermarriage between the Aja people and the local Gedevi). The foundational king for Dahomey is often considered to be Houegbadja (c. 1645–1685), who built the Royal Palaces of Abomey and began raiding and taking over towns outside of the Abomey Plateau.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Source:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "King Agaja, Houegbadja's grandson, came to the throne in 1708 and began significant expansion of the Kingdom of Dahomey. This expansion was made possible by the superior military force of King Agaja's Dahomey. In contrast to surrounding regions, Dahomey employed a professional standing army numbering around ten thousand. What the Dahomey lacked in numbers, they made up for in discipline and superior arms. In 1724, Agaja conquered Allada, the origin for the royal family according to oral tradition, and in 1727 he conquered Whydah. This increased size of the kingdom, particularly along the Atlantic coast, and increased power made Dahomey into a regional power. The result was near constant warfare with the main regional state, the Oyo Empire, from 1728 until 1740. The warfare with the Oyo empire resulted in Dahomey assuming a tributary status to the Oyo empire.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Tegbesu, also spelled as Tegbessou, was King of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, from 1740 until 1774. Tegbesu was not the oldest son of King Agaja (1708–1740), but was selected following his father's death after winning a succession struggle with a brother. King Agaja had significantly expanded the Kingdom of Dahomey during his reign, notably conquering Whydah in 1727. This increased the size of the kingdom and increased both domestic dissent and regional opposition. Tegbessou ruled over Dahomey at a point where it needed to increase its legitimacy over those whom it had recently conquered. As a result, Tegbesu is often credited with a number of administrative changes in the kingdom in order to establish the legitimacy of the kingdom.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The slave trade increased significantly during Tegbessou's reign and began to provide the largest part of the income for the king. In addition, Tegbesu's rule is the one with the first significant kpojito or mother of the leopard with Hwanjile in that role. The kpojito became a prominently important person in Dahomey royalty. Hwanjile, in particular, is said to have changed dramatically the religious practices of Dahomey by creating two new deities and more closely tying worship to that of the king. According to one oral tradition, as part of the tribute owed by Dahomey to Oyo, Agaja had to give to Oyo one of his sons. The story claims that only Hwanjile, of all of Agaja's wives, was willing to allow her son to go to Oyo. This act of sacrifice, according to the oral tradition made Tegbesu, was favored by Agaja. Agaja reportedly told Tegbesu that he was the future king, but his brother Zinga was still the official heir.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "When King Ghezo ascended the throne in 1818, he was confronted by two immediate obstacles: the Kingdom of Dahomey was in political turmoil, and it was financially unstable. First, he needed to gain political independence by removing the tributary yoke that the Yoruba empire of Oyo had over the Dahomey since 1748. Secondly, he needed to revitalize the Dahomey economy. Both of these objectives relied on the slave trade. King Ghezo implemented new military strategies, which allowed them to take a physical stand against the Oyo, who were also a major competitor in the slave trade. He also put stipulations on Dahomey's participation in the slave trade. Under his reign, no longer would the Dahomey be traded, as they were under the leadership of his brother, Adandozan. Dahomey would focus on capturing their enemies and trading them instead. King Ghezo did, however, seek to eventually lead his people toward the \"legitimate\" trade of palm oil.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Dahomey were soon met with victory when they brought down the Oyo Empire and its yoke at Paonignan in 1827. While Brazil's demand for slaves increased in 1830, the British started a campaign to abolish the slave trade in Africa. The British government began putting significant pressure on King Ghezo in the 1840s to end the slave trade in Dahomey. King Ghezo responded to these requests by emphasizing that he was unable to end the slave trade because of domestic pressure. He explained to them that the entire region had become dependent on the slave trading, so ending immediately would destabilize his kingdom and lead to anarchy. King William Dappa Pepple of Bonny and King Kosoko of Lagos took the same stance towards the British requests. Instead, King Ghezo proposed an expansion of the palm oil trade and gradual abolition of the slave trade.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "King Ghezo's reign was marked by great battles and significant changes to the empire, including the elevation of the Agojie. These \"Dahomey Amazon\" were pivotal to the defeat of Oyo Empire. His reign also cemented the Kingdom of Dahomey as one of the most powerful African kingdoms that stood against British attempts, with Egba support, at converting people to Christianity, and maintained their traditional religion, known as Vodun. He abolished the human sacrifice of slaves and removed the death penalty for certain lesser offenses, such as adultery. Despite the kingdom's history of brutality, King Ghezo was often characterized as honorable and unconquerable, even by his enemies. British missionary Thomas Birch Freeman also depicted him as \"one of the most remarkable men of his age, whether we consider him in his private capacity as a man, or as a warrior and a statesmen.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The kingdom fought the First Franco-Dahomean War and Second Franco-Dahomean War with France. The kingdom was reduced and made a French protectorate in 1894.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1904, the area became part of a French colony, French Dahomey.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1958, French Dahomey became the self-governing colony called the Republic of Dahomey and gained full independence in 1960. It was renamed in 1975 the People's Republic of Benin and in 1991 the Republic of Benin.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Today, the kingdom continues to exist as a constituent monarchy located within Benin. Its rulers no longer hold any official powers under Benin's constitution, but they retain some political and economic influence. Modern kings participate in important Vodun religious festivals and other traditional ceremonies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Early writings often presented the kingdom as an absolute monarchy led by a despotic king. However, these depictions were often deployed as arguments by different sides in the slave trade debates, mainly in the United Kingdom, and as such were probably exaggerations. Recent historical work has emphasized the limits of monarchical power in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Historian John C. Yoder, with attention to the Great Council in the kingdom, argued that its activities do not \"imply that Dahomey's government was democratic or even that her politics approximated those of nineteenth-century European monarchies. However, such evidence does support the thesis that governmental decisions were molded by conscious responses to internal political pressures as well as by executive fiat.\" The primary political divisions revolved around villages with chiefs and administrative posts appointed by the king and acting as his representatives to adjudicate disputes in the village.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The King of Dahomey (Ahosu in the Fon language) was the sovereign power of the kingdom. All of the kings claimed to be part of the Alladaxonou dynasty, claiming descent from the royal family in Allada. Much of the succession rules and administrative structures were created early by Kings Houegbadja, Akaba, and Agaja. Succession through the male members of the line was the norm, with the kingship typically (but not always) going to the oldest son. The king was selected largely through discussion and decision in the meetings of the Great Council, although how this operated was not always clear. The Great Council brought together a host of different dignitaries from throughout the kingdom yearly to meet at the Annual Customs of Dahomey. Discussions would be lengthy and included members, both men and women, from throughout the kingdom. At the end of the discussions, the king would declare the consensus of the group.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Key positions in the King's court included the migan (Prime Minister), the mehu (Finance Minister), the yovogan, the tokpo (Minister of Agriculture), the agan (general of the army), the kpojito (or queen mother), and later the chacha (or viceroy) of Whydah. Each of these cabinet positions—which, with the exception of the kpojito, were headed by men—had a female counterpart to complement them. The migan—a combination of mi (our) and gan (chief)—was a primary consul for the king, a key judicial figure, and served as the head executioner. The mehu was similarly a key administrative officer who managed the palaces and the affairs of the royal family, economic matters, and the areas to the south of Allada (making the position key to contact with Europeans).",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The relations between Dahomey and other countries were complex and heavily impacted by the transatlantic slave trade.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1750, the Kingdom of Dahomey sent a diplomatic mission to Salvador, Portuguese colony of Brazil in order to strengthen diplomatic relations with this Portuguese colony following an incident which led to the expulsion of Portuguese-Brazilian diplomatic authorities in 1743.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Other Dahomey missions were sent to Portuguese colony of Brazil from 1795 to 1805 with the purpose of strengthening relations with Portuguese colonial authorities and slave buyers residing in Brazilian territory, ensuring that they maintained an interest in purchasing enslaved people supplied by Dahomey rather than rival kingdoms. It is also recorded that in 1823, the Kingdom of Dahomey formally recognized Brazil's independence, making it one of the first political entities in the world to do so.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The transatlantic slave trade between Brazil and Dahomey remained intense even under pressure from the United Kingdom for its abolition. Francisco Félix de Sousa, a former enslaved person and later a major slave trader in the Dahomey region, became a politically influential figure in that kingdom after the ascent of Guezo to the Dahomean throne. He was granted the honorary title of Chachá, vice-king of Ajudá, and a monopoly on the exportation of slaves.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1861, the kingdom of Porto-Novo, one of Dahomey's tributaries, was attacked by the British Royal Navy, which was participating in anti-slaving patrols. Porto-Novo asked for protection from France and became a French protectorate as a result in 1863. However, this status was rejected by King Behanzin, who still declared Porto-Novo to be a tributary of Dahomey. Another issue of contention was the status of Cotonou, a port the French believed was under their control because of a treaty signed by Dahomey's representative in Whydah. Dahomey ignored all French claims there as well and continued to collect customs from the port. These territorial disputes escalated into the First Franco-Dahomean War in 1890, resulting in French victory. Dahomey was forced to sign a treaty surrendering Porto-Novo and Cotonou to the French. However, Dahomey later returned to raiding the area and disregarded French complaints, triggering the Second Franco-Dahomean War in 1892. The kingdom was defeated in 1894, it was annexed into the French colonial empire as French Dahomey, and King Behanzin was exiled to Algeria.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Portuguese fort at Ouidah was destroyed by the army of Dahomey in 1743 during its conquest of the city, so King Tegbesu desired to renew relations with Portugal. Dahomey sent at least five embassies to Portugal and Brazil during the years of 1750, 1795, 1805, 1811 and 1818, with the goal of negotiating the terms of the Atlantic slave trade. These missions created an official correspondence between the kings of Dahomey and the kings of Portugal, and gifts were exchanged between them. The Portuguese Crown paid for the expenses travel and accommodation expenses of Dahomey's ambassadors, who traveled between Lisbon and Salvador, Bahia. The embassies of 1805 and 1811 brought letters from King Adandozan, who had imprisoned Portuguese subjects in the Dahomean capital of Abomey and requested for Portugal to trade exclusively at Ouidah. Portugal promised to answer to his demands if he released the prisoners.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "A long and detailed letter from King Adandonzan dated 9 October 1810 shows that he had knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent exile of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil, and he expressed remorse that he was not able to help the Portuguese royal family during their war against France.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Soon the news that Your Royal Majesty and all the Royal family were made prisoners of the French, who took Lisbon, as well as the King of Spain, started arriving. Some time passed and another vessel came and brought other news that Your Royal Majesty and Our Sovereign Mother Queen of Portugal had left for the City of Bahia, under the protection of the English and the Portuguese Navy. Then more time passed and another vessel brought news that you have moved to Rio de Janeiro, where we know that the Duke of Cadaval deceased, for which I feel sorry and give you my condolences...what I feel the most is to no longer be the neighbour of Our Majesty, and not being able to walk on firm land to give you a help with my arm, so my wish is big, as here I have also fought many wars in the backlands.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "After detailing how he defeated the king of the Mahi nation, Adandonzan tells the Portuguese,",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "...Give me also news about the Wars, and also give me news about the wars with the French nation and the others, it will make me happy to know about it",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Dahomey became a target of the British Empire's anti-slavery campaign during the 19th century. The British sent diplomatic missions to Dahomey in an effort to convince King Ghezo to abolish human sacrifice and slave trading. Ghezo did not immediately concede to British demands but attempted to maintain friendly relations with the British by encouraging the growth of new trade in palm oil instead. In 1851, the Royal Navy imposed a naval blockade against Dahomey, forcing Ghezo to sign a treaty in 1852 that immediately abolished the export of slaves. However, the treaty was broken and slave trading efforts resumed in 1857 and 1858. Historian Martin Meredith quotes Ghezo telling the British:",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The slave trade has been the ruling principle of my people. It is the source of their glory and wealth. Their songs celebrate their victories and the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "During a diplomatic mission to Dahomey in 1849, Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy received an enslaved girl (later named Sara Forbes Bonetta) from King Ghezo as a \"gift\", who would later become a goddaughter to Queen Victoria.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "During the American Revolution, the rebelling United Colonies prohibited the international slave trade for a variety of economic, political, and moral reasons depending on the colony. Following the end of the revolution, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807, which federally outlawed the international slave trade, though domestic slavery itself would persist until the American Civil War. Thus, the United States never established any formal diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Dahomey. However, the last known slave ship that sailed to the United States secretly and illegally imported a group of 110 slaves from Dahomey, purchased long after the abolition of the slave trade. The story was mentioned in the newspaper The Tarboro Southerner on July 14, 1860. On July 9, 1860, a schooner called Clotilda, captained by William Foster, arrived in the bay of Mobile, Alabama carrying the last known shipment of slaves to the U.S. In 1858, an American man named Timothy Meaher made a wager with acquaintances that despite the law banning the slave trade, he could safely bring a load of slaves from Africa. He built the Clotilda slave ship and sent William Foster to captain it and retrieve enslaved Africans.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Captain William Foster arrived in Ouidah, a coastal port of Dahomey, and retrieved 110 slaves. Describing how he came in possession of the slaves, he wrote in his journal in 1860,",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "From thence I went to see the King of Dahomey. Having agreeably transacted affairs with the Prince we went to the warehouse where they had in confinement four thousand captives in a state of nudity from which they gave me liberty to select one hundred and twenty-five as mine offering to brand them for me, from which I preemptorily [sic] forbid; commenced taking on cargo of negroes, successfully securing on board one hundred and ten.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Zora Neal Hurston wrote about her interviews with Oluale Kossola, the last survivor of the Clotilda, in her book Barracoon. A notable descendant of a slave from this ship is Ahmir Khalib Thompson, an American music artist known as Questlove. Mr. Thompson's story is depicted in the PBS Television show Finding Your Roots [Season 4, Episode 9].",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The Oyo Empire engaged in frequent conflicts with the Kingdom of Dahomey and Dahomey became a tributary of the Oyo from 1732 until 1823. The city-state of Porto-Novo, under the protection of Oyo, and Dahomey had a long-standing rivalry largely over control of the slave trade along the coast. The rise of Abeokuta in the 1840s created another power rivaling Dahomey, largely by creating a safe haven for people from the slave trade.",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Notable Yoruba people who were captured by Dahomey in slave raids following the collapse of the Oyo Empire include Sara Forbes Bonetta (Aina), Cudjoe Lewis (Oluale Kossola), Matilda McCrear (Abake), Redoshi, and Seriki Williams Abass (Ifaremilekun Fagbemi).",
"title": "Foreign relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The military of the Kingdom of Dahomey was divided into two units: the right and the left. The right was controlled by the migan and the left was controlled by the mehu. At least by the time of Agaja, the kingdom had developed a standing army that remained encamped wherever the king was. Soldiers in the army were recruited as young as seven or eight years old, initially serving as shield carriers for regular soldiers. After years of apprenticeship and military experience, they were allowed to join the army as regular soldiers. To further incentivize the soldiers, each soldier received bonuses paid in cowry shells for each enemy they killed or captured in battle. This combination of lifelong military experience and monetary incentives resulted in a cohesive, well-disciplined military. One European said Agaja's standing army consisted of \"elite troops, brave and well-disciplined, led by a prince full of valor and prudence, supported by a staff of experienced officers\". The army consisted of 15,000 personnel which was divided into right, left, center and reserve; and in each of these was further divided into companies and platoons.",
"title": "Military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In addition to being well trained, the Dahomey army under Agaja was also very well armed. The Dahomey army favored imported European weapons as opposed to traditional weapons. For example, they used European flintlock muskets in long-range combat and imported steel swords and cutlasses in close combat. The Dahomey army also possessed twenty-five cannons. By the late 19th century, Dahomey had a large arsenal of weapons. These included the Chassepot Dreyse, Mauser, Snider Enfield, Wanzel, Werndl, Peabody action, Winchester, Spencer, Albini, Robert Jones carbine, French musketoon 1882 and the Mitrailleuse Reffye 1867. Along with firearms, Dahomey employed mortars.",
"title": "Military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "When going into battle, the king would take a secondary position to the field commander with the reason given that if any spirit were to punish the commander for decisions it should not be the king. Dahomey units were drilled constantly. They fired on command, employed countermarch, and formed extended lines from deep columns. Tactics such as covering fire, frontal attacks and flanking movements were used in the warfare of Dahomey. The Dahomey Amazons, a unit of all-female soldiers, is one of the most unusual aspects of the military of the kingdom. Unlike other regional powers, the military of Dahomey did not have a significant cavalry (like the Oyo empire) or naval power (which prevented expansion along the coast). From the 18th century, the state could obtain naval support from Ardra where they had created a subordinate dynasty after conquering the state in the early 18th century. Dahomey enlisted the services of Ardra's navy against the Epe in 1778 and Badagry in 1783.",
"title": "Military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The Dahomean state became widely known for its corps of female soldiers. Their origins are debated; they may have formed from a palace guard or from gbetos (female hunting teams).",
"title": "Military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "They were organized around 1729 to fill out the army and make it look larger in battle, armed only with banners. The women reportedly behaved so courageously they became a permanent corps. In the beginning, the soldiers were criminals pressed into service rather than being executed. Eventually, however, the corps became respected enough that King Ghezo ordered every family to send him their daughters, with the fittest being chosen as soldiers. European accounts clarified that seven distinct movements were required to load a Dane gun which took an Amazon 30 seconds in comparison to the 50 seconds it took a Dahomean male soldier to load.",
"title": "Military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In order to repress the navies of its neighbors, Dahomey built causeways starting from 1774. During a campaign against Whydah that year, Dahomey was able to force Whydah to fortify itself at an island called Foudou-Cong. Dahomey cut trees which were planted in the water to serve as a causeway and bridge the army's access to the fortified Whydah island. The causeway also obstructed the movement of a 700 canoe force belonging to Whydah. As a result, the Whydah army had to survive on the boats for months sustaining its forces with fish diet. According to Thornton, Dahomey used this strategy of siege causeways again in 1776 against another opponent state where it built 3 bridges to connect the island housing the opponent forces.",
"title": "Military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Coastal belligerents opposing Dahomey allied with European forts against the state. Dahomey was able to capture Dutch and Portuguese forts in the 18th century through the use of ladders and sappers. Thornton writes that in 1737, Dahomey used scale ladders against the Dutch fort in Keta simultaneously as its sappers built a tunnel under the fort's bastion causing it to collapse when its defenders fired an artillery round within the bastion. A similar tactic was employed against a Portuguese fort with 30 mounted guns at Whydah in 1743 as its bastions collapsed enabling the Dahomey infantry to enter the fort. In 1728, Dahomey forces captured and destroyed a French fort at Whydah by blowing up the magazine that held the fort's ammunition and gunpowder. Another tactic for attacking coastal forts was the burning of nearby villages during a land breeze in order for the wind to carry the flames towards the fort. This tactic was first revealed by a British commander at Whydah in 1728, who countered it by burning the nearby villages during a sea breeze to prevent the Dahomeyan army from burning the villages during a land breeze.",
"title": "Military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "As a result of the threat posed by Oyo in the 18th century, the state built fortifications of its own with the help of a French officer from whom they learnt field fortification and artillery. According to a Dutch source in 1772, the king of Dahomey \"has made deep ditches around his entire country as well as walls and batteries mounted with cannons he captured at Fida [Whydah].\" Thornton suggests these fortifications were mostly built out of wood. Dahomey used a tactic of trench construction against Oyo where its forces withdrew into the trenches after confrontation with the Oyo force. Despite this, Dahomey was overwhelmed by an Oyo siege after the arrival of reinforcement. In the mid 18th century, Abomey was surrounded by a ditch accessible by bridges whiles in 1772 the royal residence was surrounded with a mud brick wall 20 feet high, \"with blockhouses on each wall.\"",
"title": "Military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Dahomey also built underground chambers in Abomey which served varying functions including that of providing military installations for the army. These souterrains have been dated to the late 17th century. Wheeled vehicles are recorded to have been implemented in Dahomeyan warfare. In an operation against Abeokuta in 1864, Dahomey fielded three guns mounted on locally made carriages of which historian Robin Law adds that these weapons did not play an effective role in the battle. Some references exist about the possible production of guns and gunpowder in Dahomey. In 1880, king Béhanzin informed a French mission that firearms were manufactured in the state. Amid the war with France in 1892, a French expeditionary force discovered tools and resources such as cartridge cases, signal rockets and electric batteries which are necessary for making cartridges and repairing firearms.",
"title": "Military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The economic structure of the kingdom was highly intertwined with the political and religious systems and these developed together significantly. The main currency was cowry shells.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The domestic economy largely focused on agriculture and crafts for local consumption. Until the development of palm oil, very little agricultural or craft goods were traded outside of the kingdom. Markets served a key role in the kingdom and were organized around a rotating cycle of four days with a different market each day (the market type for the day was religiously sanctioned). Agriculture work was largely decentralized and done by most families. However, with the expansion of the kingdom, agricultural plantations began to be a common agricultural method in the kingdom. Craftwork was largely dominated by a formal guild system. Several wealthy citizens stored their cowrie wealth in a building called akueho (cowrie huts) located in the compounds of their houses. Such cowrie huts were designed to protect the cowries from fire and theft. Iroko argues that this was a form of banking in Dahomey because the owners of such akueho houses regularly kept the deposits of others in the storehouse which they used as a form of loans to 3rd parties. Guyer and Stiansen on the other hand, are skeptical of Iroko's theory.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Herskovits recounts a complex tax system in the kingdom, in which officials who represented the king, the tokpe, gathered data from each village regarding their harvest. Then the king set a tax based upon the level of production and village population. In addition, the king's own land and production were taxed. After significant road construction undertaken by the kingdom, toll booths were also established that collected yearly taxes based on the goods people carried and their occupation. Officials also sometimes imposed fines for public nuisance before allowing people to pass. Tax officials on road tolls were provided with armed guards.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Taxes were imposed on craft workers including blacksmiths, weavers and wood cutters for example. Kangaroo courts could be held at any place such as the market or on roads, presided over by officials recognized by the central government. Such courts could extract some form of tax from the litigants before judging the case. Since the 18th century, prostitution (Ko-si) was licensed by the king. Robert Norris and Archibald Dalzel documented in the late 18th century that the central government was responsible for distributing prostitutes throughout the state at a price set by civil decree. Taxes were derived from prostitutes during the annual customs.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "An unpaved road system was developed from the port of Ouidah through Cana up to Abomey. Its purpose was to improve the transportation of the king between Cana and Abomey. The Royal Road dates to the 18th century but most primary sources about the road date to the century after. The road stretched over seven miles in a near straight line, between the gates of the two towns and its width was estimated to be 20–30 meters. The road was occasionally kept weeded and cleared with cutlass. Primary sources give varying accounts that the Royal Road was kept cleared every two or three months or even six weeks. The road was shaded by tall trees. The biggest specimen was that of a bombax tree species. Surrounding the road on both sides were intensive farms which Forbes stated in the mid 19th century, to have \"rivaled that of the Chinese.\"",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In addition, religious shrines were lined along the road and Forbes counted 60 of them en route to Abomey. A palace was built halfway along the road by Tegbesu (1740–1774) to host the king as a resting place during transport. There is a lack of information about security provided across the Royal Road. Primary sources from the mid 19th century indicate that a large pair of carronades was placed on each side of the road near Abomey, which pointed towards Cana. A large number of cannons with diverse calibers were also placed at the road's end before the gates of Cana. Historian Alpern, indicates that the cannons in front of Cana might have served a ceremonial purpose because they lacked carriages to utilize.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Both domestic slavery and the Atlantic slave trade were important to the economy of Dahomey. Men, women, and children captured by Dahomey in wars and slave raids were sold to European slave traders in exchange for various goods such as rifles, gunpowder, textiles, cowry shells, and alcohol. Dahomey used magical rituals for slave trading. Prior to being sold to Europeans, slaves were forced to march in circles around the \"Tree of Forgetfulness\" so they would lose memories of their culture, family, and homeland. The purpose of this ritual was to prevent the spirits of deceased slaves from returning and seeking revenge against the royalty of Dahomey.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Other war captives who were not intended to be sold to Europeans remained in Dahomey as slaves. There, they worked on royal plantations that supplied food for the army and royal court. Some historians such as Watson and Schellinger have argued that the shift from slave trading to a plantation economy in the 19th century worsened the social perception of slaves in Dahomey. They cite reasons that slaves before then were treated as members of their master's family and they could attain free status after a generation or two. Following the intensification of palm oil in the state, it became common for slaves to be abused and ill treated. To solve this issue, King Ghezo declared the trial of cases involving the murder of slaves at the Judicial Court in Abomey.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "There was a history of large-scale human sacrifice using slaves.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The Kingdom of Dahomey shared many religious rituals with surrounding populations; however, it also developed unique ceremonies, beliefs, and religious stories for the kingdom. These included royal ancestor worship and the specific vodun practices of the kingdom.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Early kings established clear worship of royal ancestors and centralized their ceremonies in the Annual Customs of Dahomey. The spirits of the kings had an exalted position in the land of the dead and it was necessary to get their permission for many activities on earth. Ancestor worship pre-existed the kingdom of Dahomey; however, under King Agaja, a cycle of ritual was created centered on first celebrating the ancestors of the king and then celebrating a family lineage.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Annual Customs of Dahomey (xwetanu or huetanu in Fon) involved multiple elaborate components and some aspects may have been added in the 19th century. In general, the celebration involved distribution of gifts, human sacrifice, military parades, and political councils. Its main religious aspect was to offer thanks and gain the approval for ancestors of the royal lineage. However, the custom also included military parades, public discussions, gift giving (the distribution of money to and from the king), and human sacrifice and the spilling of blood.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Human sacrifice was an important part of the practice. During the Annual Custom, 500 prisoners would be sacrificed. In addition, when a ruler died, hundreds, to thousands of prisoners would be sacrificed. In 1727, an English trader alleged that he witness the Dahomey massacre 400 people during a Vodun ceremony. The number is also often reported to be 4,000. Human sacrifice was often exaggerated, however, by contemporary anti-abolitionist Western authors, who sought to justify the continued need for slavery as a means to \"rescue\" Africans from a worse fate in Dahomey.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Dahomey had a unique form of West African Vodun that linked together preexisting animist traditions with vodun practices. Oral history recounted that Hwanjile, a wife of Agaja and mother of Tegbessou, brought Vodun to the kingdom and ensured its spread. The primary deity is the combined Mawu-Lisa (Mawu having female characteristics and Lisa having male characteristics) and it is claimed that this god took over the world that was created by their mother Nana-Buluku. Mawu-Lisa governs the sky and is the highest pantheon of gods, but other gods exist in the earth and in thunder. Religious practice organized different priesthoods and shrines for each different god and each different pantheon (sky, earth or thunder). Women made up a significant amount of the priest class and the chief priest was always a descendant of Dakodonou.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The arts in Dahomey were unique and distinct from the artistic traditions elsewhere in Africa. The arts were substantially supported by the king and his family, had non-religious traditions, assembled multiple different materials, and borrowed widely from other peoples in the region. Common art forms included wood and ivory carving, metalwork (including silver, iron and brass, appliqué cloth, and clay bas-reliefs).",
"title": "Arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The king was key in supporting the arts and many of them provided significant sums for artists resulting in the unique development, for the region, of a non-religious artistic tradition in the kingdom. Artists were not of a specific class but both royalty and commoners made important artistic contributions. Kings were often depicted in large zoomorphic forms with each king resembling a particular animal in multiple representations.",
"title": "Arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Suzanne Blier identifies two unique aspects of art in Dahomey: 1. Assemblage of different components and 2. Borrowing from other states. Assemblage of art, involving the combination of multiple components (often of different materials) combined in a single piece of art, was common in all forms and was the result of the various kings promoting finished products rather than particular styles. This assembling may have been a result of the second feature, which involved the wide borrowing of styles and techniques from other cultures and states. Clothing, cloth work, architecture, and the other forms of art all resemble other artistic representation from around the region.",
"title": "Arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Much of the artwork revolved around the royalty. Each of the palaces at the Royal Palaces of Abomey contained elaborate bas-reliefs (noundidė in Fon) providing a record of the king's accomplishments. Each king had his own palace within the palace complex and within the outer walls of their personal palace was a series of clay reliefs designed specific to that king. These were not solely designed for royalty and chiefs, temples, and other important buildings had similar reliefs. The reliefs would present Dahomey kings often in military battles against the Oyo or Mahi tribes to the north of Dahomey with their opponents depicted in various negative depictions (the king of Oyo is depicted in one as a baboon eating a cob of corn). Historical themes dominated representation and characters were basically designed and often assembled on top of each other or in close proximity creating an ensemble effect. In addition to the royal depictions in the reliefs, royal members were depicted in power sculptures known as bocio, which incorporated mixed materials (including metal, wood, beads, cloth, fur, feathers, and bone) onto a base forming a standing figure. The bocio are religiously designed to include different forces together to unlock powerful forces. In addition, the cloth appliqué of Dahomey depicted royalty often in similar zoomorphic representation and dealt with matters similar to the reliefs, often the kings leading during warfare.",
"title": "Arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Dahomey had a distinctive tradition of casting small brass figures of animals or people, which were worn as jewellery or displayed in the homes of the relatively well-off. These figures, which continue to be made for the tourist trade, were relatively unusual in traditional African art in having no religious aspect, being purely decorative, as well as indicative of some wealth. Also unusual, by being so early and clearly provenanced, is a carved wooden tray (not dissimilar to much more recent examples) in Ulm, Germany, which was brought to Europe before 1659, when it was described in a printed catalogue.",
"title": "Arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Wheeled carriages were used in Dahomey after their introduction into the region of modern Benin in the late 17th century. Some carriages were manufactured indigenously while most were obtained as gifts from European allies. The carriages were often used for ceremonial purposes and were drawn mostly by men due to the small number of horses in the state. Carriages in Dahomey came in varying sizes and shapes. Some were modelled after ships, elephants and horses. Burton noted that the road between Abomey and the town of Cana, which was about six to seven miles long, was regularly kept weeded for the convenience of the royal carriages.",
"title": "Arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Kingdom of Dahomey has been depicted in a number of different works of fiction or creative nonfiction.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Dahomey has been depicted in some historical war strategy video games.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "7°11′08″N 1°59′17″E / 7.18556°N 1.98806°E / 7.18556; 1.98806",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| The Kingdom of Dahomey was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by expanding south to conquer key cities like Whydah belonging to the Kingdom of Whydah on the Atlantic coast which granted it unhindered access to the tricontinental triangular trade. For much of the middle 19th century, the Kingdom of Dahomey became a key regional state, after eventually ending tributary status to the Oyo Empire. European visitors extensively documented the kingdom, and it became one of the most familiar African nations known to Europeans. The Kingdom of Dahomey was an important regional power that had an organized domestic economy built on conquest and slave labor, significant international trade and diplomatic relations with Europeans, a centralized administration, taxation systems, and an organized military. Notable in the kingdom were significant artwork, an all-female military unit called the Dahomey Amazons by European observers, and the elaborate religious practices of Vodun. The growth of Dahomey coincided with the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, and it became known to Europeans as a major supplier of slaves. Dahomey was a highly militaristic society constantly organised for warfare; it engaged in wars and raids against neighboring nations and sold captives into the Atlantic slave trade in exchange for European goods such as rifles, gunpowder, fabrics, cowrie shells, tobacco, pipes, and alcohol. Other captives became slaves in Dahomey, where they worked on royal plantations or were killed in human sacrifices during the festival celebrations known as the Annual Customs of Dahomey. The Annual Customs of Dahomey involved significant collection and distribution of gifts and tribute, religious Vodun ceremonies, military parades, and discussions by dignitaries about the future for the kingdom. In the 1840s, Dahomey began to face decline with British pressure to abolish the slave trade, which included the British Royal Navy imposing a naval blockade against the kingdom and enforcing anti-slavery patrols near its coast. Dahomey was also weakened after failing to invade and capture slaves in Abeokuta, a Yoruba city-state which was founded by the Oyo Empire refugees migrating southwards. Dahomey later began experiencing territorial disputes with France which led to the First Franco-Dahomean War in 1890, resulting in French victory. The kingdom finally fell in 1894 when the last king, Béhanzin, was defeated by France in the Second Franco-Dahomean War, leading to the country being annexed into French West Africa as the colony of French Dahomey, later gaining independence in 1960 as the Republic of Dahomey, which would later rename itself Benin in 1975. | 2002-02-20T01:01:01Z | 2023-12-30T03:28:52Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey |
8,767 | Dragoon | Dragoons were originally a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 17th century onward, dragoons were increasingly also employed as conventional cavalry and trained for combat with swords and firearms from horseback. While their use goes back to the late 16th century, dragoon regiments were established in most European armies during the 17th and early 18th centuries; they provided greater mobility than regular infantry but were far less expensive than cavalry.
The name reputedly derives from a type of firearm, called a dragon, which was a handgun version of a blunderbuss, carried by dragoons of the French Army.
The title has been retained in modern times by a number of armoured or ceremonial mounted regiments.
The establishment of dragoons evolved from the practice of sometimes transporting infantry by horse when speed of movement was needed. In 1552, Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma mounted several companies of infantry on pack horses to achieve surprise, another example being that used by Louis of Nassau in 1572 during operations near Mons in Hainaut, when 500 infantry were transported this way. It is also suggested the first dragoons were raised by the Marshal de Brissac in 1600. According to old German literature, dragoons were invented by Count Ernst von Mansfeld, one of the greatest German military commanders, in the early 1620s. There are other instances of mounted infantry predating this. However Mansfeld, who had learned his profession in Hungary and the Netherlands, often used horses to make his foot troops more mobile, creating what was called an "armée volante" (French for flying army).
During the Spanish Conquest of Peru in the 16th century, conquistadors fought on horse with arquebuses, prefiguring the origin of European dragoons.
The name possibly derives from an early weapon, a short wheellock, called a dragon because its muzzle was decorated with a dragon's head. The practice comes from a time when all gunpowder weapons had distinctive names, including the culverin, serpentine, falcon, falconet, etc. It is also sometimes claimed a galloping infantryman with his loose coat and the burning match resembled a dragon.
It has also been suggested that the name derives from the German "tragen" or the Dutch "dragen", both being the verb "to carry" in their respective languages. Howard Reid claims the name and role descend from the Latin Draconarius.
Dragoon is occasionally used as a verb meaning to subjugate or persecute by the imposition of troops; and by extension to compel by any violent measures or threats. The term dates from 1689, when dragoons were being used by the French monarchy to persecute Protestants, particularly by forcing Protestants to lodge a dragoon (dragonnades) in their house to watch over them at the householder's expense.
Early dragoons were not organized in squadrons or troops as were cavalry, but in companies like the infantry. Their commissioned and non-commissioned officers bore infantry ranks, while they used drummers, not buglers, to communicate orders on the battlefield. The flexibility of mounted infantry made dragoons a useful arm, especially when employed for what would now be termed "internal security" against smugglers or civil unrest, and on line of communication security duties.
In Britain, companies of dragoons were first raised during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and prior to 1645 either served as independent troops or were attached to cavalry units. When the New Model Army was first approved by Parliament in January 1645, it included ten regiments of cavalry, each with a company of dragoons attached. At the urging of Sir Thomas Fairfax, on 1 March they were formed into a separate unit of 1,000 men, commanded by Colonel John Okey, and played an important part at the Battle of Naseby in June.
Supplied with inferior horses and more basic equipment, the dragoon regiments were cheaper to raise and maintain than the expensive regiments of cavalry. When in the 17th century Gustav II Adolf introduced dragoons into the Swedish Army, he provided them with a sabre, an axe and a matchlock musket, using them as "labourers on horseback". Many of the European armies henceforth imitated this all-purpose set of weaponry. Dragoons of the late 17th and early 18th centuries retained strong links with infantry in appearance and equipment, differing mainly in the substitution of riding boots for shoes and the adoption of caps instead of broad-brimmed hats to enable muskets to be worn slung.
A non-military use of dragoons was the 1681 Dragonnades, a policy instituted by Louis XIV to intimidate Huguenot families into either leaving France or re-converting to Catholicism by billeting ill-disciplined dragoons in Protestant households. While other categories of infantry and cavalry were also used, the mobility, flexibility and available numbers of the dragoon regiments made them particularly suitable for repressive work of this nature over a wide area.
In the Spanish Army, Pedro de la Puente organized a body of dragoons in Innsbruck in 1635. In 1640, a tercio of a thousand dragoons armed with the arquebus was created in Spain. By the end of the 17th century, the Spanish Army had three tercios of dragoons in Spain, plus three in the Netherlands and three more in Milan. In 1704, the Spanish dragoons were reorganised into regiments by Philip V, as were the rest of the tercios.
Dragoons were at a disadvantage when engaged against true cavalry, and constantly sought to improve their horsemanship, armament and social status. By the Seven Years' War in 1756, their primary role in most European armies had progressed from that of mounted infantry to that of heavy cavalry. They were sometimes described as 'medium' cavalry, midway between heavy/armoured and light/unarmoured regiments, though this was a classification that was rarely used at the time. Their original responsibilities for scouting and picket duty had passed to hussars and similar light cavalry corps in the French, Austrian, Prussian, and other armies. In the Imperial Russian Army, due to the availability of Cossack troops, the dragoons were retained in their original role for much longer.
An exception to the rule was the British Army, which from 1746 onward gradually redesignated all regiments of "Horse" (regular cavalry) as lower paid "Dragoons", in an economy measure. Starting in 1756, seven regiments of Light Dragoons were raised and trained in reconnaissance, skirmishing and other work requiring endurance in accordance with contemporary standards of light cavalry performance. The success of this new class of cavalry was such that another eight dragoon regiments were converted between 1768 and 1783. When this reorganisation was completed in 1788, the cavalry arm consisted of regular dragoons and seven units of Dragoon Guards. The designation of Dragoon Guards did not mean that these regiments (the former 2nd to 8th Horse) had become Household Troops, but simply that they had been given a more dignified title to compensate for the loss of pay and prestige.
Towards the end of 1776, George Washington realized the need for a mounted branch of the American military. In January 1777 four regiments of light dragoons were raised. Short term enlistments were abandoned and the dragoons joined for three years, or "the war". They participated in most of the major engagements of the American War of Independence, including the Battles of White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, Saratoga, Cowpens, and Monmouth, as well as the Yorktown campaign.
During the Napoleonic Wars, dragoons generally assumed a cavalry role, though remaining a lighter class of mounted troops than the armored cuirassiers. Dragoons rode larger horses than the light cavalry and wielded straight, rather than curved swords. Emperor Napoleon often formed complete divisions out of his 30 dragoon regiments, while in 1811 six regiments were converted to Chevau-Legers Lanciers; they were often used in battle to break the enemy's main resistance. In northern and eastern Europe they were employed as heavy cavalry, while in the Peninsular War they also fulfilled the role of lighter cavalry, for example in anti-guerrilla operations. In 1809, French dragoons scored notable successes against Spanish armies at the Battle of Ocana and the Battle of Alba de Tormes.
Post 1805, the 7th, 10th, 15th and 18th regiments of Light Dragoons of the British Army were re-designated as hussars and when the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, some became lancers. The transition from dragoons to hussars was however a slow one, affecting uniforms but not equipment and functions. Even titles often remained ambiguous until 1861, for example, 18th King's Light Dragoons (Hussars).
The seven regiments of Dragoon Guards served as the heavy cavalry arm of the British Army, although unlike continental cuirassiers they carried no armour. Between 1816 and 1861, the other twenty-one cavalry regiments were either disbanded or rebadged as lancers or hussars.
The creation of a unified German state in 1871 brought together the dragoon regiments of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, Baden, Hesse, and Württemberg in a single numbered sequence, although historic distinctions of insignia and uniform were largely preserved. Two regiments of the Imperial Guard were designated as dragoons.
The Austrian (later Austro-Hungarian) Army of the 19th century included six regiments of dragoons in 1836, classed as heavy cavalry for shock action, but in practice used as multi-purpose medium troops. After 1859 all but two Austrian dragoon regiments were converted to cuirassiers or disbanded. From 1868 to 1918 the Austro-Hungarian dragoons numbered 15 regiments.
During the 18th century, Spain raised several regiments of dragoons to protect the northern provinces and borders of New Spain, the present-day states of California, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. In mainland Spain, dragoons were reclassified as light cavalry from 1803 but remained among the elite units of the Spanish Colonial Army. A number of dragoon officers played a leading role in initiating the Mexican War of Independence in 1810, including Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama and Agustin de Iturbide, who briefly served as Emperor of México from 1822 to 1823.
Prior to the War of 1812 the U.S. organized the Regiment of Light Dragoons. For the war a second regiment was activated; that regiment was consolidated with the original regiment in 1814. The original regiment was consolidated with the Corps of Artillery in June 1815. The United States Dragoons was organized by an Act of Congress approved on 2 March 1833 after the disbandment of the Battalion of Mounted Rangers. The unit became the "First Regiment of Dragoons" when the Second Dragoons was raised in 1836. In 1861, they were re-designated as the 1st and 2nd Cavalry but did not change their role or equipment, although the traditional orange uniform braiding of the dragoons was replaced by the standard yellow of the Cavalry branch. This marked the official end of dragoons in the U.S. Army in name, although certain modern units trace their origins back to the historic dragoon regiments. In practice, all US cavalry assumed a dragoon-like role, frequently using carbines and pistols, in addition to their swords.
Between 1881 and 1907 all Russian cavalry (other than Cossacks and Imperial Guard regiments) were designated as dragoons, reflecting an emphasis on the double ability of dismounted action as well as the new cavalry tactics in their training and a growing acceptance of the impracticality of employing historical cavalry tactics against modern firepower. Upon the reinstatement of Uhlan and Hussar Regiments in 1907 their training pattern, as well as that of the Cuirassiers of the Guard, remained unchanged until the collapse of the Russian Imperial Army.
In Japan, during the late 19th and early 20th century, dragoons were deployed in the same way as in other armies, but were dressed as hussars.
In the period before 1914, there were still dragoon regiments in the British and French armies, as well as German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Canadian, Peruvian, Swiss, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Spanish. Their uniforms varied greatly, lacking the characteristic features of hussar or lancer regiments. There were occasional reminders of their mounted infantry origins; the 28 dragoon regiments of the Imperial German Army wore the infantry Pickelhaube or spiked helmet, while British dragoons wore scarlet tunics for full dress while hussars and all but one of the lancer regiments wore dark blue. In other respects however dragoons had adopted the same tactics, roles and equipment as other branches of the cavalry and the distinction had become simply one of traditional titles. Weaponry had ceased to have a historic connection, with both the French and German dragoon regiments carrying lances during the early stages of World War I.
The historic German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian dragoon regiments ceased to exist as distinct branches following the overthrow of the respective imperial regimes of these countries during 1917–18. The Spanish dragoons, which dated back to 1640, were reclassified as numbered cavalry regiments in 1931 as part of the army modernization policies of the Second Spanish Republic.
The Australian Light Horse were similar to 18th-century dragoon regiments in some respects, being mounted infantry which normally fought on foot, their horses' purpose being transportation. They served during the Second Boer War and World War I. The Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade became famous for the Battle of Beersheba in 1917 where they charged on horseback using rifle bayonets in hand, since neither sabres or lances were part of their equipment. Later in the Palestine campaign Pattern 1908 Cavalry swords were issued and used in the campaign leading to the fall of Damascus.
Probably the last use of real dragoons (infantry on horseback) in combat was made by the Portuguese Army in the war in Angola during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1966, the Portuguese created an experimental horse platoon, to operate against the guerrillas in the high grass region of Eastern Angola, in which each soldier was armed with a G3 assault rifle for combat on foot and with a semi-automatic pistol to fire from horseback. The troops on horseback were able to operate in difficult terrain unsuited to motor vehicles and had the advantage of being able to control the area around them, with a clear view over the grass that foot troops did not have. Moreover, these unconventional troops created a psychological impact on an enemy that was not used to facing horse troops, and thus had no training or strategy to deal with them. The experimental horse platoon was so successful that its entire parent battalion was transformed from an armored reconnaissance unit to a three-squadron horse battalion known as the "Dragoons of Angola". One of the typical operations carried out by the Dragoons of Angola, in cooperation with airmobile forces, consisted of the dragoons chasing the guerrillas and pushing them in one direction, with the airmobile troops being launched from helicopter in the enemy rear, trapping the enemy between the two forces.
Until 1918 Dragoner (en: dragoon) was the designation given to the lowest ranks in the dragoon regiments of the Austro-Hungarian and Imperial German Armies. The Dragoner rank, together with all other private ranks of the different branch of service, belonged to the so-called Gemeine rank group.
The guard of honour for the President of Brazil includes the 1st Guards Cavalry Regiment of the Brazilian Army, known as the "Dragões da Independência" (Independence Dragoons). The name was given in 1927 and refers to the fact that a detachment of dragoons escorted the Prince Royal of Portugal and Brazil, Pedro of Braganza, at the time when he declared the Brazilian independence from the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves on 7 September 1822.
The Independence Dragoons wear 19th-century dress uniforms similar to those of the earlier Imperial Honor Guard, which are used as the regimental full dress uniform since 1927. The uniform was designed by Debret, in white and red, with plumed bronze helmets. The colors and pattern were influenced by the Austrian dragoons of the period, as the Brazilian Empress consort was also an Austrian archduchess. The color of the plumes varies according to rank. The Independence Dragoons are armed with lances and sabres, the latter only for the officers and the colour guard.
The regiment was established in 1808 by the Prince Regent and future King of Portugal, John VI, with the duty of protecting the Portuguese royal family, which had sought refuge in Brazil during the Napoleonic wars. However dragoons had existed in Portugal since at least the early 18th century and, in 1719, units of this type of cavalry were sent to Brazil, initially to escort shipments of gold and diamonds and to guard the Viceroy who resided in Rio de Janeiro (1st Cavalry Regiment – Vice-Roy Guard Squadron). Later, they were also sent to the south to serve against the Spanish during frontier clashes. After the proclamation of the Brazilian independence, the title of the regiment was changed to that of the Imperial Honor Guard, with the role of protecting the Imperial Family. The Guard was later disbanded by Emperor Pedro II and would be recreated only later in the republican era.
At the time of the Republic proclamation in 1889, horse No. 6 of the Imperial Honor Guard was ridden by the officer making the declaration of the end of Imperial rule, Second lieutenant Eduardo José Barbosa. This is commemorated by the custom under which the horse having this number is used only by the commander of the modern regiment.
There are three dragoon regiments in the Canadian Army: The Royal Canadian Dragoons and two reserve regiments, the British Columbia Dragoons and the Saskatchewan Dragoons.
The Royal Canadian Dragoons is the senior Armoured regiment in the Canadian Army. The regiment was authorized in 1883 as the Cavalry School Corps, being redesignated as Canadian Dragoons in 1892, adding the Royal designation the next year. The RCD has a history of fighting dismounted, serving in the Second Boer War in South Africa as mounted infantry, fighting as infantry with the 1st Canadian Division in Flanders in 1915–1916 and spending the majority of the regiment's service in the Italian Campaign 1944–1945 fighting dismounted. In 1994 when the regiment deployed to Bosnia as part of the United Nations Protection Force, B Squadron was employed as a mechanized infantry company. The current role of The Royal Canadian Dragoons is to provide Armour Reconnaissance support to 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (2 CMBG) as well as C Squadron RCD in Gagetown which is a part of 2 CMBG and the RCD Regiment with Leopard 2A4 and 2A6 tanks.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were accorded the formal status of a regiment of dragoons in 1921. The modern RCMP does not retain any military status however.
Founded as the Dragones de la Reina (Queen's Dragoons) in 1758 and later renamed the Dragoons of Chile in 1812, and then becoming the Carabineros de Chile in 1903. The Carabineros are the national police of Chile. The military counterpart, that of the 15th Reinforced Regiment "Dragoons" is now as of 2010 the 4th Armored Brigade "Chorrillos" based in Punta Arenas as the 6th Armored Cavalry Squadron "Dragoons", and form part of the 5th Army Division.
The Royal Danish Army includes amongst its historic regiments the Jutish Dragoon Regiment, which was raised in 1670.
The modern French Army retains three dragoon regiments from the thirty-two in existence at the beginning of World War I: the 2nd, which is a nuclear, biological and chemical protection regiment, the 5th, an experimental Combined arms regiment, and the 13th (Special Reconnaissance).
Beginning in the 17th century, the mercenary army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania included dragoon units. In the middle of the 17th century there were 1,660 dragoons in an army totaling 8,000 men. By the 18th century there were four regiments of dragoons.
Lithuanian cavalrymen served in dragoon regiments of both the Russian and Prussian armies, after the Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Between 1920 and 1924 and 1935–1940 the Lithuanian Army included the Third Dragoon Iron Wolf Regiment. The dragoons were the equivalent of the present-day Volunteer Forces.
In modern Lithuania the Grand Duke Butigeidis Dragoon Battalion (Lithuanian: didžiojo kunigaikščio Butigeidžio dragūnų batalionas) is designated as dragoons, with a motorized infantry role.
During the times of the Viceroyalty, regiments of dragoons (Dragon de cuera) were created to defend New Spain. They were mostly horsemen from the provinces. During and after the Mexican war of independence, dragons have played an important role in military conflicts within the country such as the Battle of Puebla during the French intervention, until the Mexican Revolution. One of the best-known military marches in Mexico is the Marcha Dragona (dragon march), the only one currently used by cavalry and motorized units during the parade on 16 September to commemorate Independence Day.
In the Norwegian Army during the early part of the 20th century, dragoons served in part as mounted troops, and in part on skis or bicycles (hjulryttere, meaning "wheel-riders"). Dragoons fought on horses, bicycles and skis against the German invasion in 1940. After World War II the dragoon regiments were reorganized as armoured reconnaissance units. "Dragon" is the rank of a compulsory service private cavalryman while enlisted (regular) cavalrymen have the same rank as infantrymen: "Grenader".
The Armoured Regiment "34 Lancers" of Pakistan Army Armoured Corps is also known as "Dragoons".
The "Mariscal Domingo Nieto" Cavalry Regiment Escort, named after Field Marshal Domingo Nieto, a former President of Peru, were the traditional Guard of the Government Palace until 5 March 1987 and its disbandment in that year. However, by Ministerial Resolution No 139-2012/DE/EP of 2 February 2012 the restoration of the Cavalry Regiment "Marshal Domingo Nieto" as the official escort of the President of the Republic of Peru was announced. The main mission of the reestablished regiment was to guarantee the security of the President of the Republic and of the Government Palace.
This regiment of dragoons was created in 1904 following the suggestion of a French military mission which undertook the reorganization of the Peruvian Army in 1896. The initial title of the unit was Cavalry Squadron "President's Escort". It was modelled on the French dragoons of the period. The unit was later renamed as the Cavalry Regiment "President's Escort" before receiving its current title in 1949.
The Peruvian Dragoon Guard has throughout its existence worn French-style uniforms of black tunic and red breeches in winter and white coat and red breeches in summer, with red and white plumed bronze helmets with the coat of arms of Peru and golden or red epaulettes depending on rank. They retain their original armament of lances and sabres, until the 1980s rifles were used for dismounted drill.
At 13:00 hours every day, the main esplanade in front of the Government Palace of Perú fronting Lima's Main Square serves as the stage for the changing of the guard, undertaken by members of the Presidential Life Guard Escort Dragoons, mounted or dismounted. While the dismounted changing is held on Mondays and Fridays, the mounted ceremony is held twice a month on a Sunday.
The Portuguese Army still maintains two units which are descended from former regiments of dragoons. These are the 3rd Regiment of Cavalry (the former "Olivença Dragoons") and the 6th Regiment of Cavalry (the former "Chaves Dragoons"). Both regiments are, presently, armoured units. The Portuguese Rapid Reaction Brigade's Armoured Reconnaissance Squadron – a unit from the 3rd Regiment of Cavalry – is known as the "Paratroopers Dragoons".
During the Portuguese Colonial War in the 1960s and the 1970s, the Portuguese Army created an experimental horse platoon, to combat the guerrillas in eastern Angola. This unit was soon augmented, becoming a group of three squadrons, known as the "Angola Dragoons". The Angola Dragoons operated as mounted infantry – like the original dragoons – each soldier being armed with a pistol to fire when on horseback and with an automatic rifle, to use when dismounted. A unit of the same type was being created in Mozambique when the war ended in 1974.
The Spanish Army began the training of a dragoon corps in 1635 under the direction of Pedro de la Puente at Innsbruck. In 1640 the first dragoon "tercio" was created, equipped with arquebuses and maces. The number of dragoon tercios was increased to nine by the end of the XVII century: three garrisoned in Spain, another three in the Netherlands and the remainder in Milan.
The tercios were converted into a Regimental system, beginning in 1704. Philip V created several additional dragoon regiments to perform the functions of a police corps in the New World. Notable amongst those units were the leather-clad dragones de cuera.
In 1803 the dragoon regiments were renamed as "caballería ligera" (light cavalry). By 1815 these units had been disbanded.
Spain recreated its dragoons in the late nineteenth century. Three Spanish dragoon regiments were still in existence in 1930.
In the Swedish Army, dragoons comprise the Military Police and Military Police Rangers. They also form the 13th Battalion of the Life Guards, which is a military police unit. The 13th (Dragoons) Battalion have roots that go back as far as 1523, making it one of the world's oldest military units still in service. Today, the only mounted units still retained by the Swedish Army are the two dragoons squadrons of the King's Guards Battalion of the Life Guards. Horses are used for ceremonial purposes only, most often when the dragoons take part in the changing of the guards at The Royal Palace in Stockholm. "Livdragon" is the rank of a private cavalryman.
Mounted dragoons existed in the Swiss Armed Forces until the early 1970s, when they were converted into Armoured Grenadiers units. The "Dragoner" had to prove he was able to keep a horse at home before entering the army. At the end of basic training they had to buy a horse at a reduced price from the army and to take it home together with equipment, uniform and weapon. In the "yearly repetition course" the dragoons served with their horses, often riding from home to the meeting point.
The abolition of the dragoon units, believed to be the last non-ceremonial horse cavalry in Europe, was a contentious issue in Switzerland. On 5 December 1972 the Swiss National Council approved the measure by 91 votes, against 71 for retention.
As of 2021, the British Army contains four regiments designated as dragoons: 1st The Queens Dragoon Guards, Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, the Royal Dragoon Guards, and the Light Dragoons. These perform a variety of reconnaissance and light support activities, including convoy protection, and operate the Jackal, the Coyote Reconnaissance Vehicle and the FV107 Scimitar light tank.
The 1st and 2nd Battalion, 48th Infantry were mechanized infantry units assigned to the 3rd Armored Division (3AD) in West Germany during the Cold War. The unit crest of the 48th Infantry designated the unit as Dragoons, purely a traditional designation.
The 1st Dragoons was reformed in the Vietnam War era as the 1st Squadron, 1st U.S. Cavalry. It served in the Iraq War and remains as the oldest cavalry unit, as well as the most decorated one, in the U.S. Army. Today's modern 1–1 Cavalry is a scout/attack unit, equipped with MRAPs, M3A3 Bradley CFVs, and Strykers.
Another modern United States Army unit, informally known as the 2nd Dragoons, is the 2nd Cavalry Regiment. This unit was originally organized as the Second Regiment of Dragoons in 1836 and was renamed the Second Cavalry Regiment in 1861, being redesignated as the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in 1948. The regiment is currently equipped with the Stryker family of wheeled fighting vehicles and was redesignated as the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in 2006. In 2011 the 2nd Dragoon regiment was redesignated as the 2nd Cavalry Regiment. The 2nd Cavalry Regiment has the distinction of being the longest continuously serving regiment in the United States Army.
The 113th Army Band at Fort Knox is also officially nicknamed as "The Dragoons". This derives from its formation as the Band, First Regiment of Dragoons on 8 July 1840.
Company D, 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps, is nicknamed the "Dragoons". Their combat history includes Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom from 2002 to 2013. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Dragoons were originally a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 17th century onward, dragoons were increasingly also employed as conventional cavalry and trained for combat with swords and firearms from horseback. While their use goes back to the late 16th century, dragoon regiments were established in most European armies during the 17th and early 18th centuries; they provided greater mobility than regular infantry but were far less expensive than cavalry.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The name reputedly derives from a type of firearm, called a dragon, which was a handgun version of a blunderbuss, carried by dragoons of the French Army.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The title has been retained in modern times by a number of armoured or ceremonial mounted regiments.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The establishment of dragoons evolved from the practice of sometimes transporting infantry by horse when speed of movement was needed. In 1552, Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma mounted several companies of infantry on pack horses to achieve surprise, another example being that used by Louis of Nassau in 1572 during operations near Mons in Hainaut, when 500 infantry were transported this way. It is also suggested the first dragoons were raised by the Marshal de Brissac in 1600. According to old German literature, dragoons were invented by Count Ernst von Mansfeld, one of the greatest German military commanders, in the early 1620s. There are other instances of mounted infantry predating this. However Mansfeld, who had learned his profession in Hungary and the Netherlands, often used horses to make his foot troops more mobile, creating what was called an \"armée volante\" (French for flying army).",
"title": "Origins and name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "During the Spanish Conquest of Peru in the 16th century, conquistadors fought on horse with arquebuses, prefiguring the origin of European dragoons.",
"title": "Origins and name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The name possibly derives from an early weapon, a short wheellock, called a dragon because its muzzle was decorated with a dragon's head. The practice comes from a time when all gunpowder weapons had distinctive names, including the culverin, serpentine, falcon, falconet, etc. It is also sometimes claimed a galloping infantryman with his loose coat and the burning match resembled a dragon.",
"title": "Origins and name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "It has also been suggested that the name derives from the German \"tragen\" or the Dutch \"dragen\", both being the verb \"to carry\" in their respective languages. Howard Reid claims the name and role descend from the Latin Draconarius.",
"title": "Origins and name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Dragoon is occasionally used as a verb meaning to subjugate or persecute by the imposition of troops; and by extension to compel by any violent measures or threats. The term dates from 1689, when dragoons were being used by the French monarchy to persecute Protestants, particularly by forcing Protestants to lodge a dragoon (dragonnades) in their house to watch over them at the householder's expense.",
"title": "Origins and name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Early dragoons were not organized in squadrons or troops as were cavalry, but in companies like the infantry. Their commissioned and non-commissioned officers bore infantry ranks, while they used drummers, not buglers, to communicate orders on the battlefield. The flexibility of mounted infantry made dragoons a useful arm, especially when employed for what would now be termed \"internal security\" against smugglers or civil unrest, and on line of communication security duties.",
"title": "Early history and role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In Britain, companies of dragoons were first raised during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and prior to 1645 either served as independent troops or were attached to cavalry units. When the New Model Army was first approved by Parliament in January 1645, it included ten regiments of cavalry, each with a company of dragoons attached. At the urging of Sir Thomas Fairfax, on 1 March they were formed into a separate unit of 1,000 men, commanded by Colonel John Okey, and played an important part at the Battle of Naseby in June.",
"title": "Early history and role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Supplied with inferior horses and more basic equipment, the dragoon regiments were cheaper to raise and maintain than the expensive regiments of cavalry. When in the 17th century Gustav II Adolf introduced dragoons into the Swedish Army, he provided them with a sabre, an axe and a matchlock musket, using them as \"labourers on horseback\". Many of the European armies henceforth imitated this all-purpose set of weaponry. Dragoons of the late 17th and early 18th centuries retained strong links with infantry in appearance and equipment, differing mainly in the substitution of riding boots for shoes and the adoption of caps instead of broad-brimmed hats to enable muskets to be worn slung.",
"title": "Early history and role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "A non-military use of dragoons was the 1681 Dragonnades, a policy instituted by Louis XIV to intimidate Huguenot families into either leaving France or re-converting to Catholicism by billeting ill-disciplined dragoons in Protestant households. While other categories of infantry and cavalry were also used, the mobility, flexibility and available numbers of the dragoon regiments made them particularly suitable for repressive work of this nature over a wide area.",
"title": "Early history and role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In the Spanish Army, Pedro de la Puente organized a body of dragoons in Innsbruck in 1635. In 1640, a tercio of a thousand dragoons armed with the arquebus was created in Spain. By the end of the 17th century, the Spanish Army had three tercios of dragoons in Spain, plus three in the Netherlands and three more in Milan. In 1704, the Spanish dragoons were reorganised into regiments by Philip V, as were the rest of the tercios.",
"title": "Early history and role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Dragoons were at a disadvantage when engaged against true cavalry, and constantly sought to improve their horsemanship, armament and social status. By the Seven Years' War in 1756, their primary role in most European armies had progressed from that of mounted infantry to that of heavy cavalry. They were sometimes described as 'medium' cavalry, midway between heavy/armoured and light/unarmoured regiments, though this was a classification that was rarely used at the time. Their original responsibilities for scouting and picket duty had passed to hussars and similar light cavalry corps in the French, Austrian, Prussian, and other armies. In the Imperial Russian Army, due to the availability of Cossack troops, the dragoons were retained in their original role for much longer.",
"title": "Early history and role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "An exception to the rule was the British Army, which from 1746 onward gradually redesignated all regiments of \"Horse\" (regular cavalry) as lower paid \"Dragoons\", in an economy measure. Starting in 1756, seven regiments of Light Dragoons were raised and trained in reconnaissance, skirmishing and other work requiring endurance in accordance with contemporary standards of light cavalry performance. The success of this new class of cavalry was such that another eight dragoon regiments were converted between 1768 and 1783. When this reorganisation was completed in 1788, the cavalry arm consisted of regular dragoons and seven units of Dragoon Guards. The designation of Dragoon Guards did not mean that these regiments (the former 2nd to 8th Horse) had become Household Troops, but simply that they had been given a more dignified title to compensate for the loss of pay and prestige.",
"title": "Early history and role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Towards the end of 1776, George Washington realized the need for a mounted branch of the American military. In January 1777 four regiments of light dragoons were raised. Short term enlistments were abandoned and the dragoons joined for three years, or \"the war\". They participated in most of the major engagements of the American War of Independence, including the Battles of White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, Saratoga, Cowpens, and Monmouth, as well as the Yorktown campaign.",
"title": "Early history and role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "During the Napoleonic Wars, dragoons generally assumed a cavalry role, though remaining a lighter class of mounted troops than the armored cuirassiers. Dragoons rode larger horses than the light cavalry and wielded straight, rather than curved swords. Emperor Napoleon often formed complete divisions out of his 30 dragoon regiments, while in 1811 six regiments were converted to Chevau-Legers Lanciers; they were often used in battle to break the enemy's main resistance. In northern and eastern Europe they were employed as heavy cavalry, while in the Peninsular War they also fulfilled the role of lighter cavalry, for example in anti-guerrilla operations. In 1809, French dragoons scored notable successes against Spanish armies at the Battle of Ocana and the Battle of Alba de Tormes.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Post 1805, the 7th, 10th, 15th and 18th regiments of Light Dragoons of the British Army were re-designated as hussars and when the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, some became lancers. The transition from dragoons to hussars was however a slow one, affecting uniforms but not equipment and functions. Even titles often remained ambiguous until 1861, for example, 18th King's Light Dragoons (Hussars).",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The seven regiments of Dragoon Guards served as the heavy cavalry arm of the British Army, although unlike continental cuirassiers they carried no armour. Between 1816 and 1861, the other twenty-one cavalry regiments were either disbanded or rebadged as lancers or hussars.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The creation of a unified German state in 1871 brought together the dragoon regiments of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, Baden, Hesse, and Württemberg in a single numbered sequence, although historic distinctions of insignia and uniform were largely preserved. Two regiments of the Imperial Guard were designated as dragoons.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Austrian (later Austro-Hungarian) Army of the 19th century included six regiments of dragoons in 1836, classed as heavy cavalry for shock action, but in practice used as multi-purpose medium troops. After 1859 all but two Austrian dragoon regiments were converted to cuirassiers or disbanded. From 1868 to 1918 the Austro-Hungarian dragoons numbered 15 regiments.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "During the 18th century, Spain raised several regiments of dragoons to protect the northern provinces and borders of New Spain, the present-day states of California, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. In mainland Spain, dragoons were reclassified as light cavalry from 1803 but remained among the elite units of the Spanish Colonial Army. A number of dragoon officers played a leading role in initiating the Mexican War of Independence in 1810, including Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama and Agustin de Iturbide, who briefly served as Emperor of México from 1822 to 1823.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Prior to the War of 1812 the U.S. organized the Regiment of Light Dragoons. For the war a second regiment was activated; that regiment was consolidated with the original regiment in 1814. The original regiment was consolidated with the Corps of Artillery in June 1815. The United States Dragoons was organized by an Act of Congress approved on 2 March 1833 after the disbandment of the Battalion of Mounted Rangers. The unit became the \"First Regiment of Dragoons\" when the Second Dragoons was raised in 1836. In 1861, they were re-designated as the 1st and 2nd Cavalry but did not change their role or equipment, although the traditional orange uniform braiding of the dragoons was replaced by the standard yellow of the Cavalry branch. This marked the official end of dragoons in the U.S. Army in name, although certain modern units trace their origins back to the historic dragoon regiments. In practice, all US cavalry assumed a dragoon-like role, frequently using carbines and pistols, in addition to their swords.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Between 1881 and 1907 all Russian cavalry (other than Cossacks and Imperial Guard regiments) were designated as dragoons, reflecting an emphasis on the double ability of dismounted action as well as the new cavalry tactics in their training and a growing acceptance of the impracticality of employing historical cavalry tactics against modern firepower. Upon the reinstatement of Uhlan and Hussar Regiments in 1907 their training pattern, as well as that of the Cuirassiers of the Guard, remained unchanged until the collapse of the Russian Imperial Army.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In Japan, during the late 19th and early 20th century, dragoons were deployed in the same way as in other armies, but were dressed as hussars.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In the period before 1914, there were still dragoon regiments in the British and French armies, as well as German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Canadian, Peruvian, Swiss, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Spanish. Their uniforms varied greatly, lacking the characteristic features of hussar or lancer regiments. There were occasional reminders of their mounted infantry origins; the 28 dragoon regiments of the Imperial German Army wore the infantry Pickelhaube or spiked helmet, while British dragoons wore scarlet tunics for full dress while hussars and all but one of the lancer regiments wore dark blue. In other respects however dragoons had adopted the same tactics, roles and equipment as other branches of the cavalry and the distinction had become simply one of traditional titles. Weaponry had ceased to have a historic connection, with both the French and German dragoon regiments carrying lances during the early stages of World War I.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The historic German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian dragoon regiments ceased to exist as distinct branches following the overthrow of the respective imperial regimes of these countries during 1917–18. The Spanish dragoons, which dated back to 1640, were reclassified as numbered cavalry regiments in 1931 as part of the army modernization policies of the Second Spanish Republic.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Australian Light Horse were similar to 18th-century dragoon regiments in some respects, being mounted infantry which normally fought on foot, their horses' purpose being transportation. They served during the Second Boer War and World War I. The Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade became famous for the Battle of Beersheba in 1917 where they charged on horseback using rifle bayonets in hand, since neither sabres or lances were part of their equipment. Later in the Palestine campaign Pattern 1908 Cavalry swords were issued and used in the campaign leading to the fall of Damascus.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Probably the last use of real dragoons (infantry on horseback) in combat was made by the Portuguese Army in the war in Angola during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1966, the Portuguese created an experimental horse platoon, to operate against the guerrillas in the high grass region of Eastern Angola, in which each soldier was armed with a G3 assault rifle for combat on foot and with a semi-automatic pistol to fire from horseback. The troops on horseback were able to operate in difficult terrain unsuited to motor vehicles and had the advantage of being able to control the area around them, with a clear view over the grass that foot troops did not have. Moreover, these unconventional troops created a psychological impact on an enemy that was not used to facing horse troops, and thus had no training or strategy to deal with them. The experimental horse platoon was so successful that its entire parent battalion was transformed from an armored reconnaissance unit to a three-squadron horse battalion known as the \"Dragoons of Angola\". One of the typical operations carried out by the Dragoons of Angola, in cooperation with airmobile forces, consisted of the dragoons chasing the guerrillas and pushing them in one direction, with the airmobile troops being launched from helicopter in the enemy rear, trapping the enemy between the two forces.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Until 1918 Dragoner (en: dragoon) was the designation given to the lowest ranks in the dragoon regiments of the Austro-Hungarian and Imperial German Armies. The Dragoner rank, together with all other private ranks of the different branch of service, belonged to the so-called Gemeine rank group.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The guard of honour for the President of Brazil includes the 1st Guards Cavalry Regiment of the Brazilian Army, known as the \"Dragões da Independência\" (Independence Dragoons). The name was given in 1927 and refers to the fact that a detachment of dragoons escorted the Prince Royal of Portugal and Brazil, Pedro of Braganza, at the time when he declared the Brazilian independence from the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves on 7 September 1822.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The Independence Dragoons wear 19th-century dress uniforms similar to those of the earlier Imperial Honor Guard, which are used as the regimental full dress uniform since 1927. The uniform was designed by Debret, in white and red, with plumed bronze helmets. The colors and pattern were influenced by the Austrian dragoons of the period, as the Brazilian Empress consort was also an Austrian archduchess. The color of the plumes varies according to rank. The Independence Dragoons are armed with lances and sabres, the latter only for the officers and the colour guard.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The regiment was established in 1808 by the Prince Regent and future King of Portugal, John VI, with the duty of protecting the Portuguese royal family, which had sought refuge in Brazil during the Napoleonic wars. However dragoons had existed in Portugal since at least the early 18th century and, in 1719, units of this type of cavalry were sent to Brazil, initially to escort shipments of gold and diamonds and to guard the Viceroy who resided in Rio de Janeiro (1st Cavalry Regiment – Vice-Roy Guard Squadron). Later, they were also sent to the south to serve against the Spanish during frontier clashes. After the proclamation of the Brazilian independence, the title of the regiment was changed to that of the Imperial Honor Guard, with the role of protecting the Imperial Family. The Guard was later disbanded by Emperor Pedro II and would be recreated only later in the republican era.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "At the time of the Republic proclamation in 1889, horse No. 6 of the Imperial Honor Guard was ridden by the officer making the declaration of the end of Imperial rule, Second lieutenant Eduardo José Barbosa. This is commemorated by the custom under which the horse having this number is used only by the commander of the modern regiment.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "There are three dragoon regiments in the Canadian Army: The Royal Canadian Dragoons and two reserve regiments, the British Columbia Dragoons and the Saskatchewan Dragoons.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Royal Canadian Dragoons is the senior Armoured regiment in the Canadian Army. The regiment was authorized in 1883 as the Cavalry School Corps, being redesignated as Canadian Dragoons in 1892, adding the Royal designation the next year. The RCD has a history of fighting dismounted, serving in the Second Boer War in South Africa as mounted infantry, fighting as infantry with the 1st Canadian Division in Flanders in 1915–1916 and spending the majority of the regiment's service in the Italian Campaign 1944–1945 fighting dismounted. In 1994 when the regiment deployed to Bosnia as part of the United Nations Protection Force, B Squadron was employed as a mechanized infantry company. The current role of The Royal Canadian Dragoons is to provide Armour Reconnaissance support to 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (2 CMBG) as well as C Squadron RCD in Gagetown which is a part of 2 CMBG and the RCD Regiment with Leopard 2A4 and 2A6 tanks.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were accorded the formal status of a regiment of dragoons in 1921. The modern RCMP does not retain any military status however.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Founded as the Dragones de la Reina (Queen's Dragoons) in 1758 and later renamed the Dragoons of Chile in 1812, and then becoming the Carabineros de Chile in 1903. The Carabineros are the national police of Chile. The military counterpart, that of the 15th Reinforced Regiment \"Dragoons\" is now as of 2010 the 4th Armored Brigade \"Chorrillos\" based in Punta Arenas as the 6th Armored Cavalry Squadron \"Dragoons\", and form part of the 5th Army Division.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The Royal Danish Army includes amongst its historic regiments the Jutish Dragoon Regiment, which was raised in 1670.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The modern French Army retains three dragoon regiments from the thirty-two in existence at the beginning of World War I: the 2nd, which is a nuclear, biological and chemical protection regiment, the 5th, an experimental Combined arms regiment, and the 13th (Special Reconnaissance).",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Beginning in the 17th century, the mercenary army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania included dragoon units. In the middle of the 17th century there were 1,660 dragoons in an army totaling 8,000 men. By the 18th century there were four regiments of dragoons.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Lithuanian cavalrymen served in dragoon regiments of both the Russian and Prussian armies, after the Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Between 1920 and 1924 and 1935–1940 the Lithuanian Army included the Third Dragoon Iron Wolf Regiment. The dragoons were the equivalent of the present-day Volunteer Forces.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In modern Lithuania the Grand Duke Butigeidis Dragoon Battalion (Lithuanian: didžiojo kunigaikščio Butigeidžio dragūnų batalionas) is designated as dragoons, with a motorized infantry role.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "During the times of the Viceroyalty, regiments of dragoons (Dragon de cuera) were created to defend New Spain. They were mostly horsemen from the provinces. During and after the Mexican war of independence, dragons have played an important role in military conflicts within the country such as the Battle of Puebla during the French intervention, until the Mexican Revolution. One of the best-known military marches in Mexico is the Marcha Dragona (dragon march), the only one currently used by cavalry and motorized units during the parade on 16 September to commemorate Independence Day.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In the Norwegian Army during the early part of the 20th century, dragoons served in part as mounted troops, and in part on skis or bicycles (hjulryttere, meaning \"wheel-riders\"). Dragoons fought on horses, bicycles and skis against the German invasion in 1940. After World War II the dragoon regiments were reorganized as armoured reconnaissance units. \"Dragon\" is the rank of a compulsory service private cavalryman while enlisted (regular) cavalrymen have the same rank as infantrymen: \"Grenader\".",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Armoured Regiment \"34 Lancers\" of Pakistan Army Armoured Corps is also known as \"Dragoons\".",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The \"Mariscal Domingo Nieto\" Cavalry Regiment Escort, named after Field Marshal Domingo Nieto, a former President of Peru, were the traditional Guard of the Government Palace until 5 March 1987 and its disbandment in that year. However, by Ministerial Resolution No 139-2012/DE/EP of 2 February 2012 the restoration of the Cavalry Regiment \"Marshal Domingo Nieto\" as the official escort of the President of the Republic of Peru was announced. The main mission of the reestablished regiment was to guarantee the security of the President of the Republic and of the Government Palace.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "This regiment of dragoons was created in 1904 following the suggestion of a French military mission which undertook the reorganization of the Peruvian Army in 1896. The initial title of the unit was Cavalry Squadron \"President's Escort\". It was modelled on the French dragoons of the period. The unit was later renamed as the Cavalry Regiment \"President's Escort\" before receiving its current title in 1949.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The Peruvian Dragoon Guard has throughout its existence worn French-style uniforms of black tunic and red breeches in winter and white coat and red breeches in summer, with red and white plumed bronze helmets with the coat of arms of Peru and golden or red epaulettes depending on rank. They retain their original armament of lances and sabres, until the 1980s rifles were used for dismounted drill.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "At 13:00 hours every day, the main esplanade in front of the Government Palace of Perú fronting Lima's Main Square serves as the stage for the changing of the guard, undertaken by members of the Presidential Life Guard Escort Dragoons, mounted or dismounted. While the dismounted changing is held on Mondays and Fridays, the mounted ceremony is held twice a month on a Sunday.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The Portuguese Army still maintains two units which are descended from former regiments of dragoons. These are the 3rd Regiment of Cavalry (the former \"Olivença Dragoons\") and the 6th Regiment of Cavalry (the former \"Chaves Dragoons\"). Both regiments are, presently, armoured units. The Portuguese Rapid Reaction Brigade's Armoured Reconnaissance Squadron – a unit from the 3rd Regiment of Cavalry – is known as the \"Paratroopers Dragoons\".",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "During the Portuguese Colonial War in the 1960s and the 1970s, the Portuguese Army created an experimental horse platoon, to combat the guerrillas in eastern Angola. This unit was soon augmented, becoming a group of three squadrons, known as the \"Angola Dragoons\". The Angola Dragoons operated as mounted infantry – like the original dragoons – each soldier being armed with a pistol to fire when on horseback and with an automatic rifle, to use when dismounted. A unit of the same type was being created in Mozambique when the war ended in 1974.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Spanish Army began the training of a dragoon corps in 1635 under the direction of Pedro de la Puente at Innsbruck. In 1640 the first dragoon \"tercio\" was created, equipped with arquebuses and maces. The number of dragoon tercios was increased to nine by the end of the XVII century: three garrisoned in Spain, another three in the Netherlands and the remainder in Milan.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The tercios were converted into a Regimental system, beginning in 1704. Philip V created several additional dragoon regiments to perform the functions of a police corps in the New World. Notable amongst those units were the leather-clad dragones de cuera.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In 1803 the dragoon regiments were renamed as \"caballería ligera\" (light cavalry). By 1815 these units had been disbanded.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Spain recreated its dragoons in the late nineteenth century. Three Spanish dragoon regiments were still in existence in 1930.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In the Swedish Army, dragoons comprise the Military Police and Military Police Rangers. They also form the 13th Battalion of the Life Guards, which is a military police unit. The 13th (Dragoons) Battalion have roots that go back as far as 1523, making it one of the world's oldest military units still in service. Today, the only mounted units still retained by the Swedish Army are the two dragoons squadrons of the King's Guards Battalion of the Life Guards. Horses are used for ceremonial purposes only, most often when the dragoons take part in the changing of the guards at The Royal Palace in Stockholm. \"Livdragon\" is the rank of a private cavalryman.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Mounted dragoons existed in the Swiss Armed Forces until the early 1970s, when they were converted into Armoured Grenadiers units. The \"Dragoner\" had to prove he was able to keep a horse at home before entering the army. At the end of basic training they had to buy a horse at a reduced price from the army and to take it home together with equipment, uniform and weapon. In the \"yearly repetition course\" the dragoons served with their horses, often riding from home to the meeting point.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The abolition of the dragoon units, believed to be the last non-ceremonial horse cavalry in Europe, was a contentious issue in Switzerland. On 5 December 1972 the Swiss National Council approved the measure by 91 votes, against 71 for retention.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "As of 2021, the British Army contains four regiments designated as dragoons: 1st The Queens Dragoon Guards, Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, the Royal Dragoon Guards, and the Light Dragoons. These perform a variety of reconnaissance and light support activities, including convoy protection, and operate the Jackal, the Coyote Reconnaissance Vehicle and the FV107 Scimitar light tank.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The 1st and 2nd Battalion, 48th Infantry were mechanized infantry units assigned to the 3rd Armored Division (3AD) in West Germany during the Cold War. The unit crest of the 48th Infantry designated the unit as Dragoons, purely a traditional designation.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The 1st Dragoons was reformed in the Vietnam War era as the 1st Squadron, 1st U.S. Cavalry. It served in the Iraq War and remains as the oldest cavalry unit, as well as the most decorated one, in the U.S. Army. Today's modern 1–1 Cavalry is a scout/attack unit, equipped with MRAPs, M3A3 Bradley CFVs, and Strykers.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Another modern United States Army unit, informally known as the 2nd Dragoons, is the 2nd Cavalry Regiment. This unit was originally organized as the Second Regiment of Dragoons in 1836 and was renamed the Second Cavalry Regiment in 1861, being redesignated as the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in 1948. The regiment is currently equipped with the Stryker family of wheeled fighting vehicles and was redesignated as the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in 2006. In 2011 the 2nd Dragoon regiment was redesignated as the 2nd Cavalry Regiment. The 2nd Cavalry Regiment has the distinction of being the longest continuously serving regiment in the United States Army.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The 113th Army Band at Fort Knox is also officially nicknamed as \"The Dragoons\". This derives from its formation as the Band, First Regiment of Dragoons on 8 July 1840.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Company D, 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps, is nicknamed the \"Dragoons\". Their combat history includes Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom from 2002 to 2013.",
"title": "Modern dragoons"
}
]
| Dragoons were originally a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 17th century onward, dragoons were increasingly also employed as conventional cavalry and trained for combat with swords and firearms from horseback. While their use goes back to the late 16th century, dragoon regiments were established in most European armies during the 17th and early 18th centuries; they provided greater mobility than regular infantry but were far less expensive than cavalry. The name reputedly derives from a type of firearm, called a dragon, which was a handgun version of a blunderbuss, carried by dragoons of the French Army. The title has been retained in modern times by a number of armoured or ceremonial mounted regiments. | 2001-11-04T14:20:46Z | 2023-12-23T21:43:01Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragoon |
8,768 | Dulcimer | The word dulcimer refers to two families of musical string instruments.
The word dulcimer originally referred to a trapezoidal zither similar to a psaltery whose many strings are struck by handheld "hammers". Variants of this instrument are found in many cultures, including:
In the Appalachian region of the U.S. in the nineteenth century, hammered dulcimers were rare. There, the word dulcimer, which was familiar from the King James Version of the Bible, was used to refer to a three or four stringed fretted instrument, generally played on the lap by strumming.
Variants include: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The word dulcimer refers to two families of musical string instruments.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The word dulcimer originally referred to a trapezoidal zither similar to a psaltery whose many strings are struck by handheld \"hammers\". Variants of this instrument are found in many cultures, including:",
"title": "Hammered dulcimers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In the Appalachian region of the U.S. in the nineteenth century, hammered dulcimers were rare. There, the word dulcimer, which was familiar from the King James Version of the Bible, was used to refer to a three or four stringed fretted instrument, generally played on the lap by strumming.",
"title": "Appalachian dulcimer and derivatives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Variants include:",
"title": "Appalachian dulcimer and derivatives"
}
]
| The word dulcimer refers to two families of musical string instruments. | 2001-11-04T03:08:29Z | 2023-12-05T01:54:30Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulcimer |
8,769 | Dutch West India Company | The Dutch West India Company or WIC (Dutch: Westindische Compagnie) Dutch pronunciation: [ʋɛstˈɪndisə kɔmpɑˈɲi] was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors, formally known as GWC (English: Chartered West India Company). Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647) and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America.
The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope) and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and ended east of the Maluku Islands, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. The intended purpose of the charter was to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, between the various trading posts established by the merchants. The company became instrumental in the largely ephemeral Dutch colonization of the Americas (including New Netherland) in the seventeenth century.
From 1624 to 1654, in the context of the Dutch–Portuguese War, the GWC held Portuguese territory in northeast Brazil, but they were ousted from Dutch Brazil following fierce resistance. After several reversals, the GWC reorganized and a new charter was granted in 1675, largely on the strength in the Atlantic slave trade. This "new" version lasted for more than a century, until after the Fourth Anglo–Dutch War, during which it lost most of its assets.
When the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was founded in 1602, some traders in Amsterdam did not agree with its monopolistic policies. With help from Petrus Plancius, a Dutch-Flemish astronomer, cartographer, and clergyman, they sought for a northeastern or northwestern access to Asia to circumvent the VOC monopoly. In 1609, English explorer Henry Hudson, in employment of the VOC, landed on the coast of New England and sailed up what is now known as the Hudson River in his quest for the Northwest Passage to Asia. However, he failed to find a passage. Consequently, in 1615, Isaac Le Maire and Samuel Blommaert, assisted by others, focused on finding a south-westerly route around South America's Tierra del Fuego archipelago in order to circumvent the monopoly of the VOC.
One of the first sailors who focused on trade with Africa was Balthazar de Moucheron. The trade with Africa offered several possibilities to set up trading posts or factories, an important starting point for negotiations. It was Blommaert, however, who stated that, in 1600, eight companies sailed on the coast of Africa, competing with each other for the supply of copper, from the Kingdom of Loango. Pieter van den Broecke was employed by one of these companies. In 1612, a Dutch fortress was built in Mouree (present day Ghana), along the Dutch Gold Coast.
Trade with the Caribbean, for salt, sugar and tobacco, was hampered by Spain and delayed because of peace negotiations. Spain offered peace on condition that the Dutch Republic would withdraw from trading with Asia and America. Spain refused to sign the peace treaty if a West Indian Company would be established. At this time, the Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648) between Spain and the Dutch Republic was occurring. Grand Pensionary Johan van Oldenbarnevelt offered to suspend trade with the West Indies in exchange for the Twelve Years' Truce. He took the proposal of founding a West-India Company off table. The result was that, during a few years, the Dutch sailed under a foreign flag to South America. However, ten years later, Stadtholder Maurice of Orange, proposed to continue the war with Spain, but also to distract attention from Spain to the Republic. In 1619, his opponent Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was beheaded, and when in April 1621 the truce expired, the West Indian Company could be established.
The West India Company received its charter from the States-General in June 1621, granting it a 24-year monopoly on trade and colonization that included the American coast between Newfoundland and the Straits of Magellan. One of the promotors all these years was Reynier Pauw who appointed two of his sons as the first managers in 1621; both Pieter and Michael Reyniersz Pauw were in function for fifteen years. Reynier Pauw jr, Cornelis Bicker and Samuel Blommaert were appointed in 1622.
The Dutch West India Company was organized similarly to the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Like the VOC, the GWC had five offices, called chambers (kamers), in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hoorn, Middelburg and Groningen, of which the chambers in Amsterdam and Middelburg contributed most to the company. The board consisted of 19 members, known as the Heeren XIX (the Nineteen Gentlemen). The institutional structure of the GWC followed the federal structure, which entailed extensive discussion for any decision, with regional representation: 8 from Amsterdam; 4 from Zeeland, 2 each from the Northern Quarter (Hoorn and Enkhuizen), the Maas (Rotterdam, Delft and Dordrecht), the region of Groningen, and one representative from the States General. Each region had its own chamber and board of directors. The validity of the charter was set at 24 years.
Only in 1623 was funding arranged, after several bidders were put under pressure. The States General of the Netherlands and the VOC pledged one million guilders in the form of capital and subsidy. Although Iberian writers said that crypto-Jews or Marranos played an important role in the formation of both the VOC and the GWC, research has shown that initially they played a minor role, but expanded during the period of the Dutch in Brazil. Emigrant Calvinists from the Spanish Netherlands did make significant investments in the GWC. Investors did not rush to put their money in the company in 1621, but the States-General urged municipalities and other institutions to invest. Explanations for the slow investment by individuals were that shareholders had "no control over the directors' policy and the handling of ordinary investors' money," that it was a "racket" to provide "cushy posts for the directors and their relatives, at the expense of ordinary shareholders". The VOC directors invested money in the GWC, without consulting their shareholders, causing dissent among a number of shareholders. In order to attract foreign shareholders, the GWC offered equal standing to foreign investors with Dutch, resulting in shareholders from France, Switzerland, and Venice. A translation of the original 1621 charter appeared in English, Orders and Articles granted by the High and Mightie Lords the States General of the United Provinces concerning the erecting of a West-Indies Companie, Anno Dom. MDCXII. by 1623, the capital for the GWC at 2.8 million florins was not as great the VOC's original capitalization of 6.5 million, but it was still a substantial sum. The GWC had 15 ships to carry trade and plied the west African coast and Brazil.
Unlike the VOC, the GWC had no right to deploy military troops. When the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621 was over, the Republic had a free hand to re-wage war with Spain. A Groot Desseyn ("grand design") was devised to seize the Portuguese colonies in Africa and the Americas, so as to dominate the sugar and slave trade. When this plan failed, privateering became one of the major goals within the GWC. The arming of merchant ships with guns and soldiers to defend themselves against Spanish ships was of great importance. On almost all ships in 1623, 40 to 50 soldiers were stationed, possibly to assist in the hijacking of enemy ships. It is unclear whether the first expedition was the expedition by Jacques l'Hermite to the coast of Chile, Peru and Bolivia, set up by Stadtholder Maurice with the support of the States General and the VOC.
The company was initially a dismal failure, in terms of its expensive early projects, and its directors shifted emphasis from conquest of territory to pursue plunder of shipping. The most spectacular success for the GWC was Piet Heyn's seizure of the Spanish silver fleet, which carried silver from Spanish colonies to Spain. He had also seized a consignment of sugar from Brazil and a galleon from Honduras with cacao, indigo, and other valuable goods. Privateering was its most profitable activity in the late 1620s. Despite Heyn's success at plunder, the company's directors realized that it was not a basis to build long-term profit, leading them to renew their attempts to seize Iberian territory in the Americas. They decided their target was Brazil. (Recapture of Bahia)
There were conflicts between directors from different areas of The Netherlands, with Amsterdam less supportive of the company. Non-maritime cities, including Haarlem, Leiden, and Gouda, along with Enkhuizen and Hoorn were enthusiastic about seizing territory. They sent a fleet to Brazil, capturing Olinda and Pernambuco in 1630 in their initial foray to create a Dutch Brazil, but could not hold them due to a strong Portuguese resistance. Company ships continued privateering in the Caribbean, as well seizing vital land resources, particularly salt pans. The company's general lack of success saw their shares plummet and the Dutch and The Spanish renewed truce talks in 1633.
In 1629, the GWC gave permission to a number of investors in New Netherlands to found patroonships, enabled by the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions which was ratified by the Dutch States General on June 7, 1629. The patroonships were created to help populate the colony, by providing investors grants providing land for approximately 50 people "upwards of 15 years old", per grant, mainly in the region of New Netherland. Patroon investors could expand the size of their land grants as large as 4 miles, "along the shore or along one bank of a navigable river..." Rensselaerswyck was the most successful Dutch West India Company patroonship.
The New Netherland area, which included New Amsterdam, covered parts of present-day New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and New Jersey, with Manhattan and Fort Amsterdam serving as the first capital. Other settlements were established on the Netherlands Antilles, and in South America, in Dutch Brazil, Suriname and Guyana. In Africa, posts were established on the Gold Coast (now Ghana), the Slave Coast (now Benin), and briefly in Dutch Loango-Angola. It was a neo-feudal system, where patrons were permitted considerable powers to control the overseas colony. In the Americas, fur (North America) and sugar (South America) were the most important trade goods, while African settlements traded the enslaved (mainly destined for the plantations on the Antilles and Suriname), gold, copper and ivory.
In North America, the settlers Albert Burgh, Samuel Blommaert, Samuel Godijn, Johannes de Laet had little success with populating the colony of New Netherland, and to defend themselves against local Amerindians. Only Kiliaen Van Rensselaer managed to maintain his settlement in the north along the Hudson. Blommaert secretly tried to secure his interests with the founding of the colony of New Sweden on behalf of Sweden on the Delaware in the south. The main focus of the GWC now went to Brazil.
Only in 1630 did the West India Company manage to conquer a part of Brazil. In 1630, the colony of New Holland (capital Mauritsstad, present-day Recife) was founded, taking over Portuguese possessions in Brazil. In the meantime, the war demanded so many of its forces that the company had to operate under a permanent threat of bankruptcy. In fact, the GWC went bankrupt in 1636 and all attempts at rehabilitation were doomed to failure.
Because of the ongoing war in Brazil, the situation for the GWC in 1645, at the end of the charter, was very bad. An attempt to compensate the losses of the GWC with the profits of the VOC failed because the directors of the VOC did not want to. In 1645, the main participants in the GWC were members of the Trip family. Merging the two companies was not feasible. Amsterdam was not willing to help out, because it had too much interest in peace and healthy trade relations with Portugal. This indifferent attitude of Amsterdam was the main cause of the slow, half-hearted policy, which would eventually lead to losing the colony. In 1647, the company made a restart using 1.5 million guilders, capital of the VOC. The States General took responsibility for the warfare in Brazil.
Due to the Peace of Westphalia, the attacks on Spanish shipping were forbidden to the GWC. The Portuguese succeeded in the recapture of Angola. Many merchants from Amsterdam and Zeeland decided to work with marine and merchants from the Holy Roman Empire, Denmark–Norway, England and other European countries. In 1649, a competing Swedish Africa Company was founded; the GWC obtained a monopoly on gold and enslaved Africans with the kingdom of Accra (present-day Ghana). Elmina Castle was the main port. In 1654 the Dutch were thrown out of Brazil after the recapture of Recife. In 1656, the company signed the Treaty of Butre (Dutch Gold Coast). In 1659 the Danish West India Company, an undercover Dutch enterprise, was founded. (In 1660 the Royal African Company was founded, led by the Duke of York.)
In 1662, the GWC obtained several asiento subcontracts with the Spanish Crown, under which the Dutch were allowed to deliver 24,000 enslaved Africans. The GWC made Curaçao a centre of the Atlantic slave trade, bringing slaves from West Africa to the island, before selling them elsewhere in the Caribbean and Spanish Main. The influence of the GWC in Africa was threatened during the Second and Third Anglo–Dutch Wars, but English efforts to displace the Dutch from the region ultimately proved unsuccessful.
The first West India Company suffered a long agony, and its end in 1674 was painless. The reason that the GWC could drag on for 27 years seems to have been its valuable West African possessions, due to its slaves.
When the GWC could not repay its debts in 1674, the company was dissolved. But due to continued high demand for trade between West Africa and the Dutch colonies in the Americas (mainly slave trade), a second West India Company known as the New West India Company was chartered that same year. This new company controlled the same trade area as the first but privateering was no longer an asset. All ships, fortresses, etc. were taken over by the new company. Nobody was fired, but the number of directors was reduced from 19 to 10, and the number of governors from 74 to 50. By 1679, the new GWC had slightly more than 6 million guilders which was largely supplied by the Amsterdam Chamber. In 1687, due to the Asiento possessed by Balthasar Coymans, the company paid the highest dividend.
From 1694 until 1700, the GWC waged a long conflict against the Eguafo Kingdom along the Gold Coast, present-day Ghana. The Komenda Wars drew in significant numbers of neighbouring African kingdoms and led to the replacement of the gold trade with enslaved Africans. Calabar was the largest slave trading place in Africa. Sint Eustatius (Dutch Caribbean) became the most profitable asset of the GWC and a transit point for enslaved Africans in the transatlantic slave trade. After 1734 the GWC was primarily engaged in facilitating the slave trade, and only responsible for the supply of slaves until 1738. The company then began to outsource the slave trade and left it to private enterprise, especially in Middelburg, Zeeland.
In 1750 Thomas Hope was elected in the board of the company, but preferred the Heren XVII after two years; he was succeeded by Nicolaas Geelvinck in 1764. In 1773, when drinking coffee and cocoa was popular almost everywhere, the family Van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck sold its property in the colony of Surinam. The GWC participated in a bigger share together with the Society of Suriname. Many planters in Surinam and the Caribbean came into financial trouble because of the mortgages (Crisis of 1772); the demand for slaves dropped. In 1775, the last slave ship entered the port of Willemstad. From 1780 on the company made losses and paid no dividend.
After the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, it became apparent that the GWC was no longer capable of defending its own colonies, as Sint Eustatius, Berbice, Essequibo, Demerara, and some forts on the Dutch Gold Coast were rapidly taken by the British. In 1791 it was decided not to renew the patent to the GWC and to dissolve the Company. All stocks were sold and territories previously held by the GWC came under the rule of the States General of the Netherlands. A directorate Ad-Interim took over the administration. A Council of Colonies was established as administrator over the affairs of the GWC until 1795. Around 1800 there was an attempt to create a third West India Company, but without success. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Dutch West India Company or WIC (Dutch: Westindische Compagnie) Dutch pronunciation: [ʋɛstˈɪndisə kɔmpɑˈɲi] was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors, formally known as GWC (English: Chartered West India Company). Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647) and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope) and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and ended east of the Maluku Islands, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. The intended purpose of the charter was to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, between the various trading posts established by the merchants. The company became instrumental in the largely ephemeral Dutch colonization of the Americas (including New Netherland) in the seventeenth century.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "From 1624 to 1654, in the context of the Dutch–Portuguese War, the GWC held Portuguese territory in northeast Brazil, but they were ousted from Dutch Brazil following fierce resistance. After several reversals, the GWC reorganized and a new charter was granted in 1675, largely on the strength in the Atlantic slave trade. This \"new\" version lasted for more than a century, until after the Fourth Anglo–Dutch War, during which it lost most of its assets.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "When the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was founded in 1602, some traders in Amsterdam did not agree with its monopolistic policies. With help from Petrus Plancius, a Dutch-Flemish astronomer, cartographer, and clergyman, they sought for a northeastern or northwestern access to Asia to circumvent the VOC monopoly. In 1609, English explorer Henry Hudson, in employment of the VOC, landed on the coast of New England and sailed up what is now known as the Hudson River in his quest for the Northwest Passage to Asia. However, he failed to find a passage. Consequently, in 1615, Isaac Le Maire and Samuel Blommaert, assisted by others, focused on finding a south-westerly route around South America's Tierra del Fuego archipelago in order to circumvent the monopoly of the VOC.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "One of the first sailors who focused on trade with Africa was Balthazar de Moucheron. The trade with Africa offered several possibilities to set up trading posts or factories, an important starting point for negotiations. It was Blommaert, however, who stated that, in 1600, eight companies sailed on the coast of Africa, competing with each other for the supply of copper, from the Kingdom of Loango. Pieter van den Broecke was employed by one of these companies. In 1612, a Dutch fortress was built in Mouree (present day Ghana), along the Dutch Gold Coast.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Trade with the Caribbean, for salt, sugar and tobacco, was hampered by Spain and delayed because of peace negotiations. Spain offered peace on condition that the Dutch Republic would withdraw from trading with Asia and America. Spain refused to sign the peace treaty if a West Indian Company would be established. At this time, the Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648) between Spain and the Dutch Republic was occurring. Grand Pensionary Johan van Oldenbarnevelt offered to suspend trade with the West Indies in exchange for the Twelve Years' Truce. He took the proposal of founding a West-India Company off table. The result was that, during a few years, the Dutch sailed under a foreign flag to South America. However, ten years later, Stadtholder Maurice of Orange, proposed to continue the war with Spain, but also to distract attention from Spain to the Republic. In 1619, his opponent Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was beheaded, and when in April 1621 the truce expired, the West Indian Company could be established.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The West India Company received its charter from the States-General in June 1621, granting it a 24-year monopoly on trade and colonization that included the American coast between Newfoundland and the Straits of Magellan. One of the promotors all these years was Reynier Pauw who appointed two of his sons as the first managers in 1621; both Pieter and Michael Reyniersz Pauw were in function for fifteen years. Reynier Pauw jr, Cornelis Bicker and Samuel Blommaert were appointed in 1622.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Dutch West India Company was organized similarly to the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Like the VOC, the GWC had five offices, called chambers (kamers), in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hoorn, Middelburg and Groningen, of which the chambers in Amsterdam and Middelburg contributed most to the company. The board consisted of 19 members, known as the Heeren XIX (the Nineteen Gentlemen). The institutional structure of the GWC followed the federal structure, which entailed extensive discussion for any decision, with regional representation: 8 from Amsterdam; 4 from Zeeland, 2 each from the Northern Quarter (Hoorn and Enkhuizen), the Maas (Rotterdam, Delft and Dordrecht), the region of Groningen, and one representative from the States General. Each region had its own chamber and board of directors. The validity of the charter was set at 24 years.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Only in 1623 was funding arranged, after several bidders were put under pressure. The States General of the Netherlands and the VOC pledged one million guilders in the form of capital and subsidy. Although Iberian writers said that crypto-Jews or Marranos played an important role in the formation of both the VOC and the GWC, research has shown that initially they played a minor role, but expanded during the period of the Dutch in Brazil. Emigrant Calvinists from the Spanish Netherlands did make significant investments in the GWC. Investors did not rush to put their money in the company in 1621, but the States-General urged municipalities and other institutions to invest. Explanations for the slow investment by individuals were that shareholders had \"no control over the directors' policy and the handling of ordinary investors' money,\" that it was a \"racket\" to provide \"cushy posts for the directors and their relatives, at the expense of ordinary shareholders\". The VOC directors invested money in the GWC, without consulting their shareholders, causing dissent among a number of shareholders. In order to attract foreign shareholders, the GWC offered equal standing to foreign investors with Dutch, resulting in shareholders from France, Switzerland, and Venice. A translation of the original 1621 charter appeared in English, Orders and Articles granted by the High and Mightie Lords the States General of the United Provinces concerning the erecting of a West-Indies Companie, Anno Dom. MDCXII. by 1623, the capital for the GWC at 2.8 million florins was not as great the VOC's original capitalization of 6.5 million, but it was still a substantial sum. The GWC had 15 ships to carry trade and plied the west African coast and Brazil.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Unlike the VOC, the GWC had no right to deploy military troops. When the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621 was over, the Republic had a free hand to re-wage war with Spain. A Groot Desseyn (\"grand design\") was devised to seize the Portuguese colonies in Africa and the Americas, so as to dominate the sugar and slave trade. When this plan failed, privateering became one of the major goals within the GWC. The arming of merchant ships with guns and soldiers to defend themselves against Spanish ships was of great importance. On almost all ships in 1623, 40 to 50 soldiers were stationed, possibly to assist in the hijacking of enemy ships. It is unclear whether the first expedition was the expedition by Jacques l'Hermite to the coast of Chile, Peru and Bolivia, set up by Stadtholder Maurice with the support of the States General and the VOC.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The company was initially a dismal failure, in terms of its expensive early projects, and its directors shifted emphasis from conquest of territory to pursue plunder of shipping. The most spectacular success for the GWC was Piet Heyn's seizure of the Spanish silver fleet, which carried silver from Spanish colonies to Spain. He had also seized a consignment of sugar from Brazil and a galleon from Honduras with cacao, indigo, and other valuable goods. Privateering was its most profitable activity in the late 1620s. Despite Heyn's success at plunder, the company's directors realized that it was not a basis to build long-term profit, leading them to renew their attempts to seize Iberian territory in the Americas. They decided their target was Brazil. (Recapture of Bahia)",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "There were conflicts between directors from different areas of The Netherlands, with Amsterdam less supportive of the company. Non-maritime cities, including Haarlem, Leiden, and Gouda, along with Enkhuizen and Hoorn were enthusiastic about seizing territory. They sent a fleet to Brazil, capturing Olinda and Pernambuco in 1630 in their initial foray to create a Dutch Brazil, but could not hold them due to a strong Portuguese resistance. Company ships continued privateering in the Caribbean, as well seizing vital land resources, particularly salt pans. The company's general lack of success saw their shares plummet and the Dutch and The Spanish renewed truce talks in 1633.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1629, the GWC gave permission to a number of investors in New Netherlands to found patroonships, enabled by the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions which was ratified by the Dutch States General on June 7, 1629. The patroonships were created to help populate the colony, by providing investors grants providing land for approximately 50 people \"upwards of 15 years old\", per grant, mainly in the region of New Netherland. Patroon investors could expand the size of their land grants as large as 4 miles, \"along the shore or along one bank of a navigable river...\" Rensselaerswyck was the most successful Dutch West India Company patroonship.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The New Netherland area, which included New Amsterdam, covered parts of present-day New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and New Jersey, with Manhattan and Fort Amsterdam serving as the first capital. Other settlements were established on the Netherlands Antilles, and in South America, in Dutch Brazil, Suriname and Guyana. In Africa, posts were established on the Gold Coast (now Ghana), the Slave Coast (now Benin), and briefly in Dutch Loango-Angola. It was a neo-feudal system, where patrons were permitted considerable powers to control the overseas colony. In the Americas, fur (North America) and sugar (South America) were the most important trade goods, while African settlements traded the enslaved (mainly destined for the plantations on the Antilles and Suriname), gold, copper and ivory.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In North America, the settlers Albert Burgh, Samuel Blommaert, Samuel Godijn, Johannes de Laet had little success with populating the colony of New Netherland, and to defend themselves against local Amerindians. Only Kiliaen Van Rensselaer managed to maintain his settlement in the north along the Hudson. Blommaert secretly tried to secure his interests with the founding of the colony of New Sweden on behalf of Sweden on the Delaware in the south. The main focus of the GWC now went to Brazil.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Only in 1630 did the West India Company manage to conquer a part of Brazil. In 1630, the colony of New Holland (capital Mauritsstad, present-day Recife) was founded, taking over Portuguese possessions in Brazil. In the meantime, the war demanded so many of its forces that the company had to operate under a permanent threat of bankruptcy. In fact, the GWC went bankrupt in 1636 and all attempts at rehabilitation were doomed to failure.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Because of the ongoing war in Brazil, the situation for the GWC in 1645, at the end of the charter, was very bad. An attempt to compensate the losses of the GWC with the profits of the VOC failed because the directors of the VOC did not want to. In 1645, the main participants in the GWC were members of the Trip family. Merging the two companies was not feasible. Amsterdam was not willing to help out, because it had too much interest in peace and healthy trade relations with Portugal. This indifferent attitude of Amsterdam was the main cause of the slow, half-hearted policy, which would eventually lead to losing the colony. In 1647, the company made a restart using 1.5 million guilders, capital of the VOC. The States General took responsibility for the warfare in Brazil.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Due to the Peace of Westphalia, the attacks on Spanish shipping were forbidden to the GWC. The Portuguese succeeded in the recapture of Angola. Many merchants from Amsterdam and Zeeland decided to work with marine and merchants from the Holy Roman Empire, Denmark–Norway, England and other European countries. In 1649, a competing Swedish Africa Company was founded; the GWC obtained a monopoly on gold and enslaved Africans with the kingdom of Accra (present-day Ghana). Elmina Castle was the main port. In 1654 the Dutch were thrown out of Brazil after the recapture of Recife. In 1656, the company signed the Treaty of Butre (Dutch Gold Coast). In 1659 the Danish West India Company, an undercover Dutch enterprise, was founded. (In 1660 the Royal African Company was founded, led by the Duke of York.)",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1662, the GWC obtained several asiento subcontracts with the Spanish Crown, under which the Dutch were allowed to deliver 24,000 enslaved Africans. The GWC made Curaçao a centre of the Atlantic slave trade, bringing slaves from West Africa to the island, before selling them elsewhere in the Caribbean and Spanish Main. The influence of the GWC in Africa was threatened during the Second and Third Anglo–Dutch Wars, but English efforts to displace the Dutch from the region ultimately proved unsuccessful.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The first West India Company suffered a long agony, and its end in 1674 was painless. The reason that the GWC could drag on for 27 years seems to have been its valuable West African possessions, due to its slaves.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "When the GWC could not repay its debts in 1674, the company was dissolved. But due to continued high demand for trade between West Africa and the Dutch colonies in the Americas (mainly slave trade), a second West India Company known as the New West India Company was chartered that same year. This new company controlled the same trade area as the first but privateering was no longer an asset. All ships, fortresses, etc. were taken over by the new company. Nobody was fired, but the number of directors was reduced from 19 to 10, and the number of governors from 74 to 50. By 1679, the new GWC had slightly more than 6 million guilders which was largely supplied by the Amsterdam Chamber. In 1687, due to the Asiento possessed by Balthasar Coymans, the company paid the highest dividend.",
"title": "Second West India Company"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "From 1694 until 1700, the GWC waged a long conflict against the Eguafo Kingdom along the Gold Coast, present-day Ghana. The Komenda Wars drew in significant numbers of neighbouring African kingdoms and led to the replacement of the gold trade with enslaved Africans. Calabar was the largest slave trading place in Africa. Sint Eustatius (Dutch Caribbean) became the most profitable asset of the GWC and a transit point for enslaved Africans in the transatlantic slave trade. After 1734 the GWC was primarily engaged in facilitating the slave trade, and only responsible for the supply of slaves until 1738. The company then began to outsource the slave trade and left it to private enterprise, especially in Middelburg, Zeeland.",
"title": "Second West India Company"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1750 Thomas Hope was elected in the board of the company, but preferred the Heren XVII after two years; he was succeeded by Nicolaas Geelvinck in 1764. In 1773, when drinking coffee and cocoa was popular almost everywhere, the family Van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck sold its property in the colony of Surinam. The GWC participated in a bigger share together with the Society of Suriname. Many planters in Surinam and the Caribbean came into financial trouble because of the mortgages (Crisis of 1772); the demand for slaves dropped. In 1775, the last slave ship entered the port of Willemstad. From 1780 on the company made losses and paid no dividend.",
"title": "Second West India Company"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "After the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, it became apparent that the GWC was no longer capable of defending its own colonies, as Sint Eustatius, Berbice, Essequibo, Demerara, and some forts on the Dutch Gold Coast were rapidly taken by the British. In 1791 it was decided not to renew the patent to the GWC and to dissolve the Company. All stocks were sold and territories previously held by the GWC came under the rule of the States General of the Netherlands. A directorate Ad-Interim took over the administration. A Council of Colonies was established as administrator over the affairs of the GWC until 1795. Around 1800 there was an attempt to create a third West India Company, but without success.",
"title": "Second West India Company"
}
]
| The Dutch West India Company or WIC Dutch pronunciation: was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors, formally known as GWC. Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647) and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and ended east of the Maluku Islands, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. The intended purpose of the charter was to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, between the various trading posts established by the merchants. The company became instrumental in the largely ephemeral Dutch colonization of the Americas in the seventeenth century. From 1624 to 1654, in the context of the Dutch–Portuguese War, the GWC held Portuguese territory in northeast Brazil, but they were ousted from Dutch Brazil following fierce resistance. After several reversals, the GWC reorganized and a new charter was granted in 1675, largely on the strength in the Atlantic slave trade. This "new" version lasted for more than a century, until after the Fourth Anglo–Dutch War, during which it lost most of its assets. | 2001-11-04T03:50:12Z | 2023-12-06T19:36:38Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_West_India_Company |
8,771 | Dyula language | Dyula (or Jula, Dioula, Julakan ߖߎ߬ߟߊ߬ߞߊ߲) is a language of the Mande language family spoken mainly in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali, and also in some other countries, including Ghana, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. It is one of the Manding languages and is most closely related to Bambara, being mutually intelligible with Bambara as well as Malinke. It is a trade language in West Africa and is spoken by millions of people, either as a first or second language. Similar to the other Mande languages, it uses tones. It may be written in the Latin, Arabic or N'Ko scripts.
Historically, Dyula ("jula" in the language) was not an ethonym, but rather a Manding language label literally meaning 'trader'. The term used to distinguish Muslim traders from the non-Muslim population living in the same area, mainly Senufo agricultors. It then became an exonym for Manding-speaking traders such as the Bambara or the Mandinka and their languages. At the same time, however, a process of ethnogenesis across the centuries led to some communities in modern towns like Bobo-Dioulasso, Odienné and Kong adopting the label as one of their ethnic identity. These communities speak varieties of Dyula with common traits that distinguish it from the lingua franca form of Jula that one hears in markets across much of Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire.
Later, the term was also used for a simplified version of Bambara, which comes from Mali, mixed with elements of Maninka. It became a widely used lingua franca. Native speakers of Manding in the Ivory Coast use the pejorative term 'Tagbusikan' to refer to this simplified language, while they called their own language 'Konyakakan', 'Odiennekakan' or 'Maukakan'. The influx of millions of migrant workers from the Sahel further boostered the use of Dyula in the Ivory Coast due to the need of a lingua franca. Many Burkinabe learned Dyula while staying in the Ivory Coast and further disseminated it back home. Today, Dyula is used to at least some extent by 61% of the population of the Ivory Coast and by about 35% of the Burkinabe (mainly those living in the southern or western part of the country).
The seven vowel sounds may also be either lengthened /iː eː ɛː aː ɔː oː uː/ or nasalized /ĩ ẽ ɛ̃ ã ɔ̃ õ ũ/.
The N'Ko script is an indigenous writing system for the Manding language continuum, invented in 1949 by Solomana Kanté, a Guinean educator. Today, the script has been digitised as part of Unicode, which allows it to be used easily online, but the lack of funding and the official status of French means that use of this alphabet largely happens outside of formal education and is not systematically used on street signs, etc.
Dioula orthography is regulated in Burkina Faso by the Dioula Sub-Commission of the National Commission for Languages. On 15 July 1971, the National Sub-Commission for Dioula was created and on 16 July 1971, it began a study in order to set the Dioula alphabet. An alphabet was published on 27 July 1973 and gained official status on 2 February 1979. Some letters were added later, ⟨c, j⟩ for borrowed words, and others were replaced: ⟨sh⟩ by ⟨s⟩, and ⟨ny⟩ by ⟨ɲ⟩.
In Burkina Faso, the Dioula alphabet is made up of 28 letters each representing a single phoneme. In the orthography, long vowels are represented by doubled letters; thus, /e/ is written ⟨e⟩ and /eː/, ⟨ee⟩. The nasalisation of a vowel is written followed by an n; for example, /ẽ/ is written ⟨en⟩.
The notation of tones was recommended in 1973, but in practice they are not written. The transcription guide published in 2003 does not reiterate this recommendation. Tones are noted solely in lexicographical works. However, to avoid ambiguity, tone marking is obligatory in certain cases.
For example:
Dioula can be heard spoken in the 2004 film Night of Truth, directed by Fanta Régina Nacro, Burkina Faso's first female director. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Dyula (or Jula, Dioula, Julakan ߖߎ߬ߟߊ߬ߞߊ߲) is a language of the Mande language family spoken mainly in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali, and also in some other countries, including Ghana, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. It is one of the Manding languages and is most closely related to Bambara, being mutually intelligible with Bambara as well as Malinke. It is a trade language in West Africa and is spoken by millions of people, either as a first or second language. Similar to the other Mande languages, it uses tones. It may be written in the Latin, Arabic or N'Ko scripts.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Historically, Dyula (\"jula\" in the language) was not an ethonym, but rather a Manding language label literally meaning 'trader'. The term used to distinguish Muslim traders from the non-Muslim population living in the same area, mainly Senufo agricultors. It then became an exonym for Manding-speaking traders such as the Bambara or the Mandinka and their languages. At the same time, however, a process of ethnogenesis across the centuries led to some communities in modern towns like Bobo-Dioulasso, Odienné and Kong adopting the label as one of their ethnic identity. These communities speak varieties of Dyula with common traits that distinguish it from the lingua franca form of Jula that one hears in markets across much of Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Later, the term was also used for a simplified version of Bambara, which comes from Mali, mixed with elements of Maninka. It became a widely used lingua franca. Native speakers of Manding in the Ivory Coast use the pejorative term 'Tagbusikan' to refer to this simplified language, while they called their own language 'Konyakakan', 'Odiennekakan' or 'Maukakan'. The influx of millions of migrant workers from the Sahel further boostered the use of Dyula in the Ivory Coast due to the need of a lingua franca. Many Burkinabe learned Dyula while staying in the Ivory Coast and further disseminated it back home. Today, Dyula is used to at least some extent by 61% of the population of the Ivory Coast and by about 35% of the Burkinabe (mainly those living in the southern or western part of the country).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The seven vowel sounds may also be either lengthened /iː eː ɛː aː ɔː oː uː/ or nasalized /ĩ ẽ ɛ̃ ã ɔ̃ õ ũ/.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The N'Ko script is an indigenous writing system for the Manding language continuum, invented in 1949 by Solomana Kanté, a Guinean educator. Today, the script has been digitised as part of Unicode, which allows it to be used easily online, but the lack of funding and the official status of French means that use of this alphabet largely happens outside of formal education and is not systematically used on street signs, etc.",
"title": "Writing systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Dioula orthography is regulated in Burkina Faso by the Dioula Sub-Commission of the National Commission for Languages. On 15 July 1971, the National Sub-Commission for Dioula was created and on 16 July 1971, it began a study in order to set the Dioula alphabet. An alphabet was published on 27 July 1973 and gained official status on 2 February 1979. Some letters were added later, ⟨c, j⟩ for borrowed words, and others were replaced: ⟨sh⟩ by ⟨s⟩, and ⟨ny⟩ by ⟨ɲ⟩.",
"title": "Writing systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In Burkina Faso, the Dioula alphabet is made up of 28 letters each representing a single phoneme. In the orthography, long vowels are represented by doubled letters; thus, /e/ is written ⟨e⟩ and /eː/, ⟨ee⟩. The nasalisation of a vowel is written followed by an n; for example, /ẽ/ is written ⟨en⟩.",
"title": "Writing systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The notation of tones was recommended in 1973, but in practice they are not written. The transcription guide published in 2003 does not reiterate this recommendation. Tones are noted solely in lexicographical works. However, to avoid ambiguity, tone marking is obligatory in certain cases.",
"title": "Writing systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "For example:",
"title": "Writing systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Dioula can be heard spoken in the 2004 film Night of Truth, directed by Fanta Régina Nacro, Burkina Faso's first female director.",
"title": "Use in media"
}
]
| Dyula is a language of the Mande language family spoken mainly in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali, and also in some other countries, including Ghana, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. It is one of the Manding languages and is most closely related to Bambara, being mutually intelligible with Bambara as well as Malinke. It is a trade language in West Africa and is spoken by millions of people, either as a first or second language. Similar to the other Mande languages, it uses tones. It may be written in the Latin, Arabic or N'Ko scripts. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-30T18:56:55Z | [
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]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyula_language |
8,774 | Desi Arnaz | Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III (March 2, 1917 – December 2, 1986) was a Cuban-American actor, musician and bandleader. He played Ricky Ricardo on the American television sitcom I Love Lucy, in which he co-starred with his wife Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball are credited as the innovators of the syndicated rerun, which they pioneered with the I Love Lucy series.
Arnaz and Lucille Ball co-founded and ran the television production company called Desilu Productions, originally to market I Love Lucy to television networks. After I Love Lucy ended, Arnaz went on to produce several other television series, at first with Desilu Productions, and later independently, including The Ann Sothern Show and The Untouchables. He was also the bandleader of his Latin group, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra. He was known for playing conga drums and popularized the conga line in the United States.
Arnaz was born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, to Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Alberni II (March 8, 1894 – May 31, 1973) and Dolores "Lolita" de Acha y de Socias (April 2, 1896 – October 24, 1988). His father was Santiago's youngest mayor and also served in the Cuban House of Representatives. His maternal grandfather was Alberto de Acha, an executive at rum producer Bacardi & Co.
A descendant of Cuban nobility, Arnaz was a great-great-great-grandson of José Joaquín. The Cuban Revolution of 1933 forced Arnaz and his family to lose everything and flee Cuba. A mob attacked and destroyed the family's houses, property, and livestock. Arnaz narrowly escaped the attack because he was able to hop in a car getting away. His father, Alberto Arnaz, was jailed and all of his property was confiscated. He was released after six months when his father-in-law Alberto de Acha intervened on his behalf.
The family then fled to Miami, where Desi attended high school. They came to the United States with no money and Desi had to live with his father in a garage that was infested with rats and roaches. In the summer of 1934, he attended Saint Leo Prep (near Tampa) to improve his English. His first jobs included working at Woolworth's and cleaning canary cages in Miami. He then went into the tile business with his father before turning to show business full time.
After finishing high school, Arnaz formed a band, the Siboney Septet, and began making a name for himself in Miami. Xavier Cugat, after seeing Arnaz perform, hired him for his touring orchestra, playing the conga drum and singing. Becoming a star attraction encouraged him to start his own band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra.
Arnaz and his orchestra became a hit in New York City's club scene, including a club named La Conga, where he is credited with introducing the concept of conga line dancing to the United States.
He came to the attention of Rodgers and Hart who, in 1939, cast him in their Broadway musical Too Many Girls. The show was a hit and RKO Pictures bought the movie rights.
Arnaz went to Hollywood the next year to appear in the show's movie version at RKO, which also starred Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball fell in love during the film's production and eloped on November 30, 1940.
Arnaz appeared in several movies in the 1940s such as Bataan, starring Robert Taylor (1943). His portrayal of Felix Ramirez, the jive-loving California National Guardsman, was described by New York Times critic Bosley Crowther as one of several supporting players who were "convincing in soldier roles".
April 27, 1943, Arnaz received his draft notice. However, Arnaz was disqualified from overseas service due to hypertension and knee injuries, which caused him pain with prolonged physical exertion, according to his military physical examination. He had injured his left knee prior to his enlistment and injured his right knee soon after enlisting on May 23, 1943, during a baseball game at Camp Arlington. He completed his recruit training, but was classified for limited service in the United States Army during World War II.
He was assigned to direct United Service Organization (USO) programs at the Birmingham General Army Hospital in the San Fernando Valley. It was his responsibility to keep injured soldiers entertained while they were recovering in the hospital. Thanks to his Hollywood connections, Arnaz was able to bring celebrities to visit the hospital and boost morale of the soldiers. For example, discovering the first thing the wounded soldiers requested was a glass of cold milk, he arranged for movie starlets to meet them and pour the milk for them.
Arnaz served two years, seven months and four days. His primary unit was the 9th Service Command, Army Service Forces. For his service during World War II, he was awarded the Army Good Conduct Medal, the American Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.
Arnaz was discharged as a staff sergeant on September 30, 1945.
Following his discharge as a staff sergeant on December 1, 1945, Arnaz formed another orchestra, which was successful in live appearances and recordings. He sang for troops in Birmingham Hospital with John Macchia and hired his childhood friend Marco Rizo to play piano and arrange for the orchestra.
For the 1946–47 season, Arnaz was the bandleader, conducting his Desi Arnaz Orchestra, on Bob Hope's radio show (The Pepsodent Show) on NBC.
In 1951, Arnaz was given a game show on CBS Radio, Your Tropical Trip in order to entice Arnaz and Ball to stay at CBS over a competing offer from NBC, and to keep Arnaz and his band employed and in Hollywood, rather than touring. The musical game show, hosted by Arnaz and featuring Arnaz's orchestra, had audience members competing for a Caribbean vacation. The program aired from January 1951 until September, shortly before the premiere of I Love Lucy in October.
When he became successful in television, he kept the orchestra on his payroll, and Rizo arranged and orchestrated the music for I Love Lucy.
On October 15, 1951, Arnaz co-starred in the premiere of I Love Lucy, in which he played a fictionalized version of himself, Cuban orchestra leader Enrique "Ricky" Ricardo. His co-star was his real-life wife, Lucille Ball, who played Ricky's wife, Lucy. Television executives had been pursuing Ball to adapt her very popular radio series My Favorite Husband for television. Ball insisted on Arnaz playing her on-air spouse so the two would be able to spend more time together. CBS wanted Ball's Husband co-star Richard Denning.
The original premise was for the couple to portray Lucy and Larry Lopez, a successful show business couple whose glamorous careers interfered with their efforts to maintain a normal marriage. Market research indicated, however, that this scenario would not be popular, so Jess Oppenheimer changed it to make Ricky Ricardo a struggling young orchestra leader and Lucy an ordinary housewife who had show business fantasies but no talent. The character name "Larry Lopez" was dropped because of a real-life bandleader named Vincent Lopez, and was replaced with "Ricky Ricardo". The name was inspired by Henry Richard, a family friend and the brother of P.C. Richard of P.C. Richard & Son. This name translates to Enrique Ricardo. Ricky often appeared at, and later owned, the Tropicana Club, which under his ownership he renamed Club Babalu.
Initially, the idea of having Ball and the distinctly Latin American Arnaz portray a married couple encountered resistance as they were told that Desi's Cuban accent and Latin style would not be agreeable to American viewers. The couple overcame these objections, however, by touring together, during the summer of 1950, in a live vaudeville act they developed with the help of Spanish clown Pepito Pérez, together with Ball's radio show writers. Much of the material from their vaudeville act, including Lucy's memorable seal routine, was used in the pilot episode of I Love Lucy. Segments of the pilot were recreated in the sixth episode of the show's first season. During his time on the show, Arnaz and Ball became TV's most successful entrepreneurs.
With Ball, Arnaz founded Desilu Productions in 1950, initially to produce the vaudeville-style touring act that led to I Love Lucy. At that time, most television programs were broadcast live, and as the largest markets were in New York, the rest of the country received only kinescope images. Karl Freund, Arnaz's cameraman, and even Arnaz himself have been credited with the development of the multiple-camera setup production style using adjacent sets in front of a live audience that became the standard for subsequent situation comedies. The use of film enabled every station around the country to broadcast high-quality images of the show. Arnaz was told that it would be impossible to allow an audience onto a sound stage, but he worked with Freund to design a set that would accommodate an audience, allow filming, and adhere to fire and safety codes. Due to the expense of 35mm film, Arnaz and Ball agreed to salary cuts. In return, they retained the rights to the films. This was the basis for their invention of re-runs and syndicating TV shows (a huge source of new revenue).
In addition to I Love Lucy, he executive produced The Ann Sothern Show and Those Whiting Girls (starring Margaret Whiting and Barbara Whiting), and was involved in several other series such as The Untouchables, Whirlybirds, and Sheriff of Cochise / United States Marshal. While he was producing The Untouchables, Arnaz was allegedly the target of a mafia murder plot, which was later called off, due to the show's negative publicity of gangsters. These allegations were made in the 1980s by Jimmy Fratianno in his book, The Last Mafioso. Arnaz denied these claims were true. He also produced the feature film Forever, Darling (1956), in which he and Ball starred.
The original Desilu company continued long after Arnaz's divorce from Ball and her subsequent marriage to Gary Morton. Desilu continued to produce its own programs in addition to providing facilities to other producers. In 1962, Arnaz sold his share of Desilu to Ball and formed his own production company after their divorce. With the newly formed Desi Arnaz Productions, he made The Mothers-In-Law (at Desilu) for United Artists Television and NBC. This sitcom ran for two seasons from 1967 to 1969. During its two-year run, Arnaz made four guest appearances as a Spanish matador, Señor Delgado.
Arnaz's company was succeeded-in-interest by the company now known as Desilu, Too. Desilu, Too and Lucille Ball Productions worked hand-in-hand with MPI Home Video in the home video reissues of the Ball/Arnaz material not owned by CBS (successor-in-interest to Paramount Television, which in turn succeeded the original Desilu company). This material included Here's Lucy and The Mothers-In-Law, as well as many programs and specials Ball and Arnaz made independently of each other.
In the 1970s, Arnaz co-hosted a week of shows with daytime host and producer Mike Douglas. Vivian Vance appeared as a guest. Arnaz also headlined a Kraft Music Hall special on NBC that featured his two children, with a brief appearance by Vance. Arnaz suffered a severe attack of diverticulitis in 1971, which required an operation and several years of recovery. He worked with Universal Studios for two years working on development deals for two shows that eventually fell through, Dr. Domingo (the character did appear on one episode of Ironside) and Chairman of the Board starring Elke Sommer. Arnaz moved on to work on his autobiography for two years.
To promote his autobiography, A Book, on February 21, 1976, Arnaz served as a guest host on Saturday Night Live, with his son, Desi, Jr., also appearing. The program contained spoofs of I Love Lucy and The Untouchables. The spoofs of I Love Lucy were supposed to be earlier concepts of the show that never made it on the air, such as "I Love Louie", where Desi lived with Louis Armstrong. He read Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" in a heavy Cuban accent (he pronounced it "Habberwocky"). Desi Jr., played the drums and, supported by the SNL band, Desi sang both "Babalú" and another favorite from his dance band days, "Cuban Pete"; the arrangements were similar to the ones used on I Love Lucy. He ended the broadcast by leading the entire cast in a conga line through the SNL studio.
In 1976, CBS paid tribute to Lucille Ball with the two-hour special CBS Salutes Lucy: The First 25 Years. Both Ball and Arnaz appeared on the screen for the special, which is the first time they appeared together in 16 years since their divorce.
When asked about returning to television in a 1976 newspaper article, Arnaz said, "People ask me to go back on TV but the thin' is, it's too tough competing with the Ricky Ricardo of 20 years ago. He looks a lot better than I do." Arnaz made a guest appearance on the TV series Alice, in 1978 starring Linda Lavin and produced by I Love Lucy co-creators Madelyn Pugh (Madelyn Davis) and Bob Carroll, Jr. His last acting role was as Mayor Leon Quiñones in the 1982 film, The Escape Artist.
Arnaz owned the Indian Wells Country Club in Palm Desert, CA. He also taught classes at San Diego State University in studio production and acting for television.
Arnaz and Ball decided that I Love Lucy would maintain what Arnaz termed "basic good taste" and were therefore determined to avoid ethnic jokes, as well as humor based on physical handicaps or mental disabilities. Arnaz recalled that the only exception consisted of making fun of Ricky Ricardo's accent; even these jokes worked only when Lucy, as his wife, did the mimicking.
Arnaz was also a lifelong Catholic.
A lifelong Republican, Arnaz was deeply patriotic about the United States. In his memoirs, he wrote that he knew of no other country in the world where "a sixteen-year-old kid, broke and unable to speak the language" could achieve the successes that he had. He was a supporter of Richard Nixon and member of the Spanish-Speaking Committee for the Re-Election of the President in 1972. Nixon appointed Arnaz as the U.S. roving ambassador to Latin America in the early 1970s. He was a supporter of Ronald Reagan and spoke at campaign rallies, such as one hosted by the National Republican Hispanic Assembly in 1980. He was an advocate for the Hispanic community, encouraging them to take the 1980 census to increase federal funding for their communities.
Arnaz and Lucille Ball were married on November 30, 1940. Their marriage was always turbulent. Convinced that Arnaz was being unfaithful to her and also because he came home drunk several times, Ball filed for divorce in September 1944, but returned to him before the interlocutory decree became final. Arnaz and Ball subsequently had two children, actors Lucie Arnaz (born 1951) and Desi Arnaz Jr. (born 1953).
Hollywood procurer and prostitute Scotty Bowers claimed in his memoir Full Service that he had procured as many as two to three prostitutes per week for Arnaz, each of whom was paid 200 dollars, as opposed to the usual 20. Lucille Ball confronted Bowers about this and publicly slapped him in the face, yelling "You! Stop pimping for my husband!"
Arnaz's marriage with Ball began to collapse under the strain of his growing problems with alcohol, gambling, and infidelity. According to his memoir, the combined pressures of managing the production company, as well as supervising its day-to-day operations, had greatly worsened as the company grew much larger, and he felt compelled to seek outlets to alleviate the stress. Arnaz also suffered from diverticulitis. Ball divorced him on March 2, 1960, which was coincidentally his birthday. When Ball returned to weekly television, she and Arnaz worked out an agreement regarding Desilu, wherein she bought him out.
Edith Mack Hirsch (née McSkimming) was Arnaz's second wife. After the two married on March 2, 1963 (Arnaz's 46th birthday), he greatly reduced his show business activities. The two were married for 22 years until Edith died from cancer on March 23, 1985.
Although Arnaz and Ball both married other spouses after their divorce in 1960, they remained friends and grew closer in his final decade. "I Love Lucy was never just a title," wrote Arnaz in the last years of his life. Family home video later aired on television showed Ball and Arnaz playing together with their grandson Simon shortly before Arnaz's death.
Arnaz suffered from knee injuries as a young man shortly before and during his military service in World War II. The pain was troublesome enough that he was disqualified from serving overseas. In the late 1960s, he was seriously injured in an accident when the floor collapsed and he was impaled by a tree stump in his home in Baja California. An operation saved his life, although his health was never the same after the incident. Throughout his life he periodically had to seek medical treatment for diverticulitis and intestinal issues, sometimes requiring hospitalization.
After his second wife Edith's death in 1985, Arnaz was persuaded by his children to seek treatment for his decades-long alcohol addiction, which by then had seriously damaged his health. Lucie Arnaz described her pride at attending a treatment meeting with her father where he stood up and said "I'm Desi, and I'm an alcoholic".
Arnaz had a few run-ins with the law. He was arrested in 1959 on an intoxication charge while he was walking Hollywood Blvd. In 1966, he was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon after an altercation with youth parking in front of his house. Two young men were allegedly partying nearby and harassing his then-15-year-old daughter Lucie and her friend. Arnaz confronted them, threatened to shoot their tires and cars, and then fired two shots that went into the ground. He spent three hours at the San Diego jail and was released on $1,100 bail.
Desi Arnaz spent his retirement doing activities he enjoyed including sailing his yacht (he was a skilled yachtsman since childhood), fishing, and cooking Cuban dishes. He suffered from numerous health issues later in life. He contributed to charitable and nonprofit organizations, including San Diego State University. He was active in politics and made occasional public appearances. He was the guest of honor at the Carnival Miami in March 1982 where he performed with his children, Lucie and Desi Jr., in front of a crowd of 35,000.
Arnaz was known to be very loving to his grandchildren.
Arnaz and his second wife eventually moved to Del Mar, California where he lived the rest of his life in semi-retirement. He owned a horse-breeding farm in Corona, California and raced Thoroughbreds. The Desi Arnaz Stakes at Del Mar Racetrack is named in his honor.
Arnaz was a regular smoker for much of his life and often smoked cigarettes on the set of I Love Lucy. He smoked cigars until he was in his sixties. Arnaz was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1986 and underwent treatment. Lucille Ball visited him during this time in the hospital and the two watched VHS tapes of I Love Lucy. His daughter Lucie was by his side constantly during his final days.
On November 30, 1986, on what would have been their 46th wedding anniversary, Ball telephoned him and they spoke for a short time, including saying "I love you." She finished by saying, "Alright, honey. I'll talk to you later." He died two days later on December 2, 1986, at the age of 69. Arnaz was cremated and his ashes scattered. Ball was one of hundreds to attend Arnaz's funeral, which was held at St. James Roman Catholic Church in San Diego County, California. His death came just five days before Lucille Ball received the Kennedy Center Honors. His mother outlived him by almost two years.
Desi Arnaz has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one at 6301 Hollywood Boulevard for contributions to motion pictures and one at 6250 Hollywood Boulevard for television. Unlike his co-stars, Arnaz was never nominated for an Emmy for his performance in I Love Lucy; however, as executive producer of the series, he was nominated four times in the Best Situation Comedy category, winning twice. In 1956, he won a Golden Globe for Best Television Achievement for helping to shape the American Comedy through his contributions in front of and behind the camera of I Love Lucy. He was inducted into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame.
The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center museum is in Jamestown, New York, and the Desi Arnaz Bandshell in the Lucille Ball Memorial Park is in Celoron, New York.
Desi Arnaz appears as a character in Oscar Hijuelos's 1989 novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and is portrayed by his son, Desi Arnaz Jr., in the 1992 film adaptation, The Mambo Kings.
Maurice Benard portrayed Desi Arnaz in the 1991 television film Lucy & Desi: Before the Laughter.
In the 2003 television film Lucy, Desi Arnaz was portrayed by Danny Pino.
Arnaz was portrayed by Oscar Nuñez in I Love Lucy: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom, a comedy about how Arnaz and Ball battled to get their sitcom on the air. It had its world premiere in Los Angeles on July 12, 2018, co-starring Sarah Drew as Lucille Ball and Seamus Dever as I Love Lucy creator-producer-head writer Jess Oppenheimer. The play, written by Jess Oppenheimer's son, Gregg Oppenheimer, was recorded in front of a live audience for nationwide public radio broadcast and online distribution. BBC Radio 4 broadcast a serialized version of the play in the UK in August 2020, as LUCY LOVES DESI: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom, starring Wilmer Valderrama as Arnaz and co-starring Anne Heche as Lucille Ball.
On March 2, 2019, Google celebrated what would have been Arnaz's 102nd birthday with a Google doodle.
Javier Bardem portrayed Arnaz in the 2021 biographical film Being the Ricardos written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and produced by Amazon Studios, alongside Nicole Kidman as Ball. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III (March 2, 1917 – December 2, 1986) was a Cuban-American actor, musician and bandleader. He played Ricky Ricardo on the American television sitcom I Love Lucy, in which he co-starred with his wife Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball are credited as the innovators of the syndicated rerun, which they pioneered with the I Love Lucy series.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Arnaz and Lucille Ball co-founded and ran the television production company called Desilu Productions, originally to market I Love Lucy to television networks. After I Love Lucy ended, Arnaz went on to produce several other television series, at first with Desilu Productions, and later independently, including The Ann Sothern Show and The Untouchables. He was also the bandleader of his Latin group, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra. He was known for playing conga drums and popularized the conga line in the United States.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Arnaz was born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, to Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Alberni II (March 8, 1894 – May 31, 1973) and Dolores \"Lolita\" de Acha y de Socias (April 2, 1896 – October 24, 1988). His father was Santiago's youngest mayor and also served in the Cuban House of Representatives. His maternal grandfather was Alberto de Acha, an executive at rum producer Bacardi & Co.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "A descendant of Cuban nobility, Arnaz was a great-great-great-grandson of José Joaquín. The Cuban Revolution of 1933 forced Arnaz and his family to lose everything and flee Cuba. A mob attacked and destroyed the family's houses, property, and livestock. Arnaz narrowly escaped the attack because he was able to hop in a car getting away. His father, Alberto Arnaz, was jailed and all of his property was confiscated. He was released after six months when his father-in-law Alberto de Acha intervened on his behalf.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The family then fled to Miami, where Desi attended high school. They came to the United States with no money and Desi had to live with his father in a garage that was infested with rats and roaches. In the summer of 1934, he attended Saint Leo Prep (near Tampa) to improve his English. His first jobs included working at Woolworth's and cleaning canary cages in Miami. He then went into the tile business with his father before turning to show business full time.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "After finishing high school, Arnaz formed a band, the Siboney Septet, and began making a name for himself in Miami. Xavier Cugat, after seeing Arnaz perform, hired him for his touring orchestra, playing the conga drum and singing. Becoming a star attraction encouraged him to start his own band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Arnaz and his orchestra became a hit in New York City's club scene, including a club named La Conga, where he is credited with introducing the concept of conga line dancing to the United States.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "He came to the attention of Rodgers and Hart who, in 1939, cast him in their Broadway musical Too Many Girls. The show was a hit and RKO Pictures bought the movie rights.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Arnaz went to Hollywood the next year to appear in the show's movie version at RKO, which also starred Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball fell in love during the film's production and eloped on November 30, 1940.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Arnaz appeared in several movies in the 1940s such as Bataan, starring Robert Taylor (1943). His portrayal of Felix Ramirez, the jive-loving California National Guardsman, was described by New York Times critic Bosley Crowther as one of several supporting players who were \"convincing in soldier roles\".",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "April 27, 1943, Arnaz received his draft notice. However, Arnaz was disqualified from overseas service due to hypertension and knee injuries, which caused him pain with prolonged physical exertion, according to his military physical examination. He had injured his left knee prior to his enlistment and injured his right knee soon after enlisting on May 23, 1943, during a baseball game at Camp Arlington. He completed his recruit training, but was classified for limited service in the United States Army during World War II.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "He was assigned to direct United Service Organization (USO) programs at the Birmingham General Army Hospital in the San Fernando Valley. It was his responsibility to keep injured soldiers entertained while they were recovering in the hospital. Thanks to his Hollywood connections, Arnaz was able to bring celebrities to visit the hospital and boost morale of the soldiers. For example, discovering the first thing the wounded soldiers requested was a glass of cold milk, he arranged for movie starlets to meet them and pour the milk for them.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Arnaz served two years, seven months and four days. His primary unit was the 9th Service Command, Army Service Forces. For his service during World War II, he was awarded the Army Good Conduct Medal, the American Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Arnaz was discharged as a staff sergeant on September 30, 1945.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Following his discharge as a staff sergeant on December 1, 1945, Arnaz formed another orchestra, which was successful in live appearances and recordings. He sang for troops in Birmingham Hospital with John Macchia and hired his childhood friend Marco Rizo to play piano and arrange for the orchestra.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "For the 1946–47 season, Arnaz was the bandleader, conducting his Desi Arnaz Orchestra, on Bob Hope's radio show (The Pepsodent Show) on NBC.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1951, Arnaz was given a game show on CBS Radio, Your Tropical Trip in order to entice Arnaz and Ball to stay at CBS over a competing offer from NBC, and to keep Arnaz and his band employed and in Hollywood, rather than touring. The musical game show, hosted by Arnaz and featuring Arnaz's orchestra, had audience members competing for a Caribbean vacation. The program aired from January 1951 until September, shortly before the premiere of I Love Lucy in October.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "When he became successful in television, he kept the orchestra on his payroll, and Rizo arranged and orchestrated the music for I Love Lucy.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "On October 15, 1951, Arnaz co-starred in the premiere of I Love Lucy, in which he played a fictionalized version of himself, Cuban orchestra leader Enrique \"Ricky\" Ricardo. His co-star was his real-life wife, Lucille Ball, who played Ricky's wife, Lucy. Television executives had been pursuing Ball to adapt her very popular radio series My Favorite Husband for television. Ball insisted on Arnaz playing her on-air spouse so the two would be able to spend more time together. CBS wanted Ball's Husband co-star Richard Denning.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The original premise was for the couple to portray Lucy and Larry Lopez, a successful show business couple whose glamorous careers interfered with their efforts to maintain a normal marriage. Market research indicated, however, that this scenario would not be popular, so Jess Oppenheimer changed it to make Ricky Ricardo a struggling young orchestra leader and Lucy an ordinary housewife who had show business fantasies but no talent. The character name \"Larry Lopez\" was dropped because of a real-life bandleader named Vincent Lopez, and was replaced with \"Ricky Ricardo\". The name was inspired by Henry Richard, a family friend and the brother of P.C. Richard of P.C. Richard & Son. This name translates to Enrique Ricardo. Ricky often appeared at, and later owned, the Tropicana Club, which under his ownership he renamed Club Babalu.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Initially, the idea of having Ball and the distinctly Latin American Arnaz portray a married couple encountered resistance as they were told that Desi's Cuban accent and Latin style would not be agreeable to American viewers. The couple overcame these objections, however, by touring together, during the summer of 1950, in a live vaudeville act they developed with the help of Spanish clown Pepito Pérez, together with Ball's radio show writers. Much of the material from their vaudeville act, including Lucy's memorable seal routine, was used in the pilot episode of I Love Lucy. Segments of the pilot were recreated in the sixth episode of the show's first season. During his time on the show, Arnaz and Ball became TV's most successful entrepreneurs.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "With Ball, Arnaz founded Desilu Productions in 1950, initially to produce the vaudeville-style touring act that led to I Love Lucy. At that time, most television programs were broadcast live, and as the largest markets were in New York, the rest of the country received only kinescope images. Karl Freund, Arnaz's cameraman, and even Arnaz himself have been credited with the development of the multiple-camera setup production style using adjacent sets in front of a live audience that became the standard for subsequent situation comedies. The use of film enabled every station around the country to broadcast high-quality images of the show. Arnaz was told that it would be impossible to allow an audience onto a sound stage, but he worked with Freund to design a set that would accommodate an audience, allow filming, and adhere to fire and safety codes. Due to the expense of 35mm film, Arnaz and Ball agreed to salary cuts. In return, they retained the rights to the films. This was the basis for their invention of re-runs and syndicating TV shows (a huge source of new revenue).",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In addition to I Love Lucy, he executive produced The Ann Sothern Show and Those Whiting Girls (starring Margaret Whiting and Barbara Whiting), and was involved in several other series such as The Untouchables, Whirlybirds, and Sheriff of Cochise / United States Marshal. While he was producing The Untouchables, Arnaz was allegedly the target of a mafia murder plot, which was later called off, due to the show's negative publicity of gangsters. These allegations were made in the 1980s by Jimmy Fratianno in his book, The Last Mafioso. Arnaz denied these claims were true. He also produced the feature film Forever, Darling (1956), in which he and Ball starred.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The original Desilu company continued long after Arnaz's divorce from Ball and her subsequent marriage to Gary Morton. Desilu continued to produce its own programs in addition to providing facilities to other producers. In 1962, Arnaz sold his share of Desilu to Ball and formed his own production company after their divorce. With the newly formed Desi Arnaz Productions, he made The Mothers-In-Law (at Desilu) for United Artists Television and NBC. This sitcom ran for two seasons from 1967 to 1969. During its two-year run, Arnaz made four guest appearances as a Spanish matador, Señor Delgado.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Arnaz's company was succeeded-in-interest by the company now known as Desilu, Too. Desilu, Too and Lucille Ball Productions worked hand-in-hand with MPI Home Video in the home video reissues of the Ball/Arnaz material not owned by CBS (successor-in-interest to Paramount Television, which in turn succeeded the original Desilu company). This material included Here's Lucy and The Mothers-In-Law, as well as many programs and specials Ball and Arnaz made independently of each other.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In the 1970s, Arnaz co-hosted a week of shows with daytime host and producer Mike Douglas. Vivian Vance appeared as a guest. Arnaz also headlined a Kraft Music Hall special on NBC that featured his two children, with a brief appearance by Vance. Arnaz suffered a severe attack of diverticulitis in 1971, which required an operation and several years of recovery. He worked with Universal Studios for two years working on development deals for two shows that eventually fell through, Dr. Domingo (the character did appear on one episode of Ironside) and Chairman of the Board starring Elke Sommer. Arnaz moved on to work on his autobiography for two years.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "To promote his autobiography, A Book, on February 21, 1976, Arnaz served as a guest host on Saturday Night Live, with his son, Desi, Jr., also appearing. The program contained spoofs of I Love Lucy and The Untouchables. The spoofs of I Love Lucy were supposed to be earlier concepts of the show that never made it on the air, such as \"I Love Louie\", where Desi lived with Louis Armstrong. He read Lewis Carroll's poem \"Jabberwocky\" in a heavy Cuban accent (he pronounced it \"Habberwocky\"). Desi Jr., played the drums and, supported by the SNL band, Desi sang both \"Babalú\" and another favorite from his dance band days, \"Cuban Pete\"; the arrangements were similar to the ones used on I Love Lucy. He ended the broadcast by leading the entire cast in a conga line through the SNL studio.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 1976, CBS paid tribute to Lucille Ball with the two-hour special CBS Salutes Lucy: The First 25 Years. Both Ball and Arnaz appeared on the screen for the special, which is the first time they appeared together in 16 years since their divorce.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "When asked about returning to television in a 1976 newspaper article, Arnaz said, \"People ask me to go back on TV but the thin' is, it's too tough competing with the Ricky Ricardo of 20 years ago. He looks a lot better than I do.\" Arnaz made a guest appearance on the TV series Alice, in 1978 starring Linda Lavin and produced by I Love Lucy co-creators Madelyn Pugh (Madelyn Davis) and Bob Carroll, Jr. His last acting role was as Mayor Leon Quiñones in the 1982 film, The Escape Artist.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Arnaz owned the Indian Wells Country Club in Palm Desert, CA. He also taught classes at San Diego State University in studio production and acting for television.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Arnaz and Ball decided that I Love Lucy would maintain what Arnaz termed \"basic good taste\" and were therefore determined to avoid ethnic jokes, as well as humor based on physical handicaps or mental disabilities. Arnaz recalled that the only exception consisted of making fun of Ricky Ricardo's accent; even these jokes worked only when Lucy, as his wife, did the mimicking.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Arnaz was also a lifelong Catholic.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "A lifelong Republican, Arnaz was deeply patriotic about the United States. In his memoirs, he wrote that he knew of no other country in the world where \"a sixteen-year-old kid, broke and unable to speak the language\" could achieve the successes that he had. He was a supporter of Richard Nixon and member of the Spanish-Speaking Committee for the Re-Election of the President in 1972. Nixon appointed Arnaz as the U.S. roving ambassador to Latin America in the early 1970s. He was a supporter of Ronald Reagan and spoke at campaign rallies, such as one hosted by the National Republican Hispanic Assembly in 1980. He was an advocate for the Hispanic community, encouraging them to take the 1980 census to increase federal funding for their communities.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Arnaz and Lucille Ball were married on November 30, 1940. Their marriage was always turbulent. Convinced that Arnaz was being unfaithful to her and also because he came home drunk several times, Ball filed for divorce in September 1944, but returned to him before the interlocutory decree became final. Arnaz and Ball subsequently had two children, actors Lucie Arnaz (born 1951) and Desi Arnaz Jr. (born 1953).",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Hollywood procurer and prostitute Scotty Bowers claimed in his memoir Full Service that he had procured as many as two to three prostitutes per week for Arnaz, each of whom was paid 200 dollars, as opposed to the usual 20. Lucille Ball confronted Bowers about this and publicly slapped him in the face, yelling \"You! Stop pimping for my husband!\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Arnaz's marriage with Ball began to collapse under the strain of his growing problems with alcohol, gambling, and infidelity. According to his memoir, the combined pressures of managing the production company, as well as supervising its day-to-day operations, had greatly worsened as the company grew much larger, and he felt compelled to seek outlets to alleviate the stress. Arnaz also suffered from diverticulitis. Ball divorced him on March 2, 1960, which was coincidentally his birthday. When Ball returned to weekly television, she and Arnaz worked out an agreement regarding Desilu, wherein she bought him out.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Edith Mack Hirsch (née McSkimming) was Arnaz's second wife. After the two married on March 2, 1963 (Arnaz's 46th birthday), he greatly reduced his show business activities. The two were married for 22 years until Edith died from cancer on March 23, 1985.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Although Arnaz and Ball both married other spouses after their divorce in 1960, they remained friends and grew closer in his final decade. \"I Love Lucy was never just a title,\" wrote Arnaz in the last years of his life. Family home video later aired on television showed Ball and Arnaz playing together with their grandson Simon shortly before Arnaz's death.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Arnaz suffered from knee injuries as a young man shortly before and during his military service in World War II. The pain was troublesome enough that he was disqualified from serving overseas. In the late 1960s, he was seriously injured in an accident when the floor collapsed and he was impaled by a tree stump in his home in Baja California. An operation saved his life, although his health was never the same after the incident. Throughout his life he periodically had to seek medical treatment for diverticulitis and intestinal issues, sometimes requiring hospitalization.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "After his second wife Edith's death in 1985, Arnaz was persuaded by his children to seek treatment for his decades-long alcohol addiction, which by then had seriously damaged his health. Lucie Arnaz described her pride at attending a treatment meeting with her father where he stood up and said \"I'm Desi, and I'm an alcoholic\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Arnaz had a few run-ins with the law. He was arrested in 1959 on an intoxication charge while he was walking Hollywood Blvd. In 1966, he was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon after an altercation with youth parking in front of his house. Two young men were allegedly partying nearby and harassing his then-15-year-old daughter Lucie and her friend. Arnaz confronted them, threatened to shoot their tires and cars, and then fired two shots that went into the ground. He spent three hours at the San Diego jail and was released on $1,100 bail.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Desi Arnaz spent his retirement doing activities he enjoyed including sailing his yacht (he was a skilled yachtsman since childhood), fishing, and cooking Cuban dishes. He suffered from numerous health issues later in life. He contributed to charitable and nonprofit organizations, including San Diego State University. He was active in politics and made occasional public appearances. He was the guest of honor at the Carnival Miami in March 1982 where he performed with his children, Lucie and Desi Jr., in front of a crowd of 35,000.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Arnaz was known to be very loving to his grandchildren.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Arnaz and his second wife eventually moved to Del Mar, California where he lived the rest of his life in semi-retirement. He owned a horse-breeding farm in Corona, California and raced Thoroughbreds. The Desi Arnaz Stakes at Del Mar Racetrack is named in his honor.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Arnaz was a regular smoker for much of his life and often smoked cigarettes on the set of I Love Lucy. He smoked cigars until he was in his sixties. Arnaz was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1986 and underwent treatment. Lucille Ball visited him during this time in the hospital and the two watched VHS tapes of I Love Lucy. His daughter Lucie was by his side constantly during his final days.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "On November 30, 1986, on what would have been their 46th wedding anniversary, Ball telephoned him and they spoke for a short time, including saying \"I love you.\" She finished by saying, \"Alright, honey. I'll talk to you later.\" He died two days later on December 2, 1986, at the age of 69. Arnaz was cremated and his ashes scattered. Ball was one of hundreds to attend Arnaz's funeral, which was held at St. James Roman Catholic Church in San Diego County, California. His death came just five days before Lucille Ball received the Kennedy Center Honors. His mother outlived him by almost two years.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Desi Arnaz has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one at 6301 Hollywood Boulevard for contributions to motion pictures and one at 6250 Hollywood Boulevard for television. Unlike his co-stars, Arnaz was never nominated for an Emmy for his performance in I Love Lucy; however, as executive producer of the series, he was nominated four times in the Best Situation Comedy category, winning twice. In 1956, he won a Golden Globe for Best Television Achievement for helping to shape the American Comedy through his contributions in front of and behind the camera of I Love Lucy. He was inducted into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center museum is in Jamestown, New York, and the Desi Arnaz Bandshell in the Lucille Ball Memorial Park is in Celoron, New York.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Desi Arnaz appears as a character in Oscar Hijuelos's 1989 novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and is portrayed by his son, Desi Arnaz Jr., in the 1992 film adaptation, The Mambo Kings.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Maurice Benard portrayed Desi Arnaz in the 1991 television film Lucy & Desi: Before the Laughter.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In the 2003 television film Lucy, Desi Arnaz was portrayed by Danny Pino.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Arnaz was portrayed by Oscar Nuñez in I Love Lucy: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom, a comedy about how Arnaz and Ball battled to get their sitcom on the air. It had its world premiere in Los Angeles on July 12, 2018, co-starring Sarah Drew as Lucille Ball and Seamus Dever as I Love Lucy creator-producer-head writer Jess Oppenheimer. The play, written by Jess Oppenheimer's son, Gregg Oppenheimer, was recorded in front of a live audience for nationwide public radio broadcast and online distribution. BBC Radio 4 broadcast a serialized version of the play in the UK in August 2020, as LUCY LOVES DESI: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom, starring Wilmer Valderrama as Arnaz and co-starring Anne Heche as Lucille Ball.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "On March 2, 2019, Google celebrated what would have been Arnaz's 102nd birthday with a Google doodle.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Javier Bardem portrayed Arnaz in the 2021 biographical film Being the Ricardos written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and produced by Amazon Studios, alongside Nicole Kidman as Ball. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was a Cuban-American actor, musician and bandleader. He played Ricky Ricardo on the American television sitcom I Love Lucy, in which he co-starred with his wife Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball are credited as the innovators of the syndicated rerun, which they pioneered with the I Love Lucy series. Arnaz and Lucille Ball co-founded and ran the television production company called Desilu Productions, originally to market I Love Lucy to television networks. After I Love Lucy ended, Arnaz went on to produce several other television series, at first with Desilu Productions, and later independently, including The Ann Sothern Show and The Untouchables. He was also the bandleader of his Latin group, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra. He was known for playing conga drums and popularized the conga line in the United States. | 2001-11-05T17:31:13Z | 2023-12-24T15:40:11Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desi_Arnaz |
8,777 | DNA virus | A DNA virus is a virus that has a genome made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that is replicated by a DNA polymerase. They can be divided between those that have two strands of DNA in their genome, called double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) viruses, and those that have one strand of DNA in their genome, called single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) viruses. dsDNA viruses primarily belong to two realms: Duplodnaviria and Varidnaviria, and ssDNA viruses are almost exclusively assigned to the realm Monodnaviria, which also includes some dsDNA viruses. Additionally, many DNA viruses are unassigned to higher taxa. Reverse transcribing viruses, which have a DNA genome that is replicated through an RNA intermediate by a reverse transcriptase, are classified into the kingdom Pararnavirae in the realm Riboviria.
DNA viruses are ubiquitous worldwide, especially in marine environments where they form an important part of marine ecosystems, and infect both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. They appear to have multiple origins, as viruses in Monodnaviria appear to have emerged from archaeal and bacterial plasmids on multiple occasions, though the origins of Duplodnaviria and Varidnaviria are less clear.
Prominent disease-causing DNA viruses include herpesviruses, papillomaviruses, and poxviruses.
The Baltimore classification system is used to group viruses together based on their manner of messenger RNA (mRNA) synthesis and is often used alongside standard virus taxonomy, which is based on evolutionary history. DNA viruses constitute two Baltimore groups: Group I: double-stranded DNA viruses, and Group II: single-stranded DNA viruses. While Baltimore classification is chiefly based on transcription of mRNA, viruses in each Baltimore group also typically share their manner of replication. Viruses in a Baltimore group do not necessarily share genetic relation or morphology.
The first Baltimore group of DNA viruses are those that have a double-stranded DNA genome. All dsDNA viruses have their mRNA synthesized in a three-step process. First, a transcription preinitiation complex binds to the DNA upstream of the site where transcription begins, allowing for the recruitment of a host RNA polymerase. Second, once the RNA polymerase is recruited, it uses the negative strand as a template for synthesizing mRNA strands. Third, the RNA polymerase terminates transcription upon reaching a specific signal, such as a polyadenylation site.
dsDNA viruses make use of several mechanisms to replicate their genome. Bidirectional replication, in which two replication forks are established at a replication origin site and move in opposite directions of each other, is widely used. A rolling circle mechanism that produces linear strands while progressing in a loop around the circular genome is also common. Some dsDNA viruses use a strand displacement method whereby one strand is synthesized from a template strand, and a complementary strand is then synthesized from the prior synthesized strand, forming a dsDNA genome. Lastly, some dsDNA viruses are replicated as part of a process called replicative transposition whereby a viral genome in a host cell's DNA is replicated to another part of a host genome.
dsDNA viruses can be subdivided between those that replicate in the cell nucleus, and as such are relatively dependent on host cell machinery for transcription and replication, and those that replicate in the cytoplasm, in which case they have evolved or acquired their own means of executing transcription and replication. dsDNA viruses are also commonly divided between tailed dsDNA viruses, referring to members of the realm Duplodnaviria, usually the tailed bacteriophages of the order Caudovirales, and tailless or non-tailed dsDNA viruses of the realm Varidnaviria.
The second Baltimore group of DNA viruses are those that have a single-stranded DNA genome. ssDNA viruses have the same manner of transcription as dsDNA viruses. However, because the genome is single-stranded, it is first made into a double-stranded form by a DNA polymerase upon entering a host cell. mRNA is then synthesized from the double-stranded form. The double-stranded form of ssDNA viruses may be produced either directly after entry into a cell or as a consequence of replication of the viral genome. Eukaryotic ssDNA viruses are replicated in the nucleus.
Most ssDNA viruses contain circular genomes that are replicated via rolling circle replication (RCR). ssDNA RCR is initiated by an endonuclease that bonds to and cleaves the positive strand, allowing a DNA polymerase to use the negative strand as a template for replication. Replication progresses in a loop around the genome by means of extending the 3'-end of the positive strand, displacing the prior positive strand, and the endonuclease cleaves the positive strand again to create a standalone genome that is ligated into a circular loop. The new ssDNA may be packaged into virions or replicated by a DNA polymerase to form a double-stranded form for transcription or continuation of the replication cycle.
Parvoviruses contain linear ssDNA genomes that are replicated via rolling hairpin replication (RHR), which is similar to RCR. Parvovirus genomes have hairpin loops at each end of the genome that repeatedly unfold and refold during replication to change the direction of DNA synthesis to move back and forth along the genome, producing numerous copies of the genome in a continuous process. Individual genomes are then excised from this molecule by the viral endonuclease. For parvoviruses, either the positive or negative sense strand may be packaged into capsids, varying from virus to virus.
Nearly all ssDNA viruses have positive sense genomes, but a few exceptions and peculiarities exist. The family Anelloviridae is the only ssDNA family whose members have negative sense genomes, which are circular. Parvoviruses, as previously mentioned, may package either the positive or negative sense strand into virions. Lastly, bidnaviruses package both the positive and negative linear strands.
The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) oversees virus taxonomy and organizes viruses at the basal level at the rank of realm. Virus realms correspond to the rank of domain used for cellular life but differ in that viruses within a realm do not necessarily share common ancestry, nor do the realms share common ancestry with each other. As such, each virus realm represents at least one instance of viruses coming into existence. Within each realm, viruses are grouped together based on shared characteristics that are highly conserved over time. Three DNA virus realms are recognized: Duplodnaviria, Monodnaviria, and Varidnaviria.
Duplodnaviria contains dsDNA viruses that encode a major capsid protein (MCP) that has the HK97 fold. Viruses in the realm also share a number of other characteristics involving the capsid and capsid assembly, including an icosahedral capsid shape and a terminase enzyme that packages viral DNA into the capsid during assembly. Two groups of viruses are included in the realm: tailed bacteriophages, which infect prokaryotes and are assigned to the order Caudovirales, and herpesviruses, which infect animals and are assigned to the order Herpesvirales.
Duplodnaviria is a very ancient realm, perhaps predating the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of cellular life. Its origins not known, nor whether it is monophyletic or polyphyletic. A characteristic feature is the HK97-fold found in the MCP of all members, which is found outside the realm only in encapsulins, a type of nanocompartment found in bacteria: this relation is not fully understood.
The relation between caudoviruses and herpesviruses is also uncertain: they may share a common ancestor or herpesviruses may be a divergent clade from the realm Caudovirales. A common trait among duplodnaviruses is that they cause latent infections without replication while still being able to replicate in the future. Tailed bacteriophages are ubiquitous worldwide, important in marine ecology, and the subject of much research. Herpesviruses are known to cause a variety of epithelial diseases, including herpes simplex, chickenpox and shingles, and Kaposi's sarcoma.
Monodnaviria contains ssDNA viruses that encode an endonuclease of the HUH superfamily that initiates rolling circle replication and all other viruses descended from such viruses. The prototypical members of the realm are called CRESS-DNA viruses and have circular ssDNA genomes. ssDNA viruses with linear genomes are descended from them, and in turn some dsDNA viruses with circular genomes are descended from linear ssDNA viruses.
Viruses in Monodnaviria appear to have emerged on multiple occasions from archaeal and bacterial plasmids, a type of extra-chromosomal DNA molecule that self-replicates inside its host. The kingdom Shotokuvirae in the realm likely emerged from recombination events that merged the DNA of these plasmids and complementary DNA encoding the capsid proteins of RNA viruses.
CRESS-DNA viruses include three kingdoms that infect prokaryotes: Loebvirae, Sangervirae, and Trapavirae. The kingdom Shotokuvirae contains eukaryotic CRESS-DNA viruses and the atypical members of Monodnaviria. Eukaryotic monodnaviruses are associated with many diseases, and they include papillomaviruses and polyomaviruses, which cause many cancers, and geminiviruses, which infect many economically important crops.
Varidnaviria contains DNA viruses that encode MCPs that have a jelly roll fold folded structure in which the jelly roll (JR) fold is perpendicular to the surface of the viral capsid. Many members also share a variety of other characteristics, including a minor capsid protein that has a single JR fold, an ATPase that packages the genome during capsid assembly, and a common DNA polymerase. Two kingdoms are recognized: Helvetiavirae, whose members have MCPs with a single vertical JR fold, and Bamfordvirae, whose members have MCPs with two vertical JR folds.
Varidnaviria is either monophyletic or polyphyletic and may predate the LUCA. The kingdom Bamfordvirae is likely derived from the other kingdom Helvetiavirae via fusion of two MCPs to have an MCP with two jelly roll folds instead of one. The single jelly roll (SJR) fold MCPs of Helvetiavirae show a relation to a group of proteins that contain SJR folds, including the Cupin superfamily and nucleoplasmins.
Marine viruses in Varidnaviria are ubiquitous worldwide and, like tailed bacteriophages, play an important role in marine ecology. Most identified eukaryotic DNA viruses belong to the realm. Notable disease-causing viruses in Varidnaviria include adenoviruses, poxviruses, and the African swine fever virus. Poxviruses have been highly prominent in the history of modern medicine, especially Variola virus, which caused smallpox. Many varidnaviruses can become endogenized in their host's genome; a peculiar example are virophages, which after infecting a host, can protect the host against giant viruses.
dsDNA viruses are classified into three realms and include many taxa that are unassigned to a realm:
ssDNA viruses are classified into one realm and include several families that are unassigned to a realm: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A DNA virus is a virus that has a genome made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that is replicated by a DNA polymerase. They can be divided between those that have two strands of DNA in their genome, called double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) viruses, and those that have one strand of DNA in their genome, called single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) viruses. dsDNA viruses primarily belong to two realms: Duplodnaviria and Varidnaviria, and ssDNA viruses are almost exclusively assigned to the realm Monodnaviria, which also includes some dsDNA viruses. Additionally, many DNA viruses are unassigned to higher taxa. Reverse transcribing viruses, which have a DNA genome that is replicated through an RNA intermediate by a reverse transcriptase, are classified into the kingdom Pararnavirae in the realm Riboviria.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "DNA viruses are ubiquitous worldwide, especially in marine environments where they form an important part of marine ecosystems, and infect both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. They appear to have multiple origins, as viruses in Monodnaviria appear to have emerged from archaeal and bacterial plasmids on multiple occasions, though the origins of Duplodnaviria and Varidnaviria are less clear.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Prominent disease-causing DNA viruses include herpesviruses, papillomaviruses, and poxviruses.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Baltimore classification system is used to group viruses together based on their manner of messenger RNA (mRNA) synthesis and is often used alongside standard virus taxonomy, which is based on evolutionary history. DNA viruses constitute two Baltimore groups: Group I: double-stranded DNA viruses, and Group II: single-stranded DNA viruses. While Baltimore classification is chiefly based on transcription of mRNA, viruses in each Baltimore group also typically share their manner of replication. Viruses in a Baltimore group do not necessarily share genetic relation or morphology.",
"title": "Baltimore classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The first Baltimore group of DNA viruses are those that have a double-stranded DNA genome. All dsDNA viruses have their mRNA synthesized in a three-step process. First, a transcription preinitiation complex binds to the DNA upstream of the site where transcription begins, allowing for the recruitment of a host RNA polymerase. Second, once the RNA polymerase is recruited, it uses the negative strand as a template for synthesizing mRNA strands. Third, the RNA polymerase terminates transcription upon reaching a specific signal, such as a polyadenylation site.",
"title": "Baltimore classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "dsDNA viruses make use of several mechanisms to replicate their genome. Bidirectional replication, in which two replication forks are established at a replication origin site and move in opposite directions of each other, is widely used. A rolling circle mechanism that produces linear strands while progressing in a loop around the circular genome is also common. Some dsDNA viruses use a strand displacement method whereby one strand is synthesized from a template strand, and a complementary strand is then synthesized from the prior synthesized strand, forming a dsDNA genome. Lastly, some dsDNA viruses are replicated as part of a process called replicative transposition whereby a viral genome in a host cell's DNA is replicated to another part of a host genome.",
"title": "Baltimore classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "dsDNA viruses can be subdivided between those that replicate in the cell nucleus, and as such are relatively dependent on host cell machinery for transcription and replication, and those that replicate in the cytoplasm, in which case they have evolved or acquired their own means of executing transcription and replication. dsDNA viruses are also commonly divided between tailed dsDNA viruses, referring to members of the realm Duplodnaviria, usually the tailed bacteriophages of the order Caudovirales, and tailless or non-tailed dsDNA viruses of the realm Varidnaviria.",
"title": "Baltimore classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The second Baltimore group of DNA viruses are those that have a single-stranded DNA genome. ssDNA viruses have the same manner of transcription as dsDNA viruses. However, because the genome is single-stranded, it is first made into a double-stranded form by a DNA polymerase upon entering a host cell. mRNA is then synthesized from the double-stranded form. The double-stranded form of ssDNA viruses may be produced either directly after entry into a cell or as a consequence of replication of the viral genome. Eukaryotic ssDNA viruses are replicated in the nucleus.",
"title": "Baltimore classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Most ssDNA viruses contain circular genomes that are replicated via rolling circle replication (RCR). ssDNA RCR is initiated by an endonuclease that bonds to and cleaves the positive strand, allowing a DNA polymerase to use the negative strand as a template for replication. Replication progresses in a loop around the genome by means of extending the 3'-end of the positive strand, displacing the prior positive strand, and the endonuclease cleaves the positive strand again to create a standalone genome that is ligated into a circular loop. The new ssDNA may be packaged into virions or replicated by a DNA polymerase to form a double-stranded form for transcription or continuation of the replication cycle.",
"title": "Baltimore classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Parvoviruses contain linear ssDNA genomes that are replicated via rolling hairpin replication (RHR), which is similar to RCR. Parvovirus genomes have hairpin loops at each end of the genome that repeatedly unfold and refold during replication to change the direction of DNA synthesis to move back and forth along the genome, producing numerous copies of the genome in a continuous process. Individual genomes are then excised from this molecule by the viral endonuclease. For parvoviruses, either the positive or negative sense strand may be packaged into capsids, varying from virus to virus.",
"title": "Baltimore classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Nearly all ssDNA viruses have positive sense genomes, but a few exceptions and peculiarities exist. The family Anelloviridae is the only ssDNA family whose members have negative sense genomes, which are circular. Parvoviruses, as previously mentioned, may package either the positive or negative sense strand into virions. Lastly, bidnaviruses package both the positive and negative linear strands.",
"title": "Baltimore classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) oversees virus taxonomy and organizes viruses at the basal level at the rank of realm. Virus realms correspond to the rank of domain used for cellular life but differ in that viruses within a realm do not necessarily share common ancestry, nor do the realms share common ancestry with each other. As such, each virus realm represents at least one instance of viruses coming into existence. Within each realm, viruses are grouped together based on shared characteristics that are highly conserved over time. Three DNA virus realms are recognized: Duplodnaviria, Monodnaviria, and Varidnaviria.",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Duplodnaviria contains dsDNA viruses that encode a major capsid protein (MCP) that has the HK97 fold. Viruses in the realm also share a number of other characteristics involving the capsid and capsid assembly, including an icosahedral capsid shape and a terminase enzyme that packages viral DNA into the capsid during assembly. Two groups of viruses are included in the realm: tailed bacteriophages, which infect prokaryotes and are assigned to the order Caudovirales, and herpesviruses, which infect animals and are assigned to the order Herpesvirales.",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Duplodnaviria is a very ancient realm, perhaps predating the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of cellular life. Its origins not known, nor whether it is monophyletic or polyphyletic. A characteristic feature is the HK97-fold found in the MCP of all members, which is found outside the realm only in encapsulins, a type of nanocompartment found in bacteria: this relation is not fully understood.",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The relation between caudoviruses and herpesviruses is also uncertain: they may share a common ancestor or herpesviruses may be a divergent clade from the realm Caudovirales. A common trait among duplodnaviruses is that they cause latent infections without replication while still being able to replicate in the future. Tailed bacteriophages are ubiquitous worldwide, important in marine ecology, and the subject of much research. Herpesviruses are known to cause a variety of epithelial diseases, including herpes simplex, chickenpox and shingles, and Kaposi's sarcoma.",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Monodnaviria contains ssDNA viruses that encode an endonuclease of the HUH superfamily that initiates rolling circle replication and all other viruses descended from such viruses. The prototypical members of the realm are called CRESS-DNA viruses and have circular ssDNA genomes. ssDNA viruses with linear genomes are descended from them, and in turn some dsDNA viruses with circular genomes are descended from linear ssDNA viruses.",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Viruses in Monodnaviria appear to have emerged on multiple occasions from archaeal and bacterial plasmids, a type of extra-chromosomal DNA molecule that self-replicates inside its host. The kingdom Shotokuvirae in the realm likely emerged from recombination events that merged the DNA of these plasmids and complementary DNA encoding the capsid proteins of RNA viruses.",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "CRESS-DNA viruses include three kingdoms that infect prokaryotes: Loebvirae, Sangervirae, and Trapavirae. The kingdom Shotokuvirae contains eukaryotic CRESS-DNA viruses and the atypical members of Monodnaviria. Eukaryotic monodnaviruses are associated with many diseases, and they include papillomaviruses and polyomaviruses, which cause many cancers, and geminiviruses, which infect many economically important crops.",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Varidnaviria contains DNA viruses that encode MCPs that have a jelly roll fold folded structure in which the jelly roll (JR) fold is perpendicular to the surface of the viral capsid. Many members also share a variety of other characteristics, including a minor capsid protein that has a single JR fold, an ATPase that packages the genome during capsid assembly, and a common DNA polymerase. Two kingdoms are recognized: Helvetiavirae, whose members have MCPs with a single vertical JR fold, and Bamfordvirae, whose members have MCPs with two vertical JR folds.",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Varidnaviria is either monophyletic or polyphyletic and may predate the LUCA. The kingdom Bamfordvirae is likely derived from the other kingdom Helvetiavirae via fusion of two MCPs to have an MCP with two jelly roll folds instead of one. The single jelly roll (SJR) fold MCPs of Helvetiavirae show a relation to a group of proteins that contain SJR folds, including the Cupin superfamily and nucleoplasmins.",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Marine viruses in Varidnaviria are ubiquitous worldwide and, like tailed bacteriophages, play an important role in marine ecology. Most identified eukaryotic DNA viruses belong to the realm. Notable disease-causing viruses in Varidnaviria include adenoviruses, poxviruses, and the African swine fever virus. Poxviruses have been highly prominent in the history of modern medicine, especially Variola virus, which caused smallpox. Many varidnaviruses can become endogenized in their host's genome; a peculiar example are virophages, which after infecting a host, can protect the host against giant viruses.",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "dsDNA viruses are classified into three realms and include many taxa that are unassigned to a realm:",
"title": "ICTV classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "ssDNA viruses are classified into one realm and include several families that are unassigned to a realm:",
"title": "ICTV classification"
}
]
| A DNA virus is a virus that has a genome made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that is replicated by a DNA polymerase. They can be divided between those that have two strands of DNA in their genome, called double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) viruses, and those that have one strand of DNA in their genome, called single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) viruses. dsDNA viruses primarily belong to two realms: Duplodnaviria and Varidnaviria, and ssDNA viruses are almost exclusively assigned to the realm Monodnaviria, which also includes some dsDNA viruses. Additionally, many DNA viruses are unassigned to higher taxa. Reverse transcribing viruses, which have a DNA genome that is replicated through an RNA intermediate by a reverse transcriptase, are classified into the kingdom Pararnavirae in the realm Riboviria. DNA viruses are ubiquitous worldwide, especially in marine environments where they form an important part of marine ecosystems, and infect both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. They appear to have multiple origins, as viruses in Monodnaviria appear to have emerged from archaeal and bacterial plasmids on multiple occasions, though the origins of Duplodnaviria and Varidnaviria are less clear. Prominent disease-causing DNA viruses include herpesviruses, papillomaviruses, and poxviruses. | 2023-07-04T04:22:48Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_virus |
|
8,778 | Daniel Ortega | José Daniel Ortega Saavedra (Spanish pronunciation: [daˈnjel oɾˈteɣa]; born 11 November 1945) is a Nicaraguan politician who has been President of Nicaragua since 2007. Previously he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as coordinator (1979–1985) of the Junta of National Reconstruction, and then as President of Nicaragua (1985–1990). During his first term, he implemented policies to achieve leftist reforms across Nicaragua. In later years, Ortega's left-wing radical politics cooled significantly, leading him to pursue pro-business policies and even rapprochement with the Catholic Church. As a part of this, his government adopted strong anti-abortion policies, and his rhetoric took on a new, strongly religious tenor.
Ortega came to prominence with the overthrow and exile of US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 during the Nicaraguan Revolution. As a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Spanish: Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) Ortega became leader of the ruling Junta of National Reconstruction. A Marxist–Leninist, Ortega pursued a program of nationalization, land reform, wealth redistribution and literacy programs during his first period in office. Ortega's government was responsible for the forced displacement of 10,000 indigenous people. In 1984, Ortega won Nicaragua's first ever free and fair presidential election with over 60% of the vote as the FSLN's candidate. Throughout the 1980s, Ortega's government faced a rebellion by US-backed rebels, known as the Contras. The US also sought to place economic pressure on the Sandinista government, imposing a full trade embargo, and planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's ports. After a presidency marred by conflict and economic collapse, Ortega was defeated in the 1990 Nicaraguan general election by Violeta Chamorro, in an election marked by US interference.
Ortega was an unsuccessful candidate for president in 1996 and 2001 but won the 2006 Nicaraguan general election. In office, he made alliances with fellow Latin American socialists. His second administration, in contrast to his previous political career, abandoned most of his earlier leftist principles, and became increasingly anti-democratic, alienating many of his former revolutionary allies.
In June 2018, organisations such as Amnesty International and the OAS reported that Ortega had engaged in a violent oppression campaign against the anti-Ortega 2018–2022 Nicaraguan protests. The violent crackdown and subsequent constriction of civil liberties have led to massive waves of emigration to neighboring Costa Rica, with more than 30,000 Nicaraguans filing for asylum in that country. In his fourth term, Ortega ordered the closure of several NGOs, universities, and newspapers.
His government jailed many potential rival candidates in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election, including Cristiana Chamorro Barrios. Ortega's government also imprisoned other opponents, such as former allies Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres Jiménez. In August 2021, Nicaragua cancelled the operating permits of six US and European NGOs. Many critics of the Ortega government, including opposition leaders, journalists and members of civil society, fled the country in mid-2021. After Ortega was re-elected in 2021, United States President Joe Biden banned him and his officials from entering the United States.
Ortega was born in La Libertad, department of Chontales, Nicaragua, into a working-class family. His parents, Daniel Ortega Cerda and Lidia Saavedra, were opposed to the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. His mother was imprisoned by Somoza's National Guard for being in possession of "love letters", which the police said were coded political missives. Ortega and his two brothers grew up to become revolutionaries. His brother Humberto Ortega is a former general, military leader, and published writer, and the third brother Camilo Ortega died fighting the Somoza regime in 1978. They had a sister, Germania, who died.
Seeking stable employment, the family migrated from La Libertad to the provincial capital of Juigalpa, and then to a middle-class neighborhood in Managua. In Managua, Ortega and his brother studied at the upper-middle class high school, the LaSalle Institute, where Ortega was classmates with Arnoldo Aleman, who would go on to be mayor of Managua (1990-1995) and later President of Nicaragua (1997-2002). Ortega's father Daniel Ortega Cedra detested US military intervention in Nicaragua and Washington's support for the Somoza government. He imparted this anti-American sentiment to his sons.
From an early age, Ortega opposed Nicaragua's president Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and became involved in the underground movement against his government. Ortega and his brother Humberto formed the Insurrectionist, or Tercerista (Third Way) faction, culminating in the Nicaraguan Revolution. After the overthrow and exile of Somoza Debayle's government, Ortega became leader of the ruling multi-partisan Junta of National Reconstruction.
Ortega was first arrested for political activities at the age of 15, and quickly joined the then-underground Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1963. In 1964, Ortega travelled to Guatemala, where the police arrested him and turned him over to the Nicaraguan National Guard. After his release from detainment, Ortega arranged the assassination of his torturer, Guardsman Gonzalo Lacayo, in August 1967.
He was imprisoned in 1967 for taking part in armed robbery of a branch of the Bank of America. He told collaborators that they should be killed if they did not take part in the robbery. Ortega was released in late 1974, along with other Sandinista prisoners, in exchange for Somocista hostages. While imprisoned at the El Modelo jail, just outside Managua, Ortega wrote poems, one of which he titled "I Never Saw Managua When Miniskirts Were in Fashion". During his imprisonment, Ortega was tortured. While he was incarcerated at El Modelo, his mother helped stage protests and hunger strikes for political prisoners; this resulted in improving the treatment of incarcerated Sandinistas.
Upon release in 1974, Ortega was exiled to Cuba. There he received training in guerrilla warfare from Fidel Castro's Marxist–Leninist government. He later returned secretly to Nicaragua.
In the late 1970s, divisions over the FSLN's campaign against Somoza led Ortega and his brother Humberto to form the Insurrectionist, or Tercerista (Third Way) faction. The Terceristas sought to combine the distinct guerrilla war strategies of the two other factions, Tomás Borge's Guerra Prolongada Popular (GPP, or Prolonged People's War), and Jaime Wheelock's Proletarian Tendency. The Ortega brothers forged alliances with a wide array of anti-Somoza forces, including Catholic and Protestant activists, and other non-Marxist civil society groups. The Terceristas became the most effective faction in wielding political and military strength, and their push for FSLN solidarity received the support of revolutionary leaders such as Fidel Castro.
Ortega married Rosario Murillo in 1979 in a secret ceremony. They moved to Costa Rica with her three children from a previous marriage. Ortega remarried Murillo in 2005 in order to have the marriage recognized by the Catholic Church, as part of his effort to reconcile with the church. The couple has eight children, three of them together. Murillo serves as the Ortega government's spokeswoman and a government minister, among other positions. Ortega adopted stepdaughter Zoilamérica Narváez in 1986, through a court case.
When Somoza was overthrown by the FSLN in July 1979, Ortega became a member of the five-person Junta of National Reconstruction, which included Sandinista militant Moisés Hassan, novelist Sergio Ramírez, businessman Alfonso Robelo, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of a murdered journalist. In September 1979, United States President Carter hosted Ortega at the White House, and warned him against arming other Central American leftist guerrilla movements. At the time, Ortega spoke truthfully when he denied Sandinista involvement in neighboring countries. When Ortega questioned the Americans about CIA support for anti-Sandinista groups, Carter and Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher said the reports were false. After the meeting, Carter asked Congress for $75 million in aid to Nicaragua, contingent on the Sandinista government's promise not to aid other guerrillas.
The FSLN came to dominate the junta, Robelo and Chamorro resigned, and in 1981 Ortega became the coordinator of the Junta. As the only member of the FSLN National Directorate in the Junta, he was the effective leader of the country. After attaining power, the FSLN embarked upon an ambitious programme of social reform. They arranged to redistribute 20,000 square kilometres (5 million acres) of land to about 100,000 families; launched a literacy drive, and made health care improvements that ended polio through mass vaccinations, and reduced the frequency of other treatable diseases. The Sandinista nationalization efforts affected mostly banks and industries owned by the extended Somoza family. More than half of all farms, businesses, and industries remained in private hands. The revolutionary government wanted to preserve a mixed economy and support private sector investment. The Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP) opposed the Sandinistas' economic reform. The main organization of Nicaraguan big business was composed of prosperous families from the Pacific coast cities, who dominated commerce and banking. Ortega took a very hard line against opposition to his policies: On 21 February 1981, the Sandinista army killed 7 Miskito Indians and wounded 17.
Ortega's administration forced displacement of many of the indigenous population: 10,000 individuals had been moved by 1982. Thousands of Indians fled to take refuge across the border in Honduras, and Ortega's government imprisoned 14,000 in Nicaragua. Anthropologist Gilles Bataillon termed this "politics of ethnocide" in Nicaragua. The Indians formed two rebel groups – the Misura and Misurasata. They were joined in the north by Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) and in the south by former Sandinistas and peasantry who, under the leadership of Edén Pastora, were resisting forced collectivization.
In 1980 the Sandinista government launched the massive Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign and said the illiteracy rate fell from 50% to 13% in the span of five months. Robert F. Arnove said the figures were excessive because many "unteachable" illiterates were omitted from the statistics, and many people declared literate were found to be unable to read or write a simple sentence. Richard Kraft said that even if the figures were exaggerated, the "accomplishment is without precedent in educational history". In 1980, UNESCO awarded Nicaragua the Nadezhda K. Krupskaya prize in recognition of its efforts. The FSLN also focused on improving the Nicaraguan health system, particularly through vaccination campaigns and the construction of public hospitals. These actions reduced child mortality by half, to 40 deaths per thousand. By 1982, the World Health Organization deemed Nicaragua a model for primary health care. During this period, Nicaragua won the UNESCO prize for exceptional health progress.
In 1981, United States President Ronald Reagan accused the FSLN of joining with Soviet-backed Cuba in supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in other Latin American countries, such as El Salvador. People within the Reagan administration authorized the CIA to begin financing, arming and training rebels as anti-Sandinista guerrillas, some of whom were former officers from Somoza's National Guard. These were known collectively as the Contras. This resulted in one of the largest political scandals in US history, (the Iran–Contra affair). Oliver North and several members of the Reagan administration defied the Boland Amendment, selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds in order to secretly fund the Contras.
The Contra war claimed 30,000 lives in Nicaragua. The tactics used by the Sandinista government to fight the Contras have been widely condemned for their suppression of civil rights. On 15 March 1982, the junta declared a state of siege, which allowed it to close independent radio stations, suspend the right of association, and limit the freedom of trade unions. Nicaragua's Permanent Commission on Human Rights condemned Sandinista human rights violations, accusing them of killing and forcibly disappearing thousands of persons in the first few years of the war.
At the 1984 general election Ortega won the presidency with 67% of the vote and took office on 10 January 1985. In the early phases of the campaign, Ortega enjoyed many institutional advantages, and used the full power of the press, police, and Supreme Electoral Council against the fractured opposition. In the weeks before the November election, Ortega gave a U.N. speech denouncing talks held in Rio de Janeiro on electoral reform. But by 22 October, the Sandinistas signed an accord with opposition parties to reform electoral and campaign laws, making the process more fair and transparent. While campaigning, Ortega promoted the Sandinistas' achievements, and at a rally said that "Democracy is literacy, democracy is land reform, democracy is education and public health." International observers judged the election to be the first free election held in the country in more than half a century. A report by an Irish governmentary delegation stated: "The electoral process was carried out with total integrity. The seven parties participating in the elections represented a broad spectrum of political ideologies." The general counsel of New York's Human Rights Commission described the election as "free, fair and hotly contested". A study by the US Latin American Studies Association (LASA) concluded that the FSLN (Sandinista Front) "did little more to take advantage of its incumbency than incumbent parties everywhere (including the U.S.) routinely do." However some people described the election as "rigged". According to a detailed study, since the 1984 election was for posts subordinate to the Sandinista Directorate, the elections were no more subject to approval by vote than the Central Committee of the Communist Party is in countries of the East Bloc.
Thirty-three per cent of the Nicaraguan voters cast ballots for one of six opposition parties—three to the right of the Sandinistas, three to the left—which had campaigned with the aid of government funds and free TV and radio time. Two conservative parties captured a combined 23% of the vote. They held rallies across the country (a few of which were disrupted by FSLN supporters) and blasted the Sandinistas in harsh terms. Most foreign and independent observers noted this pluralism in debunking the Reagan administration charge—ubiquitous in the US media—that it was a "Soviet-style sham" election. Some opposition parties boycotted the election, allegedly under pressure from US embassy officials, and so it was denounced as being unfair by the Reagan administration. Reagan thus maintained that he was justified to continue supporting what he referred to as the Contras' "democratic resistance".
The illegal intervention of the Contras continued (albeit covertly) after Ortega's democratic election. Peace talks between five Central American heads of state in July 1987 led to the signing of the Central American Peace Accords, and the beginning of a roadmap to the end of the conflict. In 1988, the Contras first entered into peace talks with the Sandinista government, although the violence continued, as did their US support. Despite US opposition, disarmament of the Contras began in 1989.
In the 1990 presidential election, Ortega lost his reelection bid to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, his former colleague in the junta. Chamorro was supported by the US and a 14-party anti-Sandinista alliance known as the National Opposition Union (Unión Nacional Oppositora, UNO), an alliance that ranged from conservatives and liberals to communists. She ran an effective campaign, presenting herself as the peace candidate and promising to end the US-funded Contra War if she won. Ortega campaigned on the slogan, "Everything Will Be Better", and promised that, with the Contra war over, he could focus on the nation's recovery. Contrary to what most observers expected, Chamorro shocked Ortega and won the election. Chamorro's UNO coalition garnered 54% of the vote, and won 51 of the 92 seats in the National Assembly. Immediately after the loss, the Sandinistas tried to maintain unity around their revolutionary posture. In Ortega's concession speech the following day he vowed to keep "ruling from below" a reference to the power that the FSLN still wielded in various sectors. He also stressed his belief that the Sandinistas had the goal of bringing "dignity" to Latin America, and not necessarily to hold on to government posts. In 1991, Ortega said elections were "an instrument to reaffirm" the FSLN's "political and ideological positions," and also "confront capitalism." However, the electoral loss led to pronounced divisions in the FSLN. Some members adopted more pragmatic positions, and sought to transform the FSLN into a modern social democratic party engaged in national reconciliation and class cooperation. Ortega and other party insiders found common ground with the radicals, who still promoted anti-imperialism and class conflict to achieve social change.
Possible explanations for his loss include that the Nicaraguan people were disenchanted with the Ortega government as well as the fact that already in November 1989, the White House had announced that the economic embargo against Nicaragua would continue unless Violeta Chamorro won. Also, there had been reports of intimidation from the side of the contras, with a Canadian observer mission stating that 42 people were killed by the contras in "election violence" in October 1989. This led many commentators to assume that Nicaraguans voted against the Sandinistas out of fear of a continuation of the contra war and economic deprivation.
From 19 to 21 July 1991, the FSLN held a National Congress to mend the rifts between members and form a new overarching political program. The effort failed to unite the party, and intense debates over the internal governance of the FSLN continued. The pragmatists, led by the former vice president Sergio Ramirez, formed the basis of a "renovating" faction, and supported collaboration with other political forces to preserve the rule of law in Nicaragua. Under the leadership of Ortega and Tomás Borge, the radicals regrouped into the "principled" faction, and branded themselves the Izquierda Democratica (ID), or Democratic Left (DL). The DL fought the Chamorro government with disruptive labor strikes and demonstrations, and renewed calls for the revolutionary reconstruction of Nicaraguan society. During the 20–23 May 1994, extraordinary congress, Ortega ran against a fellow National Directorate member, Henry Ruiz, for the position of party secretary-general. Ortega was elected with 287 to Ruiz's 147 votes, and the DL secured the most dominant role in the FSLN.
On 9 September 1994, Ortega gained more power after taking over Sergio Ramirez's seat in the Asamblea Sandinista (Sandinista Assembly). Ramirez had been chief of the FSLN's parliamentary caucus since 1990, but Ortega came to oppose his actions in the National Assembly, setting the stage for Ramirez's removal. Historic leaders, such as Ernesto Cardenal, a former minister of culture in the Sandinista government, rejected Ortega's consolidation of power: "My resignation from the FSLN has been caused by the kidnapping of the party carried out by Daniel Ortega and the group he heads." The party formally split on 8 January 1995, when Ramirez and a number of prominent Sandinista officials quit.
Ortega ran for election again, in October 1996 and November 2001, but lost on both occasions to Arnoldo Alemán and Enrique Bolaños, respectively. In these elections, a key issue was the allegation of corruption. In Ortega's last days as president, through a series of legislative acts known as "The Piñata", estates that had been seized by the Sandinista government (some valued at millions and even billions of US dollars) became the private property of various FSLN officials, including Ortega himself.
In the 1996 campaign, Ortega faced the Liberal Alliance (Alianza Liberal), headed by Arnoldo Aleman Lacayo, a former mayor of Managua. The Sandinistas softened their anti-imperialist rhetoric, with Ortega calling the US "our great neighbor," and vowing to cooperate "within a framework of respect, equality, and justice." The image change failed, as Aleman's Liberal Alliance came first with 51.03% of the vote, while Ortega's FSLN secured 37.75%.
Ortega's policies became more moderate during his time in opposition, and he gradually changed much of his former Marxist–Leninist stance in favor of an agenda of democratic socialism. His Roman Catholic faith has become more public in recent years as well, leading Ortega to embrace a variety of socially conservative policies; in 2006 the FSLN endorsed a strict law banning all abortions in Nicaragua. In the run-up to the 2006 elections, Ortega displayed his ties to the Catholic Church by renewing his marriage vows before Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo.
Ortega was instrumental in creating the controversial strategic pact between the FSLN and the Constitutional Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Constitucionalista, PLC). The controversial alliance of Nicaragua's two major parties is aimed at distributing power between the PLC and FSLN, and preventing other parties from rising. After sealing the agreement in January 2000, the two parties controlled the three key institutions of the state: the Comptroller General of the Republic, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Electoral Council. "El Pacto", as it is known in Nicaragua, is said to have personally benefited former presidents Ortega and Alemán greatly, while constraining then-president Bolaños. One of the key accords of the pact was to lower the ratio necessary to win a presidential election in the first round from 45% to 35%, a change in electoral law that would become decisive in Ortega's favor in the 2006 elections.
At the Fourth Ordinary Congress of the FSLN, held 17–18 March 2002, Ortega eliminated the National Directorate (DN). Once the main collective leadership body of the party, with nine members, the DN no longer met routinely, and only three historic members remained. Instead, the body just supported decisions already made by the secretary-general. Ortega sidelined party officials and other members while empowering his own informal circle, known as the ring of iron.
In the November 2001 general elections, Ortega lost his third successive presidential election, this time to Enrique Bolaños of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party.
Under Ortega's direction, the FSLN formed the broad National Convergence (Convergencia Nacional) coalition in opposition to the PLC. Ortega abandoned the revolutionary tone of the past, and infused his campaign with religious imagery, giving thanks in speeches to "God and the Revolution" for the post-1990 democracy, and said a Sandinista victory would enable the Nicaraguan people to "pass through the sea and reach the Promised Land." The US opposed Ortega's candidacy from the beginning. The US ambassador even appeared with the PLC's Enrique Bolaños while distributing food aid. The 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks doomed Ortega's chances, as the threat of a US invasion became an issue. Bolanos convinced many Nicaraguans that the renewed US hostility towards terrorism would endanger their country if the openly anti-US Ortega prevailed. Bolanos ended up with 56.3% of the vote, and Ortega won 42.3%.
In 2006, Daniel Ortega was elected president with 38% of the vote. This occurred despite the fact that the breakaway Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) continued to oppose the FSLN, running former Mayor of Managua, Herty Lewites as its candidate for president. Ortega personally attacked Lewites' Jewish background, compared him to Judas, and warned he "could end up hanged." However, Lewites died several months before the elections.
Ortega emphasized peace and reconciliation in his campaign, and selected a former Contra leader, Jaime Morales Carazo, as his running mate. The FSLN also won 38 seats in the congressional elections, becoming the party with the largest representation in parliament. The split in the Constitutionalist Liberal Party helped allow the FSLN to become the largest party in Congress; however, the Sandinista vote had a minuscule split between the FSLN and MRS, and that the liberal party combined is larger than the Frente Faction. In 2010, several liberal congressmen raised accusations about the FSLN presumably attempting to buy votes to pass constitutional reforms that would allow Ortega to run for office for the 6th time since 1984.
According to Tim Rogers, writing in The Atlantic, during his second term as president, Ortega took "full control of all four branches of government, state institutions, the military, and police", and in the process dismantled "Nicaragua's institutional democracy". Frances Robles wrote that Ortega took control "every aspect of government ... the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, the armed forces, the judiciary, the police and the prosecutor's office". In its 2019 World Report, Human Rights Watch wrote that Ortega "aggressively dismantled all institutional checks on presidential power". Many journalists and governments criticize Ortega and label him a dictator.
In June 2008, the Nicaraguan Supreme Court disqualified the MRS and the Conservative Party from participation in municipal elections. In November 2008, the Supreme Electoral Council received national and international criticism following irregularities in municipal elections, but agreed to review results for Managua only, while the opposition demanded a nationwide review. For the first time since 1990, the Council decided not to allow national or international observers to witness the election. Instances of intimidation, violence, and harassment of opposition political party members and NGO representatives have been recorded. Official results show Sandinista candidates winning 94 of the 146 municipal mayoralties, compared to 46 for the main opposition Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC). The opposition claimed that marked ballots were dumped and destroyed, that party members were refused access to some of the vote counts and that tallies from many polling places were altered. As a result of the fraud allegations, the European Union suspended $70m of aid, and the US$64m.
With the late-2000s recession, Ortega in 2011 characterised capitalism as in its "death throes" and portrayed the Bolivarian Alternative for the People of Our America (ALBA) was the most advanced, most Christian and fairest project. He also said God was punishing the United States with the financial crisis for trying to impose its economic principles on poor countries. "It's incredible that in the most powerful country in the world, which spends billions of dollars on brutal wars ... people do not have enough money to stay in their homes."
Before the National Sandinista Council held in September 2009, Lenin Cerna, the secretary of the party organization, called for diversifying its political strategies. He declared the FSLN's future depended on implementing new plans, "so that the party can advance via new routes and in new ways, always under Ortega's leadership." Ortega gained power over the selection of candidates, allowing him to personally choose all candidates for public office.
During an interview with David Frost for the Al Jazeera English programme Frost Over the World in March 2009, Ortega suggested that he would like to change the constitution to allow him to run again for president. In Judicial Decision 504, issued on 19 October 2009, the Supreme Court of Justice of Nicaragua declared portions of Articles 147 and 178 of the Constitution of Nicaragua inapplicable; these provisions concerned the eligibility of candidates for president, vice-president, mayor, and vice-mayor—a decision that had the effect of allowing Ortega to run for reelection in 2011.
For this decision, the Sandinista magistrates formed the required quorum by excluding the opposition magistrates and replacing them with Sandinista substitutes, violating the Nicaraguan constitution. Opposing parties, the church and human rights groups in Nicaragua denounced the decision. Throughout 2010, court rulings gave Ortega greater power over judicial and civil service appointments.
While supporting abortion rights during his presidency during the 1980s, Ortega has since embraced the Catholic Church's position of strong opposition. While non-emergency abortions have long been illegal in Nicaragua, recently even abortions "in the case where the pregnancy endangers the mother's life", otherwise known as therapeutic abortions have been made illegal in the days before the 2006 election, with a six-year prison term in such cases, too—a move supported by Ortega.
Ortega was re-elected president with a vote on 6 November and confirmation on 16 November 2011. During the election, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) blocked both domestic and international poll observers from multiple polling stations. According to the Supreme Electoral Council, Ortega defeated Fabio Gadea, with 63% of the vote.
In January 2014 the National Assembly, dominated by the FSLN, approved constitutional amendments that abolished term limits for the presidency and allowed a president to run for an unlimited number of five-year terms. While the FSLN claimed the amendments would assure the stability Nicaragua needed to deal with long-term problems, the opposition claimed they were a threat to democracy. The constitutional reforms also gave Ortega the sole power to appoint military and police commanders.
As of 2016, Ortega's family owns three of the nine free-to-air television channels in Nicaragua, and controls a fourth (the public Channel 6). Four of the remaining five are controlled by Mexican mogul Ángel González, and are generally considered to be aligned with Ortega's ruling FSLN party. There are no government restrictions on Internet use; the Ortega administration attempted to gain complete control over online media in 2015, but failed due to opposition from civil society, political parties, and private organizations.
In June 2016, the Nicaraguan supreme court ruled to oust Eduardo Montealegre, the leader of the main opposition party, leaving the main opposition coalition with no means of contesting the November 2016 national elections. In August 2016, Ortega chose his wife, Rosario Murillo, as his vice-presidential running-mate for re-election.
According to The Washington Post, figures announced on November 7, 2016, put Daniel Ortega in line for his third consecutive term as president, also being his fourth term overall. The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) reported Ortega and Murillo won 72.4% of the vote, with 68% turnout. The opposition coalition had called the election a "farce" and had called for the boycott of the election. International observers were not allowed to observe the vote. Nevertheless, according to the BBC, Ortega was the most popular candidate by far, possibly due to Nicaragua's stable economic growth and lack of violence compared to its neighbours El Salvador and Honduras in recent years.
According to Tim Rogers, until the 2018 unrest, as president Ortega presided over "the fastest-growing economy in Central America" and was a "poster child for foreign investment and citizen security in a region known for gangs and unrest". During this time the Ortega government formed an alliance with the Superior Council for Private Enterprise (COSEP), Nicaragua's council of business chambers. However the same unpopular decree which "unilaterally overhauling the social-security tax system" (mentioned below) and precipitated the unrest in April 2018, also broke Ortega's arrangement with COSEP, and along with US sanctions, brought a sharp economic drop that as of mid-2020 is still "crippling" Nicaragua's economy.
President Ortega's government has been the target of criticism for its lack of a response to the pandemic.
On 14 March 2020, Ortega's government called a massive demonstration called "Love in the Time of COVID-19" as a show of support to him and his government. This occurred in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic which had only recently been officially declared by the WHO.
According to CNN, as of mid-June 2020, Ortega had "refused to impose strict, preventive quarantine measures seen in neighboring countries" to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. "Public schools remain open, businesses continue to operate, festivals and cultural events are happening on an almost-weekly basis." The story stated that from mid-March to mid-June six politicians had died, and, according to witnesses, their remains disposed of at night in "express burials" (with police in attendance but "no Mass, no wake and no funeral arrangements", no photographs). The Ortega government said reports of "express burials" were "false news". According to AP News "the government threatened to ban" professional baseball players "who refuse to play baseball ... And everyone is warned to keep quiet." In hospitals "ruling-party activists ensure no information leaks out", and it quotes a doctor (anesthesiologist María Nela Escoto) complaining that in the public hospital where she works "everything is secret. They don't allow suggestions, and you can't question anything because they're watching. It's a very hostile environment." (At the start of the pandemic, Ortega was out of the public eye for "more than 40 days", and no explanation was given for his absence when he returned.)
In April 2018, student protests over a nature reserve fire expanded to cover an unpopular decree that would have cut social security benefits and increased taxpayer contributions. The protesters were violently set upon by the state sponsored Sandinista Youth. Despite attempts by Ortega's government to hide the incident through censorship of all private-owned news outlets, photos and videos of the violence made their way to social media where they sparked outrage and urged more Nicaraguans to join in on the protests. Tensions escalated quickly, as police began using tear gas canisters and rubber bullets, and eventually live ammunition on unarmed protesters. Authorities were also seen arming Sandinista Youth members with weapons to serve as paramilitary forces. Dozens of student protesters were subsequently killed. Despite the withdrawal of the unpopular decree, the protests continue, with most protesters demanding Ortega's and his cabinet's resignations.
On 30 May 2018, Nicaragua's Mother's Day, over 300,000 people marched to honor the mothers of students killed in the preceding protests. Despite the attendance of children, mothers and retirees, and lack of any violence by marchers, marchers were attacked in an event dubbed the "Mother's Day Massacre". 16 were killed, and 88 injured, as "police sprayed the crowd with bullets, government sharpshooters positioned on the roof of the national baseball stadium went headhunting with sniper rifles".
In June 2018, Tim Rogers wrote in The Atlantic magazine:
Over the past seven weeks, Ortega's police and paramilitaries have killed more than 120 people, mostly students and other young protesters who are demanding the president's ouster and a return to democracy, according to a human-rights group [CENIDH, Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights]. Police hunt students like enemy combatants. Sandinista Youth paramilitaries, armed and paid by Ortega's party, drive around in pickup trucks attacking protesters. Gangs of masked men loot and burn shops with impunity. Cops wear civilian clothing, and some paramilitaries dress in police uniforms. "This is starting to look more like Syria than Caracas," one Nicaraguan business leader told me.
By December 322 people were dead and 565 imprisoned. Professionals involved in the protests (lawyers, engineering majors, radio broadcasters and merchants) had been reduced to lives of "ever-changing safe houses, encrypted messaging apps and pseudonyms", with the Ortega government allegedly "hunting us like deer," according to one dissident (Roberto Carlos Membreño Briceño). Human rights organization offices were raided, computers seized and observers expelled. Observers from the Organization of American States were expelled after releasing a critical investigative report of the government's response to the protests. The report found the government had progressed from "using tear gas to rubber bullets, then real bullets and finally military firepower like assault rifles and grenade launchers", based on an analysis of videos posted on social media. At least 1,400 people involved in the protests were hurt, although that the number was probably "far higher because most people were too afraid to go to public hospitals, where doctors were fired for treating wounded protesters". By July 2019 the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch called on the United States to impose sanctions on Ortega "and other top" Nicaraguan officials "implicated" in the crackdown on protests.
Soon after the 2006 election, Ortega paid an official visit to Iran and met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ortega told the press that the "revolutions of Iran and Nicaragua are almost twin revolutions...since both revolutions are about justice, liberty, self-determination, and the struggle against imperialism."
On 6 March 2008, following the 2008 Andean diplomatic crisis, Ortega announced that Nicaragua was breaking diplomatic ties with Colombia "in solidarity with the Ecuadorian people". Ortega also stated, "We are not breaking relations with the Colombian people. We are breaking relations with the terrorist policy practiced by Álvaro Uribe's government". The relations were restored with the resolution at a Rio Group summit held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on 7 March 2008. At the summit Colombia's Álvaro Uribe, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Ortega publicly shook hands in a show of good-will. The handshakes, broadcast live throughout Latin America, appeared to signal that a week of military buildups and diplomatic repercussions was over. After the handshakes, Ortega said he would re-establish diplomatic ties with Colombia. Uribe then quipped that he would send him the bill for his ambassador's plane fare.
On 25 May 2008, Ortega, upon learning of the death of FARC guerrilla leader Manuel Marulanda in Colombia, expressed condolences to the family of Marulanda and solidarity with the FARC and called Marulanda an extraordinary fighter who battled against profound inequalities in Colombia. The declarations were protested by the Colombian government and criticized in the major Colombian media outlets.
On 2 September 2008, during ceremonies for the 29th anniversary of the founding of the Nicaraguan army, Ortega announced that "Nicaragua recognizes the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and fully supports the Russian government's position". Ortega's decision made Nicaragua the second country (after Russia) to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia.
Under Ortega's leadership, Nicaragua joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.
When seeking office, Ortega threatened to cut diplomatic recognition with the Republic of China (Taiwan, formerly Nationalist China) in order to restore relations with the Mainland-based People's Republic of China (as in the period from 1985 to 1990) as the legal government of China. But he did not do so. In 2007 Ortega stated that Nicaragua did not accept the One China Policy of the PRC government and that Nicaragua reserved the right to maintain official diplomatic relations with the ROC. He reassured President Chen Shui Bian in 2007 that Nicaragua would not break diplomatic relations with the ROC. He explained that during the Reagan administration the United States imposed sanctions on Nicaragua. But cutting ties with Taipei was a sad and painful decision because of the friendship between Nicaragua and Taiwan's people and government. Ortega met with the ROC President Ma Ying-jeou in 2009 and both agreed to improve the diplomatic ties between both countries. However, with a trade show from China (PRC) in Managua in 2010, he is attempting a two-track policy to get benefits from both sides. In 2016 Nicaragua and China (ROC) signed an air services agreement and Ortega stated that Nicaragua's free trade deal with the ROC had benefited both nations. The ROC increased its investment in Nicaragua. In December 2021, Nicaragua once again switched recognition with the PRC.
In September 2010, after a US report listed Nicaragua as a "major" drug-trafficking centre, with Costa Rica and Honduras, Ortega urged the US Congress and Obama administration to allocate more resources to assist the fight against drug trafficking.
During the Libyan Civil War, Ortega was among the very few leaders who spoke out in clear defense of the embattled Muammar Gaddafi. During a telephone conversation between the two, Ortega told Gaddafi that he was "waging a great battle to defend his nation" and stated that "it's at difficult times that loyalty and resolve are put to the test."
Ortega has said that Assad's victory in the 2014 election is an important step to "attain peace in Syria and a clear cut evidence that the Syrian people trust their president as a national leader and support his policies which aim at maintaining Syria's sovereignty and unity".
Ortega attended the swearing-in ceremony of Nicolás Maduro for his second term on 10 January 2019.
In an interview with Max Blumenthal in August 2019, Ortega stated that he was open to the idea of Bernie Sanders (who had visited him in 1985) winning the US presidency in 2020 and that Sanders's message "goes in the right direction for the U.S. to become a pole of peace, development, and cooperation."
In 2016, Daniel Ortega did not sign the Paris Agreement because he felt the deal did not do enough to protect the climate, although he later changed his mind. Moreover, Nicaragua rejected projects of mining of the Canadian group B2 Gold which could represent a threat to the environment. According to government estimates, Nicaragua has passed from 25% renewable electricity to 52% between 2007 and 2016.
In November 2021, Joe Biden signed into law the "Reinforcing Nicaragua's Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act" (RENACER Act) which extended US sanctions against Nicaragua and gave Biden the power to exclude Nicaragua from the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) and to obstruct multilateral loans to Nicaragua. Venezuela and Russia condemned the new law.
In February 2021, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada approved economic sanctions against President Ortega and his government. The sanctions were in response to Ortega sending a delegation to the Russian-occupied territory of Crimea in November 2020.
Ortega's second presidency has been subject to much criticism and accusations of his becoming a strongman. The 2018 protests have been pointed to as being symbolic of these tensions. In 2018, Frances Robles wrote in The New York Times that the "many Ortega adult children manage everything from gasoline distribution to television stations" in Nicaragua.
In the months preceding the November 2021 Nicaraguan general election, Ortega's government arrested many prominent opposition members. As of 23 July, 26 opposition leaders have been imprisoned.
On 24 March 2022, the ambassador Arturo McFields, condemned the Ortega government and requested the release of political prisoners, alluding that the government people were "tired of dictatorship" and that it was not easy to denounce it. As a result, he was dismissed.
The American lawyer Paul Reichler also left his position as representative due to "moral conscience", who felt that the president "was no longer the Daniel Ortega whom he respected so much and served with so much pride." Reichler found it inconceivable that someone like Ortega would have mercilessly suppressed peaceful demonstrations and imprisoned his former colleagues in inhumane conditions, and accused him of "murdering" a general by withholding medical treatment. This figure of American origin served as Nicaragua's international legal adviser before the International Court of Justice, when Managua denounced the United States for financing the counterrevolution, winning the case.
The Ortega administration also ordered the closure of the Nicaraguan Language Academy for failing to register as a "foreign agent" ratified by the Sandinista parliament with the favorable vote of 75 deputies of the ruling FSLN.
In 1998, Daniel Ortega's adopted stepdaughter Zoilamérica Narváez released a 48-page report in which she alleged he had sexually abused her from 1979, when she was 12, until 1990. Ortega and his wife Murillo denied the allegation. The case could not proceed in Nicaraguan courts, which have been consistently allied with Ortega, because he had immunity from prosecution as a member of parliament, and the five-year statute of limitations for sexual abuse and rape charges had expired. Narváez's complaint to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission was ruled admissible on 15 October 2001. On 4 March 2002, the Nicaraguan government accepted the commission's recommendation of a "friendly agreement". Narváez withdrew the accusations in 2008. Following the 2016 election, Narváez renewed her accusations and said that she had become an outcast in her family.
In 2019 a documentary film Exiliada was released which revolves around Zoilamérica Narváez and her sexual abuse allegations against Ortega.
There is also the case of Elvia Junieth who was allegedly abused by the president in 2005, and, according to the family, a girl was born from that relationship that Ortega did not recognize. Ernesto Moncada Lau, another of the assistants to the Sandinista president, appears on the birth certificate as the father of the minor. Her brother died in the Tipitapa Model prison in November 2021. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "José Daniel Ortega Saavedra (Spanish pronunciation: [daˈnjel oɾˈteɣa]; born 11 November 1945) is a Nicaraguan politician who has been President of Nicaragua since 2007. Previously he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as coordinator (1979–1985) of the Junta of National Reconstruction, and then as President of Nicaragua (1985–1990). During his first term, he implemented policies to achieve leftist reforms across Nicaragua. In later years, Ortega's left-wing radical politics cooled significantly, leading him to pursue pro-business policies and even rapprochement with the Catholic Church. As a part of this, his government adopted strong anti-abortion policies, and his rhetoric took on a new, strongly religious tenor.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Ortega came to prominence with the overthrow and exile of US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 during the Nicaraguan Revolution. As a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Spanish: Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) Ortega became leader of the ruling Junta of National Reconstruction. A Marxist–Leninist, Ortega pursued a program of nationalization, land reform, wealth redistribution and literacy programs during his first period in office. Ortega's government was responsible for the forced displacement of 10,000 indigenous people. In 1984, Ortega won Nicaragua's first ever free and fair presidential election with over 60% of the vote as the FSLN's candidate. Throughout the 1980s, Ortega's government faced a rebellion by US-backed rebels, known as the Contras. The US also sought to place economic pressure on the Sandinista government, imposing a full trade embargo, and planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's ports. After a presidency marred by conflict and economic collapse, Ortega was defeated in the 1990 Nicaraguan general election by Violeta Chamorro, in an election marked by US interference.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Ortega was an unsuccessful candidate for president in 1996 and 2001 but won the 2006 Nicaraguan general election. In office, he made alliances with fellow Latin American socialists. His second administration, in contrast to his previous political career, abandoned most of his earlier leftist principles, and became increasingly anti-democratic, alienating many of his former revolutionary allies.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In June 2018, organisations such as Amnesty International and the OAS reported that Ortega had engaged in a violent oppression campaign against the anti-Ortega 2018–2022 Nicaraguan protests. The violent crackdown and subsequent constriction of civil liberties have led to massive waves of emigration to neighboring Costa Rica, with more than 30,000 Nicaraguans filing for asylum in that country. In his fourth term, Ortega ordered the closure of several NGOs, universities, and newspapers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "His government jailed many potential rival candidates in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election, including Cristiana Chamorro Barrios. Ortega's government also imprisoned other opponents, such as former allies Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres Jiménez. In August 2021, Nicaragua cancelled the operating permits of six US and European NGOs. Many critics of the Ortega government, including opposition leaders, journalists and members of civil society, fled the country in mid-2021. After Ortega was re-elected in 2021, United States President Joe Biden banned him and his officials from entering the United States.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Ortega was born in La Libertad, department of Chontales, Nicaragua, into a working-class family. His parents, Daniel Ortega Cerda and Lidia Saavedra, were opposed to the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. His mother was imprisoned by Somoza's National Guard for being in possession of \"love letters\", which the police said were coded political missives. Ortega and his two brothers grew up to become revolutionaries. His brother Humberto Ortega is a former general, military leader, and published writer, and the third brother Camilo Ortega died fighting the Somoza regime in 1978. They had a sister, Germania, who died.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Seeking stable employment, the family migrated from La Libertad to the provincial capital of Juigalpa, and then to a middle-class neighborhood in Managua. In Managua, Ortega and his brother studied at the upper-middle class high school, the LaSalle Institute, where Ortega was classmates with Arnoldo Aleman, who would go on to be mayor of Managua (1990-1995) and later President of Nicaragua (1997-2002). Ortega's father Daniel Ortega Cedra detested US military intervention in Nicaragua and Washington's support for the Somoza government. He imparted this anti-American sentiment to his sons.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "From an early age, Ortega opposed Nicaragua's president Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and became involved in the underground movement against his government. Ortega and his brother Humberto formed the Insurrectionist, or Tercerista (Third Way) faction, culminating in the Nicaraguan Revolution. After the overthrow and exile of Somoza Debayle's government, Ortega became leader of the ruling multi-partisan Junta of National Reconstruction.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Ortega was first arrested for political activities at the age of 15, and quickly joined the then-underground Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1963. In 1964, Ortega travelled to Guatemala, where the police arrested him and turned him over to the Nicaraguan National Guard. After his release from detainment, Ortega arranged the assassination of his torturer, Guardsman Gonzalo Lacayo, in August 1967.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "He was imprisoned in 1967 for taking part in armed robbery of a branch of the Bank of America. He told collaborators that they should be killed if they did not take part in the robbery. Ortega was released in late 1974, along with other Sandinista prisoners, in exchange for Somocista hostages. While imprisoned at the El Modelo jail, just outside Managua, Ortega wrote poems, one of which he titled \"I Never Saw Managua When Miniskirts Were in Fashion\". During his imprisonment, Ortega was tortured. While he was incarcerated at El Modelo, his mother helped stage protests and hunger strikes for political prisoners; this resulted in improving the treatment of incarcerated Sandinistas.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Upon release in 1974, Ortega was exiled to Cuba. There he received training in guerrilla warfare from Fidel Castro's Marxist–Leninist government. He later returned secretly to Nicaragua.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In the late 1970s, divisions over the FSLN's campaign against Somoza led Ortega and his brother Humberto to form the Insurrectionist, or Tercerista (Third Way) faction. The Terceristas sought to combine the distinct guerrilla war strategies of the two other factions, Tomás Borge's Guerra Prolongada Popular (GPP, or Prolonged People's War), and Jaime Wheelock's Proletarian Tendency. The Ortega brothers forged alliances with a wide array of anti-Somoza forces, including Catholic and Protestant activists, and other non-Marxist civil society groups. The Terceristas became the most effective faction in wielding political and military strength, and their push for FSLN solidarity received the support of revolutionary leaders such as Fidel Castro.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Ortega married Rosario Murillo in 1979 in a secret ceremony. They moved to Costa Rica with her three children from a previous marriage. Ortega remarried Murillo in 2005 in order to have the marriage recognized by the Catholic Church, as part of his effort to reconcile with the church. The couple has eight children, three of them together. Murillo serves as the Ortega government's spokeswoman and a government minister, among other positions. Ortega adopted stepdaughter Zoilamérica Narváez in 1986, through a court case.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "When Somoza was overthrown by the FSLN in July 1979, Ortega became a member of the five-person Junta of National Reconstruction, which included Sandinista militant Moisés Hassan, novelist Sergio Ramírez, businessman Alfonso Robelo, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of a murdered journalist. In September 1979, United States President Carter hosted Ortega at the White House, and warned him against arming other Central American leftist guerrilla movements. At the time, Ortega spoke truthfully when he denied Sandinista involvement in neighboring countries. When Ortega questioned the Americans about CIA support for anti-Sandinista groups, Carter and Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher said the reports were false. After the meeting, Carter asked Congress for $75 million in aid to Nicaragua, contingent on the Sandinista government's promise not to aid other guerrillas.",
"title": "Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The FSLN came to dominate the junta, Robelo and Chamorro resigned, and in 1981 Ortega became the coordinator of the Junta. As the only member of the FSLN National Directorate in the Junta, he was the effective leader of the country. After attaining power, the FSLN embarked upon an ambitious programme of social reform. They arranged to redistribute 20,000 square kilometres (5 million acres) of land to about 100,000 families; launched a literacy drive, and made health care improvements that ended polio through mass vaccinations, and reduced the frequency of other treatable diseases. The Sandinista nationalization efforts affected mostly banks and industries owned by the extended Somoza family. More than half of all farms, businesses, and industries remained in private hands. The revolutionary government wanted to preserve a mixed economy and support private sector investment. The Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP) opposed the Sandinistas' economic reform. The main organization of Nicaraguan big business was composed of prosperous families from the Pacific coast cities, who dominated commerce and banking. Ortega took a very hard line against opposition to his policies: On 21 February 1981, the Sandinista army killed 7 Miskito Indians and wounded 17.",
"title": "Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Ortega's administration forced displacement of many of the indigenous population: 10,000 individuals had been moved by 1982. Thousands of Indians fled to take refuge across the border in Honduras, and Ortega's government imprisoned 14,000 in Nicaragua. Anthropologist Gilles Bataillon termed this \"politics of ethnocide\" in Nicaragua. The Indians formed two rebel groups – the Misura and Misurasata. They were joined in the north by Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) and in the south by former Sandinistas and peasantry who, under the leadership of Edén Pastora, were resisting forced collectivization.",
"title": "Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1980 the Sandinista government launched the massive Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign and said the illiteracy rate fell from 50% to 13% in the span of five months. Robert F. Arnove said the figures were excessive because many \"unteachable\" illiterates were omitted from the statistics, and many people declared literate were found to be unable to read or write a simple sentence. Richard Kraft said that even if the figures were exaggerated, the \"accomplishment is without precedent in educational history\". In 1980, UNESCO awarded Nicaragua the Nadezhda K. Krupskaya prize in recognition of its efforts. The FSLN also focused on improving the Nicaraguan health system, particularly through vaccination campaigns and the construction of public hospitals. These actions reduced child mortality by half, to 40 deaths per thousand. By 1982, the World Health Organization deemed Nicaragua a model for primary health care. During this period, Nicaragua won the UNESCO prize for exceptional health progress.",
"title": "Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1981, United States President Ronald Reagan accused the FSLN of joining with Soviet-backed Cuba in supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in other Latin American countries, such as El Salvador. People within the Reagan administration authorized the CIA to begin financing, arming and training rebels as anti-Sandinista guerrillas, some of whom were former officers from Somoza's National Guard. These were known collectively as the Contras. This resulted in one of the largest political scandals in US history, (the Iran–Contra affair). Oliver North and several members of the Reagan administration defied the Boland Amendment, selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds in order to secretly fund the Contras.",
"title": "Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Contra war claimed 30,000 lives in Nicaragua. The tactics used by the Sandinista government to fight the Contras have been widely condemned for their suppression of civil rights. On 15 March 1982, the junta declared a state of siege, which allowed it to close independent radio stations, suspend the right of association, and limit the freedom of trade unions. Nicaragua's Permanent Commission on Human Rights condemned Sandinista human rights violations, accusing them of killing and forcibly disappearing thousands of persons in the first few years of the war.",
"title": "Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "At the 1984 general election Ortega won the presidency with 67% of the vote and took office on 10 January 1985. In the early phases of the campaign, Ortega enjoyed many institutional advantages, and used the full power of the press, police, and Supreme Electoral Council against the fractured opposition. In the weeks before the November election, Ortega gave a U.N. speech denouncing talks held in Rio de Janeiro on electoral reform. But by 22 October, the Sandinistas signed an accord with opposition parties to reform electoral and campaign laws, making the process more fair and transparent. While campaigning, Ortega promoted the Sandinistas' achievements, and at a rally said that \"Democracy is literacy, democracy is land reform, democracy is education and public health.\" International observers judged the election to be the first free election held in the country in more than half a century. A report by an Irish governmentary delegation stated: \"The electoral process was carried out with total integrity. The seven parties participating in the elections represented a broad spectrum of political ideologies.\" The general counsel of New York's Human Rights Commission described the election as \"free, fair and hotly contested\". A study by the US Latin American Studies Association (LASA) concluded that the FSLN (Sandinista Front) \"did little more to take advantage of its incumbency than incumbent parties everywhere (including the U.S.) routinely do.\" However some people described the election as \"rigged\". According to a detailed study, since the 1984 election was for posts subordinate to the Sandinista Directorate, the elections were no more subject to approval by vote than the Central Committee of the Communist Party is in countries of the East Bloc.",
"title": "Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Thirty-three per cent of the Nicaraguan voters cast ballots for one of six opposition parties—three to the right of the Sandinistas, three to the left—which had campaigned with the aid of government funds and free TV and radio time. Two conservative parties captured a combined 23% of the vote. They held rallies across the country (a few of which were disrupted by FSLN supporters) and blasted the Sandinistas in harsh terms. Most foreign and independent observers noted this pluralism in debunking the Reagan administration charge—ubiquitous in the US media—that it was a \"Soviet-style sham\" election. Some opposition parties boycotted the election, allegedly under pressure from US embassy officials, and so it was denounced as being unfair by the Reagan administration. Reagan thus maintained that he was justified to continue supporting what he referred to as the Contras' \"democratic resistance\".",
"title": "Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The illegal intervention of the Contras continued (albeit covertly) after Ortega's democratic election. Peace talks between five Central American heads of state in July 1987 led to the signing of the Central American Peace Accords, and the beginning of a roadmap to the end of the conflict. In 1988, the Contras first entered into peace talks with the Sandinista government, although the violence continued, as did their US support. Despite US opposition, disarmament of the Contras began in 1989.",
"title": "Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In the 1990 presidential election, Ortega lost his reelection bid to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, his former colleague in the junta. Chamorro was supported by the US and a 14-party anti-Sandinista alliance known as the National Opposition Union (Unión Nacional Oppositora, UNO), an alliance that ranged from conservatives and liberals to communists. She ran an effective campaign, presenting herself as the peace candidate and promising to end the US-funded Contra War if she won. Ortega campaigned on the slogan, \"Everything Will Be Better\", and promised that, with the Contra war over, he could focus on the nation's recovery. Contrary to what most observers expected, Chamorro shocked Ortega and won the election. Chamorro's UNO coalition garnered 54% of the vote, and won 51 of the 92 seats in the National Assembly. Immediately after the loss, the Sandinistas tried to maintain unity around their revolutionary posture. In Ortega's concession speech the following day he vowed to keep \"ruling from below\" a reference to the power that the FSLN still wielded in various sectors. He also stressed his belief that the Sandinistas had the goal of bringing \"dignity\" to Latin America, and not necessarily to hold on to government posts. In 1991, Ortega said elections were \"an instrument to reaffirm\" the FSLN's \"political and ideological positions,\" and also \"confront capitalism.\" However, the electoral loss led to pronounced divisions in the FSLN. Some members adopted more pragmatic positions, and sought to transform the FSLN into a modern social democratic party engaged in national reconciliation and class cooperation. Ortega and other party insiders found common ground with the radicals, who still promoted anti-imperialism and class conflict to achieve social change.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Possible explanations for his loss include that the Nicaraguan people were disenchanted with the Ortega government as well as the fact that already in November 1989, the White House had announced that the economic embargo against Nicaragua would continue unless Violeta Chamorro won. Also, there had been reports of intimidation from the side of the contras, with a Canadian observer mission stating that 42 people were killed by the contras in \"election violence\" in October 1989. This led many commentators to assume that Nicaraguans voted against the Sandinistas out of fear of a continuation of the contra war and economic deprivation.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "From 19 to 21 July 1991, the FSLN held a National Congress to mend the rifts between members and form a new overarching political program. The effort failed to unite the party, and intense debates over the internal governance of the FSLN continued. The pragmatists, led by the former vice president Sergio Ramirez, formed the basis of a \"renovating\" faction, and supported collaboration with other political forces to preserve the rule of law in Nicaragua. Under the leadership of Ortega and Tomás Borge, the radicals regrouped into the \"principled\" faction, and branded themselves the Izquierda Democratica (ID), or Democratic Left (DL). The DL fought the Chamorro government with disruptive labor strikes and demonstrations, and renewed calls for the revolutionary reconstruction of Nicaraguan society. During the 20–23 May 1994, extraordinary congress, Ortega ran against a fellow National Directorate member, Henry Ruiz, for the position of party secretary-general. Ortega was elected with 287 to Ruiz's 147 votes, and the DL secured the most dominant role in the FSLN.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "On 9 September 1994, Ortega gained more power after taking over Sergio Ramirez's seat in the Asamblea Sandinista (Sandinista Assembly). Ramirez had been chief of the FSLN's parliamentary caucus since 1990, but Ortega came to oppose his actions in the National Assembly, setting the stage for Ramirez's removal. Historic leaders, such as Ernesto Cardenal, a former minister of culture in the Sandinista government, rejected Ortega's consolidation of power: \"My resignation from the FSLN has been caused by the kidnapping of the party carried out by Daniel Ortega and the group he heads.\" The party formally split on 8 January 1995, when Ramirez and a number of prominent Sandinista officials quit.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Ortega ran for election again, in October 1996 and November 2001, but lost on both occasions to Arnoldo Alemán and Enrique Bolaños, respectively. In these elections, a key issue was the allegation of corruption. In Ortega's last days as president, through a series of legislative acts known as \"The Piñata\", estates that had been seized by the Sandinista government (some valued at millions and even billions of US dollars) became the private property of various FSLN officials, including Ortega himself.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In the 1996 campaign, Ortega faced the Liberal Alliance (Alianza Liberal), headed by Arnoldo Aleman Lacayo, a former mayor of Managua. The Sandinistas softened their anti-imperialist rhetoric, with Ortega calling the US \"our great neighbor,\" and vowing to cooperate \"within a framework of respect, equality, and justice.\" The image change failed, as Aleman's Liberal Alliance came first with 51.03% of the vote, while Ortega's FSLN secured 37.75%.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Ortega's policies became more moderate during his time in opposition, and he gradually changed much of his former Marxist–Leninist stance in favor of an agenda of democratic socialism. His Roman Catholic faith has become more public in recent years as well, leading Ortega to embrace a variety of socially conservative policies; in 2006 the FSLN endorsed a strict law banning all abortions in Nicaragua. In the run-up to the 2006 elections, Ortega displayed his ties to the Catholic Church by renewing his marriage vows before Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Ortega was instrumental in creating the controversial strategic pact between the FSLN and the Constitutional Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Constitucionalista, PLC). The controversial alliance of Nicaragua's two major parties is aimed at distributing power between the PLC and FSLN, and preventing other parties from rising. After sealing the agreement in January 2000, the two parties controlled the three key institutions of the state: the Comptroller General of the Republic, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Electoral Council. \"El Pacto\", as it is known in Nicaragua, is said to have personally benefited former presidents Ortega and Alemán greatly, while constraining then-president Bolaños. One of the key accords of the pact was to lower the ratio necessary to win a presidential election in the first round from 45% to 35%, a change in electoral law that would become decisive in Ortega's favor in the 2006 elections.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "At the Fourth Ordinary Congress of the FSLN, held 17–18 March 2002, Ortega eliminated the National Directorate (DN). Once the main collective leadership body of the party, with nine members, the DN no longer met routinely, and only three historic members remained. Instead, the body just supported decisions already made by the secretary-general. Ortega sidelined party officials and other members while empowering his own informal circle, known as the ring of iron.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In the November 2001 general elections, Ortega lost his third successive presidential election, this time to Enrique Bolaños of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Under Ortega's direction, the FSLN formed the broad National Convergence (Convergencia Nacional) coalition in opposition to the PLC. Ortega abandoned the revolutionary tone of the past, and infused his campaign with religious imagery, giving thanks in speeches to \"God and the Revolution\" for the post-1990 democracy, and said a Sandinista victory would enable the Nicaraguan people to \"pass through the sea and reach the Promised Land.\" The US opposed Ortega's candidacy from the beginning. The US ambassador even appeared with the PLC's Enrique Bolaños while distributing food aid. The 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks doomed Ortega's chances, as the threat of a US invasion became an issue. Bolanos convinced many Nicaraguans that the renewed US hostility towards terrorism would endanger their country if the openly anti-US Ortega prevailed. Bolanos ended up with 56.3% of the vote, and Ortega won 42.3%.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 2006, Daniel Ortega was elected president with 38% of the vote. This occurred despite the fact that the breakaway Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) continued to oppose the FSLN, running former Mayor of Managua, Herty Lewites as its candidate for president. Ortega personally attacked Lewites' Jewish background, compared him to Judas, and warned he \"could end up hanged.\" However, Lewites died several months before the elections.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Ortega emphasized peace and reconciliation in his campaign, and selected a former Contra leader, Jaime Morales Carazo, as his running mate. The FSLN also won 38 seats in the congressional elections, becoming the party with the largest representation in parliament. The split in the Constitutionalist Liberal Party helped allow the FSLN to become the largest party in Congress; however, the Sandinista vote had a minuscule split between the FSLN and MRS, and that the liberal party combined is larger than the Frente Faction. In 2010, several liberal congressmen raised accusations about the FSLN presumably attempting to buy votes to pass constitutional reforms that would allow Ortega to run for office for the 6th time since 1984.",
"title": "In opposition (1990–2007)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "According to Tim Rogers, writing in The Atlantic, during his second term as president, Ortega took \"full control of all four branches of government, state institutions, the military, and police\", and in the process dismantled \"Nicaragua's institutional democracy\". Frances Robles wrote that Ortega took control \"every aspect of government ... the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, the armed forces, the judiciary, the police and the prosecutor's office\". In its 2019 World Report, Human Rights Watch wrote that Ortega \"aggressively dismantled all institutional checks on presidential power\". Many journalists and governments criticize Ortega and label him a dictator.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In June 2008, the Nicaraguan Supreme Court disqualified the MRS and the Conservative Party from participation in municipal elections. In November 2008, the Supreme Electoral Council received national and international criticism following irregularities in municipal elections, but agreed to review results for Managua only, while the opposition demanded a nationwide review. For the first time since 1990, the Council decided not to allow national or international observers to witness the election. Instances of intimidation, violence, and harassment of opposition political party members and NGO representatives have been recorded. Official results show Sandinista candidates winning 94 of the 146 municipal mayoralties, compared to 46 for the main opposition Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC). The opposition claimed that marked ballots were dumped and destroyed, that party members were refused access to some of the vote counts and that tallies from many polling places were altered. As a result of the fraud allegations, the European Union suspended $70m of aid, and the US$64m.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "With the late-2000s recession, Ortega in 2011 characterised capitalism as in its \"death throes\" and portrayed the Bolivarian Alternative for the People of Our America (ALBA) was the most advanced, most Christian and fairest project. He also said God was punishing the United States with the financial crisis for trying to impose its economic principles on poor countries. \"It's incredible that in the most powerful country in the world, which spends billions of dollars on brutal wars ... people do not have enough money to stay in their homes.\"",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Before the National Sandinista Council held in September 2009, Lenin Cerna, the secretary of the party organization, called for diversifying its political strategies. He declared the FSLN's future depended on implementing new plans, \"so that the party can advance via new routes and in new ways, always under Ortega's leadership.\" Ortega gained power over the selection of candidates, allowing him to personally choose all candidates for public office.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "During an interview with David Frost for the Al Jazeera English programme Frost Over the World in March 2009, Ortega suggested that he would like to change the constitution to allow him to run again for president. In Judicial Decision 504, issued on 19 October 2009, the Supreme Court of Justice of Nicaragua declared portions of Articles 147 and 178 of the Constitution of Nicaragua inapplicable; these provisions concerned the eligibility of candidates for president, vice-president, mayor, and vice-mayor—a decision that had the effect of allowing Ortega to run for reelection in 2011.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "For this decision, the Sandinista magistrates formed the required quorum by excluding the opposition magistrates and replacing them with Sandinista substitutes, violating the Nicaraguan constitution. Opposing parties, the church and human rights groups in Nicaragua denounced the decision. Throughout 2010, court rulings gave Ortega greater power over judicial and civil service appointments.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "While supporting abortion rights during his presidency during the 1980s, Ortega has since embraced the Catholic Church's position of strong opposition. While non-emergency abortions have long been illegal in Nicaragua, recently even abortions \"in the case where the pregnancy endangers the mother's life\", otherwise known as therapeutic abortions have been made illegal in the days before the 2006 election, with a six-year prison term in such cases, too—a move supported by Ortega.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Ortega was re-elected president with a vote on 6 November and confirmation on 16 November 2011. During the election, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) blocked both domestic and international poll observers from multiple polling stations. According to the Supreme Electoral Council, Ortega defeated Fabio Gadea, with 63% of the vote.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In January 2014 the National Assembly, dominated by the FSLN, approved constitutional amendments that abolished term limits for the presidency and allowed a president to run for an unlimited number of five-year terms. While the FSLN claimed the amendments would assure the stability Nicaragua needed to deal with long-term problems, the opposition claimed they were a threat to democracy. The constitutional reforms also gave Ortega the sole power to appoint military and police commanders.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "As of 2016, Ortega's family owns three of the nine free-to-air television channels in Nicaragua, and controls a fourth (the public Channel 6). Four of the remaining five are controlled by Mexican mogul Ángel González, and are generally considered to be aligned with Ortega's ruling FSLN party. There are no government restrictions on Internet use; the Ortega administration attempted to gain complete control over online media in 2015, but failed due to opposition from civil society, political parties, and private organizations.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In June 2016, the Nicaraguan supreme court ruled to oust Eduardo Montealegre, the leader of the main opposition party, leaving the main opposition coalition with no means of contesting the November 2016 national elections. In August 2016, Ortega chose his wife, Rosario Murillo, as his vice-presidential running-mate for re-election.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "According to The Washington Post, figures announced on November 7, 2016, put Daniel Ortega in line for his third consecutive term as president, also being his fourth term overall. The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) reported Ortega and Murillo won 72.4% of the vote, with 68% turnout. The opposition coalition had called the election a \"farce\" and had called for the boycott of the election. International observers were not allowed to observe the vote. Nevertheless, according to the BBC, Ortega was the most popular candidate by far, possibly due to Nicaragua's stable economic growth and lack of violence compared to its neighbours El Salvador and Honduras in recent years.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "According to Tim Rogers, until the 2018 unrest, as president Ortega presided over \"the fastest-growing economy in Central America\" and was a \"poster child for foreign investment and citizen security in a region known for gangs and unrest\". During this time the Ortega government formed an alliance with the Superior Council for Private Enterprise (COSEP), Nicaragua's council of business chambers. However the same unpopular decree which \"unilaterally overhauling the social-security tax system\" (mentioned below) and precipitated the unrest in April 2018, also broke Ortega's arrangement with COSEP, and along with US sanctions, brought a sharp economic drop that as of mid-2020 is still \"crippling\" Nicaragua's economy.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "President Ortega's government has been the target of criticism for its lack of a response to the pandemic.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "On 14 March 2020, Ortega's government called a massive demonstration called \"Love in the Time of COVID-19\" as a show of support to him and his government. This occurred in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic which had only recently been officially declared by the WHO.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "According to CNN, as of mid-June 2020, Ortega had \"refused to impose strict, preventive quarantine measures seen in neighboring countries\" to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. \"Public schools remain open, businesses continue to operate, festivals and cultural events are happening on an almost-weekly basis.\" The story stated that from mid-March to mid-June six politicians had died, and, according to witnesses, their remains disposed of at night in \"express burials\" (with police in attendance but \"no Mass, no wake and no funeral arrangements\", no photographs). The Ortega government said reports of \"express burials\" were \"false news\". According to AP News \"the government threatened to ban\" professional baseball players \"who refuse to play baseball ... And everyone is warned to keep quiet.\" In hospitals \"ruling-party activists ensure no information leaks out\", and it quotes a doctor (anesthesiologist María Nela Escoto) complaining that in the public hospital where she works \"everything is secret. They don't allow suggestions, and you can't question anything because they're watching. It's a very hostile environment.\" (At the start of the pandemic, Ortega was out of the public eye for \"more than 40 days\", and no explanation was given for his absence when he returned.)",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In April 2018, student protests over a nature reserve fire expanded to cover an unpopular decree that would have cut social security benefits and increased taxpayer contributions. The protesters were violently set upon by the state sponsored Sandinista Youth. Despite attempts by Ortega's government to hide the incident through censorship of all private-owned news outlets, photos and videos of the violence made their way to social media where they sparked outrage and urged more Nicaraguans to join in on the protests. Tensions escalated quickly, as police began using tear gas canisters and rubber bullets, and eventually live ammunition on unarmed protesters. Authorities were also seen arming Sandinista Youth members with weapons to serve as paramilitary forces. Dozens of student protesters were subsequently killed. Despite the withdrawal of the unpopular decree, the protests continue, with most protesters demanding Ortega's and his cabinet's resignations.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "On 30 May 2018, Nicaragua's Mother's Day, over 300,000 people marched to honor the mothers of students killed in the preceding protests. Despite the attendance of children, mothers and retirees, and lack of any violence by marchers, marchers were attacked in an event dubbed the \"Mother's Day Massacre\". 16 were killed, and 88 injured, as \"police sprayed the crowd with bullets, government sharpshooters positioned on the roof of the national baseball stadium went headhunting with sniper rifles\".",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In June 2018, Tim Rogers wrote in The Atlantic magazine:",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Over the past seven weeks, Ortega's police and paramilitaries have killed more than 120 people, mostly students and other young protesters who are demanding the president's ouster and a return to democracy, according to a human-rights group [CENIDH, Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights]. Police hunt students like enemy combatants. Sandinista Youth paramilitaries, armed and paid by Ortega's party, drive around in pickup trucks attacking protesters. Gangs of masked men loot and burn shops with impunity. Cops wear civilian clothing, and some paramilitaries dress in police uniforms. \"This is starting to look more like Syria than Caracas,\" one Nicaraguan business leader told me.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "By December 322 people were dead and 565 imprisoned. Professionals involved in the protests (lawyers, engineering majors, radio broadcasters and merchants) had been reduced to lives of \"ever-changing safe houses, encrypted messaging apps and pseudonyms\", with the Ortega government allegedly \"hunting us like deer,\" according to one dissident (Roberto Carlos Membreño Briceño). Human rights organization offices were raided, computers seized and observers expelled. Observers from the Organization of American States were expelled after releasing a critical investigative report of the government's response to the protests. The report found the government had progressed from \"using tear gas to rubber bullets, then real bullets and finally military firepower like assault rifles and grenade launchers\", based on an analysis of videos posted on social media. At least 1,400 people involved in the protests were hurt, although that the number was probably \"far higher because most people were too afraid to go to public hospitals, where doctors were fired for treating wounded protesters\". By July 2019 the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch called on the United States to impose sanctions on Ortega \"and other top\" Nicaraguan officials \"implicated\" in the crackdown on protests.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Soon after the 2006 election, Ortega paid an official visit to Iran and met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ortega told the press that the \"revolutions of Iran and Nicaragua are almost twin revolutions...since both revolutions are about justice, liberty, self-determination, and the struggle against imperialism.\"",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "On 6 March 2008, following the 2008 Andean diplomatic crisis, Ortega announced that Nicaragua was breaking diplomatic ties with Colombia \"in solidarity with the Ecuadorian people\". Ortega also stated, \"We are not breaking relations with the Colombian people. We are breaking relations with the terrorist policy practiced by Álvaro Uribe's government\". The relations were restored with the resolution at a Rio Group summit held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on 7 March 2008. At the summit Colombia's Álvaro Uribe, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Ortega publicly shook hands in a show of good-will. The handshakes, broadcast live throughout Latin America, appeared to signal that a week of military buildups and diplomatic repercussions was over. After the handshakes, Ortega said he would re-establish diplomatic ties with Colombia. Uribe then quipped that he would send him the bill for his ambassador's plane fare.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "On 25 May 2008, Ortega, upon learning of the death of FARC guerrilla leader Manuel Marulanda in Colombia, expressed condolences to the family of Marulanda and solidarity with the FARC and called Marulanda an extraordinary fighter who battled against profound inequalities in Colombia. The declarations were protested by the Colombian government and criticized in the major Colombian media outlets.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "On 2 September 2008, during ceremonies for the 29th anniversary of the founding of the Nicaraguan army, Ortega announced that \"Nicaragua recognizes the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and fully supports the Russian government's position\". Ortega's decision made Nicaragua the second country (after Russia) to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Under Ortega's leadership, Nicaragua joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "When seeking office, Ortega threatened to cut diplomatic recognition with the Republic of China (Taiwan, formerly Nationalist China) in order to restore relations with the Mainland-based People's Republic of China (as in the period from 1985 to 1990) as the legal government of China. But he did not do so. In 2007 Ortega stated that Nicaragua did not accept the One China Policy of the PRC government and that Nicaragua reserved the right to maintain official diplomatic relations with the ROC. He reassured President Chen Shui Bian in 2007 that Nicaragua would not break diplomatic relations with the ROC. He explained that during the Reagan administration the United States imposed sanctions on Nicaragua. But cutting ties with Taipei was a sad and painful decision because of the friendship between Nicaragua and Taiwan's people and government. Ortega met with the ROC President Ma Ying-jeou in 2009 and both agreed to improve the diplomatic ties between both countries. However, with a trade show from China (PRC) in Managua in 2010, he is attempting a two-track policy to get benefits from both sides. In 2016 Nicaragua and China (ROC) signed an air services agreement and Ortega stated that Nicaragua's free trade deal with the ROC had benefited both nations. The ROC increased its investment in Nicaragua. In December 2021, Nicaragua once again switched recognition with the PRC.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In September 2010, after a US report listed Nicaragua as a \"major\" drug-trafficking centre, with Costa Rica and Honduras, Ortega urged the US Congress and Obama administration to allocate more resources to assist the fight against drug trafficking.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "During the Libyan Civil War, Ortega was among the very few leaders who spoke out in clear defense of the embattled Muammar Gaddafi. During a telephone conversation between the two, Ortega told Gaddafi that he was \"waging a great battle to defend his nation\" and stated that \"it's at difficult times that loyalty and resolve are put to the test.\"",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Ortega has said that Assad's victory in the 2014 election is an important step to \"attain peace in Syria and a clear cut evidence that the Syrian people trust their president as a national leader and support his policies which aim at maintaining Syria's sovereignty and unity\".",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Ortega attended the swearing-in ceremony of Nicolás Maduro for his second term on 10 January 2019.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In an interview with Max Blumenthal in August 2019, Ortega stated that he was open to the idea of Bernie Sanders (who had visited him in 1985) winning the US presidency in 2020 and that Sanders's message \"goes in the right direction for the U.S. to become a pole of peace, development, and cooperation.\"",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In 2016, Daniel Ortega did not sign the Paris Agreement because he felt the deal did not do enough to protect the climate, although he later changed his mind. Moreover, Nicaragua rejected projects of mining of the Canadian group B2 Gold which could represent a threat to the environment. According to government estimates, Nicaragua has passed from 25% renewable electricity to 52% between 2007 and 2016.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In November 2021, Joe Biden signed into law the \"Reinforcing Nicaragua's Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act\" (RENACER Act) which extended US sanctions against Nicaragua and gave Biden the power to exclude Nicaragua from the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) and to obstruct multilateral loans to Nicaragua. Venezuela and Russia condemned the new law.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In February 2021, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada approved economic sanctions against President Ortega and his government. The sanctions were in response to Ortega sending a delegation to the Russian-occupied territory of Crimea in November 2020.",
"title": "Second presidency (2007–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Ortega's second presidency has been subject to much criticism and accusations of his becoming a strongman. The 2018 protests have been pointed to as being symbolic of these tensions. In 2018, Frances Robles wrote in The New York Times that the \"many Ortega adult children manage everything from gasoline distribution to television stations\" in Nicaragua.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In the months preceding the November 2021 Nicaraguan general election, Ortega's government arrested many prominent opposition members. As of 23 July, 26 opposition leaders have been imprisoned.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "On 24 March 2022, the ambassador Arturo McFields, condemned the Ortega government and requested the release of political prisoners, alluding that the government people were \"tired of dictatorship\" and that it was not easy to denounce it. As a result, he was dismissed.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The American lawyer Paul Reichler also left his position as representative due to \"moral conscience\", who felt that the president \"was no longer the Daniel Ortega whom he respected so much and served with so much pride.\" Reichler found it inconceivable that someone like Ortega would have mercilessly suppressed peaceful demonstrations and imprisoned his former colleagues in inhumane conditions, and accused him of \"murdering\" a general by withholding medical treatment. This figure of American origin served as Nicaragua's international legal adviser before the International Court of Justice, when Managua denounced the United States for financing the counterrevolution, winning the case.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The Ortega administration also ordered the closure of the Nicaraguan Language Academy for failing to register as a \"foreign agent\" ratified by the Sandinista parliament with the favorable vote of 75 deputies of the ruling FSLN.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In 1998, Daniel Ortega's adopted stepdaughter Zoilamérica Narváez released a 48-page report in which she alleged he had sexually abused her from 1979, when she was 12, until 1990. Ortega and his wife Murillo denied the allegation. The case could not proceed in Nicaraguan courts, which have been consistently allied with Ortega, because he had immunity from prosecution as a member of parliament, and the five-year statute of limitations for sexual abuse and rape charges had expired. Narváez's complaint to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission was ruled admissible on 15 October 2001. On 4 March 2002, the Nicaraguan government accepted the commission's recommendation of a \"friendly agreement\". Narváez withdrew the accusations in 2008. Following the 2016 election, Narváez renewed her accusations and said that she had become an outcast in her family.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In 2019 a documentary film Exiliada was released which revolves around Zoilamérica Narváez and her sexual abuse allegations against Ortega.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "There is also the case of Elvia Junieth who was allegedly abused by the president in 2005, and, according to the family, a girl was born from that relationship that Ortega did not recognize. Ernesto Moncada Lau, another of the assistants to the Sandinista president, appears on the birth certificate as the father of the minor. Her brother died in the Tipitapa Model prison in November 2021.",
"title": "Controversy"
}
]
| José Daniel Ortega Saavedra is a Nicaraguan politician who has been President of Nicaragua since 2007. Previously he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as coordinator (1979–1985) of the Junta of National Reconstruction, and then as President of Nicaragua (1985–1990). During his first term, he implemented policies to achieve leftist reforms across Nicaragua. In later years, Ortega's left-wing radical politics cooled significantly, leading him to pursue pro-business policies and even rapprochement with the Catholic Church. As a part of this, his government adopted strong anti-abortion policies, and his rhetoric took on a new, strongly religious tenor. Ortega came to prominence with the overthrow and exile of US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 during the Nicaraguan Revolution. As a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front Ortega became leader of the ruling Junta of National Reconstruction. A Marxist–Leninist, Ortega pursued a program of nationalization, land reform, wealth redistribution and literacy programs during his first period in office. Ortega's government was responsible for the forced displacement of 10,000 indigenous people. In 1984, Ortega won Nicaragua's first ever free and fair presidential election with over 60% of the vote as the FSLN's candidate. Throughout the 1980s, Ortega's government faced a rebellion by US-backed rebels, known as the Contras. The US also sought to place economic pressure on the Sandinista government, imposing a full trade embargo, and planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's ports. After a presidency marred by conflict and economic collapse, Ortega was defeated in the 1990 Nicaraguan general election by Violeta Chamorro, in an election marked by US interference. Ortega was an unsuccessful candidate for president in 1996 and 2001 but won the 2006 Nicaraguan general election. In office, he made alliances with fellow Latin American socialists. His second administration, in contrast to his previous political career, abandoned most of his earlier leftist principles, and became increasingly anti-democratic, alienating many of his former revolutionary allies. In June 2018, organisations such as Amnesty International and the OAS reported that Ortega had engaged in a violent oppression campaign against the anti-Ortega 2018–2022 Nicaraguan protests. The violent crackdown and subsequent constriction of civil liberties have led to massive waves of emigration to neighboring Costa Rica, with more than 30,000 Nicaraguans filing for asylum in that country. In his fourth term, Ortega ordered the closure of several NGOs, universities, and newspapers. His government jailed many potential rival candidates in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election, including Cristiana Chamorro Barrios. Ortega's government also imprisoned other opponents, such as former allies Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres Jiménez. In August 2021, Nicaragua cancelled the operating permits of six US and European NGOs. Many critics of the Ortega government, including opposition leaders, journalists and members of civil society, fled the country in mid-2021. After Ortega was re-elected in 2021, United States President Joe Biden banned him and his officials from entering the United States. | 2001-11-06T08:44:01Z | 2023-12-27T06:59:37Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ortega |
8,779 | Destroyer | In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were originally conceived in 1885 by Fernando Villaamil for the Spanish Navy as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these "torpedo boat destroyers" (TBDs) were "large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats". Although the term "destroyer" had been used interchangeably with "TBD" and "torpedo boat destroyer" by navies since 1892, the term "torpedo boat destroyer" had been generally shortened to simply "destroyer" by nearly all navies by the First World War.
Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels with little endurance for unattended ocean operations; typically, a number of destroyers and a single destroyer tender operated together. After the war, destroyers grew in size. The American Allen M. Sumner-class destroyers had a displacement of 2,200 tons, while the Arleigh Burke class has a displacement of up to 9,600 tons, a difference of nearly 340%. Moreover, the advent of guided missiles allowed destroyers to take on the surface-combatant roles previously filled by battleships and cruisers. This resulted in larger and more powerful guided-missile destroyers more capable of independent operation.
At the start of the 21st century, destroyers are the global standard for surface-combatant ships, with only two nations (the United States and Russia) officially operating the heavier cruisers, with no battleships or true battlecruisers remaining. Modern guided-missile destroyers are equivalent in tonnage but vastly superior in firepower to cruisers of the World War II era, and are capable of carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. At 510 feet (160 m) long, a displacement of 9,200 tons, and with an armament of more than 90 missiles, guided-missile destroyers such as the Arleigh Burke class are actually larger and more heavily armed than most previous ships classified as guided-missile cruisers. The Chinese Type 055 destroyer has been described as a cruiser in some US Navy reports due to its size and armament.
Some NATO navies, such as the Canadian, French, Spanish, Dutch, and German, use the term "frigate" for their destroyers, which leads to some confusion.
The emergence and development of the destroyer was related to the invention of the self-propelled torpedo in the 1860s. A navy now had the potential to destroy a superior enemy battle fleet using steam launches to fire torpedoes. Cheap, fast boats armed with torpedoes called torpedo boats were built and became a threat to large capital ships near enemy coasts. The first seagoing vessel designed to launch the self-propelled Whitehead torpedo was the 33-ton HMS Lightning in 1876. She was armed with two drop collars to launch these weapons; these were replaced in 1879 by a single torpedo tube in the bow. By the 1880s, the type had evolved into small ships of 50–100 tons, fast enough to evade enemy picket boats.
At first, the threat of a torpedo-boat attack to a battle fleet was considered to exist only when at anchor, but as faster and longer-range torpedo boats and torpedoes were developed, the threat extended to cruising at sea. In response to this new threat, more heavily gunned picket boats called "catchers" were built, which were used to escort the battle fleet at sea. They needed significant seaworthiness and endurance to operate with the battle fleet, and as they inherently became larger, they became officially designated "torpedo-boat destroyers", and by the First World War were largely known as "destroyers" in English. The antitorpedo boat origin of this type of ship is retained in its name in other languages, including French (contre-torpilleur), Italian (cacciatorpediniere), Portuguese (contratorpedeiro), Czech (torpédoborec), Greek (antitorpiliko, αντιτορπιλικό), Dutch (torpedobootjager) and, up until the Second World War, Polish (kontrtorpedowiec, now obsolete).
Once destroyers became more than just catchers guarding an anchorage, they were recognized to be also ideal to take over the offensive role of torpedo boats themselves, so they were also fitted with torpedo tubes in addition to their antitorpedo-boat guns. At that time, and even into World War I, the only function of destroyers was to protect their own battle fleet from enemy torpedo attacks and to make such attacks on the battleships of the enemy. The task of escorting merchant convoys was still in the future.
An important development came with the construction of HMS Swift in 1884, later redesignated TB 81. This was a large (137 ton) torpedo boat with four 47 mm quick-firing guns and three torpedo tubes. At 23.75 knots (43.99 km/h; 27.33 mph), while still not fast enough to engage enemy torpedo boats reliably, the ship at least had the armament to deal with them.
Another forerunner of the torpedo-boat destroyer (TBD) was the Japanese torpedo boat Kotaka (Falcon), built in 1885. Designed to Japanese specifications and ordered from the Isle of Dogs, London Yarrow shipyard in 1885, she was transported in parts to Japan, where she was assembled and launched in 1887. The 165-foot (50 m) long vessel was armed with four 1-pounder (37 mm) quick-firing guns and six torpedo tubes, reached 19 knots (35 km/h), and at 203 tons, was the largest torpedo boat built to date. In her trials in 1889, Kotaka demonstrated that she could exceed the role of coastal defense, and was capable of accompanying larger warships on the high seas. The Yarrow shipyards, builder of the parts for Kotaka, "considered Japan to have effectively invented the destroyer".
The German aviso Greif, launched in 1886, was designed as a "Torpedojäger" (torpedo hunter), intended to screen the fleet against attacks by torpedo boats. The ship was significantly larger than torpedo boats of the period, displacing some 2,266 t (2,230 long tons), with an armament of 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns and 3.7 cm (1.5 in) Hotchkiss revolver cannon.
The first vessel designed for the explicit purpose of hunting and destroying torpedo boats was the torpedo gunboat. Essentially very small cruisers, torpedo gunboats were equipped with torpedo tubes and an adequate gun armament, intended for hunting down smaller enemy boats. By the end of the 1890s, torpedo gunboats were made obsolete by their more successful contemporaries, the TBDs, which were much faster.
The first example of this was HMS Rattlesnake, designed by Nathaniel Barnaby in 1885, and commissioned in response to the Russian War scare. The gunboat was armed with torpedoes and designed for hunting and destroying smaller torpedo boats. Exactly 200 feet (61 m) long and 23 feet (7.0 m) in beam, she displaced 550 tons. Built of steel, Rattlesnake was unarmoured with the exception of a 3⁄4-inch protective deck. She was armed with a single 4-inch/25-pounder breech-loading gun, six 3-pounder QF guns and four 14-inch (360 mm) torpedo tubes, arranged with two fixed tubes at the bow and a set of torpedo-dropping carriages on either side. Four torpedo reloads were carried.
A number of torpedo gunboat classes followed, including the Grasshopper class, the Sharpshooter class, the Alarm class, and the Dryad class – all built for the Royal Navy during the 1880s and the 1890s. In the 1880s, the Chilean Navy ordered the construction of two Almirante Lynch class torpedo gunboats from the British shipyard Laird Brothers, which specialized in the construction of this type of vessel. The novelty is that one of these Almirante Lynch-class torpedo boats managed to sink the ironclad Blanco Encalada with a self-propelled torpedoes in the Battle of Caldera Bay in 1891, thus surpassing its main function of hunting torpedo boats.
Fernando Villaamil, second officer of the Ministry of the Navy of Spain, designed his own torpedo gunboat to combat the threat from the torpedo boat. He asked several British shipyards to submit proposals capable of fulfilling these specifications. In 1885, the Spanish Navy chose the design submitted by the shipyard of James and George Thomson of Clydebank. Destructor (Destroyer in Spanish) was laid down at the end of the year, launched in 1886, and commissioned in 1887. Some authors considered her as the first destroyer ever built.
She displaced 348 tons, and was the first warship equipped with twin triple-expansion engines generating 3,784 ihp (2,822 kW), for a maximum speed of 22.6 knots (41.9 km/h), which made her one of the faster ships in the world in 1888. She was armed with one 90 mm (3.5 in) Spanish-designed Hontoria breech-loading gun, four 57 mm (2.2 in) (6-pounder) Nordenfelt guns, two 37 mm (1.5 in) (3-pdr) Hotchkiss cannons and two 15-inch (38 cm) Schwartzkopff torpedo tubes. The ship carried three torpedoes per tube. She carried a crew of 60.
In terms of gunnery, speed, and dimensions, the specialised design to chase torpedo boats and her high-seas capabilities, Destructor was an important precursor to the TBD.
The first classes of ships to bear the formal designation TBD were the Daring class of two ships and Havock class of two ships of the Royal Navy.
Early torpedo gunboat designs lacked the range and speed to keep up with the fleet they were supposed to protect. In 1892, the Third Sea Lord, Rear Admiral John "Jacky" Fisher ordered the development of a new type of ships equipped with the then-novel water-tube boilers and quick-firing small-calibre guns. Six ships to the specifications circulated by the admiralty were ordered initially, comprising three different designs each produced by a different shipbuilder: HMS Daring and HMS Decoy from John I. Thornycroft & Company, HMS Havock and HMS Hornet from Yarrows, and HMS Ferret and HMS Lynx from Laird, Son & Company.
These ships all featured a turtleback (i.e. rounded) forecastle that was characteristic of early British TBDs. HMS Daring and HMS Decoy were both built by Thornycroft, displaced 260 tons (287.8 tons full load), and were 185 feet in length. They were armed with one 12-pounder gun and three 6-pounder guns, with one fixed 18-in torpedo tube in the bow plus two more torpedo tubes on a revolving mount abaft the two funnels. Later, the bow torpedo tube was removed and two more 6-pounder guns added, instead. They produced 4,200 hp from a pair of Thornycroft water-tube boilers, giving them a top speed of 27 knots, giving the range and speed to travel effectively with a battle fleet. In common with subsequent early Thornycroft boats, they had sloping sterns and double rudders.
The French navy, an extensive user of torpedo boats, built its first TBD in 1899, with the Durandal-class torpilleur d'escadre. The United States commissioned its first TBD, USS Bainbridge, Destroyer No. 1, in 1902, and by 1906, 16 destroyers were in service with the US Navy.
Torpedo boat destroyer designs continued to evolve around the turn of the 20th century in several key ways. The first was the introduction of the steam turbine. The spectacular unauthorized demonstration of the turbine-powered Turbinia at the 1897 Spithead Navy Review, which, significantly, was of torpedo-boat size, prompted the Royal Navy to order a prototype turbine-powered destroyer, HMS Viper of 1899. This was the first turbine warship of any kind, and achieved a remarkable 34 knots (63 km/h; 39 mph) on sea trials. By 1910, the turbine had been widely adopted by all navies for their faster ships.
The second development was the replacement of the torpedo boat-style turtleback foredeck by a raised forecastle for the new River-class destroyers built in 1903, which provided better sea-keeping and more space below deck.
The first warship to use only fuel oil propulsion was the Royal Navy's TBD HMS Spiteful, after experiments in 1904, although the obsolescence of coal as a fuel in British warships was delayed by oil's availability. Other navies also adopted oil, for instance the USN with the Paulding class of 1909. In spite of all this variety, destroyers adopted a largely similar pattern. The hull was long and narrow, with a relatively shallow draft. The bow was either raised in a forecastle or covered under a turtleback; underneath this were the crew spaces, extending 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 the way along the hull. Aft of the crew spaces was as much engine space as the technology of the time would allow - several boilers and engines or turbines. Above deck, one or more quick-firing guns were mounted in the bows, in front of the bridge; several more were mounted amidships and astern. Two tube mountings (later on, multiple mountings) were generally found amidships.
Between 1892 and 1914, destroyers became markedly larger; initially 275 tons with a length of 165 feet (50 m) for the Royal Navy's first Havock class of TBDs, up to the First World War with 300-foot (91 m) long destroyers displacing 1,000 tons was not unusual. Construction remained focused on putting the biggest possible engines into a small hull, though, resulting in a somewhat flimsy construction. Often, hulls were built of high-tensile steel only 1⁄8 in (3.2 mm) thick.
By 1910, the steam-driven displacement (that is, not hydroplaning) torpedo boat had become redundant as a separate type. Germany, nevertheless, continued to build such boats until the end of World War I, although these were effectively small coastal destroyers. In fact, Germany never distinguished between the two types, giving them pennant numbers in the same series and never giving names to destroyers. Ultimately, the term "torpedo boat" came to be attached to a quite different vessel – the very fast-hydroplaning, motor-driven motor torpedo boat.
Navies originally built TBDrs to protect against torpedo boats, but admirals soon appreciated the flexibility of the fast, multipurpose vessels that resulted. Vice-Admiral Sir Baldwin Walker laid down destroyer duties for the Royal Navy:
Early destroyers were extremely cramped places to live, being "without a doubt magnificent fighting vessels... but unable to stand bad weather". During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, the commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy TBD Akatsuki described "being in command of a destroyer for a long period, especially in wartime... is not very good for the health". Stating that he had originally been strong and healthy, he continued, "life on a destroyer in winter, with bad food, no comforts, would sap the powers of the strongest men in the long run. A destroyer is always more uncomfortable than the others, and rain, snow, and sea-water combine to make them damp; in fact, in bad weather, there is not a dry spot where one can rest for a moment."
The Japanese destroyer-commander finished with, "Yesterday, I looked at myself in a mirror for a long time; I was disagreeably surprised to see my face thin, full of wrinkles, and as old as though I were 50. My clothes (uniform) cover nothing but a skeleton, and my bones are full of rheumatism."
In 1898, the US Navy officially classified USS Porter, a 175-foot (53 m) long all steel vessel displacing 165 tons, as a torpedo boat, but her commander, LT. John C. Fremont, described her as "...a compact mass of machinery not meant to keep the sea nor to live in... as five-sevenths of the ship are taken up by machinery and fuel, whilst the remaining two-sevenths, fore and aft, are the crew's quarters; officers forward and the men placed aft. And even in those spaces are placed anchor engines, steering engines, steam pipes, etc. rendering them unbearably hot in tropical regions."
The TBD's first major use in combat came during the Japanese surprise attack on the Russian fleet anchored in Port Arthur at the opening of the Russo-Japanese War on 8 February 1904.
Three destroyer divisions attacked the Russian fleet in port, firing a total of 18 torpedoes, but only two Russian battleships, Tsesarevich and Retvizan, and a protected cruiser, Pallada, were seriously damaged due to the proper deployment of torpedo nets. Tsesarevich, the Russian flagship, had her nets deployed, with at least four enemy torpedoes "hung up" in them, and other warships were similarly saved from further damage by their nets.
While capital-ship engagements were scarce in World War I, destroyer units engaged almost continually in raiding and patrol actions. The first shot of the war at sea was fired on 5 August 1914 by HMS Lance, one of the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla, in an engagement with the German auxiliary minelayer Königin Luise.
Destroyers were involved in the skirmishes that prompted the Battle of Heligoland Bight, and filled a range of roles in the Battle of Gallipoli, acting as troop transports and as fire-support vessels, as well as their fleet-screening role. Over 80 British destroyers and 60 German torpedo boats took part in the Battle of Jutland, which involved pitched small-boat actions between the main fleets, and several foolhardy attacks by unsupported destroyers on capital ships. Jutland also concluded with a messy night action between the German High Seas Fleet and part of the British destroyer screen.
The threat evolved by World War I with the development of the submarine, or U-boat. The submarine had the potential to hide from gunfire and close underwater to fire torpedoes. Early-war destroyers had the speed and armament to intercept submarines before they submerged, either by gunfire or by ramming. Destroyers also had a shallow enough draft that they were difficult to hit with torpedoes.
The desire to attack submarines under water led to rapid destroyer evolution during the war. They were quickly equipped with strengthened bows for ramming, and depth charges and hydrophones for identifying submarine targets. The first submarine casualty credited to a destroyer was the German U-19, rammed by HMS Badger on 29 October 1914. While U-19 was only damaged, the next month, HMS Garry successfully sank U-18. The first depth-charge sinking was on 4 December 1916, when UC-19 was sunk by HMS Llewellyn.
The submarine threat meant that many destroyers spent their time on antisubmarine patrol. Once Germany adopted unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917, destroyers were called on to escort merchant convoys. US Navy destroyers were among the first American units to be dispatched upon the American entry to the war, and a squadron of Japanese destroyers even joined Allied patrols in the Mediterranean. Patrol duty was far from safe; of the 67 British destroyers lost in the war, collisions accounted for 18, while 12 were wrecked.
At the end of the war, the state-of-the-art was represented by the British W class.
The trend during World War I had been towards larger destroyers with heavier armaments. A number of opportunities to fire at capital ships had been missed during the war, because destroyers had expended all their torpedoes in an initial salvo. The British V and W classes of the late war had sought to address this by mounting six torpedo tubes in two triple mounts, instead of the four or two on earlier models. The V and W classes set the standard of destroyer building well into the 1920s.
Two Romanian destroyers Mărăști and Mărășești, though, had the greatest firepower of all destroyers in the world throughout the first half of the 1920s. This was largely because, between their commissioning in 1920 and 1926, they retained the armament that they had while serving in the Italian Navy as scout cruisers (esploratori). When initially ordered by Romania in 1913, the Romanian specifications envisioned three 120 mm guns, a caliber which would eventually be adopted as the standard for future Italian destroyers. Armed with three 152 mm and four 76 mm guns after being completed as scout cruisers, the two warships were officially re-rated as destroyers by the Romanian Navy. The two Romanian warships were thus the destroyers with the greatest firepower in the world throughout much of the interwar period. As of 1939, when the Second World War started, their artillery, although changed, was still close to cruiser standards, amounting to nine heavy naval guns (five of 120 mm and four of 76 mm). In addition, they retained their two twin 457 mm torpedo tubes and two machine guns, plus the capacity to carry up to 50 mines.
The next major innovation came with the Japanese Fubuki class or "special type", designed in 1923 and delivered in 1928. The design was initially noted for its powerful armament of six 5-inch (127 mm) guns and three triple torpedo mounts. The second batch of the class gave the guns high-angle turrets for antiaircraft warfare, and the 24-inch (61 cm), oxygen-fueled Long Lance Type 93 torpedo. The later Hatsuharu class of 1931 further improved the torpedo armament by storing its reload torpedoes close at hand in the superstructure, allowing reloading within 15 minutes.
Most other nations replied with similar larger ships. The US Porter class adopted twin 5-inch (127 mm) guns, and the subsequent Mahan class and Gridley classes (the latter of 1934) increased the number of torpedo tubes to 12 and 16, respectively.
In the Mediterranean, the Italian Navy's building of very fast light cruisers of the Condottieri class prompted the French to produce exceptional destroyer designs. The French had long been keen on large destroyers, with their Chacal class of 1922 displacing over 2,000 tons and carrying 130 mm guns; a further three similar classes were produced around 1930. The Le Fantasque class of 1935 carried five 138 millimetres (5.4 in) guns and nine torpedo tubes, but could achieve speeds of 45 knots (83 km/h), which remains the record speed for a steamship and for any destroyer. The Italians' own destroyers were almost as swift; most Italian designs of the 1930s were rated at over 38 knots (70 km/h), while carrying torpedoes and either four or six 120 mm guns.
Germany started to build destroyers again during the 1930s as part of Hitler's rearmament program. The Germans were also fond of large destroyers, but while the initial Type 1934 displaced over 3,000 tons, their armament was equal to smaller vessels. This changed from the Type 1936 onwards, which mounted heavy 150 millimetres (5.9 in) guns. German destroyers also used innovative high-pressure steam machinery; while this should have helped their efficiency, it more often resulted in mechanical problems.
Once German and Japanese rearmament became clear, the British and American navies consciously focused on building destroyers that were smaller, but more numerous than those used by other nations. The British built a series of destroyers (the A class to I class), which were about 1,400 tons standard displacement, and had four 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns and eight torpedo tubes; the American Benson class of 1938 was similar in size, but carried five 5-inch (127 mm) guns and ten torpedo tubes. Realizing the need for heavier gun armament, the British built the Tribal class of 1936 (sometimes called Afridi after one of two lead ships). These ships displaced 1,850 tons and were armed with eight 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns in four twin turrets and four torpedo tubes. These were followed by the J-class and L-class destroyers, with six 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns in twin turrets and eight torpedo tubes.
Antisubmarine sensors included sonar (or ASDIC), although training in their use was indifferent. Antisubmarine weapons changed little, and ahead-throwing weapons, a need recognized in World War I, had made no progress.
During the 1920s and 1930s, destroyers were often deployed to areas of diplomatic tension or humanitarian disaster. British and American destroyers were common on the Chinese coast and rivers, even supplying landing parties to protect colonial interests. By World War II, the threat had evolved once again. Submarines were more effective, and aircraft had become important weapons of naval warfare; once again the early-war fleet destroyers were ill-equipped for combating these new targets. They were fitted with new light antiaircraft guns, radar, and forward-launched ASW weapons, in addition to their existing dual-purpose guns, depth charges, and torpedoes. Increasing size allowed improved internal arrangement of propulsion machinery with compartmentation, so ships were less likely to be sunk by a single hit. In most cases torpedo and/or dual-purpose gun armament was reduced to accommodate new anti-air and anti-submarine weapons. By this time the destroyers had become large, multi-purpose vessels, expensive targets in their own right. As a result, casualties on destroyers were among the highest. In the US Navy, particularly in World War II, destroyers became known as tin cans due to their light armor compared to battleships and cruisers.
The need for large numbers of antisubmarine ships led to the introduction of smaller and cheaper specialized antisubmarine warships called corvettes and frigates by the Royal Navy and destroyer escorts by the USN. A similar programme was belatedly started by the Japanese (see Matsu-class destroyer). These ships had the size and displacement of the original TBDs from which the contemporary destroyer had evolved.
Some conventional destroyers completed in the late 1940s and 1950s were built on wartime experience. These vessels were significantly larger than wartime ships and had fully automatic main guns, unit machinery, radar, sonar, and antisubmarine weapons such as the squid mortar. Examples include the British Daring-class, US Forrest Sherman-class, and the Soviet Kotlin-class destroyers.
Some World War II–vintage ships were modernized for antisubmarine warfare, and to extend their service lives, to avoid having to build (expensive) brand-new ships. Examples include the US FRAM I programme and the British Type 15 frigates converted from fleet destroyers.
The advent of surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-surface missiles, such as the Exocet, in the early 1960s changed naval warfare. Guided missile destroyers (DDG in the US Navy) were developed to carry these weapons and protect the fleet from air, submarine, and surface threats. Examples include the Soviet Kashin class, the British County class, and the US Charles F. Adams class.
The 21st century destroyers tend to display features such as large, slab sides without complicated corners and crevices to keep the radar cross-section small, vertical launch systems to carry a large number of missiles at high readiness to fire, and helicopter flight decks and hangars.
A number of countries have destroyers preserved as museum ships. These include:
Media related to Destroyers at Wikimedia Commons | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were originally conceived in 1885 by Fernando Villaamil for the Spanish Navy as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these \"torpedo boat destroyers\" (TBDs) were \"large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats\". Although the term \"destroyer\" had been used interchangeably with \"TBD\" and \"torpedo boat destroyer\" by navies since 1892, the term \"torpedo boat destroyer\" had been generally shortened to simply \"destroyer\" by nearly all navies by the First World War.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels with little endurance for unattended ocean operations; typically, a number of destroyers and a single destroyer tender operated together. After the war, destroyers grew in size. The American Allen M. Sumner-class destroyers had a displacement of 2,200 tons, while the Arleigh Burke class has a displacement of up to 9,600 tons, a difference of nearly 340%. Moreover, the advent of guided missiles allowed destroyers to take on the surface-combatant roles previously filled by battleships and cruisers. This resulted in larger and more powerful guided-missile destroyers more capable of independent operation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "At the start of the 21st century, destroyers are the global standard for surface-combatant ships, with only two nations (the United States and Russia) officially operating the heavier cruisers, with no battleships or true battlecruisers remaining. Modern guided-missile destroyers are equivalent in tonnage but vastly superior in firepower to cruisers of the World War II era, and are capable of carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. At 510 feet (160 m) long, a displacement of 9,200 tons, and with an armament of more than 90 missiles, guided-missile destroyers such as the Arleigh Burke class are actually larger and more heavily armed than most previous ships classified as guided-missile cruisers. The Chinese Type 055 destroyer has been described as a cruiser in some US Navy reports due to its size and armament.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Some NATO navies, such as the Canadian, French, Spanish, Dutch, and German, use the term \"frigate\" for their destroyers, which leads to some confusion.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The emergence and development of the destroyer was related to the invention of the self-propelled torpedo in the 1860s. A navy now had the potential to destroy a superior enemy battle fleet using steam launches to fire torpedoes. Cheap, fast boats armed with torpedoes called torpedo boats were built and became a threat to large capital ships near enemy coasts. The first seagoing vessel designed to launch the self-propelled Whitehead torpedo was the 33-ton HMS Lightning in 1876. She was armed with two drop collars to launch these weapons; these were replaced in 1879 by a single torpedo tube in the bow. By the 1880s, the type had evolved into small ships of 50–100 tons, fast enough to evade enemy picket boats.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "At first, the threat of a torpedo-boat attack to a battle fleet was considered to exist only when at anchor, but as faster and longer-range torpedo boats and torpedoes were developed, the threat extended to cruising at sea. In response to this new threat, more heavily gunned picket boats called \"catchers\" were built, which were used to escort the battle fleet at sea. They needed significant seaworthiness and endurance to operate with the battle fleet, and as they inherently became larger, they became officially designated \"torpedo-boat destroyers\", and by the First World War were largely known as \"destroyers\" in English. The antitorpedo boat origin of this type of ship is retained in its name in other languages, including French (contre-torpilleur), Italian (cacciatorpediniere), Portuguese (contratorpedeiro), Czech (torpédoborec), Greek (antitorpiliko, αντιτορπιλικό), Dutch (torpedobootjager) and, up until the Second World War, Polish (kontrtorpedowiec, now obsolete).",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Once destroyers became more than just catchers guarding an anchorage, they were recognized to be also ideal to take over the offensive role of torpedo boats themselves, so they were also fitted with torpedo tubes in addition to their antitorpedo-boat guns. At that time, and even into World War I, the only function of destroyers was to protect their own battle fleet from enemy torpedo attacks and to make such attacks on the battleships of the enemy. The task of escorting merchant convoys was still in the future.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "An important development came with the construction of HMS Swift in 1884, later redesignated TB 81. This was a large (137 ton) torpedo boat with four 47 mm quick-firing guns and three torpedo tubes. At 23.75 knots (43.99 km/h; 27.33 mph), while still not fast enough to engage enemy torpedo boats reliably, the ship at least had the armament to deal with them.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Another forerunner of the torpedo-boat destroyer (TBD) was the Japanese torpedo boat Kotaka (Falcon), built in 1885. Designed to Japanese specifications and ordered from the Isle of Dogs, London Yarrow shipyard in 1885, she was transported in parts to Japan, where she was assembled and launched in 1887. The 165-foot (50 m) long vessel was armed with four 1-pounder (37 mm) quick-firing guns and six torpedo tubes, reached 19 knots (35 km/h), and at 203 tons, was the largest torpedo boat built to date. In her trials in 1889, Kotaka demonstrated that she could exceed the role of coastal defense, and was capable of accompanying larger warships on the high seas. The Yarrow shipyards, builder of the parts for Kotaka, \"considered Japan to have effectively invented the destroyer\".",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The German aviso Greif, launched in 1886, was designed as a \"Torpedojäger\" (torpedo hunter), intended to screen the fleet against attacks by torpedo boats. The ship was significantly larger than torpedo boats of the period, displacing some 2,266 t (2,230 long tons), with an armament of 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns and 3.7 cm (1.5 in) Hotchkiss revolver cannon.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The first vessel designed for the explicit purpose of hunting and destroying torpedo boats was the torpedo gunboat. Essentially very small cruisers, torpedo gunboats were equipped with torpedo tubes and an adequate gun armament, intended for hunting down smaller enemy boats. By the end of the 1890s, torpedo gunboats were made obsolete by their more successful contemporaries, the TBDs, which were much faster.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The first example of this was HMS Rattlesnake, designed by Nathaniel Barnaby in 1885, and commissioned in response to the Russian War scare. The gunboat was armed with torpedoes and designed for hunting and destroying smaller torpedo boats. Exactly 200 feet (61 m) long and 23 feet (7.0 m) in beam, she displaced 550 tons. Built of steel, Rattlesnake was unarmoured with the exception of a 3⁄4-inch protective deck. She was armed with a single 4-inch/25-pounder breech-loading gun, six 3-pounder QF guns and four 14-inch (360 mm) torpedo tubes, arranged with two fixed tubes at the bow and a set of torpedo-dropping carriages on either side. Four torpedo reloads were carried.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "A number of torpedo gunboat classes followed, including the Grasshopper class, the Sharpshooter class, the Alarm class, and the Dryad class – all built for the Royal Navy during the 1880s and the 1890s. In the 1880s, the Chilean Navy ordered the construction of two Almirante Lynch class torpedo gunboats from the British shipyard Laird Brothers, which specialized in the construction of this type of vessel. The novelty is that one of these Almirante Lynch-class torpedo boats managed to sink the ironclad Blanco Encalada with a self-propelled torpedoes in the Battle of Caldera Bay in 1891, thus surpassing its main function of hunting torpedo boats.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Fernando Villaamil, second officer of the Ministry of the Navy of Spain, designed his own torpedo gunboat to combat the threat from the torpedo boat. He asked several British shipyards to submit proposals capable of fulfilling these specifications. In 1885, the Spanish Navy chose the design submitted by the shipyard of James and George Thomson of Clydebank. Destructor (Destroyer in Spanish) was laid down at the end of the year, launched in 1886, and commissioned in 1887. Some authors considered her as the first destroyer ever built.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "She displaced 348 tons, and was the first warship equipped with twin triple-expansion engines generating 3,784 ihp (2,822 kW), for a maximum speed of 22.6 knots (41.9 km/h), which made her one of the faster ships in the world in 1888. She was armed with one 90 mm (3.5 in) Spanish-designed Hontoria breech-loading gun, four 57 mm (2.2 in) (6-pounder) Nordenfelt guns, two 37 mm (1.5 in) (3-pdr) Hotchkiss cannons and two 15-inch (38 cm) Schwartzkopff torpedo tubes. The ship carried three torpedoes per tube. She carried a crew of 60.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In terms of gunnery, speed, and dimensions, the specialised design to chase torpedo boats and her high-seas capabilities, Destructor was an important precursor to the TBD.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The first classes of ships to bear the formal designation TBD were the Daring class of two ships and Havock class of two ships of the Royal Navy.",
"title": "Development of modern destroyers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Early torpedo gunboat designs lacked the range and speed to keep up with the fleet they were supposed to protect. In 1892, the Third Sea Lord, Rear Admiral John \"Jacky\" Fisher ordered the development of a new type of ships equipped with the then-novel water-tube boilers and quick-firing small-calibre guns. Six ships to the specifications circulated by the admiralty were ordered initially, comprising three different designs each produced by a different shipbuilder: HMS Daring and HMS Decoy from John I. Thornycroft & Company, HMS Havock and HMS Hornet from Yarrows, and HMS Ferret and HMS Lynx from Laird, Son & Company.",
"title": "Development of modern destroyers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "These ships all featured a turtleback (i.e. rounded) forecastle that was characteristic of early British TBDs. HMS Daring and HMS Decoy were both built by Thornycroft, displaced 260 tons (287.8 tons full load), and were 185 feet in length. They were armed with one 12-pounder gun and three 6-pounder guns, with one fixed 18-in torpedo tube in the bow plus two more torpedo tubes on a revolving mount abaft the two funnels. Later, the bow torpedo tube was removed and two more 6-pounder guns added, instead. They produced 4,200 hp from a pair of Thornycroft water-tube boilers, giving them a top speed of 27 knots, giving the range and speed to travel effectively with a battle fleet. In common with subsequent early Thornycroft boats, they had sloping sterns and double rudders.",
"title": "Development of modern destroyers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The French navy, an extensive user of torpedo boats, built its first TBD in 1899, with the Durandal-class torpilleur d'escadre. The United States commissioned its first TBD, USS Bainbridge, Destroyer No. 1, in 1902, and by 1906, 16 destroyers were in service with the US Navy.",
"title": "Development of modern destroyers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Torpedo boat destroyer designs continued to evolve around the turn of the 20th century in several key ways. The first was the introduction of the steam turbine. The spectacular unauthorized demonstration of the turbine-powered Turbinia at the 1897 Spithead Navy Review, which, significantly, was of torpedo-boat size, prompted the Royal Navy to order a prototype turbine-powered destroyer, HMS Viper of 1899. This was the first turbine warship of any kind, and achieved a remarkable 34 knots (63 km/h; 39 mph) on sea trials. By 1910, the turbine had been widely adopted by all navies for their faster ships.",
"title": "Development of modern destroyers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The second development was the replacement of the torpedo boat-style turtleback foredeck by a raised forecastle for the new River-class destroyers built in 1903, which provided better sea-keeping and more space below deck.",
"title": "Development of modern destroyers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The first warship to use only fuel oil propulsion was the Royal Navy's TBD HMS Spiteful, after experiments in 1904, although the obsolescence of coal as a fuel in British warships was delayed by oil's availability. Other navies also adopted oil, for instance the USN with the Paulding class of 1909. In spite of all this variety, destroyers adopted a largely similar pattern. The hull was long and narrow, with a relatively shallow draft. The bow was either raised in a forecastle or covered under a turtleback; underneath this were the crew spaces, extending 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 the way along the hull. Aft of the crew spaces was as much engine space as the technology of the time would allow - several boilers and engines or turbines. Above deck, one or more quick-firing guns were mounted in the bows, in front of the bridge; several more were mounted amidships and astern. Two tube mountings (later on, multiple mountings) were generally found amidships.",
"title": "Development of modern destroyers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Between 1892 and 1914, destroyers became markedly larger; initially 275 tons with a length of 165 feet (50 m) for the Royal Navy's first Havock class of TBDs, up to the First World War with 300-foot (91 m) long destroyers displacing 1,000 tons was not unusual. Construction remained focused on putting the biggest possible engines into a small hull, though, resulting in a somewhat flimsy construction. Often, hulls were built of high-tensile steel only 1⁄8 in (3.2 mm) thick.",
"title": "Development of modern destroyers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "By 1910, the steam-driven displacement (that is, not hydroplaning) torpedo boat had become redundant as a separate type. Germany, nevertheless, continued to build such boats until the end of World War I, although these were effectively small coastal destroyers. In fact, Germany never distinguished between the two types, giving them pennant numbers in the same series and never giving names to destroyers. Ultimately, the term \"torpedo boat\" came to be attached to a quite different vessel – the very fast-hydroplaning, motor-driven motor torpedo boat.",
"title": "Development of modern destroyers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Navies originally built TBDrs to protect against torpedo boats, but admirals soon appreciated the flexibility of the fast, multipurpose vessels that resulted. Vice-Admiral Sir Baldwin Walker laid down destroyer duties for the Royal Navy:",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Early destroyers were extremely cramped places to live, being \"without a doubt magnificent fighting vessels... but unable to stand bad weather\". During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, the commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy TBD Akatsuki described \"being in command of a destroyer for a long period, especially in wartime... is not very good for the health\". Stating that he had originally been strong and healthy, he continued, \"life on a destroyer in winter, with bad food, no comforts, would sap the powers of the strongest men in the long run. A destroyer is always more uncomfortable than the others, and rain, snow, and sea-water combine to make them damp; in fact, in bad weather, there is not a dry spot where one can rest for a moment.\"",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Japanese destroyer-commander finished with, \"Yesterday, I looked at myself in a mirror for a long time; I was disagreeably surprised to see my face thin, full of wrinkles, and as old as though I were 50. My clothes (uniform) cover nothing but a skeleton, and my bones are full of rheumatism.\"",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1898, the US Navy officially classified USS Porter, a 175-foot (53 m) long all steel vessel displacing 165 tons, as a torpedo boat, but her commander, LT. John C. Fremont, described her as \"...a compact mass of machinery not meant to keep the sea nor to live in... as five-sevenths of the ship are taken up by machinery and fuel, whilst the remaining two-sevenths, fore and aft, are the crew's quarters; officers forward and the men placed aft. And even in those spaces are placed anchor engines, steering engines, steam pipes, etc. rendering them unbearably hot in tropical regions.\"",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The TBD's first major use in combat came during the Japanese surprise attack on the Russian fleet anchored in Port Arthur at the opening of the Russo-Japanese War on 8 February 1904.",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Three destroyer divisions attacked the Russian fleet in port, firing a total of 18 torpedoes, but only two Russian battleships, Tsesarevich and Retvizan, and a protected cruiser, Pallada, were seriously damaged due to the proper deployment of torpedo nets. Tsesarevich, the Russian flagship, had her nets deployed, with at least four enemy torpedoes \"hung up\" in them, and other warships were similarly saved from further damage by their nets.",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "While capital-ship engagements were scarce in World War I, destroyer units engaged almost continually in raiding and patrol actions. The first shot of the war at sea was fired on 5 August 1914 by HMS Lance, one of the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla, in an engagement with the German auxiliary minelayer Königin Luise.",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Destroyers were involved in the skirmishes that prompted the Battle of Heligoland Bight, and filled a range of roles in the Battle of Gallipoli, acting as troop transports and as fire-support vessels, as well as their fleet-screening role. Over 80 British destroyers and 60 German torpedo boats took part in the Battle of Jutland, which involved pitched small-boat actions between the main fleets, and several foolhardy attacks by unsupported destroyers on capital ships. Jutland also concluded with a messy night action between the German High Seas Fleet and part of the British destroyer screen.",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The threat evolved by World War I with the development of the submarine, or U-boat. The submarine had the potential to hide from gunfire and close underwater to fire torpedoes. Early-war destroyers had the speed and armament to intercept submarines before they submerged, either by gunfire or by ramming. Destroyers also had a shallow enough draft that they were difficult to hit with torpedoes.",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The desire to attack submarines under water led to rapid destroyer evolution during the war. They were quickly equipped with strengthened bows for ramming, and depth charges and hydrophones for identifying submarine targets. The first submarine casualty credited to a destroyer was the German U-19, rammed by HMS Badger on 29 October 1914. While U-19 was only damaged, the next month, HMS Garry successfully sank U-18. The first depth-charge sinking was on 4 December 1916, when UC-19 was sunk by HMS Llewellyn.",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The submarine threat meant that many destroyers spent their time on antisubmarine patrol. Once Germany adopted unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917, destroyers were called on to escort merchant convoys. US Navy destroyers were among the first American units to be dispatched upon the American entry to the war, and a squadron of Japanese destroyers even joined Allied patrols in the Mediterranean. Patrol duty was far from safe; of the 67 British destroyers lost in the war, collisions accounted for 18, while 12 were wrecked.",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "At the end of the war, the state-of-the-art was represented by the British W class.",
"title": "Early use and World War I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The trend during World War I had been towards larger destroyers with heavier armaments. A number of opportunities to fire at capital ships had been missed during the war, because destroyers had expended all their torpedoes in an initial salvo. The British V and W classes of the late war had sought to address this by mounting six torpedo tubes in two triple mounts, instead of the four or two on earlier models. The V and W classes set the standard of destroyer building well into the 1920s.",
"title": "1918–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Two Romanian destroyers Mărăști and Mărășești, though, had the greatest firepower of all destroyers in the world throughout the first half of the 1920s. This was largely because, between their commissioning in 1920 and 1926, they retained the armament that they had while serving in the Italian Navy as scout cruisers (esploratori). When initially ordered by Romania in 1913, the Romanian specifications envisioned three 120 mm guns, a caliber which would eventually be adopted as the standard for future Italian destroyers. Armed with three 152 mm and four 76 mm guns after being completed as scout cruisers, the two warships were officially re-rated as destroyers by the Romanian Navy. The two Romanian warships were thus the destroyers with the greatest firepower in the world throughout much of the interwar period. As of 1939, when the Second World War started, their artillery, although changed, was still close to cruiser standards, amounting to nine heavy naval guns (five of 120 mm and four of 76 mm). In addition, they retained their two twin 457 mm torpedo tubes and two machine guns, plus the capacity to carry up to 50 mines.",
"title": "1918–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The next major innovation came with the Japanese Fubuki class or \"special type\", designed in 1923 and delivered in 1928. The design was initially noted for its powerful armament of six 5-inch (127 mm) guns and three triple torpedo mounts. The second batch of the class gave the guns high-angle turrets for antiaircraft warfare, and the 24-inch (61 cm), oxygen-fueled Long Lance Type 93 torpedo. The later Hatsuharu class of 1931 further improved the torpedo armament by storing its reload torpedoes close at hand in the superstructure, allowing reloading within 15 minutes.",
"title": "1918–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Most other nations replied with similar larger ships. The US Porter class adopted twin 5-inch (127 mm) guns, and the subsequent Mahan class and Gridley classes (the latter of 1934) increased the number of torpedo tubes to 12 and 16, respectively.",
"title": "1918–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In the Mediterranean, the Italian Navy's building of very fast light cruisers of the Condottieri class prompted the French to produce exceptional destroyer designs. The French had long been keen on large destroyers, with their Chacal class of 1922 displacing over 2,000 tons and carrying 130 mm guns; a further three similar classes were produced around 1930. The Le Fantasque class of 1935 carried five 138 millimetres (5.4 in) guns and nine torpedo tubes, but could achieve speeds of 45 knots (83 km/h), which remains the record speed for a steamship and for any destroyer. The Italians' own destroyers were almost as swift; most Italian designs of the 1930s were rated at over 38 knots (70 km/h), while carrying torpedoes and either four or six 120 mm guns.",
"title": "1918–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Germany started to build destroyers again during the 1930s as part of Hitler's rearmament program. The Germans were also fond of large destroyers, but while the initial Type 1934 displaced over 3,000 tons, their armament was equal to smaller vessels. This changed from the Type 1936 onwards, which mounted heavy 150 millimetres (5.9 in) guns. German destroyers also used innovative high-pressure steam machinery; while this should have helped their efficiency, it more often resulted in mechanical problems.",
"title": "1918–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Once German and Japanese rearmament became clear, the British and American navies consciously focused on building destroyers that were smaller, but more numerous than those used by other nations. The British built a series of destroyers (the A class to I class), which were about 1,400 tons standard displacement, and had four 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns and eight torpedo tubes; the American Benson class of 1938 was similar in size, but carried five 5-inch (127 mm) guns and ten torpedo tubes. Realizing the need for heavier gun armament, the British built the Tribal class of 1936 (sometimes called Afridi after one of two lead ships). These ships displaced 1,850 tons and were armed with eight 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns in four twin turrets and four torpedo tubes. These were followed by the J-class and L-class destroyers, with six 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns in twin turrets and eight torpedo tubes.",
"title": "1918–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Antisubmarine sensors included sonar (or ASDIC), although training in their use was indifferent. Antisubmarine weapons changed little, and ahead-throwing weapons, a need recognized in World War I, had made no progress.",
"title": "1918–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "During the 1920s and 1930s, destroyers were often deployed to areas of diplomatic tension or humanitarian disaster. British and American destroyers were common on the Chinese coast and rivers, even supplying landing parties to protect colonial interests. By World War II, the threat had evolved once again. Submarines were more effective, and aircraft had become important weapons of naval warfare; once again the early-war fleet destroyers were ill-equipped for combating these new targets. They were fitted with new light antiaircraft guns, radar, and forward-launched ASW weapons, in addition to their existing dual-purpose guns, depth charges, and torpedoes. Increasing size allowed improved internal arrangement of propulsion machinery with compartmentation, so ships were less likely to be sunk by a single hit. In most cases torpedo and/or dual-purpose gun armament was reduced to accommodate new anti-air and anti-submarine weapons. By this time the destroyers had become large, multi-purpose vessels, expensive targets in their own right. As a result, casualties on destroyers were among the highest. In the US Navy, particularly in World War II, destroyers became known as tin cans due to their light armor compared to battleships and cruisers.",
"title": "1918–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The need for large numbers of antisubmarine ships led to the introduction of smaller and cheaper specialized antisubmarine warships called corvettes and frigates by the Royal Navy and destroyer escorts by the USN. A similar programme was belatedly started by the Japanese (see Matsu-class destroyer). These ships had the size and displacement of the original TBDs from which the contemporary destroyer had evolved.",
"title": "1918–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Some conventional destroyers completed in the late 1940s and 1950s were built on wartime experience. These vessels were significantly larger than wartime ships and had fully automatic main guns, unit machinery, radar, sonar, and antisubmarine weapons such as the squid mortar. Examples include the British Daring-class, US Forrest Sherman-class, and the Soviet Kotlin-class destroyers.",
"title": "Post-World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Some World War II–vintage ships were modernized for antisubmarine warfare, and to extend their service lives, to avoid having to build (expensive) brand-new ships. Examples include the US FRAM I programme and the British Type 15 frigates converted from fleet destroyers.",
"title": "Post-World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The advent of surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-surface missiles, such as the Exocet, in the early 1960s changed naval warfare. Guided missile destroyers (DDG in the US Navy) were developed to carry these weapons and protect the fleet from air, submarine, and surface threats. Examples include the Soviet Kashin class, the British County class, and the US Charles F. Adams class.",
"title": "Post-World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The 21st century destroyers tend to display features such as large, slab sides without complicated corners and crevices to keep the radar cross-section small, vertical launch systems to carry a large number of missiles at high readiness to fire, and helicopter flight decks and hangars.",
"title": "Post-World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "A number of countries have destroyers preserved as museum ships. These include:",
"title": "Preserved destroyers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Media related to Destroyers at Wikimedia Commons",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort
larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were originally conceived in 1885 by Fernando Villaamil for the Spanish Navy as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these "torpedo boat destroyers" (TBDs) were "large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats". Although the term "destroyer" had been used interchangeably with "TBD" and "torpedo boat destroyer" by navies since 1892, the term "torpedo boat destroyer" had been generally shortened to simply "destroyer" by nearly all navies by the First World War. Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels with little endurance for unattended ocean operations; typically, a number of destroyers and a single destroyer tender operated together. After the war, destroyers grew in size. The American Allen M. Sumner-class destroyers had a displacement of 2,200 tons, while the Arleigh Burke class has a displacement of up to 9,600 tons, a difference of nearly 340%. Moreover, the advent of guided missiles allowed destroyers to take on the surface-combatant roles previously filled by battleships and cruisers. This resulted in larger and more powerful guided-missile destroyers more capable of independent operation. At the start of the 21st century, destroyers are the global standard for surface-combatant ships, with only two nations officially operating the heavier cruisers, with no battleships or true battlecruisers remaining. Modern guided-missile destroyers are equivalent in tonnage but vastly superior in firepower to cruisers of the World War II era, and are capable of carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. At 510 feet (160 m) long, a displacement of 9,200 tons, and with an armament of more than 90 missiles, guided-missile destroyers such as the Arleigh Burke class are actually larger and more heavily armed than most previous ships classified as guided-missile cruisers. The Chinese Type 055 destroyer has been described as a cruiser in some US Navy reports due to its size and armament. Some NATO navies, such as the Canadian, French, Spanish, Dutch, and German, use the term "frigate" for their destroyers, which leads to some confusion. | 2001-11-06T19:14:27Z | 2023-12-28T23:18:50Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyer |
8,781 | Dorothy Parker | Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, wit, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her caustic wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.
From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary works published in magazines, such as The New Yorker, and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics resulted in her being placed on the Hollywood blacklist.
Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker". Nevertheless, both her literary output and reputation for sharp wit have endured. Some of her works have been set to music.
Also known as Dot or Dottie, Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild in 1893 to Jacob Henry Rothschild and his wife Eliza Annie (née Marston) (1851–1898) at 732 Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, New Jersey. Parker wrote in her essay "My Home Town" that her parents returned from their summer beach cottage there to their Manhattan apartment shortly after Labor Day (September 4) so that she could be called a true New Yorker.
Parker's mother was of Scottish descent. Her father was the son of Sampson Jacob Rothschild (1818–1899) and Mary Greissman (b. 1824), both Prussian-born Jews. Sampson Jacob Rothschild was a merchant who immigrated to the United States around 1846, settling in Monroe County, Alabama. Dorothy's father was one of five known siblings: Simon (1854–1908); Samuel (b. 1857); Hannah (1860–1911), later Mrs. William Henry Theobald; and Martin, born in Manhattan on December 12, 1865, who perished in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
Her mother died in Manhattan in July 1898, a month before Parker's fifth birthday. Her father remarried in 1900 to Eleanor Frances Lewis (1851–1903), a Protestant.
Parker has been said to have hated her father, who allegedly physically abused her, and her stepmother, whom she is said to have refused to call "mother", "stepmother", or "Eleanor", instead referring to her as "the housekeeper". However, her biographer Marion Meade refers to this account as "largely false", stating that the atmosphere in which Parker grew up was indulgent, affectionate, supportive and generous.
Parker grew up on the Upper West Side and attended a Roman Catholic elementary school at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament on West 79th Street with her sister, Helen, and classmade Mercedes de Acosta. Parker once joked that she was asked to leave following her characterization of the Immaculate Conception as "spontaneous combustion".
Her stepmother died in 1903, when Parker was nine. Parker later attended Miss Dana's School, a finishing school in Morristown, New Jersey. She graduated in 1911, at the age of 18, according to Kinney, just before the school closed, although Rhonda Pettit and Marion Meade state she never graduated from high school. Following her father's death in 1913, she played piano at a dancing school to earn a living while she worked on her poetry.
She sold her first poem to Vanity Fair magazine in 1914 and some months later was hired as an editorial assistant for Vogue, another Condé Nast magazine. She moved to Vanity Fair as a staff writer after two years at Vogue.
In 1917, she met a Wall Street stockbroker, Edwin Pond Parker II (1893–1933) and they married before he left to serve in World War I with the U.S. Army 4th Division. She filed for divorce in 1928. Dorothy retained her married name Parker, though she remarried to Alan Campbell, screenwriter and former actor, in 1934, and moved to Hollywood.
Parker's career took off in 1918 while she was writing theater criticism for Vanity Fair, filling in for the vacationing P. G. Wodehouse. At the magazine, she met Robert Benchley, who became a close friend, and Robert E. Sherwood. The trio began lunching at the Algonquin Hotel almost daily and became founding members of what became known as the Algonquin Round Table. This numbered among its members the newspaper columnists Franklin P. Adams and Alexander Woollcott, as well as the editor Harold Ross, the novelist Edna Ferber, the reporter Heywood Broun, and the comedian Harpo Marx. Through their publication of her lunchtime remarks and short verses, particularly in Adams' column "The Conning Tower", Parker began developing a national reputation as a wit.
Parker's caustic wit as a critic initially proved popular, but she was eventually dismissed by Vanity Fair on January 11, 1920 after her criticisms had too often offended the playwright–producer David Belasco, the actor Billie Burke, the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, and others. Benchley resigned in protest. (Sherwood is sometimes reported to have done so too, but in fact had been fired in December 1919.) Parker soon started working for Ainslee's Magazine, which had a higher circulation. She also published pieces in Vanity Fair, which was happier to publish her than employ her, The Smart Set, and The American Mercury, but also in the popular Ladies’ Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, and Life.
When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, Parker and Benchley were part of a board of editors he established to allay the concerns of his investors. Parker's first piece for the magazine was published in its second issue. She became famous for her short, viciously humorous poems, many highlighting ludicrous aspects of her many (largely unsuccessful) romantic affairs and others wistfully considering the appeal of suicide.
The next 15 years were Parker's period of greatest productivity and success. In the 1920s alone she published some 300 poems and free verses in Vanity Fair, Vogue, "The Conning Tower" and The New Yorker as well as Life, McCall's and The New Republic. Her poem "Song in a Minor Key" was published during a candid interview with New York N.E.A. writer Josephine van der Grift.
Parker published her first volume of poetry, Enough Rope, in 1926. It sold 47,000 copies and garnered impressive reviews. The Nation described her verse as "caked with a salty humor, rough with splinters of disillusion, and tarred with a bright black authenticity". Although some critics, notably The New York Times' reviewer, dismissed her work as "flapper verse", the book helped Parker's reputation for sparkling wit. She released two more volumes of verse, Sunset Gun (1928) and Death and Taxes (1931), along with the short story collections Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1933). Not So Deep as a Well (1936) collected much of the material previously published in Rope, Gun, and Death; and she re-released her fiction with a few new pieces in 1939 as Here Lies.
Parker collaborated with playwright Elmer Rice to create Close Harmony, which ran on Broadway in December 1924. The play was well received in out-of-town previews and favorably reviewed in New York, but it closed after only 24 performances. As The Lady Next Door, it became a successful touring production.
Some of Parker's most popular work was published in The New Yorker in the form of acerbic book reviews under the byline "Constant Reader". Her response to the whimsy of A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner was "Tonstant Weader fwowed up." Her reviews appeared semi-regularly from 1927 to 1933, were widely read, and were posthumously published in 1970 in a collection titled Constant Reader.
Her best-known short story, "Big Blonde", published in The Bookman, was awarded the O. Henry Award as the best short story of 1929. Her short stories, though often witty, were also spare and incisive, and more bittersweet than comic; her poetry has been described as sardonic.
Parker eventually separated from her husband Edwin Parker, divorcing in 1928. She had a number of affairs, her lovers including reporter-turned-playwright Charles MacArthur and the publisher Seward Collins. Her relationship with MacArthur resulted in a pregnancy. Parker is alleged to have said, "how like me, to put all my eggs into one bastard”. She had an abortion, and fell into a depression that culminated in her first attempt at suicide.
Toward the end of this period, Parker began to become more politically aware and active. What would become a lifelong commitment to activism began in 1927, when she became concerned about the pending executions of Sacco and Vanzetti. Parker traveled to Boston to protest the proceedings. She and fellow Round Tabler Ruth Hale were arrested, and Parker eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of "loitering and sauntering", paying a $5 fine.
In 1932, Parker met Alan Campbell, an actor hoping to become a screenwriter. They married two years later in Raton, New Mexico. Campbell's mixed parentage was the reverse of Parker's: he had a German-Jewish mother and a Scottish father. She learned that he was bisexual and later proclaimed in public that he was "queer as a billy goat". The pair moved to Hollywood and signed ten-week contracts with Paramount Pictures, with Campbell (also expected to act) earning $250 per week and Parker earning $1,000 per week. They would eventually earn $2,000 and sometimes more than $5,000 per week as freelancers for various studios. She and Campbell "[received] writing credit for over 15 films between 1934 and 1941".
In 1933, when informed that famously taciturn former president Calvin Coolidge had died, Parker remarked, "How could they tell?"
In 1935, Parker contributed lyrics for the song "I Wished on the Moon", with music by Ralph Rainger. The song was introduced in The Big Broadcast of 1936 by Bing Crosby.
With Campbell and Robert Carson, she wrote the script for the 1937 film A Star Is Born, for which they were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing—Screenplay. She wrote additional dialogue for The Little Foxes in 1941. Together with Frank Cavett, she received a "Writing (Motion Picture Story)" Oscar nomination for Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947), starring Susan Hayward.
After the United States entered the Second World War, Parker and Alexander Woollcott collaborated to produce an anthology of her work as part of a series published by Viking Press for servicemen stationed overseas. With an introduction by W. Somerset Maugham, the volume compiled over two dozen of Parker's short stories, along with selected poems from Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, and Death and Taxes. It was published in the United States in 1944 as The Portable Dorothy Parker. Hers is one of three volumes in the Portable series, including volumes devoted to William Shakespeare and the Bible, that had remained in continuous print as of 1976.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Parker became an increasingly vocal advocate of civil liberties and civil rights and a frequent critic of authority figures. During the Great Depression, she was among numerous American intellectuals and artists who became involved in related social movements. She reported in 1937 on the Loyalist cause in Spain for the Communist magazine New Masses. At the behest of Otto Katz, a covert Soviet Comintern agent and operative of German Communist Party agent Willi Münzenberg, Parker helped to found the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in 1936, which the FBI suspected of being a Communist Party front. The League's membership eventually grew to around 4,000. According to David Caute, its often wealthy members were "able to contribute as much to [Communist] Party funds as the whole American working class", although they may not have been intending to support the Party cause.
Parker also chaired the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee's fundraising arm, "Spanish Refugee Appeal". She organized Project Rescue Ship to transport Loyalist veterans to Mexico, headed Spanish Children's Relief, and lent her name to many other left-wing causes and organizations. Her former Round Table friends saw less and less of her, and her relationship with Robert Benchley became particularly strained (although they would reconcile). Parker met S. J. Perelman at a party in 1932 and, despite a rocky start (Perelman called it "a scarifying ordeal"), they remained friends for the next 35 years. They became neighbors when the Perelmans helped Parker and Campbell buy a run-down farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, near New Hope, a popular summer destination among many writers and artists from New York.
Parker was listed as a Communist by the publication Red Channels in 1950. The FBI compiled a 1,000-page dossier on her because of her suspected involvement in Communism during the era when Senator Joseph McCarthy was raising alarms about communists in government and Hollywood. As a result, movie studio bosses placed her on the Hollywood blacklist. Her final screenplay was The Fan, a 1949 adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, directed by Otto Preminger.
Her marriage to Campbell was tempestuous, with tensions exacerbated by Parker's increasing alcohol consumption and Campbell's long-term affair with a married woman in Europe during World War II. They divorced in 1947, remarried in 1950, then separated in 1952 when Parker moved back to New York. From 1957 to 1962, she wrote book reviews for Esquire. Her writing became increasingly erratic owing to her continued abuse of alcohol. She returned to Hollywood in 1961, reconciled with Campbell, and collaborated with him on a number of unproduced projects until Campbell died from a drug overdose in 1963.
Following Campbell's death, Parker returned to New York City and the Volney residential hotel. In her later years, she denigrated the Algonquin Round Table, although it had brought her such early notoriety:
These were no giants. Think who was writing in those days—Lardner, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway. Those were the real giants. The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them ... There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didn't have to be any truth ...
Parker occasionally participated in radio programs, including Information Please (as a guest) and Author, Author (as a regular panelist). She wrote for the Columbia Workshop, and both Ilka Chase and Tallulah Bankhead used her material for radio monologues.
Parker died on June 7, 1967, of a heart attack at the age of 73. In her will, she bequeathed her estate to Martin Luther King Jr., and upon King's death, to the NAACP. At the time of her death, she was living at the Volney residential hotel on East 74th Street.
Following her cremation, Parker's ashes were unclaimed for several years. Finally, in 1973, the crematorium sent them to her lawyer's office; by then he had retired, and the ashes remained in his colleague Paul O'Dwyer's filing cabinet for about 17 years. In 1988, O'Dwyer brought this to public attention, with the aid of celebrity columnist Liz Smith; after some discussion, the NAACP claimed Parker's remains and designed a memorial garden for them outside its Baltimore headquarters. The plaque read:
Here lie the ashes of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) humorist, writer, critic. Defender of human and civil rights. For her epitaph she suggested, 'Excuse my dust'. This memorial garden is dedicated to her noble spirit which celebrated the oneness of humankind and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people. Dedicated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. October 28, 1988.
In early 2020, the NAACP moved its headquarters to downtown Baltimore and how this might affect Parker's ashes became the topic of much speculation, especially after the NAACP formally announced it would later move to Washington, D.C.
The NAACP restated that Parker's ashes would ultimately be where her family wished. "It’s important to us that we do this right," said the NAACP.
Relatives called for the ashes to be moved to the family's plot in Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx, where a place had been reserved for Parker by her father. On August 18, 2020, Parker's urn was exhumed. "Two executives from the N.A.A.C.P. spoke, and a rabbi who had attended her initial burial said Kaddish." On August 22, 2020, Parker was re-buried privately in Woodlawn, with the possibility of a more public ceremony later. "Her legacy means a lot," added representatives from the NAACP.
On August 22, 1992, the 99th anniversary of Parker's birth, the United States Postal Service issued a 29¢ U.S. commemorative postage stamp in the Literary Arts series. The Algonquin Round Table, as well as the number of other literary and theatrical greats who lodged at the hotel, contributed to the Algonquin Hotel's being designated in 1987 as a New York City Historic Landmark. In 1996, the hotel was designated as a National Literary Landmark by the Friends of Libraries USA, based on the contributions of Parker and other members of the Round Table. The organization's bronze plaque is attached to the front of the hotel. Parker's birthplace at the Jersey Shore was also designated a National Literary Landmark by Friends of Libraries USA in 2005 and a bronze plaque marks the former site of her family house.
In 2014, Parker was elected to the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
Parker inspired a number of fictional characters in several plays of her day. These included "Lily Malone" in Philip Barry's Hotel Universe (1932), "Mary Hilliard" (played by Ruth Gordon) in George Oppenheimer's Here Today (1932), "Paula Wharton" in Gordon's 1944 play Over Twenty-one (directed by George S. Kaufman), and "Julia Glenn" in the Kaufman–Moss Hart collaboration Merrily We Roll Along (1934). Kaufman's representation of her in Merrily We Roll Along led Parker, once his Round Table compatriot, to despise him. She also was portrayed as "Daisy Lester" in Charles Brackett's 1934 novel Entirely Surrounded. She is mentioned in the original introductory lyrics in Cole Porter's song "Just One of Those Things" from the 1935 Broadway musical Jubilee, which have been retained in the standard interpretation of the song as part of the Great American Songbook.
Parker is a character in the novel The Dorothy Parker Murder Case by George Baxt (1984), in a series of Algonquin Round Table Mysteries by J. J. Murphy (2011– ), and in Ellen Meister's novel Farewell, Dorothy Parker (2013). She is the main character in "Love For Miss Dottie", a short story by Larry N Mayer, which was selected by writer Mary Gaitskill for the collection Best New American Voices 2009 (Harcourt).
She has been portrayed on film and television by Dolores Sutton in F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1976), Rosemary Murphy in Julia (1977), Bebe Neuwirth in Dash and Lilly (1999), and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994). Neuwirth was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance, and Leigh received a number of awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination.
Television creator Amy Sherman-Palladino named her production company 'Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions' in tribute to Parker.
Tucson actress Lesley Abrams wrote and performed the one-woman show Dorothy Parker's Last Call in 2009 in Tucson, Arizona, presented by the Winding Road Theater Ensemble. She reprised the role at the Live Theatre Workshop in Tucson in 2014. The play was selected to be part of the Capital Fringe Festival in DC in 2010.
In 2018, American drag queen Miz Cracker played Parker in the celebrity-impersonation game show episode of the Season 10 of Rupaul's Drag Race.
In the 2018 film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (based on the 2008 memoir of the same name), Melissa McCarthy plays Lee Israel, an author who for a time forged original letters in Dorothy Parker's name.
In the 2010s some of her poems from the early 20th century have been set to music by the composer Marcus Paus as the operatic song cycle Hate Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Orchestra (2014); Paus's Hate Songs was described by musicologist Ralph P. Locke as "one of the most engaging works" in recent years; "the cycle expresses Parker's favorite theme: how awful human beings are, especially the male of the species".
With the authorization of the NAACP, lyrics taken from her book of poetry Not So Deep as a Well were used in 2014 by Canadian singer Myriam Gendron to create a folk album of the same title. Also in 2014, Chicago jazz bassist/singer/composer Katie Ernst issued her album Little Words, consisting of her authorized settings of seven of Parker's poems.
In 2021 her book Men I'm Not Married To was adapted as an opera of the same name by composer Lisa DeSpain and librettist Rachel J. Peters. It premiered virtually as part of Operas in Place and Virtual Festival of New Operas commissioned by Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Voice Performance, Cleveland Opera Theater, and On Site Opera on February 18, 2021. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, wit, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her caustic wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary works published in magazines, such as The New Yorker, and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics resulted in her being placed on the Hollywood blacklist.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a \"wisecracker\". Nevertheless, both her literary output and reputation for sharp wit have endured. Some of her works have been set to music.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Also known as Dot or Dottie, Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild in 1893 to Jacob Henry Rothschild and his wife Eliza Annie (née Marston) (1851–1898) at 732 Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, New Jersey. Parker wrote in her essay \"My Home Town\" that her parents returned from their summer beach cottage there to their Manhattan apartment shortly after Labor Day (September 4) so that she could be called a true New Yorker.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Parker's mother was of Scottish descent. Her father was the son of Sampson Jacob Rothschild (1818–1899) and Mary Greissman (b. 1824), both Prussian-born Jews. Sampson Jacob Rothschild was a merchant who immigrated to the United States around 1846, settling in Monroe County, Alabama. Dorothy's father was one of five known siblings: Simon (1854–1908); Samuel (b. 1857); Hannah (1860–1911), later Mrs. William Henry Theobald; and Martin, born in Manhattan on December 12, 1865, who perished in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Her mother died in Manhattan in July 1898, a month before Parker's fifth birthday. Her father remarried in 1900 to Eleanor Frances Lewis (1851–1903), a Protestant.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Parker has been said to have hated her father, who allegedly physically abused her, and her stepmother, whom she is said to have refused to call \"mother\", \"stepmother\", or \"Eleanor\", instead referring to her as \"the housekeeper\". However, her biographer Marion Meade refers to this account as \"largely false\", stating that the atmosphere in which Parker grew up was indulgent, affectionate, supportive and generous.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Parker grew up on the Upper West Side and attended a Roman Catholic elementary school at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament on West 79th Street with her sister, Helen, and classmade Mercedes de Acosta. Parker once joked that she was asked to leave following her characterization of the Immaculate Conception as \"spontaneous combustion\".",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Her stepmother died in 1903, when Parker was nine. Parker later attended Miss Dana's School, a finishing school in Morristown, New Jersey. She graduated in 1911, at the age of 18, according to Kinney, just before the school closed, although Rhonda Pettit and Marion Meade state she never graduated from high school. Following her father's death in 1913, she played piano at a dancing school to earn a living while she worked on her poetry.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "She sold her first poem to Vanity Fair magazine in 1914 and some months later was hired as an editorial assistant for Vogue, another Condé Nast magazine. She moved to Vanity Fair as a staff writer after two years at Vogue.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1917, she met a Wall Street stockbroker, Edwin Pond Parker II (1893–1933) and they married before he left to serve in World War I with the U.S. Army 4th Division. She filed for divorce in 1928. Dorothy retained her married name Parker, though she remarried to Alan Campbell, screenwriter and former actor, in 1934, and moved to Hollywood.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Parker's career took off in 1918 while she was writing theater criticism for Vanity Fair, filling in for the vacationing P. G. Wodehouse. At the magazine, she met Robert Benchley, who became a close friend, and Robert E. Sherwood. The trio began lunching at the Algonquin Hotel almost daily and became founding members of what became known as the Algonquin Round Table. This numbered among its members the newspaper columnists Franklin P. Adams and Alexander Woollcott, as well as the editor Harold Ross, the novelist Edna Ferber, the reporter Heywood Broun, and the comedian Harpo Marx. Through their publication of her lunchtime remarks and short verses, particularly in Adams' column \"The Conning Tower\", Parker began developing a national reputation as a wit.",
"title": "Algonquin Round Table years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Parker's caustic wit as a critic initially proved popular, but she was eventually dismissed by Vanity Fair on January 11, 1920 after her criticisms had too often offended the playwright–producer David Belasco, the actor Billie Burke, the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, and others. Benchley resigned in protest. (Sherwood is sometimes reported to have done so too, but in fact had been fired in December 1919.) Parker soon started working for Ainslee's Magazine, which had a higher circulation. She also published pieces in Vanity Fair, which was happier to publish her than employ her, The Smart Set, and The American Mercury, but also in the popular Ladies’ Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, and Life.",
"title": "Algonquin Round Table years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, Parker and Benchley were part of a board of editors he established to allay the concerns of his investors. Parker's first piece for the magazine was published in its second issue. She became famous for her short, viciously humorous poems, many highlighting ludicrous aspects of her many (largely unsuccessful) romantic affairs and others wistfully considering the appeal of suicide.",
"title": "Algonquin Round Table years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The next 15 years were Parker's period of greatest productivity and success. In the 1920s alone she published some 300 poems and free verses in Vanity Fair, Vogue, \"The Conning Tower\" and The New Yorker as well as Life, McCall's and The New Republic. Her poem \"Song in a Minor Key\" was published during a candid interview with New York N.E.A. writer Josephine van der Grift.",
"title": "Algonquin Round Table years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Parker published her first volume of poetry, Enough Rope, in 1926. It sold 47,000 copies and garnered impressive reviews. The Nation described her verse as \"caked with a salty humor, rough with splinters of disillusion, and tarred with a bright black authenticity\". Although some critics, notably The New York Times' reviewer, dismissed her work as \"flapper verse\", the book helped Parker's reputation for sparkling wit. She released two more volumes of verse, Sunset Gun (1928) and Death and Taxes (1931), along with the short story collections Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1933). Not So Deep as a Well (1936) collected much of the material previously published in Rope, Gun, and Death; and she re-released her fiction with a few new pieces in 1939 as Here Lies.",
"title": "Algonquin Round Table years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Parker collaborated with playwright Elmer Rice to create Close Harmony, which ran on Broadway in December 1924. The play was well received in out-of-town previews and favorably reviewed in New York, but it closed after only 24 performances. As The Lady Next Door, it became a successful touring production.",
"title": "Algonquin Round Table years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Some of Parker's most popular work was published in The New Yorker in the form of acerbic book reviews under the byline \"Constant Reader\". Her response to the whimsy of A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner was \"Tonstant Weader fwowed up.\" Her reviews appeared semi-regularly from 1927 to 1933, were widely read, and were posthumously published in 1970 in a collection titled Constant Reader.",
"title": "Algonquin Round Table years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Her best-known short story, \"Big Blonde\", published in The Bookman, was awarded the O. Henry Award as the best short story of 1929. Her short stories, though often witty, were also spare and incisive, and more bittersweet than comic; her poetry has been described as sardonic.",
"title": "Algonquin Round Table years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Parker eventually separated from her husband Edwin Parker, divorcing in 1928. She had a number of affairs, her lovers including reporter-turned-playwright Charles MacArthur and the publisher Seward Collins. Her relationship with MacArthur resulted in a pregnancy. Parker is alleged to have said, \"how like me, to put all my eggs into one bastard”. She had an abortion, and fell into a depression that culminated in her first attempt at suicide.",
"title": "Algonquin Round Table years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Toward the end of this period, Parker began to become more politically aware and active. What would become a lifelong commitment to activism began in 1927, when she became concerned about the pending executions of Sacco and Vanzetti. Parker traveled to Boston to protest the proceedings. She and fellow Round Tabler Ruth Hale were arrested, and Parker eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of \"loitering and sauntering\", paying a $5 fine.",
"title": "Algonquin Round Table years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1932, Parker met Alan Campbell, an actor hoping to become a screenwriter. They married two years later in Raton, New Mexico. Campbell's mixed parentage was the reverse of Parker's: he had a German-Jewish mother and a Scottish father. She learned that he was bisexual and later proclaimed in public that he was \"queer as a billy goat\". The pair moved to Hollywood and signed ten-week contracts with Paramount Pictures, with Campbell (also expected to act) earning $250 per week and Parker earning $1,000 per week. They would eventually earn $2,000 and sometimes more than $5,000 per week as freelancers for various studios. She and Campbell \"[received] writing credit for over 15 films between 1934 and 1941\".",
"title": "Hollywood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1933, when informed that famously taciturn former president Calvin Coolidge had died, Parker remarked, \"How could they tell?\"",
"title": "Hollywood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1935, Parker contributed lyrics for the song \"I Wished on the Moon\", with music by Ralph Rainger. The song was introduced in The Big Broadcast of 1936 by Bing Crosby.",
"title": "Hollywood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "With Campbell and Robert Carson, she wrote the script for the 1937 film A Star Is Born, for which they were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing—Screenplay. She wrote additional dialogue for The Little Foxes in 1941. Together with Frank Cavett, she received a \"Writing (Motion Picture Story)\" Oscar nomination for Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947), starring Susan Hayward.",
"title": "Hollywood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "After the United States entered the Second World War, Parker and Alexander Woollcott collaborated to produce an anthology of her work as part of a series published by Viking Press for servicemen stationed overseas. With an introduction by W. Somerset Maugham, the volume compiled over two dozen of Parker's short stories, along with selected poems from Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, and Death and Taxes. It was published in the United States in 1944 as The Portable Dorothy Parker. Hers is one of three volumes in the Portable series, including volumes devoted to William Shakespeare and the Bible, that had remained in continuous print as of 1976.",
"title": "Hollywood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "During the 1930s and 1940s, Parker became an increasingly vocal advocate of civil liberties and civil rights and a frequent critic of authority figures. During the Great Depression, she was among numerous American intellectuals and artists who became involved in related social movements. She reported in 1937 on the Loyalist cause in Spain for the Communist magazine New Masses. At the behest of Otto Katz, a covert Soviet Comintern agent and operative of German Communist Party agent Willi Münzenberg, Parker helped to found the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in 1936, which the FBI suspected of being a Communist Party front. The League's membership eventually grew to around 4,000. According to David Caute, its often wealthy members were \"able to contribute as much to [Communist] Party funds as the whole American working class\", although they may not have been intending to support the Party cause.",
"title": "Hollywood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Parker also chaired the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee's fundraising arm, \"Spanish Refugee Appeal\". She organized Project Rescue Ship to transport Loyalist veterans to Mexico, headed Spanish Children's Relief, and lent her name to many other left-wing causes and organizations. Her former Round Table friends saw less and less of her, and her relationship with Robert Benchley became particularly strained (although they would reconcile). Parker met S. J. Perelman at a party in 1932 and, despite a rocky start (Perelman called it \"a scarifying ordeal\"), they remained friends for the next 35 years. They became neighbors when the Perelmans helped Parker and Campbell buy a run-down farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, near New Hope, a popular summer destination among many writers and artists from New York.",
"title": "Hollywood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Parker was listed as a Communist by the publication Red Channels in 1950. The FBI compiled a 1,000-page dossier on her because of her suspected involvement in Communism during the era when Senator Joseph McCarthy was raising alarms about communists in government and Hollywood. As a result, movie studio bosses placed her on the Hollywood blacklist. Her final screenplay was The Fan, a 1949 adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, directed by Otto Preminger.",
"title": "Hollywood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Her marriage to Campbell was tempestuous, with tensions exacerbated by Parker's increasing alcohol consumption and Campbell's long-term affair with a married woman in Europe during World War II. They divorced in 1947, remarried in 1950, then separated in 1952 when Parker moved back to New York. From 1957 to 1962, she wrote book reviews for Esquire. Her writing became increasingly erratic owing to her continued abuse of alcohol. She returned to Hollywood in 1961, reconciled with Campbell, and collaborated with him on a number of unproduced projects until Campbell died from a drug overdose in 1963.",
"title": "Hollywood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Following Campbell's death, Parker returned to New York City and the Volney residential hotel. In her later years, she denigrated the Algonquin Round Table, although it had brought her such early notoriety:",
"title": "Later life and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "These were no giants. Think who was writing in those days—Lardner, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway. Those were the real giants. The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them ... There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didn't have to be any truth ...",
"title": "Later life and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Parker occasionally participated in radio programs, including Information Please (as a guest) and Author, Author (as a regular panelist). She wrote for the Columbia Workshop, and both Ilka Chase and Tallulah Bankhead used her material for radio monologues.",
"title": "Later life and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Parker died on June 7, 1967, of a heart attack at the age of 73. In her will, she bequeathed her estate to Martin Luther King Jr., and upon King's death, to the NAACP. At the time of her death, she was living at the Volney residential hotel on East 74th Street.",
"title": "Later life and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Following her cremation, Parker's ashes were unclaimed for several years. Finally, in 1973, the crematorium sent them to her lawyer's office; by then he had retired, and the ashes remained in his colleague Paul O'Dwyer's filing cabinet for about 17 years. In 1988, O'Dwyer brought this to public attention, with the aid of celebrity columnist Liz Smith; after some discussion, the NAACP claimed Parker's remains and designed a memorial garden for them outside its Baltimore headquarters. The plaque read:",
"title": "Later life and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Here lie the ashes of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) humorist, writer, critic. Defender of human and civil rights. For her epitaph she suggested, 'Excuse my dust'. This memorial garden is dedicated to her noble spirit which celebrated the oneness of humankind and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people. Dedicated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. October 28, 1988.",
"title": "Later life and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In early 2020, the NAACP moved its headquarters to downtown Baltimore and how this might affect Parker's ashes became the topic of much speculation, especially after the NAACP formally announced it would later move to Washington, D.C.",
"title": "Later life and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The NAACP restated that Parker's ashes would ultimately be where her family wished. \"It’s important to us that we do this right,\" said the NAACP.",
"title": "Later life and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Relatives called for the ashes to be moved to the family's plot in Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx, where a place had been reserved for Parker by her father. On August 18, 2020, Parker's urn was exhumed. \"Two executives from the N.A.A.C.P. spoke, and a rabbi who had attended her initial burial said Kaddish.\" On August 22, 2020, Parker was re-buried privately in Woodlawn, with the possibility of a more public ceremony later. \"Her legacy means a lot,\" added representatives from the NAACP.",
"title": "Later life and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On August 22, 1992, the 99th anniversary of Parker's birth, the United States Postal Service issued a 29¢ U.S. commemorative postage stamp in the Literary Arts series. The Algonquin Round Table, as well as the number of other literary and theatrical greats who lodged at the hotel, contributed to the Algonquin Hotel's being designated in 1987 as a New York City Historic Landmark. In 1996, the hotel was designated as a National Literary Landmark by the Friends of Libraries USA, based on the contributions of Parker and other members of the Round Table. The organization's bronze plaque is attached to the front of the hotel. Parker's birthplace at the Jersey Shore was also designated a National Literary Landmark by Friends of Libraries USA in 2005 and a bronze plaque marks the former site of her family house.",
"title": "Honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 2014, Parker was elected to the New Jersey Hall of Fame.",
"title": "Honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Parker inspired a number of fictional characters in several plays of her day. These included \"Lily Malone\" in Philip Barry's Hotel Universe (1932), \"Mary Hilliard\" (played by Ruth Gordon) in George Oppenheimer's Here Today (1932), \"Paula Wharton\" in Gordon's 1944 play Over Twenty-one (directed by George S. Kaufman), and \"Julia Glenn\" in the Kaufman–Moss Hart collaboration Merrily We Roll Along (1934). Kaufman's representation of her in Merrily We Roll Along led Parker, once his Round Table compatriot, to despise him. She also was portrayed as \"Daisy Lester\" in Charles Brackett's 1934 novel Entirely Surrounded. She is mentioned in the original introductory lyrics in Cole Porter's song \"Just One of Those Things\" from the 1935 Broadway musical Jubilee, which have been retained in the standard interpretation of the song as part of the Great American Songbook.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Parker is a character in the novel The Dorothy Parker Murder Case by George Baxt (1984), in a series of Algonquin Round Table Mysteries by J. J. Murphy (2011– ), and in Ellen Meister's novel Farewell, Dorothy Parker (2013). She is the main character in \"Love For Miss Dottie\", a short story by Larry N Mayer, which was selected by writer Mary Gaitskill for the collection Best New American Voices 2009 (Harcourt).",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "She has been portrayed on film and television by Dolores Sutton in F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1976), Rosemary Murphy in Julia (1977), Bebe Neuwirth in Dash and Lilly (1999), and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994). Neuwirth was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance, and Leigh received a number of awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Television creator Amy Sherman-Palladino named her production company 'Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions' in tribute to Parker.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Tucson actress Lesley Abrams wrote and performed the one-woman show Dorothy Parker's Last Call in 2009 in Tucson, Arizona, presented by the Winding Road Theater Ensemble. She reprised the role at the Live Theatre Workshop in Tucson in 2014. The play was selected to be part of the Capital Fringe Festival in DC in 2010.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In 2018, American drag queen Miz Cracker played Parker in the celebrity-impersonation game show episode of the Season 10 of Rupaul's Drag Race.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In the 2018 film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (based on the 2008 memoir of the same name), Melissa McCarthy plays Lee Israel, an author who for a time forged original letters in Dorothy Parker's name.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In the 2010s some of her poems from the early 20th century have been set to music by the composer Marcus Paus as the operatic song cycle Hate Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Orchestra (2014); Paus's Hate Songs was described by musicologist Ralph P. Locke as \"one of the most engaging works\" in recent years; \"the cycle expresses Parker's favorite theme: how awful human beings are, especially the male of the species\".",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "With the authorization of the NAACP, lyrics taken from her book of poetry Not So Deep as a Well were used in 2014 by Canadian singer Myriam Gendron to create a folk album of the same title. Also in 2014, Chicago jazz bassist/singer/composer Katie Ernst issued her album Little Words, consisting of her authorized settings of seven of Parker's poems.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In 2021 her book Men I'm Not Married To was adapted as an opera of the same name by composer Lisa DeSpain and librettist Rachel J. Peters. It premiered virtually as part of Operas in Place and Virtual Festival of New Operas commissioned by Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Voice Performance, Cleveland Opera Theater, and On Site Opera on February 18, 2021.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "",
"title": "Bibliography"
}
]
| Dorothy Parker was an American poet, writer, critic, wit, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her caustic wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary works published in magazines, such as The New Yorker, and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics resulted in her being placed on the Hollywood blacklist. Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker". Nevertheless, both her literary output and reputation for sharp wit have endured. Some of her works have been set to music. | 2001-11-06T22:17:51Z | 2023-12-26T18:55:01Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker |
8,783 | Dylan Thomas | Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood. He also wrote stories and radio broadcasts such as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. He became widely popular in his lifetime and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then, he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a "roistering, drunken and doomed poet".
He was born in Uplands, Swansea, in 1914, leaving school in 1932 to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post. Many of his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager. In 1934, the publication of "Light breaks where no sun shines" caught the attention of the literary world. While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara. They married in 1937 and had three children: Llewelyn, Aeronwy, and Colm.
He came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found earning a living as a writer difficult. He began augmenting his income with reading tours and radio broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940s brought him to the public's attention, and he was frequently featured by the BBC as an accessible voice of the literary scene.
Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950s. His readings there brought him a degree of fame, while his erratic behaviour and drinking worsened. His time in the United States cemented his legend, and he went on to record to vinyl such works as A Child's Christmas in Wales. During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill and fell into a coma. He died on 9 November and his body was returned to Wales. On 25 November, he was interred at St Martin's churchyard in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.
Although Thomas wrote exclusively in the English language, he has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century. He is noted for his original, rhythmic, and ingenious use of words and imagery. His position as one of the great modern poets has been much discussed, and he remains popular with the public.
Dylan Thomas was born on 27 October 1914 in Swansea the son of Florence Hannah (née Williams; 1882–1958), a seamstress, and David John 'Jack' Thomas (1876–1952), a teacher. His father had a first-class honours degree in English from University College, Aberystwyth, and ambitions to rise above his position teaching English literature at the local grammar school. Thomas had one sibling, Nancy Marles (1906–1953), who was eight years his senior.
At the 1921 census, Nancy and Dylan are noted as speaking both Welsh and English. Their parents were also bilingual in English and Welsh, and Jack Thomas taught Welsh at evening classes. One of their Swansea relations has recalled that, at home, "Both Auntie Florrie and Uncle Jack always spoke Welsh." There are three accounts from the 1940s of Dylan singing Welsh hymns and songs, and of speaking a little Welsh.
Thomas's father chose the name Dylan, which could be translated as "son of the sea" after Dylan ail Don, a character in The Mabinogion. His middle name, Marlais, was given in honour of his great-uncle, William Thomas, a Unitarian minister and poet whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles. Dylan, pronounced ˈ [ˈdəlan] (Dull-an) in Welsh, caused his mother to worry that he might be teased as the "dull one". When he broadcast on Welsh BBC early in his career, he was introduced using this pronunciation. Thomas favoured the Anglicised pronunciation and gave instructions that it should be Dillan /ˈdɪlən/.
The red-brick semi-detached house at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive (in the respectable area of the Uplands), in which Thomas was born and lived until he was 23, had been bought by his parents a few months before his birth.
Thomas has written a number of accounts of his childhood growing up in Swansea, and there are also accounts available by those who knew him as a young child. Thomas wrote several poems about his childhood and early teenage years, including "Once it was the colour of saying" and "The hunchback in the park", as well as short stories such as The Fight and A Child's Christmas in Wales.
Thomas' four grandparents played no part in his childhood. For the first ten years or so of his life, Thomas' Swansea aunts and uncles helped with his upbringing. These were his mother's three siblings, Polly and Bob, who lived in the St Thomas district of Swansea and Theodosia, and her husband, the Rev. David Rees, in Newton, Swansea, where parishioners recall Thomas sometimes staying for a month or so at a time. All four aunts and uncles spoke Welsh and English.
Thomas' childhood also featured regular summer trips to the Llansteffan peninsula, a Welsh-speaking part of Carmarthenshire. In the land between Llangain and Llansteffan, his mother's family, the Williamses and their close relatives, worked a dozen farms with over a thousand acres between them. The memory of Fernhill, a dilapidated 15-acre farm rented by his maternal aunt, Ann Jones, and her husband, Jim Jones, is evoked in the 1945 lyrical poem "Fern Hill", but is portrayed more accurately in his short story, The Peaches. Thomas also spent part of his summer holidays with Jim's sister, Rachel Jones, at neighbouring Pentrewyman farm, where he spent his time riding Prince the cart horse, chasing pheasants and fishing for trout.
All these relatives were bilingual, and many worshipped at Smyrna chapel in Llangain where the services were always in Welsh, including Sunday School which Thomas sometimes attended. There is also an account of the young Thomas being taught how to swear in Welsh. His schoolboy friends recalled that "It was all Welsh—and the children played in Welsh...he couldn't speak English when he stopped at Fernhill...in all his surroundings, everybody else spoke Welsh..." At the 1921 census, 95% of residents in the two parishes around Fernhill were Welsh speakers. Across the whole peninsula, 13%—more than 200 people—spoke only Welsh.
A few fields south of Fernhill lay Blaencwm, a pair of stone cottages to which his mother's Swansea siblings had retired, and with whom the young Thomas and his sister, Nancy, would sometimes stay. A couple of miles down the road from Blaencwm is the village of Llansteffan, where Thomas used to holiday at Rose Cottage with another Welsh-speaking aunt, Anne Williams, his mother's half-sister who had married into local gentry. Anne’s daughter, Doris, married a dentist, Randy Fullylove. The young Dylan also holidayed with them in Abergavenny, where Fulleylove had his practice.
Thomas' paternal grandparents, Anne and Evan Thomas, lived at The Poplars in Johnstown, just outside Carmarthen. Anne was the daughter of William Lewis, a gardener in the town. She had been born and brought up in Llangadog, as had her father, who is thought to be "Grandpa" in Thomas's short story A Visit to Grandpa's, in which Grandpa expresses his determination to be buried not in Llansteffan but in Llangadog.
Evan worked on the railways and was known as Thomas the Guard. His family had originated in another part of Welsh-speaking Carmarthenshire, in the farms that lay around the villages of Brechfa, Abergorlech, Gwernogle and Llanybydder, and which the young Thomas occasionally visited with his father. His father's side of the family also provided the young Thomas with another kind of experience; many lived in the towns of the South Wales industrial belt, including Port Talbot, Pontarddulais and Cross Hands.
Thomas had bronchitis and asthma in childhood and struggled with these throughout his life. He was indulged by his mother, Florence, and enjoyed being mollycoddled, a trait he carried into adulthood, becoming skilled in gaining attention and sympathy. But Florence would have known that child deaths had been a recurring event in the family's history, and it's said that she herself had lost a child soon after her marriage. But if Thomas was protected and spoilt at home, the real spoilers were his many aunts and older cousins, those in both Swansea and the Llansteffan countryside. Some of them played an important part in both his upbringing and his later life, as Thomas's wife, Caitlin, has observed: "He couldn't stand their company for more than five minutes... Yet Dylan couldn't break away from them, either. They were the background from which he had sprung, and he needed that background all his life, like a tree needs roots.".
Thomas's formal education began at Mrs Hole's dame school, a private school on Mirador Crescent, a few streets away from his home. He described his experience there in Reminiscences of Childhood:
Never was there such a dame school as ours, so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom, where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over undone sums, or to repent a little crime – the pulling of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick under the table during English literature.
Alongside dame school, Thomas also took private lessons from Gwen James, an elocution teacher who had studied at drama school in London, winning several major prizes. She also taught "Dramatic Art" and "Voice Production", and would often help cast members of the Swansea Little Theatre (see below) with the parts they were playing. Thomas's parents' storytelling and dramatic talents, as well as their theatre-going interests, could also have contributed to the young Thomas's interest in performance.
In October 1925, Thomas enrolled at Swansea Grammar School for boys, in Mount Pleasant, where his father taught English. There are several accounts by his teachers and fellow pupils of Thomas’ time at grammar school. He was an undistinguished pupil who shied away from school, preferring reading and drama activities. In his first year one of his poems was published in the school's magazine, and before he left he became its editor. Thomas' various contributions to the school magazine can be found here:
During his final school years he began writing poetry in notebooks; the first poem, dated 27 April (1930), is entitled "Osiris, come to Isis". In June 1928, Thomas won the school's mile race, held at St. Helen's Ground; he carried a newspaper photograph of his victory with him until his death.
In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, where he remained for some 18 months. After leaving the newspaper, Thomas continued to work as a freelance journalist for several years, during which time he remained at Cwmdonkin Drive and continued to add to his notebooks, amassing 200 poems in four books between 1930 and 1934. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these years.
The stage was also an important part of Thomas's life from 1929 to 1934, as an actor, writer, producer and set painter. He took part in productions at Swansea Grammar School, and with the YMCA Junior Players and the Little Theatre, which was based in the Mumbles. It was also a touring company that took part in drama competitions and festivals around South Wales. Between October 1933 and March 1934, for example, Thomas and his fellow actors took part in five productions at the Mumbles theatre, as well as nine touring performances. Thomas continued with acting and production throughout his life, including his time in Laugharne, South Leigh and London (in the theatre and on radio), as well as taking part in nine stage readings of Under Milk Wood. The Shakespearian actor, John Laurie, who had worked with Thomas on both the stage and radio thought that Thomas would "have loved to have been an actor" and, had he chosen to do so, would have been "Our first real poet-dramatist since Shakespeare."
Painting the sets at the Little Theatre was just one aspect of the young Thomas's interest in art. His own drawings and paintings hung in his bedroom in Cwmdonkin Drive, and his early letters reveal a broader interest in art and art theory. Thomas saw writing a poem as an act of construction "as a sculptor works at stone," later advising a student "to treat words as a craftsman does his wood or stone...hew, carve, mould, coil, polish and plane them..." Throughout his life, his friends included artists, both in Swansea and in London, as well as in America.
In his free time, Thomas visited the cinema in Uplands, took walks along Swansea Bay, and frequented Swansea's pubs, especially the Antelope and the Mermaid Hotels in Mumbles. In the Kardomah Café, close to the newspaper office in Castle Street, he met his creative contemporaries, including his friend the poet Vernon Watkins and the musician and composer, Daniel Jones with whom, as teenagers, Thomas had helped to set up the "Warmley Broadcasting Corporation". This group of writers, musicians and artists became known as "The Kardomah Gang". This was also the period of his friendship with Bert Trick, a local shopkeeper, left-wing political activist and would-be poet, and with the Rev. Leon Atkin, a Swansea minister, human rights activist and local politician.
In 1933, Thomas visited London for probably the first time.
Thomas was a teenager when many of the poems for which he became famous were published: "And death shall have no dominion", "Before I Knocked" and "The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower". "And death shall have no dominion" appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933. When "Light breaks where no sun shines" appeared in The Listener in 1934, it caught the attention of three senior figures in literary London, T. S. Eliot, Geoffrey Grigson and Stephen Spender. They contacted Thomas and his first poetry volume, 18 Poems, was published in December 1934. 18 Poems was noted for its visionary qualities which led to critic Desmond Hawkins writing that the work was "the sort of bomb that bursts no more than once in three years". The volume was critically acclaimed and won a contest run by the Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell and Edwin Muir. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, in part a vanity publisher that did not pay its writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement was used by other new authors including Philip Larkin.
In May 1934, Thomas made his first visit to Laugharne, "the strangest town in Wales", as he described it in an extended letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, in which he also writes about the town's estuarine bleakness, and the dismal lives of the women cockle pickers working the shore around him.
The following year, in September 1935, Thomas met Vernon Watkins, thus beginning a lifelong friendship. Thomas introduced Watkins, working at Lloyds Bank at the time, to his friends, now known as The Kardomah Gang. In those days, Thomas used to frequent the cinema on Mondays with Tom Warner who, like Watkins, had recently suffered a nervous breakdown. After these trips, Warner would bring Thomas back for supper with his aunt. On one occasion, when she served him a boiled egg, she had to cut its top off for him, as Thomas did not know how to do this. This was because his mother had done it for him all his life, an example of her coddling him. Years later, his wife Caitlin would still have to prepare his eggs for him.
In December 1935, Thomas contributed the poem "The Hand That Signed the Paper" to Issue 18 of the bi-monthly New Verse. In 1936, his next collection Twenty-five Poems, published by J. M. Dent, also received much critical praise. Two years later, in 1938, Thomas won the Oscar Blumenthal Prize for Poetry; it was also the year in which New Directions offered to be his publisher in the United States. In all, he wrote half his poems while living at Cwmdonkin Drive before moving to London. During this time Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.
By the late 1930s, Thomas was embraced as the "poetic herald" for a group of English poets, the New Apocalyptics. Thomas refused to align himself with them and declined to sign their manifesto. He later stated that he believed they were "intellectual muckpots leaning on a theory". Despite this, many of the group, including Henry Treece, modelled their work on Thomas's.
In the politically charged atmosphere of the 1930s Thomas's sympathies were very much with the radical left, to the point of his holding close links with the communists; he was also decidedly pacifist and anti-fascist. He was a supporter of the left-wing No More War Movement and boasted about participating in demonstrations against the British Union of Fascists. Bert Trick has provided an extensive account of an Oswald Mosley rally in the Plaza cinema in Swansea in July 1933 that he and Thomas attended.
In early 1936, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara (1913–1994), a 22-year-old dancer of Irish and French Quaker descent. She had run away from home, intent on making a career in dance, and aged 18 joined the chorus line at the London Palladium. Introduced by Augustus John, Caitlin's lover, they met in The Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place in London's West End. Laying his head in her lap, a drunken Thomas proposed. Thomas liked to assert that he and Caitlin were in bed together ten minutes after they first met. Although Caitlin initially continued her relationship with John, she and Thomas began a correspondence, and in the second half of 1936 were courting. They married at the register office in Penzance, Cornwall, on 11 July 1937.
In May 1938, they moved to Wales, renting a cottage in the village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. They lived there intermittently for just under two years until July 1941, and did not return to live in Laugharne until 1949. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on 30 January 1939.
In 1939, a collection of 16 poems and seven of the 20 short stories published by Thomas in magazines since 1934, appeared as The Map of Love. Ten stories in his next book, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940), were based less on lavish fantasy than those in The Map of Love and more on real-life romances featuring himself in Wales. Sales of both books were poor, resulting in Thomas living on meagre fees from writing and reviewing. At this time he borrowed heavily from friends and acquaintances. Hounded by creditors, Thomas and his family left Laugharne in July 1940 and moved to the home of critic John Davenport in Marshfield near Chippenham in Gloucestershire. There Thomas collaborated with Davenport on the satire The Death of the King's Canary, though due to fears of libel the work was not published until 1976.
At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was worried about conscription, and referred to his ailment as "an unreliable lung". Coughing sometimes confined him to bed, and he had a history of bringing up blood and mucus. After initially seeking employment in a reserved occupation, he managed to be classified Grade III, which meant that he would be among the last to be called up for service. Saddened to see his friends going on active service, he continued drinking and struggled to support his family. He wrote begging letters to random literary figures asking for support, a plan he hoped would provide a long-term regular income. Thomas supplemented his income by writing scripts for the BBC, which not only gave him additional earnings but also provided evidence that he was engaged in essential war work.
In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the Luftwaffe in a "three nights' blitz". Castle Street was one of many streets that suffered badly; rows of shops, including the Kardomah Café, were destroyed. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded: "Our Swansea is dead". Thomas later wrote a feature programme for the radio, Return Journey, which described the café as being "razed to the snow". The programme, produced by Philip Burton, was first broadcast on 15 June 1947. The Kardomah Café reopened on Portland Street after the war.
In five film projects, between 1942 and 1945, the Ministry of Information (MOI) commissioned Thomas to script a series of documentaries about both urban planning and wartime patriotism, all in partnership with director John Eldridge: Wales: Green Mountain, Black Mountain, New Towns for Old, Fuel for Battle, Our Country and A City Reborn.
In May 1941, Thomas and Caitlin left their son with his grandmother at Blashford and moved to London. Thomas hoped to find employment in the film industry and wrote to the director of the films division of the Ministry of Information. After being rebuffed, he found work with Strand Films, providing him with his first regular income since the South Wales Daily Post. Strand produced films for the MOI; Thomas scripted at least five films in 1942, This Is Colour (a history of the British dyeing industry) and New Towns For Old (on post-war reconstruction). These Are The Men (1943) was a more ambitious piece in which Thomas's verse accompanies Leni Riefenstahl's footage of an early Nuremberg Rally. Conquest of a Germ (1944) explored the use of early antibiotics in the fight against pneumonia and tuberculosis. Our Country (1945) was a romantic tour of Britain set to Thomas's poetry.
In early 1943, Thomas began a relationship with Pamela Glendower; one of several affairs he had during his marriage. The affairs either ran out of steam or were halted after Caitlin discovered his infidelity. In March 1943, Caitlin gave birth to a daughter, Aeronwy, in London. They lived in a run-down studio in Chelsea, made up of a single large room with a curtain to separate the kitchen.
The Thomas family also made several escapes back to Wales. Between 1941 and 1943, they lived intermittently in Plas Gelli, Talsarn, in Cardiganshire. Plas Gelli sits close by the River Aeron, after whom Aeronwy is thought to have been named. Some of Thomas's letters from Gelli can be found in his Collected Letters. The Thomases shared the mansion with his childhood friends from Swansea, Vera and Evelyn Phillips. Vera's friendship with the Thomases in nearby New Quay is portrayed in the 2008 film, The Edge of Love.
In July 1944, with the threat in London of German flying bombs, Thomas moved to the family cottage at Blaencwm near Llangain, Carmarthenshire, where he resumed writing poetry, completing "Holy Spring" and "Vision and Prayer".
In September that year, the Thomas family moved to New Quay in Cardiganshire (Ceredigion), where they rented Majoda, a wood and asbestos bungalow on the cliffs overlooking Cardigan Bay. It was there that Thomas wrote the radio piece Quite Early One Morning, a sketch for his later work, Under Milk Wood. Of the poetry written at this time, of note is "Fern Hill", believed to have been started while living in New Quay, but completed at Blaencwm in mid-1945. Thomas' nine months in New Quay, said first biographer, Constantine FitzGibbon, were "a second flowering, a period of fertility that recalls the earliest days…[with a] great outpouring of poems", as well as a good deal of other material. His second biographer, Paul Ferris, agreed: "On the grounds of output, the bungalow deserves a plaque of its own." Thomas' third biographer, George Tremlett, concurred, describing the time in New Quay as "one of the most creative periods of Thomas's life." Professor Walford Davies, who co-edited the 1995 definitive edition of the play, has noted that New Quay "was crucial in supplementing the gallery of characters Thomas had to hand for writing Under Milk Wood."
Although Thomas had previously written for the BBC, it was a minor and intermittent source of income. In 1943, he wrote and recorded a 15-minute talk titled "Reminiscences of Childhood" for the Welsh BBC. In December 1944, he recorded Quite Early One Morning (produced by Aneirin Talfan Davies, again for the Welsh BBC) but when Davies offered it for national broadcast BBC London turned it down. On 31 August 1945, the BBC Home Service broadcast Quite Early One Morning and, in the three years beginning in October 1945, Thomas made over a hundred broadcasts for the corporation. Thomas was employed not only for his poetry readings, but for discussions and critiques.
In the second half of 1945, Thomas began reading for the BBC Radio programme, Book of Verse, broadcast weekly to the Far East. This provided Thomas with a regular income and brought him into contact with Louis MacNeice, a congenial drinking companion whose advice Thomas cherished. On 29 September 1946, the BBC began transmitting the Third Programme, a high-culture network which provided opportunities for Thomas. He appeared in the play Comus for the Third Programme, the day after the network launched, and his rich, sonorous voice led to character parts, including the lead in Aeschylus's Agamemnon and Satan in an adaptation of Paradise Lost. Thomas remained a popular guest on radio talk shows for the BBC, who regarded him as "useful should a younger generation poet be needed". He had an uneasy relationship with BBC management and a staff job was never an option, with drinking cited as the problem. Despite this, Thomas became a familiar radio voice and within Britain was "in every sense a celebrity".
By late September 1945, the Thomases had left Wales and were living with various friends in London. In December, they moved to Oxford to live in a summerhouse on the banks of the Cherwell. It belonged to the historian, A.J.P. Taylor. His wife, Margaret, would prove to be Thomas's most committed patron.
The publication of Deaths and Entrances in February 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic Walter J. Turner commented in The Spectator, "This book alone, in my opinion, ranks him as a major poet".
The following year, in April 1947, the Thomases travelled to Italy, after Thomas had been awarded a Society of Authors scholarship. They stayed first in villas near Rapallo and then Florence, before moving to a hotel in Rio Marina on the island of Elba. On their return, Thomas and family moved, in September 1947, into the Manor House in South Leigh, just west of Oxford, found for him by Margaret Taylor. He continued with his work for the BBC, completed a number of film scripts and worked further on his ideas for Under Milk Wood, including a discussion in late 1947 of The Village of the Mad (as the play was then called) with the BBC producer Philip Burton. He later recalled that, during the meeting, Thomas had discussed his ideas for having a blind narrator, an organist who played for a dog and two lovers who wrote to each other every day but never met.
In March 1949 Thomas travelled to Prague. He had been invited by the Czech government to attend the inauguration of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union. Jiřina Hauková, who had previously published translations of some of Thomas's poems, was his guide and interpreter. In her memoir, Hauková recalls that at a party in Prague, Thomas "narrated the first version of his radio play Under Milk Wood." She describes how he outlined the plot about a town that was declared insane, mentioning the organist who played for sheep and goats and the baker with two wives.
A month later, in May 1949, Thomas and his family moved to his final home, the Boat House at Laugharne, purchased for him at a cost of £2,500 in April 1949 by Margaret Taylor. Thomas acquired a garage a hundred yards from the house on a cliff ledge which he turned into his writing shed, and where he wrote several of his most acclaimed poems. He also rented "Pelican House" opposite his regular drinking den, Brown's Hotel, for his parents who lived there from 1949 until 1953.
Caitlin gave birth to their third child, a boy named Colm Garan Hart, on 25 July 1949.
In October, the New Zealand poet, Allen Curnow, came to visit Thomas at the Boat House, who took him to his writing shed and "fished out a draft to show me of the unfinished Under Milk Wood" that was, says Curnow, titled The Town That Was Mad. This is the first known sighting of the script of the play that was to become Under Milk Wood.
American poet John Brinnin invited Thomas to New York, where in February 1950 they embarked on a lucrative three-month tour of arts centres and campuses. The tour, which began in front of an audience of a thousand at the Kaufmann Auditorium of the Poetry Centre in New York, took in about 40 venues. During the tour, Thomas was invited to many parties and functions and on several occasions became drunk – going out of his way to shock people – and was a difficult guest. Thomas drank before some of his readings, though it is argued he may have pretended to be more affected by it than he actually was. The writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicating a performer he was and how the tension would build before a performance: "Would he arrive only to break down on the stage? Would some dismaying scene take place at the faculty party? Would he be offensive, violent, obscene?" Caitlin said in her memoir, "Nobody ever needed encouragement less, and he was drowned in it."
On returning to Britain, Thomas began work on two further poems, "In the white giant's thigh", which he read on the Third Programme in September 1950, and the incomplete "In country heaven". In October, Thomas sent a draft of the first 39 pages of 'The Town That Was Mad' to the BBC. The task of seeing this work through to production as Under Milk Wood was assigned to the BBC's Douglas Cleverdon, who had been responsible for casting Thomas in 'Paradise Lost'.
Despite Cleverdon's urgings, the script slipped from Thomas's priorities and in January 1951 he went to Iran to work on a film for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, an assignment which Callard has speculated was undertaken on behalf of British intelligence agencies. Thomas toured the country with the film crew, and his letters home vividly express his shock and anger with the poverty he saw around him. He also gave a reading at the British Council and talked with a number of Iranian intellectuals, including Ebrahim Golestan whose account of his meeting with Thomas has been translated and published. The film was never made, with Thomas returning to Wales in February, though his time in Iran allowed him to provide a few minutes of material for a BBC documentary, 'Persian Oil'.
Later that year, Thomas published two poems, which have been described as "unusually blunt." They were an ode, in the form of a villanelle, to his dying father, Do not go gentle into that good night, and the ribald Lament.
Although he had a range of wealthy patrons, including Margaret Taylor, Princess Marguerite Caetani and Marged Howard-Stepney, Thomas was still in financial difficulty, and he wrote several begging letters to notable literary figures, including T. S. Eliot. Taylor was not keen on Thomas taking another trip to the United States, and thought that if he had a permanent address in London he would be able to gain steady work there. She bought a property, 54 Delancey Street, in Camden Town, and in late 1951 Thomas and Caitlin lived in the basement flat. Thomas would describe the flat as his "London house of horror" and did not return there after his 1952 tour of America.
Thomas undertook a second tour of the United States in 1952, this time with Caitlin – after she had discovered he had been unfaithful on his earlier trip. They drank heavily, and Thomas began to suffer with gout and lung problems. The second tour was the most intensive of the four, taking in 46 engagements. The trip also resulted in Thomas recording his first poetry to vinyl, which Caedmon Records released in America later that year. One of his works recorded during this time, A Child's Christmas in Wales, became his most popular prose work in America. The original 1952 recording of A Child's Christmas in Wales was a 2008 selection for the United States National Recording Registry, stating that it is "credited with launching the audiobook industry in the United States".
A shortened version of the first half of The Town That Was Mad was published in Botteghe Oscure in May 1952, with the title Llareggub. A Piece for Radio Perhaps. Thomas had been in Laugharne for almost three years, but his half-play had made little progress since his time living in South Leigh. By the summer of 1952, the half-play's title had been changed to Under Milk Wood because John Brinnin thought the title Llareggub would not attract American audiences. On November 6, 1952, Thomas wrote to the editor of Botteghe Oscure to explain why he hadn't been able to "finish the second half of my piece for you." He had failed shamefully, he said, to add to "my lonely half of a looney maybe-play".
On 10 November 1952 Thomas's last collection Collected Poems, 1934–1952, was published by Dent; he was 38. It won the Foyle poetry prize. Reviewing the volume, critic Philip Toynbee declared that "Thomas is the greatest living poet in the English language". Thomas's father died from pneumonia just before Christmas 1952. In the first few months of 1953, his sister died from liver cancer, one of his patrons took an overdose of sleeping pills, three friends died at an early age and Caitlin had an abortion.
In April 1953, Thomas returned alone for a third tour of America. He performed a "work in progress" version of Under Milk Wood, solo, for the first time at Harvard University on 3 May. A week later, the work was performed with a full cast at the Poetry Centre in New York. He met the deadline only after being locked in a room by Brinnin's assistant, Liz Reitell, and he was still editing the script on the afternoon of the performance; its last lines were handed to the actors as they were putting on their makeup.
During this penultimate tour, Thomas met the composer Igor Stravinsky who had become an admirer after having been introduced to his poetry by W. H. Auden. They had discussions about collaborating on a "musical theatrical work" for which Thomas would provide the libretto on the theme of "the rediscovery of love and language in what might be left after the world after the bomb." The shock of Thomas's death later in the year moved Stravinsky to compose his In Memoriam Dylan Thomas for tenor, string quartet and four trombones. The first performance in Los Angeles in 1954 was introduced with a tribute to Thomas from Aldous Huxley.
Thomas spent the last nine or ten days of his third tour in New York mostly in the company of Reitell, with whom he had an affair. During this time, Thomas fractured his arm falling down a flight of stairs when drunk. Reitell's doctor, Milton Feltenstein, put his arm in plaster and treated him for gout and gastritis.
After returning home, Thomas worked on Under Milk Wood in Laugharne. Aeronwy, his daughter, noticed that his health had "visibly deteriorated...I could hear his racking cough. Every morning he had a prolonged coughing attack...The coughing was nothing new but it seemed worse than before." She also noted that the blackouts that Thomas was experiencing were "a constant source of comment" amongst his Laugharne friends.
Thomas sent the original manuscript to Douglas Cleverdon on 15 October 1953. It was copied and returned to Thomas, who lost it in a pub in London and required a duplicate to take to America. Thomas flew to the States on 19 October 1953 for what would be his final tour. He died in New York before the BBC could record Under Milk Wood. Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast in 1954, and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film. In 1954, the play won the Prix Italia for literary or dramatic programmes.
And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.
From "And death shall have no dominion"Twenty-five Poems (1936)
Thomas left Laugharne on 9 October 1953 on the first leg of his fourth trip to America. He called on his mother, Florence, to say goodbye: "He always felt that he had to get out from this country because of his chest being so bad." Thomas had suffered from chest problems for most of his life, though they began in earnest soon after he moved in May 1949 to the Boat House at Laugharne – the "bronchial heronry", as he called it. Within weeks of moving in, he visited a local doctor, who prescribed medicine for both his chest and throat.
While waiting in London before his flight, Thomas stayed with the comedian Harry Locke and worked on Under Milk Wood. Locke noted that Thomas was having trouble with his chest, "terrible" coughing fits that made him go purple in the face. He was also using an inhaler to help his breathing. There were reports, too, that Thomas was also having blackouts. His visit to the BBC producer Philip Burton, a few days before he left for New York, was interrupted by a blackout. On his last night in London, he had another in the company of his fellow poet Louis MacNeice.
Thomas arrived in New York on 20 October 1953 to undertake further performances of Under Milk Wood, organised by John Brinnin, his American agent and Director of the Poetry Centre. Brinnin did not travel to New York but remained in Boston to write. He handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell. She met Thomas at Idlewild Airport and was shocked at his appearance. He looked pale, delicate and shaky, not his usual robust self: "He was very ill when he got here." After being taken by Reitell to check in at the Chelsea Hotel, Thomas took the first rehearsal of Under Milk Wood. They then went to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, before returning to the Chelsea Hotel.
The next day, Reitell invited him to her apartment, but he declined. They went sightseeing, but Thomas felt unwell and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon. Reitell gave him half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of phenobarbitone to help him sleep and spent the night at the hotel with him. Two days later, on 23 October, at the third rehearsal, Thomas said he was too ill to take part, but he struggled on, shivering and burning with fever, before collapsing on the stage.
The following day, 24 October, Reitell took Thomas to see her doctor, Milton Feltenstein, who administered cortisone injections and Thomas made it through the first performance that evening, but collapsed immediately afterwards. "This circus out there," he told a friend who had come back-stage, "has taken the life out of me for now." Reitell later said that Feltenstein was "rather a wild doctor who thought injections would cure anything."
At the next performance on 25 October, his fellow actors realised that Thomas was very ill: "He was desperately ill…we didn't think that he would be able to do the last performance because he was so ill…Dylan literally couldn't speak he was so ill…still my greatest memory of it is that he had no voice."
On the evening of 27 October, Thomas attended his 39th birthday party but felt unwell and returned to his hotel after an hour. The next day, he took part in Poetry and the Film, a recorded symposium at Cinema 16.
A turning point came on 2 November. Air pollution in New York had risen significantly and exacerbated chest illnesses such as Thomas had. By the end of the month, over 200 New Yorkers had died from the smog.
On 3 November, Thomas spent most of the day in his room, entertaining various friends. He went out in the evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went out again for a drink at 2 am. After drinking at the White Horse, Thomas returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring, "I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record!" The barman and the owner of the pub who served him later commented that Thomas could not have drunk more than half that amount.
Thomas had an appointment at a clam house in New Jersey with Ruthven Todd on 4 November. When Todd telephoned the Chelsea that morning, Thomas said he was feeling ill and postponed the engagement. Todd thought he sounded "terrible". The poet, Harvey Breit, was another to phone that morning. He thought that Thomas sounded "bad". Thomas's voice, recalled Breit, was "low and hoarse". He had wanted to say: "You sound as though from the tomb", but instead he told Thomas that he sounded like Louis Armstrong.
Later, Thomas went drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, administering the cortisone secretant ACTH by injection and, on his third visit, half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of morphine sulphate, which affected Thomas's breathing. Reitell became increasingly concerned and telephoned Feltenstein for advice. He suggested she get male assistance, so she called upon the painter Jack Heliker, who arrived before 11 pm. At midnight on 5 November, Thomas's breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue. Reitell phoned Feltenstein who arrived at the hotel at about 1 am, and called for an ambulance. It then took another hour for the ambulance to arrive at St. Vincent's, even though it was only a few blocks from the Chelsea.
Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at St Vincent's Hospital at 1:58 am. He was comatose, and his medical notes state that "the impression upon admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the brain by alcohol, for which the patient was treated without response". Feltenstein then took control of Thomas's care, even though he did not have admitting rights at St. Vincent's. The hospital's senior brain specialist, C.G. Gutierrez-Mahoney, was not called to examine Thomas until the afternoon of 6 November, some 36 hours after Thomas's admission.
Caitlin flew to America the following day and was taken to the hospital, by which time a tracheotomy had been performed. Her reported first words were, "Is the bloody man dead yet?" She was allowed to see Thomas only for 40 minutes in the morning but returned in the afternoon and, in a drunken rage, threatened to kill John Brinnin. When she became uncontrollable, she was put in a straitjacket and committed, by Feltenstein, to the River Crest private psychiatric detox clinic on Long Island.
It is now believed that Thomas had been suffering from bronchitis, pneumonia, emphysema and asthma before his admission to St Vincent's. In their 2004 paper, Death by Neglect, D. N. Thomas and former GP Principal Simon Barton disclose that Thomas was found to have pneumonia when he was admitted to hospital in a coma. Doctors took three hours to restore his breathing, using artificial respiration and oxygen. Summarising their findings, they conclude: "The medical notes indicate that, on admission, Dylan's bronchial disease was found to be very extensive, affecting upper, mid and lower lung fields, both left and right." The forensic pathologist, Bernard Knight, who examined the post-mortem report, concurs: "death was clearly due to a severe lung infection with extensive advanced bronchopneumonia...the severity of the chest infection, with greyish consolidated areas of well-established pneumonia, suggests that it had started before admission to hospital."
Thomas died at noon on 9 November, having never recovered from his coma. A nurse, and the poet John Berryman, were present with him at the time of death.
Rumours circulated of a brain haemorrhage, followed by competing reports of a mugging or even that Thomas had drunk himself to death. Later, speculation arose about drugs and diabetes. At the post-mortem, the pathologist found three causes of death – pneumonia, brain swelling and a fatty liver. Despite the poet's heavy drinking, his liver showed no sign of cirrhosis.
The publication of John Brinnin's 1955 biography Dylan Thomas in America cemented Thomas's reputation as a "roistering, drunken and doomed poet"; Brinnin focuses on Thomas's last few years and paints a picture of him as a drunk and a philanderer. Later biographies have criticised Brinnin's view, especially his coverage of Thomas's death. David Thomas in Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas? claims that Brinnin, along with Reitell and Feltenstein, were culpable. FitzGibbon's 1965 biography ignores Thomas's heavy drinking and skims over his death, giving just two pages in his detailed book to Thomas's demise. Ferris in his 1989 biography includes Thomas's heavy drinking, but is more critical of those around him in his final days and does not draw the conclusion that he drank himself to death. Many sources have criticised Feltenstein's role and actions, especially his incorrect diagnosis of delirium tremens and the high dose of morphine he administered. Dr C. G. de Gutierrez-Mahoney, the doctor who treated Thomas while at St. Vincents, concluded that Feltenstein's failure to see that Thomas was gravely ill and have him admitted to hospital sooner "was even more culpable than his use of morphine".
Caitlin Thomas's autobiographies, Caitlin Thomas – Leftover Life to Kill (1957) and My Life with Dylan Thomas: Double Drink Story (1997), describe the effects of alcohol on the poet and on their relationship. "Ours was not only a love story, it was a drink story, because without alcohol it would never had got on its rocking feet", she wrote, and "The bar was our altar." Biographer Andrew Lycett ascribed the decline in Thomas's health to an alcoholic co-dependent relationship with his wife, who deeply resented his extramarital affairs. In contrast, Dylan biographers Andrew Sinclair and George Tremlett express the view that Thomas was not an alcoholic. Tremlett argues that many of Thomas's health issues stemmed from undiagnosed diabetes.
Thomas died intestate, with assets worth £100. His body was brought back to Wales for burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne. Thomas's funeral, which Brinnin did not attend, took place at St Martin's Church in Laugharne on 24 November. Six friends from the village carried Thomas's coffin. Caitlin, without her customary hat, walked behind the coffin, with his childhood friend Daniel Jones at her arm and her mother by her side. The procession to the church was filmed and the wake took place at Brown's Hotel. Thomas's fellow poet and long-time friend Vernon Watkins wrote The Times obituary.
Thomas's widow, Caitlin, died in 1994 and was buried alongside him. Thomas's father, "DJ", died on 16 December 1952 and his mother Florence in August 1958. Thomas's elder son, Llewelyn, died in 2000, his daughter, Aeronwy in 2009, and his younger son, Colm, in 2012.
Thomas's refusal to align with any literary group or movement has made him and his work difficult to categorise. Although influenced by the modern symbolism and surrealism movements he refused to follow such creeds. Instead, critics view Thomas as part of the modernism and romanticism movements, though attempts to pigeon-hole him within a particular neo-romantic school have been unsuccessful. Elder Olson, in his 1954 critical study of Thomas's poetry, wrote of "…a further characteristic which distinguished Thomas's work from that of other poets. It was unclassifiable." Olson continued that in a postmodern age that continually attempted to demand that poetry have social reference, none could be found in Thomas's work, and that his work was so obscure that critics could not explicate it.
Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle "Do not go gentle into that good night". His images appear carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death and new life that linked the generations. Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore, preaching, and Sigmund Freud. Explaining the source of his imagery, Thomas wrote in a letter to Glyn Jones: "My own obscurity is quite an unfashionable one, based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism derived (I'm afraid all this sounds wooly and pretentious) from the cosmic significance of the human anatomy".
Who once were a bloom of wayside brides in the hawed house And heard the lewd, wooed field flow to the coming frost, The scurrying, furred small friars squeal in the dowse Of day, in the thistle aisles, till the white owl crossed
From "In the white giant's thigh" (1950)
Thomas's early poetry was noted for its verbal density, alliteration, sprung rhythm and internal rhyme, and some critics detected the influence of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. This is attributed to Hopkins, who taught himself Welsh and who used sprung verse, bringing some features of Welsh poetic metre into his work. When Henry Treece wrote to Thomas comparing his style to that of Hopkins, Thomas wrote back denying any such influence. Thomas greatly admired Thomas Hardy, who is regarded as an influence. When Thomas travelled in America, he recited some of Hardy's work in his readings.
Other poets from whom critics believe Thomas drew influence include James Joyce, Arthur Rimbaud and D. H. Lawrence. William York Tindall, in his 1962 study, A Reader's Guide to Dylan Thomas, finds comparison between Thomas's and Joyce's wordplay, while he notes the themes of rebirth and nature are common to the works of Lawrence and Thomas. Although Thomas described himself as the "Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive", he stated that the phrase "Swansea's Rimbaud" was coined by poet Roy Campbell. Critics have explored the origins of Thomas's mythological pasts in his works such as "The Orchards", which Ann Elizabeth Mayer believes reflects the Welsh myths of the Mabinogion. Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in "Fern Hill", "In Country Sleep", "Ballad of the Long-legged Bait" and "In the White Giant's Thigh" from Under Milk Wood.
Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:
I should say I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words. The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes and before I could read them for myself I had come to love the words of them. The words alone. What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance… I fell in love, that is the only expression I can think of, at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy. I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later, to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to me, that could be ever.
Thomas became an accomplished writer of prose poetry, with collections such as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940) and Quite Early One Morning (1954) showing he was capable of writing moving short stories. His first published prose work, After the Fair, appeared in The New English Weekly on 15 March 1934. Jacob Korg believes that one can classify Thomas's fiction work into two main bodies: vigorous fantasies in a poetic style and, after 1939, more straightforward narratives. Korg surmises that Thomas approached his prose writing as an alternate poetic form, which allowed him to produce complex, involuted narratives that do not allow the reader to rest.
Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon, I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art.
From "In my Craft or Sullen Art" Deaths and Entrances, 1946
Thomas disliked being regarded as a provincial poet and decried any notion of 'Welshness' in his poetry. When he wrote to Stephen Spender in 1952, thanking him for a review of his Collected Poems, he added "Oh, & I forgot. I'm not influenced by Welsh bardic poetry. I can't read Welsh." Despite this his work was rooted in the geography of Wales. Thomas acknowledged that he returned to Wales when he had difficulty writing, and John Ackerman argues that "His inspiration and imagination were rooted in his Welsh background". Caitlin Thomas wrote that he worked "in a fanatically narrow groove, although there was nothing narrow about the depth and understanding of his feelings. The groove of direct hereditary descent in the land of his birth, which he never in thought, and hardly in body, moved out of."
Head of Programmes Wales at the BBC, Aneirin Talfan Davies, who commissioned several of Thomas's early radio talks, believed that the poet's "whole attitude is that of the medieval bards." Kenneth O. Morgan counter-argues that it is a 'difficult enterprise' to find traces of cynghanedd (consonant harmony) or cerdd dafod (tongue-craft) in Thomas's poetry. Instead he believes his work, especially his earlier more autobiographical poems, are rooted in a changing country which echoes the Welshness of the past and the Anglicisation of the new industrial nation: "rural and urban, chapel-going and profane, Welsh and English, Unforgiving and deeply compassionate." Fellow poet and critic Glyn Jones believed that any traces of cynghanedd in Thomas's work were accidental, although he felt Thomas consciously employed one element of Welsh metrics; that of counting syllables per line instead of feet. Constantine Fitzgibbon, who was his first in-depth biographer, wrote "No major English poet has ever been as Welsh as Dylan".
Although Thomas had a deep connection with Wales, he disliked Welsh nationalism. He once wrote, "Land of my fathers, and my fathers can keep it". While often attributed to Thomas himself, this line actually comes from the character Owen Morgan-Vaughan, in the screenplay Thomas wrote for the 1948 British melodrama The Three Weird Sisters. Robert Pocock, a friend from the BBC, recalled "I only once heard Dylan express an opinion on Welsh Nationalism. He used three words. Two of them were Welsh Nationalism." Although not expressed as strongly, Glyn Jones believed that he and Thomas's friendship cooled in the later years as he had not 'rejected enough' of the elements that Thomas disliked – "Welsh nationalism and a sort of hill farm morality". Apologetically, in a letter to Keidrych Rhys, editor of the literary magazine Wales, Thomas's father wrote that he was "afraid Dylan isn't much of a Welshman". Though FitzGibbon asserts that Thomas's negativity towards Welsh nationalism was fostered by his father's hostility towards the Welsh language.
Thomas's work and stature as a poet have been much debated by critics and biographers since his death. Critical studies have been clouded by Thomas's personality and mythology, especially his drunken persona and death in New York. When Seamus Heaney gave an Oxford lecture on the poet he opened by addressing the assembly, "Dylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry", querying how 'Thomas the Poet' is one of his forgotten attributes. David Holbrook, who has written three books about Thomas, stated in his 1962 publication Llareggub Revisited, "the strangest feature of Dylan Thomas's notoriety—not that he is bogus, but that attitudes to poetry attached themselves to him which not only threaten the prestige, effectiveness and accessibility to English poetry but also destroyed his true voice and, at last, him." The Poetry Archive notes that "Dylan Thomas's detractors accuse him of being drunk on language as well as whiskey, but whilst there's no doubt that the sound of language is central to his style, he was also a disciplined writer who re-drafted obsessively".
Many critics have argued that Thomas's work is too narrow and that he suffers from verbal extravagance. Those that have championed his work have found the criticism baffling. Robert Lowell wrote in 1947, "Nothing could be more wrongheaded than the English disputes about Dylan Thomas's greatness ... He is a dazzling obscure writer who can be enjoyed without understanding." Kenneth Rexroth said, on reading Eighteen Poems, "The reeling excitement of a poetry-intoxicated schoolboy smote the Philistine as hard a blow with one small book as Swinburne had with Poems and Ballads." Philip Larkin in a letter to Kingsley Amis in 1948, wrote that "no one can 'stick words into us like pins'... like he [Thomas] can", but followed that by stating that he "doesn't use his words to any advantage". Amis was far harsher, finding little of merit in his work, and claiming that he was 'frothing at the mouth with piss.' In 1956, the publication of the anthology New Lines featuring works by the British collective The Movement, which included Amis and Larkin amongst its number, set out a vision of modern poetry that was damning towards the poets of the 1940s. Thomas's work in particular was criticised. David Lodge, writing about The Movement in 1981 stated "Dylan Thomas was made to stand for everything they detest, verbal obscurity, metaphysical pretentiousness, and romantic rhapsodizing".
Despite criticism by sections of academia, Thomas's work has been embraced by readers more so than many of his contemporaries, and is one of the few modern poets whose name is recognised by the general public. In 2009, over 18,000 votes were cast in a BBC poll to find the UK's favourite poet; Thomas was placed 10th. Several of his poems have passed into the cultural mainstream, and his work has been used by authors, musicians and film and television writers. The BBC Radio programme, Desert Island Discs, in which guests usually choose their favourite songs, has heard 50 participants select a Dylan Thomas recording. John Goodby states that this popularity with the reading public allows Thomas's work to be classed as vulgar and common. He also cites that despite a brief period during the 1960s when Thomas was considered a cultural icon, that the poet has been marginalized in critical circles due to his exuberance, in both life and work, and his refusal to know his place. Goodby believes that Thomas has been mainly snubbed since the 1970s and has become "... an embarrassment to twentieth-century poetry criticism", his work failing to fit standard narratives and thus being ignored rather than studied. In June 2022, Thomas was the subject of BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.
In Swansea's maritime quarter are the Dylan Thomas Theatre, home of the Swansea Little Theatre of which Thomas was once a member, and the former Guildhall built in 1825 and now occupied by the Dylan Thomas Centre, a literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held and setting for the annual Dylan Thomas Festival. Outside the centre stands a bronze statue of Thomas, by John Doubleday. Another monument to Thomas stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of his favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace. The memorial is a small rock in an enclosed garden within the park cut by and inscribed by the late sculptor Ronald Cour with the closing lines from Fern Hill.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Thomas's home in Laugharne, the Boathouse, is a museum run by Carmarthenshire County Council. His writing shed is also preserved. In 2004, the Dylan Thomas Prize was created in his honour, awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30. In 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award was established. The prize, administered by the Dylan Thomas Centre, is awarded at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival. In 1982 a plaque was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The plaque is also inscribed with the last two lines of "Fern Hill".
In 2014, the Royal Patron of The Dylan Thomas 100 Festival was Charles, Prince of Wales, who in 2013 made a recording of "Fern Hill" for National Poetry Day.
In 2014, to celebrate the centenary of Thomas's birth, the British Council Wales undertook a year-long programme of cultural and educational works. Highlights included a touring replica of Thomas's work shed, Sir Peter Blake's exhibition of illustrations based on Under Milk Wood and a 36-hour marathon of readings, which included Michael Sheen and Sir Ian McKellen performing Thomas's work. The same year, Thomas was among the ten people commemorated on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail in their "Remarkable Lives" issue.
The actor, Dylan Sprouse and Columbine shooter, Dylan Klebold are both named after him. Thomas is mentioned in the song "Dylan Thomas" from Better Oblivion Community Center's 2019 album. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems \"Do not go gentle into that good night\" and \"And death shall have no dominion\", as well as the \"play for voices\" Under Milk Wood. He also wrote stories and radio broadcasts such as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. He became widely popular in his lifetime and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then, he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a \"roistering, drunken and doomed poet\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "He was born in Uplands, Swansea, in 1914, leaving school in 1932 to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post. Many of his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager. In 1934, the publication of \"Light breaks where no sun shines\" caught the attention of the literary world. While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara. They married in 1937 and had three children: Llewelyn, Aeronwy, and Colm.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "He came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found earning a living as a writer difficult. He began augmenting his income with reading tours and radio broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940s brought him to the public's attention, and he was frequently featured by the BBC as an accessible voice of the literary scene.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950s. His readings there brought him a degree of fame, while his erratic behaviour and drinking worsened. His time in the United States cemented his legend, and he went on to record to vinyl such works as A Child's Christmas in Wales. During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill and fell into a coma. He died on 9 November and his body was returned to Wales. On 25 November, he was interred at St Martin's churchyard in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Although Thomas wrote exclusively in the English language, he has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century. He is noted for his original, rhythmic, and ingenious use of words and imagery. His position as one of the great modern poets has been much discussed, and he remains popular with the public.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Dylan Thomas was born on 27 October 1914 in Swansea the son of Florence Hannah (née Williams; 1882–1958), a seamstress, and David John 'Jack' Thomas (1876–1952), a teacher. His father had a first-class honours degree in English from University College, Aberystwyth, and ambitions to rise above his position teaching English literature at the local grammar school. Thomas had one sibling, Nancy Marles (1906–1953), who was eight years his senior.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "At the 1921 census, Nancy and Dylan are noted as speaking both Welsh and English. Their parents were also bilingual in English and Welsh, and Jack Thomas taught Welsh at evening classes. One of their Swansea relations has recalled that, at home, \"Both Auntie Florrie and Uncle Jack always spoke Welsh.\" There are three accounts from the 1940s of Dylan singing Welsh hymns and songs, and of speaking a little Welsh.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Thomas's father chose the name Dylan, which could be translated as \"son of the sea\" after Dylan ail Don, a character in The Mabinogion. His middle name, Marlais, was given in honour of his great-uncle, William Thomas, a Unitarian minister and poet whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles. Dylan, pronounced ˈ [ˈdəlan] (Dull-an) in Welsh, caused his mother to worry that he might be teased as the \"dull one\". When he broadcast on Welsh BBC early in his career, he was introduced using this pronunciation. Thomas favoured the Anglicised pronunciation and gave instructions that it should be Dillan /ˈdɪlən/.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The red-brick semi-detached house at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive (in the respectable area of the Uplands), in which Thomas was born and lived until he was 23, had been bought by his parents a few months before his birth.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Thomas has written a number of accounts of his childhood growing up in Swansea, and there are also accounts available by those who knew him as a young child. Thomas wrote several poems about his childhood and early teenage years, including \"Once it was the colour of saying\" and \"The hunchback in the park\", as well as short stories such as The Fight and A Child's Christmas in Wales.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Thomas' four grandparents played no part in his childhood. For the first ten years or so of his life, Thomas' Swansea aunts and uncles helped with his upbringing. These were his mother's three siblings, Polly and Bob, who lived in the St Thomas district of Swansea and Theodosia, and her husband, the Rev. David Rees, in Newton, Swansea, where parishioners recall Thomas sometimes staying for a month or so at a time. All four aunts and uncles spoke Welsh and English.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Thomas' childhood also featured regular summer trips to the Llansteffan peninsula, a Welsh-speaking part of Carmarthenshire. In the land between Llangain and Llansteffan, his mother's family, the Williamses and their close relatives, worked a dozen farms with over a thousand acres between them. The memory of Fernhill, a dilapidated 15-acre farm rented by his maternal aunt, Ann Jones, and her husband, Jim Jones, is evoked in the 1945 lyrical poem \"Fern Hill\", but is portrayed more accurately in his short story, The Peaches. Thomas also spent part of his summer holidays with Jim's sister, Rachel Jones, at neighbouring Pentrewyman farm, where he spent his time riding Prince the cart horse, chasing pheasants and fishing for trout.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "All these relatives were bilingual, and many worshipped at Smyrna chapel in Llangain where the services were always in Welsh, including Sunday School which Thomas sometimes attended. There is also an account of the young Thomas being taught how to swear in Welsh. His schoolboy friends recalled that \"It was all Welsh—and the children played in Welsh...he couldn't speak English when he stopped at Fernhill...in all his surroundings, everybody else spoke Welsh...\" At the 1921 census, 95% of residents in the two parishes around Fernhill were Welsh speakers. Across the whole peninsula, 13%—more than 200 people—spoke only Welsh.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A few fields south of Fernhill lay Blaencwm, a pair of stone cottages to which his mother's Swansea siblings had retired, and with whom the young Thomas and his sister, Nancy, would sometimes stay. A couple of miles down the road from Blaencwm is the village of Llansteffan, where Thomas used to holiday at Rose Cottage with another Welsh-speaking aunt, Anne Williams, his mother's half-sister who had married into local gentry. Anne’s daughter, Doris, married a dentist, Randy Fullylove. The young Dylan also holidayed with them in Abergavenny, where Fulleylove had his practice.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Thomas' paternal grandparents, Anne and Evan Thomas, lived at The Poplars in Johnstown, just outside Carmarthen. Anne was the daughter of William Lewis, a gardener in the town. She had been born and brought up in Llangadog, as had her father, who is thought to be \"Grandpa\" in Thomas's short story A Visit to Grandpa's, in which Grandpa expresses his determination to be buried not in Llansteffan but in Llangadog.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Evan worked on the railways and was known as Thomas the Guard. His family had originated in another part of Welsh-speaking Carmarthenshire, in the farms that lay around the villages of Brechfa, Abergorlech, Gwernogle and Llanybydder, and which the young Thomas occasionally visited with his father. His father's side of the family also provided the young Thomas with another kind of experience; many lived in the towns of the South Wales industrial belt, including Port Talbot, Pontarddulais and Cross Hands.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Thomas had bronchitis and asthma in childhood and struggled with these throughout his life. He was indulged by his mother, Florence, and enjoyed being mollycoddled, a trait he carried into adulthood, becoming skilled in gaining attention and sympathy. But Florence would have known that child deaths had been a recurring event in the family's history, and it's said that she herself had lost a child soon after her marriage. But if Thomas was protected and spoilt at home, the real spoilers were his many aunts and older cousins, those in both Swansea and the Llansteffan countryside. Some of them played an important part in both his upbringing and his later life, as Thomas's wife, Caitlin, has observed: \"He couldn't stand their company for more than five minutes... Yet Dylan couldn't break away from them, either. They were the background from which he had sprung, and he needed that background all his life, like a tree needs roots.\".",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Thomas's formal education began at Mrs Hole's dame school, a private school on Mirador Crescent, a few streets away from his home. He described his experience there in Reminiscences of Childhood:",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Never was there such a dame school as ours, so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom, where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over undone sums, or to repent a little crime – the pulling of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick under the table during English literature.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Alongside dame school, Thomas also took private lessons from Gwen James, an elocution teacher who had studied at drama school in London, winning several major prizes. She also taught \"Dramatic Art\" and \"Voice Production\", and would often help cast members of the Swansea Little Theatre (see below) with the parts they were playing. Thomas's parents' storytelling and dramatic talents, as well as their theatre-going interests, could also have contributed to the young Thomas's interest in performance.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In October 1925, Thomas enrolled at Swansea Grammar School for boys, in Mount Pleasant, where his father taught English. There are several accounts by his teachers and fellow pupils of Thomas’ time at grammar school. He was an undistinguished pupil who shied away from school, preferring reading and drama activities. In his first year one of his poems was published in the school's magazine, and before he left he became its editor. Thomas' various contributions to the school magazine can be found here:",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "During his final school years he began writing poetry in notebooks; the first poem, dated 27 April (1930), is entitled \"Osiris, come to Isis\". In June 1928, Thomas won the school's mile race, held at St. Helen's Ground; he carried a newspaper photograph of his victory with him until his death.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, where he remained for some 18 months. After leaving the newspaper, Thomas continued to work as a freelance journalist for several years, during which time he remained at Cwmdonkin Drive and continued to add to his notebooks, amassing 200 poems in four books between 1930 and 1934. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these years.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The stage was also an important part of Thomas's life from 1929 to 1934, as an actor, writer, producer and set painter. He took part in productions at Swansea Grammar School, and with the YMCA Junior Players and the Little Theatre, which was based in the Mumbles. It was also a touring company that took part in drama competitions and festivals around South Wales. Between October 1933 and March 1934, for example, Thomas and his fellow actors took part in five productions at the Mumbles theatre, as well as nine touring performances. Thomas continued with acting and production throughout his life, including his time in Laugharne, South Leigh and London (in the theatre and on radio), as well as taking part in nine stage readings of Under Milk Wood. The Shakespearian actor, John Laurie, who had worked with Thomas on both the stage and radio thought that Thomas would \"have loved to have been an actor\" and, had he chosen to do so, would have been \"Our first real poet-dramatist since Shakespeare.\"",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Painting the sets at the Little Theatre was just one aspect of the young Thomas's interest in art. His own drawings and paintings hung in his bedroom in Cwmdonkin Drive, and his early letters reveal a broader interest in art and art theory. Thomas saw writing a poem as an act of construction \"as a sculptor works at stone,\" later advising a student \"to treat words as a craftsman does his wood or stone...hew, carve, mould, coil, polish and plane them...\" Throughout his life, his friends included artists, both in Swansea and in London, as well as in America.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In his free time, Thomas visited the cinema in Uplands, took walks along Swansea Bay, and frequented Swansea's pubs, especially the Antelope and the Mermaid Hotels in Mumbles. In the Kardomah Café, close to the newspaper office in Castle Street, he met his creative contemporaries, including his friend the poet Vernon Watkins and the musician and composer, Daniel Jones with whom, as teenagers, Thomas had helped to set up the \"Warmley Broadcasting Corporation\". This group of writers, musicians and artists became known as \"The Kardomah Gang\". This was also the period of his friendship with Bert Trick, a local shopkeeper, left-wing political activist and would-be poet, and with the Rev. Leon Atkin, a Swansea minister, human rights activist and local politician.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1933, Thomas visited London for probably the first time.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Thomas was a teenager when many of the poems for which he became famous were published: \"And death shall have no dominion\", \"Before I Knocked\" and \"The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower\". \"And death shall have no dominion\" appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933. When \"Light breaks where no sun shines\" appeared in The Listener in 1934, it caught the attention of three senior figures in literary London, T. S. Eliot, Geoffrey Grigson and Stephen Spender. They contacted Thomas and his first poetry volume, 18 Poems, was published in December 1934. 18 Poems was noted for its visionary qualities which led to critic Desmond Hawkins writing that the work was \"the sort of bomb that bursts no more than once in three years\". The volume was critically acclaimed and won a contest run by the Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell and Edwin Muir. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, in part a vanity publisher that did not pay its writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement was used by other new authors including Philip Larkin.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In May 1934, Thomas made his first visit to Laugharne, \"the strangest town in Wales\", as he described it in an extended letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, in which he also writes about the town's estuarine bleakness, and the dismal lives of the women cockle pickers working the shore around him.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The following year, in September 1935, Thomas met Vernon Watkins, thus beginning a lifelong friendship. Thomas introduced Watkins, working at Lloyds Bank at the time, to his friends, now known as The Kardomah Gang. In those days, Thomas used to frequent the cinema on Mondays with Tom Warner who, like Watkins, had recently suffered a nervous breakdown. After these trips, Warner would bring Thomas back for supper with his aunt. On one occasion, when she served him a boiled egg, she had to cut its top off for him, as Thomas did not know how to do this. This was because his mother had done it for him all his life, an example of her coddling him. Years later, his wife Caitlin would still have to prepare his eggs for him.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In December 1935, Thomas contributed the poem \"The Hand That Signed the Paper\" to Issue 18 of the bi-monthly New Verse. In 1936, his next collection Twenty-five Poems, published by J. M. Dent, also received much critical praise. Two years later, in 1938, Thomas won the Oscar Blumenthal Prize for Poetry; it was also the year in which New Directions offered to be his publisher in the United States. In all, he wrote half his poems while living at Cwmdonkin Drive before moving to London. During this time Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "By the late 1930s, Thomas was embraced as the \"poetic herald\" for a group of English poets, the New Apocalyptics. Thomas refused to align himself with them and declined to sign their manifesto. He later stated that he believed they were \"intellectual muckpots leaning on a theory\". Despite this, many of the group, including Henry Treece, modelled their work on Thomas's.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In the politically charged atmosphere of the 1930s Thomas's sympathies were very much with the radical left, to the point of his holding close links with the communists; he was also decidedly pacifist and anti-fascist. He was a supporter of the left-wing No More War Movement and boasted about participating in demonstrations against the British Union of Fascists. Bert Trick has provided an extensive account of an Oswald Mosley rally in the Plaza cinema in Swansea in July 1933 that he and Thomas attended.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In early 1936, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara (1913–1994), a 22-year-old dancer of Irish and French Quaker descent. She had run away from home, intent on making a career in dance, and aged 18 joined the chorus line at the London Palladium. Introduced by Augustus John, Caitlin's lover, they met in The Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place in London's West End. Laying his head in her lap, a drunken Thomas proposed. Thomas liked to assert that he and Caitlin were in bed together ten minutes after they first met. Although Caitlin initially continued her relationship with John, she and Thomas began a correspondence, and in the second half of 1936 were courting. They married at the register office in Penzance, Cornwall, on 11 July 1937.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In May 1938, they moved to Wales, renting a cottage in the village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. They lived there intermittently for just under two years until July 1941, and did not return to live in Laugharne until 1949. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on 30 January 1939.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 1939, a collection of 16 poems and seven of the 20 short stories published by Thomas in magazines since 1934, appeared as The Map of Love. Ten stories in his next book, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940), were based less on lavish fantasy than those in The Map of Love and more on real-life romances featuring himself in Wales. Sales of both books were poor, resulting in Thomas living on meagre fees from writing and reviewing. At this time he borrowed heavily from friends and acquaintances. Hounded by creditors, Thomas and his family left Laugharne in July 1940 and moved to the home of critic John Davenport in Marshfield near Chippenham in Gloucestershire. There Thomas collaborated with Davenport on the satire The Death of the King's Canary, though due to fears of libel the work was not published until 1976.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was worried about conscription, and referred to his ailment as \"an unreliable lung\". Coughing sometimes confined him to bed, and he had a history of bringing up blood and mucus. After initially seeking employment in a reserved occupation, he managed to be classified Grade III, which meant that he would be among the last to be called up for service. Saddened to see his friends going on active service, he continued drinking and struggled to support his family. He wrote begging letters to random literary figures asking for support, a plan he hoped would provide a long-term regular income. Thomas supplemented his income by writing scripts for the BBC, which not only gave him additional earnings but also provided evidence that he was engaged in essential war work.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the Luftwaffe in a \"three nights' blitz\". Castle Street was one of many streets that suffered badly; rows of shops, including the Kardomah Café, were destroyed. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded: \"Our Swansea is dead\". Thomas later wrote a feature programme for the radio, Return Journey, which described the café as being \"razed to the snow\". The programme, produced by Philip Burton, was first broadcast on 15 June 1947. The Kardomah Café reopened on Portland Street after the war.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In five film projects, between 1942 and 1945, the Ministry of Information (MOI) commissioned Thomas to script a series of documentaries about both urban planning and wartime patriotism, all in partnership with director John Eldridge: Wales: Green Mountain, Black Mountain, New Towns for Old, Fuel for Battle, Our Country and A City Reborn.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In May 1941, Thomas and Caitlin left their son with his grandmother at Blashford and moved to London. Thomas hoped to find employment in the film industry and wrote to the director of the films division of the Ministry of Information. After being rebuffed, he found work with Strand Films, providing him with his first regular income since the South Wales Daily Post. Strand produced films for the MOI; Thomas scripted at least five films in 1942, This Is Colour (a history of the British dyeing industry) and New Towns For Old (on post-war reconstruction). These Are The Men (1943) was a more ambitious piece in which Thomas's verse accompanies Leni Riefenstahl's footage of an early Nuremberg Rally. Conquest of a Germ (1944) explored the use of early antibiotics in the fight against pneumonia and tuberculosis. Our Country (1945) was a romantic tour of Britain set to Thomas's poetry.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In early 1943, Thomas began a relationship with Pamela Glendower; one of several affairs he had during his marriage. The affairs either ran out of steam or were halted after Caitlin discovered his infidelity. In March 1943, Caitlin gave birth to a daughter, Aeronwy, in London. They lived in a run-down studio in Chelsea, made up of a single large room with a curtain to separate the kitchen.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Thomas family also made several escapes back to Wales. Between 1941 and 1943, they lived intermittently in Plas Gelli, Talsarn, in Cardiganshire. Plas Gelli sits close by the River Aeron, after whom Aeronwy is thought to have been named. Some of Thomas's letters from Gelli can be found in his Collected Letters. The Thomases shared the mansion with his childhood friends from Swansea, Vera and Evelyn Phillips. Vera's friendship with the Thomases in nearby New Quay is portrayed in the 2008 film, The Edge of Love.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In July 1944, with the threat in London of German flying bombs, Thomas moved to the family cottage at Blaencwm near Llangain, Carmarthenshire, where he resumed writing poetry, completing \"Holy Spring\" and \"Vision and Prayer\".",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In September that year, the Thomas family moved to New Quay in Cardiganshire (Ceredigion), where they rented Majoda, a wood and asbestos bungalow on the cliffs overlooking Cardigan Bay. It was there that Thomas wrote the radio piece Quite Early One Morning, a sketch for his later work, Under Milk Wood. Of the poetry written at this time, of note is \"Fern Hill\", believed to have been started while living in New Quay, but completed at Blaencwm in mid-1945. Thomas' nine months in New Quay, said first biographer, Constantine FitzGibbon, were \"a second flowering, a period of fertility that recalls the earliest days…[with a] great outpouring of poems\", as well as a good deal of other material. His second biographer, Paul Ferris, agreed: \"On the grounds of output, the bungalow deserves a plaque of its own.\" Thomas' third biographer, George Tremlett, concurred, describing the time in New Quay as \"one of the most creative periods of Thomas's life.\" Professor Walford Davies, who co-edited the 1995 definitive edition of the play, has noted that New Quay \"was crucial in supplementing the gallery of characters Thomas had to hand for writing Under Milk Wood.\"",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Although Thomas had previously written for the BBC, it was a minor and intermittent source of income. In 1943, he wrote and recorded a 15-minute talk titled \"Reminiscences of Childhood\" for the Welsh BBC. In December 1944, he recorded Quite Early One Morning (produced by Aneirin Talfan Davies, again for the Welsh BBC) but when Davies offered it for national broadcast BBC London turned it down. On 31 August 1945, the BBC Home Service broadcast Quite Early One Morning and, in the three years beginning in October 1945, Thomas made over a hundred broadcasts for the corporation. Thomas was employed not only for his poetry readings, but for discussions and critiques.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In the second half of 1945, Thomas began reading for the BBC Radio programme, Book of Verse, broadcast weekly to the Far East. This provided Thomas with a regular income and brought him into contact with Louis MacNeice, a congenial drinking companion whose advice Thomas cherished. On 29 September 1946, the BBC began transmitting the Third Programme, a high-culture network which provided opportunities for Thomas. He appeared in the play Comus for the Third Programme, the day after the network launched, and his rich, sonorous voice led to character parts, including the lead in Aeschylus's Agamemnon and Satan in an adaptation of Paradise Lost. Thomas remained a popular guest on radio talk shows for the BBC, who regarded him as \"useful should a younger generation poet be needed\". He had an uneasy relationship with BBC management and a staff job was never an option, with drinking cited as the problem. Despite this, Thomas became a familiar radio voice and within Britain was \"in every sense a celebrity\".",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "By late September 1945, the Thomases had left Wales and were living with various friends in London. In December, they moved to Oxford to live in a summerhouse on the banks of the Cherwell. It belonged to the historian, A.J.P. Taylor. His wife, Margaret, would prove to be Thomas's most committed patron.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The publication of Deaths and Entrances in February 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic Walter J. Turner commented in The Spectator, \"This book alone, in my opinion, ranks him as a major poet\".",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The following year, in April 1947, the Thomases travelled to Italy, after Thomas had been awarded a Society of Authors scholarship. They stayed first in villas near Rapallo and then Florence, before moving to a hotel in Rio Marina on the island of Elba. On their return, Thomas and family moved, in September 1947, into the Manor House in South Leigh, just west of Oxford, found for him by Margaret Taylor. He continued with his work for the BBC, completed a number of film scripts and worked further on his ideas for Under Milk Wood, including a discussion in late 1947 of The Village of the Mad (as the play was then called) with the BBC producer Philip Burton. He later recalled that, during the meeting, Thomas had discussed his ideas for having a blind narrator, an organist who played for a dog and two lovers who wrote to each other every day but never met.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In March 1949 Thomas travelled to Prague. He had been invited by the Czech government to attend the inauguration of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union. Jiřina Hauková, who had previously published translations of some of Thomas's poems, was his guide and interpreter. In her memoir, Hauková recalls that at a party in Prague, Thomas \"narrated the first version of his radio play Under Milk Wood.\" She describes how he outlined the plot about a town that was declared insane, mentioning the organist who played for sheep and goats and the baker with two wives.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "A month later, in May 1949, Thomas and his family moved to his final home, the Boat House at Laugharne, purchased for him at a cost of £2,500 in April 1949 by Margaret Taylor. Thomas acquired a garage a hundred yards from the house on a cliff ledge which he turned into his writing shed, and where he wrote several of his most acclaimed poems. He also rented \"Pelican House\" opposite his regular drinking den, Brown's Hotel, for his parents who lived there from 1949 until 1953.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Caitlin gave birth to their third child, a boy named Colm Garan Hart, on 25 July 1949.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In October, the New Zealand poet, Allen Curnow, came to visit Thomas at the Boat House, who took him to his writing shed and \"fished out a draft to show me of the unfinished Under Milk Wood\" that was, says Curnow, titled The Town That Was Mad. This is the first known sighting of the script of the play that was to become Under Milk Wood.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "American poet John Brinnin invited Thomas to New York, where in February 1950 they embarked on a lucrative three-month tour of arts centres and campuses. The tour, which began in front of an audience of a thousand at the Kaufmann Auditorium of the Poetry Centre in New York, took in about 40 venues. During the tour, Thomas was invited to many parties and functions and on several occasions became drunk – going out of his way to shock people – and was a difficult guest. Thomas drank before some of his readings, though it is argued he may have pretended to be more affected by it than he actually was. The writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicating a performer he was and how the tension would build before a performance: \"Would he arrive only to break down on the stage? Would some dismaying scene take place at the faculty party? Would he be offensive, violent, obscene?\" Caitlin said in her memoir, \"Nobody ever needed encouragement less, and he was drowned in it.\"",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "On returning to Britain, Thomas began work on two further poems, \"In the white giant's thigh\", which he read on the Third Programme in September 1950, and the incomplete \"In country heaven\". In October, Thomas sent a draft of the first 39 pages of 'The Town That Was Mad' to the BBC. The task of seeing this work through to production as Under Milk Wood was assigned to the BBC's Douglas Cleverdon, who had been responsible for casting Thomas in 'Paradise Lost'.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Despite Cleverdon's urgings, the script slipped from Thomas's priorities and in January 1951 he went to Iran to work on a film for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, an assignment which Callard has speculated was undertaken on behalf of British intelligence agencies. Thomas toured the country with the film crew, and his letters home vividly express his shock and anger with the poverty he saw around him. He also gave a reading at the British Council and talked with a number of Iranian intellectuals, including Ebrahim Golestan whose account of his meeting with Thomas has been translated and published. The film was never made, with Thomas returning to Wales in February, though his time in Iran allowed him to provide a few minutes of material for a BBC documentary, 'Persian Oil'.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Later that year, Thomas published two poems, which have been described as \"unusually blunt.\" They were an ode, in the form of a villanelle, to his dying father, Do not go gentle into that good night, and the ribald Lament.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Although he had a range of wealthy patrons, including Margaret Taylor, Princess Marguerite Caetani and Marged Howard-Stepney, Thomas was still in financial difficulty, and he wrote several begging letters to notable literary figures, including T. S. Eliot. Taylor was not keen on Thomas taking another trip to the United States, and thought that if he had a permanent address in London he would be able to gain steady work there. She bought a property, 54 Delancey Street, in Camden Town, and in late 1951 Thomas and Caitlin lived in the basement flat. Thomas would describe the flat as his \"London house of horror\" and did not return there after his 1952 tour of America.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Thomas undertook a second tour of the United States in 1952, this time with Caitlin – after she had discovered he had been unfaithful on his earlier trip. They drank heavily, and Thomas began to suffer with gout and lung problems. The second tour was the most intensive of the four, taking in 46 engagements. The trip also resulted in Thomas recording his first poetry to vinyl, which Caedmon Records released in America later that year. One of his works recorded during this time, A Child's Christmas in Wales, became his most popular prose work in America. The original 1952 recording of A Child's Christmas in Wales was a 2008 selection for the United States National Recording Registry, stating that it is \"credited with launching the audiobook industry in the United States\".",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "A shortened version of the first half of The Town That Was Mad was published in Botteghe Oscure in May 1952, with the title Llareggub. A Piece for Radio Perhaps. Thomas had been in Laugharne for almost three years, but his half-play had made little progress since his time living in South Leigh. By the summer of 1952, the half-play's title had been changed to Under Milk Wood because John Brinnin thought the title Llareggub would not attract American audiences. On November 6, 1952, Thomas wrote to the editor of Botteghe Oscure to explain why he hadn't been able to \"finish the second half of my piece for you.\" He had failed shamefully, he said, to add to \"my lonely half of a looney maybe-play\".",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "On 10 November 1952 Thomas's last collection Collected Poems, 1934–1952, was published by Dent; he was 38. It won the Foyle poetry prize. Reviewing the volume, critic Philip Toynbee declared that \"Thomas is the greatest living poet in the English language\". Thomas's father died from pneumonia just before Christmas 1952. In the first few months of 1953, his sister died from liver cancer, one of his patrons took an overdose of sleeping pills, three friends died at an early age and Caitlin had an abortion.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In April 1953, Thomas returned alone for a third tour of America. He performed a \"work in progress\" version of Under Milk Wood, solo, for the first time at Harvard University on 3 May. A week later, the work was performed with a full cast at the Poetry Centre in New York. He met the deadline only after being locked in a room by Brinnin's assistant, Liz Reitell, and he was still editing the script on the afternoon of the performance; its last lines were handed to the actors as they were putting on their makeup.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "During this penultimate tour, Thomas met the composer Igor Stravinsky who had become an admirer after having been introduced to his poetry by W. H. Auden. They had discussions about collaborating on a \"musical theatrical work\" for which Thomas would provide the libretto on the theme of \"the rediscovery of love and language in what might be left after the world after the bomb.\" The shock of Thomas's death later in the year moved Stravinsky to compose his In Memoriam Dylan Thomas for tenor, string quartet and four trombones. The first performance in Los Angeles in 1954 was introduced with a tribute to Thomas from Aldous Huxley.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Thomas spent the last nine or ten days of his third tour in New York mostly in the company of Reitell, with whom he had an affair. During this time, Thomas fractured his arm falling down a flight of stairs when drunk. Reitell's doctor, Milton Feltenstein, put his arm in plaster and treated him for gout and gastritis.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "After returning home, Thomas worked on Under Milk Wood in Laugharne. Aeronwy, his daughter, noticed that his health had \"visibly deteriorated...I could hear his racking cough. Every morning he had a prolonged coughing attack...The coughing was nothing new but it seemed worse than before.\" She also noted that the blackouts that Thomas was experiencing were \"a constant source of comment\" amongst his Laugharne friends.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Thomas sent the original manuscript to Douglas Cleverdon on 15 October 1953. It was copied and returned to Thomas, who lost it in a pub in London and required a duplicate to take to America. Thomas flew to the States on 19 October 1953 for what would be his final tour. He died in New York before the BBC could record Under Milk Wood. Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast in 1954, and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film. In 1954, the play won the Prix Italia for literary or dramatic programmes.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "From \"And death shall have no dominion\"Twenty-five Poems (1936)",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Thomas left Laugharne on 9 October 1953 on the first leg of his fourth trip to America. He called on his mother, Florence, to say goodbye: \"He always felt that he had to get out from this country because of his chest being so bad.\" Thomas had suffered from chest problems for most of his life, though they began in earnest soon after he moved in May 1949 to the Boat House at Laugharne – the \"bronchial heronry\", as he called it. Within weeks of moving in, he visited a local doctor, who prescribed medicine for both his chest and throat.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "While waiting in London before his flight, Thomas stayed with the comedian Harry Locke and worked on Under Milk Wood. Locke noted that Thomas was having trouble with his chest, \"terrible\" coughing fits that made him go purple in the face. He was also using an inhaler to help his breathing. There were reports, too, that Thomas was also having blackouts. His visit to the BBC producer Philip Burton, a few days before he left for New York, was interrupted by a blackout. On his last night in London, he had another in the company of his fellow poet Louis MacNeice.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Thomas arrived in New York on 20 October 1953 to undertake further performances of Under Milk Wood, organised by John Brinnin, his American agent and Director of the Poetry Centre. Brinnin did not travel to New York but remained in Boston to write. He handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell. She met Thomas at Idlewild Airport and was shocked at his appearance. He looked pale, delicate and shaky, not his usual robust self: \"He was very ill when he got here.\" After being taken by Reitell to check in at the Chelsea Hotel, Thomas took the first rehearsal of Under Milk Wood. They then went to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, before returning to the Chelsea Hotel.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The next day, Reitell invited him to her apartment, but he declined. They went sightseeing, but Thomas felt unwell and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon. Reitell gave him half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of phenobarbitone to help him sleep and spent the night at the hotel with him. Two days later, on 23 October, at the third rehearsal, Thomas said he was too ill to take part, but he struggled on, shivering and burning with fever, before collapsing on the stage.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The following day, 24 October, Reitell took Thomas to see her doctor, Milton Feltenstein, who administered cortisone injections and Thomas made it through the first performance that evening, but collapsed immediately afterwards. \"This circus out there,\" he told a friend who had come back-stage, \"has taken the life out of me for now.\" Reitell later said that Feltenstein was \"rather a wild doctor who thought injections would cure anything.\"",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "At the next performance on 25 October, his fellow actors realised that Thomas was very ill: \"He was desperately ill…we didn't think that he would be able to do the last performance because he was so ill…Dylan literally couldn't speak he was so ill…still my greatest memory of it is that he had no voice.\"",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "On the evening of 27 October, Thomas attended his 39th birthday party but felt unwell and returned to his hotel after an hour. The next day, he took part in Poetry and the Film, a recorded symposium at Cinema 16.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "A turning point came on 2 November. Air pollution in New York had risen significantly and exacerbated chest illnesses such as Thomas had. By the end of the month, over 200 New Yorkers had died from the smog.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "On 3 November, Thomas spent most of the day in his room, entertaining various friends. He went out in the evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went out again for a drink at 2 am. After drinking at the White Horse, Thomas returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring, \"I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record!\" The barman and the owner of the pub who served him later commented that Thomas could not have drunk more than half that amount.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Thomas had an appointment at a clam house in New Jersey with Ruthven Todd on 4 November. When Todd telephoned the Chelsea that morning, Thomas said he was feeling ill and postponed the engagement. Todd thought he sounded \"terrible\". The poet, Harvey Breit, was another to phone that morning. He thought that Thomas sounded \"bad\". Thomas's voice, recalled Breit, was \"low and hoarse\". He had wanted to say: \"You sound as though from the tomb\", but instead he told Thomas that he sounded like Louis Armstrong.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Later, Thomas went drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, administering the cortisone secretant ACTH by injection and, on his third visit, half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of morphine sulphate, which affected Thomas's breathing. Reitell became increasingly concerned and telephoned Feltenstein for advice. He suggested she get male assistance, so she called upon the painter Jack Heliker, who arrived before 11 pm. At midnight on 5 November, Thomas's breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue. Reitell phoned Feltenstein who arrived at the hotel at about 1 am, and called for an ambulance. It then took another hour for the ambulance to arrive at St. Vincent's, even though it was only a few blocks from the Chelsea.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at St Vincent's Hospital at 1:58 am. He was comatose, and his medical notes state that \"the impression upon admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the brain by alcohol, for which the patient was treated without response\". Feltenstein then took control of Thomas's care, even though he did not have admitting rights at St. Vincent's. The hospital's senior brain specialist, C.G. Gutierrez-Mahoney, was not called to examine Thomas until the afternoon of 6 November, some 36 hours after Thomas's admission.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Caitlin flew to America the following day and was taken to the hospital, by which time a tracheotomy had been performed. Her reported first words were, \"Is the bloody man dead yet?\" She was allowed to see Thomas only for 40 minutes in the morning but returned in the afternoon and, in a drunken rage, threatened to kill John Brinnin. When she became uncontrollable, she was put in a straitjacket and committed, by Feltenstein, to the River Crest private psychiatric detox clinic on Long Island.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "It is now believed that Thomas had been suffering from bronchitis, pneumonia, emphysema and asthma before his admission to St Vincent's. In their 2004 paper, Death by Neglect, D. N. Thomas and former GP Principal Simon Barton disclose that Thomas was found to have pneumonia when he was admitted to hospital in a coma. Doctors took three hours to restore his breathing, using artificial respiration and oxygen. Summarising their findings, they conclude: \"The medical notes indicate that, on admission, Dylan's bronchial disease was found to be very extensive, affecting upper, mid and lower lung fields, both left and right.\" The forensic pathologist, Bernard Knight, who examined the post-mortem report, concurs: \"death was clearly due to a severe lung infection with extensive advanced bronchopneumonia...the severity of the chest infection, with greyish consolidated areas of well-established pneumonia, suggests that it had started before admission to hospital.\"",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Thomas died at noon on 9 November, having never recovered from his coma. A nurse, and the poet John Berryman, were present with him at the time of death.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Rumours circulated of a brain haemorrhage, followed by competing reports of a mugging or even that Thomas had drunk himself to death. Later, speculation arose about drugs and diabetes. At the post-mortem, the pathologist found three causes of death – pneumonia, brain swelling and a fatty liver. Despite the poet's heavy drinking, his liver showed no sign of cirrhosis.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The publication of John Brinnin's 1955 biography Dylan Thomas in America cemented Thomas's reputation as a \"roistering, drunken and doomed poet\"; Brinnin focuses on Thomas's last few years and paints a picture of him as a drunk and a philanderer. Later biographies have criticised Brinnin's view, especially his coverage of Thomas's death. David Thomas in Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas? claims that Brinnin, along with Reitell and Feltenstein, were culpable. FitzGibbon's 1965 biography ignores Thomas's heavy drinking and skims over his death, giving just two pages in his detailed book to Thomas's demise. Ferris in his 1989 biography includes Thomas's heavy drinking, but is more critical of those around him in his final days and does not draw the conclusion that he drank himself to death. Many sources have criticised Feltenstein's role and actions, especially his incorrect diagnosis of delirium tremens and the high dose of morphine he administered. Dr C. G. de Gutierrez-Mahoney, the doctor who treated Thomas while at St. Vincents, concluded that Feltenstein's failure to see that Thomas was gravely ill and have him admitted to hospital sooner \"was even more culpable than his use of morphine\".",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Caitlin Thomas's autobiographies, Caitlin Thomas – Leftover Life to Kill (1957) and My Life with Dylan Thomas: Double Drink Story (1997), describe the effects of alcohol on the poet and on their relationship. \"Ours was not only a love story, it was a drink story, because without alcohol it would never had got on its rocking feet\", she wrote, and \"The bar was our altar.\" Biographer Andrew Lycett ascribed the decline in Thomas's health to an alcoholic co-dependent relationship with his wife, who deeply resented his extramarital affairs. In contrast, Dylan biographers Andrew Sinclair and George Tremlett express the view that Thomas was not an alcoholic. Tremlett argues that many of Thomas's health issues stemmed from undiagnosed diabetes.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Thomas died intestate, with assets worth £100. His body was brought back to Wales for burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne. Thomas's funeral, which Brinnin did not attend, took place at St Martin's Church in Laugharne on 24 November. Six friends from the village carried Thomas's coffin. Caitlin, without her customary hat, walked behind the coffin, with his childhood friend Daniel Jones at her arm and her mother by her side. The procession to the church was filmed and the wake took place at Brown's Hotel. Thomas's fellow poet and long-time friend Vernon Watkins wrote The Times obituary.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Thomas's widow, Caitlin, died in 1994 and was buried alongside him. Thomas's father, \"DJ\", died on 16 December 1952 and his mother Florence in August 1958. Thomas's elder son, Llewelyn, died in 2000, his daughter, Aeronwy in 2009, and his younger son, Colm, in 2012.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Thomas's refusal to align with any literary group or movement has made him and his work difficult to categorise. Although influenced by the modern symbolism and surrealism movements he refused to follow such creeds. Instead, critics view Thomas as part of the modernism and romanticism movements, though attempts to pigeon-hole him within a particular neo-romantic school have been unsuccessful. Elder Olson, in his 1954 critical study of Thomas's poetry, wrote of \"…a further characteristic which distinguished Thomas's work from that of other poets. It was unclassifiable.\" Olson continued that in a postmodern age that continually attempted to demand that poetry have social reference, none could be found in Thomas's work, and that his work was so obscure that critics could not explicate it.",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle \"Do not go gentle into that good night\". His images appear carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death and new life that linked the generations. Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore, preaching, and Sigmund Freud. Explaining the source of his imagery, Thomas wrote in a letter to Glyn Jones: \"My own obscurity is quite an unfashionable one, based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism derived (I'm afraid all this sounds wooly and pretentious) from the cosmic significance of the human anatomy\".",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Who once were a bloom of wayside brides in the hawed house And heard the lewd, wooed field flow to the coming frost, The scurrying, furred small friars squeal in the dowse Of day, in the thistle aisles, till the white owl crossed",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "From \"In the white giant's thigh\" (1950)",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Thomas's early poetry was noted for its verbal density, alliteration, sprung rhythm and internal rhyme, and some critics detected the influence of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. This is attributed to Hopkins, who taught himself Welsh and who used sprung verse, bringing some features of Welsh poetic metre into his work. When Henry Treece wrote to Thomas comparing his style to that of Hopkins, Thomas wrote back denying any such influence. Thomas greatly admired Thomas Hardy, who is regarded as an influence. When Thomas travelled in America, he recited some of Hardy's work in his readings.",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Other poets from whom critics believe Thomas drew influence include James Joyce, Arthur Rimbaud and D. H. Lawrence. William York Tindall, in his 1962 study, A Reader's Guide to Dylan Thomas, finds comparison between Thomas's and Joyce's wordplay, while he notes the themes of rebirth and nature are common to the works of Lawrence and Thomas. Although Thomas described himself as the \"Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive\", he stated that the phrase \"Swansea's Rimbaud\" was coined by poet Roy Campbell. Critics have explored the origins of Thomas's mythological pasts in his works such as \"The Orchards\", which Ann Elizabeth Mayer believes reflects the Welsh myths of the Mabinogion. Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in \"Fern Hill\", \"In Country Sleep\", \"Ballad of the Long-legged Bait\" and \"In the White Giant's Thigh\" from Under Milk Wood.",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "I should say I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words. The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes and before I could read them for myself I had come to love the words of them. The words alone. What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance… I fell in love, that is the only expression I can think of, at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy. I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later, to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to me, that could be ever.",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Thomas became an accomplished writer of prose poetry, with collections such as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940) and Quite Early One Morning (1954) showing he was capable of writing moving short stories. His first published prose work, After the Fair, appeared in The New English Weekly on 15 March 1934. Jacob Korg believes that one can classify Thomas's fiction work into two main bodies: vigorous fantasies in a poetic style and, after 1939, more straightforward narratives. Korg surmises that Thomas approached his prose writing as an alternate poetic form, which allowed him to produce complex, involuted narratives that do not allow the reader to rest.",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon, I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art.",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "From \"In my Craft or Sullen Art\" Deaths and Entrances, 1946",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Thomas disliked being regarded as a provincial poet and decried any notion of 'Welshness' in his poetry. When he wrote to Stephen Spender in 1952, thanking him for a review of his Collected Poems, he added \"Oh, & I forgot. I'm not influenced by Welsh bardic poetry. I can't read Welsh.\" Despite this his work was rooted in the geography of Wales. Thomas acknowledged that he returned to Wales when he had difficulty writing, and John Ackerman argues that \"His inspiration and imagination were rooted in his Welsh background\". Caitlin Thomas wrote that he worked \"in a fanatically narrow groove, although there was nothing narrow about the depth and understanding of his feelings. The groove of direct hereditary descent in the land of his birth, which he never in thought, and hardly in body, moved out of.\"",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Head of Programmes Wales at the BBC, Aneirin Talfan Davies, who commissioned several of Thomas's early radio talks, believed that the poet's \"whole attitude is that of the medieval bards.\" Kenneth O. Morgan counter-argues that it is a 'difficult enterprise' to find traces of cynghanedd (consonant harmony) or cerdd dafod (tongue-craft) in Thomas's poetry. Instead he believes his work, especially his earlier more autobiographical poems, are rooted in a changing country which echoes the Welshness of the past and the Anglicisation of the new industrial nation: \"rural and urban, chapel-going and profane, Welsh and English, Unforgiving and deeply compassionate.\" Fellow poet and critic Glyn Jones believed that any traces of cynghanedd in Thomas's work were accidental, although he felt Thomas consciously employed one element of Welsh metrics; that of counting syllables per line instead of feet. Constantine Fitzgibbon, who was his first in-depth biographer, wrote \"No major English poet has ever been as Welsh as Dylan\".",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Although Thomas had a deep connection with Wales, he disliked Welsh nationalism. He once wrote, \"Land of my fathers, and my fathers can keep it\". While often attributed to Thomas himself, this line actually comes from the character Owen Morgan-Vaughan, in the screenplay Thomas wrote for the 1948 British melodrama The Three Weird Sisters. Robert Pocock, a friend from the BBC, recalled \"I only once heard Dylan express an opinion on Welsh Nationalism. He used three words. Two of them were Welsh Nationalism.\" Although not expressed as strongly, Glyn Jones believed that he and Thomas's friendship cooled in the later years as he had not 'rejected enough' of the elements that Thomas disliked – \"Welsh nationalism and a sort of hill farm morality\". Apologetically, in a letter to Keidrych Rhys, editor of the literary magazine Wales, Thomas's father wrote that he was \"afraid Dylan isn't much of a Welshman\". Though FitzGibbon asserts that Thomas's negativity towards Welsh nationalism was fostered by his father's hostility towards the Welsh language.",
"title": "Poetry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Thomas's work and stature as a poet have been much debated by critics and biographers since his death. Critical studies have been clouded by Thomas's personality and mythology, especially his drunken persona and death in New York. When Seamus Heaney gave an Oxford lecture on the poet he opened by addressing the assembly, \"Dylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry\", querying how 'Thomas the Poet' is one of his forgotten attributes. David Holbrook, who has written three books about Thomas, stated in his 1962 publication Llareggub Revisited, \"the strangest feature of Dylan Thomas's notoriety—not that he is bogus, but that attitudes to poetry attached themselves to him which not only threaten the prestige, effectiveness and accessibility to English poetry but also destroyed his true voice and, at last, him.\" The Poetry Archive notes that \"Dylan Thomas's detractors accuse him of being drunk on language as well as whiskey, but whilst there's no doubt that the sound of language is central to his style, he was also a disciplined writer who re-drafted obsessively\".",
"title": "Critical reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Many critics have argued that Thomas's work is too narrow and that he suffers from verbal extravagance. Those that have championed his work have found the criticism baffling. Robert Lowell wrote in 1947, \"Nothing could be more wrongheaded than the English disputes about Dylan Thomas's greatness ... He is a dazzling obscure writer who can be enjoyed without understanding.\" Kenneth Rexroth said, on reading Eighteen Poems, \"The reeling excitement of a poetry-intoxicated schoolboy smote the Philistine as hard a blow with one small book as Swinburne had with Poems and Ballads.\" Philip Larkin in a letter to Kingsley Amis in 1948, wrote that \"no one can 'stick words into us like pins'... like he [Thomas] can\", but followed that by stating that he \"doesn't use his words to any advantage\". Amis was far harsher, finding little of merit in his work, and claiming that he was 'frothing at the mouth with piss.' In 1956, the publication of the anthology New Lines featuring works by the British collective The Movement, which included Amis and Larkin amongst its number, set out a vision of modern poetry that was damning towards the poets of the 1940s. Thomas's work in particular was criticised. David Lodge, writing about The Movement in 1981 stated \"Dylan Thomas was made to stand for everything they detest, verbal obscurity, metaphysical pretentiousness, and romantic rhapsodizing\".",
"title": "Critical reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Despite criticism by sections of academia, Thomas's work has been embraced by readers more so than many of his contemporaries, and is one of the few modern poets whose name is recognised by the general public. In 2009, over 18,000 votes were cast in a BBC poll to find the UK's favourite poet; Thomas was placed 10th. Several of his poems have passed into the cultural mainstream, and his work has been used by authors, musicians and film and television writers. The BBC Radio programme, Desert Island Discs, in which guests usually choose their favourite songs, has heard 50 participants select a Dylan Thomas recording. John Goodby states that this popularity with the reading public allows Thomas's work to be classed as vulgar and common. He also cites that despite a brief period during the 1960s when Thomas was considered a cultural icon, that the poet has been marginalized in critical circles due to his exuberance, in both life and work, and his refusal to know his place. Goodby believes that Thomas has been mainly snubbed since the 1970s and has become \"... an embarrassment to twentieth-century poetry criticism\", his work failing to fit standard narratives and thus being ignored rather than studied. In June 2022, Thomas was the subject of BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.",
"title": "Critical reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "In Swansea's maritime quarter are the Dylan Thomas Theatre, home of the Swansea Little Theatre of which Thomas was once a member, and the former Guildhall built in 1825 and now occupied by the Dylan Thomas Centre, a literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held and setting for the annual Dylan Thomas Festival. Outside the centre stands a bronze statue of Thomas, by John Doubleday. Another monument to Thomas stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of his favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace. The memorial is a small rock in an enclosed garden within the park cut by and inscribed by the late sculptor Ronald Cour with the closing lines from Fern Hill.",
"title": "Memorials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.",
"title": "Memorials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Thomas's home in Laugharne, the Boathouse, is a museum run by Carmarthenshire County Council. His writing shed is also preserved. In 2004, the Dylan Thomas Prize was created in his honour, awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30. In 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award was established. The prize, administered by the Dylan Thomas Centre, is awarded at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival. In 1982 a plaque was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The plaque is also inscribed with the last two lines of \"Fern Hill\".",
"title": "Memorials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "In 2014, the Royal Patron of The Dylan Thomas 100 Festival was Charles, Prince of Wales, who in 2013 made a recording of \"Fern Hill\" for National Poetry Day.",
"title": "Memorials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "In 2014, to celebrate the centenary of Thomas's birth, the British Council Wales undertook a year-long programme of cultural and educational works. Highlights included a touring replica of Thomas's work shed, Sir Peter Blake's exhibition of illustrations based on Under Milk Wood and a 36-hour marathon of readings, which included Michael Sheen and Sir Ian McKellen performing Thomas's work. The same year, Thomas was among the ten people commemorated on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail in their \"Remarkable Lives\" issue.",
"title": "Memorials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "The actor, Dylan Sprouse and Columbine shooter, Dylan Klebold are both named after him. Thomas is mentioned in the song \"Dylan Thomas\" from Better Oblivion Community Center's 2019 album.",
"title": "Memorials"
}
]
| Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood. He also wrote stories and radio broadcasts such as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. He became widely popular in his lifetime and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then, he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a "roistering, drunken and doomed poet". He was born in Uplands, Swansea, in 1914, leaving school in 1932 to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post. Many of his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager. In 1934, the publication of "Light breaks where no sun shines" caught the attention of the literary world. While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara. They married in 1937 and had three children: Llewelyn, Aeronwy, and Colm. He came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found earning a living as a writer difficult. He began augmenting his income with reading tours and radio broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940s brought him to the public's attention, and he was frequently featured by the BBC as an accessible voice of the literary scene. Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950s. His readings there brought him a degree of fame, while his erratic behaviour and drinking worsened. His time in the United States cemented his legend, and he went on to record to vinyl such works as A Child's Christmas in Wales. During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill and fell into a coma. He died on 9 November and his body was returned to Wales. On 25 November, he was interred at St Martin's churchyard in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. Although Thomas wrote exclusively in the English language, he has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century. He is noted for his original, rhythmic, and ingenious use of words and imagery. His position as one of the great modern poets has been much discussed, and he remains popular with the public. | 2001-11-07T07:49:55Z | 2023-12-17T11:26:20Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Thomas |
8,785 | Fern Hill | "Fern Hill" (1945) is a poem by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, first published in Horizon magazine in October 1945, with its first book publication in 1946 as the last poem in Deaths and Entrances.
Thomas had started writing Fern Hill in New Quay, Cardiganshire, where he lived from September 4, 1944, to July 1945. Further work was done on the poem in July and August 1945 at Blaencwm, the family cottage in Carmarthenshire, Wales. A draft was sent to a friend in late August, and then the completed poem to his publisher on September 18, 1945.
The house Fernhill is a Grade 2 listed residence just outside Llangain in Carmarthenshire. In Thomas' day, it had an orchard and fifteen acres of farmland, most of it of poor quality. Thomas had extended stays here in the 1920s with his aunt Annie and her husband, Jim Jones. They had lived at Fernhill from about 1908 to 1928, renting it from the daughter of Robert Ricketts Evans (also known as Robert Anderson Evans), an occasional hangman and public executioner who once lived in Fernhill. Thomas’ own notes about Fernhill confirm that he knew the various stories about Evans the Hangman.
Thomas wrote about Fernhill (calling it Gorsehill) in his short story, The Peaches, in which he describes it as a ramshackle house of hollow fear. Fernhill's dilapidated farmyard and buildings are also described in The Peaches. Jim Jones had shown little interest in farming, as his neighbours had noticed: there was “no work in him...left Fernhill farm to ruins.” Jim had sold most of his farming machinery, implements and livestock before moving to Fernhill. He'd also been convicted for allowing decomposing animal carcasses to lie around his fields.
Fernhill, said an official survey, had an outside earth closet, water was carried in from a well in the farmyard, washing oneself was done in the kitchen, whilst meals were cooked on an open fire. Its two living rooms were lit by candles and paraffin lamps. The house, said the survey, had “extreme rising dampness” and smelt, wrote Thomas in The Peaches, "of rotten wood and damp and animals".
Thomas' holidays here have been recalled in interviews with his schoolboy friends and with Annie and Jim's neighbours. A further account describes both Thomas’ childhood and later years on the family farms between Llangain and Llansteffan, as well as suggesting that the poem Fern Hill was inspired not just by the house Fernhill but by another farm as well.
The poem starts as a straightforward evocation of his childhood visits to his Aunt Annie's farm:
In the middle section, the idyllic scene is expanded upon, reinforced by the lilting rhythm of the poem, the dreamlike, pastoral metaphors and allusion to Eden.
By the end, the poet's older voice has taken over, mourning his lost youth with echoes of the opening:
The poem uses internal half rhyme and full rhyme as well as end rhyme. Thomas was very conscious of the effect of spoken or intoned verse and explored the potentialities of sound and rhythm, in a manner reminiscent of Gerard Manley Hopkins. He always denied having conscious knowledge of Welsh, but "his lines chime with internal consonantal correspondence, or cynghanedd, a prescribed feature of Welsh versification".
Fern Hill has been set to music by the American composer John Corigliano, for SATB chorus with orchestral accompaniment.
Samples of the Fern Hill poem read by Dylan Thomas himself are used in the track Apple Towns by the one-man act Reflection Nebula.
Happy as the Grass Was Green became the title of a 1973 drama film.
Canadian performer Raffi transformed the poem as a song called "Up on Fernhill" on his 2002 album: "Let's Play!" | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "\"Fern Hill\" (1945) is a poem by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, first published in Horizon magazine in October 1945, with its first book publication in 1946 as the last poem in Deaths and Entrances.",
"title": "Poem and House"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Thomas had started writing Fern Hill in New Quay, Cardiganshire, where he lived from September 4, 1944, to July 1945. Further work was done on the poem in July and August 1945 at Blaencwm, the family cottage in Carmarthenshire, Wales. A draft was sent to a friend in late August, and then the completed poem to his publisher on September 18, 1945.",
"title": "Poem and House"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The house Fernhill is a Grade 2 listed residence just outside Llangain in Carmarthenshire. In Thomas' day, it had an orchard and fifteen acres of farmland, most of it of poor quality. Thomas had extended stays here in the 1920s with his aunt Annie and her husband, Jim Jones. They had lived at Fernhill from about 1908 to 1928, renting it from the daughter of Robert Ricketts Evans (also known as Robert Anderson Evans), an occasional hangman and public executioner who once lived in Fernhill. Thomas’ own notes about Fernhill confirm that he knew the various stories about Evans the Hangman.",
"title": "Poem and House"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Thomas wrote about Fernhill (calling it Gorsehill) in his short story, The Peaches, in which he describes it as a ramshackle house of hollow fear. Fernhill's dilapidated farmyard and buildings are also described in The Peaches. Jim Jones had shown little interest in farming, as his neighbours had noticed: there was “no work in him...left Fernhill farm to ruins.” Jim had sold most of his farming machinery, implements and livestock before moving to Fernhill. He'd also been convicted for allowing decomposing animal carcasses to lie around his fields.",
"title": "Poem and House"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Fernhill, said an official survey, had an outside earth closet, water was carried in from a well in the farmyard, washing oneself was done in the kitchen, whilst meals were cooked on an open fire. Its two living rooms were lit by candles and paraffin lamps. The house, said the survey, had “extreme rising dampness” and smelt, wrote Thomas in The Peaches, \"of rotten wood and damp and animals\".",
"title": "Poem and House"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Thomas' holidays here have been recalled in interviews with his schoolboy friends and with Annie and Jim's neighbours. A further account describes both Thomas’ childhood and later years on the family farms between Llangain and Llansteffan, as well as suggesting that the poem Fern Hill was inspired not just by the house Fernhill but by another farm as well.",
"title": "Poem and House"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The poem starts as a straightforward evocation of his childhood visits to his Aunt Annie's farm:",
"title": "Linguistic considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the middle section, the idyllic scene is expanded upon, reinforced by the lilting rhythm of the poem, the dreamlike, pastoral metaphors and allusion to Eden.",
"title": "Linguistic considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "By the end, the poet's older voice has taken over, mourning his lost youth with echoes of the opening:",
"title": "Linguistic considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The poem uses internal half rhyme and full rhyme as well as end rhyme. Thomas was very conscious of the effect of spoken or intoned verse and explored the potentialities of sound and rhythm, in a manner reminiscent of Gerard Manley Hopkins. He always denied having conscious knowledge of Welsh, but \"his lines chime with internal consonantal correspondence, or cynghanedd, a prescribed feature of Welsh versification\".",
"title": "Linguistic considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Fern Hill has been set to music by the American composer John Corigliano, for SATB chorus with orchestral accompaniment.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Samples of the Fern Hill poem read by Dylan Thomas himself are used in the track Apple Towns by the one-man act Reflection Nebula.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Happy as the Grass Was Green became the title of a 1973 drama film.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Canadian performer Raffi transformed the poem as a song called \"Up on Fernhill\" on his 2002 album: \"Let's Play!\"",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| 2023-01-21T12:07:33Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_Hill |
||
8,786 | David Bowie | David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie (/ˈboʊi/ BOH-ee), was an English singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, and his music and stagecraft had a significant impact on popular music.
Bowie developed an interest in music from an early age. He studied art, music and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963. He released a string of unsuccessful singles with local bands and a solo album before achieving his first top five entry on the UK Singles Chart with "Space Oddity", released in 1969. After a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of "Starman" and album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which won him widespread popularity. In 1975, Bowie's style shifted towards a sound he characterised as "plastic soul", initially alienating many of his UK fans but garnering him his first major US crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the album Young Americans. In 1976, Bowie starred in the cult film The Man Who Fell to Earth and released Station to Station. In 1977, he again changed direction with the electronic-inflected album Low, the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno that came to be known as the Berlin Trilogy. "Heroes" (1977) and Lodger (1979) followed; each album reached the UK top five and received lasting critical praise.
After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had three number-one hits: the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes", its album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) and "Under Pressure" (a 1981 collaboration with Queen). He achieved his greatest commercial success in the 1980s with Let's Dance (1983). Between 1988 and 1992, he fronted the hard rock band Tin Machine before resuming his solo career in 1993. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including industrial and jungle. He also continued acting; his roles included Major Jack Celliers in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth (1986), Phillip Jeffries in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Andy Warhol in the biopic Basquiat (1996), and Nikola Tesla in The Prestige (2006), among other film and television appearances and cameos. He stopped touring after 2004 and his last live performance was at a charity event in 2006. He returned from a decade-long recording hiatus in 2013 with The Next Day and remained musically active until his death from liver cancer in 2016. He died two days after both his 69th birthday and the release of his final album, Blackstar.
During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at over 100 million records worldwide, made him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Often dubbed the "chameleon of rock" due to his constant musical reinventions, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Rolling Stone ranked him among the greatest artists in history. As of 2022, Bowie was the best-selling vinyl artist of the 21st century.
David Robert Jones was born on 8 January 1947 in Brixton, London. His mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy" (née Burns; 2 October 1913 – 2 April 2001), was born at Shorncliffe Army Camp near Cheriton, Kent. Her paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants who had settled in Manchester. She worked as a waitress at a cinema in Royal Tunbridge Wells. His father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones (21 November 1912 – 5 August 1969), was from Doncaster, Yorkshire, and worked as a promotions officer for the children's charity Barnardo's. The family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, on the boundary between Brixton and Stockwell in the south London borough of Lambeth. Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, acquiring a reputation as a gifted and single-minded child—and a defiant brawler.
From 1953, Bowie moved with his family to Bickley and then Bromley Common, before settling in Sundridge Park in 1955 where he attended Burnt Ash Junior School. His voice was considered "adequate" by the school choir, and he demonstrated above-average abilities in playing the recorder. At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers called his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his poise "astonishing" for a child. The same year, his interest in music was further stimulated when his father brought home a collection of American 45s by artists including the Teenagers, the Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. Upon listening to Little Richard's song "Tutti Frutti", Bowie later said that he had "heard God".
Bowie was first impressed with Presley when he saw his cousin Kristina dance to "Hound Dog" soon after its release in 1956. According to Kristina, she and David "danced like possessed elves" to records of various artists. By the end of the following year, Bowie had taken up the ukulele and tea-chest bass, begun to participate in skiffle sessions with friends, and had started to play the piano; meanwhile, his stage presentation of numbers by both Presley and Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the original artists—to his local Wolf Cub group was described as "mesmerizing ... like someone from another planet". Having encouraged his son to follow his dreams of being an entertainer since he was a toddler, in the late 1950s David's father took him to meet singers and other performers preparing for the Royal Variety Performance, introducing him to Alma Cogan and Tommy Steele. After taking his eleven-plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie went to Bromley Technical High School. It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher Sandford wrote:
Despite its status it was, by the time David arrived in 1958, as rich in arcane ritual as any [English] public school. There were houses named after eighteenth-century statesmen like Pitt and Wilberforce. There was a uniform and an elaborate system of rewards and punishments. There was also an accent on languages, science and particularly design, where a collegiate atmosphere flourished under the tutorship of Owen Frampton. In David's account, Frampton led through force of personality, not intellect; his colleagues at Bromley Tech were famous for neither and yielded the school's most gifted pupils to the arts, a regime so liberal that Frampton actively encouraged his own son, Peter, to pursue a musical career with David, a partnership briefly intact thirty years later.
Bowie's maternal half-brother, Terry Burns, was a substantial influence on his early life. Burns, who was 10 years older than Bowie, had schizophrenia and seizures, and lived alternately at home and in psychiatric wards; while living with Bowie, he introduced the younger man to many of his lifelong influences, such as modern jazz, Buddhism, Beat poetry and the occult. In addition to Burns, a significant proportion of Bowie's extended family members had schizophrenia spectrum disorders, including an aunt who was institutionalised and another who underwent a lobotomy; this has been labelled as an influence on his early work.
Bowie studied art, music and design, including layout and typesetting. After Burns introduced him to modern jazz, his enthusiasm for players like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane led his mother to give him a Grafton saxophone in 1961. He was soon receiving lessons from baritone saxophonist Ronnie Ross.
He received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. After a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation, his doctors determined that the damage could not be fully repaired and Bowie was left with faulty depth perception and anisocoria (a permanently dilated pupil), which gave a false impression of a change in the iris' colour, erroneously suggesting he had heterochromia iridum (one iris a different colour to the other); his eye later became one of Bowie's most recognisable features. Despite their altercation, Bowie remained on good terms with Underwood, who went on to create the artwork for Bowie's early albums.
Bowie formed his first band, the Konrads, in 1962 at the age of 15. Playing guitar-based rock and roll at local youth gatherings and weddings, the Konrads had a varying line-up of between four and eight members, Underwood among them. When Bowie left the technical school the following year, he informed his parents of his intention to become a pop star. His mother arranged his employment as an electrician's mate. Frustrated by his bandmates' limited aspirations, Bowie left the Konrads and joined another band, the King Bees. He wrote to the newly successful washing-machine entrepreneur John Bloom inviting him to "do for us what Brian Epstein has done for the Beatles—and make another million." Bloom did not respond to the offer, but his referral to Dick James's partner Leslie Conn led to Bowie's first personal management contract.
Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. His debut single, "Liza Jane", credited to Davie Jones with the King Bees, was not commercially successful. Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their repertoire of Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon covers, Bowie quit the band less than a month later to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who incorporated folk and soul—"I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger", he recalled. Their cover of Bobby Bland's "I Pity the Fool" was no more successful than "Liza Jane", and Bowie soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio strongly influenced by the Who. "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" fared no better, signalling the end of Conn's contract. Declaring that he would exit the pop music world "to study mime at Sadler's Wells", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower Third. His new manager, Ralph Horton, later instrumental in his transition to solo artist, helped secure him a contract with Pye Records. Publicist Tony Hatch signed Bowie on the basis that he wrote his own songs. Dissatisfied with Davy (and Davie) Jones, which in the mid-1960s invited confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees, he took on the stage name David Bowie after the 19th-century American pioneer James Bowie and the knife he had popularised. His first release under the name was the January 1966 single "Can't Help Thinking About Me", recorded with the Lower Third. It flopped like its predecessors.
Bowie departed the Lower Third after the single's release, partly due to Horton's influence, and released two more singles for Pye, "Do Anything You Say" and "I Dig Everything", both of which featured a new band called the Buzz, before signing with Deram Records. Around this time Bowie also joined the Riot Squad; their recordings, which included one of Bowie's original songs and material by the Velvet Underground, went unreleased. Kenneth Pitt, introduced by Horton, took over as Bowie's manager. His April 1967 solo single, "The Laughing Gnome", on which speeded-up and high-pitched vocals were used to portray the gnome, failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut, David Bowie, an amalgam of pop, psychedelia and music hall, met the same fate. It was his last release for two years. In September, Bowie recorded "Let Me Sleep Beside You" and "Karma Man", both rejected by Deram and left unreleased until 1970. The tracks marked the beginning of Bowie's working relationship with producer Tony Visconti which, with large gaps, lasted for the rest of Bowie's career.
Studying the dramatic arts under Lindsay Kemp, from avant-garde theatre and mime to commedia dell'arte, Bowie became immersed in the creation of personae to present to the world. Satirising life in a British prison, his composition "Over the Wall We Go" became a 1967 single for Oscar; another Bowie song, "Silly Boy Blue", was released by Billy Fury the following year. Playing acoustic guitar, Hermione Farthingale formed a group with Bowie and guitarist John Hutchinson named Feathers; between September 1968 and early 1969 the trio gave a small number of concerts combining folk, Merseybeat, poetry and mime.
After the break-up with Farthingale, Bowie moved in with Mary Finnigan as her lodger. In February and March 1969, he undertook a short tour with Marc Bolan's duo Tyrannosaurus Rex, as third on the bill, performing a mime act. Continuing the divergence from rock and roll and blues begun by his work with Farthingale, Bowie joined forces with Finnigan, Christina Ostrom and Barrie Jackson to run a folk club on Sunday nights at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street. The club was influenced by the Arts Lab movement, developing into the Beckenham Arts Lab and became extremely popular. The Arts Lab hosted a free festival in a local park, the subject of his song "Memory of a Free Festival".
Pitt attempted to introduce Bowie to a larger audience with the Love You till Tuesday film, which went unreleased until 1984. Feeling alienated over his unsuccessful career and deeply affected by his break-up, Bowie wrote "Space Oddity", a tale about a fictional astronaut named Major Tom. The song earned him a contract with Mercury Records and its UK subsidiary Philips, who issued "Space Oddity" as a single on 11 July 1969, five days ahead of the Apollo 11 launch. Reaching the top five in the UK, it was his first and last hit for three years. Bowie's second album followed in November; originally issued in the UK as David Bowie, it caused some confusion with its predecessor of the same name, and the US release was instead titled Man of Words/Man of Music; it was reissued internationally in 1972 by RCA Records as Space Oddity. Featuring philosophical post-hippie lyrics on peace, love and morality, its acoustic folk rock occasionally fortified by harder rock, the album was not a commercial success at the time of its release.
Bowie met Angela Barnett in April 1969. They married within a year. Her impact on him was immediate—he wrote his 1970 single "The Prettiest Star" for her—and her involvement in his career far-reaching, leaving Pitt with limited influence which he found frustrating. Having established himself as a solo artist with "Space Oddity", Bowie desired a full-time band he could record with and could relate to personally. The band Bowie assembled comprised John Cambridge, a drummer Bowie met at the Arts Lab, Visconti on bass and Mick Ronson on electric guitar. Known as Hype, the bandmates created characters for themselves and wore elaborate costumes that prefigured the glam style of the Spiders from Mars. After a disastrous opening gig at the London Roundhouse, they reverted to a configuration presenting Bowie as a solo artist. Their initial studio work was marred by a heated disagreement between Bowie and Cambridge over the latter's drumming style, leading to his replacement by Mick Woodmansey. Not long after, Bowie fired his manager and replaced him with Tony Defries. This resulted in years of litigation that concluded with Bowie having to pay Pitt compensation.
The studio sessions continued and resulted in Bowie's third album, The Man Who Sold the World (1970), which contained references to schizophrenia, paranoia and delusion. It represented a departure from the acoustic guitar and folk rock style established by his second album, to a more hard rock sound. To promote it in the US, Mercury financed a coast-to-coast publicity tour across America in which Bowie, between January and February 1971, was interviewed by radio stations and the media. Exploiting his androgynous appearance, the original cover of the UK version unveiled two months later depicted Bowie wearing a dress. He took the dress with him and wore it during interviews, to the approval of critics – including Rolling Stone's John Mendelsohn, who described him as "ravishing, almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall".
During the tour, Bowie's observation of two seminal American proto-punk artists led him to develop a concept that eventually found form in the Ziggy Stardust character: a melding of the persona of Iggy Pop with the music of Lou Reed, producing "the ultimate pop idol". A girlfriend recalled his "scrawling notes on a cocktail napkin about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy", and on his return to England he declared his intention to create a character "who looks like he's landed from Mars". The "Stardust" surname was a tribute to the "Legendary Stardust Cowboy", whose record he was given during the tour. Bowie later covered "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Space Ship" on 2002's Heathen.
Hunky Dory (1971) found Visconti supplanted in both roles by Ken Scott producing and Trevor Bolder on bass. It again featured a stylistic shift towards art pop and melodic pop rock, with light fare tracks such as "Kooks", a song written for his son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, born on 30 May. Elsewhere, the album explored more serious subjects, and found Bowie paying unusually direct homage to his influences with "Song for Bob Dylan", "Andy Warhol" and "Queen Bitch", the latter a Velvet Underground pastiche. His first release through RCA, it was a commercial failure, partly due lack of promotion from the label. Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits covered the album's track "Oh! You Pretty Things", which reached number 12 in the UK.
Dressed in a striking costume, his hair dyed reddish-brown, Bowie launched his Ziggy Stardust stage show with the Spiders from Mars—Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey—at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth in Kingston upon Thames on 10 February 1972. The show was hugely popular, catapulting him to stardom as he toured the UK over the next six months and creating, as described by David Buckley, a "cult of Bowie" that was "unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom." The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), combining the hard rock elements of The Man Who Sold the World with the lighter experimental rock and pop of Hunky Dory, was released in June and was considered one of the defining albums of glam rock. "Starman", issued as an April single ahead of the album, was to cement Bowie's UK breakthrough: both single and album charted rapidly following his July Top of the Pops performance of the song. The album, which remained in the chart for two years, was soon joined there by the six-month-old Hunky Dory. At the same time, the non-album single "John, I'm Only Dancing" and "All the Young Dudes", a song he wrote and produced for Mott the Hoople, were successful in the UK. The Ziggy Stardust Tour continued to the United States.
Bowie contributed backing vocals, keyboards and guitar to Reed's 1972 solo breakthrough Transformer, co-producing the album with Ronson. The following year, Bowie co-produced and mixed the Stooges' album Raw Power alongside Iggy Pop. His own Aladdin Sane (1973) was his first UK number-one album. Described by Bowie as "Ziggy goes to America", it contained songs he wrote while travelling to and across the US during the earlier part of the Ziggy tour, which now continued to Japan to promote the new album. Aladdin Sane spawned the UK top five singles "The Jean Genie" and "Drive-In Saturday".
Bowie's love of acting led to his total immersion in the characters he created for his music. "Offstage I'm a robot. Onstage I achieve emotion. It's probably why I prefer dressing up as Ziggy to being David." With satisfaction came severe personal difficulties: acting the same role over an extended period, it became impossible for him to separate Ziggy Stardust—and later, the Thin White Duke—from his own character offstage. Ziggy, Bowie said, "wouldn't leave me alone for years. That was when it all started to go sour ... My whole personality was affected. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts about my sanity." His later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, were ultra-theatrical affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie stripping down to a sumo wrestling loincloth or simulating oral sex with Ronson's guitar. Bowie toured and gave press conferences as Ziggy before a dramatic and abrupt on-stage "retirement" at London's Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973. Footage from the final show was incorporated for the film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which premiered in 1979 and commercially released in 1983.
After breaking up the Spiders, Bowie attempted to move on from his Ziggy persona. His back catalogue was now highly sought after: The Man Who Sold the World had been re-released in 1972 along with Space Oddity. Hunky Dory's "Life on Mars?" was released in June 1973 and peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart. Entering the same chart in September, his 1967 novelty record "The Laughing Gnome" reached number six. Pin Ups, a collection of covers of his 1960s favourites, followed in October, producing a UK number three hit in his version of the McCoys's "Sorrow" and itself peaking at number one, making Bowie the best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. It brought the total number of Bowie albums concurrently on the UK chart to six.
Bowie moved to the US in 1974, initially staying in New York City before settling in Los Angeles. Diamond Dogs (1974), parts of which found him heading towards soul and funk, was the product of two distinct ideas: a musical based on a wild future in a post-apocalyptic city, and setting George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to music. The album went to number one in the UK, spawning the hits "Rebel Rebel" and "Diamond Dogs", and number five in the US. The supporting Diamond Dogs Tour visited cities in North America between June and December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special effects, the high-budget stage production was filmed by Alan Yentob. The resulting documentary, Cracked Actor, featured a pasty and emaciated Bowie: the tour coincided with his slide from heavy cocaine use into addiction, producing severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems. He later commented that the accompanying live album, David Live, ought to have been titled "David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only in Theory". David Live nevertheless solidified Bowie's status as a superstar, charting at number two in the UK and number eight in the US. It also spawned a UK number ten hit in a cover of Eddie Floyd's "Knock on Wood". After a break in Philadelphia, where Bowie recorded new material, the tour resumed with a new emphasis on soul.
The fruit of the Philadelphia recording sessions was Young Americans (1975). Sandford writes, "Over the years, most British rockers had tried, one way or another, to become black-by-extension. Few had succeeded as Bowie did now." The album's sound, which Bowie identified as "plastic soul", constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. Young Americans was a commercial success in both the US and the UK and yielded Bowie's first US number one, "Fame", a collaboration with John Lennon. A re-issue of the 1969 single "Space Oddity" became Bowie's first number-one hit in the UK a few months after "Fame" achieved the same in the US. He mimed "Fame" and his November single "Golden Years" on the US variety show Soul Train, earning him the distinction of being one of the first white artists to appear on the programme. The same year, Bowie fired Defries as his manager. At the culmination of the ensuing months-long legal dispute, he watched, as described by Sandford, "millions of dollars of his future earnings being surrendered" in what were "uniquely generous terms for Defries", then "shut himself up in West 20th Street, where for a week his howls could be heard through the locked attic door." Michael Lippman, Bowie's lawyer during the negotiations, became his new manager; Lippman, in turn, was awarded substantial compensation when he was fired the following year.
Station to Station (1976), produced by Bowie and Harry Maslin, introduced a new Bowie persona, the Thin White Duke of its title track. Visually, the character was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being he portrayed in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth the same year. Developing the funk and soul of Young Americans, Station to Station's synthesiser-heavy arrangements were influenced by electronic and German krautrock. Bowie's cocaine addiction during this period was at its peak; he often did not sleep for three to four days at a time during Station to Station's recording sessions and later said he remembered "only flashes" of its making. His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted from cocaine; he referenced the drug directly in the album's ten-minute title track. The album's release was followed by a 3+1⁄2-month-long concert tour, the Isolar Tour, of Europe and North America. The core band that coalesced to record the album and tour—rhythm guitarist Carlos Alomar, bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis—continued as a stable unit for the remainder of the 1970s. Bowie performed on stage as the Thin White Duke.
The tour was highly successful but mired in political controversy. Bowie was quoted in Stockholm as saying that "Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader", and was detained by customs on the Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia. Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as the "Victoria Station incident". Arriving in an open-top Mercedes convertible, Bowie waved to the crowd in a gesture that some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in NME. Bowie said the photographer caught him in mid-wave. He later blamed his pro-fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his cocaine addiction, the character of the Thin White Duke and his life living in Los Angeles, a city he later said "should be wiped off the face of the Earth". He later apologised for these statements, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s criticised racism in European politics and the American music industry. Nevertheless, his comments on fascism, as well as Eric Clapton's alcohol-fuelled denunciations of Pakistani immigrants in 1976, led to the establishment of Rock Against Racism.
In August 1976, Bowie moved to West Berlin with his old friend Iggy Pop to rid themselves of their respective drug addictions and escape the spotlight. Bowie's interest in German krautrock and the ambient works of multi-instrumentalist Brian Eno culminated in the first of three albums, co-produced with Visconti, that became known as the Berlin Trilogy. The album, Low (1977), was recorded in France and took influence from krautrock and experimental music and featured both short song-fragments and ambient instrumentals. Before its recording, Bowie produced Iggy Pop's debut solo album The Idiot, described by Pegg as "a stepping stone between Station to Station and Low". Low was completed in November, but left unreleased for three months. RCA did not see the album as commercially viable and were expecting another success following Young Americans and Station to Station. Bowie's former manager Tony Defries, who maintained a significant financial interest in Bowie's affairs, also tried to prevent. Upon its release in January 1977, Low yielded the UK number three single "Sound and Vision", and its own performance surpassed that of Station to Station in the UK chart, where it reached number two. Bowie himself did not promote it, instead touring with Pop as his keyboardist throughout March and April before recording Pop's follow-up, Lust for Life.
Echoing Low's minimalist, instrumental approach, the second of the trilogy, "Heroes" (1977), incorporated pop and rock to a greater extent, seeing Bowie joined by guitarist Robert Fripp. It was the only album recorded entirely in Berlin. Incorporating ambient sounds from a variety of sources including white noise generators, synthesisers and koto, the album was another hit, reaching number three in the UK. Its title track was released in both German and French and, though only reached number 24 in the UK singles chart, later became one of his best-known tracks. In contrast to Low, Bowie promoted "Heroes" extensively, performing the title track on Marc Bolan's television show Marc, and again two days later for Bing Crosby's final CBS television Christmas special, when he joined Crosby in "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy", a version of "The Little Drummer Boy" with a new, contrapuntal verse. RCA belatedly released the recording as a single five years later in 1982, charting in the UK at number three.
After completing Low and "Heroes", Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts in 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug addiction; Buckley writes that Isolar II was "Bowie's first tour for five years in which he had probably not anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before taking the stage. ... Without the oblivion that drugs had brought, he was now in a healthy enough mental condition to want to make friends." Recordings from the tour made up the live album Stage, released the same year. Bowie also recorded narration for an adaptation of Sergei Prokofiev's classical composition Peter and the Wolf, which was released as an album in May 1978.
The final piece in what Bowie called his "triptych", Lodger (1979), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of its two predecessors, making a partial return to the drum- and guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era. The result was a complex mixture of new wave and world music, in places incorporating Hijaz non-Western scales. Some tracks were composed using Eno's Oblique Strategies cards: "Boys Keep Swinging" entailed band members swapping instruments, "Move On" used the chords from Bowie's early composition "All the Young Dudes" played backwards, and "Red Money" took backing tracks from The Idiot's "Sister Midnight". The album was recorded in Switzerland and New York City. Ahead of its release, RCA's Mel Ilberman described it as "a concept album that portrays the Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life's pressures and technology." Lodger reached number four in the UK and number 20 in the US, and yielded the UK hit singles "Boys Keep Swinging" and "DJ". Towards the end of the year, Bowie and Angie initiated divorce proceedings, and after months of court battles the marriage was ended in early 1980. The three albums were later adapted into classical music symphonies by American composer Philip Glass for his first, fourth and twelfth symphonies in 1992, 1997 and 2019, respectively. Glass praised Bowie's gift for creating "fairly complex pieces of music, masquerading as simple pieces".
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) produced the number one single "Ashes to Ashes", featuring the textural guitar-synthesiser work of Chuck Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from "Space Oddity". The song gave international exposure to the underground New Romantic movement when Bowie visited the London club "Blitz"—the main New Romantic hangout—to recruit several of the regulars (including Steve Strange of the band Visage) to act in the accompanying video, renowned as one of the most innovative of all time. While Scary Monsters used principles established by the Berlin albums, it was considered by critics to be far more direct musically and lyrically. The album's hard rock edge included conspicuous guitar contributions from Fripp and Pete Townshend. Topping the UK Albums Chart for the first time since Diamond Dogs, Buckley writes that with Scary Monsters, Bowie achieved "the perfect balance" of creativity and mainstream success.
Bowie paired with Queen in 1981 for a one-off single release, "Under Pressure". The duet was a hit, becoming Bowie's third UK number-one single. Bowie was given the lead role in the BBC's 1982 televised adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play Baal. Coinciding with its transmission, a five-track EP of songs from the play was released as Baal. In March 1982, Bowie's title song for Paul Schrader's film Cat People was released as a single. A collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, it became a minor US hit and charted in the UK top 30. The same year, he departed RCA, having grown increasingly dissatisfied with them, and signed a new contract with EMI America Records for a reported $17 million. His 1975 severance settlement with Defries also ended in September.
Bowie reached his peak of popularity and commercial success in 1983 with Let's Dance. Co-produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, the album went platinum in both the UK and the US. Its three singles became top 20 hits in both countries, where its title track reached number one. "Modern Love" and "China Girl" each made number two in the UK, accompanied by a pair of "absorbing" music videos that Buckley said "activated key archetypes in the pop world... 'Let's Dance', with its little narrative surrounding the young Aboriginal couple, targeted 'youth', and 'China Girl', with its bare-bummed (and later partially censored) beach lovemaking scene... was sufficiently sexually provocative to guarantee heavy rotation on MTV". Then-unknown Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan guested on the album, featuring prominently on the title track. Let's Dance was followed by the six-month Serious Moonlight Tour, which was extremely successful. At the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards Bowie received two awards including the inaugural Video Vanguard Award.
Tonight (1984), another dance-oriented album, found Bowie collaborating with Pop and Tina Turner. Co-produced by Hugh Padgham, it included a number of cover songs, including three Pop covers and the 1966 Beach Boys hit "God Only Knows". The album bore the transatlantic top 10 hit "Blue Jean", itself the inspiration for the Julien Temple-directed short film Jazzin' for Blue Jean, in which Bowie played the dual roles of romantic protagonist Vic and arrogant rock star Screaming Lord Byron. The short won Bowie his only non-posthumous Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video. In early 1985, Bowie's collaboration with the Pat Metheny Group, "This Is Not America", for the soundtrack of The Falcon and the Snowman, was released as a single and became a top 40 hit in the UK and US. In July that year, Bowie performed at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid, a multi-venue benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief. Bowie and Mick Jagger duetted on a cover of Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street" as a fundraising single, which went to number one in the UK and number seven in the US; its video premiered during Live Aid.
Bowie took an acting role in the 1986 film Absolute Beginners, and his title song rose to number two in the UK charts. He also worked with composer Trevor Jones and wrote five original songs for the 1986 film Labyrinth, which he starred in. His final solo album of the decade was 1987's Never Let Me Down, where he ditched the light sound of his previous two albums, instead combining pop rock with a harder rock sound. Peaking at number six in the UK, the album yielded the hits "Day-In Day-Out", "Time Will Crawl" and "Never Let Me Down". Bowie later described it as his "nadir", calling it "an awful album". He supported the album on the 86-concert Glass Spider Tour. The backing band included Peter Frampton on lead guitar. Contemporary critics maligned the tour as overproduced, saying it pandered to the current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancing, although in later years critics acknowledged the tour's strengths and influence on concert tours by other artists, such as Prince, Madonna and U2.
Wanting to completely rejuvenate himself following the critical failures of Tonight and Never Let Me Down, Bowie placed his solo career on hold after meeting guitarist Reeves Gabrels and formed the hard rock quartet Tin Machine. The line-up was completed by bassist and drummer Tony and Hunt Sales, who had played with Bowie on Iggy Pop's Lust for Life in 1977. Although he intended Tin Machine to operate as a democracy, Bowie dominated, both in songwriting and in decision-making. The band's 1989 self-titled debut album received mixed reviews and, according to author Paul Trynka, was quickly dismissed as "pompous, dogmatic and dull". EMI complained of "lyrics that preach" as well as "repetitive tunes" and "minimalist or no production". It reached number three in the UK and was supported by a twelve-date tour.
The tour was a commercial success, but there was growing reluctance—among fans and critics alike—to accept Bowie's presentation as merely a band member. A series of Tin Machine singles failed to chart, and Bowie, after a disagreement with EMI, left the label. Like his audience and his critics, Bowie himself became increasingly disaffected with his role as just one member of a band. Tin Machine began work on a second album, but recording halted while Bowie conducted the seven-month Sound+Vision Tour, which brought him commercial success and acclaim.
In October 1990, Bowie and Somali-born supermodel Iman were introduced by a mutual friend. He recalled, "I was naming the children the night we met ... it was absolutely immediate." They married in 1992. Tin Machine resumed work the same month, but their audience and critics, ultimately left disappointed by the first album, showed little interest in a second. Tin Machine II (1991) was Bowie's first album to miss the UK top 20 in nearly twenty years, and was controversial for its cover art. Depicting four ancient nude Kouroi statues, the new record label, Victory, deemed the cover "a show of wrong, obscene images" and airbrushed the statues' genitalia for the American release. Tin Machine toured again, but after the live album Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby (1992) failed commercially, Bowie dissolved the band and resumed his solo career. He continued to collaborate with Gabrels for the rest of the 1990s.
On 20 April 1992, Bowie appeared at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, following the Queen singer's death the previous year. As well as performing "'Heroes'" and "All the Young Dudes", he was joined on "Under Pressure" by Annie Lennox, who took Mercury's vocal part; during his appearance, Bowie knelt and recited the Lord's Prayer at Wembley Stadium. Four days later, Bowie and Iman married in Switzerland. Intending to move to Los Angeles, they flew in to search for a suitable property, but found themselves confined to their hotel, under curfew: the 1992 Los Angeles riots began the day they arrived. They settled in New York instead.
In 1993, Bowie released his first solo offering since his Tin Machine departure, the soul, jazz and hip-hop influenced Black Tie White Noise. Making prominent use of electronic instruments, the album, which reunited Bowie with Let's Dance producer Nile Rodgers, confirmed Bowie's return to popularity, topping the UK chart and spawning three top 40 hits, including the top 10 single "Jump They Say". Bowie explored new directions on The Buddha of Suburbia (1993), which began as a soundtrack album for the BBC television adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's novel of the same name before turning into a full album; only the title track was used in the programme. Referencing his 1970s works with pop, jazz, ambient and experimental material, it received a low-key release, had almost no promotion and flopped commercially, reaching number 87 in the UK. Nevertheless, it later received critical praise as Bowie's "lost great album".
Reuniting Bowie with Eno, the quasi-industrial Outside (1995) was originally conceived as the first volume in a non-linear narrative of art and murder. Featuring characters from a short story written by Bowie, the album achieved UK and US chart success and yielded three top 40 UK singles. In a move that provoked mixed reactions from both fans and critics, Bowie chose Nine Inch Nails as his tour partner for the Outside Tour. Visiting cities in Europe and North America between September 1995 and February 1996, the tour saw the return of Gabrels as Bowie's guitarist. On 7 January 1997, Bowie celebrated his half century with a 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden at which he was joined in playing his songs and those of his guests, Lou Reed, Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, Robert Smith of the Cure, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Black Francis of the Pixies, and Sonic Youth.
Incorporating experiments in jungle and drum 'n' bass, Earthling (1997) was a critical and commercial success in the UK and the US, and two singles from the album—"Little Wonder" and "Dead Man Walking"—became UK top 40 hits. The song "I'm Afraid of Americans" from the Paul Verhoeven film Showgirls was re-recorded for the album, and remixed by Trent Reznor for a single release. The heavy rotation of the accompanying video, also featuring Reznor, contributed to the song's 16-week stay in the US Billboard Hot 100. Bowie received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 12 February 1997. The Earthling Tour took place in Europe and North America between June and November. In November, Bowie performed on the BBC's Children in Need charity single "Perfect Day", which reached number one in the UK. Bowie reunited with Visconti in 1998 to record "(Safe in This) Sky Life" for The Rugrats Movie. Although the track was edited out of the final cut, it was later re-recorded and released as "Safe" on the B-side of Bowie's 2002 single "Everyone Says 'Hi'". The reunion led to other collaborations with his old producer, including a limited-edition single release version of Placebo's track "Without You I'm Nothing" with Bowie's harmonised vocal added to the original recording.
Bowie, with Gabrels, created the soundtrack for Omikron: The Nomad Soul, a 1999 computer game in which he and Iman also voiced characters based on their likenesses. Released the same year and containing re-recorded tracks from Omikron, his album Hours featured a song with lyrics by the winner of his "Cyber Song Contest" Internet competition, Alex Grant. Making extensive use of live instruments, the album was Bowie's exit from heavy electronica. Hours and a performance on VH1 Storytellers in mid-1999 represented the end of Gabrels' association with Bowie as a performer and songwriter. Sessions for Toy, a planned collection of remakes of tracks from Bowie's 1960s period, commenced in 2000, but was shelved due to EMI/Virgin's lack of faith in its commercial appeal. Bowie and Visconti continued their collaboration, producing a new album of completely original songs instead: the result of the sessions was the 2002 album Heathen.
On 25 June 2000, Bowie made his second appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in England, playing almost 30 years after his first. The performance was released as a live album in November 2018. On 27 June, he performed a concert at the BBC Radio Theatre in London, which was released on the compilation album Bowie at the Beeb; this also featured BBC recording sessions from 1968 to 1972. Bowie and Iman's daughter, Alexandra, was born on 15 August. His interest in Buddhism led him to support the Tibetan cause by performing at the February 2001 and February 2003 concerts to support Tibet House US at Carnegie Hall in New York.
In October 2001, Bowie opened the Concert for New York City, a charity event to benefit the victims of the September 11 attacks, with a minimalist performance of Simon & Garfunkel's "America", followed by a full band performance of "'Heroes'". 2002 saw the release of Heathen, and, during the second half of the year, the Heathen Tour. Taking place in Europe and North America, the tour opened at London's annual Meltdown festival, for which Bowie was that year appointed artistic director. Among the acts he selected for the festival were Philip Glass, Television and the Dandy Warhols. As well as songs from the new album, the tour featured material from Bowie's Low era. Reality (2003) followed, and its accompanying world tour, the A Reality Tour, with an estimated attendance of 722,000, grossed more than any other in 2004. On 13 June, Bowie headlined the last night of the Isle of Wight Festival 2004. On 25 June, he experienced chest pain while performing at the Hurricane Festival in Scheeßel, Germany. Originally thought to be a pinched nerve in his shoulder, the pain was later diagnosed as an acutely blocked coronary artery, requiring an emergency angioplasty in Hamburg. The remaining fourteen dates of the tour were cancelled.
In the years following his recuperation from the heart attack, Bowie reduced his musical output, making only one-off appearances on stage and in the studio. He sang in a duet of his 1971 song "Changes" with Butterfly Boucher for the 2004 animated film Shrek 2. During a relatively quiet 2005, he recorded the vocals for the song "(She Can) Do That", co-written with Brian Transeau, for the film Stealth. He returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, appearing with Arcade Fire for the US nationally televised event Fashion Rocks, and performed with the Canadian band for the second time a week later during the CMJ Music Marathon. He contributed backing vocals on TV on the Radio's song "Province" for their album Return to Cookie Mountain, and joined with Lou Reed on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir's 2005 album No Balance Palace.
Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 February 2006. In April, he announced, "I'm taking a year off—no touring, no albums." He made a surprise guest appearance at David Gilmour's 29 May concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The event was recorded, and a selection of songs on which he had contributed joint vocals were subsequently released. He performed again in November, alongside Alicia Keys, at the Black Ball, a benefit event for Keep a Child Alive at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. The performance marked the last time Bowie performed his music on stage.
Bowie was chosen to curate the 2007 High Line Festival. The musicians and artists he selected for the Manhattan event included electronic pop duo AIR, surrealist photographer Claude Cahun and English comedian Ricky Gervais. Bowie performed on Scarlett Johansson's 2008 album of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head. In June 2008, a live album was released of a Ziggy Stardust-era concert from 1972. On the 40th anniversary of the July 1969 Moon landing—and Bowie's accompanying commercial breakthrough with "Space Oddity"—EMI released the individual tracks from the original eight-track studio recording of the song, in a 2009 contest inviting members of the public to create a remix. A live album from the A Reality Tour was released in January 2010.
In late March 2011, Toy, Bowie's previously unreleased album from 2001, was leaked onto the internet, containing material used for Heathen and most of its single B-sides, as well as unheard new versions of his early back catalogue.
On 8 January 2013, his 66th birthday, his website announced a new studio album—his first in a decade—to be titled The Next Day and scheduled for release in March; the announcement was accompanied by the immediate release of the single "Where Are We Now?". A music video for the single was released onto Vimeo the same day, directed by New York artist Tony Oursler. The single topped the UK iTunes Chart within hours of its release, and debuted in the UK Singles Chart at number six, his first single to enter the Top 10 for two decades (since "Jump They Say" in 1993). A second single and video, "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)", were released at the end of February. Directed by Floria Sigismondi, it stars Bowie and Tilda Swinton as a married couple.
Recorded in secret between 2011 and 2012, 29 songs were recorded during the album's sessions, of which 22 saw official release in 2013, including fourteen on the standard album. Three bonus tracks were later packaged with seven outtakes and remixes on The Next Day Extra, released in November. On 1 March, the album was made available to stream for free through iTunes. Debuting at number one on the UK Albums Chart, The Next Day was his first album to top the chart since Black Tie White Noise, and was the fastest-selling album of 2013 at the time. The music video for the song "The Next Day" created some controversy due to its Christian themes and messages, initially being removed from YouTube for terms-of-service violation, then restored with a warning recommending viewing only by those 18 or over.
According to The Times, Bowie ruled out ever giving an interview again. Later in 2013, he was featured in a cameo vocal in the Arcade Fire song "Reflektor". A poll carried out by BBC History Magazine in October 2013 named Bowie as the best-dressed Briton in history. In mid-2014, Bowie was diagnosed with liver cancer, which he kept private. A new compilation album, Nothing Has Changed, was released in November. The album featured rare tracks and old material from his catalogue in addition to a new song, "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)".
Bowie continued working throughout 2015, secretly recording his final album Blackstar in New York between January and May. In August, it was announced that he was writing songs for a Broadway musical based on the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon series; the final production included a retooled version of "No Control" from Outside. He also wrote and recorded the opening title song to the television series The Last Panthers, which aired in November. The theme that was used for The Last Panthers was also the title track for Blackstar. On 7 December, Bowie's musical Lazarus debuted in New York; he made his final public appearance at its opening night.
Blackstar was released on 8 January 2016, Bowie's 69th birthday, and was met with critical acclaim. He died two days later, after which Visconti revealed that Bowie had planned the album to be his swan song, and a "parting gift" for his fans before his death. Several reporters and critics subsequently noted that most of the lyrics on the album seem to revolve around his impending death, with CNN noting that the album "reveals a man who appears to be grappling with his own mortality". Visconti also said that he had been planning a follow-up album, and had written and recorded demos of five songs in his final weeks, suggesting he believed he had a few months left. The day following his death, online viewing of Bowie's music skyrocketed, breaking the record for Vevo's most viewed artist in a single day. Blackstar debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart; nineteen of his albums were in the UK Top 100 Albums Chart, and thirteen singles were in the UK Top 100 Singles Chart. Blackstar also debuted at number one on album charts around the world, including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the US Billboard 200.
In September 2016, a box set Who Can I Be Now? (1974–1976) was released covering Bowie's mid-1970s soul period; it included The Gouster, a previously unreleased 1974 album. An EP, No Plan, was released on 8 January 2017, which would have been Bowie's 70th birthday. Apart from "Lazarus", the EP includes three songs that Bowie recorded during the Blackstar sessions, but were left off the album and appeared on the soundtrack album for the Lazarus musical in October 2016. A music video for the title track was also released. 2017 and 2018 also saw the release of a series of posthumous live albums, Cracked Actor (Live Los Angeles '74), Live Nassau Coliseum '76 and Welcome to the Blackout (Live London '78). In the two years following his death, Bowie sold five million records in the UK alone. In their top 10 list for the Global Recording Artist of the Year, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry named Bowie the second-bestselling artist worldwide in 2016, behind Drake.
At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in 2017, Bowie won all five nominated awards: Best Rock Performance; Best Alternative Music Album; Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Recording Package; and Best Rock Song. They were Bowie's first Grammy wins in musical categories. On 8 January 2020, on what would have been Bowie's 73rd birthday, a previously unreleased version of "The Man Who Sold the World" was released and two releases were announced: a streaming-only EP, Is It Any Wonder?, and an album, ChangesNowBowie, released in November 2020 for Record Store Day. In August, another series of live shows were released, including sets from Dallas in 1995 and Paris in 1999. These and other shows, part of a series of live concerts spanning his tours from 1995 to 1999, was released in late 2020 and early 2021 as part of the box set Brilliant Live Adventures. In September 2021, Bowie's estate signed a distribution deal with Warner Music Group, beginning in 2023, covering Bowie's recordings from 2000 through 2016. Bowie's album Toy, recorded in 2000, was released on what would have been Bowie's 75th birthday. On 3 January 2022, Variety reported that Bowie's estate had sold his publishing catalogue to Warner Chappell Music, "for a price upwards of $250 million".
In addition to music, Bowie took acting roles throughout his career, appearing in over 30 films, television shows and theatrical productions. His acting career was "productively selective", largely eschewing starring roles for cameos and supporting parts; he once described his film career as "splashing in the kids' pool". He mostly chose projects with arthouse directors that he felt were outside the Hollywood mainstream, commenting in 2000: "One cameo for Scorsese to me brings so much more satisfaction than, say, a James Bond." Critics have believed that, had he not chosen to pursue music, he could have found great success as an actor. Others have felt that, while his screen presence was singular, his best contributions to film were the use of his songs in films such as Lost Highway, A Knight's Tale, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Inglourious Basterds.
Bowie's acting career predated his commercial breakthrough as a musician. His first film was a short fourteen-minute black-and-white film called The Image, shot in September 1967. Concerning a ghostly boy who emerges from a troubled artist's painting to haunt him, Bowie later called the film "awful". From December 1967 to March 1968, Bowie acted in mime Lindsay Kemp's theatrical production Pierrot in Turquoise, during which he performed several songs from his self-titled debut album. The production was later adapted into the 1970 television film The Looking Glass Murders. In late January 1968, Bowie filmed a walk-on role for the BBC drama series Theatre 625 that aired in May. He also appeared as a walk-on extra in the 1969 film adaptation of Leslie Thomas's 1966 comic novel The Virgin Soldiers.
Bowie's first major film role was in Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which he portrayed Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien from a dying planet. The actor's severe cocaine addiction at the time left him in such a fragile state of mind that he barely understood the film; he later said in 1993: "My one snapshot of that film is not having to act. Just being me as I was, was perfectly adequate for the role. I wasn't of this earth at that particular time." Bowie's role was particularly singled out for praise by film critics both on release and in later decades; Pegg argues it stands as Bowie's most significant role. In 1978, Bowie had a starring role in Just a Gigolo, directed by David Hemmings, portraying Prussian officer Paul von Przygodski, who, returning from World War I, discovers life has changed and becomes a gigolo employed by a Baroness, playing by Marlene Dietrich. The film was a critical and commercial failure, and Bowie expressed disappointment in the finished product.
From July 1980 to January 1981, Bowie played Joseph Merrick in the Broadway theatre production The Elephant Man, which he undertook wearing no stage make-up, earning critical praise for his performance. Christiane F., a 1981 biographical film focusing on a young girl's drug addiction in West Berlin, featured Bowie in a cameo appearance as himself at a concert in Germany. Its soundtrack album, Christiane F. (1981), featured much material from his Berlin albums. The following year, he starred in the titular role in a BBC adaptation of the Bertolt Brecht play Baal. Bowie made three on-screen appearances in 1983, the first as a vampire in Tony Scott's erotic horror film The Hunger, with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. Bowie later said that he felt "very uncomfortable" with the role, but was happy to work with Scott. The second was in Nagisa Ōshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, based on Laurens van der Post's novel The Seed and the Sower, in which he played Major Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. While the film itself received mixed reviews, Bowie's performance was praised. Pegg places it amongst his finest acting performances. Bowie's third role in 1983 was a small cameo in Mel Damski's pirate comedy Yellowbeard, heralded by several members of the Monty Python group. Bowie also filmed a 30-second introduction to the animated film The Snowman, based on Raymond Briggs's book of the same name.
In 1985, Bowie had a supporting role as hitman Colin in John Landis's Into the Night. He declined to play the villain Max Zorin in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985). Bowie reteamed with Julian Temple for Absolute Beginners, a rock musical film adapted from Colin MacInnes's book of the same name about life in late 1950s London, in a supporting role as ad man Vendice Partners. The same year, Jim Henson's dark musical fantasy Labyrinth cast him as Jareth, the villainous Goblin King. Despite initially performing poorly, the film grew in popularity and became a cult film. Two years later, he played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed biblical epic The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Despite only appearing for a three-minute sequence, Pegg writes that Bowie "acquits himself well with a thoughtful, unshowy performance."
In 1991, Bowie reteamed with Landis for an episode of the HBO sitcom Dream On and played a disgruntled restaurant employee opposite Rosanna Arquette in The Linguini Incident. Bowie portrayed the mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). The prequel to the television series was poorly received at the time of its release, but has since been critically reevaluated. He took a small but pivotal role as his friend Andy Warhol in Basquiat, artist/director Julian Schnabel's 1996 biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat, another artist he considered a friend and colleague. Bowie co-starred in Giovanni Veronesi's Spaghetti Western Il Mio West (1998, released as Gunslinger's Revenge in the US in 2005) as the most feared gunfighter in the region. He played the ageing gangster Bernie in Andrew Goth's Everybody Loves Sunshine (1999, released in the US as B.U.S.T.E.D.), and appeared as the host in the second season of the television horror anthology series The Hunger. Despite having several episodes which focus on vampires and Bowie's involvement, the show had no plot connection to the 1983 film of the same name. In 1999, Bowie voiced two characters in the Sega Dreamcast game Omikron: The Nomad Soul, his only appearance in a video game.
In Mr. Rice's Secret (2000), Bowie played the title role as the neighbour of a terminally ill 12-year-old boy. Bowie appeared as himself in the 2001 Ben Stiller comedy Zoolander, judging a "walk-off" between rival male models, and in Eric Idle's 2002 mockumentary The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch. In 2005, he filmed a commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio. Bowie portrayed a fictionalised version of physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan's film The Prestige (2006), which was about the bitter rivalry between two magicians in the late 19th century. Nolan later claimed that Bowie was his only preference to play Tesla, and that he personally appealed to Bowie to take the role after he initially passed. In the same year, he voice-acted in Luc Besson's animated film Arthur and the Invisibles as the powerful villain Maltazard, and appeared as himself in an episode of the Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant television series Extras. In 2007, he lent his voice to the character Lord Royal Highness in the SpongeBob's Atlantis SquarePantis television film. In the 2008 film August, directed by Austin Chick, he played a supporting role as Ogilvie, a "ruthless venture capitalist." Bowie's final film appearance was a cameo as himself in the 2009 teen comedy Bandslam.
In a 2017 interview with Consequence of Sound, director Denis Villeneuve revealed his intention to cast Bowie in Blade Runner 2049 as the lead villain, Niander Wallace, but when news broke of Bowie's death in January of the same year, Villeneuve was forced to look for talent with similar "rock star" qualities. He eventually cast actor and lead singer of Thirty Seconds to Mars, Jared Leto. Talking about the casting process, Villeneuve said: "Our first thought [for the character] had been David Bowie, who had influenced Blade Runner in many ways. When we learned the sad news, we looked around for someone like that. He [Bowie] embodied the Blade Runner spirit." David Lynch also hoped to have Bowie reprise his Fire Walk With Me character for Twin Peaks: The Return but Bowie's illness prevented this. His character was portrayed via archival footage. At Bowie's request, Lynch overdubbed Bowie's original dialogue with a different actor's voice, as Bowie was unhappy with his Cajun accent in the original film.
Bowie was a painter and artist. He moved to Switzerland in 1976, purchasing a chalet in the hills to the north of Lake Geneva. In the new environment, his cocaine use decreased and he found time for other pursuits outside his musical career. He devoted more time to his painting, and produced a number of post-modernist pieces. When on tour, he took to sketching in a notebook, and photographing scenes for later reference. Visiting galleries in Geneva and the Brücke Museum in Berlin, Bowie became, in the words of Sandford, "a prolific producer and collector of contemporary art. ... Not only did he become a well-known patron of expressionist art: locked in Clos des Mésanges he began an intensive self-improvement course in classical music and literature, and started work on an autobiography."
One of Bowie's paintings sold at auction in late 1990 for $500, and the cover for his 1995 album Outside is a close-up of a self-portrait (from a series of five) he painted that same year. His first solo show, titled New Afro/Pagan and Work: 1975–1995, was in 1995 at The Gallery in Cork Street, London. In 1997, he founded the publishing company 21 Publishing, whose first title was Blimey! – From Bohemia to Britpop: London Art World from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst by Matthew Collings. A year later, Bowie was invited to join the editorial board of the journal Modern Painters, and participated in the Nat Tate art hoax later that year. The same year, during an interview with Michael Kimmelman for The New York Times, he said "Art was, seriously, the only thing I'd ever wanted to own." Subsequently, in a 1999 interview for the BBC, he said "The only thing I buy obsessively and addictively is art". His art collection, which included works by Damien Hirst, Derek Boshier, Frank Auerbach, Henry Moore, and Jean-Michel Basquiat among others, was valued at over £10 million in mid-2016.
After his death, his family decided to sell most of the collection because they "didn't have the space" to store it. On 10 and 11 November, three auctions were held at Sotheby's in London, first with 47 lots and second with 208 paintings, drawings, and sculptures, third with 100 design lots. The items on sale represented about 65 per cent of the collection. Exhibition of the works in the auction attracted 51,470 visitors, the auction itself was attended by 1,750 bidders, with over 1,000 more bidding online. The auctions has overall sale total £32.9 million (app. $41.5 million), while the highest-selling item, Basquiat's graffiti-inspired painting Air Power, sold for £7.09 million.
Outside of music, Bowie dabbled in several forms of writings during his life. In the late 1990s, Bowie was commissioned for writings of various media, including an essay on Jean-Michel Basquiat for the 2001 anthology book Writers on Artists and forewords to Jo Levin's 2001 publication GQ Cool, Mick Rock's 2001 photography portfolio Blood and Glitter, his wife Iman's 2001 book I Am Iman, Q magazine's 2002 special The 100 Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Photographs and Jonathan Barnbrook's artwork portfolio Barnbrook Bible: The Graphic Design of Jonathan Barnbrook. He also heavily contributed to the 2002 Genesis Publications memoir of the Ziggy Stardust years, Moonage Daydream, which was rereleased in 2022.
Bowie also wrote liner notes for several albums, including Too Many Fish in the Sea by Robin Clark, the wife of his guitarist Carlos Alomar, Stevie Ray Vaughan's posthumous Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985 (2002), The Spinners' compilation The Chrome Collection (2003), the tenth anniversary reissue of Placebo's debut album (2006) and Neu!'s Vinyl Box (2010). Bowie also wrote an appreciation piece in Rolling Stone for Nine Inch Nails in 2005 and an essay for the booklet accompanying Iggy Pop's A Million in Prizes: The Anthology the same year.
"Bowie Bonds", the first modern example of celebrity bonds, were asset-backed securities of current and future revenues of the 25 albums (287 songs) that Bowie recorded before 1990. Issued in 1997, the bonds were bought for US$55 million by the Prudential Insurance Company of America. Royalties from the 25 albums generated the cash flow that secured the bonds' interest payments. By forfeiting 10 years worth of royalties, Bowie received a payment of US$55 million up front. Bowie used this income to buy songs owned by Defries. The bonds liquidated in 2007 and the rights to the income from the songs reverted to Bowie.
Bowie launched two personal websites during his lifetime. The first, an Internet service provider titled BowieNet, was developed in conjunction with Robert Goodale and Ron Roy and launched in September 1998. Subscribers to the dial-up service were offered exclusive content as well as a BowieNet email address and Internet access. The service was closed by 2006. The second, www.bowieart.com, offered fans the opportunity to view and purchase selected paintings, prints and sculptures from his private collection. The service, which ran from 2000 to 2008, also offered a showcase for young art students, in Bowie's words, "to show and sell their work without having to go through a dealer. Therefore, they really make the money they deserve for their paintings."
From the time of his earliest recordings in the 1960s, Bowie employed a wide variety of musical styles. His early compositions and performances were strongly influenced by rock and roll singers like Little Richard and Elvis Presley, and also the wider world of show business. He particularly strove to emulate the British musical theatre singer-songwriter and actor Anthony Newley, whose vocal style he frequently adopted, and made prominent use of for his 1967 debut release, David Bowie (to the disgust of Newley himself, who destroyed the copy he received from Bowie's publisher). Bowie's fascination with music hall continued to surface sporadically alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal, soul, psychedelic folk and pop.
Musicologist James E. Perone observes Bowie's use of octave switches for different repetitions of the same melody, exemplified in "Space Oddity", and later in "'Heroes'" to dramatic effect; the author writes that "in the lowest part of his vocal register ... his voice has an almost crooner-like richness". Voice instructor Jo Thompson describes Bowie's vocal vibrato technique as "particularly deliberate and distinctive". Authors Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz call him "a vocalist of extraordinary technical ability, able to pitch his singing to particular effect." Here, too, as in his stagecraft and songwriting, Bowie's roleplaying is evident: historiographer Michael Campbell says that Bowie's lyrics "arrest our ear, without question. But Bowie continually shifts from person to person as he delivers them ... His voice changes dramatically from section to section." In addition to the guitar, Bowie also played a variety of keyboards, including piano, Mellotron, Chamberlin, and synthesisers; harmonica; alto and baritone saxophones; stylophone; viola; cello; koto (on the "Heroes" track "Moss Garden"); thumb piano; drums (on the Heathen track "Cactus"), and various percussion instruments.
Bowie married his first wife, Mary Angela Barnett, on 19 March 1970 at Bromley Register Office in Bromley, London. Their son Duncan, born on 30 May 1971, was at first known as Zowie. They had an open marriage and dated other people during it: David had relationships with model Cyrinda Foxe and Young Americans backing singer Ava Cherry; Angie had encounters with Stooges members Ron Asheton and James Williamson, and Ziggy Stardust Tour bodyguard Anton Jones. Angie later described their union as a marriage of convenience. "We got married so that I could [get a permit to] work. I didn't think it would last and David said, before we got married, 'I'm not really in love with you' and I thought that's probably a good thing", she said. Bowie said about Angie that "living with her is like living with a blow torch." The couple divorced on 8 February 1980 in Switzerland; David received custody of Duncan. After the gag order that was part of their divorce agreement ended, Angie wrote a memoir of their turbulent marriage, titled Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie.
David met Somali-American model Iman in Los Angeles following the Sound+Vision Tour in October 1990. They married in a private ceremony in Lausanne on 24 April 1992. The wedding was later solemnised on 6 June in Florence. The couple's marriage influenced the content of Black Tie White Noise, particularly on tracks such as "The Wedding"/"The Wedding Song" and "Miracle Goodnight". They had one daughter, Alexandria "Lexi" Zahra Jones, born on 15 August 2000. The couple resided primarily in New York City and London as well as owning an apartment in Sydney's Elizabeth Bay and Britannia Bay House on the island of Mustique. Following Bowie's death, Iman expressed gratitude that the two were able to maintain separate identities during their marriage.
Bowie met dancer Lindsay Kemp in 1967 and enrolled in his dance class at the London Dance Centre. He commented in 1972 that meeting Kemp was when his interest in image "really blossomed". "He lived on his emotions, he was a wonderful influence. His day-to-day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen, ever. It was everything I thought Bohemia probably was. I joined the circus." In January 1968, Kemp choreographed a dance scene for a BBC play, The Pistol Shot, in the Theatre 625 series, and used Bowie with a dancer, Hermione Farthingale; the pair began dating and moved into a London flat together. Bowie and Farthingale broke up in early 1969 when she went to Norway to take part in a film, Song of Norway; this affected him, and several songs, such as "Letter to Hermione" and "An Occasional Dream", reference her; and, for the video accompanying "Where Are We Now?", he wore a T-shirt with the words "m/s Song of Norway". Bowie blamed himself for their break-up, saying in 2002 that he "was totally unfaithful and couldn't for the life of me keep it zipped." Farthingale, who spoke of deep affection for him in an interview with Pegg, said they last saw each other in 1970.
In 1983, Bowie briefly dated New Zealand model Geeling Ng, who had starred in the video for "China Girl". While filming The Hunger the same year, Bowie had a sexual relationship with his co-star Susan Sarandon, who stated in 2014 "He's worth idolising. He's extraordinary." She also called this "a really interesting period". For three years between 1987 and 1990, Bowie dated Glass Spider Tour dancer Melissa Hurley. The two began their relationship at the end of the tour when she was only 22 years old. Bowie's Tin Machine collaborator Kevin Armstrong remembered her as "a genuinely kind, sweet person". They announced their engagement in May 1989 but never married; Bowie broke the relationship off during the latter half of the Sound+Vision Tour, primarily due to the age difference—he was 43 at the time. He later spoke of Hurley as "such a wonderful, lovely, vibrant girl".
Bowie's sexuality has been the subject of debate. While married to Angie, he famously declared himself gay in a 1972 interview with Melody Maker journalist Michael Watts, which generated publicity in both America and Britain; Bowie was adopted as a gay icon in both countries. According to Buckley, "If Ziggy confused both his creator and his audience, a big part of that confusion centred on the topic of sexuality." He affirmed his stance in a 1976 interview with Playboy, stating: "It's true—I am a bisexual. But I can't deny that I've used that fact very well. I suppose it's the best thing that ever happened to me." His claim of bisexuality has been supported by Angie.
In 1983, Bowie told Rolling Stone writer Kurt Loder that his public declaration of bisexuality was "the biggest mistake I ever made" and "I was always a closet heterosexual". On other occasions, he said his interest in homosexual and bisexual culture had been more a product of the times and the situation in which he found himself than of his own feelings. Blender asked Bowie in 2002 whether he still believed his public declaration was his biggest mistake. After a long pause, he said, "I don't think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners nor be a representative of any group of people." Bowie said he wanted to be a songwriter and performer rather than a headline for his bisexuality, and in "puritanical" America, "I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do."
Buckley wrote that Bowie "mined sexual intrigue for its ability to shock." According to Mary Finnigan—a brief girlfriend of Bowie's in 1969—David and Angie "created their bisexual fantasy". Sandford wrote that David "made a positive fetish of repeating the quip that he and his wife had met while 'fucking the same bloke' ... Gay sex was always an anecdotal and laughing matter." The BBC's Mark Easton stated in 2016 that Britain was "far more tolerant of difference", and that gay rights (such as same-sex marriage) and gender equality would not have "enjoyed the broad support they do today without Bowie's androgynous challenge all those years ago".
Over the years, Bowie made numerous references to religions and to his evolving spirituality. Beginning in 1967 from the influence of his half-brother, he became interested in Buddhism and, with commercial success eluding him, he considered becoming a Buddhist monk. Biographer Marc Spitz states that the religion reminded the young artist that other goals in life existed outside fame and material gain and one can learn about themselves through meditation and chanting. After a few months' study at Tibet House in London, he was told by his Lama, Chime Rinpoche, "You don't want to be Buddhist. ... You should follow music." By 1975, Bowie admitted, "I felt totally, absolutely alone. And I probably was alone because I pretty much had abandoned God." In his will, Bowie stipulated that he be cremated and his ashes scattered in Bali "in accordance with the Buddhist rituals".
After Bowie married Iman in a private ceremony in 1992, he said they knew that their "real marriage, sanctified by God, had to happen in a church in Florence". Earlier that year, he knelt on stage at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert and recited the Lord's Prayer before a television audience. In 1993, Bowie said he had an "undying" belief in the "unquestionable" existence of God. In a separate 1993 interview, while describing the genesis of the music for his album Black Tie White Noise, he said " … it was important for me to find something [musically] that also had no sort of representation of institutionalized and organized religion, of which I'm not a believer, I must make that clear." Interviewed in 2005, Bowie said whether God exists "is not a question that can be answered. ... I'm not quite an atheist and it worries me. There's that little bit that holds on: 'Well, I'm almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months. ... I've nearly got it right.'" He had a tattoo of the Serenity Prayer in Japanese on his left calf.
Bowie stated that "questioning [his] spiritual life [was] always ... germane" to his songwriting. The song "Station to Station" is "very much concerned with the Stations of the Cross"; the song also specifically references Kabbalah. Bowie called the album "extremely dark ... the nearest album to a magick treatise that I've written". Earthling showed "the abiding need in me to vacillate between atheism or a kind of gnosticism ... What I need is to find a balance, spiritually, with the way I live and my demise." Hours boasted overtly Christian themes, with its artwork inspired by the Pietà. Blackstar's "Lazarus" began with the words, "Look up here, I'm in Heaven" while the rest of the album deals with other matters of mysticism and mortality.
As a seventeen-year-old still known as Davy Jones, he was a cofounder and spokesman for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men in response to members of the Manish Boys being asked to cut their hair before a television appearance on the BBC. He and his bandmates were interviewed on the network's 12 November 1964 instalment of Tonight to champion their cause. He stated on the programme, "I think we all like long hair and we don't see why other people should persecute us because of it."
In 1976, speaking as the Thin White Duke persona and "at least partially tongue-in-cheek", he made statements that expressed support for fascism and perceived admiration for Adolf Hitler in interviews with Playboy, NME and a Swedish publication. Bowie was quoted as saying: "Britain is ready for a fascist leader ... I think Britain could benefit from a fascist leader. After all, fascism is really nationalism... I believe very strongly in fascism, people have always responded with greater efficiency under a regimental leadership." He was also quoted as saying: "Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars" and "You've got to have an extreme right front come up and sweep everything off its feet and tidy everything up." Bowie later retracted these comments in an interview with Melody Maker in October 1977, blaming them on mental instability caused by his drug problems at the time, saying: "I was out of my mind, totally, completely crazed." In the same interview, Bowie described himself as "apolitical", stating "The more I travel and the less sure I am about exactly which political philosophies are commendable. The more government systems I see, the less enticed I am to give my allegiance to any set of people, so it would be disastrous for me to adopt a definitive point of view, or to adopt a party of people and say 'these are my people'."
In the 1980s and 1990s, Bowie's public statements shifted sharply towards anti-racism and anti-fascism. In an interview with MTV anchor Mark Goodman in 1983, Bowie criticised the channel for not providing enough coverage of Black musicians, becoming visibly uncomfortable when Goodman suggested that the network's fear of backlash from the American Midwest was one reason for such a lack of coverage. The music videos for "China Girl" and "Let's Dance" were described by Bowie as a "very simple, very direct" statement against racism. The album Tin Machine took a more direct stance against fascism and neo-Nazism, and was criticised for being too preachy. In 1993 he released the single "Black Tie White Noise" which dealt with the 1992 LA riots. In 2007 Bowie donated 10,000 dollars to the defence fund for the Jena Six saying, "there is clearly a separate and unequal judicial process going on in the town of Jena".
At the 2014 Brit Awards, Bowie became the oldest recipient of a Brit Award in the ceremony's history when he won the award for British Male Solo Artist, which was collected on his behalf by Kate Moss. His speech read: "I'm completely delighted to have a Brit for being the best male – but I am, aren't I Kate? Yes. I think it's a great way to end the day. Thank you very, very much and Scotland stay with us." Bowie's reference to the forthcoming September 2014 Scottish independence referendum garnered a significant reaction throughout the UK on social media.
In 2016, filmmaker and activist Michael Moore said he had wanted to use "Panic in Detroit" for his 1998 documentary The Big One. Denied at first, Moore was given the rights after calling Bowie personally, recalling: "I've read stuff since his death saying that he wasn't that political and he stayed away from politics. But that wasn't the conversation that I had with him."
Bowie was involved in philanthropic and charitable efforts for HIV/AIDS research in Africa, as well as other humanitarian projects helping disadvantaged children and developing nations, ending poverty and hunger, promoting human rights, and providing education and health care to children affected by war. A portion of the proceeds from the Pay-per-view showing of Bowie's 50th birthday concert in 1997 was donated to the Save the Children charity.
Bowie died of liver cancer in his New York City apartment on 10 January 2016. He had been diagnosed 18 months earlier, but he had not made his condition public. The Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove, who had worked with Bowie on his off-Broadway musical Lazarus, explained that he was unable to attend rehearsals due to the progression of the disease. He noted that Bowie had kept working during the illness.
Tony Visconti wrote:
He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life – a work of art. He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will always be with us. For now, it is appropriate to cry.
Following Bowie's death, fans gathered at impromptu street shrines. At the mural of Bowie in his birthplace of Brixton, south London, which shows him in his Aladdin Sane character, fans laid flowers and sang his songs. Other memorial sites included Berlin, Los Angeles, and outside his apartment in New York. After news of his death, sales of his albums and singles soared. Bowie had insisted that he did not want a funeral, and according to his death certificate he was cremated in New Jersey on 12 January. As he wished in his will, his ashes were scattered in a Buddhist ceremony in Bali, Indonesia.
Bowie's songs and stagecraft brought a new dimension to popular music in the early 1970s, strongly influencing its immediate forms and subsequent development. Schinder and Schwartz credit Bowie and Marc Bolan as the founders of the glam rock genre. He also inspired the innovators of the punk rock movement; Buckley wrote that "Bowie almost completely abandoned traditional rock instrumentation". RCA promoted his status during the campaign for "Heroes" with the slogan, "There's old wave, there's new wave, and there's David Bowie". His work with Tin Machine, though critically maligned, was later acknowledged as featuring grunge and alternative rock before those styles became popular. He was dubbed the "chameleon of rock" due to his constant reinvention.
Perone credited Bowie with having "brought sophistication to rock music", and critical reviews frequently acknowledged the intellectual depth of his work and influence. The BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz likened Bowie to Pablo Picasso, writing that he was "an innovative, visionary, restless artist who synthesised complex avant garde concepts into beautifully coherent works that touched the hearts and minds of millions".
Broadcaster John Peel contrasted Bowie with his progressive rock contemporaries, arguing that Bowie was "an interesting kind of fringe figure... on the outskirts of things". Peel said he "liked the idea of him reinventing himself... the one distinguishing feature about early-70s progressive rock was that it didn't progress. Before Bowie came along, people didn't want too much change"; then Bowie "subverted the whole notion of what it was to be a rock star". Buckley called Bowie "both star and icon. The vast body of work he has produced ... has created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture. ... His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure."
Through continual reinvention, his influence broadened and extended. Biographer Thomas Forget added, "Because he has succeeded in so many different styles of music, it is almost impossible to find a popular artist today that has not been influenced by David Bowie." In 2000, Bowie was voted by other music stars as the "most influential artist of all time" in a poll by NME. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote that Bowie was confirmed by 1980 to be "the most important and influential artist since the Beatles". Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph stated that Bowie had "one of the supreme careers in popular music, art and culture of the 20th century" and "he was too inventive, too mercurial, too strange for all but his most devoted fans to keep up with". The BBC's Mark Easton argued that Bowie provided fuel for "the creative powerhouse that Britain has become" by challenging future generations "to aim high, to be ambitious and provocative, to take risks". Easton concluded that Bowie had "changed the way the world sees Britain. And the way Britain sees itself". In 2006, Bowie was voted the fourth greatest living British icon in a poll held by the BBC's Culture Show. Annie Zaleski of Alternative Press wrote, "Every band or solo artist who's decided to rip up their playbook and start again owes a debt to Bowie".
Numerous figures from the music industry whose careers Bowie had influenced paid tribute to him following his death; panegyrics on Twitter (tweets about him peaked at 20,000 a minute an hour after the announcement of his death) also came from outside the entertainment industry and pop culture, such as those from the Vatican, namely Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, who quoted "Space Oddity", and the German Federal Foreign Office, which thanked Bowie for his part in the fall of the Berlin Wall and referenced "'Heroes'".
On 7 January 2017, the BBC broadcast the 90-minute documentary David Bowie: The Last Five Years. A day later, which would have been Bowie's 70th birthday, a charity concert in his birthplace of Brixton was hosted by close friend and actor Gary Oldman. A David Bowie walking tour through Brixton was also launched, and other events marking his birthday weekend included concerts in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Tokyo.
On 6 February 2018, the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carried Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster and a mannequin affectionately named Starman into space. "Space Oddity" and "Life on Mars?" were looping on the car's sound system during the launch.
An exhibition of Bowie artefacts, called David Bowie Is, was organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and shown there in 2013. The London exhibit was visited by over 300,000 people, making it one of the most successful exhibitions ever staged at the museum. Later that year the exhibition began a world tour which started in Toronto and included stops in Chicago, Paris, Melbourne, Groningen and New York where the exhibit ended in 2018 at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition hosted around 2,000,000 visitors over its run.
A biopic, Stardust, was announced on 31 January 2019, with musician and actor Johnny Flynn as Bowie, Jena Malone as his wife Angie and Marc Maron as his publicist. The film follows Bowie on his first trip to the United States in 1971. The film was written by Christopher Bell and directed by Gabriel Range. Bowie's son Duncan Jones spoke out against the film, saying he was not consulted and that the film would not have permission to use Bowie's music. The film was set to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, but the festival was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It received generally unfavourable reviews from critics.
A film based on Bowie's musical journey throughout his career was announced on 23 May 2022. Titled Moonage Daydream, after the song of the same name, the film is written and directed by Brett Morgen and features never-before-seen footage, performances and music framed by Bowie's own narration. Morgan stated that "Bowie cannot be defined, he can be experienced... That is why we crafted 'Moonage Daydream' to be a unique cinematic experience." The documentary is the first posthumous film about Bowie to be approved by his estate. After spending five years in production, the film premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, and was released theatrically in the US in IMAX on 16 September. It received positive reviews.
Bowie's 1969 commercial breakthrough, "Space Oddity", won him an Ivor Novello Special Award For Originality. For his performance in The Man Who Fell to Earth, he won the Saturn Award for Best Actor. In the ensuing decades he received six Grammy Awards and four Brit Awards, including Best British Male Artist twice; the award for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 1996; and the Brits Icon award for his "lasting impact on British culture", given posthumously in 2016.
In 1999, Bowie was made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music. He declined the royal honour of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000, and turned down a knighthood in 2003. Bowie later stated "I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don't know what it's for. It's not what I spent my life working for."
During his lifetime, Bowie sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists. In the UK, he was awarded nine platinum, eleven gold and eight silver albums, and in the US, five platinum and nine gold. Since 2015, Parlophone has remastered Bowie's back catalogue through the "Era" box set series, starting with Five Years (1969–1973). Bowie was announced as the best-selling vinyl artist of the 21st century in 2022.
The 2020 revision of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list includes The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars at number 40, Station to Station at 52, Hunky Dory at 88, Low at 206, and Scary Monsters at 443. On the 2021 revision of the same magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, Bowie's songs include "'Heroes'" at number 23, "Life on Mars?" at 105, "Space Oddity" at 189, "Changes" at 200, "Young Americans" at 204, "Station to Station" at 400, and "Under Pressure" at 429. Four of his songs are included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie was ranked 29. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013. Days after Bowie's death, Rolling Stone contributor Rob Sheffield proclaimed him "the greatest rock star ever". The magazine also listed him as the 39th greatest songwriter of all time. In 2022, Sky Arts ranked him the most influential artist in Britain of the last 50 years "owing to his transcendent influence on British culture". He ranked 32nd on the 2023 Rolling Stone list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
In 2008, the spider Heteropoda davidbowie was named in Bowie's honour. In 2011, his image was chosen by popular vote for the B£10m note of the local currency of his birthplace, the Brixton Pound. On 5 January 2015, a main-belt asteroid was named 342843 Davidbowie. On 13 January 2016, Belgian amateur astronomers at MIRA Public Observatory created a "Bowie asterism" of seven stars which had been in the vicinity of Mars at the time of Bowie's death; the "constellation" forms the lightning bolt on Bowie's face from the cover of his Aladdin Sane album. In March 2017, Bowie featured on a series of UK postage stamps. On 25 March 2018, a statue of Bowie was unveiled in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, the town where he debuted Ziggy Stardust. The statue features a likeness of Bowie in 2002 accompanied with various characters and looks from over his career, with Ziggy Stardust at the front. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie (/ˈboʊi/ BOH-ee), was an English singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, and his music and stagecraft had a significant impact on popular music.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Bowie developed an interest in music from an early age. He studied art, music and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963. He released a string of unsuccessful singles with local bands and a solo album before achieving his first top five entry on the UK Singles Chart with \"Space Oddity\", released in 1969. After a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of \"Starman\" and album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which won him widespread popularity. In 1975, Bowie's style shifted towards a sound he characterised as \"plastic soul\", initially alienating many of his UK fans but garnering him his first major US crossover success with the number-one single \"Fame\" and the album Young Americans. In 1976, Bowie starred in the cult film The Man Who Fell to Earth and released Station to Station. In 1977, he again changed direction with the electronic-inflected album Low, the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno that came to be known as the Berlin Trilogy. \"Heroes\" (1977) and Lodger (1979) followed; each album reached the UK top five and received lasting critical praise.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had three number-one hits: the 1980 single \"Ashes to Ashes\", its album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) and \"Under Pressure\" (a 1981 collaboration with Queen). He achieved his greatest commercial success in the 1980s with Let's Dance (1983). Between 1988 and 1992, he fronted the hard rock band Tin Machine before resuming his solo career in 1993. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including industrial and jungle. He also continued acting; his roles included Major Jack Celliers in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth (1986), Phillip Jeffries in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Andy Warhol in the biopic Basquiat (1996), and Nikola Tesla in The Prestige (2006), among other film and television appearances and cameos. He stopped touring after 2004 and his last live performance was at a charity event in 2006. He returned from a decade-long recording hiatus in 2013 with The Next Day and remained musically active until his death from liver cancer in 2016. He died two days after both his 69th birthday and the release of his final album, Blackstar.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at over 100 million records worldwide, made him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Often dubbed the \"chameleon of rock\" due to his constant musical reinventions, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Rolling Stone ranked him among the greatest artists in history. As of 2022, Bowie was the best-selling vinyl artist of the 21st century.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "David Robert Jones was born on 8 January 1947 in Brixton, London. His mother, Margaret Mary \"Peggy\" (née Burns; 2 October 1913 – 2 April 2001), was born at Shorncliffe Army Camp near Cheriton, Kent. Her paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants who had settled in Manchester. She worked as a waitress at a cinema in Royal Tunbridge Wells. His father, Haywood Stenton \"John\" Jones (21 November 1912 – 5 August 1969), was from Doncaster, Yorkshire, and worked as a promotions officer for the children's charity Barnardo's. The family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, on the boundary between Brixton and Stockwell in the south London borough of Lambeth. Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, acquiring a reputation as a gifted and single-minded child—and a defiant brawler.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "From 1953, Bowie moved with his family to Bickley and then Bromley Common, before settling in Sundridge Park in 1955 where he attended Burnt Ash Junior School. His voice was considered \"adequate\" by the school choir, and he demonstrated above-average abilities in playing the recorder. At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers called his interpretations \"vividly artistic\" and his poise \"astonishing\" for a child. The same year, his interest in music was further stimulated when his father brought home a collection of American 45s by artists including the Teenagers, the Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. Upon listening to Little Richard's song \"Tutti Frutti\", Bowie later said that he had \"heard God\".",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Bowie was first impressed with Presley when he saw his cousin Kristina dance to \"Hound Dog\" soon after its release in 1956. According to Kristina, she and David \"danced like possessed elves\" to records of various artists. By the end of the following year, Bowie had taken up the ukulele and tea-chest bass, begun to participate in skiffle sessions with friends, and had started to play the piano; meanwhile, his stage presentation of numbers by both Presley and Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the original artists—to his local Wolf Cub group was described as \"mesmerizing ... like someone from another planet\". Having encouraged his son to follow his dreams of being an entertainer since he was a toddler, in the late 1950s David's father took him to meet singers and other performers preparing for the Royal Variety Performance, introducing him to Alma Cogan and Tommy Steele. After taking his eleven-plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie went to Bromley Technical High School. It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher Sandford wrote:",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Despite its status it was, by the time David arrived in 1958, as rich in arcane ritual as any [English] public school. There were houses named after eighteenth-century statesmen like Pitt and Wilberforce. There was a uniform and an elaborate system of rewards and punishments. There was also an accent on languages, science and particularly design, where a collegiate atmosphere flourished under the tutorship of Owen Frampton. In David's account, Frampton led through force of personality, not intellect; his colleagues at Bromley Tech were famous for neither and yielded the school's most gifted pupils to the arts, a regime so liberal that Frampton actively encouraged his own son, Peter, to pursue a musical career with David, a partnership briefly intact thirty years later.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Bowie's maternal half-brother, Terry Burns, was a substantial influence on his early life. Burns, who was 10 years older than Bowie, had schizophrenia and seizures, and lived alternately at home and in psychiatric wards; while living with Bowie, he introduced the younger man to many of his lifelong influences, such as modern jazz, Buddhism, Beat poetry and the occult. In addition to Burns, a significant proportion of Bowie's extended family members had schizophrenia spectrum disorders, including an aunt who was institutionalised and another who underwent a lobotomy; this has been labelled as an influence on his early work.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Bowie studied art, music and design, including layout and typesetting. After Burns introduced him to modern jazz, his enthusiasm for players like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane led his mother to give him a Grafton saxophone in 1961. He was soon receiving lessons from baritone saxophonist Ronnie Ross.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "He received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. After a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation, his doctors determined that the damage could not be fully repaired and Bowie was left with faulty depth perception and anisocoria (a permanently dilated pupil), which gave a false impression of a change in the iris' colour, erroneously suggesting he had heterochromia iridum (one iris a different colour to the other); his eye later became one of Bowie's most recognisable features. Despite their altercation, Bowie remained on good terms with Underwood, who went on to create the artwork for Bowie's early albums.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Bowie formed his first band, the Konrads, in 1962 at the age of 15. Playing guitar-based rock and roll at local youth gatherings and weddings, the Konrads had a varying line-up of between four and eight members, Underwood among them. When Bowie left the technical school the following year, he informed his parents of his intention to become a pop star. His mother arranged his employment as an electrician's mate. Frustrated by his bandmates' limited aspirations, Bowie left the Konrads and joined another band, the King Bees. He wrote to the newly successful washing-machine entrepreneur John Bloom inviting him to \"do for us what Brian Epstein has done for the Beatles—and make another million.\" Bloom did not respond to the offer, but his referral to Dick James's partner Leslie Conn led to Bowie's first personal management contract.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. His debut single, \"Liza Jane\", credited to Davie Jones with the King Bees, was not commercially successful. Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their repertoire of Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon covers, Bowie quit the band less than a month later to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who incorporated folk and soul—\"I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger\", he recalled. Their cover of Bobby Bland's \"I Pity the Fool\" was no more successful than \"Liza Jane\", and Bowie soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio strongly influenced by the Who. \"You've Got a Habit of Leaving\" fared no better, signalling the end of Conn's contract. Declaring that he would exit the pop music world \"to study mime at Sadler's Wells\", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower Third. His new manager, Ralph Horton, later instrumental in his transition to solo artist, helped secure him a contract with Pye Records. Publicist Tony Hatch signed Bowie on the basis that he wrote his own songs. Dissatisfied with Davy (and Davie) Jones, which in the mid-1960s invited confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees, he took on the stage name David Bowie after the 19th-century American pioneer James Bowie and the knife he had popularised. His first release under the name was the January 1966 single \"Can't Help Thinking About Me\", recorded with the Lower Third. It flopped like its predecessors.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Bowie departed the Lower Third after the single's release, partly due to Horton's influence, and released two more singles for Pye, \"Do Anything You Say\" and \"I Dig Everything\", both of which featured a new band called the Buzz, before signing with Deram Records. Around this time Bowie also joined the Riot Squad; their recordings, which included one of Bowie's original songs and material by the Velvet Underground, went unreleased. Kenneth Pitt, introduced by Horton, took over as Bowie's manager. His April 1967 solo single, \"The Laughing Gnome\", on which speeded-up and high-pitched vocals were used to portray the gnome, failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut, David Bowie, an amalgam of pop, psychedelia and music hall, met the same fate. It was his last release for two years. In September, Bowie recorded \"Let Me Sleep Beside You\" and \"Karma Man\", both rejected by Deram and left unreleased until 1970. The tracks marked the beginning of Bowie's working relationship with producer Tony Visconti which, with large gaps, lasted for the rest of Bowie's career.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Studying the dramatic arts under Lindsay Kemp, from avant-garde theatre and mime to commedia dell'arte, Bowie became immersed in the creation of personae to present to the world. Satirising life in a British prison, his composition \"Over the Wall We Go\" became a 1967 single for Oscar; another Bowie song, \"Silly Boy Blue\", was released by Billy Fury the following year. Playing acoustic guitar, Hermione Farthingale formed a group with Bowie and guitarist John Hutchinson named Feathers; between September 1968 and early 1969 the trio gave a small number of concerts combining folk, Merseybeat, poetry and mime.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "After the break-up with Farthingale, Bowie moved in with Mary Finnigan as her lodger. In February and March 1969, he undertook a short tour with Marc Bolan's duo Tyrannosaurus Rex, as third on the bill, performing a mime act. Continuing the divergence from rock and roll and blues begun by his work with Farthingale, Bowie joined forces with Finnigan, Christina Ostrom and Barrie Jackson to run a folk club on Sunday nights at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street. The club was influenced by the Arts Lab movement, developing into the Beckenham Arts Lab and became extremely popular. The Arts Lab hosted a free festival in a local park, the subject of his song \"Memory of a Free Festival\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Pitt attempted to introduce Bowie to a larger audience with the Love You till Tuesday film, which went unreleased until 1984. Feeling alienated over his unsuccessful career and deeply affected by his break-up, Bowie wrote \"Space Oddity\", a tale about a fictional astronaut named Major Tom. The song earned him a contract with Mercury Records and its UK subsidiary Philips, who issued \"Space Oddity\" as a single on 11 July 1969, five days ahead of the Apollo 11 launch. Reaching the top five in the UK, it was his first and last hit for three years. Bowie's second album followed in November; originally issued in the UK as David Bowie, it caused some confusion with its predecessor of the same name, and the US release was instead titled Man of Words/Man of Music; it was reissued internationally in 1972 by RCA Records as Space Oddity. Featuring philosophical post-hippie lyrics on peace, love and morality, its acoustic folk rock occasionally fortified by harder rock, the album was not a commercial success at the time of its release.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Bowie met Angela Barnett in April 1969. They married within a year. Her impact on him was immediate—he wrote his 1970 single \"The Prettiest Star\" for her—and her involvement in his career far-reaching, leaving Pitt with limited influence which he found frustrating. Having established himself as a solo artist with \"Space Oddity\", Bowie desired a full-time band he could record with and could relate to personally. The band Bowie assembled comprised John Cambridge, a drummer Bowie met at the Arts Lab, Visconti on bass and Mick Ronson on electric guitar. Known as Hype, the bandmates created characters for themselves and wore elaborate costumes that prefigured the glam style of the Spiders from Mars. After a disastrous opening gig at the London Roundhouse, they reverted to a configuration presenting Bowie as a solo artist. Their initial studio work was marred by a heated disagreement between Bowie and Cambridge over the latter's drumming style, leading to his replacement by Mick Woodmansey. Not long after, Bowie fired his manager and replaced him with Tony Defries. This resulted in years of litigation that concluded with Bowie having to pay Pitt compensation.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The studio sessions continued and resulted in Bowie's third album, The Man Who Sold the World (1970), which contained references to schizophrenia, paranoia and delusion. It represented a departure from the acoustic guitar and folk rock style established by his second album, to a more hard rock sound. To promote it in the US, Mercury financed a coast-to-coast publicity tour across America in which Bowie, between January and February 1971, was interviewed by radio stations and the media. Exploiting his androgynous appearance, the original cover of the UK version unveiled two months later depicted Bowie wearing a dress. He took the dress with him and wore it during interviews, to the approval of critics – including Rolling Stone's John Mendelsohn, who described him as \"ravishing, almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "During the tour, Bowie's observation of two seminal American proto-punk artists led him to develop a concept that eventually found form in the Ziggy Stardust character: a melding of the persona of Iggy Pop with the music of Lou Reed, producing \"the ultimate pop idol\". A girlfriend recalled his \"scrawling notes on a cocktail napkin about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy\", and on his return to England he declared his intention to create a character \"who looks like he's landed from Mars\". The \"Stardust\" surname was a tribute to the \"Legendary Stardust Cowboy\", whose record he was given during the tour. Bowie later covered \"I Took a Trip on a Gemini Space Ship\" on 2002's Heathen.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Hunky Dory (1971) found Visconti supplanted in both roles by Ken Scott producing and Trevor Bolder on bass. It again featured a stylistic shift towards art pop and melodic pop rock, with light fare tracks such as \"Kooks\", a song written for his son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, born on 30 May. Elsewhere, the album explored more serious subjects, and found Bowie paying unusually direct homage to his influences with \"Song for Bob Dylan\", \"Andy Warhol\" and \"Queen Bitch\", the latter a Velvet Underground pastiche. His first release through RCA, it was a commercial failure, partly due lack of promotion from the label. Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits covered the album's track \"Oh! You Pretty Things\", which reached number 12 in the UK.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Dressed in a striking costume, his hair dyed reddish-brown, Bowie launched his Ziggy Stardust stage show with the Spiders from Mars—Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey—at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth in Kingston upon Thames on 10 February 1972. The show was hugely popular, catapulting him to stardom as he toured the UK over the next six months and creating, as described by David Buckley, a \"cult of Bowie\" that was \"unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom.\" The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), combining the hard rock elements of The Man Who Sold the World with the lighter experimental rock and pop of Hunky Dory, was released in June and was considered one of the defining albums of glam rock. \"Starman\", issued as an April single ahead of the album, was to cement Bowie's UK breakthrough: both single and album charted rapidly following his July Top of the Pops performance of the song. The album, which remained in the chart for two years, was soon joined there by the six-month-old Hunky Dory. At the same time, the non-album single \"John, I'm Only Dancing\" and \"All the Young Dudes\", a song he wrote and produced for Mott the Hoople, were successful in the UK. The Ziggy Stardust Tour continued to the United States.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Bowie contributed backing vocals, keyboards and guitar to Reed's 1972 solo breakthrough Transformer, co-producing the album with Ronson. The following year, Bowie co-produced and mixed the Stooges' album Raw Power alongside Iggy Pop. His own Aladdin Sane (1973) was his first UK number-one album. Described by Bowie as \"Ziggy goes to America\", it contained songs he wrote while travelling to and across the US during the earlier part of the Ziggy tour, which now continued to Japan to promote the new album. Aladdin Sane spawned the UK top five singles \"The Jean Genie\" and \"Drive-In Saturday\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Bowie's love of acting led to his total immersion in the characters he created for his music. \"Offstage I'm a robot. Onstage I achieve emotion. It's probably why I prefer dressing up as Ziggy to being David.\" With satisfaction came severe personal difficulties: acting the same role over an extended period, it became impossible for him to separate Ziggy Stardust—and later, the Thin White Duke—from his own character offstage. Ziggy, Bowie said, \"wouldn't leave me alone for years. That was when it all started to go sour ... My whole personality was affected. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts about my sanity.\" His later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, were ultra-theatrical affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie stripping down to a sumo wrestling loincloth or simulating oral sex with Ronson's guitar. Bowie toured and gave press conferences as Ziggy before a dramatic and abrupt on-stage \"retirement\" at London's Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973. Footage from the final show was incorporated for the film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which premiered in 1979 and commercially released in 1983.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "After breaking up the Spiders, Bowie attempted to move on from his Ziggy persona. His back catalogue was now highly sought after: The Man Who Sold the World had been re-released in 1972 along with Space Oddity. Hunky Dory's \"Life on Mars?\" was released in June 1973 and peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart. Entering the same chart in September, his 1967 novelty record \"The Laughing Gnome\" reached number six. Pin Ups, a collection of covers of his 1960s favourites, followed in October, producing a UK number three hit in his version of the McCoys's \"Sorrow\" and itself peaking at number one, making Bowie the best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. It brought the total number of Bowie albums concurrently on the UK chart to six.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Bowie moved to the US in 1974, initially staying in New York City before settling in Los Angeles. Diamond Dogs (1974), parts of which found him heading towards soul and funk, was the product of two distinct ideas: a musical based on a wild future in a post-apocalyptic city, and setting George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to music. The album went to number one in the UK, spawning the hits \"Rebel Rebel\" and \"Diamond Dogs\", and number five in the US. The supporting Diamond Dogs Tour visited cities in North America between June and December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special effects, the high-budget stage production was filmed by Alan Yentob. The resulting documentary, Cracked Actor, featured a pasty and emaciated Bowie: the tour coincided with his slide from heavy cocaine use into addiction, producing severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems. He later commented that the accompanying live album, David Live, ought to have been titled \"David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only in Theory\". David Live nevertheless solidified Bowie's status as a superstar, charting at number two in the UK and number eight in the US. It also spawned a UK number ten hit in a cover of Eddie Floyd's \"Knock on Wood\". After a break in Philadelphia, where Bowie recorded new material, the tour resumed with a new emphasis on soul.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The fruit of the Philadelphia recording sessions was Young Americans (1975). Sandford writes, \"Over the years, most British rockers had tried, one way or another, to become black-by-extension. Few had succeeded as Bowie did now.\" The album's sound, which Bowie identified as \"plastic soul\", constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. Young Americans was a commercial success in both the US and the UK and yielded Bowie's first US number one, \"Fame\", a collaboration with John Lennon. A re-issue of the 1969 single \"Space Oddity\" became Bowie's first number-one hit in the UK a few months after \"Fame\" achieved the same in the US. He mimed \"Fame\" and his November single \"Golden Years\" on the US variety show Soul Train, earning him the distinction of being one of the first white artists to appear on the programme. The same year, Bowie fired Defries as his manager. At the culmination of the ensuing months-long legal dispute, he watched, as described by Sandford, \"millions of dollars of his future earnings being surrendered\" in what were \"uniquely generous terms for Defries\", then \"shut himself up in West 20th Street, where for a week his howls could be heard through the locked attic door.\" Michael Lippman, Bowie's lawyer during the negotiations, became his new manager; Lippman, in turn, was awarded substantial compensation when he was fired the following year.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Station to Station (1976), produced by Bowie and Harry Maslin, introduced a new Bowie persona, the Thin White Duke of its title track. Visually, the character was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being he portrayed in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth the same year. Developing the funk and soul of Young Americans, Station to Station's synthesiser-heavy arrangements were influenced by electronic and German krautrock. Bowie's cocaine addiction during this period was at its peak; he often did not sleep for three to four days at a time during Station to Station's recording sessions and later said he remembered \"only flashes\" of its making. His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted from cocaine; he referenced the drug directly in the album's ten-minute title track. The album's release was followed by a 3+1⁄2-month-long concert tour, the Isolar Tour, of Europe and North America. The core band that coalesced to record the album and tour—rhythm guitarist Carlos Alomar, bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis—continued as a stable unit for the remainder of the 1970s. Bowie performed on stage as the Thin White Duke.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The tour was highly successful but mired in political controversy. Bowie was quoted in Stockholm as saying that \"Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader\", and was detained by customs on the Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia. Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as the \"Victoria Station incident\". Arriving in an open-top Mercedes convertible, Bowie waved to the crowd in a gesture that some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in NME. Bowie said the photographer caught him in mid-wave. He later blamed his pro-fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his cocaine addiction, the character of the Thin White Duke and his life living in Los Angeles, a city he later said \"should be wiped off the face of the Earth\". He later apologised for these statements, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s criticised racism in European politics and the American music industry. Nevertheless, his comments on fascism, as well as Eric Clapton's alcohol-fuelled denunciations of Pakistani immigrants in 1976, led to the establishment of Rock Against Racism.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In August 1976, Bowie moved to West Berlin with his old friend Iggy Pop to rid themselves of their respective drug addictions and escape the spotlight. Bowie's interest in German krautrock and the ambient works of multi-instrumentalist Brian Eno culminated in the first of three albums, co-produced with Visconti, that became known as the Berlin Trilogy. The album, Low (1977), was recorded in France and took influence from krautrock and experimental music and featured both short song-fragments and ambient instrumentals. Before its recording, Bowie produced Iggy Pop's debut solo album The Idiot, described by Pegg as \"a stepping stone between Station to Station and Low\". Low was completed in November, but left unreleased for three months. RCA did not see the album as commercially viable and were expecting another success following Young Americans and Station to Station. Bowie's former manager Tony Defries, who maintained a significant financial interest in Bowie's affairs, also tried to prevent. Upon its release in January 1977, Low yielded the UK number three single \"Sound and Vision\", and its own performance surpassed that of Station to Station in the UK chart, where it reached number two. Bowie himself did not promote it, instead touring with Pop as his keyboardist throughout March and April before recording Pop's follow-up, Lust for Life.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Echoing Low's minimalist, instrumental approach, the second of the trilogy, \"Heroes\" (1977), incorporated pop and rock to a greater extent, seeing Bowie joined by guitarist Robert Fripp. It was the only album recorded entirely in Berlin. Incorporating ambient sounds from a variety of sources including white noise generators, synthesisers and koto, the album was another hit, reaching number three in the UK. Its title track was released in both German and French and, though only reached number 24 in the UK singles chart, later became one of his best-known tracks. In contrast to Low, Bowie promoted \"Heroes\" extensively, performing the title track on Marc Bolan's television show Marc, and again two days later for Bing Crosby's final CBS television Christmas special, when he joined Crosby in \"Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy\", a version of \"The Little Drummer Boy\" with a new, contrapuntal verse. RCA belatedly released the recording as a single five years later in 1982, charting in the UK at number three.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "After completing Low and \"Heroes\", Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts in 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug addiction; Buckley writes that Isolar II was \"Bowie's first tour for five years in which he had probably not anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before taking the stage. ... Without the oblivion that drugs had brought, he was now in a healthy enough mental condition to want to make friends.\" Recordings from the tour made up the live album Stage, released the same year. Bowie also recorded narration for an adaptation of Sergei Prokofiev's classical composition Peter and the Wolf, which was released as an album in May 1978.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The final piece in what Bowie called his \"triptych\", Lodger (1979), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of its two predecessors, making a partial return to the drum- and guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era. The result was a complex mixture of new wave and world music, in places incorporating Hijaz non-Western scales. Some tracks were composed using Eno's Oblique Strategies cards: \"Boys Keep Swinging\" entailed band members swapping instruments, \"Move On\" used the chords from Bowie's early composition \"All the Young Dudes\" played backwards, and \"Red Money\" took backing tracks from The Idiot's \"Sister Midnight\". The album was recorded in Switzerland and New York City. Ahead of its release, RCA's Mel Ilberman described it as \"a concept album that portrays the Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life's pressures and technology.\" Lodger reached number four in the UK and number 20 in the US, and yielded the UK hit singles \"Boys Keep Swinging\" and \"DJ\". Towards the end of the year, Bowie and Angie initiated divorce proceedings, and after months of court battles the marriage was ended in early 1980. The three albums were later adapted into classical music symphonies by American composer Philip Glass for his first, fourth and twelfth symphonies in 1992, 1997 and 2019, respectively. Glass praised Bowie's gift for creating \"fairly complex pieces of music, masquerading as simple pieces\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) produced the number one single \"Ashes to Ashes\", featuring the textural guitar-synthesiser work of Chuck Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from \"Space Oddity\". The song gave international exposure to the underground New Romantic movement when Bowie visited the London club \"Blitz\"—the main New Romantic hangout—to recruit several of the regulars (including Steve Strange of the band Visage) to act in the accompanying video, renowned as one of the most innovative of all time. While Scary Monsters used principles established by the Berlin albums, it was considered by critics to be far more direct musically and lyrically. The album's hard rock edge included conspicuous guitar contributions from Fripp and Pete Townshend. Topping the UK Albums Chart for the first time since Diamond Dogs, Buckley writes that with Scary Monsters, Bowie achieved \"the perfect balance\" of creativity and mainstream success.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Bowie paired with Queen in 1981 for a one-off single release, \"Under Pressure\". The duet was a hit, becoming Bowie's third UK number-one single. Bowie was given the lead role in the BBC's 1982 televised adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play Baal. Coinciding with its transmission, a five-track EP of songs from the play was released as Baal. In March 1982, Bowie's title song for Paul Schrader's film Cat People was released as a single. A collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, it became a minor US hit and charted in the UK top 30. The same year, he departed RCA, having grown increasingly dissatisfied with them, and signed a new contract with EMI America Records for a reported $17 million. His 1975 severance settlement with Defries also ended in September.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Bowie reached his peak of popularity and commercial success in 1983 with Let's Dance. Co-produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, the album went platinum in both the UK and the US. Its three singles became top 20 hits in both countries, where its title track reached number one. \"Modern Love\" and \"China Girl\" each made number two in the UK, accompanied by a pair of \"absorbing\" music videos that Buckley said \"activated key archetypes in the pop world... 'Let's Dance', with its little narrative surrounding the young Aboriginal couple, targeted 'youth', and 'China Girl', with its bare-bummed (and later partially censored) beach lovemaking scene... was sufficiently sexually provocative to guarantee heavy rotation on MTV\". Then-unknown Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan guested on the album, featuring prominently on the title track. Let's Dance was followed by the six-month Serious Moonlight Tour, which was extremely successful. At the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards Bowie received two awards including the inaugural Video Vanguard Award.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Tonight (1984), another dance-oriented album, found Bowie collaborating with Pop and Tina Turner. Co-produced by Hugh Padgham, it included a number of cover songs, including three Pop covers and the 1966 Beach Boys hit \"God Only Knows\". The album bore the transatlantic top 10 hit \"Blue Jean\", itself the inspiration for the Julien Temple-directed short film Jazzin' for Blue Jean, in which Bowie played the dual roles of romantic protagonist Vic and arrogant rock star Screaming Lord Byron. The short won Bowie his only non-posthumous Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video. In early 1985, Bowie's collaboration with the Pat Metheny Group, \"This Is Not America\", for the soundtrack of The Falcon and the Snowman, was released as a single and became a top 40 hit in the UK and US. In July that year, Bowie performed at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid, a multi-venue benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief. Bowie and Mick Jagger duetted on a cover of Martha and the Vandellas' \"Dancing in the Street\" as a fundraising single, which went to number one in the UK and number seven in the US; its video premiered during Live Aid.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Bowie took an acting role in the 1986 film Absolute Beginners, and his title song rose to number two in the UK charts. He also worked with composer Trevor Jones and wrote five original songs for the 1986 film Labyrinth, which he starred in. His final solo album of the decade was 1987's Never Let Me Down, where he ditched the light sound of his previous two albums, instead combining pop rock with a harder rock sound. Peaking at number six in the UK, the album yielded the hits \"Day-In Day-Out\", \"Time Will Crawl\" and \"Never Let Me Down\". Bowie later described it as his \"nadir\", calling it \"an awful album\". He supported the album on the 86-concert Glass Spider Tour. The backing band included Peter Frampton on lead guitar. Contemporary critics maligned the tour as overproduced, saying it pandered to the current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancing, although in later years critics acknowledged the tour's strengths and influence on concert tours by other artists, such as Prince, Madonna and U2.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Wanting to completely rejuvenate himself following the critical failures of Tonight and Never Let Me Down, Bowie placed his solo career on hold after meeting guitarist Reeves Gabrels and formed the hard rock quartet Tin Machine. The line-up was completed by bassist and drummer Tony and Hunt Sales, who had played with Bowie on Iggy Pop's Lust for Life in 1977. Although he intended Tin Machine to operate as a democracy, Bowie dominated, both in songwriting and in decision-making. The band's 1989 self-titled debut album received mixed reviews and, according to author Paul Trynka, was quickly dismissed as \"pompous, dogmatic and dull\". EMI complained of \"lyrics that preach\" as well as \"repetitive tunes\" and \"minimalist or no production\". It reached number three in the UK and was supported by a twelve-date tour.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The tour was a commercial success, but there was growing reluctance—among fans and critics alike—to accept Bowie's presentation as merely a band member. A series of Tin Machine singles failed to chart, and Bowie, after a disagreement with EMI, left the label. Like his audience and his critics, Bowie himself became increasingly disaffected with his role as just one member of a band. Tin Machine began work on a second album, but recording halted while Bowie conducted the seven-month Sound+Vision Tour, which brought him commercial success and acclaim.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In October 1990, Bowie and Somali-born supermodel Iman were introduced by a mutual friend. He recalled, \"I was naming the children the night we met ... it was absolutely immediate.\" They married in 1992. Tin Machine resumed work the same month, but their audience and critics, ultimately left disappointed by the first album, showed little interest in a second. Tin Machine II (1991) was Bowie's first album to miss the UK top 20 in nearly twenty years, and was controversial for its cover art. Depicting four ancient nude Kouroi statues, the new record label, Victory, deemed the cover \"a show of wrong, obscene images\" and airbrushed the statues' genitalia for the American release. Tin Machine toured again, but after the live album Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby (1992) failed commercially, Bowie dissolved the band and resumed his solo career. He continued to collaborate with Gabrels for the rest of the 1990s.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "On 20 April 1992, Bowie appeared at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, following the Queen singer's death the previous year. As well as performing \"'Heroes'\" and \"All the Young Dudes\", he was joined on \"Under Pressure\" by Annie Lennox, who took Mercury's vocal part; during his appearance, Bowie knelt and recited the Lord's Prayer at Wembley Stadium. Four days later, Bowie and Iman married in Switzerland. Intending to move to Los Angeles, they flew in to search for a suitable property, but found themselves confined to their hotel, under curfew: the 1992 Los Angeles riots began the day they arrived. They settled in New York instead.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In 1993, Bowie released his first solo offering since his Tin Machine departure, the soul, jazz and hip-hop influenced Black Tie White Noise. Making prominent use of electronic instruments, the album, which reunited Bowie with Let's Dance producer Nile Rodgers, confirmed Bowie's return to popularity, topping the UK chart and spawning three top 40 hits, including the top 10 single \"Jump They Say\". Bowie explored new directions on The Buddha of Suburbia (1993), which began as a soundtrack album for the BBC television adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's novel of the same name before turning into a full album; only the title track was used in the programme. Referencing his 1970s works with pop, jazz, ambient and experimental material, it received a low-key release, had almost no promotion and flopped commercially, reaching number 87 in the UK. Nevertheless, it later received critical praise as Bowie's \"lost great album\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Reuniting Bowie with Eno, the quasi-industrial Outside (1995) was originally conceived as the first volume in a non-linear narrative of art and murder. Featuring characters from a short story written by Bowie, the album achieved UK and US chart success and yielded three top 40 UK singles. In a move that provoked mixed reactions from both fans and critics, Bowie chose Nine Inch Nails as his tour partner for the Outside Tour. Visiting cities in Europe and North America between September 1995 and February 1996, the tour saw the return of Gabrels as Bowie's guitarist. On 7 January 1997, Bowie celebrated his half century with a 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden at which he was joined in playing his songs and those of his guests, Lou Reed, Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, Robert Smith of the Cure, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Black Francis of the Pixies, and Sonic Youth.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Incorporating experiments in jungle and drum 'n' bass, Earthling (1997) was a critical and commercial success in the UK and the US, and two singles from the album—\"Little Wonder\" and \"Dead Man Walking\"—became UK top 40 hits. The song \"I'm Afraid of Americans\" from the Paul Verhoeven film Showgirls was re-recorded for the album, and remixed by Trent Reznor for a single release. The heavy rotation of the accompanying video, also featuring Reznor, contributed to the song's 16-week stay in the US Billboard Hot 100. Bowie received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 12 February 1997. The Earthling Tour took place in Europe and North America between June and November. In November, Bowie performed on the BBC's Children in Need charity single \"Perfect Day\", which reached number one in the UK. Bowie reunited with Visconti in 1998 to record \"(Safe in This) Sky Life\" for The Rugrats Movie. Although the track was edited out of the final cut, it was later re-recorded and released as \"Safe\" on the B-side of Bowie's 2002 single \"Everyone Says 'Hi'\". The reunion led to other collaborations with his old producer, including a limited-edition single release version of Placebo's track \"Without You I'm Nothing\" with Bowie's harmonised vocal added to the original recording.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Bowie, with Gabrels, created the soundtrack for Omikron: The Nomad Soul, a 1999 computer game in which he and Iman also voiced characters based on their likenesses. Released the same year and containing re-recorded tracks from Omikron, his album Hours featured a song with lyrics by the winner of his \"Cyber Song Contest\" Internet competition, Alex Grant. Making extensive use of live instruments, the album was Bowie's exit from heavy electronica. Hours and a performance on VH1 Storytellers in mid-1999 represented the end of Gabrels' association with Bowie as a performer and songwriter. Sessions for Toy, a planned collection of remakes of tracks from Bowie's 1960s period, commenced in 2000, but was shelved due to EMI/Virgin's lack of faith in its commercial appeal. Bowie and Visconti continued their collaboration, producing a new album of completely original songs instead: the result of the sessions was the 2002 album Heathen.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "On 25 June 2000, Bowie made his second appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in England, playing almost 30 years after his first. The performance was released as a live album in November 2018. On 27 June, he performed a concert at the BBC Radio Theatre in London, which was released on the compilation album Bowie at the Beeb; this also featured BBC recording sessions from 1968 to 1972. Bowie and Iman's daughter, Alexandra, was born on 15 August. His interest in Buddhism led him to support the Tibetan cause by performing at the February 2001 and February 2003 concerts to support Tibet House US at Carnegie Hall in New York.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In October 2001, Bowie opened the Concert for New York City, a charity event to benefit the victims of the September 11 attacks, with a minimalist performance of Simon & Garfunkel's \"America\", followed by a full band performance of \"'Heroes'\". 2002 saw the release of Heathen, and, during the second half of the year, the Heathen Tour. Taking place in Europe and North America, the tour opened at London's annual Meltdown festival, for which Bowie was that year appointed artistic director. Among the acts he selected for the festival were Philip Glass, Television and the Dandy Warhols. As well as songs from the new album, the tour featured material from Bowie's Low era. Reality (2003) followed, and its accompanying world tour, the A Reality Tour, with an estimated attendance of 722,000, grossed more than any other in 2004. On 13 June, Bowie headlined the last night of the Isle of Wight Festival 2004. On 25 June, he experienced chest pain while performing at the Hurricane Festival in Scheeßel, Germany. Originally thought to be a pinched nerve in his shoulder, the pain was later diagnosed as an acutely blocked coronary artery, requiring an emergency angioplasty in Hamburg. The remaining fourteen dates of the tour were cancelled.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In the years following his recuperation from the heart attack, Bowie reduced his musical output, making only one-off appearances on stage and in the studio. He sang in a duet of his 1971 song \"Changes\" with Butterfly Boucher for the 2004 animated film Shrek 2. During a relatively quiet 2005, he recorded the vocals for the song \"(She Can) Do That\", co-written with Brian Transeau, for the film Stealth. He returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, appearing with Arcade Fire for the US nationally televised event Fashion Rocks, and performed with the Canadian band for the second time a week later during the CMJ Music Marathon. He contributed backing vocals on TV on the Radio's song \"Province\" for their album Return to Cookie Mountain, and joined with Lou Reed on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir's 2005 album No Balance Palace.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 February 2006. In April, he announced, \"I'm taking a year off—no touring, no albums.\" He made a surprise guest appearance at David Gilmour's 29 May concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The event was recorded, and a selection of songs on which he had contributed joint vocals were subsequently released. He performed again in November, alongside Alicia Keys, at the Black Ball, a benefit event for Keep a Child Alive at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. The performance marked the last time Bowie performed his music on stage.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Bowie was chosen to curate the 2007 High Line Festival. The musicians and artists he selected for the Manhattan event included electronic pop duo AIR, surrealist photographer Claude Cahun and English comedian Ricky Gervais. Bowie performed on Scarlett Johansson's 2008 album of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head. In June 2008, a live album was released of a Ziggy Stardust-era concert from 1972. On the 40th anniversary of the July 1969 Moon landing—and Bowie's accompanying commercial breakthrough with \"Space Oddity\"—EMI released the individual tracks from the original eight-track studio recording of the song, in a 2009 contest inviting members of the public to create a remix. A live album from the A Reality Tour was released in January 2010.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In late March 2011, Toy, Bowie's previously unreleased album from 2001, was leaked onto the internet, containing material used for Heathen and most of its single B-sides, as well as unheard new versions of his early back catalogue.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "On 8 January 2013, his 66th birthday, his website announced a new studio album—his first in a decade—to be titled The Next Day and scheduled for release in March; the announcement was accompanied by the immediate release of the single \"Where Are We Now?\". A music video for the single was released onto Vimeo the same day, directed by New York artist Tony Oursler. The single topped the UK iTunes Chart within hours of its release, and debuted in the UK Singles Chart at number six, his first single to enter the Top 10 for two decades (since \"Jump They Say\" in 1993). A second single and video, \"The Stars (Are Out Tonight)\", were released at the end of February. Directed by Floria Sigismondi, it stars Bowie and Tilda Swinton as a married couple.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Recorded in secret between 2011 and 2012, 29 songs were recorded during the album's sessions, of which 22 saw official release in 2013, including fourteen on the standard album. Three bonus tracks were later packaged with seven outtakes and remixes on The Next Day Extra, released in November. On 1 March, the album was made available to stream for free through iTunes. Debuting at number one on the UK Albums Chart, The Next Day was his first album to top the chart since Black Tie White Noise, and was the fastest-selling album of 2013 at the time. The music video for the song \"The Next Day\" created some controversy due to its Christian themes and messages, initially being removed from YouTube for terms-of-service violation, then restored with a warning recommending viewing only by those 18 or over.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "According to The Times, Bowie ruled out ever giving an interview again. Later in 2013, he was featured in a cameo vocal in the Arcade Fire song \"Reflektor\". A poll carried out by BBC History Magazine in October 2013 named Bowie as the best-dressed Briton in history. In mid-2014, Bowie was diagnosed with liver cancer, which he kept private. A new compilation album, Nothing Has Changed, was released in November. The album featured rare tracks and old material from his catalogue in addition to a new song, \"Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Bowie continued working throughout 2015, secretly recording his final album Blackstar in New York between January and May. In August, it was announced that he was writing songs for a Broadway musical based on the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon series; the final production included a retooled version of \"No Control\" from Outside. He also wrote and recorded the opening title song to the television series The Last Panthers, which aired in November. The theme that was used for The Last Panthers was also the title track for Blackstar. On 7 December, Bowie's musical Lazarus debuted in New York; he made his final public appearance at its opening night.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Blackstar was released on 8 January 2016, Bowie's 69th birthday, and was met with critical acclaim. He died two days later, after which Visconti revealed that Bowie had planned the album to be his swan song, and a \"parting gift\" for his fans before his death. Several reporters and critics subsequently noted that most of the lyrics on the album seem to revolve around his impending death, with CNN noting that the album \"reveals a man who appears to be grappling with his own mortality\". Visconti also said that he had been planning a follow-up album, and had written and recorded demos of five songs in his final weeks, suggesting he believed he had a few months left. The day following his death, online viewing of Bowie's music skyrocketed, breaking the record for Vevo's most viewed artist in a single day. Blackstar debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart; nineteen of his albums were in the UK Top 100 Albums Chart, and thirteen singles were in the UK Top 100 Singles Chart. Blackstar also debuted at number one on album charts around the world, including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the US Billboard 200.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In September 2016, a box set Who Can I Be Now? (1974–1976) was released covering Bowie's mid-1970s soul period; it included The Gouster, a previously unreleased 1974 album. An EP, No Plan, was released on 8 January 2017, which would have been Bowie's 70th birthday. Apart from \"Lazarus\", the EP includes three songs that Bowie recorded during the Blackstar sessions, but were left off the album and appeared on the soundtrack album for the Lazarus musical in October 2016. A music video for the title track was also released. 2017 and 2018 also saw the release of a series of posthumous live albums, Cracked Actor (Live Los Angeles '74), Live Nassau Coliseum '76 and Welcome to the Blackout (Live London '78). In the two years following his death, Bowie sold five million records in the UK alone. In their top 10 list for the Global Recording Artist of the Year, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry named Bowie the second-bestselling artist worldwide in 2016, behind Drake.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in 2017, Bowie won all five nominated awards: Best Rock Performance; Best Alternative Music Album; Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Recording Package; and Best Rock Song. They were Bowie's first Grammy wins in musical categories. On 8 January 2020, on what would have been Bowie's 73rd birthday, a previously unreleased version of \"The Man Who Sold the World\" was released and two releases were announced: a streaming-only EP, Is It Any Wonder?, and an album, ChangesNowBowie, released in November 2020 for Record Store Day. In August, another series of live shows were released, including sets from Dallas in 1995 and Paris in 1999. These and other shows, part of a series of live concerts spanning his tours from 1995 to 1999, was released in late 2020 and early 2021 as part of the box set Brilliant Live Adventures. In September 2021, Bowie's estate signed a distribution deal with Warner Music Group, beginning in 2023, covering Bowie's recordings from 2000 through 2016. Bowie's album Toy, recorded in 2000, was released on what would have been Bowie's 75th birthday. On 3 January 2022, Variety reported that Bowie's estate had sold his publishing catalogue to Warner Chappell Music, \"for a price upwards of $250 million\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In addition to music, Bowie took acting roles throughout his career, appearing in over 30 films, television shows and theatrical productions. His acting career was \"productively selective\", largely eschewing starring roles for cameos and supporting parts; he once described his film career as \"splashing in the kids' pool\". He mostly chose projects with arthouse directors that he felt were outside the Hollywood mainstream, commenting in 2000: \"One cameo for Scorsese to me brings so much more satisfaction than, say, a James Bond.\" Critics have believed that, had he not chosen to pursue music, he could have found great success as an actor. Others have felt that, while his screen presence was singular, his best contributions to film were the use of his songs in films such as Lost Highway, A Knight's Tale, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Inglourious Basterds.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Bowie's acting career predated his commercial breakthrough as a musician. His first film was a short fourteen-minute black-and-white film called The Image, shot in September 1967. Concerning a ghostly boy who emerges from a troubled artist's painting to haunt him, Bowie later called the film \"awful\". From December 1967 to March 1968, Bowie acted in mime Lindsay Kemp's theatrical production Pierrot in Turquoise, during which he performed several songs from his self-titled debut album. The production was later adapted into the 1970 television film The Looking Glass Murders. In late January 1968, Bowie filmed a walk-on role for the BBC drama series Theatre 625 that aired in May. He also appeared as a walk-on extra in the 1969 film adaptation of Leslie Thomas's 1966 comic novel The Virgin Soldiers.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Bowie's first major film role was in Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which he portrayed Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien from a dying planet. The actor's severe cocaine addiction at the time left him in such a fragile state of mind that he barely understood the film; he later said in 1993: \"My one snapshot of that film is not having to act. Just being me as I was, was perfectly adequate for the role. I wasn't of this earth at that particular time.\" Bowie's role was particularly singled out for praise by film critics both on release and in later decades; Pegg argues it stands as Bowie's most significant role. In 1978, Bowie had a starring role in Just a Gigolo, directed by David Hemmings, portraying Prussian officer Paul von Przygodski, who, returning from World War I, discovers life has changed and becomes a gigolo employed by a Baroness, playing by Marlene Dietrich. The film was a critical and commercial failure, and Bowie expressed disappointment in the finished product.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "From July 1980 to January 1981, Bowie played Joseph Merrick in the Broadway theatre production The Elephant Man, which he undertook wearing no stage make-up, earning critical praise for his performance. Christiane F., a 1981 biographical film focusing on a young girl's drug addiction in West Berlin, featured Bowie in a cameo appearance as himself at a concert in Germany. Its soundtrack album, Christiane F. (1981), featured much material from his Berlin albums. The following year, he starred in the titular role in a BBC adaptation of the Bertolt Brecht play Baal. Bowie made three on-screen appearances in 1983, the first as a vampire in Tony Scott's erotic horror film The Hunger, with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. Bowie later said that he felt \"very uncomfortable\" with the role, but was happy to work with Scott. The second was in Nagisa Ōshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, based on Laurens van der Post's novel The Seed and the Sower, in which he played Major Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. While the film itself received mixed reviews, Bowie's performance was praised. Pegg places it amongst his finest acting performances. Bowie's third role in 1983 was a small cameo in Mel Damski's pirate comedy Yellowbeard, heralded by several members of the Monty Python group. Bowie also filmed a 30-second introduction to the animated film The Snowman, based on Raymond Briggs's book of the same name.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In 1985, Bowie had a supporting role as hitman Colin in John Landis's Into the Night. He declined to play the villain Max Zorin in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985). Bowie reteamed with Julian Temple for Absolute Beginners, a rock musical film adapted from Colin MacInnes's book of the same name about life in late 1950s London, in a supporting role as ad man Vendice Partners. The same year, Jim Henson's dark musical fantasy Labyrinth cast him as Jareth, the villainous Goblin King. Despite initially performing poorly, the film grew in popularity and became a cult film. Two years later, he played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed biblical epic The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Despite only appearing for a three-minute sequence, Pegg writes that Bowie \"acquits himself well with a thoughtful, unshowy performance.\"",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 1991, Bowie reteamed with Landis for an episode of the HBO sitcom Dream On and played a disgruntled restaurant employee opposite Rosanna Arquette in The Linguini Incident. Bowie portrayed the mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). The prequel to the television series was poorly received at the time of its release, but has since been critically reevaluated. He took a small but pivotal role as his friend Andy Warhol in Basquiat, artist/director Julian Schnabel's 1996 biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat, another artist he considered a friend and colleague. Bowie co-starred in Giovanni Veronesi's Spaghetti Western Il Mio West (1998, released as Gunslinger's Revenge in the US in 2005) as the most feared gunfighter in the region. He played the ageing gangster Bernie in Andrew Goth's Everybody Loves Sunshine (1999, released in the US as B.U.S.T.E.D.), and appeared as the host in the second season of the television horror anthology series The Hunger. Despite having several episodes which focus on vampires and Bowie's involvement, the show had no plot connection to the 1983 film of the same name. In 1999, Bowie voiced two characters in the Sega Dreamcast game Omikron: The Nomad Soul, his only appearance in a video game.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In Mr. Rice's Secret (2000), Bowie played the title role as the neighbour of a terminally ill 12-year-old boy. Bowie appeared as himself in the 2001 Ben Stiller comedy Zoolander, judging a \"walk-off\" between rival male models, and in Eric Idle's 2002 mockumentary The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch. In 2005, he filmed a commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio. Bowie portrayed a fictionalised version of physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan's film The Prestige (2006), which was about the bitter rivalry between two magicians in the late 19th century. Nolan later claimed that Bowie was his only preference to play Tesla, and that he personally appealed to Bowie to take the role after he initially passed. In the same year, he voice-acted in Luc Besson's animated film Arthur and the Invisibles as the powerful villain Maltazard, and appeared as himself in an episode of the Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant television series Extras. In 2007, he lent his voice to the character Lord Royal Highness in the SpongeBob's Atlantis SquarePantis television film. In the 2008 film August, directed by Austin Chick, he played a supporting role as Ogilvie, a \"ruthless venture capitalist.\" Bowie's final film appearance was a cameo as himself in the 2009 teen comedy Bandslam.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In a 2017 interview with Consequence of Sound, director Denis Villeneuve revealed his intention to cast Bowie in Blade Runner 2049 as the lead villain, Niander Wallace, but when news broke of Bowie's death in January of the same year, Villeneuve was forced to look for talent with similar \"rock star\" qualities. He eventually cast actor and lead singer of Thirty Seconds to Mars, Jared Leto. Talking about the casting process, Villeneuve said: \"Our first thought [for the character] had been David Bowie, who had influenced Blade Runner in many ways. When we learned the sad news, we looked around for someone like that. He [Bowie] embodied the Blade Runner spirit.\" David Lynch also hoped to have Bowie reprise his Fire Walk With Me character for Twin Peaks: The Return but Bowie's illness prevented this. His character was portrayed via archival footage. At Bowie's request, Lynch overdubbed Bowie's original dialogue with a different actor's voice, as Bowie was unhappy with his Cajun accent in the original film.",
"title": "Acting career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Bowie was a painter and artist. He moved to Switzerland in 1976, purchasing a chalet in the hills to the north of Lake Geneva. In the new environment, his cocaine use decreased and he found time for other pursuits outside his musical career. He devoted more time to his painting, and produced a number of post-modernist pieces. When on tour, he took to sketching in a notebook, and photographing scenes for later reference. Visiting galleries in Geneva and the Brücke Museum in Berlin, Bowie became, in the words of Sandford, \"a prolific producer and collector of contemporary art. ... Not only did he become a well-known patron of expressionist art: locked in Clos des Mésanges he began an intensive self-improvement course in classical music and literature, and started work on an autobiography.\"",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "One of Bowie's paintings sold at auction in late 1990 for $500, and the cover for his 1995 album Outside is a close-up of a self-portrait (from a series of five) he painted that same year. His first solo show, titled New Afro/Pagan and Work: 1975–1995, was in 1995 at The Gallery in Cork Street, London. In 1997, he founded the publishing company 21 Publishing, whose first title was Blimey! – From Bohemia to Britpop: London Art World from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst by Matthew Collings. A year later, Bowie was invited to join the editorial board of the journal Modern Painters, and participated in the Nat Tate art hoax later that year. The same year, during an interview with Michael Kimmelman for The New York Times, he said \"Art was, seriously, the only thing I'd ever wanted to own.\" Subsequently, in a 1999 interview for the BBC, he said \"The only thing I buy obsessively and addictively is art\". His art collection, which included works by Damien Hirst, Derek Boshier, Frank Auerbach, Henry Moore, and Jean-Michel Basquiat among others, was valued at over £10 million in mid-2016.",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "After his death, his family decided to sell most of the collection because they \"didn't have the space\" to store it. On 10 and 11 November, three auctions were held at Sotheby's in London, first with 47 lots and second with 208 paintings, drawings, and sculptures, third with 100 design lots. The items on sale represented about 65 per cent of the collection. Exhibition of the works in the auction attracted 51,470 visitors, the auction itself was attended by 1,750 bidders, with over 1,000 more bidding online. The auctions has overall sale total £32.9 million (app. $41.5 million), while the highest-selling item, Basquiat's graffiti-inspired painting Air Power, sold for £7.09 million.",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Outside of music, Bowie dabbled in several forms of writings during his life. In the late 1990s, Bowie was commissioned for writings of various media, including an essay on Jean-Michel Basquiat for the 2001 anthology book Writers on Artists and forewords to Jo Levin's 2001 publication GQ Cool, Mick Rock's 2001 photography portfolio Blood and Glitter, his wife Iman's 2001 book I Am Iman, Q magazine's 2002 special The 100 Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Photographs and Jonathan Barnbrook's artwork portfolio Barnbrook Bible: The Graphic Design of Jonathan Barnbrook. He also heavily contributed to the 2002 Genesis Publications memoir of the Ziggy Stardust years, Moonage Daydream, which was rereleased in 2022.",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Bowie also wrote liner notes for several albums, including Too Many Fish in the Sea by Robin Clark, the wife of his guitarist Carlos Alomar, Stevie Ray Vaughan's posthumous Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985 (2002), The Spinners' compilation The Chrome Collection (2003), the tenth anniversary reissue of Placebo's debut album (2006) and Neu!'s Vinyl Box (2010). Bowie also wrote an appreciation piece in Rolling Stone for Nine Inch Nails in 2005 and an essay for the booklet accompanying Iggy Pop's A Million in Prizes: The Anthology the same year.",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "\"Bowie Bonds\", the first modern example of celebrity bonds, were asset-backed securities of current and future revenues of the 25 albums (287 songs) that Bowie recorded before 1990. Issued in 1997, the bonds were bought for US$55 million by the Prudential Insurance Company of America. Royalties from the 25 albums generated the cash flow that secured the bonds' interest payments. By forfeiting 10 years worth of royalties, Bowie received a payment of US$55 million up front. Bowie used this income to buy songs owned by Defries. The bonds liquidated in 2007 and the rights to the income from the songs reverted to Bowie.",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Bowie launched two personal websites during his lifetime. The first, an Internet service provider titled BowieNet, was developed in conjunction with Robert Goodale and Ron Roy and launched in September 1998. Subscribers to the dial-up service were offered exclusive content as well as a BowieNet email address and Internet access. The service was closed by 2006. The second, www.bowieart.com, offered fans the opportunity to view and purchase selected paintings, prints and sculptures from his private collection. The service, which ran from 2000 to 2008, also offered a showcase for young art students, in Bowie's words, \"to show and sell their work without having to go through a dealer. Therefore, they really make the money they deserve for their paintings.\"",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "From the time of his earliest recordings in the 1960s, Bowie employed a wide variety of musical styles. His early compositions and performances were strongly influenced by rock and roll singers like Little Richard and Elvis Presley, and also the wider world of show business. He particularly strove to emulate the British musical theatre singer-songwriter and actor Anthony Newley, whose vocal style he frequently adopted, and made prominent use of for his 1967 debut release, David Bowie (to the disgust of Newley himself, who destroyed the copy he received from Bowie's publisher). Bowie's fascination with music hall continued to surface sporadically alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal, soul, psychedelic folk and pop.",
"title": "Musicianship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Musicologist James E. Perone observes Bowie's use of octave switches for different repetitions of the same melody, exemplified in \"Space Oddity\", and later in \"'Heroes'\" to dramatic effect; the author writes that \"in the lowest part of his vocal register ... his voice has an almost crooner-like richness\". Voice instructor Jo Thompson describes Bowie's vocal vibrato technique as \"particularly deliberate and distinctive\". Authors Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz call him \"a vocalist of extraordinary technical ability, able to pitch his singing to particular effect.\" Here, too, as in his stagecraft and songwriting, Bowie's roleplaying is evident: historiographer Michael Campbell says that Bowie's lyrics \"arrest our ear, without question. But Bowie continually shifts from person to person as he delivers them ... His voice changes dramatically from section to section.\" In addition to the guitar, Bowie also played a variety of keyboards, including piano, Mellotron, Chamberlin, and synthesisers; harmonica; alto and baritone saxophones; stylophone; viola; cello; koto (on the \"Heroes\" track \"Moss Garden\"); thumb piano; drums (on the Heathen track \"Cactus\"), and various percussion instruments.",
"title": "Musicianship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Bowie married his first wife, Mary Angela Barnett, on 19 March 1970 at Bromley Register Office in Bromley, London. Their son Duncan, born on 30 May 1971, was at first known as Zowie. They had an open marriage and dated other people during it: David had relationships with model Cyrinda Foxe and Young Americans backing singer Ava Cherry; Angie had encounters with Stooges members Ron Asheton and James Williamson, and Ziggy Stardust Tour bodyguard Anton Jones. Angie later described their union as a marriage of convenience. \"We got married so that I could [get a permit to] work. I didn't think it would last and David said, before we got married, 'I'm not really in love with you' and I thought that's probably a good thing\", she said. Bowie said about Angie that \"living with her is like living with a blow torch.\" The couple divorced on 8 February 1980 in Switzerland; David received custody of Duncan. After the gag order that was part of their divorce agreement ended, Angie wrote a memoir of their turbulent marriage, titled Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "David met Somali-American model Iman in Los Angeles following the Sound+Vision Tour in October 1990. They married in a private ceremony in Lausanne on 24 April 1992. The wedding was later solemnised on 6 June in Florence. The couple's marriage influenced the content of Black Tie White Noise, particularly on tracks such as \"The Wedding\"/\"The Wedding Song\" and \"Miracle Goodnight\". They had one daughter, Alexandria \"Lexi\" Zahra Jones, born on 15 August 2000. The couple resided primarily in New York City and London as well as owning an apartment in Sydney's Elizabeth Bay and Britannia Bay House on the island of Mustique. Following Bowie's death, Iman expressed gratitude that the two were able to maintain separate identities during their marriage.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Bowie met dancer Lindsay Kemp in 1967 and enrolled in his dance class at the London Dance Centre. He commented in 1972 that meeting Kemp was when his interest in image \"really blossomed\". \"He lived on his emotions, he was a wonderful influence. His day-to-day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen, ever. It was everything I thought Bohemia probably was. I joined the circus.\" In January 1968, Kemp choreographed a dance scene for a BBC play, The Pistol Shot, in the Theatre 625 series, and used Bowie with a dancer, Hermione Farthingale; the pair began dating and moved into a London flat together. Bowie and Farthingale broke up in early 1969 when she went to Norway to take part in a film, Song of Norway; this affected him, and several songs, such as \"Letter to Hermione\" and \"An Occasional Dream\", reference her; and, for the video accompanying \"Where Are We Now?\", he wore a T-shirt with the words \"m/s Song of Norway\". Bowie blamed himself for their break-up, saying in 2002 that he \"was totally unfaithful and couldn't for the life of me keep it zipped.\" Farthingale, who spoke of deep affection for him in an interview with Pegg, said they last saw each other in 1970.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In 1983, Bowie briefly dated New Zealand model Geeling Ng, who had starred in the video for \"China Girl\". While filming The Hunger the same year, Bowie had a sexual relationship with his co-star Susan Sarandon, who stated in 2014 \"He's worth idolising. He's extraordinary.\" She also called this \"a really interesting period\". For three years between 1987 and 1990, Bowie dated Glass Spider Tour dancer Melissa Hurley. The two began their relationship at the end of the tour when she was only 22 years old. Bowie's Tin Machine collaborator Kevin Armstrong remembered her as \"a genuinely kind, sweet person\". They announced their engagement in May 1989 but never married; Bowie broke the relationship off during the latter half of the Sound+Vision Tour, primarily due to the age difference—he was 43 at the time. He later spoke of Hurley as \"such a wonderful, lovely, vibrant girl\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Bowie's sexuality has been the subject of debate. While married to Angie, he famously declared himself gay in a 1972 interview with Melody Maker journalist Michael Watts, which generated publicity in both America and Britain; Bowie was adopted as a gay icon in both countries. According to Buckley, \"If Ziggy confused both his creator and his audience, a big part of that confusion centred on the topic of sexuality.\" He affirmed his stance in a 1976 interview with Playboy, stating: \"It's true—I am a bisexual. But I can't deny that I've used that fact very well. I suppose it's the best thing that ever happened to me.\" His claim of bisexuality has been supported by Angie.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In 1983, Bowie told Rolling Stone writer Kurt Loder that his public declaration of bisexuality was \"the biggest mistake I ever made\" and \"I was always a closet heterosexual\". On other occasions, he said his interest in homosexual and bisexual culture had been more a product of the times and the situation in which he found himself than of his own feelings. Blender asked Bowie in 2002 whether he still believed his public declaration was his biggest mistake. After a long pause, he said, \"I don't think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners nor be a representative of any group of people.\" Bowie said he wanted to be a songwriter and performer rather than a headline for his bisexuality, and in \"puritanical\" America, \"I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Buckley wrote that Bowie \"mined sexual intrigue for its ability to shock.\" According to Mary Finnigan—a brief girlfriend of Bowie's in 1969—David and Angie \"created their bisexual fantasy\". Sandford wrote that David \"made a positive fetish of repeating the quip that he and his wife had met while 'fucking the same bloke' ... Gay sex was always an anecdotal and laughing matter.\" The BBC's Mark Easton stated in 2016 that Britain was \"far more tolerant of difference\", and that gay rights (such as same-sex marriage) and gender equality would not have \"enjoyed the broad support they do today without Bowie's androgynous challenge all those years ago\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Over the years, Bowie made numerous references to religions and to his evolving spirituality. Beginning in 1967 from the influence of his half-brother, he became interested in Buddhism and, with commercial success eluding him, he considered becoming a Buddhist monk. Biographer Marc Spitz states that the religion reminded the young artist that other goals in life existed outside fame and material gain and one can learn about themselves through meditation and chanting. After a few months' study at Tibet House in London, he was told by his Lama, Chime Rinpoche, \"You don't want to be Buddhist. ... You should follow music.\" By 1975, Bowie admitted, \"I felt totally, absolutely alone. And I probably was alone because I pretty much had abandoned God.\" In his will, Bowie stipulated that he be cremated and his ashes scattered in Bali \"in accordance with the Buddhist rituals\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "After Bowie married Iman in a private ceremony in 1992, he said they knew that their \"real marriage, sanctified by God, had to happen in a church in Florence\". Earlier that year, he knelt on stage at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert and recited the Lord's Prayer before a television audience. In 1993, Bowie said he had an \"undying\" belief in the \"unquestionable\" existence of God. In a separate 1993 interview, while describing the genesis of the music for his album Black Tie White Noise, he said \" … it was important for me to find something [musically] that also had no sort of representation of institutionalized and organized religion, of which I'm not a believer, I must make that clear.\" Interviewed in 2005, Bowie said whether God exists \"is not a question that can be answered. ... I'm not quite an atheist and it worries me. There's that little bit that holds on: 'Well, I'm almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months. ... I've nearly got it right.'\" He had a tattoo of the Serenity Prayer in Japanese on his left calf.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Bowie stated that \"questioning [his] spiritual life [was] always ... germane\" to his songwriting. The song \"Station to Station\" is \"very much concerned with the Stations of the Cross\"; the song also specifically references Kabbalah. Bowie called the album \"extremely dark ... the nearest album to a magick treatise that I've written\". Earthling showed \"the abiding need in me to vacillate between atheism or a kind of gnosticism ... What I need is to find a balance, spiritually, with the way I live and my demise.\" Hours boasted overtly Christian themes, with its artwork inspired by the Pietà. Blackstar's \"Lazarus\" began with the words, \"Look up here, I'm in Heaven\" while the rest of the album deals with other matters of mysticism and mortality.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "As a seventeen-year-old still known as Davy Jones, he was a cofounder and spokesman for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men in response to members of the Manish Boys being asked to cut their hair before a television appearance on the BBC. He and his bandmates were interviewed on the network's 12 November 1964 instalment of Tonight to champion their cause. He stated on the programme, \"I think we all like long hair and we don't see why other people should persecute us because of it.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In 1976, speaking as the Thin White Duke persona and \"at least partially tongue-in-cheek\", he made statements that expressed support for fascism and perceived admiration for Adolf Hitler in interviews with Playboy, NME and a Swedish publication. Bowie was quoted as saying: \"Britain is ready for a fascist leader ... I think Britain could benefit from a fascist leader. After all, fascism is really nationalism... I believe very strongly in fascism, people have always responded with greater efficiency under a regimental leadership.\" He was also quoted as saying: \"Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars\" and \"You've got to have an extreme right front come up and sweep everything off its feet and tidy everything up.\" Bowie later retracted these comments in an interview with Melody Maker in October 1977, blaming them on mental instability caused by his drug problems at the time, saying: \"I was out of my mind, totally, completely crazed.\" In the same interview, Bowie described himself as \"apolitical\", stating \"The more I travel and the less sure I am about exactly which political philosophies are commendable. The more government systems I see, the less enticed I am to give my allegiance to any set of people, so it would be disastrous for me to adopt a definitive point of view, or to adopt a party of people and say 'these are my people'.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "In the 1980s and 1990s, Bowie's public statements shifted sharply towards anti-racism and anti-fascism. In an interview with MTV anchor Mark Goodman in 1983, Bowie criticised the channel for not providing enough coverage of Black musicians, becoming visibly uncomfortable when Goodman suggested that the network's fear of backlash from the American Midwest was one reason for such a lack of coverage. The music videos for \"China Girl\" and \"Let's Dance\" were described by Bowie as a \"very simple, very direct\" statement against racism. The album Tin Machine took a more direct stance against fascism and neo-Nazism, and was criticised for being too preachy. In 1993 he released the single \"Black Tie White Noise\" which dealt with the 1992 LA riots. In 2007 Bowie donated 10,000 dollars to the defence fund for the Jena Six saying, \"there is clearly a separate and unequal judicial process going on in the town of Jena\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "At the 2014 Brit Awards, Bowie became the oldest recipient of a Brit Award in the ceremony's history when he won the award for British Male Solo Artist, which was collected on his behalf by Kate Moss. His speech read: \"I'm completely delighted to have a Brit for being the best male – but I am, aren't I Kate? Yes. I think it's a great way to end the day. Thank you very, very much and Scotland stay with us.\" Bowie's reference to the forthcoming September 2014 Scottish independence referendum garnered a significant reaction throughout the UK on social media.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In 2016, filmmaker and activist Michael Moore said he had wanted to use \"Panic in Detroit\" for his 1998 documentary The Big One. Denied at first, Moore was given the rights after calling Bowie personally, recalling: \"I've read stuff since his death saying that he wasn't that political and he stayed away from politics. But that wasn't the conversation that I had with him.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Bowie was involved in philanthropic and charitable efforts for HIV/AIDS research in Africa, as well as other humanitarian projects helping disadvantaged children and developing nations, ending poverty and hunger, promoting human rights, and providing education and health care to children affected by war. A portion of the proceeds from the Pay-per-view showing of Bowie's 50th birthday concert in 1997 was donated to the Save the Children charity.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Bowie died of liver cancer in his New York City apartment on 10 January 2016. He had been diagnosed 18 months earlier, but he had not made his condition public. The Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove, who had worked with Bowie on his off-Broadway musical Lazarus, explained that he was unable to attend rehearsals due to the progression of the disease. He noted that Bowie had kept working during the illness.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Tony Visconti wrote:",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life – a work of art. He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will always be with us. For now, it is appropriate to cry.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Following Bowie's death, fans gathered at impromptu street shrines. At the mural of Bowie in his birthplace of Brixton, south London, which shows him in his Aladdin Sane character, fans laid flowers and sang his songs. Other memorial sites included Berlin, Los Angeles, and outside his apartment in New York. After news of his death, sales of his albums and singles soared. Bowie had insisted that he did not want a funeral, and according to his death certificate he was cremated in New Jersey on 12 January. As he wished in his will, his ashes were scattered in a Buddhist ceremony in Bali, Indonesia.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Bowie's songs and stagecraft brought a new dimension to popular music in the early 1970s, strongly influencing its immediate forms and subsequent development. Schinder and Schwartz credit Bowie and Marc Bolan as the founders of the glam rock genre. He also inspired the innovators of the punk rock movement; Buckley wrote that \"Bowie almost completely abandoned traditional rock instrumentation\". RCA promoted his status during the campaign for \"Heroes\" with the slogan, \"There's old wave, there's new wave, and there's David Bowie\". His work with Tin Machine, though critically maligned, was later acknowledged as featuring grunge and alternative rock before those styles became popular. He was dubbed the \"chameleon of rock\" due to his constant reinvention.",
"title": "Legacy and influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Perone credited Bowie with having \"brought sophistication to rock music\", and critical reviews frequently acknowledged the intellectual depth of his work and influence. The BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz likened Bowie to Pablo Picasso, writing that he was \"an innovative, visionary, restless artist who synthesised complex avant garde concepts into beautifully coherent works that touched the hearts and minds of millions\".",
"title": "Legacy and influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Broadcaster John Peel contrasted Bowie with his progressive rock contemporaries, arguing that Bowie was \"an interesting kind of fringe figure... on the outskirts of things\". Peel said he \"liked the idea of him reinventing himself... the one distinguishing feature about early-70s progressive rock was that it didn't progress. Before Bowie came along, people didn't want too much change\"; then Bowie \"subverted the whole notion of what it was to be a rock star\". Buckley called Bowie \"both star and icon. The vast body of work he has produced ... has created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture. ... His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure.\"",
"title": "Legacy and influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Through continual reinvention, his influence broadened and extended. Biographer Thomas Forget added, \"Because he has succeeded in so many different styles of music, it is almost impossible to find a popular artist today that has not been influenced by David Bowie.\" In 2000, Bowie was voted by other music stars as the \"most influential artist of all time\" in a poll by NME. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote that Bowie was confirmed by 1980 to be \"the most important and influential artist since the Beatles\". Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph stated that Bowie had \"one of the supreme careers in popular music, art and culture of the 20th century\" and \"he was too inventive, too mercurial, too strange for all but his most devoted fans to keep up with\". The BBC's Mark Easton argued that Bowie provided fuel for \"the creative powerhouse that Britain has become\" by challenging future generations \"to aim high, to be ambitious and provocative, to take risks\". Easton concluded that Bowie had \"changed the way the world sees Britain. And the way Britain sees itself\". In 2006, Bowie was voted the fourth greatest living British icon in a poll held by the BBC's Culture Show. Annie Zaleski of Alternative Press wrote, \"Every band or solo artist who's decided to rip up their playbook and start again owes a debt to Bowie\".",
"title": "Legacy and influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Numerous figures from the music industry whose careers Bowie had influenced paid tribute to him following his death; panegyrics on Twitter (tweets about him peaked at 20,000 a minute an hour after the announcement of his death) also came from outside the entertainment industry and pop culture, such as those from the Vatican, namely Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, who quoted \"Space Oddity\", and the German Federal Foreign Office, which thanked Bowie for his part in the fall of the Berlin Wall and referenced \"'Heroes'\".",
"title": "Legacy and influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "On 7 January 2017, the BBC broadcast the 90-minute documentary David Bowie: The Last Five Years. A day later, which would have been Bowie's 70th birthday, a charity concert in his birthplace of Brixton was hosted by close friend and actor Gary Oldman. A David Bowie walking tour through Brixton was also launched, and other events marking his birthday weekend included concerts in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Tokyo.",
"title": "Legacy and influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "On 6 February 2018, the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carried Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster and a mannequin affectionately named Starman into space. \"Space Oddity\" and \"Life on Mars?\" were looping on the car's sound system during the launch.",
"title": "Legacy and influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "An exhibition of Bowie artefacts, called David Bowie Is, was organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and shown there in 2013. The London exhibit was visited by over 300,000 people, making it one of the most successful exhibitions ever staged at the museum. Later that year the exhibition began a world tour which started in Toronto and included stops in Chicago, Paris, Melbourne, Groningen and New York where the exhibit ended in 2018 at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition hosted around 2,000,000 visitors over its run.",
"title": "Legacy and influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "A biopic, Stardust, was announced on 31 January 2019, with musician and actor Johnny Flynn as Bowie, Jena Malone as his wife Angie and Marc Maron as his publicist. The film follows Bowie on his first trip to the United States in 1971. The film was written by Christopher Bell and directed by Gabriel Range. Bowie's son Duncan Jones spoke out against the film, saying he was not consulted and that the film would not have permission to use Bowie's music. The film was set to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, but the festival was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It received generally unfavourable reviews from critics.",
"title": "Legacy and influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "A film based on Bowie's musical journey throughout his career was announced on 23 May 2022. Titled Moonage Daydream, after the song of the same name, the film is written and directed by Brett Morgen and features never-before-seen footage, performances and music framed by Bowie's own narration. Morgan stated that \"Bowie cannot be defined, he can be experienced... That is why we crafted 'Moonage Daydream' to be a unique cinematic experience.\" The documentary is the first posthumous film about Bowie to be approved by his estate. After spending five years in production, the film premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, and was released theatrically in the US in IMAX on 16 September. It received positive reviews.",
"title": "Legacy and influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Bowie's 1969 commercial breakthrough, \"Space Oddity\", won him an Ivor Novello Special Award For Originality. For his performance in The Man Who Fell to Earth, he won the Saturn Award for Best Actor. In the ensuing decades he received six Grammy Awards and four Brit Awards, including Best British Male Artist twice; the award for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 1996; and the Brits Icon award for his \"lasting impact on British culture\", given posthumously in 2016.",
"title": "Awards and achievements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In 1999, Bowie was made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music. He declined the royal honour of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000, and turned down a knighthood in 2003. Bowie later stated \"I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don't know what it's for. It's not what I spent my life working for.\"",
"title": "Awards and achievements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "During his lifetime, Bowie sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists. In the UK, he was awarded nine platinum, eleven gold and eight silver albums, and in the US, five platinum and nine gold. Since 2015, Parlophone has remastered Bowie's back catalogue through the \"Era\" box set series, starting with Five Years (1969–1973). Bowie was announced as the best-selling vinyl artist of the 21st century in 2022.",
"title": "Awards and achievements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "The 2020 revision of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list includes The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars at number 40, Station to Station at 52, Hunky Dory at 88, Low at 206, and Scary Monsters at 443. On the 2021 revision of the same magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, Bowie's songs include \"'Heroes'\" at number 23, \"Life on Mars?\" at 105, \"Space Oddity\" at 189, \"Changes\" at 200, \"Young Americans\" at 204, \"Station to Station\" at 400, and \"Under Pressure\" at 429. Four of his songs are included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.",
"title": "Awards and achievements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie was ranked 29. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013. Days after Bowie's death, Rolling Stone contributor Rob Sheffield proclaimed him \"the greatest rock star ever\". The magazine also listed him as the 39th greatest songwriter of all time. In 2022, Sky Arts ranked him the most influential artist in Britain of the last 50 years \"owing to his transcendent influence on British culture\". He ranked 32nd on the 2023 Rolling Stone list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.",
"title": "Awards and achievements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "In 2008, the spider Heteropoda davidbowie was named in Bowie's honour. In 2011, his image was chosen by popular vote for the B£10m note of the local currency of his birthplace, the Brixton Pound. On 5 January 2015, a main-belt asteroid was named 342843 Davidbowie. On 13 January 2016, Belgian amateur astronomers at MIRA Public Observatory created a \"Bowie asterism\" of seven stars which had been in the vicinity of Mars at the time of Bowie's death; the \"constellation\" forms the lightning bolt on Bowie's face from the cover of his Aladdin Sane album. In March 2017, Bowie featured on a series of UK postage stamps. On 25 March 2018, a statue of Bowie was unveiled in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, the town where he debuted Ziggy Stardust. The statue features a likeness of Bowie in 2002 accompanied with various characters and looks from over his career, with Ziggy Stardust at the front.",
"title": "Awards and achievements"
}
]
| David Robert Jones, known professionally as David Bowie, was an English singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, and his music and stagecraft had a significant impact on popular music. Bowie developed an interest in music from an early age. He studied art, music and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963. He released a string of unsuccessful singles with local bands and a solo album before achieving his first top five entry on the UK Singles Chart with "Space Oddity", released in 1969. After a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of "Starman" and album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which won him widespread popularity. In 1975, Bowie's style shifted towards a sound he characterised as "plastic soul", initially alienating many of his UK fans but garnering him his first major US crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the album Young Americans. In 1976, Bowie starred in the cult film The Man Who Fell to Earth and released Station to Station. In 1977, he again changed direction with the electronic-inflected album Low, the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno that came to be known as the Berlin Trilogy. "Heroes" (1977) and Lodger (1979) followed; each album reached the UK top five and received lasting critical praise. After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had three number-one hits: the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes", its album Scary Monsters and "Under Pressure". He achieved his greatest commercial success in the 1980s with Let's Dance (1983). Between 1988 and 1992, he fronted the hard rock band Tin Machine before resuming his solo career in 1993. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including industrial and jungle. He also continued acting; his roles included Major Jack Celliers in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth (1986), Phillip Jeffries in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Andy Warhol in the biopic Basquiat (1996), and Nikola Tesla in The Prestige (2006), among other film and television appearances and cameos. He stopped touring after 2004 and his last live performance was at a charity event in 2006. He returned from a decade-long recording hiatus in 2013 with The Next Day and remained musically active until his death from liver cancer in 2016. He died two days after both his 69th birthday and the release of his final album, Blackstar. During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at over 100 million records worldwide, made him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Often dubbed the "chameleon of rock" due to his constant musical reinventions, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Rolling Stone ranked him among the greatest artists in history. As of 2022, Bowie was the best-selling vinyl artist of the 21st century. | 2001-11-12T14:45:16Z | 2024-01-01T00:46:38Z | [
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8,788 | Daisy cutter | Daisy cutter may refer to: | [
{
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"text": "Daisy cutter may refer to:",
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| Daisy cutter may refer to: Daisy cutter (fuse), a type of fuse designed to detonate an aerial bomb at or above ground level
BLU-82, a type of bomb nicknamed Daisy Cutter in Vietnam
In cricket, a ball that bounces multiple times before reaching the batsman
A seldom used term for a sharply struck ground ball in baseball, used mostly in Vintage base ball
A song on the album Uplifter by 311
A pale ale brewed by Half Acre Beer Company of Chicago, Illinois | 2021-12-08T11:26:16Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_cutter |
|
8,791 | Dennis Hopper | Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor and film director. He is known for his roles as mentally disturbed outsiders and rebels. He earned prizes from the Cannes Film Festival and Venice International Film Festival as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Hopper studied acting at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and the Actors Studio in New York. Hopper also began a prolific and acclaimed photography career in the 1960s.
Hopper made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in two of the films that made James Dean famous, Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). He then acted in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Hang 'Em High (1968) and True Grit (1969). Hopper made his directorial film debut with Easy Rider (1969), which he and co-star Peter Fonda wrote with Terry Southern. The film earned Hopper a Cannes Film Festival Award and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
He became frequently typecast as mentally disturbed outsiders in such films as Mad Dog Morgan (1976), The American Friend (1977), Apocalypse Now (1979), Rumble Fish (1983), and Blue Velvet (1986). He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in Hoosiers (1986). His later film roles included Super Mario Bros. (1993), Speed (1994), Waterworld (1995) and Elegy (2009). He appeared posthumously in the long-delayed The Other Side of the Wind (2018), which had previously been filmed in the early 1970s.
Other directorial credits for Hopper include The Last Movie (1971), Out of the Blue (1980), Colors (1988), and The Hot Spot (1990). He received Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie nomination for his role in Paris Trout (1991). His other television roles include in the HBO film Doublecrossed (1991), 24 (2002), the NBC series E-Ring (2005–2006), and the Starz series Crash (2008–2009).
Hopper was born on May 17, 1936, in Dodge City, Kansas, to Marjorie Mae (née Davis; July 12, 1917 – January 12, 2007) and James Millard Hopper (June 23, 1916 – August 7, 1982). He had Scottish ancestors. Hopper had two younger brothers, Marvin and David.
After World War II, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where the young Hopper attended Saturday art classes at the Kansas City Art Institute. When he was 13, Hopper and his family moved to San Diego, where his mother worked as a lifeguard instructor and his father was a post office manager, having previously served in the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, in World War II in the China Burma India Theater. Hopper was voted most likely to succeed at Helix High School, where he was active in the drama club, speech and choir. It was there that he developed an interest in acting, studying at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, and the Actors Studio in New York City (he studied with Lee Strasberg for five years). Hopper struck up a friendship with actor Vincent Price, whose passion for art influenced Hopper's interest in art. He was especially fond of the plays of William Shakespeare.
Hopper was reported to have an uncredited role in Johnny Guitar in 1954, but he has stated that he was not in Hollywood when this film was made. Hopper made his debut on film in two roles with James Dean (whom he admired immensely) in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). Dean's death in a car accident in September 1955 affected the young Hopper deeply and it was shortly afterward that he got into a confrontation with veteran director Henry Hathaway on the film From Hell to Texas (1958). Hopper forced Hathaway to shoot more than 80 takes of a scene over several days before he acquiesced to Hathaway's direction. After filming was finally completed, Hathaway allegedly told Hopper that his career in Hollywood was finished.
In his book Last Train to Memphis, American popular music historian Peter Guralnick says that in 1956, when Elvis Presley was making his first film in Hollywood, Hopper was roommates with fellow actor Nick Adams and the three became friends and socialized together. In 1959 Hopper moved to New York to study Method acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. In 1961, Hopper played his first lead role in Night Tide, an atmospheric supernatural thriller involving a mermaid in an amusement park. In a December 1994 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Hopper credited John Wayne with saving his career, as Hopper acknowledged that because of his insolent behavior, he could not find work in Hollywood for seven years. Hopper stated that because he was the son-in-law of actress Margaret Sullavan, a friend of John Wayne, Wayne hired Hopper for a role in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), also directed by Hathaway, which enabled Hopper to restart his film career.
Hopper debuted in an episode of the Richard Boone television series Medic in 1955, portraying a young epileptic. He appeared in the first episode of the popular TV series "The Rifleman" (1958–1963) as protagonist Vernon Tippet. The series starred Chuck Connors and the premiere episode "The Sharpshooter" was written by Sam Peckinpah. He subsequently appeared in over 140 episodes of television shows such as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Petticoat Junction, The Twilight Zone, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Defenders, The Investigators, The Legend of Jesse James, Entourage, The Big Valley, The Time Tunnel, and Combat!.
Hopper had a supporting role as the bet-taker, "Babalugats", in Cool Hand Luke (1967). In 1968, Hopper teamed with Peter Fonda, Terry Southern and Jack Nicholson to make Easy Rider, which premiered in July 1969. With the release of True Grit a month earlier, Hopper had starring roles in two major box-office films that summer. Hopper won wide acclaim as the director for his improvisational methods and innovative editing for Easy Rider. The production was plagued by creative differences and personal acrimony between Fonda and Hopper, the dissolution of Hopper's marriage to Brooke Hayward, his unwillingness to leave the editor's desk and his accelerating abuse of drugs and alcohol. Hopper said of Easy Rider: "The cocaine problem in the United States is really because of me. There was no cocaine before Easy Rider on the street. After Easy Rider, it was everywhere".
Besides showing drug use on film, it was one of the first films to portray the hippie lifestyle. Hopper became a role model for some male youths who rejected traditional jobs and traditional American culture, partly exemplified by Fonda's long sideburns and Hopper wearing shoulder-length hair and a long mustache. They were denied rooms in motels and proper service in restaurants as a result of their radical looks. Their long hair became a point of contention in various scenes during the film. Journalist Ann Hornaday wrote: "With its portrait of counterculture heroes raising their middle fingers to the uptight middle-class hypocrisies, Easy Rider became the cinematic symbol of the 1960s, a celluloid anthem to freedom, macho bravado and anti-establishment rebellion". Film critic Matthew Hays wrote "no other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper".
Hopper was unable to capitalize on his Easy Rider success for several years. In 1970 he filmed The Last Movie, cowritten by Stewart Stern and photographed by László Kovács in Peru, and completed production in 1971. It won the prestigious CIDALC Award at that year's Venice Film Festival, but Universal Studios leaders expected a blockbuster like Easy Rider, and did not like the film or give it an enthusiastic release, while American film audiences found it confounding – as convoluted as an abstract painting. On viewing the first release print, fresh from the lab, in his screening room at Universal, MCA founder Jules C. Stein rose from his chair and said, "I just don't understand this younger generation." During the tumultuous editing process, Hopper ensconced himself at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico, which he had purchased in 1970, for almost an entire year. In between contesting Fonda's rights to the majority of the residual profits from Easy Rider, he married singer Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas on Halloween of 1970. The marriage lasted eight days.
Hopper acted in another John Wayne film, True Grit (1969), and during its production, he became well acquainted with Wayne. In both of the films with Wayne, Hopper's character is killed in the presence of Wayne's character, to whom he utters his dying words. On 30 September 1970, Hopper appeared on the second episode of season 2 of "The Johnny Cash Show" where he sang a duet with Cash entitled "Goin' Up Goin' Down". Cash said the song was written by Kris Kristofferson about Hopper. Hopper added that Kristofferson had written some songs for his Peruvian-shot movie "The Last Movie", in which Kristofferson appeared in his debut role with Julie Adams. Hopper also recited Rudyard Kipling's famous poem If— during his appearance. Hopper was able to sustain his lifestyle and a measure of celebrity by acting in numerous low budget and European films throughout the 1970s as the archetypal "tormented maniac", including Mad Dog Morgan (1976), Tracks (1976), and The American Friend (1977). With Francis Ford Coppola's blockbuster Apocalypse Now (1979), Hopper returned to prominence as a hyper-manic Vietnam-era photojournalist. Stepping in for an overwhelmed director, Hopper won praise in 1980 for his directing and acting in Out of the Blue. Immediately thereafter, Hopper starred as an addled short-order cook "Cracker" in the Neil Young/Dean Stockwell low-budget collaboration Human Highway. Production was reportedly often delayed by his unreliable behavior. Peter Biskind states in the New Hollywood history Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that Hopper's cocaine intake had reached three grams a day by this time, complemented by 30 beers, and some marijuana and Cuba libres.
After staging a "suicide attempt" (really more of a daredevil act) in a coffin using 17 sticks of dynamite during an "art happening" at the Rice University Media Center (filmed by professor and documentary filmmaker Brian Huberman), and later disappearing into the Mexican desert during a particularly extravagant bender, Hopper entered a drug rehabilitation program in 1983.
Though Hopper gave critically acclaimed performances in Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983) and Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983), it was not until he portrayed the gas-huffing, obscenity-screaming villain Frank Booth in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) that his career truly revived. On reading the script Hopper said to Lynch: "You have to let me play Frank Booth. Because I am Frank Booth!" He won critical acclaim and several awards for this role, and in the same year received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an alcoholic assistant basketball coach in Hoosiers. Also in 1986, Hopper portrayed Lt. Enright in the comedy horror The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
In 1987 he acted in the neo-noir thriller Black Widow alongside Debra Winger, the action comedy Straight to Hell, the adventure film Running Out of Luck starring Mick Jagger and the romantic comedy The Pick-up Artist starring Molly Ringwald and Robert Downey Jr. In 1988, he directed Colors, a critically acclaimed police procedural about gang violence in Los Angeles starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. Hopper plays an aging hippie prankster in the 1990 comedy Flashback, fleeing in a Furthur-like old bus to the tune of Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild". Hopper teamed with Nike in the early 1990s to make a series of television commercials. He appeared as a "crazed referee" in those ads. Hopper appeared on the final two episodes of the cult 1991 television show Fishing with John with host John Lurie. He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for the 1991 HBO film Paris Trout. Shortly thereafter, he played drug smuggler and DEA informant Barry Seal in the HBO film Doublecrossed.
He starred as King Koopa in Super Mario Bros., a 1993 critical and commercial failure loosely based on the video game of the same name. In 1993, he played Clifford Worley in True Romance. He co-starred in the 1994 blockbuster Speed with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, and as magic-phobic H.P. Lovecraft in the TV movie Witch Hunt. In 1995, Hopper played a greedy TV self-help guru, Dr. Luther Waxling in Search and Destroy. The same year, he starred as Deacon, the one-eyed nemesis of Kevin Costner in Waterworld. And in 1996 he starred in the science fiction comedy Space Truckers directed by Stuart Gordon.Also in 1996 he appeared as art dealer Bruno Bischofberger in Basquiat. Hopper was originally cast as Christof in the 1998 Peter Weir film, The Truman Show, but left during the filming due to "creative differences"; he was replaced by Ed Harris. In 1999, he starred in The Prophet's Game (a dark thriller), directed by David Worth and also starring Stephanie Zimbalist, Robert Yocum, Sondra Locke, Joe Penny and Tracey Birdsall. In 2003, Hopper was in the running for the dual lead in the indie horror drama Firecracker, but was ousted at the last minute in favor of Mike Patton.
In 2005, Hopper played Paul Kaufman in George A. Romero's Land of the Dead. He portrayed villain Victor Drazen in the first season of the popular action drama 24. Hopper starred as a U.S. Army colonel in the 2005 television series E-Ring, a drama set at The Pentagon, but the series was canceled after 14 episodes aired. Hopper appeared in all 22 episodes that were filmed. He also played the part of record producer Ben Cendars in the Starz television series Crash, which lasted two seasons (26 episodes). In 2008, Hopper starred in An American Carol. In 2008 he also played The Death in Wim Wenders' Palermo Shooting. His last major feature film appearance was in the 2008 film Elegy with Ben Kingsley, Penélope Cruz and Debbie Harry. For his last performance, he was the voice of Tony, the alpha-male of the Eastern wolf pack in the 2010 3D computer-animated film Alpha and Omega. He died before the movie was released. This brought the directors to dedicate the film to his memory at the beginning of the movie credits. Hopper filmed scenes for The Other Side of the Wind in 1971, appearing as himself; after decades of legal, financial and technical delays, the film was finally released on Netflix in 2018.
Hopper had several artistic pursuits beyond film. He was a prolific photographer, painter, and sculptor.
Hopper's fascination with art began with painting lessons at the Nelson-Atkins Museum while still a child in Kansas City, Missouri. Early in his career, he painted and wrote poetry, though many of his works were destroyed in the 1961 Bel Air Fire, which burned hundreds of homes, including his and his wife's, on Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air. His painting style ranges from abstract impressionism to photorealism and often includes references to his cinematic work and to other artists.
Ostracized by the Hollywood film studios due to his reputation for being a "difficult" actor, Hopper turned to photography in 1961 with a camera bought for him by his first wife Brooke Hayward. During this period he created the cover art for the Ike & Tina Turner album River Deep – Mountain High (released in 1966). He became a prolific photographer, and noted writer Terry Southern profiled Hopper in Better Homes and Gardens as an up-and-coming photographer "to watch" in the mid-1960s. Hopper's early photography is known for portraits from the 1960s, and he began shooting portraits for Vogue and other magazines. His photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 civil-rights march in Selma, Alabama, were published. His intimate and unguarded images of Andy Warhol, Jane Fonda, The Byrds, Paul Newman, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, James Brown, Peter Fonda, Ed Ruscha, the Grateful Dead, Michael McClure, and Timothy Leary, among others, became the subject of gallery and museum shows and were collected in several books, including "1712 North Crescent Heights." The book, whose title refers to the house where he lived with Hayward in the Hollywood Hills in the 1960s, was edited by his daughter Marin Hopper. In 1960–67, before the making of Easy Rider, Hopper created 18,000 images that chronicled the remarkable artists, musicians, actors, places, happenings, demonstrations, and concerts of that period. Dennis Hopper: Photographs 1961–1967 was published in February 2011, by Taschen. German film director Wim Wenders said of Hopper that if “he'd only been a photographer, he'd be one of the great photographers of the twentieth century.” In The New Yorker, Hopper, as photographer, was described as "a compelling, important, and weirdly omnipresent chronicler of his times."
Hopper began working as a painter and a poet as well as a collector of art in the 1960s as well, particularly Pop Art. Over his lifetime he amassed a formidable array of 20th- and 21st-century art, including many of Julian Schnabel's works (such as a shattered-plate portrait of Hopper); numerous works from his early cohorts, such as Ed Ruscha, Edward Kienholz, Roy Lichtenstein (Sinking Sun, 1964), and Warhol (Double Mona Lisa, 1963); and pieces by contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst and Robin Rhode. He was involved in L.A.'s Ferus and Virginia Dwan galleries in the 1960s, and he was a longtime friend and supporter to New York dealer Tony Shafrazi. One of the first art works Hopper owned was an early print of Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans bought for US$75. Hopper also once owned Warhol's Mao, which he shot one evening in a fit of paranoia, the two bullet holes possibly adding to the print's value. The print sold at Christie's, New York, for US$302,500 in January 2011.
During his lifetime, Hopper's own work as well as his collection was shown in monographic and group exhibitions around the world including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; MAK Vienna: Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Cinémathèque Française, Paris, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne. In March 2010, it was announced that Hopper was on the "short list" for Jeffrey Deitch's inaugural show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). In April 2010, Deitch confirmed that Hopper's work, curated by Julian Schnabel, will indeed be the focus of his debut at MOCA. The title of the exhibition, Double Standard, was taken from Hopper's iconic 1961 photograph of the two Standard Oil signs seen through an automobile windshield at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, and North Doheny Drive on historic Route 66 in Los Angeles. The image was reproduced on the invitation for Ed Ruscha's second solo exhibition at Ferus Gallery in 1964.
In 2011, Barricade Books published film historian Peter L. Winkler's biography, Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel. In 2013, Harper Collins published Hopper: A Journey into the American Dream, a biography by American writer Tom Folsom.
On the Gorillaz album Demon Days, Hopper narrates the song "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head".
In the late 1980s, Hopper purchased a trio of nearly identical two-story, loft-style condominiums at 330 Indiana Avenue in Venice Beach, California – one made of concrete, one of plywood, and one of green roofing shingles – built by Frank Gehry and two artist friends of Hopper's, Chuck Arnoldi and Laddie John Dill, in 1981. In 1987, he commissioned an industrial-style main residence, with a corrugated metal exterior designed by Brian Murphy, as a place to display his artwork.
According to Rolling Stone magazine, Hopper was "one of Hollywood's most notorious drug addicts" for 20 years. He spent much of the 1970s and early 1980s living as an "outcast" in Taos, New Mexico, after the success of Easy Rider. Hopper was also "notorious for his troubled relationships with women", including Michelle Phillips, who divorced him after eight days of marriage. Hopper was married five times:
Hopper has been widely reported to be the godfather of actress Amber Tamblyn; in a 2009 interview with Parade, Tamblyn explained that "godfather" was "just a loose term" for Hopper, Dean Stockwell and Neil Young, three famous friends of her father's, who were always around the house when she was growing up, and who were big influences on her life.
In 1994, Rip Torn filed a defamation lawsuit against Hopper over a story Hopper told on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Hopper claimed that Torn pulled a knife on him during pre-production of the film Easy Rider. According to Hopper, Torn was originally cast in the film but was replaced with Jack Nicholson after the incident. According to Torn's suit, it was actually Hopper who pulled the knife on him. A judge ruled in Torn's favor and Hopper was ordered to pay US$475,000 in damages. Hopper then appealed but the judge again ruled in Torn's favor and Hopper was required to pay another US$475,000 in punitive damages.
According to Newsmeat, Hopper donated US$2,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2004 and an equal amount in 2005. Hopper donated $600 to Irish political party Sinn Fein.
Hopper was honored with the rank of commander of France's National Order of Arts and Letters, at a ceremony in Paris.
Despite being a Republican, Hopper supported Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Hopper confirmed this in an election day appearance on the ABC daytime show The View. He said his reason for not voting Republican was the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate.
Hopper was a longtime friend of actress Sally Kirkland, who freely admitted in a 2021 Reelz documentary that they had a one-night stand early on in their friendship.
On January 14, 2010, Hopper filed for divorce from his fifth wife Victoria Duffy. After citing her "outrageous conduct" and stating she was "insane", "inhuman" and "volatile", Hopper was granted a restraining order against her on February 11, 2010, and as a result, she was forbidden to come within 10 feet (3 m) of him or contact him. On March 9, 2010, Duffy refused to move out of the Hopper home, despite the court's order that she do so by March 15.
On April 5, 2010, a court ruled that Duffy could continue living on Hopper's property, and that he must pay US$12,000 per month spousal and child support for their daughter Galen. Hopper did not attend the hearing. On May 12, 2010, a hearing was held before Judge Amy Pellman in downtown Los Angeles Superior Court. Though Hopper died two weeks later, Duffy insisted at the hearing that he was well enough to be deposed. The hearing also dealt with who would be the beneficiary on Hopper's life insurance policy, which listed his wife as a beneficiary. A very ill Hopper did not appear in court though his estranged wife did. Despite Duffy's bid to be named the sole beneficiary of Hopper's million-dollar policy, the judge ruled against her and limited her claim to one-quarter of the policy. The remaining US$750,000 was to go to his estate.
On September 28, 2009, Hopper, then 73, was reportedly taken by ambulance to an unidentified Manhattan hospital wearing an oxygen mask and "with numerous tubes visible". On October 2, he was discharged after receiving treatment for dehydration.
On October 29, 2009, Hopper's manager Sam Maydew reported that he had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. In January 2010, it was reported that Hopper's cancer had metastasized to his bones.
On March 18, 2010, he was honored with the 2,403rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Surrounded by family, fans, and friends—including Jack Nicholson, Viggo Mortensen, David Lynch, and Michael Madsen—he attended its addition to the sidewalk six days later.
By March 2010, Hopper reportedly weighed only 100 pounds (45 kg) and was unable to carry on long conversations. According to papers filed in his divorce court case, Hopper was terminally ill and was unable to undergo chemotherapy to treat his prostate cancer.
Hopper died at his home in the coastal Venice district of Los Angeles, on May 29, 2010, at age 74. His funeral took place on June 3, 2010, at San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. His body was buried at the Jesus Nazareno Cemetery in Ranchos de Taos.
The film Alpha and Omega, which was among his last film roles, was dedicated to him, as was the 2011 film Restless, which starred his son Henry Hopper.
The moving image collection of Dennis Hopper is held at the Academy Film Archive. The Dennis Hopper Trust Collection represents Hopper's directorial efforts. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor and film director. He is known for his roles as mentally disturbed outsiders and rebels. He earned prizes from the Cannes Film Festival and Venice International Film Festival as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Hopper studied acting at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and the Actors Studio in New York. Hopper also began a prolific and acclaimed photography career in the 1960s.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hopper made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in two of the films that made James Dean famous, Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). He then acted in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Hang 'Em High (1968) and True Grit (1969). Hopper made his directorial film debut with Easy Rider (1969), which he and co-star Peter Fonda wrote with Terry Southern. The film earned Hopper a Cannes Film Festival Award and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "He became frequently typecast as mentally disturbed outsiders in such films as Mad Dog Morgan (1976), The American Friend (1977), Apocalypse Now (1979), Rumble Fish (1983), and Blue Velvet (1986). He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in Hoosiers (1986). His later film roles included Super Mario Bros. (1993), Speed (1994), Waterworld (1995) and Elegy (2009). He appeared posthumously in the long-delayed The Other Side of the Wind (2018), which had previously been filmed in the early 1970s.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Other directorial credits for Hopper include The Last Movie (1971), Out of the Blue (1980), Colors (1988), and The Hot Spot (1990). He received Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie nomination for his role in Paris Trout (1991). His other television roles include in the HBO film Doublecrossed (1991), 24 (2002), the NBC series E-Ring (2005–2006), and the Starz series Crash (2008–2009).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Hopper was born on May 17, 1936, in Dodge City, Kansas, to Marjorie Mae (née Davis; July 12, 1917 – January 12, 2007) and James Millard Hopper (June 23, 1916 – August 7, 1982). He had Scottish ancestors. Hopper had two younger brothers, Marvin and David.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "After World War II, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where the young Hopper attended Saturday art classes at the Kansas City Art Institute. When he was 13, Hopper and his family moved to San Diego, where his mother worked as a lifeguard instructor and his father was a post office manager, having previously served in the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, in World War II in the China Burma India Theater. Hopper was voted most likely to succeed at Helix High School, where he was active in the drama club, speech and choir. It was there that he developed an interest in acting, studying at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, and the Actors Studio in New York City (he studied with Lee Strasberg for five years). Hopper struck up a friendship with actor Vincent Price, whose passion for art influenced Hopper's interest in art. He was especially fond of the plays of William Shakespeare.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Hopper was reported to have an uncredited role in Johnny Guitar in 1954, but he has stated that he was not in Hollywood when this film was made. Hopper made his debut on film in two roles with James Dean (whom he admired immensely) in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). Dean's death in a car accident in September 1955 affected the young Hopper deeply and it was shortly afterward that he got into a confrontation with veteran director Henry Hathaway on the film From Hell to Texas (1958). Hopper forced Hathaway to shoot more than 80 takes of a scene over several days before he acquiesced to Hathaway's direction. After filming was finally completed, Hathaway allegedly told Hopper that his career in Hollywood was finished.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In his book Last Train to Memphis, American popular music historian Peter Guralnick says that in 1956, when Elvis Presley was making his first film in Hollywood, Hopper was roommates with fellow actor Nick Adams and the three became friends and socialized together. In 1959 Hopper moved to New York to study Method acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. In 1961, Hopper played his first lead role in Night Tide, an atmospheric supernatural thriller involving a mermaid in an amusement park. In a December 1994 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Hopper credited John Wayne with saving his career, as Hopper acknowledged that because of his insolent behavior, he could not find work in Hollywood for seven years. Hopper stated that because he was the son-in-law of actress Margaret Sullavan, a friend of John Wayne, Wayne hired Hopper for a role in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), also directed by Hathaway, which enabled Hopper to restart his film career.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hopper debuted in an episode of the Richard Boone television series Medic in 1955, portraying a young epileptic. He appeared in the first episode of the popular TV series \"The Rifleman\" (1958–1963) as protagonist Vernon Tippet. The series starred Chuck Connors and the premiere episode \"The Sharpshooter\" was written by Sam Peckinpah. He subsequently appeared in over 140 episodes of television shows such as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Petticoat Junction, The Twilight Zone, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Defenders, The Investigators, The Legend of Jesse James, Entourage, The Big Valley, The Time Tunnel, and Combat!.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Hopper had a supporting role as the bet-taker, \"Babalugats\", in Cool Hand Luke (1967). In 1968, Hopper teamed with Peter Fonda, Terry Southern and Jack Nicholson to make Easy Rider, which premiered in July 1969. With the release of True Grit a month earlier, Hopper had starring roles in two major box-office films that summer. Hopper won wide acclaim as the director for his improvisational methods and innovative editing for Easy Rider. The production was plagued by creative differences and personal acrimony between Fonda and Hopper, the dissolution of Hopper's marriage to Brooke Hayward, his unwillingness to leave the editor's desk and his accelerating abuse of drugs and alcohol. Hopper said of Easy Rider: \"The cocaine problem in the United States is really because of me. There was no cocaine before Easy Rider on the street. After Easy Rider, it was everywhere\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Besides showing drug use on film, it was one of the first films to portray the hippie lifestyle. Hopper became a role model for some male youths who rejected traditional jobs and traditional American culture, partly exemplified by Fonda's long sideburns and Hopper wearing shoulder-length hair and a long mustache. They were denied rooms in motels and proper service in restaurants as a result of their radical looks. Their long hair became a point of contention in various scenes during the film. Journalist Ann Hornaday wrote: \"With its portrait of counterculture heroes raising their middle fingers to the uptight middle-class hypocrisies, Easy Rider became the cinematic symbol of the 1960s, a celluloid anthem to freedom, macho bravado and anti-establishment rebellion\". Film critic Matthew Hays wrote \"no other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Hopper was unable to capitalize on his Easy Rider success for several years. In 1970 he filmed The Last Movie, cowritten by Stewart Stern and photographed by László Kovács in Peru, and completed production in 1971. It won the prestigious CIDALC Award at that year's Venice Film Festival, but Universal Studios leaders expected a blockbuster like Easy Rider, and did not like the film or give it an enthusiastic release, while American film audiences found it confounding – as convoluted as an abstract painting. On viewing the first release print, fresh from the lab, in his screening room at Universal, MCA founder Jules C. Stein rose from his chair and said, \"I just don't understand this younger generation.\" During the tumultuous editing process, Hopper ensconced himself at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico, which he had purchased in 1970, for almost an entire year. In between contesting Fonda's rights to the majority of the residual profits from Easy Rider, he married singer Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas on Halloween of 1970. The marriage lasted eight days.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Hopper acted in another John Wayne film, True Grit (1969), and during its production, he became well acquainted with Wayne. In both of the films with Wayne, Hopper's character is killed in the presence of Wayne's character, to whom he utters his dying words. On 30 September 1970, Hopper appeared on the second episode of season 2 of \"The Johnny Cash Show\" where he sang a duet with Cash entitled \"Goin' Up Goin' Down\". Cash said the song was written by Kris Kristofferson about Hopper. Hopper added that Kristofferson had written some songs for his Peruvian-shot movie \"The Last Movie\", in which Kristofferson appeared in his debut role with Julie Adams. Hopper also recited Rudyard Kipling's famous poem If— during his appearance. Hopper was able to sustain his lifestyle and a measure of celebrity by acting in numerous low budget and European films throughout the 1970s as the archetypal \"tormented maniac\", including Mad Dog Morgan (1976), Tracks (1976), and The American Friend (1977). With Francis Ford Coppola's blockbuster Apocalypse Now (1979), Hopper returned to prominence as a hyper-manic Vietnam-era photojournalist. Stepping in for an overwhelmed director, Hopper won praise in 1980 for his directing and acting in Out of the Blue. Immediately thereafter, Hopper starred as an addled short-order cook \"Cracker\" in the Neil Young/Dean Stockwell low-budget collaboration Human Highway. Production was reportedly often delayed by his unreliable behavior. Peter Biskind states in the New Hollywood history Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that Hopper's cocaine intake had reached three grams a day by this time, complemented by 30 beers, and some marijuana and Cuba libres.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "After staging a \"suicide attempt\" (really more of a daredevil act) in a coffin using 17 sticks of dynamite during an \"art happening\" at the Rice University Media Center (filmed by professor and documentary filmmaker Brian Huberman), and later disappearing into the Mexican desert during a particularly extravagant bender, Hopper entered a drug rehabilitation program in 1983.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Though Hopper gave critically acclaimed performances in Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983) and Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983), it was not until he portrayed the gas-huffing, obscenity-screaming villain Frank Booth in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) that his career truly revived. On reading the script Hopper said to Lynch: \"You have to let me play Frank Booth. Because I am Frank Booth!\" He won critical acclaim and several awards for this role, and in the same year received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an alcoholic assistant basketball coach in Hoosiers. Also in 1986, Hopper portrayed Lt. Enright in the comedy horror The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1987 he acted in the neo-noir thriller Black Widow alongside Debra Winger, the action comedy Straight to Hell, the adventure film Running Out of Luck starring Mick Jagger and the romantic comedy The Pick-up Artist starring Molly Ringwald and Robert Downey Jr. In 1988, he directed Colors, a critically acclaimed police procedural about gang violence in Los Angeles starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. Hopper plays an aging hippie prankster in the 1990 comedy Flashback, fleeing in a Furthur-like old bus to the tune of Steppenwolf's \"Born to Be Wild\". Hopper teamed with Nike in the early 1990s to make a series of television commercials. He appeared as a \"crazed referee\" in those ads. Hopper appeared on the final two episodes of the cult 1991 television show Fishing with John with host John Lurie. He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for the 1991 HBO film Paris Trout. Shortly thereafter, he played drug smuggler and DEA informant Barry Seal in the HBO film Doublecrossed.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "He starred as King Koopa in Super Mario Bros., a 1993 critical and commercial failure loosely based on the video game of the same name. In 1993, he played Clifford Worley in True Romance. He co-starred in the 1994 blockbuster Speed with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, and as magic-phobic H.P. Lovecraft in the TV movie Witch Hunt. In 1995, Hopper played a greedy TV self-help guru, Dr. Luther Waxling in Search and Destroy. The same year, he starred as Deacon, the one-eyed nemesis of Kevin Costner in Waterworld. And in 1996 he starred in the science fiction comedy Space Truckers directed by Stuart Gordon.Also in 1996 he appeared as art dealer Bruno Bischofberger in Basquiat. Hopper was originally cast as Christof in the 1998 Peter Weir film, The Truman Show, but left during the filming due to \"creative differences\"; he was replaced by Ed Harris. In 1999, he starred in The Prophet's Game (a dark thriller), directed by David Worth and also starring Stephanie Zimbalist, Robert Yocum, Sondra Locke, Joe Penny and Tracey Birdsall. In 2003, Hopper was in the running for the dual lead in the indie horror drama Firecracker, but was ousted at the last minute in favor of Mike Patton.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 2005, Hopper played Paul Kaufman in George A. Romero's Land of the Dead. He portrayed villain Victor Drazen in the first season of the popular action drama 24. Hopper starred as a U.S. Army colonel in the 2005 television series E-Ring, a drama set at The Pentagon, but the series was canceled after 14 episodes aired. Hopper appeared in all 22 episodes that were filmed. He also played the part of record producer Ben Cendars in the Starz television series Crash, which lasted two seasons (26 episodes). In 2008, Hopper starred in An American Carol. In 2008 he also played The Death in Wim Wenders' Palermo Shooting. His last major feature film appearance was in the 2008 film Elegy with Ben Kingsley, Penélope Cruz and Debbie Harry. For his last performance, he was the voice of Tony, the alpha-male of the Eastern wolf pack in the 2010 3D computer-animated film Alpha and Omega. He died before the movie was released. This brought the directors to dedicate the film to his memory at the beginning of the movie credits. Hopper filmed scenes for The Other Side of the Wind in 1971, appearing as himself; after decades of legal, financial and technical delays, the film was finally released on Netflix in 2018.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Hopper had several artistic pursuits beyond film. He was a prolific photographer, painter, and sculptor.",
"title": "Photography and art"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Hopper's fascination with art began with painting lessons at the Nelson-Atkins Museum while still a child in Kansas City, Missouri. Early in his career, he painted and wrote poetry, though many of his works were destroyed in the 1961 Bel Air Fire, which burned hundreds of homes, including his and his wife's, on Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air. His painting style ranges from abstract impressionism to photorealism and often includes references to his cinematic work and to other artists.",
"title": "Photography and art"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Ostracized by the Hollywood film studios due to his reputation for being a \"difficult\" actor, Hopper turned to photography in 1961 with a camera bought for him by his first wife Brooke Hayward. During this period he created the cover art for the Ike & Tina Turner album River Deep – Mountain High (released in 1966). He became a prolific photographer, and noted writer Terry Southern profiled Hopper in Better Homes and Gardens as an up-and-coming photographer \"to watch\" in the mid-1960s. Hopper's early photography is known for portraits from the 1960s, and he began shooting portraits for Vogue and other magazines. His photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 civil-rights march in Selma, Alabama, were published. His intimate and unguarded images of Andy Warhol, Jane Fonda, The Byrds, Paul Newman, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, James Brown, Peter Fonda, Ed Ruscha, the Grateful Dead, Michael McClure, and Timothy Leary, among others, became the subject of gallery and museum shows and were collected in several books, including \"1712 North Crescent Heights.\" The book, whose title refers to the house where he lived with Hayward in the Hollywood Hills in the 1960s, was edited by his daughter Marin Hopper. In 1960–67, before the making of Easy Rider, Hopper created 18,000 images that chronicled the remarkable artists, musicians, actors, places, happenings, demonstrations, and concerts of that period. Dennis Hopper: Photographs 1961–1967 was published in February 2011, by Taschen. German film director Wim Wenders said of Hopper that if “he'd only been a photographer, he'd be one of the great photographers of the twentieth century.” In The New Yorker, Hopper, as photographer, was described as \"a compelling, important, and weirdly omnipresent chronicler of his times.\"",
"title": "Photography and art"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Hopper began working as a painter and a poet as well as a collector of art in the 1960s as well, particularly Pop Art. Over his lifetime he amassed a formidable array of 20th- and 21st-century art, including many of Julian Schnabel's works (such as a shattered-plate portrait of Hopper); numerous works from his early cohorts, such as Ed Ruscha, Edward Kienholz, Roy Lichtenstein (Sinking Sun, 1964), and Warhol (Double Mona Lisa, 1963); and pieces by contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst and Robin Rhode. He was involved in L.A.'s Ferus and Virginia Dwan galleries in the 1960s, and he was a longtime friend and supporter to New York dealer Tony Shafrazi. One of the first art works Hopper owned was an early print of Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans bought for US$75. Hopper also once owned Warhol's Mao, which he shot one evening in a fit of paranoia, the two bullet holes possibly adding to the print's value. The print sold at Christie's, New York, for US$302,500 in January 2011.",
"title": "Photography and art"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "During his lifetime, Hopper's own work as well as his collection was shown in monographic and group exhibitions around the world including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; MAK Vienna: Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Cinémathèque Française, Paris, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne. In March 2010, it was announced that Hopper was on the \"short list\" for Jeffrey Deitch's inaugural show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). In April 2010, Deitch confirmed that Hopper's work, curated by Julian Schnabel, will indeed be the focus of his debut at MOCA. The title of the exhibition, Double Standard, was taken from Hopper's iconic 1961 photograph of the two Standard Oil signs seen through an automobile windshield at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, and North Doheny Drive on historic Route 66 in Los Angeles. The image was reproduced on the invitation for Ed Ruscha's second solo exhibition at Ferus Gallery in 1964.",
"title": "Photography and art"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 2011, Barricade Books published film historian Peter L. Winkler's biography, Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel. In 2013, Harper Collins published Hopper: A Journey into the American Dream, a biography by American writer Tom Folsom.",
"title": "Photography and art"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "On the Gorillaz album Demon Days, Hopper narrates the song \"Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head\".",
"title": "Photography and art"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In the late 1980s, Hopper purchased a trio of nearly identical two-story, loft-style condominiums at 330 Indiana Avenue in Venice Beach, California – one made of concrete, one of plywood, and one of green roofing shingles – built by Frank Gehry and two artist friends of Hopper's, Chuck Arnoldi and Laddie John Dill, in 1981. In 1987, he commissioned an industrial-style main residence, with a corrugated metal exterior designed by Brian Murphy, as a place to display his artwork.",
"title": "Photography and art"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "According to Rolling Stone magazine, Hopper was \"one of Hollywood's most notorious drug addicts\" for 20 years. He spent much of the 1970s and early 1980s living as an \"outcast\" in Taos, New Mexico, after the success of Easy Rider. Hopper was also \"notorious for his troubled relationships with women\", including Michelle Phillips, who divorced him after eight days of marriage. Hopper was married five times:",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Hopper has been widely reported to be the godfather of actress Amber Tamblyn; in a 2009 interview with Parade, Tamblyn explained that \"godfather\" was \"just a loose term\" for Hopper, Dean Stockwell and Neil Young, three famous friends of her father's, who were always around the house when she was growing up, and who were big influences on her life.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1994, Rip Torn filed a defamation lawsuit against Hopper over a story Hopper told on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Hopper claimed that Torn pulled a knife on him during pre-production of the film Easy Rider. According to Hopper, Torn was originally cast in the film but was replaced with Jack Nicholson after the incident. According to Torn's suit, it was actually Hopper who pulled the knife on him. A judge ruled in Torn's favor and Hopper was ordered to pay US$475,000 in damages. Hopper then appealed but the judge again ruled in Torn's favor and Hopper was required to pay another US$475,000 in punitive damages.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "According to Newsmeat, Hopper donated US$2,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2004 and an equal amount in 2005. Hopper donated $600 to Irish political party Sinn Fein.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Hopper was honored with the rank of commander of France's National Order of Arts and Letters, at a ceremony in Paris.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Despite being a Republican, Hopper supported Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Hopper confirmed this in an election day appearance on the ABC daytime show The View. He said his reason for not voting Republican was the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Hopper was a longtime friend of actress Sally Kirkland, who freely admitted in a 2021 Reelz documentary that they had a one-night stand early on in their friendship.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "On January 14, 2010, Hopper filed for divorce from his fifth wife Victoria Duffy. After citing her \"outrageous conduct\" and stating she was \"insane\", \"inhuman\" and \"volatile\", Hopper was granted a restraining order against her on February 11, 2010, and as a result, she was forbidden to come within 10 feet (3 m) of him or contact him. On March 9, 2010, Duffy refused to move out of the Hopper home, despite the court's order that she do so by March 15.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "On April 5, 2010, a court ruled that Duffy could continue living on Hopper's property, and that he must pay US$12,000 per month spousal and child support for their daughter Galen. Hopper did not attend the hearing. On May 12, 2010, a hearing was held before Judge Amy Pellman in downtown Los Angeles Superior Court. Though Hopper died two weeks later, Duffy insisted at the hearing that he was well enough to be deposed. The hearing also dealt with who would be the beneficiary on Hopper's life insurance policy, which listed his wife as a beneficiary. A very ill Hopper did not appear in court though his estranged wife did. Despite Duffy's bid to be named the sole beneficiary of Hopper's million-dollar policy, the judge ruled against her and limited her claim to one-quarter of the policy. The remaining US$750,000 was to go to his estate.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "On September 28, 2009, Hopper, then 73, was reportedly taken by ambulance to an unidentified Manhattan hospital wearing an oxygen mask and \"with numerous tubes visible\". On October 2, he was discharged after receiving treatment for dehydration.",
"title": "Illness and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "On October 29, 2009, Hopper's manager Sam Maydew reported that he had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. In January 2010, it was reported that Hopper's cancer had metastasized to his bones.",
"title": "Illness and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "On March 18, 2010, he was honored with the 2,403rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Surrounded by family, fans, and friends—including Jack Nicholson, Viggo Mortensen, David Lynch, and Michael Madsen—he attended its addition to the sidewalk six days later.",
"title": "Illness and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "By March 2010, Hopper reportedly weighed only 100 pounds (45 kg) and was unable to carry on long conversations. According to papers filed in his divorce court case, Hopper was terminally ill and was unable to undergo chemotherapy to treat his prostate cancer.",
"title": "Illness and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Hopper died at his home in the coastal Venice district of Los Angeles, on May 29, 2010, at age 74. His funeral took place on June 3, 2010, at San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. His body was buried at the Jesus Nazareno Cemetery in Ranchos de Taos.",
"title": "Illness and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The film Alpha and Omega, which was among his last film roles, was dedicated to him, as was the 2011 film Restless, which starred his son Henry Hopper.",
"title": "Illness and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The moving image collection of Dennis Hopper is held at the Academy Film Archive. The Dennis Hopper Trust Collection represents Hopper's directorial efforts.",
"title": "Archive"
}
]
| Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor and film director. He is known for his roles as mentally disturbed outsiders and rebels. He earned prizes from the Cannes Film Festival and Venice International Film Festival as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Hopper studied acting at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and the Actors Studio in New York. Hopper also began a prolific and acclaimed photography career in the 1960s. Hopper made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in two of the films that made James Dean famous, Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). He then acted in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Hang 'Em High (1968) and True Grit (1969). Hopper made his directorial film debut with Easy Rider (1969), which he and co-star Peter Fonda wrote with Terry Southern. The film earned Hopper a Cannes Film Festival Award and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He became frequently typecast as mentally disturbed outsiders in such films as Mad Dog Morgan (1976), The American Friend (1977), Apocalypse Now (1979), Rumble Fish (1983), and Blue Velvet (1986). He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in Hoosiers (1986). His later film roles included Super Mario Bros. (1993), Speed (1994), Waterworld (1995) and Elegy (2009). He appeared posthumously in the long-delayed The Other Side of the Wind (2018), which had previously been filmed in the early 1970s. Other directorial credits for Hopper include The Last Movie (1971), Out of the Blue (1980), Colors (1988), and The Hot Spot (1990). He received Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie nomination for his role in Paris Trout (1991). His other television roles include in the HBO film Doublecrossed (1991), 24 (2002), the NBC series E-Ring (2005–2006), and the Starz series Crash (2008–2009). | 2001-11-09T14:07:39Z | 2023-12-24T04:24:10Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Hopper |
8,795 | Detroit Red Wings | The Detroit Red Wings (colloquially referred to as the Wings) are a professional ice hockey team based in Detroit. The Red Wings compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference, and are one of the Original Six teams of the league. Founded in 1926, the team was known as the Detroit Cougars until 1930. For the next two seasons, the team was named the Detroit Falcons, before changing their name to the Red Wings in 1932.
As of 2023, the Red Wings have won the most Stanley Cup championships of any NHL franchise based in the United States (11), and are third overall in total Stanley Cup championships, behind the Montreal Canadiens (24) and Toronto Maple Leafs (13). The Wings played their home games at Joe Louis Arena from 1979 until 2017, after playing for 52 years at Olympia Stadium. They moved into Little Caesars Arena beginning with the 2017–18 season. The Red Wings are one of the most popular and successful franchises in the NHL; fans and sports commentators refer to the Detroit area as "Hockeytown", which has been a registered trademark owned by the franchise since 1996.
Between the 1931–32 and 1965–66 seasons, the Red Wings missed the playoffs only four times. They struggled between the 1966–67 and 1982–83 seasons, only making the playoffs twice in that stretch. However, thereafter, from 1983–84 to 2015–16, they made the playoffs 30 times in 32 seasons, including 25-straight from 1990–91 to 2015–16 (not including the cancelled 2004–05 season); in 2006, this became the longest active streak of postseason appearances in all of North American professional sports and finished tied for the third-longest streak in NHL history. Since 1983–84, the Red Wings have tallied six regular season first-place finishes and have won the Stanley Cup four times (1997, 1998, 2002, and 2008).
Following the 1926 Stanley Cup playoffs, during which the Western Hockey League (WHL) was widely reported to be on the verge of folding, the NHL held a meeting on April 17 to consider applications for expansion franchises, at which it was reported that five different groups sought a team for Detroit. During a subsequent meeting on May 15, the league approved a franchise to the Townsend-Seyburn group of Detroit and named Charles A. Hughes as governor. WHL owners Frank and Lester Patrick made a deal to sell the league's players to the NHL and cease league operations. The new Detroit franchise purchased the players of the WHL's Victoria Cougars, who had won the Stanley Cup in 1925 and had made the Finals the previous winter, to play for the team. The new Detroit franchise also adopted the Cougars' nickname in honor of the folded franchise.
Since no arena in Detroit was ready at the time, the Cougars played their first season at the Border Cities Arena in Windsor, Ontario. For the 1927–28 season, the Cougars moved into the new Detroit Olympia, which would be their home rink until December 15, 1979. This was also the first season behind the bench for Jack Adams, who would be the face of the franchise for the next 36 years as either coach or general manager.
The Cougars made the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in 1929, with Carson Cooper leading the team in scoring. The Cougars were outscored 7–2 in the two-game series with the Toronto Maple Leafs. In 1930, the Cougars were renamed the Falcons, but their woes continued, as they usually finished near the bottom of the standings, even though they made the playoffs again in 1932.
In 1932, the NHL let grain merchant James E. Norris, who had made two previous unsuccessful bids to buy an NHL team, purchase the Falcons. Norris' first act was to rename the team; earlier in the century, Norris had been a member of the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association (MAAA), a multi-sport club whose winged-wheel emblem derived from its cycling roots, and whose hockey team won the first Stanley Cup in 1893. Norris decided that a red version of the MAAA "Winged Wheelers" logo would be perfect for a team playing in the "Motor City", and on October 5, 1932, the club was renamed the Detroit Red Wings. Norris also placed coach Jack Adams on a one-year probation for the 1932–33 NHL season. Adams managed to pass his probationary period by leading the Red Wings to their first-ever playoff series victory, over the Montreal Maroons. The team then lost in the semi-finals to the New York Rangers.
In 1934, the Red Wings made the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time, with John Sorrell scoring 21 goals over 47 games and Larry Aurie leading the team in scoring. However, the Chicago Black Hawks defeated the Red Wings in the Finals, winning the best-of-five series in four games to claim their first title. Two seasons later, the Red Wings won their first Stanley Cup in 1936, defeating Toronto in four games. Detroit repeated as Stanley Cup champions in 1937, winning over the Rangers in the full five games. In 1938, the Montreal Canadiens and the Red Wings became the first NHL teams to play in Europe, playing in Paris and London. The Wings played nine games against the Canadiens and went 3–5–1. They did not play in Europe again until the pre-season and start of the 2009–10 NHL season, in Sweden, against the St. Louis Blues.
The Red Wings made the Stanley Cup Finals in three consecutive years during the early 1940s. In 1941, they were swept by the Boston Bruins, and in 1942, they lost a seven-game series to Toronto after winning the first three games. However, in 1943, with Mud Bruneteau and Syd Howe scoring 23 and 20 goals, respectively, Detroit won their third Stanley Cup by sweeping the Bruins. Through the rest of the decade, the team made the playoffs every year, and reached the Finals three more times.
In 1946, one of the greatest players in hockey history came into the NHL with the Red Wings. Gordie Howe, a right winger from Floral, Saskatchewan, only scored seven goals and 15 assists in his first season, and would not reach his prime for a few more years. It was also the last season as head coach for Adams, who stepped down after the season to concentrate on his duties as general manager and was succeeded by minor league coach Tommy Ivan. By his second season, Howe was paired with Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay to form what would become one of the great lines in NHL history: the "Production Line". Lindsay's 33 goals propelled the Red Wings to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they were swept by the Maple Leafs. Detroit reached the Finals again the following season, only to be swept again by Toronto.
During the 1950 Stanley Cup semi-finals, Leo Reise Jr. scored the winning goal in overtime, which prevented the Maple Leafs from winning four straight championships. In the Finals, the Red Wings defeated the New York Rangers in seven games. In Game 7, Pete Babando scored the game winner in double overtime. After the game, Lindsay skated around the Olympia ice with the Stanley Cup.
After being upset by the Montreal Canadiens in the 1951 semi-finals, Detroit won its fifth Stanley Cup in 1952, sweeping both the Maple Leafs and the Canadiens, with the Production Line of Howe, Abel and Lindsay joined by second-year goaltender Terry Sawchuk. Detroit became the first team in 17 years to go undefeated in the playoffs. They also scored 24 playoff goals, compared to Toronto and Montreal's combined total of 5. Abel left the Red Wings for Chicago during the off-season, and his spot on the roster was replaced by Alex Delvecchio. In December 1952, James E. Norris died. He was succeeded as team president by his daughter, Marguerite, which made her the first woman to head an NHL franchise.
Following another playoff upset in 1953 at the hands of the Bruins, the Red Wings won back-to-back Stanley Cups, beating the rival powerhouse Montreal Canadiens. Both of the Stanley Cup Finals played between the two teams were decided in seven games. The seventh game during the 1954 Stanley Cup Finals was won with one of the oddest cup winning goals ever, when the 5'7" left winger Tony Leswick, known more for his relentless checking than scoring prowess, shot a puck towards the Montreal goal from the middle of the ice. Habs defenseman Doug Harvey tried to gain control of the wobbly puck with his glove but instead redirected it past Montreal goalie Gerry McNeil. The repeat of the series the season after was closely contested, as all seven games were won by the home team, with Detroit taking the seventh game. Montreal was sorely lacking its all-star Maurice Richard, who was suspended after hitting a linesman during the regular season, and the Red Wings' stars carried their team, as Lindsay scored four goals in a single game and Howe scored 20 points during the playoffs, 12 of which during the Finals, all new records in the league.
The 1954–55 season ended a run of seven straight regular season titles, an NHL record. During the 1955 off-season, Marguerite Norris lost an intra-family power struggle, and was forced to turn over the Red Wings to her younger brother Bruce. Detroit and Montreal once again met, in the 1956 Stanley Cup Finals, but this time the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup, their first of five in a row. In 1957, Lindsay, who had scored 30 goals and led the league in assists with 55, teamed up with Harvey to help start the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA). As a result, he and goaltender Glenn Hall were promptly traded to Chicago.
In 1959, the Red Wings missed the playoffs for the first time in 21 years. However, within a couple of years, the franchise was able to rejuvenate itself. The Red Wings made the Finals in four of the next six years between 1961 and 1966. However, they came away empty-handed.
Only a year after making the Finals, the Red Wings finished a distant fifth, 24 points out of the playoffs. It was the beginning of a slump that they would not emerge from in almost 20 years. This period is derisively known as the "Dead Wings" era.
One factor in the Red Wings' decline was the end of the old development system. Another factor was Ned Harkness, who was hired as coach in 1970 and was promoted to general manager midway through the season. A successful college hockey coach, Harkness tried to force his two-way style of play on a veteran Red Wings team resistant to change. They chafed under his rule in which he demanded short hair and no smoking, and put other rules in place regarding drinking and phone calls. Harkness was forced to resign in 1974, ending the period colloquially referred to as "Darkness with Harkness".
During the expansion season of 1967–68, the Red Wings acquired longtime star left-winger Frank Mahovlich from the defending Cup champions in Toronto. Mahovlich would go on a line with Howe and Delvecchio, and in 1968–69, he scored a career-high 49 goals and had two All-Star seasons in Detroit. However, Mahovlich was traded to Montreal in 1971, while Howe announced his retirement the same year. Throughout the decade, the Red Wings were hampered due to a number of factors.
On December 27, 1979, during the 1979–80 season, the Red Wings officially began playing at the Joe Louis Arena after leaving the Olympia, where they had played since 1927. In 1982, after 50 years of family ownership, Bruce Norris sold the Red Wings to Mike Ilitch, founder of the pizza chain Little Caesars.
In 1983, the Red Wings drafted Steve Yzerman, a center from the Peterborough Petes, with their first-round pick. He led the team in scoring in his rookie year. That season, with John Ogrodnick, Ivan Boldirev, Ron Duguay, and Brad Park, Detroit made the playoffs for the first time in six years. Park ended up winning the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy. Park was later asked to coach the Red Wings, only to be sacked after just 45 games in 1985–86. They ended up in last place with a 17–57–6 record for only 40 points. This was the same year that the Red Wings added enforcer Bob Probert, one of the most familiar faces of the team during the 1980s and 1990s.
In the 1986–87 season, with Yzerman, now the captain following the departure of Danny Gare, joined by Petr Klima, Adam Oates, Gerard Gallant, defenseman Darren Veitch, and new head coach Jacques Demers, the Red Wings won a playoff series for only the second time in the modern era. They made it all the way to the conference finals against the powerful Edmonton Oilers, but lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champions in five games. In 1988, they won their first division title in 23 years. They did so, however, in a relatively weak division, as no other team in the Norris finished above .500. As was the case in the previous season, they made it to the conference finals only to lose again to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Oilers in five games.
In 1989, Yzerman scored a career-best 65 goals, but Detroit was upset in the first round by the Chicago Blackhawks. The following season, Yzerman scored 62 goals, but the team missed the playoffs.
After the season, Demers was fired and was replaced by Bryan Murray as the new head coach. Murray was unable to get them back over .500, but they returned to the playoffs. Yzerman was joined by Sergei Fedorov, who would be an award-winner and frequent all-star for the team during the 1990s. In 1991, the team signed free agent Ray Sheppard, who would score a career-best 52 goals three years later. In 1993, the Red Wings acquired top defenseman Paul Coffey. Also joining the Red Wings around this time were draft picks Vladimir Konstantinov, Nicklas Lidstrom, Vyacheslav Kozlov, Darren McCarty, and Chris Osgood.
In 1993, former Montreal Canadiens coach Scotty Bowman was hired as the new head coach. In his second season, the lockout-shortened 1994–95 NHL season, Bowman guided Detroit to its first Finals appearance in 29 years, only to be swept by the New Jersey Devils.
During the 1995–96 season, the Red Wings won a then NHL record 62 games. However, after defeating the St. Louis Blues in seven games, they would fall in the Western Conference finals to the eventual Stanley Cup champions, the Colorado Avalanche.
The following season, the Red Wings acquired Brendan Shanahan and Larry Murphy. In the playoffs, they would defeat the St. Louis Blues, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and the Avalanche in the first three rounds. In the Finals, the Red Wings swept the Philadelphia Flyers. It was their first Stanley Cup since 1955, breaking the longest drought (42 years long) in the league at that time. Mike Vernon was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy.
Misfortune befell the Red Wings six days after their championship; defenseman Vladimir Konstantinov, one of the members of the "Russian Five", suffered a brain injury in a limousine accident, and his career came to an abrupt end. As a result, the team dedicated the 1997–98 season to him. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in four games, this time over the Washington Capitals, and Konstantinov was brought onto the ice in his wheelchair so he could touch it.
The following season, the Red Wings appeared to be poised to win a third consecutive Stanley Cup when they acquired three-time top blueliner Chris Chelios from his hometown Chicago Blackhawks in March 1999. Also acquired at the trade deadline were defenseman Ulf Samuelsson, winger Wendel Clark, and goaltender Bill Ranford. Despite high aspirations, however, Detroit would end up losing in the Western Conference semi-finals to Colorado in six games. In 2000, the Red Wings would finish second in the Central Division. Just like the previous season, however, they would lose to the Avalanche in the Western Conference semi-finals.
In 2001, Detroit, the NHL's second-best team in the regular season, were upset in the playoffs by the Los Angeles Kings. During the ensuing off-season, the team acquired goaltender Dominik Hasek (the defending Vezina Trophy winner) and forwards Luc Robitaille and Brett Hull. Russian prospect Pavel Datsyuk also joined the team. Strengthened by the additions, the Red Wings posted the league's best record in the 2001–02 regular season and defeated Colorado in seven games in the Western Conference finals after beating the Vancouver Canucks and St. Louis Blues in rounds one and two. The Red Wings then went on to capture another Stanley Cup, in five games, over the Carolina Hurricanes, with Nicklas Lidstrom winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs' MVP. Bowman and Hasek both retired after the season.
The off-season saw the Red Wings promote associate coach Dave Lewis to the head coach position after Bowman's retirement. In the market for a new starting goaltender after Hasek's retirement, they signed Curtis Joseph from the Toronto Maple Leafs to a three-year, $24 million deal. Also new to the lineup was highly touted Swedish prospect Henrik Zetterberg. The Red Wings finished the season second in the Western Conference, which pitted them in the 2003 playoffs against the seventh-seeded Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. The Mighty Ducks shocked the hockey world when they swept the Red Wings in four games en route to a Finals appearance.
In the off-season, long time Red Wing Fedorov signed with the Mighty Ducks as a free agent. Additionally, Hasek opted to come out of retirement and join the Red Wings for the 2003–04 season. Joseph, despite being one of the highest-paid players in the NHL, spent part of the season in the minor leagues. Hasek himself would be sidelined with a groin injury. Notwithstanding, the Red Wings would finish atop of the Central Division and the NHL standings. The Red Wings eliminated the Nashville Predators in six games in the first round of the 2004 playoffs, which led to a second round match-up with the Calgary Flames. The teams split the first four games, and headed to Detroit for a pivotal Game 5, which the Red Wings lost 1–0. They were then eliminated two nights later in Calgary by the same score in overtime. The Red Wings did not play in the 2004–05 season due to the lockout, which cancelled the entire NHL season.
On July 15, 2005, Mike Babcock, former head coach in Anaheim, became the new head coach for the Red Wings. On November 21, 2005, defenseman Jiri Fischer went into cardiac arrest and collapsed on the bench during a game against the Nashville Predators. The game was cancelled because of his injury and was made up on January 23, 2006. This was the first time in NHL history a game had been postponed due to an injury. While the game was played for the full 60 minutes, the Predators were allowed to maintain their 1–0 lead from the original game and won 3–2. The Red Wings won the Presidents' Trophy with a 58–16–8 record, earning them 124 points and secured home ice advantage for the entire playoffs. They opened the 2006 playoffs against the Edmonton Oilers with a 3–2 overtime victory at Joe Louis Arena, but the Oilers won four of the next five games to take the series.
Continuing the shakeup of the Red Wings roster, the off-season saw the departure of Brendan Shanahan, the return of Dominik Hasek and the retirement of Steve Yzerman. Yzerman retired with the distinction of having been the longest-serving team captain in NHL history.
The Red Wings opened the 2006–07 season with Nicklas Lidstrom as the new captain. The team retired Yzerman's jersey number 19 on January 2, 2007. The Red Wings finished first in the Western Conference and tied for first in the NHL with the Buffalo Sabres, but the Sabres were awarded the Presidents' Trophy because they had more wins. Detroit advanced to the third round of the 2007 playoffs after defeating Calgary and the San Jose Sharks both in six games, coming back to win three-straight after the Sharks had a 2–1 series lead. The Red Wings would then lose to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Anaheim Ducks in the Western Conference finals in six games.
To start the 2007–08 campaign, Zetterberg recorded at least a point in each of Detroit's first 17 games, setting a club record. The Wings cruised to the playoffs, where they faced the Nashville Predators. After goaltender Dominik Hasek played poorly in Games 3 and 4 of the series, both losses, head coach Mike Babcock replaced him with Chris Osgood. Osgood never left the net for the remainder of the playoffs, as the Red Wings came back in that series on their way to winning their 11th Stanley Cup. The final victory came in Game 6 on June 4, 2008, against the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3–2. This was the Red Wings' fourth Stanley Cup in 11 years. Zetterberg scored the winning goal in the decisive game, and was also named the winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs. It was the first time a team captained by a non-North American player (Lidstrom) won the Stanley Cup.
On July 2, 2008, the Red Wings announced the signing of Marian Hossa. On January 1, 2009, the Red Wings played the Chicago Blackhawks in the second NHL Winter Classic at Chicago's Wrigley Field, defeating them 6–4. Although they finished second in the conference to the San Jose Sharks, the Wings became the first team in NHL history to top 100 points in nine straight seasons. In the playoffs, the Red Wings swept the Columbus Blue Jackets, then defeated the eighth-seeded Anaheim Ducks in a hard-fought seven-game series. They took on the vastly improved Chicago Blackhawks in the conference finals, winning in five games. The Red Wings would face the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Finals for a second consecutive year, but this series would feature a different outcome as the Penguins defeated the Red Wings in seven games. The Red Wings became only the second NHL team to lose the Stanley Cup at home in Game 7.
The Red Wings began the 2009–10 NHL season in Stockholm, losing both games to the St. Louis Blues 4–3 and 5–3, respectively. They were plagued by injuries throughout the season and lost the second most man games to injury, with only the last place Edmonton Oilers losing more. The beginning of the season was a struggle for the Red Wings, with key players out of the lineup, including Zetterberg, Tomas Holmstrom, Johan Franzen, Valtteri Filppula and Niklas Kronwall. After the Olympic break, Detroit posted a record of 13–3–2 and earned 28 points, the most by any team in the NHL. This run helped them secure the fifth playoff seed in the Western Conference. This, however, was the first time the Red Wings did not have home ice advantage in a playoff series in ten seasons. Detroit won their first-round playoff series over the Phoenix Coyotes in seven games. In the second round, they would be defeated by the San Jose Sharks in five games.
A healthier Red Wings team finished the 2010–11 NHL season with a 47–25–10 record and 104 points to win the Central Division title. They once again faced the Phoenix Coyotes in the first round of the playoffs, this time sweeping them 4–0. The Red Wings then went on to face the Sharks in round two. After losing the first three games of the series, the Red Wings won three consecutive games to force a Game 7, becoming just the eighth team in NHL history to accomplish the feat. The Red Wings lost Game 7 to the Sharks by a score of 3–2 and were eliminated.
During the 2011 off-season, Red Wings defenseman Brian Rafalski retired. Detroit soon signed free agent defenseman Ian White to take his place. Long-time Red Wings Chris Osgood and Kris Draper also announced their retirement from hockey, with both soon taking positions within the club. Detroit signed goaltender Ty Conklin for his second stint with the team. Tragedy struck the organization and the rest of the NHL with the 2011 Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash, which killed former Red Wings assistant coach Brad McCrimmon and defenseman Ruslan Salei, who had joined the KHL team during the summer. Stefan Liv, a former Red Wings goaltending prospect, was also among the fatalities. The Red Wings then added a patch to the left arm of their uniforms with the trio's initials.
During the season, the Red Wings won an NHL-record 23 consecutive home games. The Red Wings also made the NHL playoffs, extending their streak of 21-straight playoff appearances, as the fifth seed. They were defeated in five games by their opening round opponent, the Nashville Predators. On May 31, 2012, Nicklas Lidstrom retired.
Zetterberg was named successor to Lidstrom as team captain. On July 1, 2012, the first day of the NHL free agency period, the Red Wings signed Swiss forward Damien Brunner to a one-year, entry-level contract; forward Jordin Tootoo to a three-year, $5.7 million contract; and goaltender Jonas Gustavsson to a two-year, $3 million deal.
The team won their final four games of the 2012–13 season to earn the seventh seed of the playoffs. The Red Wings' 3–0 victory over the Dallas Stars on April 27, 2013, preserved their streak of 22 consecutive playoff appearances. As the seventh seed in the 2013 playoffs, the Red Wings faced the second-seeded Anaheim Ducks. They survived a fierce battle that included four overtime games, winning the series 4–3 after a 3–2 Game 7 victory in Anaheim. The next round pitted the Red Wings against the top-seeded Chicago Blackhawks. Despite jumping out to a 3–1 series lead, the Red Wings would ultimately lose to the eventual Stanley Cup champions in seven games.
On July 5, 2013, the Red Wings signed long time Ottawa Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson to a one-year contract and long time Florida Panther Stephen Weiss to a five-year contract. In the 2013–14 season, the Red Wings moved to the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference as part of the NHL's realignment. The move to the Eastern Conference allowed them to play a majority of their games against teams in the Eastern Time Zone. On April 9, 2014, the Red Wings clinched their 23rd consecutive playoff appearance. They would be eliminated in the first round by the Boston Bruins.
On April 9, 2015, the Red Wings clinched their 24th consecutive playoff appearance, thus extending their streak. The team was eliminated in the first round by the Tampa Bay Lightning. Petr Mrazek had earned the starting goaltender role from Jimmy Howard, and Kronwall was suspended for Game 7 as Tampa Bay erased a 3–2 deficit to win the series. Mike Babcock, concluding the final year of his contract, left the Red Wings to become the new head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Jeff Blashill, head coach of the Red Wings' top minor league affiliate, the Grand Rapids Griffins, was named his successor on June 9.
On April 9, 2016, despite the Red Wings losing 3–2 to the New York Rangers, the Ottawa Senators defeated the Boston Bruins 6–1 as the Red Wings narrowly made the playoffs and extended their streak to a 25th season. They would lose in the first round to the Lightning again, this time in five games.
During the off-season, Datsyuk decided to return to Russia. On February 10, 2017, club owner Mike Ilitch died. The Red Wings' playoff streak ended after 25 seasons in the 2016–17 season. The Red Wings won their last game at Joe Louis Arena 4–1 on April 9, 2017, against the New Jersey Devils.
The Red Wings played their first regular season game at Little Caesars Arena on October 5, 2017, winning 4–2 over the Minnesota Wild. The Red Wings finished the 2017–18 season with a 30–39–13 record. They missed the playoffs for the second season in a row, marking the first time since the early 1980s the team missed the playoffs in consecutive years. The Red Wings finished the 2018–19 season with a 32–40–10 record, missing the playoffs for a third consecutive season.
On April 19, 2019, the Red Wings announced that Steve Yzerman would rejoin the team as general manager and executive vice president. On February 21, 2020, the Red Wings became the first team to be eliminated from playoff contention before the trade deadline since the Pittsburgh Penguins did so in the 2003–04 season. On March 10, 2020, the Red Wings clinched the worst overall record in NHL for the first time since the 1985–86 season. On March 12, 2020, the 2019–20 season was suspended by the NHL due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 26, 2020, the NHL announced that the rest of the season was over for the seven teams that did not qualify for the 24-team Stanley Cup Playoffs, which included the Red Wings. With a record of 17–49–5, this was the first time since the 1985–86 season that the Red Wings finished with fewer than 20 wins. The Red Wings also became the second team since the 2004–05 NHL lockout, and the subsequent start of the salary cap era, to finish with a sub-.300 points percentage, along with the 2016–17 Colorado Avalanche. Their .275 points percentage was the worst for an NHL team since the 1999–2000 Atlanta Thrashers.
Dylan Larkin was named the Red Wings captain on January 13, 2021, who succeeded Henrik Zetterberg following his retirement in 2018. On April 26, the Red Wings were eliminated from playoff contention for the fifth consecutive season. They would ultimately finish with a 19–27–10 record. The Red Wings finished the 2021–22 season at 32–40–10. They missed the playoff for the sixth consecutive season. On April 30, 2022, Jeff Blashill was fired as head coach. They then hired Derek Lalonde as their head coach on June 30, 2022. During 2022–23 season, the Red Wings would re-sign Dylan Larkin to an eight-year contract extension. The Red Wings finished the season at 35–37–10. They missed the playoffs for the seventh consecutive season.
The Red Wings' jerseys (traditionally known in hockey as "sweaters") have been more or less the same since the 1930s – a white or red base with red or white piping. The only significant changes have been the replacement of the word Detroit with the "winged wheel" logo in 1932, and vertical arch lettering for the players' names and block letters in 1983. The Red Wings wear the vertical arched letters in the regular season and playoffs, but use straight serifed nameplates during the preseason.
The Hockey News voted the Red Wings' "winged wheel" logo the second best in the league in 2008. The Red Wings, like all NHL teams, updated their jerseys to the new Rbk Edge standard for the 2007–08 NHL season. The Red Wings kept their design as close to original as possible, the exceptions being: On the road (white) jersey, there was more red on the sleeves as the color panel began closer to the shoulder, and the letters of the captain and alternate captains were moved to the right shoulder.
When Adidas became the uniform outfitter starting with the 2017–18 season, the Red Wings kept the same basic look.
The Red Wings have rarely used any alternate logos or uniforms since the trend became popular in the 1990s, the sole exceptions were select games of the 1991–92 season commemorating the league's 75th anniversary, and for a commemorative game on January 27, 1994, at Chicago Stadium. Those jerseys were based on the uniforms worn by the team (then the Detroit Cougars) in 1927–28. The throwbacks are primarily white with five red horizontal stripes on the body, the broadest middle stripe bearing "Detroit" in bold letters, and three red stripes on the sleeves. This jersey served as the basis for the uniforms worn by Wayne Gretzky's team of NHLPA All-Stars, nicknamed the "99ers", for their exhibition tour in Europe during the 1994–95 NHL lockout.
The Red Wings wore alternative "retro" jerseys for the 2009 NHL Winter Classic in Chicago. The jerseys were based on the uniforms worn by the Detroit Cougars during their inaugural season of 1926–27. These jerseys were white, with a single bold red stripe on the sleeves and chest, and a uniquely styled white Old English D centered on the chest stripe. These jerseys were also worn for their final 2009 regular season home game, again against the Chicago Blackhawks. The Red Wings again used an alternate jersey mimicking throwback jerseys for the 2014 NHL Winter Classic against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Michigan Stadium.
The Red Wings wore a specially designed one-time-only jersey for their Stadium Series game in Denver against the Colorado Avalanche on February 27, 2016. The majority of this jersey was the traditional red, decorated with a thick diagonal white stripe running from the player's right shoulder across the front towards the left hip. The bottom of each sleeve featured a thick white stripe from wrist to elbow. The crest on the front of the jersey was a stylized red D. The words "Red Wings" were printed in all capital letters on the left side of the collar, and the phrase "EST. 1926" was printed inside the back of the collar. These jerseys featured the current Red Wings logo on the left shoulder cap. The names and numbers were printed larger than traditional NHL jerseys to increase visibility and player identification for fans watching the game at Coors Field, a stadium traditionally used for Major League Baseball.
The Red Wings unveiled a uniform patch on September 27, 2016, to honor Gordie Howe, who died on June 10, 2016. The patch was a depiction of Howe's jersey number 9 and was worn by the team above the logo on the front of the jersey on the left side of the chest for all 82 regular season games during the 2016–17 season.
The Red Wings wore a specially designed one-time-only jersey for the Centennial Classic in Toronto against the Toronto Maple Leafs on January 1, 2017. It was a white jersey that had four stripes on the arms. Three of the stripes were red, while the fourth was silver. On the silver stripes were the years the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. The logo and numbers were outlined in silver.
For the 2020–21 season, the Red Wings would wear special "Reverse Retro" alternate jerseys designed by Adidas. The uniform featured a white base and white sleeves inspired by the Red Wings' road uniforms of the Original Six era. Silver stripes replaced red stripes in commemoration of the team's 11 Stanley Cup championships and the 2017 Centennial Classic. A second "Reverse Retro" uniform was unveiled in the 2022–23 season, using the 1991–92 throwback uniform based on the original Cougars' uniforms but with a red base and black stripes.
The Red Wings' logo received significant media attention in August 2017 when it was discovered that a white supremacist group used a modified version of it, in which the wheel's spokes consisted of the occult SS symbol Black Sun; it was the aegis of their shields during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. As a result, the Red Wings condemned the group for the usage of the logo and threatened legal action.
The "Legend of the Octopus" is a sports tradition during Detroit Red Wings playoff games, in which an octopus is thrown onto the ice surface for good luck. During the playoffs, Joe Louis Arena was generally adorned with a giant octopus with red eyes, nicknamed "Al" after former head ice manager Al Sobotka.
The 1952 playoffs featured the start of the octopus throw. The owner of a local fish market, Peter Cusimano, threw one from the stands onto the ice. The eight legs are symbolic of the eight wins it took to win the Stanley Cup at the time. The Red Wings went on to sweep both of their opponents that year en route to a Stanley Cup championship. The NHL has, at various times, tried to eliminate this tradition but it continues to this day.
Sobotka was responsible for removing the thrown creatures from the ice. When the Red Wings played at Joe Louis Arena, he was known for swinging the tossed octopuses above his head when walking off the ice. On April 19, 2008, the NHL sent a memo to the Red Wings that forbade this; they said that violating the mandate would result in a $10,000 fine. Instead, it was to up to the linesmen to remove the octopuses. In an email to the Detroit Free Press, NHL spokesman Frank Brown justified the ban because matter flew off the octopus and got on the ice when Sobotka swung it above his head. This ban was later loosened to allow for the octopus twirling to take place at the Zamboni entrance.
Typically during the last minute or two of games that the Red Wings are winning, especially around the end of the season and during the playoffs, fans are known to start singing along to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." The song is played over the PA system and continues until it is muted while the crowd sings the words "Born and raised in South Detroit," then the song resumes over the speakers in the arena.
The Red Wings' flagship radio stations are Detroit sister stations WXYT-AM 1270 and WXYT-FM 97.1. Games are carried on both stations unless there is a conflict with Detroit Tigers baseball. There are several affiliate stations throughout Michigan and Southwestern Ontario.
The Red Wings' exclusive local television rights are held by Bally Sports Detroit.
Announcers:
Four members of the Red Wings organization have received the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award:
Lynch called the first locally televised game at Olympia for the original WWJ-TV in 1949. He remained with the organization for 63 years, serving as director of publicity from 1975 to 1982, and was the public address announcer from 1982 until his death in 2012. From 2008 to 2012, a second PA announcer was added to work alongside him, first John Fossen, then Erich Freiny. Freiny took over as the sole PA announcer following Lynch's death.
This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by the Detroit Red Wings. For the full season-by-season history, see List of Detroit Red Wings seasons.
Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, OTL = Overtime losses, ROW = Regulation + OT wins, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against
Updated December 18, 2023
The Detroit Red Wings acknowledge an affiliation with many inductees to the Hockey Hall of Fame, including 67 former players and 12 builders of the sport. The 12 individuals recognized as builders by the Hall of Fame include former Red Wings executives, general managers, head coaches, and owners. In addition to players and builders, several broadcasters have been awarded the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award from the Hockey Hall of Fame. Budd Lynch, a radio play-by-play announcer, was the first Red Wings broadcaster to be awarded the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award. Lynch also served as Detroit's public address announcer from 1985 until his death in 2012. In addition to Lynch, Bruce Martyn, Mickey Redmond, and Dave Strader have also won the award.
Players
Builders
The Red Wings have retired eight numbers. The first number the Red Wings retired was No. 9 in 1972 in honor of Gordie Howe, who played right wing for the team from 1946 to 1971. Howe won both the Art Ross Trophy and the Hart Memorial Trophy six times each and won the Stanley Cup as a Red Wing four times. In 2007, the Red Wings retired Steve Yzerman's No. 19. During Yzerman's career, he won the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, the Conn Smythe Trophy, the Frank J. Selke Trophy, the Lester Patrick Trophy, and the Ted Lindsay Award. Yzerman served as Detroit's captain for 19 seasons, an NHL record, and won the Stanley Cup three times as a player with the Red Wings. The most recent retired number is Red Kelly's No. 4, which was retired on February 1, 2019. During Kelly's 13-year career with the Red Wings, he won four Stanley Cups, the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy three times, and the James Norris Memorial Trophy once.
The Red Wings have also made the number 6 of Larry Aurie and the number 16 of Vladimir Konstantinov no longer available for issue. However, the numbers are not considered to be officially retired. Although Aurie's number was retired in 1938 by James E. Norris, current team owners do not consider the number to be retired. Konstantinov's number has not been issued to any player since he was permanently disabled in a vehicle accident after the 1997 Stanley Cup Finals. Number 99 is also unavailable as it was retired by the league in honor of Wayne Gretzky.
All the players who have served as team captain with the Detroit franchise.
These players rank in the top ten in franchise history in scoring as of the end of the 2022–23 season. Figures are updated after each completed NHL season.
Note: Pos = Position; GP = Games played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points; P/G = Points per game
These players rank in the top ten in franchise history for wins as of the end of the 2018−19 season. Figures are updated after each completed NHL season. There is a four-way tie for ninth place in postseason wins, resulting in 12 players listed in that table.
Note: GP = Games played; W = Wins; L = Losses; T = Ties; OT = Overtime losses; SO = Shutouts; GAA = Goals against average; * = current Red Wings player
Footnotes
Citations | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Detroit Red Wings (colloquially referred to as the Wings) are a professional ice hockey team based in Detroit. The Red Wings compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference, and are one of the Original Six teams of the league. Founded in 1926, the team was known as the Detroit Cougars until 1930. For the next two seasons, the team was named the Detroit Falcons, before changing their name to the Red Wings in 1932.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "As of 2023, the Red Wings have won the most Stanley Cup championships of any NHL franchise based in the United States (11), and are third overall in total Stanley Cup championships, behind the Montreal Canadiens (24) and Toronto Maple Leafs (13). The Wings played their home games at Joe Louis Arena from 1979 until 2017, after playing for 52 years at Olympia Stadium. They moved into Little Caesars Arena beginning with the 2017–18 season. The Red Wings are one of the most popular and successful franchises in the NHL; fans and sports commentators refer to the Detroit area as \"Hockeytown\", which has been a registered trademark owned by the franchise since 1996.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Between the 1931–32 and 1965–66 seasons, the Red Wings missed the playoffs only four times. They struggled between the 1966–67 and 1982–83 seasons, only making the playoffs twice in that stretch. However, thereafter, from 1983–84 to 2015–16, they made the playoffs 30 times in 32 seasons, including 25-straight from 1990–91 to 2015–16 (not including the cancelled 2004–05 season); in 2006, this became the longest active streak of postseason appearances in all of North American professional sports and finished tied for the third-longest streak in NHL history. Since 1983–84, the Red Wings have tallied six regular season first-place finishes and have won the Stanley Cup four times (1997, 1998, 2002, and 2008).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Following the 1926 Stanley Cup playoffs, during which the Western Hockey League (WHL) was widely reported to be on the verge of folding, the NHL held a meeting on April 17 to consider applications for expansion franchises, at which it was reported that five different groups sought a team for Detroit. During a subsequent meeting on May 15, the league approved a franchise to the Townsend-Seyburn group of Detroit and named Charles A. Hughes as governor. WHL owners Frank and Lester Patrick made a deal to sell the league's players to the NHL and cease league operations. The new Detroit franchise purchased the players of the WHL's Victoria Cougars, who had won the Stanley Cup in 1925 and had made the Finals the previous winter, to play for the team. The new Detroit franchise also adopted the Cougars' nickname in honor of the folded franchise.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Since no arena in Detroit was ready at the time, the Cougars played their first season at the Border Cities Arena in Windsor, Ontario. For the 1927–28 season, the Cougars moved into the new Detroit Olympia, which would be their home rink until December 15, 1979. This was also the first season behind the bench for Jack Adams, who would be the face of the franchise for the next 36 years as either coach or general manager.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Cougars made the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in 1929, with Carson Cooper leading the team in scoring. The Cougars were outscored 7–2 in the two-game series with the Toronto Maple Leafs. In 1930, the Cougars were renamed the Falcons, but their woes continued, as they usually finished near the bottom of the standings, even though they made the playoffs again in 1932.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1932, the NHL let grain merchant James E. Norris, who had made two previous unsuccessful bids to buy an NHL team, purchase the Falcons. Norris' first act was to rename the team; earlier in the century, Norris had been a member of the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association (MAAA), a multi-sport club whose winged-wheel emblem derived from its cycling roots, and whose hockey team won the first Stanley Cup in 1893. Norris decided that a red version of the MAAA \"Winged Wheelers\" logo would be perfect for a team playing in the \"Motor City\", and on October 5, 1932, the club was renamed the Detroit Red Wings. Norris also placed coach Jack Adams on a one-year probation for the 1932–33 NHL season. Adams managed to pass his probationary period by leading the Red Wings to their first-ever playoff series victory, over the Montreal Maroons. The team then lost in the semi-finals to the New York Rangers.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1934, the Red Wings made the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time, with John Sorrell scoring 21 goals over 47 games and Larry Aurie leading the team in scoring. However, the Chicago Black Hawks defeated the Red Wings in the Finals, winning the best-of-five series in four games to claim their first title. Two seasons later, the Red Wings won their first Stanley Cup in 1936, defeating Toronto in four games. Detroit repeated as Stanley Cup champions in 1937, winning over the Rangers in the full five games. In 1938, the Montreal Canadiens and the Red Wings became the first NHL teams to play in Europe, playing in Paris and London. The Wings played nine games against the Canadiens and went 3–5–1. They did not play in Europe again until the pre-season and start of the 2009–10 NHL season, in Sweden, against the St. Louis Blues.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Red Wings made the Stanley Cup Finals in three consecutive years during the early 1940s. In 1941, they were swept by the Boston Bruins, and in 1942, they lost a seven-game series to Toronto after winning the first three games. However, in 1943, with Mud Bruneteau and Syd Howe scoring 23 and 20 goals, respectively, Detroit won their third Stanley Cup by sweeping the Bruins. Through the rest of the decade, the team made the playoffs every year, and reached the Finals three more times.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1946, one of the greatest players in hockey history came into the NHL with the Red Wings. Gordie Howe, a right winger from Floral, Saskatchewan, only scored seven goals and 15 assists in his first season, and would not reach his prime for a few more years. It was also the last season as head coach for Adams, who stepped down after the season to concentrate on his duties as general manager and was succeeded by minor league coach Tommy Ivan. By his second season, Howe was paired with Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay to form what would become one of the great lines in NHL history: the \"Production Line\". Lindsay's 33 goals propelled the Red Wings to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they were swept by the Maple Leafs. Detroit reached the Finals again the following season, only to be swept again by Toronto.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "During the 1950 Stanley Cup semi-finals, Leo Reise Jr. scored the winning goal in overtime, which prevented the Maple Leafs from winning four straight championships. In the Finals, the Red Wings defeated the New York Rangers in seven games. In Game 7, Pete Babando scored the game winner in double overtime. After the game, Lindsay skated around the Olympia ice with the Stanley Cup.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "After being upset by the Montreal Canadiens in the 1951 semi-finals, Detroit won its fifth Stanley Cup in 1952, sweeping both the Maple Leafs and the Canadiens, with the Production Line of Howe, Abel and Lindsay joined by second-year goaltender Terry Sawchuk. Detroit became the first team in 17 years to go undefeated in the playoffs. They also scored 24 playoff goals, compared to Toronto and Montreal's combined total of 5. Abel left the Red Wings for Chicago during the off-season, and his spot on the roster was replaced by Alex Delvecchio. In December 1952, James E. Norris died. He was succeeded as team president by his daughter, Marguerite, which made her the first woman to head an NHL franchise.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Following another playoff upset in 1953 at the hands of the Bruins, the Red Wings won back-to-back Stanley Cups, beating the rival powerhouse Montreal Canadiens. Both of the Stanley Cup Finals played between the two teams were decided in seven games. The seventh game during the 1954 Stanley Cup Finals was won with one of the oddest cup winning goals ever, when the 5'7\" left winger Tony Leswick, known more for his relentless checking than scoring prowess, shot a puck towards the Montreal goal from the middle of the ice. Habs defenseman Doug Harvey tried to gain control of the wobbly puck with his glove but instead redirected it past Montreal goalie Gerry McNeil. The repeat of the series the season after was closely contested, as all seven games were won by the home team, with Detroit taking the seventh game. Montreal was sorely lacking its all-star Maurice Richard, who was suspended after hitting a linesman during the regular season, and the Red Wings' stars carried their team, as Lindsay scored four goals in a single game and Howe scored 20 points during the playoffs, 12 of which during the Finals, all new records in the league.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The 1954–55 season ended a run of seven straight regular season titles, an NHL record. During the 1955 off-season, Marguerite Norris lost an intra-family power struggle, and was forced to turn over the Red Wings to her younger brother Bruce. Detroit and Montreal once again met, in the 1956 Stanley Cup Finals, but this time the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup, their first of five in a row. In 1957, Lindsay, who had scored 30 goals and led the league in assists with 55, teamed up with Harvey to help start the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA). As a result, he and goaltender Glenn Hall were promptly traded to Chicago.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1959, the Red Wings missed the playoffs for the first time in 21 years. However, within a couple of years, the franchise was able to rejuvenate itself. The Red Wings made the Finals in four of the next six years between 1961 and 1966. However, they came away empty-handed.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Only a year after making the Finals, the Red Wings finished a distant fifth, 24 points out of the playoffs. It was the beginning of a slump that they would not emerge from in almost 20 years. This period is derisively known as the \"Dead Wings\" era.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "One factor in the Red Wings' decline was the end of the old development system. Another factor was Ned Harkness, who was hired as coach in 1970 and was promoted to general manager midway through the season. A successful college hockey coach, Harkness tried to force his two-way style of play on a veteran Red Wings team resistant to change. They chafed under his rule in which he demanded short hair and no smoking, and put other rules in place regarding drinking and phone calls. Harkness was forced to resign in 1974, ending the period colloquially referred to as \"Darkness with Harkness\".",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "During the expansion season of 1967–68, the Red Wings acquired longtime star left-winger Frank Mahovlich from the defending Cup champions in Toronto. Mahovlich would go on a line with Howe and Delvecchio, and in 1968–69, he scored a career-high 49 goals and had two All-Star seasons in Detroit. However, Mahovlich was traded to Montreal in 1971, while Howe announced his retirement the same year. Throughout the decade, the Red Wings were hampered due to a number of factors.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "On December 27, 1979, during the 1979–80 season, the Red Wings officially began playing at the Joe Louis Arena after leaving the Olympia, where they had played since 1927. In 1982, after 50 years of family ownership, Bruce Norris sold the Red Wings to Mike Ilitch, founder of the pizza chain Little Caesars.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1983, the Red Wings drafted Steve Yzerman, a center from the Peterborough Petes, with their first-round pick. He led the team in scoring in his rookie year. That season, with John Ogrodnick, Ivan Boldirev, Ron Duguay, and Brad Park, Detroit made the playoffs for the first time in six years. Park ended up winning the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy. Park was later asked to coach the Red Wings, only to be sacked after just 45 games in 1985–86. They ended up in last place with a 17–57–6 record for only 40 points. This was the same year that the Red Wings added enforcer Bob Probert, one of the most familiar faces of the team during the 1980s and 1990s.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In the 1986–87 season, with Yzerman, now the captain following the departure of Danny Gare, joined by Petr Klima, Adam Oates, Gerard Gallant, defenseman Darren Veitch, and new head coach Jacques Demers, the Red Wings won a playoff series for only the second time in the modern era. They made it all the way to the conference finals against the powerful Edmonton Oilers, but lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champions in five games. In 1988, they won their first division title in 23 years. They did so, however, in a relatively weak division, as no other team in the Norris finished above .500. As was the case in the previous season, they made it to the conference finals only to lose again to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Oilers in five games.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1989, Yzerman scored a career-best 65 goals, but Detroit was upset in the first round by the Chicago Blackhawks. The following season, Yzerman scored 62 goals, but the team missed the playoffs.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "After the season, Demers was fired and was replaced by Bryan Murray as the new head coach. Murray was unable to get them back over .500, but they returned to the playoffs. Yzerman was joined by Sergei Fedorov, who would be an award-winner and frequent all-star for the team during the 1990s. In 1991, the team signed free agent Ray Sheppard, who would score a career-best 52 goals three years later. In 1993, the Red Wings acquired top defenseman Paul Coffey. Also joining the Red Wings around this time were draft picks Vladimir Konstantinov, Nicklas Lidstrom, Vyacheslav Kozlov, Darren McCarty, and Chris Osgood.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1993, former Montreal Canadiens coach Scotty Bowman was hired as the new head coach. In his second season, the lockout-shortened 1994–95 NHL season, Bowman guided Detroit to its first Finals appearance in 29 years, only to be swept by the New Jersey Devils.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "During the 1995–96 season, the Red Wings won a then NHL record 62 games. However, after defeating the St. Louis Blues in seven games, they would fall in the Western Conference finals to the eventual Stanley Cup champions, the Colorado Avalanche.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The following season, the Red Wings acquired Brendan Shanahan and Larry Murphy. In the playoffs, they would defeat the St. Louis Blues, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and the Avalanche in the first three rounds. In the Finals, the Red Wings swept the Philadelphia Flyers. It was their first Stanley Cup since 1955, breaking the longest drought (42 years long) in the league at that time. Mike Vernon was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Misfortune befell the Red Wings six days after their championship; defenseman Vladimir Konstantinov, one of the members of the \"Russian Five\", suffered a brain injury in a limousine accident, and his career came to an abrupt end. As a result, the team dedicated the 1997–98 season to him. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in four games, this time over the Washington Capitals, and Konstantinov was brought onto the ice in his wheelchair so he could touch it.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The following season, the Red Wings appeared to be poised to win a third consecutive Stanley Cup when they acquired three-time top blueliner Chris Chelios from his hometown Chicago Blackhawks in March 1999. Also acquired at the trade deadline were defenseman Ulf Samuelsson, winger Wendel Clark, and goaltender Bill Ranford. Despite high aspirations, however, Detroit would end up losing in the Western Conference semi-finals to Colorado in six games. In 2000, the Red Wings would finish second in the Central Division. Just like the previous season, however, they would lose to the Avalanche in the Western Conference semi-finals.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 2001, Detroit, the NHL's second-best team in the regular season, were upset in the playoffs by the Los Angeles Kings. During the ensuing off-season, the team acquired goaltender Dominik Hasek (the defending Vezina Trophy winner) and forwards Luc Robitaille and Brett Hull. Russian prospect Pavel Datsyuk also joined the team. Strengthened by the additions, the Red Wings posted the league's best record in the 2001–02 regular season and defeated Colorado in seven games in the Western Conference finals after beating the Vancouver Canucks and St. Louis Blues in rounds one and two. The Red Wings then went on to capture another Stanley Cup, in five games, over the Carolina Hurricanes, with Nicklas Lidstrom winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs' MVP. Bowman and Hasek both retired after the season.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The off-season saw the Red Wings promote associate coach Dave Lewis to the head coach position after Bowman's retirement. In the market for a new starting goaltender after Hasek's retirement, they signed Curtis Joseph from the Toronto Maple Leafs to a three-year, $24 million deal. Also new to the lineup was highly touted Swedish prospect Henrik Zetterberg. The Red Wings finished the season second in the Western Conference, which pitted them in the 2003 playoffs against the seventh-seeded Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. The Mighty Ducks shocked the hockey world when they swept the Red Wings in four games en route to a Finals appearance.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In the off-season, long time Red Wing Fedorov signed with the Mighty Ducks as a free agent. Additionally, Hasek opted to come out of retirement and join the Red Wings for the 2003–04 season. Joseph, despite being one of the highest-paid players in the NHL, spent part of the season in the minor leagues. Hasek himself would be sidelined with a groin injury. Notwithstanding, the Red Wings would finish atop of the Central Division and the NHL standings. The Red Wings eliminated the Nashville Predators in six games in the first round of the 2004 playoffs, which led to a second round match-up with the Calgary Flames. The teams split the first four games, and headed to Detroit for a pivotal Game 5, which the Red Wings lost 1–0. They were then eliminated two nights later in Calgary by the same score in overtime. The Red Wings did not play in the 2004–05 season due to the lockout, which cancelled the entire NHL season.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On July 15, 2005, Mike Babcock, former head coach in Anaheim, became the new head coach for the Red Wings. On November 21, 2005, defenseman Jiri Fischer went into cardiac arrest and collapsed on the bench during a game against the Nashville Predators. The game was cancelled because of his injury and was made up on January 23, 2006. This was the first time in NHL history a game had been postponed due to an injury. While the game was played for the full 60 minutes, the Predators were allowed to maintain their 1–0 lead from the original game and won 3–2. The Red Wings won the Presidents' Trophy with a 58–16–8 record, earning them 124 points and secured home ice advantage for the entire playoffs. They opened the 2006 playoffs against the Edmonton Oilers with a 3–2 overtime victory at Joe Louis Arena, but the Oilers won four of the next five games to take the series.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Continuing the shakeup of the Red Wings roster, the off-season saw the departure of Brendan Shanahan, the return of Dominik Hasek and the retirement of Steve Yzerman. Yzerman retired with the distinction of having been the longest-serving team captain in NHL history.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Red Wings opened the 2006–07 season with Nicklas Lidstrom as the new captain. The team retired Yzerman's jersey number 19 on January 2, 2007. The Red Wings finished first in the Western Conference and tied for first in the NHL with the Buffalo Sabres, but the Sabres were awarded the Presidents' Trophy because they had more wins. Detroit advanced to the third round of the 2007 playoffs after defeating Calgary and the San Jose Sharks both in six games, coming back to win three-straight after the Sharks had a 2–1 series lead. The Red Wings would then lose to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Anaheim Ducks in the Western Conference finals in six games.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "To start the 2007–08 campaign, Zetterberg recorded at least a point in each of Detroit's first 17 games, setting a club record. The Wings cruised to the playoffs, where they faced the Nashville Predators. After goaltender Dominik Hasek played poorly in Games 3 and 4 of the series, both losses, head coach Mike Babcock replaced him with Chris Osgood. Osgood never left the net for the remainder of the playoffs, as the Red Wings came back in that series on their way to winning their 11th Stanley Cup. The final victory came in Game 6 on June 4, 2008, against the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3–2. This was the Red Wings' fourth Stanley Cup in 11 years. Zetterberg scored the winning goal in the decisive game, and was also named the winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs. It was the first time a team captained by a non-North American player (Lidstrom) won the Stanley Cup.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "On July 2, 2008, the Red Wings announced the signing of Marian Hossa. On January 1, 2009, the Red Wings played the Chicago Blackhawks in the second NHL Winter Classic at Chicago's Wrigley Field, defeating them 6–4. Although they finished second in the conference to the San Jose Sharks, the Wings became the first team in NHL history to top 100 points in nine straight seasons. In the playoffs, the Red Wings swept the Columbus Blue Jackets, then defeated the eighth-seeded Anaheim Ducks in a hard-fought seven-game series. They took on the vastly improved Chicago Blackhawks in the conference finals, winning in five games. The Red Wings would face the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Finals for a second consecutive year, but this series would feature a different outcome as the Penguins defeated the Red Wings in seven games. The Red Wings became only the second NHL team to lose the Stanley Cup at home in Game 7.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Red Wings began the 2009–10 NHL season in Stockholm, losing both games to the St. Louis Blues 4–3 and 5–3, respectively. They were plagued by injuries throughout the season and lost the second most man games to injury, with only the last place Edmonton Oilers losing more. The beginning of the season was a struggle for the Red Wings, with key players out of the lineup, including Zetterberg, Tomas Holmstrom, Johan Franzen, Valtteri Filppula and Niklas Kronwall. After the Olympic break, Detroit posted a record of 13–3–2 and earned 28 points, the most by any team in the NHL. This run helped them secure the fifth playoff seed in the Western Conference. This, however, was the first time the Red Wings did not have home ice advantage in a playoff series in ten seasons. Detroit won their first-round playoff series over the Phoenix Coyotes in seven games. In the second round, they would be defeated by the San Jose Sharks in five games.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "A healthier Red Wings team finished the 2010–11 NHL season with a 47–25–10 record and 104 points to win the Central Division title. They once again faced the Phoenix Coyotes in the first round of the playoffs, this time sweeping them 4–0. The Red Wings then went on to face the Sharks in round two. After losing the first three games of the series, the Red Wings won three consecutive games to force a Game 7, becoming just the eighth team in NHL history to accomplish the feat. The Red Wings lost Game 7 to the Sharks by a score of 3–2 and were eliminated.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "During the 2011 off-season, Red Wings defenseman Brian Rafalski retired. Detroit soon signed free agent defenseman Ian White to take his place. Long-time Red Wings Chris Osgood and Kris Draper also announced their retirement from hockey, with both soon taking positions within the club. Detroit signed goaltender Ty Conklin for his second stint with the team. Tragedy struck the organization and the rest of the NHL with the 2011 Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash, which killed former Red Wings assistant coach Brad McCrimmon and defenseman Ruslan Salei, who had joined the KHL team during the summer. Stefan Liv, a former Red Wings goaltending prospect, was also among the fatalities. The Red Wings then added a patch to the left arm of their uniforms with the trio's initials.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "During the season, the Red Wings won an NHL-record 23 consecutive home games. The Red Wings also made the NHL playoffs, extending their streak of 21-straight playoff appearances, as the fifth seed. They were defeated in five games by their opening round opponent, the Nashville Predators. On May 31, 2012, Nicklas Lidstrom retired.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Zetterberg was named successor to Lidstrom as team captain. On July 1, 2012, the first day of the NHL free agency period, the Red Wings signed Swiss forward Damien Brunner to a one-year, entry-level contract; forward Jordin Tootoo to a three-year, $5.7 million contract; and goaltender Jonas Gustavsson to a two-year, $3 million deal.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The team won their final four games of the 2012–13 season to earn the seventh seed of the playoffs. The Red Wings' 3–0 victory over the Dallas Stars on April 27, 2013, preserved their streak of 22 consecutive playoff appearances. As the seventh seed in the 2013 playoffs, the Red Wings faced the second-seeded Anaheim Ducks. They survived a fierce battle that included four overtime games, winning the series 4–3 after a 3–2 Game 7 victory in Anaheim. The next round pitted the Red Wings against the top-seeded Chicago Blackhawks. Despite jumping out to a 3–1 series lead, the Red Wings would ultimately lose to the eventual Stanley Cup champions in seven games.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "On July 5, 2013, the Red Wings signed long time Ottawa Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson to a one-year contract and long time Florida Panther Stephen Weiss to a five-year contract. In the 2013–14 season, the Red Wings moved to the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference as part of the NHL's realignment. The move to the Eastern Conference allowed them to play a majority of their games against teams in the Eastern Time Zone. On April 9, 2014, the Red Wings clinched their 23rd consecutive playoff appearance. They would be eliminated in the first round by the Boston Bruins.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "On April 9, 2015, the Red Wings clinched their 24th consecutive playoff appearance, thus extending their streak. The team was eliminated in the first round by the Tampa Bay Lightning. Petr Mrazek had earned the starting goaltender role from Jimmy Howard, and Kronwall was suspended for Game 7 as Tampa Bay erased a 3–2 deficit to win the series. Mike Babcock, concluding the final year of his contract, left the Red Wings to become the new head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Jeff Blashill, head coach of the Red Wings' top minor league affiliate, the Grand Rapids Griffins, was named his successor on June 9.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "On April 9, 2016, despite the Red Wings losing 3–2 to the New York Rangers, the Ottawa Senators defeated the Boston Bruins 6–1 as the Red Wings narrowly made the playoffs and extended their streak to a 25th season. They would lose in the first round to the Lightning again, this time in five games.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "During the off-season, Datsyuk decided to return to Russia. On February 10, 2017, club owner Mike Ilitch died. The Red Wings' playoff streak ended after 25 seasons in the 2016–17 season. The Red Wings won their last game at Joe Louis Arena 4–1 on April 9, 2017, against the New Jersey Devils.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Red Wings played their first regular season game at Little Caesars Arena on October 5, 2017, winning 4–2 over the Minnesota Wild. The Red Wings finished the 2017–18 season with a 30–39–13 record. They missed the playoffs for the second season in a row, marking the first time since the early 1980s the team missed the playoffs in consecutive years. The Red Wings finished the 2018–19 season with a 32–40–10 record, missing the playoffs for a third consecutive season.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On April 19, 2019, the Red Wings announced that Steve Yzerman would rejoin the team as general manager and executive vice president. On February 21, 2020, the Red Wings became the first team to be eliminated from playoff contention before the trade deadline since the Pittsburgh Penguins did so in the 2003–04 season. On March 10, 2020, the Red Wings clinched the worst overall record in NHL for the first time since the 1985–86 season. On March 12, 2020, the 2019–20 season was suspended by the NHL due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 26, 2020, the NHL announced that the rest of the season was over for the seven teams that did not qualify for the 24-team Stanley Cup Playoffs, which included the Red Wings. With a record of 17–49–5, this was the first time since the 1985–86 season that the Red Wings finished with fewer than 20 wins. The Red Wings also became the second team since the 2004–05 NHL lockout, and the subsequent start of the salary cap era, to finish with a sub-.300 points percentage, along with the 2016–17 Colorado Avalanche. Their .275 points percentage was the worst for an NHL team since the 1999–2000 Atlanta Thrashers.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Dylan Larkin was named the Red Wings captain on January 13, 2021, who succeeded Henrik Zetterberg following his retirement in 2018. On April 26, the Red Wings were eliminated from playoff contention for the fifth consecutive season. They would ultimately finish with a 19–27–10 record. The Red Wings finished the 2021–22 season at 32–40–10. They missed the playoff for the sixth consecutive season. On April 30, 2022, Jeff Blashill was fired as head coach. They then hired Derek Lalonde as their head coach on June 30, 2022. During 2022–23 season, the Red Wings would re-sign Dylan Larkin to an eight-year contract extension. The Red Wings finished the season at 35–37–10. They missed the playoffs for the seventh consecutive season.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The Red Wings' jerseys (traditionally known in hockey as \"sweaters\") have been more or less the same since the 1930s – a white or red base with red or white piping. The only significant changes have been the replacement of the word Detroit with the \"winged wheel\" logo in 1932, and vertical arch lettering for the players' names and block letters in 1983. The Red Wings wear the vertical arched letters in the regular season and playoffs, but use straight serifed nameplates during the preseason.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The Hockey News voted the Red Wings' \"winged wheel\" logo the second best in the league in 2008. The Red Wings, like all NHL teams, updated their jerseys to the new Rbk Edge standard for the 2007–08 NHL season. The Red Wings kept their design as close to original as possible, the exceptions being: On the road (white) jersey, there was more red on the sleeves as the color panel began closer to the shoulder, and the letters of the captain and alternate captains were moved to the right shoulder.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "When Adidas became the uniform outfitter starting with the 2017–18 season, the Red Wings kept the same basic look.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Red Wings have rarely used any alternate logos or uniforms since the trend became popular in the 1990s, the sole exceptions were select games of the 1991–92 season commemorating the league's 75th anniversary, and for a commemorative game on January 27, 1994, at Chicago Stadium. Those jerseys were based on the uniforms worn by the team (then the Detroit Cougars) in 1927–28. The throwbacks are primarily white with five red horizontal stripes on the body, the broadest middle stripe bearing \"Detroit\" in bold letters, and three red stripes on the sleeves. This jersey served as the basis for the uniforms worn by Wayne Gretzky's team of NHLPA All-Stars, nicknamed the \"99ers\", for their exhibition tour in Europe during the 1994–95 NHL lockout.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Red Wings wore alternative \"retro\" jerseys for the 2009 NHL Winter Classic in Chicago. The jerseys were based on the uniforms worn by the Detroit Cougars during their inaugural season of 1926–27. These jerseys were white, with a single bold red stripe on the sleeves and chest, and a uniquely styled white Old English D centered on the chest stripe. These jerseys were also worn for their final 2009 regular season home game, again against the Chicago Blackhawks. The Red Wings again used an alternate jersey mimicking throwback jerseys for the 2014 NHL Winter Classic against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Michigan Stadium.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The Red Wings wore a specially designed one-time-only jersey for their Stadium Series game in Denver against the Colorado Avalanche on February 27, 2016. The majority of this jersey was the traditional red, decorated with a thick diagonal white stripe running from the player's right shoulder across the front towards the left hip. The bottom of each sleeve featured a thick white stripe from wrist to elbow. The crest on the front of the jersey was a stylized red D. The words \"Red Wings\" were printed in all capital letters on the left side of the collar, and the phrase \"EST. 1926\" was printed inside the back of the collar. These jerseys featured the current Red Wings logo on the left shoulder cap. The names and numbers were printed larger than traditional NHL jerseys to increase visibility and player identification for fans watching the game at Coors Field, a stadium traditionally used for Major League Baseball.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The Red Wings unveiled a uniform patch on September 27, 2016, to honor Gordie Howe, who died on June 10, 2016. The patch was a depiction of Howe's jersey number 9 and was worn by the team above the logo on the front of the jersey on the left side of the chest for all 82 regular season games during the 2016–17 season.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The Red Wings wore a specially designed one-time-only jersey for the Centennial Classic in Toronto against the Toronto Maple Leafs on January 1, 2017. It was a white jersey that had four stripes on the arms. Three of the stripes were red, while the fourth was silver. On the silver stripes were the years the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. The logo and numbers were outlined in silver.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "For the 2020–21 season, the Red Wings would wear special \"Reverse Retro\" alternate jerseys designed by Adidas. The uniform featured a white base and white sleeves inspired by the Red Wings' road uniforms of the Original Six era. Silver stripes replaced red stripes in commemoration of the team's 11 Stanley Cup championships and the 2017 Centennial Classic. A second \"Reverse Retro\" uniform was unveiled in the 2022–23 season, using the 1991–92 throwback uniform based on the original Cougars' uniforms but with a red base and black stripes.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The Red Wings' logo received significant media attention in August 2017 when it was discovered that a white supremacist group used a modified version of it, in which the wheel's spokes consisted of the occult SS symbol Black Sun; it was the aegis of their shields during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. As a result, the Red Wings condemned the group for the usage of the logo and threatened legal action.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The \"Legend of the Octopus\" is a sports tradition during Detroit Red Wings playoff games, in which an octopus is thrown onto the ice surface for good luck. During the playoffs, Joe Louis Arena was generally adorned with a giant octopus with red eyes, nicknamed \"Al\" after former head ice manager Al Sobotka.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The 1952 playoffs featured the start of the octopus throw. The owner of a local fish market, Peter Cusimano, threw one from the stands onto the ice. The eight legs are symbolic of the eight wins it took to win the Stanley Cup at the time. The Red Wings went on to sweep both of their opponents that year en route to a Stanley Cup championship. The NHL has, at various times, tried to eliminate this tradition but it continues to this day.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Sobotka was responsible for removing the thrown creatures from the ice. When the Red Wings played at Joe Louis Arena, he was known for swinging the tossed octopuses above his head when walking off the ice. On April 19, 2008, the NHL sent a memo to the Red Wings that forbade this; they said that violating the mandate would result in a $10,000 fine. Instead, it was to up to the linesmen to remove the octopuses. In an email to the Detroit Free Press, NHL spokesman Frank Brown justified the ban because matter flew off the octopus and got on the ice when Sobotka swung it above his head. This ban was later loosened to allow for the octopus twirling to take place at the Zamboni entrance.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Typically during the last minute or two of games that the Red Wings are winning, especially around the end of the season and during the playoffs, fans are known to start singing along to Journey's \"Don't Stop Believin'.\" The song is played over the PA system and continues until it is muted while the crowd sings the words \"Born and raised in South Detroit,\" then the song resumes over the speakers in the arena.",
"title": "Team information"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The Red Wings' flagship radio stations are Detroit sister stations WXYT-AM 1270 and WXYT-FM 97.1. Games are carried on both stations unless there is a conflict with Detroit Tigers baseball. There are several affiliate stations throughout Michigan and Southwestern Ontario.",
"title": "Broadcasters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The Red Wings' exclusive local television rights are held by Bally Sports Detroit.",
"title": "Broadcasters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Announcers:",
"title": "Broadcasters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Four members of the Red Wings organization have received the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award:",
"title": "Broadcasters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Lynch called the first locally televised game at Olympia for the original WWJ-TV in 1949. He remained with the organization for 63 years, serving as director of publicity from 1975 to 1982, and was the public address announcer from 1982 until his death in 2012. From 2008 to 2012, a second PA announcer was added to work alongside him, first John Fossen, then Erich Freiny. Freiny took over as the sole PA announcer following Lynch's death.",
"title": "Broadcasters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by the Detroit Red Wings. For the full season-by-season history, see List of Detroit Red Wings seasons.",
"title": "Season-by-season record"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, OTL = Overtime losses, ROW = Regulation + OT wins, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against",
"title": "Season-by-season record"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Updated December 18, 2023",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Detroit Red Wings acknowledge an affiliation with many inductees to the Hockey Hall of Fame, including 67 former players and 12 builders of the sport. The 12 individuals recognized as builders by the Hall of Fame include former Red Wings executives, general managers, head coaches, and owners. In addition to players and builders, several broadcasters have been awarded the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award from the Hockey Hall of Fame. Budd Lynch, a radio play-by-play announcer, was the first Red Wings broadcaster to be awarded the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award. Lynch also served as Detroit's public address announcer from 1985 until his death in 2012. In addition to Lynch, Bruce Martyn, Mickey Redmond, and Dave Strader have also won the award.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Players",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Builders",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The Red Wings have retired eight numbers. The first number the Red Wings retired was No. 9 in 1972 in honor of Gordie Howe, who played right wing for the team from 1946 to 1971. Howe won both the Art Ross Trophy and the Hart Memorial Trophy six times each and won the Stanley Cup as a Red Wing four times. In 2007, the Red Wings retired Steve Yzerman's No. 19. During Yzerman's career, he won the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, the Conn Smythe Trophy, the Frank J. Selke Trophy, the Lester Patrick Trophy, and the Ted Lindsay Award. Yzerman served as Detroit's captain for 19 seasons, an NHL record, and won the Stanley Cup three times as a player with the Red Wings. The most recent retired number is Red Kelly's No. 4, which was retired on February 1, 2019. During Kelly's 13-year career with the Red Wings, he won four Stanley Cups, the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy three times, and the James Norris Memorial Trophy once.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The Red Wings have also made the number 6 of Larry Aurie and the number 16 of Vladimir Konstantinov no longer available for issue. However, the numbers are not considered to be officially retired. Although Aurie's number was retired in 1938 by James E. Norris, current team owners do not consider the number to be retired. Konstantinov's number has not been issued to any player since he was permanently disabled in a vehicle accident after the 1997 Stanley Cup Finals. Number 99 is also unavailable as it was retired by the league in honor of Wayne Gretzky.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "All the players who have served as team captain with the Detroit franchise.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "These players rank in the top ten in franchise history in scoring as of the end of the 2022–23 season. Figures are updated after each completed NHL season.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Note: Pos = Position; GP = Games played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points; P/G = Points per game",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "These players rank in the top ten in franchise history for wins as of the end of the 2018−19 season. Figures are updated after each completed NHL season. There is a four-way tie for ninth place in postseason wins, resulting in 12 players listed in that table.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Note: GP = Games played; W = Wins; L = Losses; T = Ties; OT = Overtime losses; SO = Shutouts; GAA = Goals against average; * = current Red Wings player",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Footnotes",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Citations",
"title": "References"
}
]
| The Detroit Red Wings are a professional ice hockey team based in Detroit. The Red Wings compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference, and are one of the Original Six teams of the league. Founded in 1926, the team was known as the Detroit Cougars until 1930. For the next two seasons, the team was named the Detroit Falcons, before changing their name to the Red Wings in 1932. As of 2023, the Red Wings have won the most Stanley Cup championships of any NHL franchise based in the United States (11), and are third overall in total Stanley Cup championships, behind the Montreal Canadiens (24) and Toronto Maple Leafs (13). The Wings played their home games at Joe Louis Arena from 1979 until 2017, after playing for 52 years at Olympia Stadium. They moved into Little Caesars Arena beginning with the 2017–18 season. The Red Wings are one of the most popular and successful franchises in the NHL; fans and sports commentators refer to the Detroit area as "Hockeytown", which has been a registered trademark owned by the franchise since 1996. Between the 1931–32 and 1965–66 seasons, the Red Wings missed the playoffs only four times. They struggled between the 1966–67 and 1982–83 seasons, only making the playoffs twice in that stretch. However, thereafter, from 1983–84 to 2015–16, they made the playoffs 30 times in 32 seasons, including 25-straight from 1990–91 to 2015–16; in 2006, this became the longest active streak of postseason appearances in all of North American professional sports and finished tied for the third-longest streak in NHL history. Since 1983–84, the Red Wings have tallied six regular season first-place finishes and have won the Stanley Cup four times. | 2001-11-09T21:44:27Z | 2023-12-23T14:28:54Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Red_Wings |
8,796 | Demiurge | In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge (/ˈdɛmi.ɜːrdʒ/) (sometimes spelled as demiurg) is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The Gnostics adopted the term demiurge. Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not necessarily the same as the creator figure in the monotheistic sense, because the demiurge itself and the material from which the demiurge fashions the universe are both considered consequences of something else. Depending on the system, they may be considered either uncreated and eternal or the product of some other entity.
The word demiurge is an English word derived from demiurgus, a Latinised form of the Greek δημιουργός or dēmiurgós. It was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan", but gradually came to mean "producer", and eventually "creator". The philosophical usage and the proper noun derive from Plato's Timaeus, written c. 360 BC, where the demiurge is presented as the creator of the universe. The demiurge is also described as a creator in the Platonic (c. 310–90 BC) and Middle Platonic (c. 90 BC–AD 300) philosophical traditions. In the various branches of the Neoplatonic school (third century onwards), the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas, but (in most Neoplatonic systems) is still not itself "the One". In the arch-dualist ideology of the various Gnostic systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world is good. According to some strains of Gnosticism, the demiurge is malevolent, as it is linked to the material world. In others, including the teaching of Valentinus, the demiurge is simply ignorant or misguided.
Plato, as the speaker Timaeus, refers to the Demiurge frequently in the Socratic dialogue Timaeus (28a ff.), c. 360 BC. The main character refers to the Demiurge as the entity who "fashioned and shaped" the material world. Timaeus describes the Demiurge as unreservedly benevolent, and so it desires a world as good as possible. The result of his work is a universe as a living god with lesser gods, such as the stars, planets, and gods of traditional religion, inside it. Timaeus is a philosophical reconciliation of Hesiod's cosmology in his Theogony, syncretically reconciling Hesiod to Homer, though other scholars have argued that Plato's theology 'invokes a broad cultural horizon without committing to any specific poetic or religious tradition'.
In Middle Platonist and Numenius's Neo-Pythagorean cosmogenies, the Demiurge is second God as the nous or thought of intelligibles and sensibles (Middle Platonism and Neo-Pythagoreanism overlapped: both originating in the early 1st century BC and extending through to the end of the 2nd century AD or even into the 3rd century).
The work of Plotinus and other later Platonists in the 3rd century AD to further clarify the Demiurge is known as Neoplatonism. To Plotinus, the second emanation represents an uncreated second cause (see Pythagoras' Dyad). Plotinus sought to reconcile Aristotle's energeia with Plato's Demiurge, which, as Demiurge and mind (nous), is a critical component in the ontological construct of human consciousness used to explain and clarify substance theory within Platonic realism (also called idealism). In order to reconcile Aristotelian with Platonian philosophy, Plotinus metaphorically identified the demiurge (or nous) within the pantheon of the Greek Gods as Zeus.
The first and highest aspect of God is described by Plato as the One (Τὸ Ἕν, 'To Hen'), the source, or the Monad. This is the God above the Demiurge, and manifests through the actions of the Demiurge. The Monad emanated the demiurge or Nous (consciousness) from its "indeterminate" vitality due to the monad being so abundant that it overflowed back onto itself, causing self-reflection. This self-reflection of the indeterminate vitality was referred to by Plotinus as the "Demiurge" or creator. The second principle is organization in its reflection of the nonsentient force or dynamis, also called the one or the Monad. The dyad is energeia emanated by the one that is then the work, process or activity called nous, Demiurge, mind, consciousness that organizes the indeterminate vitality into the experience called the material world, universe, cosmos. Plotinus also elucidates the equation of matter with nothing or non-being in The Enneads which more correctly is to express the concept of idealism or that there is not anything or anywhere outside of the "mind" or nous (c.f. pantheism).
Plotinus' form of Platonic idealism is to treat the Demiurge, nous, as the contemplative faculty (ergon) within man which orders the force (dynamis) into conscious reality. In this, he claimed to reveal Plato's true meaning: a doctrine he learned from Platonic tradition that did not appear outside the academy or in Plato's text. This tradition of creator God as nous (the manifestation of consciousness), can be validated in the works of pre-Plotinus philosophers such as Numenius, as well as a connection between Hebrew and Platonic cosmology (see also Philo).
The Demiurge of Neoplatonism is the Nous (mind of God), and is one of the three ordering principles:
Before Numenius of Apamea and Plotinus' Enneads, no Platonic works ontologically clarified the Demiurge from the allegory in Plato's Timaeus. The idea of Demiurge was, however, addressed before Plotinus in the works of Christian writer Justin Martyr who built his understanding of the Demiurge on the works of Numenius.
Later, the Neoplatonist Iamblichus changed the role of the "One", effectively altering the role of the Demiurge as second cause or dyad, which was one of the reasons that Iamblichus and his teacher Porphyry came into conflict.
The figure of the Demiurge emerges in the theoretic of Iamblichus, which conjoins the transcendent, incommunicable “One,” or Source. Here, at the summit of this system, the Source and Demiurge (material realm) coexist via the process of henosis. Iamblichus describes the One as a monad whose first principle or emanation is intellect (nous), while among "the many" that follow it there is a second, super-existent "One" that is the producer of intellect or soul (psyche).
The "One" is further separated into spheres of intelligence; the first and superior sphere is objects of thought, while the latter sphere is the domain of thought. Thus, a triad is formed of the intelligible nous, the intellective nous, and the psyche in order to reconcile further the various Hellenistic philosophical schools of Aristotle's actus and potentia (actuality and potentiality) of the unmoved mover and Plato's Demiurge.
Then within this intellectual triad Iamblichus assigns the third rank to the Demiurge, identifying it with the perfect or Divine nous with the intellectual triad being promoted to a hebdomad (pure intellect).
In the theoretic of Plotinus, nous produces nature through intellectual mediation, thus the intellectualizing gods are followed by a triad of psychic gods.
Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God or Supreme Being and the demiurgic "creator" of the material, identified in some traditions with Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew Bible. Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being, with his creation initially intending the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality. In other systems, the Demiurge is instead portrayed as "merely" incompetent or foolish: his creation is an unconscious attempt to replicate the divine world (the pleroma) based on faint recollections, and thus ends up fundamentally flawed. Thus, in such systems, the Demiurge is a proposed solution to the problem of evil: while the divine beings are omniscient and omnibenevolent, the Demiurge who rules over our own physical world is not.
Psalm 82 begins, "God stands in the assembly of El [LXX: assembly of gods], in the midst of the gods he renders judgment", indicating a plurality of gods, although it does not indicate that these gods were co-actors in creation. Philo had inferred from the expression "Let us make man" of the Book of Genesis that God had used other beings as assistants in the creation of man, and he explains in this way why man is capable of vice as well as virtue, ascribing the origin of the latter to God, of the former to his helpers in the work of creation.
The earliest Gnostic sects ascribe the work of creation to angels, some of them using the same passage in Genesis. So Irenaeus tells of the system of Simon Magus, of the system of Menander, of the system of Saturninus, in which the number of these angels is reckoned as seven, and of the system of Carpocrates. In Basilides's system, he reports, the world was made by the angels who occupy the lowest heaven; but special mention is made of their chief, who is said to have been the God of the Jews, to have led that people out of the land of Egypt, and to have given them their law. The prophecies are ascribed not to the chief but to the other world-making angels.
The Latin translation, confirmed by Hippolytus of Rome, makes Irenaeus state that according to Cerinthus (who shows Ebionite influence), creation was made by a power quite separate from the Supreme God and ignorant of him. Theodoret, who here copies Irenaeus, turns this into the plural number "powers", and so Epiphanius of Salamis represents Cerinthus as agreeing with Carpocrates in the doctrine that the world was made by angels.
In the Archontic, Sethian, and Ophite systems, which have many affinities with the doctrine of Valentinus, the making of the world is ascribed to a company of seven archons, whose names are given, but still more prominent is their chief, "Yaldabaoth" (also known as "Yaltabaoth" or "Ialdabaoth").
In the Apocryphon of John c. AD 120–180, the demiurge declares that he has made the world by himself:
Now the archon ["ruler"] who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas ["fool"], and the third is Samael ["blind god"]. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.
He is Demiurge and maker of man, but as a ray of light from above enters the body of man and gives him a soul, Yaldabaoth is filled with envy; he tries to limit man's knowledge by forbidding him the fruit of knowledge in paradise. At the consummation of all things, all light will return to the Pleroma. But Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge, with the material world, will be cast into the lower depths.
Yaldabaoth is frequently called "the Lion-faced", leontoeides, and is said to have the body of a serpent. The demiurge is also described as having a fiery nature, applying the words of Moses to him: "the Lord our God is a burning and consuming fire". Hippolytus claims that Simon used a similar description.
In Pistis Sophia, Yaldabaoth has already sunk from his high estate and resides in Chaos, where, with his forty-nine demons, he tortures wicked souls in boiling rivers of pitch, and with other punishments (pp. 257, 382). He is an archon with the face of a lion, half flame, and half darkness.
In the Nag Hammadi text On the Origin of the World, the three sons of Yaldabaoth are listed as Yao, Eloai, and Astaphaios.
Under the name of Nebro (rebel), Yaldabaoth is called an angel in the apocryphal Gospel of Judas. He is first mentioned in "The Cosmos, Chaos, and the Underworld" as one of the twelve angels to come "into being [to] rule over chaos and the [underworld]". He comes from heaven, and it is said his "face flashed with fire and [his] appearance was defiled with blood". Nebro creates six angels in addition to the angel Saklas to be his assistants. These six, in turn, create another twelve angels "with each one receiving a portion in the heavens".
The etymology of the name Yaldabaoth has been subject to many speculative theories. Until 1974, etymologies deriving from the unattested Aramaic: בהותא, romanized: bāhūthā, supposedly meaning "chaos", represented the majority view. Following an analysis by the Jewish historian of religion Gershom Scholem published in 1974, this etymology no longer enjoyed any notable support. His analysis showed the unattested Aramaic term to have been fabulated and attested only in a single corrupted text from 1859, with its claimed translation having been transposed from the reading of an earlier etymology, whose explanation seemingly equated "darkness" and "chaos" when translating an unattested supposed plural form of Hebrew: בוהו, romanized: bōhu.
"Samael" literally means "Blind God" or "God of the Blind" in Hebrew (סמאל). This being is considered not only blind, or ignorant of its own origins, but may, in addition, be evil; its name is also found in Judaism as the Angel of Death and in Christian demonology. This link to Judeo-Christian tradition leads to a further comparison with Satan. Another alternative title for the demiurge is "Saklas", Aramaic for "fool". In the Apocryphon of John, Yaldabaoth is also known as both Sakla and Samael.
The angelic name "Ariel" (Hebrew: 'the lion of God') has also been used to refer to the Demiurge and is called his "perfect" name; in some Gnostic lore, Ariel has been called an ancient or original name for Ialdabaoth. The name has also been inscribed on amulets as "Ariel Ialdabaoth", and the figure of the archon inscribed with "Aariel".
According to Marcion, the title God was given to the Demiurge, who was to be sharply distinguished from the higher Good God. The former was díkaios, severely just, the latter agathós, or loving-kind; the former was the "god of this world", the God of the Old Testament, the latter the true God of the New Testament. Christ, in reality, is the Son of the Good God. The true believer in Christ entered into God's kingdom; the unbeliever remained forever the slave of the Demiurge.
It is in the system of Valentinus that the name Dēmiurgos is used, which occurs nowhere in Irenaeus except in connection with the Valentinian system. When it is employed by other Gnostics either it is not used in a technical sense, or its use has been borrowed from Valentinus. But it is only the name that can be said to be specially Valentinian; the personage intended by it corresponds more or less closely with the Yaldabaoth of the Ophites, the great Archon of Basilides, the Elohim of Justinus, etc.
The Valentinian theory elaborates that from Achamoth (he kátō sophía or lower wisdom) three kinds of substance take their origin, the spiritual (pneumatikoí), the animal (psychikoí) and the material (hylikoí). The Demiurge belongs to the second kind, as he was the offspring of a union of Achamoth with matter. And as Achamoth herself was only the daughter of Sophía the last of the thirty Aeons, the Demiurge was distant by many emanations from the Propatôr, or Supreme God.
In creating this world out of Chaos the Demiurge was unconsciously influenced for good; and the universe, to the surprise even of its Maker, became almost perfect. The Demiurge regretted even its slight imperfection, and as he thought himself the Supreme God, he attempted to remedy this by sending a Messiah. To this Messiah, however, was actually united with Jesus the Saviour, Who redeemed men. These are either hylikoí or pneumatikoí.
The first, or material men, will return to the grossness of matter and finally be consumed by fire; the second, or animal men, together with the Demiurge, will enter a middle state, neither Pleroma nor hyle; the purely spiritual men will be completely freed from the influence of the Demiurge and together with the Saviour and Achamoth, his spouse, will enter the Pleroma divested of body (hyle) and soul (psyché). In this most common form of Gnosticism the Demiurge had an inferior though not intrinsically evil function in the universe as the head of the animal, or psychic world.
Opinions on the devil, and his relationship to the Demiurge, varied. The Ophites held that he and his demons constantly oppose and thwart the human race, as it was on their account the devil was cast down into this world. According to one variant of the Valentinian system, the Demiurge is also the maker, out of the appropriate substance, of an order of spiritual beings, the devil, the prince of this world, and his angels. But the devil, as being a spirit of wickedness, is able to recognise the higher spiritual world, of which his maker the Demiurge, who is only animal, has no real knowledge. The devil resides in this lower world, of which he is the prince, the Demiurge in the heavens; his mother Sophia in the middle region, above the heavens and below the Pleroma.
The Valentinian Heracleon interpreted the devil as the principle of evil, that of hyle (matter). As he writes in his commentary on John 4:21,
The mountain represents the Devil, or his world, since the Devil was one part of the whole of matter, but the world is the total mountain of evil, a deserted dwelling place of beasts, to which all who lived before the law and all Gentiles render worship. But Jerusalem represents the creation or the Creator whom the Jews worship. ... You then who are spiritual should worship neither the creation nor the Craftsman, but the Father of Truth.
This vilification of the creator was held to be inimical to Christianity by the early fathers of the church. In refuting the beliefs of the gnostics, Irenaeus stated that "Plato is proved to be more religious than these men, for he allowed that the same God was both just and good, having power over all things, and himself executing judgment."
Catharism apparently inherited their idea of Satan as the creator of the evil world from Gnosticism. Gilles Quispel writes, "There is a direct link between ancient Gnosticism and Catharism. The Cathars held that the creator of the world, Satanael, had usurped the name of God, but that he had subsequently been unmasked and told that he was not really God."
Gnosticism attributed falsehood or evil to the concept of the Demiurge or creator, though in some Gnostic traditions the creator is from a fallen, ignorant, or lesser—rather than evil—perspective, such as that of Valentinius.
The Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus addressed within his works Gnosticism's conception of the Demiurge, which he saw as un-Hellenic and blasphemous to the Demiurge or creator of Plato. Plotinus, along with his teacher Ammonius Saccas, was the founder of Neoplatonism. In the ninth tractate of the second of his Enneads, Plotinus criticizes his opponents for their appropriation of ideas from Plato:
From Plato come their punishments, their rivers of the underworld and the changing from body to body; as for the plurality they assert in the Intellectual Realm—the Authentic Existent, the Intellectual-Principle, the Second Creator and the Soul—all this is taken over from the Timaeus.
Of note here is the remark concerning the second hypostasis or Creator and third hypostasis or World Soul. Plotinus criticizes his opponents for "all the novelties through which they seek to establish a philosophy of their own" which, he declares, "have been picked up outside of the truth"; they attempt to conceal rather than admit their indebtedness to ancient philosophy, which they have corrupted by their extraneous and misguided embellishments. Thus their understanding of the Demiurge is similarly flawed in comparison to Plato’s original intentions.
Whereas Plato's Demiurge is good wishing good on his creation, Gnosticism contends that the Demiurge is not only the originator of evil but is evil as well. Hence the title of Plotinus' refutation: "Against Those That Affirm the Creator of the Kosmos and the Kosmos Itself to be Evil" (generally quoted as "Against the Gnostics"). Plotinus argues of the disconnect or great barrier that is created between the nous or mind's noumenon (see Heraclitus) and the material world (phenomenon) by believing the material world is evil.
The majority of scholars tend to understand Plotinus' opponents as being a Gnostic sect—certainly (specifically Sethian), several such groups were present in Alexandria and elsewhere about the Mediterranean during Plotinus' lifetime. Plotinus specifically points to the Gnostic doctrine of Sophia and her emission of the Demiurge.
Though the former understanding certainly enjoys the greatest popularity, the identification of Plotinus' opponents as Gnostic is not without some contention. Christos Evangeliou has contended that Plotinus' opponents might be better described as simply "Christian Gnostics", arguing that several of Plotinus' criticisms are as applicable to orthodox Christian doctrine as well. Also, considering the evidence from the time, Evangeliou thought the definition of the term "Gnostics" was unclear. Of note here is that while Plotinus' student Porphyry names Christianity specifically in Porphyry's own works, and Plotinus is to have been a known associate of the Christian Origen, none of Plotinus' works mention Christ or Christianity—whereas Plotinus specifically addresses his target in the Enneads as the Gnostics.
A. H. Armstrong identified the so-called "Gnostics" that Plotinus was attacking as Jewish and Pagan, in his introduction to the tract in his translation of the Enneads. Armstrong alluding to Gnosticism being a Hellenic philosophical heresy of sorts, which later engaged Christianity and Neoplatonism.
John D. Turner, professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska, and famed translator and editor of the Nag Hammadi library, stated that the text Plotinus and his students read was Sethian Gnosticism, which predates Christianity. It appears that Plotinus attempted to clarify how the philosophers of the academy had not arrived at the same conclusions (such as dystheism or misotheism for the creator God as an answer to the problem of evil) as the targets of his criticism.
Emil Cioran also wrote his Le mauvais démiurge ("The Evil Demiurge"), published in 1969, influenced by Gnosticism and Schopenhauerian interpretation of Platonic ontology, as well as that of Plotinus. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge (/ˈdɛmi.ɜːrdʒ/) (sometimes spelled as demiurg) is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The Gnostics adopted the term demiurge. Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not necessarily the same as the creator figure in the monotheistic sense, because the demiurge itself and the material from which the demiurge fashions the universe are both considered consequences of something else. Depending on the system, they may be considered either uncreated and eternal or the product of some other entity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The word demiurge is an English word derived from demiurgus, a Latinised form of the Greek δημιουργός or dēmiurgós. It was originally a common noun meaning \"craftsman\" or \"artisan\", but gradually came to mean \"producer\", and eventually \"creator\". The philosophical usage and the proper noun derive from Plato's Timaeus, written c. 360 BC, where the demiurge is presented as the creator of the universe. The demiurge is also described as a creator in the Platonic (c. 310–90 BC) and Middle Platonic (c. 90 BC–AD 300) philosophical traditions. In the various branches of the Neoplatonic school (third century onwards), the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas, but (in most Neoplatonic systems) is still not itself \"the One\". In the arch-dualist ideology of the various Gnostic systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world is good. According to some strains of Gnosticism, the demiurge is malevolent, as it is linked to the material world. In others, including the teaching of Valentinus, the demiurge is simply ignorant or misguided.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Plato, as the speaker Timaeus, refers to the Demiurge frequently in the Socratic dialogue Timaeus (28a ff.), c. 360 BC. The main character refers to the Demiurge as the entity who \"fashioned and shaped\" the material world. Timaeus describes the Demiurge as unreservedly benevolent, and so it desires a world as good as possible. The result of his work is a universe as a living god with lesser gods, such as the stars, planets, and gods of traditional religion, inside it. Timaeus is a philosophical reconciliation of Hesiod's cosmology in his Theogony, syncretically reconciling Hesiod to Homer, though other scholars have argued that Plato's theology 'invokes a broad cultural horizon without committing to any specific poetic or religious tradition'.",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In Middle Platonist and Numenius's Neo-Pythagorean cosmogenies, the Demiurge is second God as the nous or thought of intelligibles and sensibles (Middle Platonism and Neo-Pythagoreanism overlapped: both originating in the early 1st century BC and extending through to the end of the 2nd century AD or even into the 3rd century).",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The work of Plotinus and other later Platonists in the 3rd century AD to further clarify the Demiurge is known as Neoplatonism. To Plotinus, the second emanation represents an uncreated second cause (see Pythagoras' Dyad). Plotinus sought to reconcile Aristotle's energeia with Plato's Demiurge, which, as Demiurge and mind (nous), is a critical component in the ontological construct of human consciousness used to explain and clarify substance theory within Platonic realism (also called idealism). In order to reconcile Aristotelian with Platonian philosophy, Plotinus metaphorically identified the demiurge (or nous) within the pantheon of the Greek Gods as Zeus.",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The first and highest aspect of God is described by Plato as the One (Τὸ Ἕν, 'To Hen'), the source, or the Monad. This is the God above the Demiurge, and manifests through the actions of the Demiurge. The Monad emanated the demiurge or Nous (consciousness) from its \"indeterminate\" vitality due to the monad being so abundant that it overflowed back onto itself, causing self-reflection. This self-reflection of the indeterminate vitality was referred to by Plotinus as the \"Demiurge\" or creator. The second principle is organization in its reflection of the nonsentient force or dynamis, also called the one or the Monad. The dyad is energeia emanated by the one that is then the work, process or activity called nous, Demiurge, mind, consciousness that organizes the indeterminate vitality into the experience called the material world, universe, cosmos. Plotinus also elucidates the equation of matter with nothing or non-being in The Enneads which more correctly is to express the concept of idealism or that there is not anything or anywhere outside of the \"mind\" or nous (c.f. pantheism).",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Plotinus' form of Platonic idealism is to treat the Demiurge, nous, as the contemplative faculty (ergon) within man which orders the force (dynamis) into conscious reality. In this, he claimed to reveal Plato's true meaning: a doctrine he learned from Platonic tradition that did not appear outside the academy or in Plato's text. This tradition of creator God as nous (the manifestation of consciousness), can be validated in the works of pre-Plotinus philosophers such as Numenius, as well as a connection between Hebrew and Platonic cosmology (see also Philo).",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Demiurge of Neoplatonism is the Nous (mind of God), and is one of the three ordering principles:",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Before Numenius of Apamea and Plotinus' Enneads, no Platonic works ontologically clarified the Demiurge from the allegory in Plato's Timaeus. The idea of Demiurge was, however, addressed before Plotinus in the works of Christian writer Justin Martyr who built his understanding of the Demiurge on the works of Numenius.",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Later, the Neoplatonist Iamblichus changed the role of the \"One\", effectively altering the role of the Demiurge as second cause or dyad, which was one of the reasons that Iamblichus and his teacher Porphyry came into conflict.",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The figure of the Demiurge emerges in the theoretic of Iamblichus, which conjoins the transcendent, incommunicable “One,” or Source. Here, at the summit of this system, the Source and Demiurge (material realm) coexist via the process of henosis. Iamblichus describes the One as a monad whose first principle or emanation is intellect (nous), while among \"the many\" that follow it there is a second, super-existent \"One\" that is the producer of intellect or soul (psyche).",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The \"One\" is further separated into spheres of intelligence; the first and superior sphere is objects of thought, while the latter sphere is the domain of thought. Thus, a triad is formed of the intelligible nous, the intellective nous, and the psyche in order to reconcile further the various Hellenistic philosophical schools of Aristotle's actus and potentia (actuality and potentiality) of the unmoved mover and Plato's Demiurge.",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Then within this intellectual triad Iamblichus assigns the third rank to the Demiurge, identifying it with the perfect or Divine nous with the intellectual triad being promoted to a hebdomad (pure intellect).",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In the theoretic of Plotinus, nous produces nature through intellectual mediation, thus the intellectualizing gods are followed by a triad of psychic gods.",
"title": "Platonism and Neoplatonism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God or Supreme Being and the demiurgic \"creator\" of the material, identified in some traditions with Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew Bible. Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being, with his creation initially intending the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality. In other systems, the Demiurge is instead portrayed as \"merely\" incompetent or foolish: his creation is an unconscious attempt to replicate the divine world (the pleroma) based on faint recollections, and thus ends up fundamentally flawed. Thus, in such systems, the Demiurge is a proposed solution to the problem of evil: while the divine beings are omniscient and omnibenevolent, the Demiurge who rules over our own physical world is not.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Psalm 82 begins, \"God stands in the assembly of El [LXX: assembly of gods], in the midst of the gods he renders judgment\", indicating a plurality of gods, although it does not indicate that these gods were co-actors in creation. Philo had inferred from the expression \"Let us make man\" of the Book of Genesis that God had used other beings as assistants in the creation of man, and he explains in this way why man is capable of vice as well as virtue, ascribing the origin of the latter to God, of the former to his helpers in the work of creation.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The earliest Gnostic sects ascribe the work of creation to angels, some of them using the same passage in Genesis. So Irenaeus tells of the system of Simon Magus, of the system of Menander, of the system of Saturninus, in which the number of these angels is reckoned as seven, and of the system of Carpocrates. In Basilides's system, he reports, the world was made by the angels who occupy the lowest heaven; but special mention is made of their chief, who is said to have been the God of the Jews, to have led that people out of the land of Egypt, and to have given them their law. The prophecies are ascribed not to the chief but to the other world-making angels.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Latin translation, confirmed by Hippolytus of Rome, makes Irenaeus state that according to Cerinthus (who shows Ebionite influence), creation was made by a power quite separate from the Supreme God and ignorant of him. Theodoret, who here copies Irenaeus, turns this into the plural number \"powers\", and so Epiphanius of Salamis represents Cerinthus as agreeing with Carpocrates in the doctrine that the world was made by angels.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In the Archontic, Sethian, and Ophite systems, which have many affinities with the doctrine of Valentinus, the making of the world is ascribed to a company of seven archons, whose names are given, but still more prominent is their chief, \"Yaldabaoth\" (also known as \"Yaltabaoth\" or \"Ialdabaoth\").",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In the Apocryphon of John c. AD 120–180, the demiurge declares that he has made the world by himself:",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Now the archon [\"ruler\"] who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas [\"fool\"], and the third is Samael [\"blind god\"]. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "He is Demiurge and maker of man, but as a ray of light from above enters the body of man and gives him a soul, Yaldabaoth is filled with envy; he tries to limit man's knowledge by forbidding him the fruit of knowledge in paradise. At the consummation of all things, all light will return to the Pleroma. But Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge, with the material world, will be cast into the lower depths.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Yaldabaoth is frequently called \"the Lion-faced\", leontoeides, and is said to have the body of a serpent. The demiurge is also described as having a fiery nature, applying the words of Moses to him: \"the Lord our God is a burning and consuming fire\". Hippolytus claims that Simon used a similar description.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In Pistis Sophia, Yaldabaoth has already sunk from his high estate and resides in Chaos, where, with his forty-nine demons, he tortures wicked souls in boiling rivers of pitch, and with other punishments (pp. 257, 382). He is an archon with the face of a lion, half flame, and half darkness.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In the Nag Hammadi text On the Origin of the World, the three sons of Yaldabaoth are listed as Yao, Eloai, and Astaphaios.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Under the name of Nebro (rebel), Yaldabaoth is called an angel in the apocryphal Gospel of Judas. He is first mentioned in \"The Cosmos, Chaos, and the Underworld\" as one of the twelve angels to come \"into being [to] rule over chaos and the [underworld]\". He comes from heaven, and it is said his \"face flashed with fire and [his] appearance was defiled with blood\". Nebro creates six angels in addition to the angel Saklas to be his assistants. These six, in turn, create another twelve angels \"with each one receiving a portion in the heavens\".",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The etymology of the name Yaldabaoth has been subject to many speculative theories. Until 1974, etymologies deriving from the unattested Aramaic: בהותא, romanized: bāhūthā, supposedly meaning \"chaos\", represented the majority view. Following an analysis by the Jewish historian of religion Gershom Scholem published in 1974, this etymology no longer enjoyed any notable support. His analysis showed the unattested Aramaic term to have been fabulated and attested only in a single corrupted text from 1859, with its claimed translation having been transposed from the reading of an earlier etymology, whose explanation seemingly equated \"darkness\" and \"chaos\" when translating an unattested supposed plural form of Hebrew: בוהו, romanized: bōhu.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "\"Samael\" literally means \"Blind God\" or \"God of the Blind\" in Hebrew (סמאל). This being is considered not only blind, or ignorant of its own origins, but may, in addition, be evil; its name is also found in Judaism as the Angel of Death and in Christian demonology. This link to Judeo-Christian tradition leads to a further comparison with Satan. Another alternative title for the demiurge is \"Saklas\", Aramaic for \"fool\". In the Apocryphon of John, Yaldabaoth is also known as both Sakla and Samael.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The angelic name \"Ariel\" (Hebrew: 'the lion of God') has also been used to refer to the Demiurge and is called his \"perfect\" name; in some Gnostic lore, Ariel has been called an ancient or original name for Ialdabaoth. The name has also been inscribed on amulets as \"Ariel Ialdabaoth\", and the figure of the archon inscribed with \"Aariel\".",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "According to Marcion, the title God was given to the Demiurge, who was to be sharply distinguished from the higher Good God. The former was díkaios, severely just, the latter agathós, or loving-kind; the former was the \"god of this world\", the God of the Old Testament, the latter the true God of the New Testament. Christ, in reality, is the Son of the Good God. The true believer in Christ entered into God's kingdom; the unbeliever remained forever the slave of the Demiurge.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "It is in the system of Valentinus that the name Dēmiurgos is used, which occurs nowhere in Irenaeus except in connection with the Valentinian system. When it is employed by other Gnostics either it is not used in a technical sense, or its use has been borrowed from Valentinus. But it is only the name that can be said to be specially Valentinian; the personage intended by it corresponds more or less closely with the Yaldabaoth of the Ophites, the great Archon of Basilides, the Elohim of Justinus, etc.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The Valentinian theory elaborates that from Achamoth (he kátō sophía or lower wisdom) three kinds of substance take their origin, the spiritual (pneumatikoí), the animal (psychikoí) and the material (hylikoí). The Demiurge belongs to the second kind, as he was the offspring of a union of Achamoth with matter. And as Achamoth herself was only the daughter of Sophía the last of the thirty Aeons, the Demiurge was distant by many emanations from the Propatôr, or Supreme God.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In creating this world out of Chaos the Demiurge was unconsciously influenced for good; and the universe, to the surprise even of its Maker, became almost perfect. The Demiurge regretted even its slight imperfection, and as he thought himself the Supreme God, he attempted to remedy this by sending a Messiah. To this Messiah, however, was actually united with Jesus the Saviour, Who redeemed men. These are either hylikoí or pneumatikoí.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The first, or material men, will return to the grossness of matter and finally be consumed by fire; the second, or animal men, together with the Demiurge, will enter a middle state, neither Pleroma nor hyle; the purely spiritual men will be completely freed from the influence of the Demiurge and together with the Saviour and Achamoth, his spouse, will enter the Pleroma divested of body (hyle) and soul (psyché). In this most common form of Gnosticism the Demiurge had an inferior though not intrinsically evil function in the universe as the head of the animal, or psychic world.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Opinions on the devil, and his relationship to the Demiurge, varied. The Ophites held that he and his demons constantly oppose and thwart the human race, as it was on their account the devil was cast down into this world. According to one variant of the Valentinian system, the Demiurge is also the maker, out of the appropriate substance, of an order of spiritual beings, the devil, the prince of this world, and his angels. But the devil, as being a spirit of wickedness, is able to recognise the higher spiritual world, of which his maker the Demiurge, who is only animal, has no real knowledge. The devil resides in this lower world, of which he is the prince, the Demiurge in the heavens; his mother Sophia in the middle region, above the heavens and below the Pleroma.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Valentinian Heracleon interpreted the devil as the principle of evil, that of hyle (matter). As he writes in his commentary on John 4:21,",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The mountain represents the Devil, or his world, since the Devil was one part of the whole of matter, but the world is the total mountain of evil, a deserted dwelling place of beasts, to which all who lived before the law and all Gentiles render worship. But Jerusalem represents the creation or the Creator whom the Jews worship. ... You then who are spiritual should worship neither the creation nor the Craftsman, but the Father of Truth.",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "This vilification of the creator was held to be inimical to Christianity by the early fathers of the church. In refuting the beliefs of the gnostics, Irenaeus stated that \"Plato is proved to be more religious than these men, for he allowed that the same God was both just and good, having power over all things, and himself executing judgment.\"",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Catharism apparently inherited their idea of Satan as the creator of the evil world from Gnosticism. Gilles Quispel writes, \"There is a direct link between ancient Gnosticism and Catharism. The Cathars held that the creator of the world, Satanael, had usurped the name of God, but that he had subsequently been unmasked and told that he was not really God.\"",
"title": "Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Gnosticism attributed falsehood or evil to the concept of the Demiurge or creator, though in some Gnostic traditions the creator is from a fallen, ignorant, or lesser—rather than evil—perspective, such as that of Valentinius.",
"title": "Neoplatonism and Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus addressed within his works Gnosticism's conception of the Demiurge, which he saw as un-Hellenic and blasphemous to the Demiurge or creator of Plato. Plotinus, along with his teacher Ammonius Saccas, was the founder of Neoplatonism. In the ninth tractate of the second of his Enneads, Plotinus criticizes his opponents for their appropriation of ideas from Plato:",
"title": "Neoplatonism and Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "From Plato come their punishments, their rivers of the underworld and the changing from body to body; as for the plurality they assert in the Intellectual Realm—the Authentic Existent, the Intellectual-Principle, the Second Creator and the Soul—all this is taken over from the Timaeus.",
"title": "Neoplatonism and Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Of note here is the remark concerning the second hypostasis or Creator and third hypostasis or World Soul. Plotinus criticizes his opponents for \"all the novelties through which they seek to establish a philosophy of their own\" which, he declares, \"have been picked up outside of the truth\"; they attempt to conceal rather than admit their indebtedness to ancient philosophy, which they have corrupted by their extraneous and misguided embellishments. Thus their understanding of the Demiurge is similarly flawed in comparison to Plato’s original intentions.",
"title": "Neoplatonism and Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Whereas Plato's Demiurge is good wishing good on his creation, Gnosticism contends that the Demiurge is not only the originator of evil but is evil as well. Hence the title of Plotinus' refutation: \"Against Those That Affirm the Creator of the Kosmos and the Kosmos Itself to be Evil\" (generally quoted as \"Against the Gnostics\"). Plotinus argues of the disconnect or great barrier that is created between the nous or mind's noumenon (see Heraclitus) and the material world (phenomenon) by believing the material world is evil.",
"title": "Neoplatonism and Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The majority of scholars tend to understand Plotinus' opponents as being a Gnostic sect—certainly (specifically Sethian), several such groups were present in Alexandria and elsewhere about the Mediterranean during Plotinus' lifetime. Plotinus specifically points to the Gnostic doctrine of Sophia and her emission of the Demiurge.",
"title": "Neoplatonism and Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Though the former understanding certainly enjoys the greatest popularity, the identification of Plotinus' opponents as Gnostic is not without some contention. Christos Evangeliou has contended that Plotinus' opponents might be better described as simply \"Christian Gnostics\", arguing that several of Plotinus' criticisms are as applicable to orthodox Christian doctrine as well. Also, considering the evidence from the time, Evangeliou thought the definition of the term \"Gnostics\" was unclear. Of note here is that while Plotinus' student Porphyry names Christianity specifically in Porphyry's own works, and Plotinus is to have been a known associate of the Christian Origen, none of Plotinus' works mention Christ or Christianity—whereas Plotinus specifically addresses his target in the Enneads as the Gnostics.",
"title": "Neoplatonism and Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "A. H. Armstrong identified the so-called \"Gnostics\" that Plotinus was attacking as Jewish and Pagan, in his introduction to the tract in his translation of the Enneads. Armstrong alluding to Gnosticism being a Hellenic philosophical heresy of sorts, which later engaged Christianity and Neoplatonism.",
"title": "Neoplatonism and Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "John D. Turner, professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska, and famed translator and editor of the Nag Hammadi library, stated that the text Plotinus and his students read was Sethian Gnosticism, which predates Christianity. It appears that Plotinus attempted to clarify how the philosophers of the academy had not arrived at the same conclusions (such as dystheism or misotheism for the creator God as an answer to the problem of evil) as the targets of his criticism.",
"title": "Neoplatonism and Gnosticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Emil Cioran also wrote his Le mauvais démiurge (\"The Evil Demiurge\"), published in 1969, influenced by Gnosticism and Schopenhauerian interpretation of Platonic ontology, as well as that of Plotinus.",
"title": "Neoplatonism and Gnosticism"
}
]
| In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The Gnostics adopted the term demiurge. Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not necessarily the same as the creator figure in the monotheistic sense, because the demiurge itself and the material from which the demiurge fashions the universe are both considered consequences of something else. Depending on the system, they may be considered either uncreated and eternal or the product of some other entity. The word demiurge is an English word derived from demiurgus, a Latinised form of the Greek δημιουργός or dēmiurgós. It was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan", but gradually came to mean "producer", and eventually "creator". The philosophical usage and the proper noun derive from Plato's Timaeus, written c. 360 BC, where the demiurge is presented as the creator of the universe. The demiurge is also described as a creator in the Platonic and Middle Platonic philosophical traditions. In the various branches of the Neoplatonic school, the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas, but is still not itself "the One". In the arch-dualist ideology of the various Gnostic systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world is good. According to some strains of Gnosticism, the demiurge is malevolent, as it is linked to the material world. In others, including the teaching of Valentinus, the demiurge is simply ignorant or misguided. | 2001-11-09T22:15:15Z | 2023-12-28T20:27:41Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge |
8,798 | Doubravka of Bohemia | Doubravka of Bohemia, Dobrawa (Czech: Doubravka Přemyslovna, Polish: Dobrawa, Dąbrówka; ca. 940/45 – 977) was a Bohemian princess of the Přemyslid dynasty and by marriage Duchess of the Polans.
She was the daughter of Boleslaus I the Cruel, Duke of Bohemia, whose wife may have been the mysterious Biagota.
According to earlier sources, Doubravka urged her husband Mieszko I of Poland to accept baptism in 966, the year after their marriage. Modern historians believe, however, that the change of religion by Mieszko was one of the points discussed in the Polish-Bohemian agreement concluded soon before his marriage with Doubravka. Her role in his conversion is not considered now to be as important as it is often represented in medieval chronicles.
Doubravka's date of birth is not known. The only indication is communicated by the chronicler Cosmas of Prague, who stated that the Bohemian princess at the time of her marriage with Mieszko I was an old woman. The passage is regarded as tendentious and of little reliability, and some researchers believe that the statement was made with malicious intent. It is possible that in the statement about Doubravka's age, Cosmas was making a reference to the age difference between her and her sister Mlada. That would give him a basis for determining Doubravka as "old." (The word Mlada means Young). It also found that Cosmas confuses Doubravka with Mieszko I's second wife Oda, who at the time of her marriage was around 19–25 years old, a relatively advanced age for a bride according to the customs of the Middle Ages. Some researchers have taken up speculative views, such as Jerzy Strzelczyk, who assumed that in the light of contemporary concepts and habits of marriage of that time (when as a rule marriages were contracted with teenage girls) is assumed that Doubravka had passed her early youth, so, it's probable that she was in her late teens or twenties.
Nothing is known about Doubravka's childhood and youth. In 1895 Oswald Balzer refuted reports that previous to her marriage with Mieszko I, Doubravka was married to Gunther, Margrave of Merseburg and they had a son, Gunzelin. This view is based on the fact that Thietmar of Merseburg in his chronicles named Gunzelin, Gunther's son, brother of Bolesław I the Brave, Doubravka's son. Currently, historians believed that Gunzelin and Bolesław I are in fact cousins or brothers-in-law.
In the second half of 964 an alliance between Boleslav I the Cruel, Duke of Bohemia, and Mieszko I of Poland was concluded. In order to consolidate the agreement, in 965 Boleslav I's daughter Doubravka was married to Mieszko I. The marriage cemented the Polish-Bohemian alliance, which continued even after Doubravka's death.
Two independent sources attribute to Doubravka an important role in the conversion to Christianity of Mieszko I and Poland. The first is the chronicles of Thietmar, who was born two years before the death of Doubravka. He wrote that the Bohemian princess tried to persuade her husband to accept Christianity (even at the cost of breaking their marriage and with it the Polish-Bohemian alliance). In the end, she finally obtained the conversion of Mieszko I and with him, of all Poland. In turn, the 12th-century chronicler Gallus Anonymus says that Doubravka came to Poland surrounded by secular and religious dignitaries. She agreed to marry Mieszko I providing that he was baptized. The Polish ruler accepted, and only then was able to marry the Bohemian princess.
Modern historians agree that the baptism of Mieszko I was dictated by political benefits and should not be attributed to any action of Doubravka. She is held to have had virtually no role in the conversion of her husband. Historians note that the narrative of the conversion of Mieszko I thanks to Doubravka formed part of the tradition of the Church which stressed the conversion of Pagan rulers through the influence of women.
Doubravka did have a significant role in the Christianization of the Poles. In her wedding procession, she arrived in Poland with Christian clergymen, among them possibly Jordan, ordained the first bishop of Poland in 968. Tradition attributes to Doubravka the establishment of the Holy Trinity and St. Wit Churches in Gniezno and the Church of the Virgin Mary in Ostrów Tumski, Poznań.
Doubravka and Mieszko I had at least one son, Bolesław the Brave (b. 967 – d. 17 June 1025). A daughter, called Świętosława or Sigrid the Haughty, married first King Eric the Victorious of Sweden and later King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark, by whom she was the mother of Canute the Great. Gunhilda of Poland, who married Swyen Forkbeard, is usually identified as this daughter. There is a hypothesis asserting the existence of another daughter of Mieszko I who was married to a Pomeranian Slavic prince. She could have been the daughter of either Doubravka or one of Mieszko's previous pagan wives. Also, a theory has been advanced (apparently recorded by Thietmar of Prague and supported by Oswald Balzer in 1895) that Vladivoj (c. 981 – January 1003), who ruled as duke of Bohemia from 1002 until 1003, was another son of Doubravka and Mieszko I. Although modern historians have rejected this hypothesis, Czech historiography has supported the notion of mixed Piast-Přemyslid parentage for Vladivoj.
Doubravka died in 977. In his study of 1888, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski wrote that "her tomb was discovered in Gniezno Cathedral. It was a simple stone marked with a cross. Purple robes and a weighty gold loincloth were the only objects found in her tomb." A similar view of Doubravka's burial place was expressed earlier, in 1843, by Edward Raczyński in his study Wspomnienia Wielkopolski to jest województw poznańskiego, kaliskiego i gnieźnieńskiego (Memories of the Greater Poland districts of Poznań, Kalisz and Gniezno). However, the burial place of the Bohemian princess is now considered to be unknown.
Doubravka's death weakened the Polish-Bohemian alliance, which finally collapsed in the mid-980s. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Doubravka of Bohemia, Dobrawa (Czech: Doubravka Přemyslovna, Polish: Dobrawa, Dąbrówka; ca. 940/45 – 977) was a Bohemian princess of the Přemyslid dynasty and by marriage Duchess of the Polans.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "She was the daughter of Boleslaus I the Cruel, Duke of Bohemia, whose wife may have been the mysterious Biagota.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "According to earlier sources, Doubravka urged her husband Mieszko I of Poland to accept baptism in 966, the year after their marriage. Modern historians believe, however, that the change of religion by Mieszko was one of the points discussed in the Polish-Bohemian agreement concluded soon before his marriage with Doubravka. Her role in his conversion is not considered now to be as important as it is often represented in medieval chronicles.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Doubravka's date of birth is not known. The only indication is communicated by the chronicler Cosmas of Prague, who stated that the Bohemian princess at the time of her marriage with Mieszko I was an old woman. The passage is regarded as tendentious and of little reliability, and some researchers believe that the statement was made with malicious intent. It is possible that in the statement about Doubravka's age, Cosmas was making a reference to the age difference between her and her sister Mlada. That would give him a basis for determining Doubravka as \"old.\" (The word Mlada means Young). It also found that Cosmas confuses Doubravka with Mieszko I's second wife Oda, who at the time of her marriage was around 19–25 years old, a relatively advanced age for a bride according to the customs of the Middle Ages. Some researchers have taken up speculative views, such as Jerzy Strzelczyk, who assumed that in the light of contemporary concepts and habits of marriage of that time (when as a rule marriages were contracted with teenage girls) is assumed that Doubravka had passed her early youth, so, it's probable that she was in her late teens or twenties.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Nothing is known about Doubravka's childhood and youth. In 1895 Oswald Balzer refuted reports that previous to her marriage with Mieszko I, Doubravka was married to Gunther, Margrave of Merseburg and they had a son, Gunzelin. This view is based on the fact that Thietmar of Merseburg in his chronicles named Gunzelin, Gunther's son, brother of Bolesław I the Brave, Doubravka's son. Currently, historians believed that Gunzelin and Bolesław I are in fact cousins or brothers-in-law.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the second half of 964 an alliance between Boleslav I the Cruel, Duke of Bohemia, and Mieszko I of Poland was concluded. In order to consolidate the agreement, in 965 Boleslav I's daughter Doubravka was married to Mieszko I. The marriage cemented the Polish-Bohemian alliance, which continued even after Doubravka's death.",
"title": "Marriage and Christianization of Poland"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Two independent sources attribute to Doubravka an important role in the conversion to Christianity of Mieszko I and Poland. The first is the chronicles of Thietmar, who was born two years before the death of Doubravka. He wrote that the Bohemian princess tried to persuade her husband to accept Christianity (even at the cost of breaking their marriage and with it the Polish-Bohemian alliance). In the end, she finally obtained the conversion of Mieszko I and with him, of all Poland. In turn, the 12th-century chronicler Gallus Anonymus says that Doubravka came to Poland surrounded by secular and religious dignitaries. She agreed to marry Mieszko I providing that he was baptized. The Polish ruler accepted, and only then was able to marry the Bohemian princess.",
"title": "Marriage and Christianization of Poland"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Modern historians agree that the baptism of Mieszko I was dictated by political benefits and should not be attributed to any action of Doubravka. She is held to have had virtually no role in the conversion of her husband. Historians note that the narrative of the conversion of Mieszko I thanks to Doubravka formed part of the tradition of the Church which stressed the conversion of Pagan rulers through the influence of women.",
"title": "Marriage and Christianization of Poland"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Doubravka did have a significant role in the Christianization of the Poles. In her wedding procession, she arrived in Poland with Christian clergymen, among them possibly Jordan, ordained the first bishop of Poland in 968. Tradition attributes to Doubravka the establishment of the Holy Trinity and St. Wit Churches in Gniezno and the Church of the Virgin Mary in Ostrów Tumski, Poznań.",
"title": "Marriage and Christianization of Poland"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Doubravka and Mieszko I had at least one son, Bolesław the Brave (b. 967 – d. 17 June 1025). A daughter, called Świętosława or Sigrid the Haughty, married first King Eric the Victorious of Sweden and later King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark, by whom she was the mother of Canute the Great. Gunhilda of Poland, who married Swyen Forkbeard, is usually identified as this daughter. There is a hypothesis asserting the existence of another daughter of Mieszko I who was married to a Pomeranian Slavic prince. She could have been the daughter of either Doubravka or one of Mieszko's previous pagan wives. Also, a theory has been advanced (apparently recorded by Thietmar of Prague and supported by Oswald Balzer in 1895) that Vladivoj (c. 981 – January 1003), who ruled as duke of Bohemia from 1002 until 1003, was another son of Doubravka and Mieszko I. Although modern historians have rejected this hypothesis, Czech historiography has supported the notion of mixed Piast-Přemyslid parentage for Vladivoj.",
"title": "Children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Doubravka died in 977. In his study of 1888, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski wrote that \"her tomb was discovered in Gniezno Cathedral. It was a simple stone marked with a cross. Purple robes and a weighty gold loincloth were the only objects found in her tomb.\" A similar view of Doubravka's burial place was expressed earlier, in 1843, by Edward Raczyński in his study Wspomnienia Wielkopolski to jest województw poznańskiego, kaliskiego i gnieźnieńskiego (Memories of the Greater Poland districts of Poznań, Kalisz and Gniezno). However, the burial place of the Bohemian princess is now considered to be unknown.",
"title": "Death and burial"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Doubravka's death weakened the Polish-Bohemian alliance, which finally collapsed in the mid-980s.",
"title": "Death and burial"
}
]
| Doubravka of Bohemia, Dobrawa was a Bohemian princess of the Přemyslid dynasty and by marriage Duchess of the Polans. She was the daughter of Boleslaus I the Cruel, Duke of Bohemia, whose wife may have been the mysterious Biagota. According to earlier sources, Doubravka urged her husband Mieszko I of Poland to accept baptism in 966, the year after their marriage. Modern historians believe, however, that the change of religion by Mieszko was one of the points discussed in the Polish-Bohemian agreement concluded soon before his marriage with Doubravka. Her role in his conversion is not considered now to be as important as it is often represented in medieval chronicles. | 2001-11-11T05:43:06Z | 2023-10-26T03:25:18Z | [
"Template:Cn",
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"Template:Lang-pl",
"Template:S-ttl",
"Template:S-end",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Lang-cs",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:S-hou",
"Template:Royal consorts of Poland",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:S-bef",
"Template:S-aft",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Infobox royalty"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubravka_of_Bohemia |
8,799 | D. B. Cooper | D. B. Cooper is a media epithet for an unidentified man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft, in United States airspace on November 24, 1971. During the flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, the hijacker told a flight attendant he was armed with a bomb, demanded $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to $1,400,000 in 2022) and requested four parachutes upon landing in Seattle. After releasing the passengers in Seattle, the hijacker instructed the flight crew to refuel the aircraft and begin a second flight to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. About 30 minutes after taking off from Seattle, the hijacker opened the aircraft's aft door, deployed the staircase, and parachuted into the night over southwestern Washington. The hijacker has never been found or conclusively identified.
In 1980, a small portion of the ransom money was found along the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. The discovery of the money renewed public interest in the mystery, but yielded no additional information about the hijacker's identity or fate, and the remaining money was never recovered. The hijacker identified himself as Dan Cooper, but a reporter confused his name with another suspect and the hijacker subsequently became known as "D. B. Cooper".
For 45 years after the hijacking, the Federal Bureau of Investigation maintained an active investigation and built an extensive case file, but ultimately did not reach any definitive conclusions. The crime remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation. The FBI speculates Cooper did not survive his jump, for several reasons: the inclement weather on the night of the hijacking, Cooper's unsuitable clothing and lack of proper skydiving equipment, the heavily wooded area into which he jumped, his apparent lack of detailed knowledge of his landing area, and the disappearance of the remaining ransom money, suggesting it was never spent. In July 2016, the FBI officially suspended active investigation of the NORJAK (Northwest hijacking) case, although reporters, enthusiasts, professional investigators, and amateur sleuths continue to pursue numerous theories for Cooper's identity, success, and fate.
Cooper's hijacking—and several imitators in the following year—immediately initiated major upgrades to security measures for airports and commercial aviation. Metal detectors were installed at airports, baggage inspection became mandatory, and passengers who paid cash for tickets on the day of departure were selected for additional scrutiny. Boeing 727s were retrofitted with eponymous "Cooper vanes", specifically designed to prevent the aft staircase from being lowered in-flight. By 1973, aircraft hijacking incidents had decreased, as the new security measures dissuaded would-be hijackers whose only motive was money.
On Thanksgiving Eve, November 24, 1971, a man carrying a black attaché case approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines at Portland International Airport. Using cash, the man bought a one-way ticket on Flight 305, a thirty-minute trip north to "Sea-Tac" (Seattle–Tacoma International Airport). On his ticket, the man listed his name as "Dan Cooper". Eyewitnesses described Cooper as a white male in his mid-40s, with dark hair and brown eyes, wearing a black or brown business suit, a white shirt, a thin black tie, a black raincoat, and brown shoes. Carrying a briefcase and a brown paper bag, Cooper boarded Flight 305, a Boeing 727-100 (FAA registration N467US). Cooper took seat 18-E in the last row and ordered a drink, a bourbon and 7-Up, from the flight attendant.
With a crew of six (consisting of Captain William A. Scott, First Officer William "Bill" J. Rataczak, Flight Engineer Harold E. Anderson, and flight attendants Alice Hancock, Tina Mucklow and Florence Schaffner) and 36 passengers aboard, including the hijacker, Flight 305 left Portland on-schedule at 2:50 pm PST. Shortly after takeoff, Cooper handed a note to flight attendant Schaffner, who was sitting in the jump seat at the rear of the plane, directly behind Cooper. Assuming the note was a lonely businessman's phone number, Schaffner dropped the note unopened into her purse. Cooper then leaned toward her and whispered, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb."
Schaffner opened the note. In neat, all-capital letters printed with a felt-tip pen, Cooper had written, "Miss—I have a bomb in my briefcase and want you to sit by me." Schaffner returned the note to Cooper, sat down as he requested, and quietly asked to see the bomb. He opened his briefcase, and she saw two rows of four red cylinders, which she assumed was dynamite. Attached to the cylinders were a wire and a large, cylindrical battery, which appeared to resemble a bomb.
Cooper closed the briefcase, and told Schaffner his demands. She wrote a note with Cooper's demands, brought it to the cockpit, and informed the flight crew of the situation. Captain Scott directed her to remain in the cockpit for the remainder of the flight and take notes of events as they unfolded. He then contacted Northwest flight operations in Minnesota, and relayed the hijacker's demands: "[Cooper] requests $200,000 in a knapsack by 5:00 pm. He wants two front parachutes, two back parachutes. He wants the money in negotiable American currency." By requesting two sets of parachutes, Cooper implied that he planned to take a hostage with him, thereby discouraging authorities from supplying non-functional equipment.
With Schaffner in the cockpit, flight attendant Mucklow sat next to Cooper to act as a liaison between him and the flight crew in the cockpit. He then made additional demands: upon landing in Seattle, the fuel trucks must meet the plane and all passengers must remain seated while she brought the money aboard. He said he would release the passengers after he had the money. The last items brought aboard would be the four parachutes.
Captain Scott informed Seattle–Tacoma Airport air traffic control (ATC) of the situation, who contacted local police and the FBI. The passengers were told their arrival in Seattle would be delayed because of a "minor mechanical difficulty". Donald Nyrop, the president of Northwest Orient, authorized payment of the ransom and ordered all employees to cooperate with the hijacker and comply with his demands. For approximately two hours, Flight 305 circled Puget Sound to give Seattle police and the FBI sufficient time to assemble Cooper's ransom money and parachutes, and to mobilize emergency personnel.
During the flight from Portland to Seattle, Cooper demanded that Mucklow remain by his side at all times. She later said that he appeared familiar with the local terrain; while looking out the window, he remarked, "Looks like Tacoma down there", as the aircraft flew above it. He also correctly noted McChord Air Force Base was only a 20-minute drive from Sea-Tac Airport. She later described the hijacker's demeanor: "[Cooper] was not nervous. He seemed rather nice and he was not cruel or nasty."
While the plane circled Seattle, Mucklow chatted with Cooper and asked why he picked Northwest Airlines to hijack. He laughed and replied, "It's not because I have a grudge against your airlines, it's just because I have a grudge," then explained that this flight simply suited his needs. He asked where she was from; she answered that she was originally from Pennsylvania, but was living in Minneapolis at the time. Cooper responded that Minnesota was "very nice country." She asked where he was from, but he became upset and refused to answer. He asked if she smoked and offered her a cigarette. She replied that she had quit, but accepted the cigarette.
FBI records note Cooper briefly spoke to an unidentified passenger while the plane maintained its holding pattern over Seattle. In his interview with FBI agents, passenger George Labissoniere said he visited the restroom directly behind Cooper on several occasions. After one visit, Labissoniere said the path to his seat was blocked by a passenger wearing a cowboy hat, questioning Mucklow about the supposed mechanical issue delaying them. Labissoniere said Cooper was initially amused by the interaction, then became irritated and told the man to return to his seat, but "the cowboy" ignored Cooper and continued to question her. Labissoniere claimed he eventually persuaded "the cowboy" to return to his seat.
Mucklow's version of the interaction differed from Labissoniere's. She said a passenger approached her, and asked for a sports magazine to read because he was bored. She and the passenger moved to an area directly behind Cooper, where the passenger and she looked for magazines. The passenger took a copy of The New Yorker and returned to his seat. When Mucklow returned to sit with Cooper, he said, "If that is a sky marshal, I don't want any more of that." Despite his brief interaction with Cooper, "the cowboy" was not interviewed by the FBI and was never identified.
The $200,000 ransom was received from Seattle First National Bank in a bag weighing approximately nineteen pounds. The money—10,000 unmarked $20 bills, most of which had serial numbers beginning with "L" (indicating issuance by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)—was photographed on microfilm by the FBI. Seattle police obtained the two front (reserve) parachutes from a local skydiving school and the two back (main) parachutes from a local stunt pilot.
Around 5:24 PST, Captain Scott was informed the parachutes had been delivered to the airport, and notified Cooper they would be landing soon. At 5:46 PST, Flight 305 landed at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. With Cooper's permission Scott parked the aircraft on a partially-lit runway, away from the main terminal. Cooper demanded that only one representative of the airline approach the plane with the parachutes and money, and the only entrance and exit would be through the aircraft's front door via the mobile air stairs. Northwest Orient's Seattle operations manager, Al Lee, was designated to be the courier. To avoid the possibility that Cooper might mistake Lee's airline uniform for that of a law enforcement officer, he changed into civilian clothes for the task. With the passengers remaining seated, a ground crew attached the mobile staircase. Per Cooper's directive, Mucklow exited the aircraft through the front door, and retrieved the ransom money. When she returned, she carried the money bag past the seated passengers to Cooper in the last row.
Cooper then agreed to release the passengers. As they debarked, Cooper inspected the money. In an attempt to break the tension, Mucklow jokingly asked Cooper if she could have some of the money. Cooper readily agreed, and handed her a packet of bills, but she immediately returned the money and explained accepting gratuities was against company policy. She said Cooper had tried to tip her and the other two flight attendants earlier in the flight with money from his own pocket, but they had each declined, citing the policy.
With the passengers safely debarked, only Cooper and the six crew members remained on board. In accordance with Cooper's demands, Mucklow made three trips outside the aircraft to retrieve the parachutes, which she brought to him in the rear of the plane. While Mucklow brought aboard the parachutes, Schaffner asked Cooper if she could retrieve her purse, stored in a compartment behind his seat. Cooper agreed and told her, "I won't bite you." Flight attendant Hancock then asked Cooper if the flight attendants could leave, to which Cooper replied, "Whatever you girls would like," so Hancock and Schaffner debarked. When Mucklow brought the final parachute to Cooper, she gave him printed instructions for using the parachutes, but Cooper said he didn't need them.
A problem with the refueling process caused a delay, so a second truck and then a third were brought to the aircraft to complete the refueling. During the delay, Mucklow said Cooper complained the money was delivered in a cloth bag instead of a knapsack as he had directed, and he now had to improvise a new way to transport the money. Using a pocketknife, Cooper cut the canopy from one of the reserve parachutes, and stuffed some of the money into the empty parachute bag.
An FAA official requested a face-to-face meeting with Cooper aboard the aircraft, but Cooper denied the request. Cooper became impatient, saying, "This shouldn't take so long", and, "Let's get this show on the road." He then gave the cockpit crew his flight plan and directives: a southeast course toward Mexico City at the minimum airspeed possible without stalling the aircraft—approximately 100 knots (185 km/h; 115 mph)—at a maximum 10,000-foot (3,000 m) altitude. Cooper also specified the landing gear must remain deployed, the wing flaps must be lowered 15 degrees, and the cabin must remain unpressurized.
First Officer Rataczak informed Cooper that this configuration limited the aircraft's range to about 1,000 miles (1,600 km), so a second refueling would be necessary before entering Mexico. Cooper and the crew discussed options, and agreed on Reno–Tahoe International Airport as the refueling stop. Cooper further directed the aircraft take off with the rear exit door open and its airstair extended. Northwest's home office objected that this was unsafe. Cooper countered saying, "It can be done, do it," but did not argue the point and said he would lower the staircase once they were airborne. He demanded Mucklow remain aboard to assist the operation.
Around 7:40 pm, Flight 305 took off, with only Cooper, Mucklow, Captain Scott, First Officer Rataczak, and Flight Engineer Anderson aboard. Two F-106 fighters from McChord Air Force Base and a Lockheed T-33 trainer—diverted from an unrelated Air National Guard mission—followed the 727. All three jets maintained "S" flight patterns to stay behind the slow-moving 727 and out of Cooper's view.
After takeoff, Cooper told Mucklow to lower the aft staircase. She told him and the flight crew she feared being sucked out of the aircraft. The flight crew suggested she come to the cockpit and retrieve an emergency rope with which she could tie herself to a seat. Cooper rejected the suggestion, stating he did not want her going up front or the flight crew coming back to the cabin. She continued to express her fear to him, and asked him to cut some cord from one of the parachutes to create a safety line for her. He said he would lower the stairs himself, instructed her to go to the cockpit, close the curtain partition between the Coach and First Class sections, and not return.
Before she left, Mucklow begged Cooper, "Please, please take the bomb with you." Cooper responded he would either disarm it or take it with him. As she walked to the cockpit and turned to close the curtain partition, she saw Cooper standing in the aisle tying what appeared to be the money bag around his waist. From takeoff to when Mucklow entered the cockpit, four to five minutes had elapsed. For the rest of the flight to Reno, Mucklow remained in the cockpit, and was the last person to see the hijacker.
Around 8:00 pm, a cockpit warning light flashed, indicating the aft staircase had been deployed. The pilot used the cabin intercom to ask Cooper if he needed assistance, but Cooper's last message was a one-word reply: "No." The crew's ears popped from the drop in cabin air pressure from the stairs being opened. At approximately 8:13 p.m., the aircraft's tail section suddenly pitched upward, forcing the pilots to trim and return the aircraft to level flight. In his interview with the FBI, Co-pilot Bill Rataczak said the sudden upward pitch occurred while the flight was near the suburbs north of Portland.
With the aft cabin door open and the staircase deployed, the flight crew remained in the cockpit, unsure if Cooper was still aboard. Mucklow used the cabin intercom to inform Cooper they were approaching Reno, and he needed to raise the stairs so the plane could land safely. She repeated her requests as the pilots made the final approach to land, but neither Mucklow nor the flight crew received a reply from the hijacker.
At 11:02 pm, with the aft staircase still deployed, Flight 305 landed at Reno–Tahoe International Airport. FBI agents, state troopers, sheriff's deputies, and Reno police established a perimeter around the aircraft, but fearing the hijacker and the bomb were still aboard, did not approach the plane. Captain Scott searched the cabin, confirmed Cooper was no longer aboard, and after a 30-minute search, an FBI bomb squad declared the cabin safe.
In addition to 66 latent fingerprints aboard the airliner, FBI agents recovered Cooper's black clip-on tie, tie clip, and two of the four parachutes, one of which had been opened and had three shroud lines cut from the canopy. FBI agents interviewed eyewitnesses in Portland, Seattle, and Reno, and developed a series of composite sketches.
Local police and FBI agents immediately began questioning possible suspects. Acting on the possibility the hijacker may have used his real name (or the same alias in a previous crime), Portland police discovered and interviewed a Portland citizen named D. B. Cooper. The Portland Cooper had a minor police record, but was quickly eliminated as a suspect. In his rush to meet a deadline, reporter James Long confused the man with the name used by the hijacker. United Press International wire service reporter Clyde Jabin republished Long's error, and as other media sources repeated the error, the hijacker's pseudonym became "D. B. Cooper."
Due to the number of variables and parameters, precisely defining the area to search was difficult. The jet's airspeed estimates varied, the environmental conditions along the flight path varied with the aircraft's location and altitude, and only Cooper knew how long he remained in free-fall before pulling his ripcord. The Air Force F-106 pilots neither saw anyone jumping from the airliner, nor did their radar detect a deployed parachute. Moreover, a black-clad individual jumping into the moonless night would be difficult to see, especially given the limited visibility, cloud cover, and lack of ground lighting. The T-33 pilots did not make visual contact with the 727.
On December 6, 1971, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover approved the use of an Air Force SR-71 Blackbird to retrace and photograph Flight 305's flightpath, and attempt to locate the items Cooper carried during his jump. The SR-71 made five flights to retrace Flight 305's route, but due to poor visibility, the photography attempts were unsuccessful.
In an experimental recreation, flying the same aircraft used in the hijacking in the same flight configuration, FBI agents pushed a 200-pound (91 kg) sled out of the open airstair and were able to reproduce the upward motion of the tail section and brief change in cabin pressure described by the flight crew at 8:13 pm. Initial extrapolations placed Cooper's landing zone within an area on the southernmost outreach of Mount St. Helens, a few miles southeast of Ariel, Washington, near Lake Merwin, an artificial lake formed by a dam on the Lewis River. Search efforts focused on Clark and Cowlitz counties, encompassing the terrain immediately south and north of the Lewis River in southwest Washington. FBI agents and sheriff's deputies searched large areas of the heavily wooded terrain on foot and by helicopter. Door-to-door searches of local farmhouses were also carried out. Other search parties ran patrol boats along Lake Merwin and Yale Lake, the reservoir immediately to its east. Neither Cooper nor any of the equipment he presumably carried was found.
Using fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters from the Oregon Army National Guard, the FBI coordinated an aerial search along the entire flight path (known as Victor 23 in U.S. aviation terminology but "Vector 23" in most Cooper literature) from Seattle to Reno. Although numerous broken treetops and several pieces of plastic and other objects resembling parachute canopies were sighted and investigated, nothing relevant to the hijacking was found.
Shortly after the spring thaw in early 1972, teams of FBI agents aided by some 200 soldiers from Fort Lewis, along with United States Air Force personnel, National Guardsmen, and civilian volunteers, conducted another thorough ground search of Clark and Cowlitz Counties for 18 days in March, and then another 18 days in April. Electronic Explorations Company, a marine-salvage firm, used a submarine to search the 200-foot (61 m) depths of Lake Merwin. Two local women stumbled upon a skeleton in an abandoned structure in Clark County; it was later identified as the remains of Barbara Ann Derry, a teenaged girl who had been abducted and murdered several weeks before. Ultimately, the extensive search and recovery operation uncovered no significant material evidence related to the hijacking.
Based on early computer projections produced for the FBI, Cooper's drop zone was first estimated to be between Ariel dam to the north and the town of Battle Ground, Washington, to the south. In March 1972, after a joint investigation with Northwest Orient Airlines and the Air Force, the FBI determined Cooper probably jumped over the town of La Center, Washington.
In 2019, the FBI released a report indicating that about three hours after Cooper jumped, a burglary was reported at a small grocery store near Heisson, Washington, an unincorporated community located within the calculated drop zone that Northwest Airlines presented to the FBI. The burglar was noted by the FBI to have taken only survival items such as beef jerky and gloves.
A month after the hijacking, the FBI distributed lists of the ransom serial numbers to financial institutions, casinos, racetracks, and other businesses that routinely conducted large cash transactions, and to law-enforcement agencies around the world. Northwest Orient offered a reward of 15% of the recovered money, to a maximum of $25,000. In early 1972, U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell released the serial numbers to the general public. Two men used counterfeit $20 bills printed with Cooper serial numbers to swindle $30,000 from a Newsweek reporter named Karl Fleming in exchange for an interview with a man they falsely claimed was the hijacker.
In early 1973, with the ransom money still missing, The Oregon Journal republished the serial numbers and offered $1,000 to the first person to turn in a ransom bill to the newspaper or any FBI field office. In Seattle, the Post-Intelligencer made a similar offer with a $5,000 reward. The offers remained in effect until Thanksgiving 1974, and though several near matches were reported, no genuine bills were found. In 1975, Northwest Orient's insurer, Global Indemnity Co., complied with an order from the Minnesota Supreme Court and paid the airline's $180,000 (equivalent to $978,924 in 2022) claim on the ransom money.
Later analysis indicated that the original landing zone estimate was inaccurate; Captain Scott, who was flying the aircraft manually because of Cooper's speed and altitude demands, later determined his flight path was farther east than initially thought. Additional data from a variety of sources—in particular Continental Airlines pilot Tom Bohan, who was flying four minutes behind Flight 305—indicated the wind direction factored into drop-zone calculations had been wrong, possibly by as much as 80°. This and other supplemental data suggested the actual drop zone was south-southeast of the original estimate, in the drainage area of the Washougal River.
In 1986 FBI Agent Ralph Himmelsbach wrote, "I have to confess, if I were going to look for Cooper ... I would head for the Washougal." The Washougal Valley and its surroundings have been searched repeatedly in subsequent years; to date, no discoveries traceable to the hijacking have been reported. Some investigators have speculated that the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens could have obliterated any remaining physical clues.
On July 8, 2016, the FBI announced active investigation of the Cooper case was suspended, citing the need to focus investigative resources and manpower on issues of higher and more urgent priority. Local field offices would continue to accept any legitimate physical evidence, related specifically to the parachutes or to the ransom money, that may emerge in the future. The 66-volume case file compiled over the 45-year course of the investigation would be preserved for historical purposes at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, and on the FBI website. All of the evidence is open to the public. The crime remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation history.
During their forensic search of the aircraft, FBI agents found four major pieces of evidence, each with a direct physical link to Cooper: a black clip-on tie, a mother-of-pearl tie clip, a hair from Cooper's headrest, and eight filter-tipped Raleigh cigarette butts from the armrest ashtray.
FBI agents found a black clip-on necktie in seat 18-E, where Cooper had been seated. Attached to the tie was a gold tie-clip with a circular mother-of-pearl setting in the center of the clip. The FBI determined the tie had been sold exclusively at JCPenney department stores, but was discontinued in 1968.
By late 2007, the FBI had built a partial DNA profile from samples found on Cooper's tie in 2001. However, the FBI also acknowledged no evidence linked Cooper to the source of the DNA sample. Said FBI Special Agent Fred Gutt, "The tie had two small DNA samples, and one large sample ... it's difficult to draw firm conclusions from these samples." The FBI also made public a file of previously unreleased evidence, including Cooper's plane ticket, composite sketches, fact sheets, and posted a request for information about Cooper's identification.
In March 2009, a group of "citizen sleuths" using GPS, satellite imagery, and other technologies unavailable in 1971, began reinvestigating components of the case. Known as the Cooper Research Team (CRT), the group included paleontologist Tom Kaye from the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle, scientific illustrator Carol Abraczinskas, and metallurgist Alan Stone. Although the CRT obtained little new information about the buried ransom money or Cooper's landing zone, they found, analyzed, and identified hundreds of organic and metallic particles on Cooper's tie.
Using electron microscopy, the CRT identified Lycopodium spores, the source of which was likely pharmaceutical. The team also found minute particles of unalloyed titanium on the tie, along with particles of bismuth, antimony, cerium, strontium sulfide, aluminum, and titanium-antimony alloys. The metal and rare-earth particles suggested Cooper may have worked for Boeing or another aeronautical engineering firm, at a chemical manufacturing plant, or at a metal fabrication and production facility.
The material with the most significance, explained Kaye, was the unalloyed titanium. In the 1970s, the use of pure titanium was rare and would only be used in aircraft fabrication facilities, or at chemical companies combining titanium and aluminum to store extremely corrosive substances. The cerium and strontium sulfide were used by Boeing's supersonic transport development project, and by Portland factories in which cathode ray tubes were manufactured, such as Teledyne and Tektronix. Cooper researcher Eric Ulis has speculated the titanium-antimony alloys are linked to Rem-Cru Titanium Inc., a metals manufacturer and Boeing contractor.
FBI agents found two hair samples in Cooper's seat: a single strand of limb hair on the seat, and a single strand of brown Caucasian head hair on the headrest. The limb hair was destroyed after the FBI Crime Laboratory determined the sample lacked enough unique microscopic characteristics to be useful. However, the FBI Crime Laboratory determined the head hair was suitable for future comparison, and preserved the hair on a microscope slide. During their attempts to build Cooper's DNA profile in 2002, the FBI discovered the hair sample had been lost.
In the armrest ashtray of seat 18-E, FBI agents found eight Raleigh filter-tipped cigarette butts. These were sent to the FBI Crime Laboratory to search for fingerprints, but investigators were unable to find fingerprints and returned the butts to the Las Vegas field office. In 1998, the FBI sought to extract DNA from the cigarette butts, but discovered the butts had been destroyed while in the custody of the Las Vegas field office.
On February 10, 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram was vacationing with his family on the Columbia River at a beachfront known as Tina (or Tena) Bar, about 9 miles (14 km) downstream from Vancouver, Washington, and 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Ariel. As he raked the sandy riverbank to build a campfire, he uncovered three packets of the ransom cash, totaling around $5,800. The bills had disintegrated from lengthy exposure to the elements, but were still bundled in rubber bands. FBI technicians confirmed that the money was indeed a portion of the ransom: two packets of 100 twenty-dollar bills each, and a third packet of 90, all arranged in the same order as when given to Cooper.
The discovery launched several new rounds of conjecture and ultimately raised more questions than it answered. Initial statements by investigators and scientific consultants were founded on the assumption the bundled bills washed freely into the Columbia River from one of its many connecting tributaries. An Army Corps of Engineers hydrologist noted the bills had disintegrated in a "rounded" fashion and were "matted together", indicating they "had been deposited by river action", as opposed to having been deliberately buried. That conclusion, if correct, supported the hypothesis that Cooper had not landed near Lake Merwin nor any tributary of the Lewis River, which feeds into the Columbia well downstream from Tina Bar. It also lent credence to supplemental speculation the drop zone was near the Washougal River, which merges with the Columbia upstream from the discovery site.
The "free-floating" hypothesis presented difficulties; it did not explain the 10 bills missing from one packet, nor was there an explanation for how the three packets would have remained together after separating from the rest of the money. Physical evidence was incompatible with geological evidence; Himmelsbach wrote free-floating bundles would have washed up on the bank "within a couple of years" of the hijacking; otherwise, the rubber bands would have long since deteriorated. Geological evidence suggested the bills arrived at Tina Bar after 1974, the year of a Corps of Engineers dredging operation on that stretch of the river. Geologist Leonard Palmer of Portland State University found two distinct layers of sand and sediment between the clay deposited on the riverbank by the dredge and the sand layer in which the bills were buried, indicating that the bills arrived long after dredging had been completed.
In late 2020, analysis of diatoms found on the bills suggests the bundles found at Tina Bar were not submerged in the river or buried dry at the time of the hijacking in November 1971. Only diatoms that bloom during springtime were found, placing the date range that the money entered the water at least several months after the hijacking.
In 1986, after protracted negotiations, the recovered bills were divided equally between Brian Ingram and Northwest Orient's insurer Royal Globe Insurance; the FBI retained 14 examples as evidence. Ingram sold fifteen of his bills at auction in 2008 for about $37,000 (equivalent to $50,000 in 2022).
The Columbia River ransom money remains the only confirmed physical evidence from the hijacking found outside the aircraft.
During the hijacking, Cooper demanded and received two main chutes and two reserve chutes. The two reserve (front) chutes came from a local skydiving school and the two main (back) chutes were supplied by a local pilot, Norman Hayden. Earl Cossey, the parachute rigger who packed all four parachutes brought to Cooper, described the two main chutes as emergency bailout chutes as opposed to sporting parachutes that skydivers would use. Cossey further described the main chutes as being like military chutes because they were rigged to open immediately upon the ripcord being pulled and were incapable of being steered. When the plane landed in Reno, FBI agents discovered two parachutes that Cooper left behind: one reserve (front) chute and one main (back) chute. The reserve chute had been opened and three shroud lines had been cut out, but the main chute left behind was still intact. The unused main chute was described by FBI agents as a Model NB6 (Navy Backpack 6) and is on display at the Washington State Historical Society Museum.
One of the two reserve (front) chutes that Cooper was given was an unusable training chute intended to only be used for classroom demonstrations. According to Cossey, the reserve chute had a canopy inside of it that was sewn together so that skydiving students could get the feel of pulling a ripcord on a packed parachute without the canopy actually deploying. This nonfunctional reserve parachute was not found in the aircraft when it landed in Reno, leading FBI agents to speculate that Cooper was not an experienced parachutist because someone with experience would have realized this reserve chute was a "dummy chute". However, within days of the hijacking, it was revealed that neither of the parachute harnesses Cooper was given had the necessary D-rings required to attach reserve parachutes. Although Cooper lacked the ability to attach this "dummy" chute to his main harness as a reserve parachute, it was not found in the plane, so what he did with it is unknown. Cossey speculated that Cooper removed the sewn-together canopy and used the empty reserve container as an extra money bag. Tina Mucklow's testimony was in line with Cossey's speculation, stating that she recalled Cooper attempting to pack money inside a parachute container.
In November 1978, a deer hunter found a 727's instruction placard for lowering the aft airstair. The placard was found near a logging road about 13 miles (21 km) east of Castle Rock, Washington, north of Lake Merwin, but within Flight 305's basic flight path.
Over the 45-year span of its active investigation, the FBI periodically made public some of its working hypotheses and tentative conclusions, drawn from witness testimony and the scarce physical evidence.
During the first year of the investigation, the FBI used eyewitness testimony from the passengers and flight crew to develop sketches of Cooper. The first sketch, officially titled Composite A, was completed a few days after the hijacking and was released on November 28, 1971. According to witnesses, the Composite A sketch—jokingly known as "Bing Crosby"—was not an accurate likeness of Cooper. The Composite A sketch, said witnesses, showed a young man with a narrow face, and did not resemble Cooper or capture his disinterested, “let's get this over with" look. Flight attendant Florence Schaffner repeatedly told the FBI the Composite A sketch was a very poor likeness of Cooper.
After multiple eyewitnesses said Composite A was not an accurate rendering, FBI artists developed a second composite sketch. Completed in late 1972, the second Composite B sketch was intended to more accurately depict Cooper's age, skin tone, and face shape. Eyewitnesses to whom Composite B was shown said the sketch was more accurate, but the Composite B Cooper looked too "angry" or "nasty". One flight attendant said the Composite B sketch looked like a "hoodlum". and remembered Cooper as "more refined in appearance". Moreover, said witnesses, the Composite B sketch depicted a man older than Cooper, with a lighter complexion.
Using the criticisms of Composite B, FBI artists made adjustments and improvements to the Composite B sketch. On January 2, 1973, the FBI finalized revised Composite B, their third sketch of Cooper. Of the new sketch, one flight attendant said revised Composite B was, "a very close resemblance" to the hijacker. Opined another flight attendant, "the hijacker would be easily recognized from this sketch."
In April 1973, the FBI concluded the revised Composite B sketch was the best likeness of Cooper they could develop, and should be considered the definitive sketch of Cooper.
Flight attendants Schaffner and Mucklow, who spent the most time interacting with Cooper, were interviewed on the same night in separate cities, and gave nearly identical descriptions: around 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) tall, mid-40s, short, black hair combed back, 170–180 lb, swarthy or olive skin tone, and with no discernible accent. The only person to recall his eye color was Schaffner, who described them as being brown. The FBI relied heavily on the testimony of University of Oregon student Bill Mitchell, who sat across from Cooper during the three hours between take off in Portland and landing in Seattle, repeatedly interviewing him for what would become known as Composite Sketch B. His descriptions of Cooper were mostly the same as those of the flight attendants, except that he described Cooper as being somewhat smaller, stating that he thought Cooper was 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m) to 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) and that at 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) he was "way bigger" than Cooper and even referring to him as "slight". Robert Gregory, one of the only other passengers besides Mitchell who provided the FBI with a full description of Cooper, also provided a shorter impression of Cooper, describing him as 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m). Gregory stated that he believed Cooper to be of Mexican-American or American Indian descent.
Cooper appeared to be familiar with the Seattle area and may have been an Air Force veteran, based on testimony that he recognized the city of Tacoma from the air as the jet circled Puget Sound, and his accurate comment to Mucklow that McChord Air Force Base was about 20-minutes' driving time from Seattle-Tacoma Airport—a detail most civilians would not know or comment upon. His financial situation was very likely desperate. According to the FBI's retired chief investigator, Ralph Himmelsbach, extortionists and other criminals who steal large amounts of money nearly always do so because they need it urgently; otherwise, the crime is not worth the considerable risk. Alternatively, Cooper may have been "a thrill seeker" who made the jump "just to prove it could be done".
In May 1973, the FBI internally released an eight-page suspect profile. The profile speculated that Cooper was a military-trained parachutist and not a sports skydiver, because, in addition to his apparent comfort level with the military-style parachutes he was provided, his age would have made him an outlier in the sport-skydiving community, thereby increasing the likelihood that he would have been quickly recognized by a member of that community. The profile also speculated that Cooper was someone who exercised regularly due to comments by multiple eyewitnesses regarding Cooper's athletic-looking frame despite his age. They also felt he was not a heavy drinker or an alcoholic because the only drink he was served was quickly spilled and he never requested another. The profile determined that an alcoholic would have likely been incapable of turning down further alcoholic beverages throughout the stressful and lengthy hijacking. By calculating the number of cigarettes he smoked throughout the hijacking, the FBI believed that he smoked around one pack of cigarettes a day. Several of Cooper's mannerisms led the FBI to conclude that he was more intelligent than a common criminal such as his vocabulary level, his proper use of aviation-related terminology, complete lack of profane language, his calm demeanor, his style of dress, and the respect he showed for the female members of the crew. Cooper's ability to quickly and competently adapt to various situations as they arose indicated to profilers that he was likely the type of person who would commit a crime without the need or desire for an accomplice.
Agents theorized that Cooper took his alias from a popular French-language Belgian comics series featuring the fictional hero Dan Cooper, a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot who took part in numerous heroic adventures, including parachuting. (One cover from the series, reproduced on the FBI website, depicts test pilot Cooper skydiving.) Because the Dan Cooper comics were never translated into English, nor imported to the U.S., they speculated that he had encountered them during a tour of duty in Europe.
Based on the evidence and Cooper's tactics, the FBI speculated Cooper carefully planned the hijacking and had detailed, specific knowledge of aviation, the local terrain, and the 727's capabilities.
Cooper chose a seat in the last row of the rear cabin for three reasons: to observe and respond to any action in front of him, to minimize the possibility of being approached or attacked by someone behind him, and to make himself less conspicuous to the rest of the passengers. To ensure he would not be deliberately supplied with sabotaged equipment, Cooper demanded four parachutes to force the assumption he might compel one or more hostages to jump with him. FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach noted Cooper's choice of a bomb—instead of other weapons previously used by hijackers—thwarted any multidirectional attempts to rush him.
Cooper was also careful to avoid leaving evidence. Before he jumped, he demanded Mucklow return to him all notes either written by him, or on his behalf. Mucklow said she used the last match in his paper matchbook to light one of his cigarettes, and when she attempted to dispose of the empty matchbook, he demanded she return it to him. Although he was methodical in his attempts to retrieve evidence, he was unsuccessful; he left his clip-on tie in his seat.
Although Cooper was clearly familiar with the 727's capabilities and confidential features, its design was the primary reason Cooper chose the aircraft. With its aft airstair and the placement of its three engines, the 727 was one of the only passenger jets from which a parachute jump could be easily made. Cooper also appeared to be familiar with the 727's typical refueling time, with Mucklow telling the FBI that Cooper "seemed specifically well informed in refueling procedures".
By specifying a 15° flap setting, Cooper displayed specific knowledge of aviation tactics and the 727's capabilities; unlike most commercial jet airliners, the 727 could remain in slow, low-altitude flight without stalling. Cooper's specific flap setting also allowed him to control the 727's airspeed and altitude without entering the cockpit, where Cooper could have been overpowered by the three pilots. First Officer Bill Rataczak, who spoke with Cooper on the intercom during the hijacking, told the FBI, "[Cooper] displayed a specific knowledge of flying and aircraft in general."
The most significant knowledge Cooper displayed was a feature both secret and unique to the 727; the aft airstair could be operated during flight, and the single activation switch in the rear of the cabin could not be overridden from the cockpit. Cooper knew how to operate the aft staircase, and had clearly planned to use it for his escape. The FBI speculated Cooper knew the Central Intelligence Agency was using 727s to drop agents and supplies into enemy territory during the Vietnam War. Since no situation on a passenger flight would necessitate such an operation, civilian crews were neither informed the aft airstair could be lowered midflight, nor were they aware its operation could not be overridden from the cockpit.
Cooper appeared to be familiar with parachutes, although his experience level is unknown. Mucklow said Cooper, "appeared to be completely familiar with the parachutes which had been furnished to him", and told a journalist, "Cooper put on [his] parachute as though he did so every day". Cooper's familiarity with the military-style parachutes he was given has led to speculation that Cooper was a military parachutist and not a civilian skydiver.
Larry Carr, who led the investigative team from 2006 to 2009, does not believe Cooper was a paratrooper. Instead, Carr speculates Cooper had been an Air Force aircraft cargo loader. An aircraft cargo-loading assignment would provide him with aviation knowledge and experience: cargo loaders have basic jump training, wear emergency parachutes, and know how to dispatch items from planes in flight. As a cargo loader, Cooper would be familiar with parachutes, "but not necessarily sufficient knowledge to survive the jump he made".
From the beginning of their investigation, FBI agents did not believe Cooper survived his jump. The FBI provided several reasons and facts to support their conclusion: Cooper's apparent lack of skydiving experience, his apparent unfamiliarity with parachutes, his lack of proper equipment for his jump and survival, the temperature and inclement weather on the night of the hijacking, the wooded terrain into which Cooper jumped, his lack of knowledge of his landing area, and the unused ransom money.
First, Cooper appeared to lack the necessary skydiving knowledge, skills, and experience for the type of jump he attempted. "We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper," said Carr. "We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 172 mph [77 m/s] wind in his face wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky." Skydiving instructor Earl Cossey, who supplied the parachutes, testified Cooper did not need extensive experience to survive the jump and "anyone who had six or seven practice jumps could accomplish this." However, Cossey also noted jumping at night drastically increased the risk of injury, and without jump boots, Cooper probably would have suffered severe ankle or leg injuries upon landing.
Second, Cooper did not appear to have the equipment necessary for either his jump or his survival in the wilderness. Cooper failed to bring or request a helmet, and jumped into a 15 °F (−9 °C) wind at 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in November over Washington State without proper protection against the extreme wind chill. Although the contents of Cooper's 4 in × 12 in × 14 in (10 cm × 30 cm × 36 cm) paper bag are unknown, Cooper did not use any of the bag's contents to assist him during any part of the hijacking, so the FBI speculated the bag contained items Cooper needed for his jump, such as boots, gloves, and goggles.
Third, Cooper did not appear to have an accomplice waiting on the ground to help him escape. Such an arrangement would have required both a precisely timed jump and the flight crew's cooperation to follow a predetermined flight path, but Cooper did not give the flight crew a specific path. Moreover, the flight crew proposed—and Cooper agreed—to alter the flight path, and fly from Seattle to Reno for refueling, and Cooper had no way of keeping an accomplice apprised of his changed plans. The low cloud cover and lack of visibility to the ground further complicated Cooper's ability to determine his location, establish a bearing, or see his landing zone.
Finally, the ransom money was never spent, and the recovered portion was found unused. "Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open," said Carr. FBI agent Richard Tosaw theorized Cooper became incapacitated from hypothermia during his jump, landed in the Columbia River, and drowned. However, FBI agents were not unanimous in their assessments of Cooper's ultimate fate. A senior FBI agent anonymously opined in a 1976 article in The Seattle Times, "I think [Cooper] made it. I think he slept in his own bed that night. It was a clear night. A lot of the country is pretty flat ... he could have just walked out. Right down the road. Hell, they weren't even looking for him there at the time. They thought he was somewhere else. He could just walk down the road."
Conclusive evidence of Cooper's death has not been found. In the months following the Cooper hijacking, five men attempted copycat hijackings, and all five survived their parachute escapes. The survival of the copycats—several of whom faced circumstances and conditions similar to Cooper's jump—forced FBI lead case agent Ralph Himmelsbach to reevaluate his opinions and theories regarding Cooper's chances for survival. Himmelsbach cited three examples of hijackers who survived jumps in conditions similar to Cooper's escape: Martin McNally, Frederick Hahneman, and Richard LaPoint.
Hijacker Martin McNally jumped using only a reserve chute, without protective gear, at night, over Indiana. Unlike Cooper, who appeared to be familiar with parachutes, McNally had to be shown how to put on his parachute. Additionally, McNally's pilot increased the airspeed to 320 knots, nearly twice the airspeed of Flight 305 at the time of Cooper's jump. The increased windspeed caused a violent jump for McNally: The money bag was immediately torn from him, "yet he had landed unharmed except for some superficial scratches and bruises".
49-year-old Frederick Hahneman hijacked a 727 in Pennsylvania and survived after jumping at night into a Honduran jungle. A third copycat, Richard LaPoint, hijacked a 727 in Nevada. Wearing only trousers, a shirt, and cowboy boots, LaPoint jumped into the freezing January wind over northern Colorado and landed in the snow. In 2008, Himmelsbach admitted he originally thought Cooper had only a fifty-percent chance of survival, but subsequently revised his assessment.
By 1976, most published legal analyses concurred the impending expiration of the statute of limitations for prosecution of the hijacker would make little difference: Since the statute's interpretation varies from case to case, and from court to court, a prosecutor could argue Cooper had forfeited legal immunity on any of several valid technical grounds. In November 1976, a Portland grand jury returned an indictment in absentia against "John Doe, a.k.a. Dan Cooper" for air piracy and violation of the Hobbs Act. The indictment formally initiated prosecution to be continued, should the hijacker be apprehended at any time in the future.
Between 1971 and 2016, the FBI processed more than a thousand "serious suspects", including assorted publicity seekers and deathbed confessors.
Theodore Burdette Braden Jr. (1928–2007) was a Special Forces commando during the Vietnam War, a master skydiver, and a convicted felon. He was believed by many within the Special Forces community, both at the time of the hijacking and in subsequent years, to have been Cooper. Born in Ohio, Braden first joined the military at the age of 16 in 1944, serving with the 101st Airborne during World War II. He eventually became one of the military's leading parachutists, often representing the Army in international skydiving tournaments, and his military records list him as having made 911 jumps. During the 1960s, Braden was a team leader within the MACVSOG, a classified commando unit of Green Berets which conducted unconventional warfare operations during the Vietnam War. He also served as a military skydiving instructor, teaching HALO jumping techniques to members of Project Delta. Braden spent 23 months in Vietnam, conducting classified operations within both North and South Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia. In December 1966, Braden deserted his unit in Vietnam and made his way to the Congo to serve as a mercenary, but only served there a short time before being arrested by CIA agents and taken back to the United States for a court-martial. Despite having committed a capital offense by deserting in wartime, Braden was given an honorable discharge and barred from re-enlisting in the military in exchange for his continued secrecy about the MACVSOG program.
Braden was profiled in the October 1967 issue of Ramparts Magazine, wherein he was described by fellow Special Forces veteran and journalist Don Duncan as being someone with a "secret death wish" who "continually places himself in unnecessary danger but always seems to get away with it", specifically referring to Braden's disregard for military skydiving safety regulations. Duncan also claimed that during Braden's time in Vietnam, he was "continuously involved in shady deals to make money." Following his military discharge in 1967, the details of Braden's life are largely unknown, but at the time of the hijacking he was a truck driver for Consolidated Freightways, which was headquartered in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland and not far from the suspected dropzone of Ariel, Washington. It is also known that at some point in the early 1970s he was investigated by the FBI for stealing $250,000 during a trucking scam he had allegedly devised, but he was never charged for this supposed crime. In 1980, Braden was indicted by a Federal grand jury for driving an 18-wheeler full of stolen goods from Arizona to Massachusetts, but it is unknown whether there was a conviction in that case. Two years later Braden was arrested in Pennsylvania for driving a stolen vehicle with fictitious plates and for having no driver's license. Braden eventually ended up being sent to Federal prison at some point during the late 1980s, serving time in Pennsylvania, but the precise crime is unknown.
Despite his ability as a soldier, he was not well liked personally and was described by a family member as "the perfect combination of high intelligence and criminality". From his time working covert operations in Vietnam, he likely would have possessed the then-classified knowledge about the ability and proper specifications for jumping from a 727, perhaps having done it himself on MACVSOG missions. Physically, Braden's military records list him at 5 ft 8 in (173 cm), which is shorter than the height description of at least 5 ft 10 in (178 cm) given by the two flight attendants, but this military measurement would have been taken in his stocking feet and he may have appeared somewhat taller in shoes. However, he possessed a dark complexion from years of outdoor military service, had short dark hair, a medium athletic build, and was 43 years of age at the time of the hijacking, which are features all in line with the descriptions of Cooper.
In 2003, Minnesota resident Lyle Christiansen watched a television documentary about the Cooper hijacking and became convinced that his late brother Kenneth (1926–1994) was Cooper. After repeated futile attempts to convince the FBI and author and film director Nora Ephron (whom he hoped would make a movie about the case), he contacted private investigator Skipp Porteous in New York City. In 2010, Porteous published a book postulating that Christiansen was the hijacker. The following year, an episode of the History series Brad Meltzer's Decoded also summarized the circumstantial evidence linking Christiansen to the Cooper case.
Christiansen enlisted in the Army in 1944 and was trained as a paratrooper. World War II had ended by the time he was deployed in 1945, but he made occasional training jumps while stationed in Japan with occupation forces in the late 1940s. After leaving the Army, he joined Northwest Orient in 1954 as a laborer stationed at Northwest Airlines' Far East stopover on Shemya Island in the Aleutians. He subsequently became a flight attendant, and then a purser, based in Seattle. Christiansen was 45 years old at the time of the hijacking, but he was shorter (5 ft 8 in or 173 cm), thinner (150 pounds or 68 kg), than eyewitness descriptions of Cooper. Christiansen smoked (as did the hijacker) and displayed a fondness for bourbon (the drink Cooper had requested). Stewardess Florence Schaffner told author Geoffrey Gray that photos of Christiansen fit her memory of the hijacker's appearance more closely than those of other suspects she had been shown but could not conclusively identify him.
Despite the publicity generated by Porteous's book and the 2011 television documentary, the FBI stands by its position that Christiansen cannot be considered a prime suspect. It cites the poor match to eyewitness physical descriptions and a complete absence of direct incriminating evidence.
Bryant "Jack" Coffelt (1917–1975) was a con man, ex-convict, and purported government informant who claimed to have been the chauffeur and confidant of Abraham Lincoln's last undisputed descendant, great-grandson Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith. In 1972, he began claiming he was Cooper and attempted through an intermediary – a former cellmate named James Brown – to sell his story to a Hollywood production company. He said he landed near Mount Hood, about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Ariel, injuring himself and losing the ransom money in the process. Photos of Coffelt bear a resemblance to the composite drawings, although he was in his mid-fifties in 1971. He was reportedly in Portland on the day of the hijacking and sustained leg injuries around that time which were consistent with a skydiving mishap.
Coffelt's account was reviewed by the FBI, which concluded that it differed in several details from information that had not been made public and was therefore a fabrication. Brown continued peddling the story long after Coffelt died in 1975. Multiple media venues, including the CBS news program 60 Minutes, considered and rejected it.
Lynn Doyle "L. D." Cooper (1931–1999), a leather worker and Korean War veteran, was proposed as a suspect in July 2011 by his niece, Marla Cooper. As an eight-year-old, she recalled Cooper and another uncle planning something "very mischievous", involving the use of "expensive walkie-talkies", at her grandmother's house in Sisters, Oregon, 150 miles (240 km) southeast of Portland. The next day Flight 305 was hijacked; and though the uncles ostensibly were turkey hunting, L. D. Cooper came home wearing a bloody shirt—the result, he said, of an auto accident. Later, Marla claimed, her parents came to believe that L. D. was the hijacker. She also recalled that her uncle, who died in 1999, was obsessed with the Canadian comic book hero Dan Cooper and "had one of his comic books thumbtacked to his wall"—although he was not a skydiver or paratrooper.
In August 2011, New York magazine published an alternative witness sketch, reportedly based on a description by Flight 305 eyewitness Robert Gregory, depicting horn-rimmed sunglasses, a "russet"-colored suit jacket with wide lapels, and marcelled hair. The article observed that L. D. Cooper had wavy hair that looked marcelled (as did Duane Weber, see below). The FBI announced that no fingerprints had been found on a guitar strap made by L. D. Cooper. One week later, they added that his DNA did not match the partial DNA profile obtained from the hijacker's tie, but acknowledged that there is no certainty that the hijacker was the source of the organic material obtained from the tie.
Barbara Dayton (1926–2002), a recreational pilot and University of Washington librarian who was named Robert Dayton at birth, served in the U.S. Merchant Marine and then the Army during World War II. After discharge, Dayton worked with explosives in the construction field and aspired to a professional airline career, but could not obtain a commercial pilot's license.
Dayton underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1969, and changed her name to Barbara; she is believed to be the first person to undergo this surgery in Washington State. She claimed to have staged the hijacking two years later, presenting as a man, in order to "get back" at the airline industry and the FAA, whose insurmountable rules and conditions had prevented her from becoming an airline pilot. Dayton said that the ransom money was hidden in a cistern near Woodburn, Oregon, a suburban area south of Portland. She eventually recanted the entire story, ostensibly after learning that hijacking charges could still be brought. She also did not match the physical description particularly closely.
William Pratt Gossett (1930–2003) was a Marine Corps, Army, and Army Air Forces veteran who had military service in Korea and Vietnam. His military experience included jump training and wilderness survival. Gossett was known to be obsessed with the Cooper hijacking. According to Galen Cook, a lawyer who has collected information related to Gossett for years, he once showed his sons a key to a Vancouver, British Columbia, safe deposit box which, he claimed, contained the long-missing ransom money.
The FBI has no direct evidence implicating Gossett and cannot even reliably place him in the Pacific Northwest at the time of the hijacking. "There is not one link to the D. B. Cooper case," said Special Agent Carr, "other than the statements [Gossett] made to someone."
Joe Lakich (1921–2017) was a retired U.S. Army Major and Korean War veteran whose daughter Susan Giffe was killed less than two months before the hijacking, as a consequence of a botched hostage negotiation conducted by the FBI. The events culminating in the death of Lakich's daughter would be studied by hostage negotiators for decades as an example of what not to do during a hostage situation. He and his wife later sued the FBI, and ultimately an Appeals Court ruled in their favor, holding that the FBI acted negligently during the hostage negotiation.
Lakich would become a Cooper suspect in large part due to the revelation that Cooper's tie contained microscopic particles of uncommon metals, such as unalloyed titanium. It is speculated that few people during that era would have contact with such materials, and that Cooper may have worked in a manufacturing environment working on electronics as engineer or manager. When the hijacking occurred, Lakich was working in Nashville as a production supervisor at an electronics capacitor factory and would have likely been exposed to the materials found on the tie. When Cooper was asked by Tina Mucklow why he was committing the hijacking, he replied: "It's not because I have a grudge against your airlines, it's just because I have a grudge." It is believed by some that this "grudge" was Lakich's anger toward the FBI for their failed efforts at rescuing his daughter less than two months earlier.
John Emil List (1925–2008) was an accountant and war veteran who murdered his wife, three teenage children, and 85-year-old mother in Westfield, New Jersey, fifteen days before the Cooper hijacking, withdrew $200,000 from his mother's bank account, and disappeared. He came to the attention of the Cooper task force due to the timing of his disappearance, multiple matches to the hijacker's description, and the reasoning that "a fugitive accused of mass murder has nothing to lose". After his capture in 1989, List denied any involvement in the Cooper hijacking: no substantial evidence implicates him, and the FBI no longer considers him a suspect. List died in prison in 2008.
Theodore Ernest Mayfield (1935–2015) was a Special Forces veteran, pilot, competitive skydiver, and skydiving instructor. He served time in 1994 for negligent homicide after two of his students died when their parachutes failed to open and was later found indirectly responsible for thirteen additional skydiving deaths due to faulty equipment and training. In 2010, he was sentenced to three years' probation for piloting a plane 26 years after losing his pilot's license and rigging certificates. He was suggested repeatedly as a suspect early in the investigation, according to FBI Agent Ralph Himmelsbach, who knew Mayfield from a prior dispute at a local airport. He was ruled out, based partly on the fact that he called Himmelsbach less than two hours after Flight 305 landed in Reno to volunteer advice on standard skydiving practices and possible landing zones, as well as information on local skydivers.
Richard McCoy (1942–1974) was an Army veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, first as a demolition expert and later with the Green Berets as a helicopter pilot. After his military service, he became a warrant officer in the Utah National Guard and an avid recreational skydiver, with aspirations of becoming a Utah State Trooper.
On April 7, 1972, McCoy staged the best-known of the so-called "copycat" hijackings (see below). He boarded United Airlines' Flight 855 (a Boeing 727 with aft stairs) in Denver, Colorado, and, brandishing what later proved to be a paperweight resembling a hand grenade and an unloaded handgun, he demanded four parachutes and $500,000. After delivery of the money and parachutes at San Francisco International Airport, McCoy ordered the aircraft back into the sky and bailed out over Provo, Utah, leaving behind his handwritten hijacking instructions and his fingerprints on a magazine he had been reading.
He was arrested on April 9 with the ransom cash in his possession and, after trial and conviction, received a 45-year sentence. Two years later, he escaped from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary with several accomplices by crashing a garbage truck through the main gate. Tracked down three months later in Virginia Beach, McCoy was killed in a shootout with FBI agents.
In their 1991 book, D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, parole officer Bernie Rhodes and former FBI agent Russell Calame asserted that they had identified McCoy as Cooper. They cited obvious similarities in the two hijackings, claims by McCoy's family that the tie and mother-of-pearl tie clip left on the plane belonged to McCoy, and McCoy's own refusal to admit or deny that he was Cooper. A proponent of their claim was the FBI agent who killed McCoy. "When I shot Richard McCoy," he said, "I shot D. B. Cooper at the same time."
Although there is no reasonable doubt that McCoy committed the Denver hijacking, the FBI does not consider him a suspect in the Cooper case because of mismatches in age and description, a level of skydiving skill well above that thought to be possessed by the hijacker, and credible evidence that McCoy was in Las Vegas on the day of the Portland hijacking, and at home in Utah the day after, having Thanksgiving dinner with his family.
On November 11, 2022, independent researcher Eric Ulis held a press conference putting forward Vincent C. Petersen as a person of interest. While researching the spectrum analysis that was done on Cooper's tie, Ulis discovered 3 particles that appeared to be a very rare titanium antimony alloy. Petersen worked at a company named Rem-Cru, based in Midland, Pennsylvania, and later in metro Pittsburgh, that manufactured titanium-antimony alloys.
Sheridan Peterson (1926–2021) served in the Marine Corps during World War II and was later employed as a technical editor at Boeing, based in Seattle. Investigators took an interest in Peterson as a suspect soon after the skyjacking because of his experience as a smokejumper and love of taking physical risks, as well as his similar appearance and age (44) to the Cooper description.
Peterson often teased the media about whether he was really Cooper. Entrepreneur Eric Ulis, who spent years investigating the crime, said he was "98% convinced" that Peterson was Cooper; when pressed by FBI agents, Peterson insisted he was in Nepal at the time of the hijacking. He died in 2021.
In an episode of History Channel's History's Greatest Mysteries, analysis of DNA found on the tie worn by Cooper indicated that Peterson was not a match for Cooper when compared to a DNA sample from one of Peterson's living daughters. Eric Ulis has since withdrawn his allegation that Peterson could have been Cooper.
Robert Wesley Rackstraw (1943–2019) was a retired pilot and ex-convict who served on an Army helicopter crew and other units during the Vietnam War. He came to the attention of the Cooper task force in February 1978, after he was arrested in Iran and deported to the U.S. to face explosives possession and check kiting charges. Several months later, while released on bail, Rackstraw attempted to fake his own death by radioing a false mayday call and telling controllers that he was bailing out of a rented plane over Monterey Bay. Police later arrested him in Fullerton, California, on an additional charge of forging federal pilot certificates; the plane he claimed to have ditched was found, repainted, in a nearby hangar. Cooper investigators noted his physical resemblance to Cooper composite sketches even though he was only 28 in 1971, military parachute training, and criminal record but eliminated him as a suspect in 1979 after no direct evidence of his involvement could be found.
In 2016, Rackstraw re-emerged as a suspect in a History channel program, along with a book. On September 8, 2016, Thomas J. Colbert, the author of the book, and attorney Mark Zaid filed a lawsuit to compel the FBI to release its Cooper case file under the Freedom of Information Act. In 2017, Colbert and a group of volunteer investigators uncovered what they believed to be "a decades-old parachute strap" at an undisclosed location in the Pacific Northwest. This was followed later in 2017 with a piece of foam, which they suspected was part of Cooper's parachute backpack. In January 2018, Tom and Dawna Colbert reported that they had obtained a confession letter originally written in December 1971 containing codes that matched three units Rackstraw was a part of while in the Army.
One of the Flight 305 flight attendants reportedly "did not find any similarities" between photos of Rackstraw from the 1970s and her recollection of Cooper's appearance. Rackstraw's attorney called the renewed allegations "the stupidest thing I've ever heard", and Rackstraw himself told People magazine, "It's a lot of [expletive], and they know it is." The FBI declined further comment. Rackstraw stated in a 2017 phone interview that he lost his job over the 2016 investigations. Rackstraw said to Colbert, "I told everybody I was [the hijacker]", before explaining the admission was a stunt. He died in 2019.
Walter R. Reca (1933–2014) was a former military paratrooper and intelligence operative. He was proposed as a suspect by his friend Carl Laurin in 2018. In 2008, Reca told Laurin via a recorded phone call that he was the hijacker.
Reca gave Laurin permission in a notarized letter to share his story after his death. He also allowed Laurin to tape their phone conversations about the crime over a six-week period in late 2008. In over three hours of recordings, Reca shared details about his version of the hijacking. He also confessed to his niece, Lisa Story.
From Reca's description of the terrain on his way to the drop zone, Laurin concluded that he landed near Cle Elum, Washington. After Reca described an encounter with a dump truck driver at a roadside cafe after he landed, Laurin located Jeff Osiadacz, who was driving his dump truck near Cle Elum the night of the hijacking and met a stranger at the Teanaway Junction Café just outside of town. The man asked Osiadacz to give his friend directions to the café over the phone, presumably to be picked up, and he complied. Laurin convinced Joe Koenig, a former member of the Michigan State Police, of Reca's guilt. Koenig later published a book on Cooper, titled Getting the Truth: I Am D.B. Cooper.
These claims have aroused skepticism. Cle Elum is well north and east of Flight 305's known flight path, more than 150 miles (240 km) north of the drop zone assumed by most analysts, and even further from Tena Bar, where a portion of the ransom money was found. Reca was a military paratrooper and private skydiver with hundreds of jumps to his credit, in contradiction to the FBI's publicized profile of an amateur skydiver at best. Reca also did not resemble the composite portrait the FBI assembled, which Laurin and Osiadacz used to explain why Osiadacz's suspicions were not aroused at the time. In response to the allegations against Reca, the FBI said that it would be inappropriate to comment on specific tips provided to them, and that no evidence to date had proved the culpability of any suspect beyond a reasonable doubt.
In November 2018, The Oregonian published an article proposing William J. Smith (1928–2018), of Bloomfield, New Jersey, as a suspect. The article was based on research conducted by an Army data analyst who sent his findings to the FBI in mid-2018. Smith, a New Jersey native, was a World War II veteran. After high school, he enlisted in the United States Navy and volunteered for combat air crew training. After his discharge, he worked for the Lehigh Valley Railroad and was affected by the Penn Central Transportation Company's bankruptcy in 1970, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history at that time. The article proposed that the loss of his pension created a grudge against the corporate establishment and transportation field, as well as a sudden need for money. Smith was 43 at the time of the hijacking. In his high school yearbook, a list of alumni killed in World War II lists an Ira Daniel Cooper, possibly the source for the hijacker's pseudonym. The analyst claimed that Smith's naval aviation experience would have given him knowledge of planes and parachutes, and his railroad experience would have helped him find railroad tracks and hop on a train to escape the area after landing.
According to the analyst, aluminum spiral chips found on the clip-on tie could have come from a locomotive maintenance facility. Smith's information about the Seattle area may have come from his close friend Dan Clair, who was stationed at Fort Lewis during the war. The analyst noted that the man who claimed to be Cooper in Max Gunther's 1985 book identified himself as "Dan LeClair". Smith and Clair worked together for Conrail at Newark's Oak Island Yard. Smith retired from that facility as a yardmaster. The article noted that a picture of Smith on the Lehigh Valley Railroad website showed a "remarkable resemblance" to Cooper FBI sketches. The FBI said that it would be inappropriate to comment on tips related to Smith.
Duane L. Weber (1924–1995) was a World War II Army veteran who served time in at least six prisons from 1945 to 1968 for burglary and forgery. He was proposed as a suspect by his widow, Jo, based primarily on a deathbed confession: three days before he died in 1995, Weber told his wife, "I am Dan Cooper." The name meant nothing to her, she said; but months later, a friend told her of its significance in the hijacking. She went to her local library to research Cooper, found Max Gunther's book, and discovered notations in the margins in her husband's handwriting. Like the hijacker, Weber drank bourbon and chain-smoked. Other circumstantial evidence included a 1979 trip to Seattle and the Columbia River, where his wife remembered him throwing a trash bag just upstream of Tina Bar.
Himmelsbach said, "[Weber] does fit the physical description (and) does have the criminal background that I have always felt was associated with the case", but did not believe Weber was Cooper. The FBI eliminated Weber as an active suspect in July 1998 when his fingerprints did not match any of those processed in the hijacked plane, and no other direct evidence could be found to implicate him. Later, his DNA also failed to match the samples recovered from Cooper's tie.
Cooper was among the first to attempt air piracy for personal gain, but merely eleven days prior to Cooper's hijack, Canadian Paul Joseph Cini hijacked an Air Canada DC-8 over Montana, but was overpowered by the crew when he put down his shotgun to strap on his parachute. Encouraged by Cooper's apparent success, fifteen similar hijackings—all unsuccessful—were attempted in 1972. Some notable examples from that year:
With the advent of universal luggage searches in 1973 (see Airport security), the general incidence of hijackings dropped dramatically. There were no further notable Cooper imitators until July 11, 1980, when Glenn K. Tripp seized Northwest Orient Flight 608 at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, demanding $600,000 ($100,000 by an independent account), two parachutes, and the assassination of his boss. A quick-thinking flight attendant drugged Tripp's alcoholic drink with Valium. After a ten-hour standoff, during which Tripp reduced his demands to three cheeseburgers and a ground vehicle in which to escape, he was apprehended. Tripp attempted to hijack the same Northwest flight on January 21, 1983, and this time demanded to be flown to Afghanistan. When the plane landed in Portland, he was shot and killed by FBI agents.
Despite the initiation of the federal Sky Marshal Program the previous year, 31 hijackings were committed in U.S. airspace in 1972; 19 of them were for the specific purpose of extorting money. In 15 of the extortion cases, the hijackers also demanded parachutes. In early 1973, the FAA began requiring airlines to search all passengers and their bags. Amid multiple lawsuits charging that such searches violated Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, federal courts ruled that they were acceptable when applied universally and when limited to searches for weapons and explosives. Only two hijackings were attempted in 1973, both by psychiatric patients; one hijacker, Samuel Byck, intended to crash the airliner into the White House to kill President Nixon.
Due to multiple "copycat" hijackings in 1972, the FAA required that the exterior of all Boeing 727 aircraft be fitted with a spring-loaded device, later dubbed the "Cooper vane", that prevents lowering of the aft airstair during flight. The device consists of a flat blade of aluminum mounted on a pivot, which is spring-loaded to stay out of the way of the door when the craft is at rest, but aerodynamically rotates into position to prevent the door from being opened when the plane is traveling at flight speeds. Operation of the vane is automatic and cannot be overridden from within the aircraft. As a direct result of the hijacking, the installation of peepholes was mandated in all cockpit doors; this enables the cockpit crew to observe passengers without opening the cockpit door.
In 1978, the hijacked 727-100 aircraft was sold by Northwest Orient to Piedmont Airlines, where it was re-registered N838N and continued in domestic carrier service. In 1984, it was purchased by the charter company Key Airlines, re-registered N29KA, and incorporated into the Air Force's civilian charter fleet that shuttled workers between Nellis Air Force Base and the Tonopah Test Range during the F-117 Nighthawk development program. In 1996, the aircraft was scrapped for parts in a Memphis aircraft boneyard.
On April 23, 2013, Earl J. Cossey, who packed the four parachutes that were given to Cooper, was found dead in his home in Woodinville, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. His death was ruled a homicide due to blunt-force trauma to the head. The perpetrator remains unknown. Some commenters alleged possible links to the Cooper case, but authorities responded that they had no reason to believe that any such link exists. Woodinville officials later announced that burglary was most likely the motive for the crime.
Himmelsbach famously called Cooper a "rotten sleazy crook", but his bold and unusual crime inspired a cult following that was expressed in song, film, and literature. Novelty shops sold t-shirts emblazoned with "D. B. Cooper, Where Are You?" Restaurants and bowling alleys in the Pacific Northwest hold regular Cooper-themed promotions and sell tourist souvenirs. A "Cooper Day" celebration has been held at the Ariel General Store and Tavern each November since 1974 with the exception of 2015, the year its owner, Dona Elliot, died.
Characters and situations inspired by Cooper have appeared in the story lines of the television series Prison Break, Justified, The Blacklist, NewsRadio, Leverage, Journeyman, Renegade, Numb3rs, Quincy, M.E., 30 Rock, Drunk History, Breaking Bad, and Loki, as well as the 1981 film The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper, the 2004 film Without a Paddle, and a book titled The Vesuvius Prophecy by Greg Cox, based on The 4400 TV series.
An annual convention, known as CooperCon, is held every year in late November in Seattle, Washington. The event, founded by Cooper researcher Eric Ulis in 2018, is a multi-day gathering of Cooper researchers and enthusiasts. Originally held in Vancouver, Washington, it was moved to Seattle beginning in 2023. CooperCon took the place of the annual D. B. Cooper Days, which ended when the owner of the Ariel Store Pub died and the pub was forced to close. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "D. B. Cooper is a media epithet for an unidentified man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft, in United States airspace on November 24, 1971. During the flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, the hijacker told a flight attendant he was armed with a bomb, demanded $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to $1,400,000 in 2022) and requested four parachutes upon landing in Seattle. After releasing the passengers in Seattle, the hijacker instructed the flight crew to refuel the aircraft and begin a second flight to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. About 30 minutes after taking off from Seattle, the hijacker opened the aircraft's aft door, deployed the staircase, and parachuted into the night over southwestern Washington. The hijacker has never been found or conclusively identified.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In 1980, a small portion of the ransom money was found along the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. The discovery of the money renewed public interest in the mystery, but yielded no additional information about the hijacker's identity or fate, and the remaining money was never recovered. The hijacker identified himself as Dan Cooper, but a reporter confused his name with another suspect and the hijacker subsequently became known as \"D. B. Cooper\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "For 45 years after the hijacking, the Federal Bureau of Investigation maintained an active investigation and built an extensive case file, but ultimately did not reach any definitive conclusions. The crime remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation. The FBI speculates Cooper did not survive his jump, for several reasons: the inclement weather on the night of the hijacking, Cooper's unsuitable clothing and lack of proper skydiving equipment, the heavily wooded area into which he jumped, his apparent lack of detailed knowledge of his landing area, and the disappearance of the remaining ransom money, suggesting it was never spent. In July 2016, the FBI officially suspended active investigation of the NORJAK (Northwest hijacking) case, although reporters, enthusiasts, professional investigators, and amateur sleuths continue to pursue numerous theories for Cooper's identity, success, and fate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Cooper's hijacking—and several imitators in the following year—immediately initiated major upgrades to security measures for airports and commercial aviation. Metal detectors were installed at airports, baggage inspection became mandatory, and passengers who paid cash for tickets on the day of departure were selected for additional scrutiny. Boeing 727s were retrofitted with eponymous \"Cooper vanes\", specifically designed to prevent the aft staircase from being lowered in-flight. By 1973, aircraft hijacking incidents had decreased, as the new security measures dissuaded would-be hijackers whose only motive was money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "On Thanksgiving Eve, November 24, 1971, a man carrying a black attaché case approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines at Portland International Airport. Using cash, the man bought a one-way ticket on Flight 305, a thirty-minute trip north to \"Sea-Tac\" (Seattle–Tacoma International Airport). On his ticket, the man listed his name as \"Dan Cooper\". Eyewitnesses described Cooper as a white male in his mid-40s, with dark hair and brown eyes, wearing a black or brown business suit, a white shirt, a thin black tie, a black raincoat, and brown shoes. Carrying a briefcase and a brown paper bag, Cooper boarded Flight 305, a Boeing 727-100 (FAA registration N467US). Cooper took seat 18-E in the last row and ordered a drink, a bourbon and 7-Up, from the flight attendant.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "With a crew of six (consisting of Captain William A. Scott, First Officer William \"Bill\" J. Rataczak, Flight Engineer Harold E. Anderson, and flight attendants Alice Hancock, Tina Mucklow and Florence Schaffner) and 36 passengers aboard, including the hijacker, Flight 305 left Portland on-schedule at 2:50 pm PST. Shortly after takeoff, Cooper handed a note to flight attendant Schaffner, who was sitting in the jump seat at the rear of the plane, directly behind Cooper. Assuming the note was a lonely businessman's phone number, Schaffner dropped the note unopened into her purse. Cooper then leaned toward her and whispered, \"Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb.\"",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Schaffner opened the note. In neat, all-capital letters printed with a felt-tip pen, Cooper had written, \"Miss—I have a bomb in my briefcase and want you to sit by me.\" Schaffner returned the note to Cooper, sat down as he requested, and quietly asked to see the bomb. He opened his briefcase, and she saw two rows of four red cylinders, which she assumed was dynamite. Attached to the cylinders were a wire and a large, cylindrical battery, which appeared to resemble a bomb.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Cooper closed the briefcase, and told Schaffner his demands. She wrote a note with Cooper's demands, brought it to the cockpit, and informed the flight crew of the situation. Captain Scott directed her to remain in the cockpit for the remainder of the flight and take notes of events as they unfolded. He then contacted Northwest flight operations in Minnesota, and relayed the hijacker's demands: \"[Cooper] requests $200,000 in a knapsack by 5:00 pm. He wants two front parachutes, two back parachutes. He wants the money in negotiable American currency.\" By requesting two sets of parachutes, Cooper implied that he planned to take a hostage with him, thereby discouraging authorities from supplying non-functional equipment.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "With Schaffner in the cockpit, flight attendant Mucklow sat next to Cooper to act as a liaison between him and the flight crew in the cockpit. He then made additional demands: upon landing in Seattle, the fuel trucks must meet the plane and all passengers must remain seated while she brought the money aboard. He said he would release the passengers after he had the money. The last items brought aboard would be the four parachutes.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Captain Scott informed Seattle–Tacoma Airport air traffic control (ATC) of the situation, who contacted local police and the FBI. The passengers were told their arrival in Seattle would be delayed because of a \"minor mechanical difficulty\". Donald Nyrop, the president of Northwest Orient, authorized payment of the ransom and ordered all employees to cooperate with the hijacker and comply with his demands. For approximately two hours, Flight 305 circled Puget Sound to give Seattle police and the FBI sufficient time to assemble Cooper's ransom money and parachutes, and to mobilize emergency personnel.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "During the flight from Portland to Seattle, Cooper demanded that Mucklow remain by his side at all times. She later said that he appeared familiar with the local terrain; while looking out the window, he remarked, \"Looks like Tacoma down there\", as the aircraft flew above it. He also correctly noted McChord Air Force Base was only a 20-minute drive from Sea-Tac Airport. She later described the hijacker's demeanor: \"[Cooper] was not nervous. He seemed rather nice and he was not cruel or nasty.\"",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "While the plane circled Seattle, Mucklow chatted with Cooper and asked why he picked Northwest Airlines to hijack. He laughed and replied, \"It's not because I have a grudge against your airlines, it's just because I have a grudge,\" then explained that this flight simply suited his needs. He asked where she was from; she answered that she was originally from Pennsylvania, but was living in Minneapolis at the time. Cooper responded that Minnesota was \"very nice country.\" She asked where he was from, but he became upset and refused to answer. He asked if she smoked and offered her a cigarette. She replied that she had quit, but accepted the cigarette.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "FBI records note Cooper briefly spoke to an unidentified passenger while the plane maintained its holding pattern over Seattle. In his interview with FBI agents, passenger George Labissoniere said he visited the restroom directly behind Cooper on several occasions. After one visit, Labissoniere said the path to his seat was blocked by a passenger wearing a cowboy hat, questioning Mucklow about the supposed mechanical issue delaying them. Labissoniere said Cooper was initially amused by the interaction, then became irritated and told the man to return to his seat, but \"the cowboy\" ignored Cooper and continued to question her. Labissoniere claimed he eventually persuaded \"the cowboy\" to return to his seat.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Mucklow's version of the interaction differed from Labissoniere's. She said a passenger approached her, and asked for a sports magazine to read because he was bored. She and the passenger moved to an area directly behind Cooper, where the passenger and she looked for magazines. The passenger took a copy of The New Yorker and returned to his seat. When Mucklow returned to sit with Cooper, he said, \"If that is a sky marshal, I don't want any more of that.\" Despite his brief interaction with Cooper, \"the cowboy\" was not interviewed by the FBI and was never identified.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The $200,000 ransom was received from Seattle First National Bank in a bag weighing approximately nineteen pounds. The money—10,000 unmarked $20 bills, most of which had serial numbers beginning with \"L\" (indicating issuance by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)—was photographed on microfilm by the FBI. Seattle police obtained the two front (reserve) parachutes from a local skydiving school and the two back (main) parachutes from a local stunt pilot.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Around 5:24 PST, Captain Scott was informed the parachutes had been delivered to the airport, and notified Cooper they would be landing soon. At 5:46 PST, Flight 305 landed at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. With Cooper's permission Scott parked the aircraft on a partially-lit runway, away from the main terminal. Cooper demanded that only one representative of the airline approach the plane with the parachutes and money, and the only entrance and exit would be through the aircraft's front door via the mobile air stairs. Northwest Orient's Seattle operations manager, Al Lee, was designated to be the courier. To avoid the possibility that Cooper might mistake Lee's airline uniform for that of a law enforcement officer, he changed into civilian clothes for the task. With the passengers remaining seated, a ground crew attached the mobile staircase. Per Cooper's directive, Mucklow exited the aircraft through the front door, and retrieved the ransom money. When she returned, she carried the money bag past the seated passengers to Cooper in the last row.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Cooper then agreed to release the passengers. As they debarked, Cooper inspected the money. In an attempt to break the tension, Mucklow jokingly asked Cooper if she could have some of the money. Cooper readily agreed, and handed her a packet of bills, but she immediately returned the money and explained accepting gratuities was against company policy. She said Cooper had tried to tip her and the other two flight attendants earlier in the flight with money from his own pocket, but they had each declined, citing the policy.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "With the passengers safely debarked, only Cooper and the six crew members remained on board. In accordance with Cooper's demands, Mucklow made three trips outside the aircraft to retrieve the parachutes, which she brought to him in the rear of the plane. While Mucklow brought aboard the parachutes, Schaffner asked Cooper if she could retrieve her purse, stored in a compartment behind his seat. Cooper agreed and told her, \"I won't bite you.\" Flight attendant Hancock then asked Cooper if the flight attendants could leave, to which Cooper replied, \"Whatever you girls would like,\" so Hancock and Schaffner debarked. When Mucklow brought the final parachute to Cooper, she gave him printed instructions for using the parachutes, but Cooper said he didn't need them.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "A problem with the refueling process caused a delay, so a second truck and then a third were brought to the aircraft to complete the refueling. During the delay, Mucklow said Cooper complained the money was delivered in a cloth bag instead of a knapsack as he had directed, and he now had to improvise a new way to transport the money. Using a pocketknife, Cooper cut the canopy from one of the reserve parachutes, and stuffed some of the money into the empty parachute bag.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "An FAA official requested a face-to-face meeting with Cooper aboard the aircraft, but Cooper denied the request. Cooper became impatient, saying, \"This shouldn't take so long\", and, \"Let's get this show on the road.\" He then gave the cockpit crew his flight plan and directives: a southeast course toward Mexico City at the minimum airspeed possible without stalling the aircraft—approximately 100 knots (185 km/h; 115 mph)—at a maximum 10,000-foot (3,000 m) altitude. Cooper also specified the landing gear must remain deployed, the wing flaps must be lowered 15 degrees, and the cabin must remain unpressurized.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "First Officer Rataczak informed Cooper that this configuration limited the aircraft's range to about 1,000 miles (1,600 km), so a second refueling would be necessary before entering Mexico. Cooper and the crew discussed options, and agreed on Reno–Tahoe International Airport as the refueling stop. Cooper further directed the aircraft take off with the rear exit door open and its airstair extended. Northwest's home office objected that this was unsafe. Cooper countered saying, \"It can be done, do it,\" but did not argue the point and said he would lower the staircase once they were airborne. He demanded Mucklow remain aboard to assist the operation.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Around 7:40 pm, Flight 305 took off, with only Cooper, Mucklow, Captain Scott, First Officer Rataczak, and Flight Engineer Anderson aboard. Two F-106 fighters from McChord Air Force Base and a Lockheed T-33 trainer—diverted from an unrelated Air National Guard mission—followed the 727. All three jets maintained \"S\" flight patterns to stay behind the slow-moving 727 and out of Cooper's view.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "After takeoff, Cooper told Mucklow to lower the aft staircase. She told him and the flight crew she feared being sucked out of the aircraft. The flight crew suggested she come to the cockpit and retrieve an emergency rope with which she could tie herself to a seat. Cooper rejected the suggestion, stating he did not want her going up front or the flight crew coming back to the cabin. She continued to express her fear to him, and asked him to cut some cord from one of the parachutes to create a safety line for her. He said he would lower the stairs himself, instructed her to go to the cockpit, close the curtain partition between the Coach and First Class sections, and not return.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Before she left, Mucklow begged Cooper, \"Please, please take the bomb with you.\" Cooper responded he would either disarm it or take it with him. As she walked to the cockpit and turned to close the curtain partition, she saw Cooper standing in the aisle tying what appeared to be the money bag around his waist. From takeoff to when Mucklow entered the cockpit, four to five minutes had elapsed. For the rest of the flight to Reno, Mucklow remained in the cockpit, and was the last person to see the hijacker.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Around 8:00 pm, a cockpit warning light flashed, indicating the aft staircase had been deployed. The pilot used the cabin intercom to ask Cooper if he needed assistance, but Cooper's last message was a one-word reply: \"No.\" The crew's ears popped from the drop in cabin air pressure from the stairs being opened. At approximately 8:13 p.m., the aircraft's tail section suddenly pitched upward, forcing the pilots to trim and return the aircraft to level flight. In his interview with the FBI, Co-pilot Bill Rataczak said the sudden upward pitch occurred while the flight was near the suburbs north of Portland.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "With the aft cabin door open and the staircase deployed, the flight crew remained in the cockpit, unsure if Cooper was still aboard. Mucklow used the cabin intercom to inform Cooper they were approaching Reno, and he needed to raise the stairs so the plane could land safely. She repeated her requests as the pilots made the final approach to land, but neither Mucklow nor the flight crew received a reply from the hijacker.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "At 11:02 pm, with the aft staircase still deployed, Flight 305 landed at Reno–Tahoe International Airport. FBI agents, state troopers, sheriff's deputies, and Reno police established a perimeter around the aircraft, but fearing the hijacker and the bomb were still aboard, did not approach the plane. Captain Scott searched the cabin, confirmed Cooper was no longer aboard, and after a 30-minute search, an FBI bomb squad declared the cabin safe.",
"title": "Hijacking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In addition to 66 latent fingerprints aboard the airliner, FBI agents recovered Cooper's black clip-on tie, tie clip, and two of the four parachutes, one of which had been opened and had three shroud lines cut from the canopy. FBI agents interviewed eyewitnesses in Portland, Seattle, and Reno, and developed a series of composite sketches.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Local police and FBI agents immediately began questioning possible suspects. Acting on the possibility the hijacker may have used his real name (or the same alias in a previous crime), Portland police discovered and interviewed a Portland citizen named D. B. Cooper. The Portland Cooper had a minor police record, but was quickly eliminated as a suspect. In his rush to meet a deadline, reporter James Long confused the man with the name used by the hijacker. United Press International wire service reporter Clyde Jabin republished Long's error, and as other media sources repeated the error, the hijacker's pseudonym became \"D. B. Cooper.\"",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Due to the number of variables and parameters, precisely defining the area to search was difficult. The jet's airspeed estimates varied, the environmental conditions along the flight path varied with the aircraft's location and altitude, and only Cooper knew how long he remained in free-fall before pulling his ripcord. The Air Force F-106 pilots neither saw anyone jumping from the airliner, nor did their radar detect a deployed parachute. Moreover, a black-clad individual jumping into the moonless night would be difficult to see, especially given the limited visibility, cloud cover, and lack of ground lighting. The T-33 pilots did not make visual contact with the 727.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "On December 6, 1971, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover approved the use of an Air Force SR-71 Blackbird to retrace and photograph Flight 305's flightpath, and attempt to locate the items Cooper carried during his jump. The SR-71 made five flights to retrace Flight 305's route, but due to poor visibility, the photography attempts were unsuccessful.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In an experimental recreation, flying the same aircraft used in the hijacking in the same flight configuration, FBI agents pushed a 200-pound (91 kg) sled out of the open airstair and were able to reproduce the upward motion of the tail section and brief change in cabin pressure described by the flight crew at 8:13 pm. Initial extrapolations placed Cooper's landing zone within an area on the southernmost outreach of Mount St. Helens, a few miles southeast of Ariel, Washington, near Lake Merwin, an artificial lake formed by a dam on the Lewis River. Search efforts focused on Clark and Cowlitz counties, encompassing the terrain immediately south and north of the Lewis River in southwest Washington. FBI agents and sheriff's deputies searched large areas of the heavily wooded terrain on foot and by helicopter. Door-to-door searches of local farmhouses were also carried out. Other search parties ran patrol boats along Lake Merwin and Yale Lake, the reservoir immediately to its east. Neither Cooper nor any of the equipment he presumably carried was found.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Using fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters from the Oregon Army National Guard, the FBI coordinated an aerial search along the entire flight path (known as Victor 23 in U.S. aviation terminology but \"Vector 23\" in most Cooper literature) from Seattle to Reno. Although numerous broken treetops and several pieces of plastic and other objects resembling parachute canopies were sighted and investigated, nothing relevant to the hijacking was found.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Shortly after the spring thaw in early 1972, teams of FBI agents aided by some 200 soldiers from Fort Lewis, along with United States Air Force personnel, National Guardsmen, and civilian volunteers, conducted another thorough ground search of Clark and Cowlitz Counties for 18 days in March, and then another 18 days in April. Electronic Explorations Company, a marine-salvage firm, used a submarine to search the 200-foot (61 m) depths of Lake Merwin. Two local women stumbled upon a skeleton in an abandoned structure in Clark County; it was later identified as the remains of Barbara Ann Derry, a teenaged girl who had been abducted and murdered several weeks before. Ultimately, the extensive search and recovery operation uncovered no significant material evidence related to the hijacking.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Based on early computer projections produced for the FBI, Cooper's drop zone was first estimated to be between Ariel dam to the north and the town of Battle Ground, Washington, to the south. In March 1972, after a joint investigation with Northwest Orient Airlines and the Air Force, the FBI determined Cooper probably jumped over the town of La Center, Washington.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 2019, the FBI released a report indicating that about three hours after Cooper jumped, a burglary was reported at a small grocery store near Heisson, Washington, an unincorporated community located within the calculated drop zone that Northwest Airlines presented to the FBI. The burglar was noted by the FBI to have taken only survival items such as beef jerky and gloves.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "A month after the hijacking, the FBI distributed lists of the ransom serial numbers to financial institutions, casinos, racetracks, and other businesses that routinely conducted large cash transactions, and to law-enforcement agencies around the world. Northwest Orient offered a reward of 15% of the recovered money, to a maximum of $25,000. In early 1972, U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell released the serial numbers to the general public. Two men used counterfeit $20 bills printed with Cooper serial numbers to swindle $30,000 from a Newsweek reporter named Karl Fleming in exchange for an interview with a man they falsely claimed was the hijacker.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In early 1973, with the ransom money still missing, The Oregon Journal republished the serial numbers and offered $1,000 to the first person to turn in a ransom bill to the newspaper or any FBI field office. In Seattle, the Post-Intelligencer made a similar offer with a $5,000 reward. The offers remained in effect until Thanksgiving 1974, and though several near matches were reported, no genuine bills were found. In 1975, Northwest Orient's insurer, Global Indemnity Co., complied with an order from the Minnesota Supreme Court and paid the airline's $180,000 (equivalent to $978,924 in 2022) claim on the ransom money.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Later analysis indicated that the original landing zone estimate was inaccurate; Captain Scott, who was flying the aircraft manually because of Cooper's speed and altitude demands, later determined his flight path was farther east than initially thought. Additional data from a variety of sources—in particular Continental Airlines pilot Tom Bohan, who was flying four minutes behind Flight 305—indicated the wind direction factored into drop-zone calculations had been wrong, possibly by as much as 80°. This and other supplemental data suggested the actual drop zone was south-southeast of the original estimate, in the drainage area of the Washougal River.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In 1986 FBI Agent Ralph Himmelsbach wrote, \"I have to confess, if I were going to look for Cooper ... I would head for the Washougal.\" The Washougal Valley and its surroundings have been searched repeatedly in subsequent years; to date, no discoveries traceable to the hijacking have been reported. Some investigators have speculated that the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens could have obliterated any remaining physical clues.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "On July 8, 2016, the FBI announced active investigation of the Cooper case was suspended, citing the need to focus investigative resources and manpower on issues of higher and more urgent priority. Local field offices would continue to accept any legitimate physical evidence, related specifically to the parachutes or to the ransom money, that may emerge in the future. The 66-volume case file compiled over the 45-year course of the investigation would be preserved for historical purposes at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, and on the FBI website. All of the evidence is open to the public. The crime remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation history.",
"title": "Investigation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "During their forensic search of the aircraft, FBI agents found four major pieces of evidence, each with a direct physical link to Cooper: a black clip-on tie, a mother-of-pearl tie clip, a hair from Cooper's headrest, and eight filter-tipped Raleigh cigarette butts from the armrest ashtray.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "FBI agents found a black clip-on necktie in seat 18-E, where Cooper had been seated. Attached to the tie was a gold tie-clip with a circular mother-of-pearl setting in the center of the clip. The FBI determined the tie had been sold exclusively at JCPenney department stores, but was discontinued in 1968.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "By late 2007, the FBI had built a partial DNA profile from samples found on Cooper's tie in 2001. However, the FBI also acknowledged no evidence linked Cooper to the source of the DNA sample. Said FBI Special Agent Fred Gutt, \"The tie had two small DNA samples, and one large sample ... it's difficult to draw firm conclusions from these samples.\" The FBI also made public a file of previously unreleased evidence, including Cooper's plane ticket, composite sketches, fact sheets, and posted a request for information about Cooper's identification.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In March 2009, a group of \"citizen sleuths\" using GPS, satellite imagery, and other technologies unavailable in 1971, began reinvestigating components of the case. Known as the Cooper Research Team (CRT), the group included paleontologist Tom Kaye from the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle, scientific illustrator Carol Abraczinskas, and metallurgist Alan Stone. Although the CRT obtained little new information about the buried ransom money or Cooper's landing zone, they found, analyzed, and identified hundreds of organic and metallic particles on Cooper's tie.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Using electron microscopy, the CRT identified Lycopodium spores, the source of which was likely pharmaceutical. The team also found minute particles of unalloyed titanium on the tie, along with particles of bismuth, antimony, cerium, strontium sulfide, aluminum, and titanium-antimony alloys. The metal and rare-earth particles suggested Cooper may have worked for Boeing or another aeronautical engineering firm, at a chemical manufacturing plant, or at a metal fabrication and production facility.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The material with the most significance, explained Kaye, was the unalloyed titanium. In the 1970s, the use of pure titanium was rare and would only be used in aircraft fabrication facilities, or at chemical companies combining titanium and aluminum to store extremely corrosive substances. The cerium and strontium sulfide were used by Boeing's supersonic transport development project, and by Portland factories in which cathode ray tubes were manufactured, such as Teledyne and Tektronix. Cooper researcher Eric Ulis has speculated the titanium-antimony alloys are linked to Rem-Cru Titanium Inc., a metals manufacturer and Boeing contractor.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "FBI agents found two hair samples in Cooper's seat: a single strand of limb hair on the seat, and a single strand of brown Caucasian head hair on the headrest. The limb hair was destroyed after the FBI Crime Laboratory determined the sample lacked enough unique microscopic characteristics to be useful. However, the FBI Crime Laboratory determined the head hair was suitable for future comparison, and preserved the hair on a microscope slide. During their attempts to build Cooper's DNA profile in 2002, the FBI discovered the hair sample had been lost.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In the armrest ashtray of seat 18-E, FBI agents found eight Raleigh filter-tipped cigarette butts. These were sent to the FBI Crime Laboratory to search for fingerprints, but investigators were unable to find fingerprints and returned the butts to the Las Vegas field office. In 1998, the FBI sought to extract DNA from the cigarette butts, but discovered the butts had been destroyed while in the custody of the Las Vegas field office.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "On February 10, 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram was vacationing with his family on the Columbia River at a beachfront known as Tina (or Tena) Bar, about 9 miles (14 km) downstream from Vancouver, Washington, and 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Ariel. As he raked the sandy riverbank to build a campfire, he uncovered three packets of the ransom cash, totaling around $5,800. The bills had disintegrated from lengthy exposure to the elements, but were still bundled in rubber bands. FBI technicians confirmed that the money was indeed a portion of the ransom: two packets of 100 twenty-dollar bills each, and a third packet of 90, all arranged in the same order as when given to Cooper.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The discovery launched several new rounds of conjecture and ultimately raised more questions than it answered. Initial statements by investigators and scientific consultants were founded on the assumption the bundled bills washed freely into the Columbia River from one of its many connecting tributaries. An Army Corps of Engineers hydrologist noted the bills had disintegrated in a \"rounded\" fashion and were \"matted together\", indicating they \"had been deposited by river action\", as opposed to having been deliberately buried. That conclusion, if correct, supported the hypothesis that Cooper had not landed near Lake Merwin nor any tributary of the Lewis River, which feeds into the Columbia well downstream from Tina Bar. It also lent credence to supplemental speculation the drop zone was near the Washougal River, which merges with the Columbia upstream from the discovery site.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The \"free-floating\" hypothesis presented difficulties; it did not explain the 10 bills missing from one packet, nor was there an explanation for how the three packets would have remained together after separating from the rest of the money. Physical evidence was incompatible with geological evidence; Himmelsbach wrote free-floating bundles would have washed up on the bank \"within a couple of years\" of the hijacking; otherwise, the rubber bands would have long since deteriorated. Geological evidence suggested the bills arrived at Tina Bar after 1974, the year of a Corps of Engineers dredging operation on that stretch of the river. Geologist Leonard Palmer of Portland State University found two distinct layers of sand and sediment between the clay deposited on the riverbank by the dredge and the sand layer in which the bills were buried, indicating that the bills arrived long after dredging had been completed.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In late 2020, analysis of diatoms found on the bills suggests the bundles found at Tina Bar were not submerged in the river or buried dry at the time of the hijacking in November 1971. Only diatoms that bloom during springtime were found, placing the date range that the money entered the water at least several months after the hijacking.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In 1986, after protracted negotiations, the recovered bills were divided equally between Brian Ingram and Northwest Orient's insurer Royal Globe Insurance; the FBI retained 14 examples as evidence. Ingram sold fifteen of his bills at auction in 2008 for about $37,000 (equivalent to $50,000 in 2022).",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The Columbia River ransom money remains the only confirmed physical evidence from the hijacking found outside the aircraft.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "During the hijacking, Cooper demanded and received two main chutes and two reserve chutes. The two reserve (front) chutes came from a local skydiving school and the two main (back) chutes were supplied by a local pilot, Norman Hayden. Earl Cossey, the parachute rigger who packed all four parachutes brought to Cooper, described the two main chutes as emergency bailout chutes as opposed to sporting parachutes that skydivers would use. Cossey further described the main chutes as being like military chutes because they were rigged to open immediately upon the ripcord being pulled and were incapable of being steered. When the plane landed in Reno, FBI agents discovered two parachutes that Cooper left behind: one reserve (front) chute and one main (back) chute. The reserve chute had been opened and three shroud lines had been cut out, but the main chute left behind was still intact. The unused main chute was described by FBI agents as a Model NB6 (Navy Backpack 6) and is on display at the Washington State Historical Society Museum.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "One of the two reserve (front) chutes that Cooper was given was an unusable training chute intended to only be used for classroom demonstrations. According to Cossey, the reserve chute had a canopy inside of it that was sewn together so that skydiving students could get the feel of pulling a ripcord on a packed parachute without the canopy actually deploying. This nonfunctional reserve parachute was not found in the aircraft when it landed in Reno, leading FBI agents to speculate that Cooper was not an experienced parachutist because someone with experience would have realized this reserve chute was a \"dummy chute\". However, within days of the hijacking, it was revealed that neither of the parachute harnesses Cooper was given had the necessary D-rings required to attach reserve parachutes. Although Cooper lacked the ability to attach this \"dummy\" chute to his main harness as a reserve parachute, it was not found in the plane, so what he did with it is unknown. Cossey speculated that Cooper removed the sewn-together canopy and used the empty reserve container as an extra money bag. Tina Mucklow's testimony was in line with Cossey's speculation, stating that she recalled Cooper attempting to pack money inside a parachute container.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In November 1978, a deer hunter found a 727's instruction placard for lowering the aft airstair. The placard was found near a logging road about 13 miles (21 km) east of Castle Rock, Washington, north of Lake Merwin, but within Flight 305's basic flight path.",
"title": "Physical evidence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Over the 45-year span of its active investigation, the FBI periodically made public some of its working hypotheses and tentative conclusions, drawn from witness testimony and the scarce physical evidence.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "During the first year of the investigation, the FBI used eyewitness testimony from the passengers and flight crew to develop sketches of Cooper. The first sketch, officially titled Composite A, was completed a few days after the hijacking and was released on November 28, 1971. According to witnesses, the Composite A sketch—jokingly known as \"Bing Crosby\"—was not an accurate likeness of Cooper. The Composite A sketch, said witnesses, showed a young man with a narrow face, and did not resemble Cooper or capture his disinterested, “let's get this over with\" look. Flight attendant Florence Schaffner repeatedly told the FBI the Composite A sketch was a very poor likeness of Cooper.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "After multiple eyewitnesses said Composite A was not an accurate rendering, FBI artists developed a second composite sketch. Completed in late 1972, the second Composite B sketch was intended to more accurately depict Cooper's age, skin tone, and face shape. Eyewitnesses to whom Composite B was shown said the sketch was more accurate, but the Composite B Cooper looked too \"angry\" or \"nasty\". One flight attendant said the Composite B sketch looked like a \"hoodlum\". and remembered Cooper as \"more refined in appearance\". Moreover, said witnesses, the Composite B sketch depicted a man older than Cooper, with a lighter complexion.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Using the criticisms of Composite B, FBI artists made adjustments and improvements to the Composite B sketch. On January 2, 1973, the FBI finalized revised Composite B, their third sketch of Cooper. Of the new sketch, one flight attendant said revised Composite B was, \"a very close resemblance\" to the hijacker. Opined another flight attendant, \"the hijacker would be easily recognized from this sketch.\"",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In April 1973, the FBI concluded the revised Composite B sketch was the best likeness of Cooper they could develop, and should be considered the definitive sketch of Cooper.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Flight attendants Schaffner and Mucklow, who spent the most time interacting with Cooper, were interviewed on the same night in separate cities, and gave nearly identical descriptions: around 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) tall, mid-40s, short, black hair combed back, 170–180 lb, swarthy or olive skin tone, and with no discernible accent. The only person to recall his eye color was Schaffner, who described them as being brown. The FBI relied heavily on the testimony of University of Oregon student Bill Mitchell, who sat across from Cooper during the three hours between take off in Portland and landing in Seattle, repeatedly interviewing him for what would become known as Composite Sketch B. His descriptions of Cooper were mostly the same as those of the flight attendants, except that he described Cooper as being somewhat smaller, stating that he thought Cooper was 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m) to 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) and that at 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) he was \"way bigger\" than Cooper and even referring to him as \"slight\". Robert Gregory, one of the only other passengers besides Mitchell who provided the FBI with a full description of Cooper, also provided a shorter impression of Cooper, describing him as 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m). Gregory stated that he believed Cooper to be of Mexican-American or American Indian descent.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Cooper appeared to be familiar with the Seattle area and may have been an Air Force veteran, based on testimony that he recognized the city of Tacoma from the air as the jet circled Puget Sound, and his accurate comment to Mucklow that McChord Air Force Base was about 20-minutes' driving time from Seattle-Tacoma Airport—a detail most civilians would not know or comment upon. His financial situation was very likely desperate. According to the FBI's retired chief investigator, Ralph Himmelsbach, extortionists and other criminals who steal large amounts of money nearly always do so because they need it urgently; otherwise, the crime is not worth the considerable risk. Alternatively, Cooper may have been \"a thrill seeker\" who made the jump \"just to prove it could be done\".",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In May 1973, the FBI internally released an eight-page suspect profile. The profile speculated that Cooper was a military-trained parachutist and not a sports skydiver, because, in addition to his apparent comfort level with the military-style parachutes he was provided, his age would have made him an outlier in the sport-skydiving community, thereby increasing the likelihood that he would have been quickly recognized by a member of that community. The profile also speculated that Cooper was someone who exercised regularly due to comments by multiple eyewitnesses regarding Cooper's athletic-looking frame despite his age. They also felt he was not a heavy drinker or an alcoholic because the only drink he was served was quickly spilled and he never requested another. The profile determined that an alcoholic would have likely been incapable of turning down further alcoholic beverages throughout the stressful and lengthy hijacking. By calculating the number of cigarettes he smoked throughout the hijacking, the FBI believed that he smoked around one pack of cigarettes a day. Several of Cooper's mannerisms led the FBI to conclude that he was more intelligent than a common criminal such as his vocabulary level, his proper use of aviation-related terminology, complete lack of profane language, his calm demeanor, his style of dress, and the respect he showed for the female members of the crew. Cooper's ability to quickly and competently adapt to various situations as they arose indicated to profilers that he was likely the type of person who would commit a crime without the need or desire for an accomplice.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Agents theorized that Cooper took his alias from a popular French-language Belgian comics series featuring the fictional hero Dan Cooper, a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot who took part in numerous heroic adventures, including parachuting. (One cover from the series, reproduced on the FBI website, depicts test pilot Cooper skydiving.) Because the Dan Cooper comics were never translated into English, nor imported to the U.S., they speculated that he had encountered them during a tour of duty in Europe.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Based on the evidence and Cooper's tactics, the FBI speculated Cooper carefully planned the hijacking and had detailed, specific knowledge of aviation, the local terrain, and the 727's capabilities.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Cooper chose a seat in the last row of the rear cabin for three reasons: to observe and respond to any action in front of him, to minimize the possibility of being approached or attacked by someone behind him, and to make himself less conspicuous to the rest of the passengers. To ensure he would not be deliberately supplied with sabotaged equipment, Cooper demanded four parachutes to force the assumption he might compel one or more hostages to jump with him. FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach noted Cooper's choice of a bomb—instead of other weapons previously used by hijackers—thwarted any multidirectional attempts to rush him.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Cooper was also careful to avoid leaving evidence. Before he jumped, he demanded Mucklow return to him all notes either written by him, or on his behalf. Mucklow said she used the last match in his paper matchbook to light one of his cigarettes, and when she attempted to dispose of the empty matchbook, he demanded she return it to him. Although he was methodical in his attempts to retrieve evidence, he was unsuccessful; he left his clip-on tie in his seat.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Although Cooper was clearly familiar with the 727's capabilities and confidential features, its design was the primary reason Cooper chose the aircraft. With its aft airstair and the placement of its three engines, the 727 was one of the only passenger jets from which a parachute jump could be easily made. Cooper also appeared to be familiar with the 727's typical refueling time, with Mucklow telling the FBI that Cooper \"seemed specifically well informed in refueling procedures\".",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "By specifying a 15° flap setting, Cooper displayed specific knowledge of aviation tactics and the 727's capabilities; unlike most commercial jet airliners, the 727 could remain in slow, low-altitude flight without stalling. Cooper's specific flap setting also allowed him to control the 727's airspeed and altitude without entering the cockpit, where Cooper could have been overpowered by the three pilots. First Officer Bill Rataczak, who spoke with Cooper on the intercom during the hijacking, told the FBI, \"[Cooper] displayed a specific knowledge of flying and aircraft in general.\"",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The most significant knowledge Cooper displayed was a feature both secret and unique to the 727; the aft airstair could be operated during flight, and the single activation switch in the rear of the cabin could not be overridden from the cockpit. Cooper knew how to operate the aft staircase, and had clearly planned to use it for his escape. The FBI speculated Cooper knew the Central Intelligence Agency was using 727s to drop agents and supplies into enemy territory during the Vietnam War. Since no situation on a passenger flight would necessitate such an operation, civilian crews were neither informed the aft airstair could be lowered midflight, nor were they aware its operation could not be overridden from the cockpit.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Cooper appeared to be familiar with parachutes, although his experience level is unknown. Mucklow said Cooper, \"appeared to be completely familiar with the parachutes which had been furnished to him\", and told a journalist, \"Cooper put on [his] parachute as though he did so every day\". Cooper's familiarity with the military-style parachutes he was given has led to speculation that Cooper was a military parachutist and not a civilian skydiver.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Larry Carr, who led the investigative team from 2006 to 2009, does not believe Cooper was a paratrooper. Instead, Carr speculates Cooper had been an Air Force aircraft cargo loader. An aircraft cargo-loading assignment would provide him with aviation knowledge and experience: cargo loaders have basic jump training, wear emergency parachutes, and know how to dispatch items from planes in flight. As a cargo loader, Cooper would be familiar with parachutes, \"but not necessarily sufficient knowledge to survive the jump he made\".",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "From the beginning of their investigation, FBI agents did not believe Cooper survived his jump. The FBI provided several reasons and facts to support their conclusion: Cooper's apparent lack of skydiving experience, his apparent unfamiliarity with parachutes, his lack of proper equipment for his jump and survival, the temperature and inclement weather on the night of the hijacking, the wooded terrain into which Cooper jumped, his lack of knowledge of his landing area, and the unused ransom money.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "First, Cooper appeared to lack the necessary skydiving knowledge, skills, and experience for the type of jump he attempted. \"We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper,\" said Carr. \"We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 172 mph [77 m/s] wind in his face wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky.\" Skydiving instructor Earl Cossey, who supplied the parachutes, testified Cooper did not need extensive experience to survive the jump and \"anyone who had six or seven practice jumps could accomplish this.\" However, Cossey also noted jumping at night drastically increased the risk of injury, and without jump boots, Cooper probably would have suffered severe ankle or leg injuries upon landing.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Second, Cooper did not appear to have the equipment necessary for either his jump or his survival in the wilderness. Cooper failed to bring or request a helmet, and jumped into a 15 °F (−9 °C) wind at 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in November over Washington State without proper protection against the extreme wind chill. Although the contents of Cooper's 4 in × 12 in × 14 in (10 cm × 30 cm × 36 cm) paper bag are unknown, Cooper did not use any of the bag's contents to assist him during any part of the hijacking, so the FBI speculated the bag contained items Cooper needed for his jump, such as boots, gloves, and goggles.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Third, Cooper did not appear to have an accomplice waiting on the ground to help him escape. Such an arrangement would have required both a precisely timed jump and the flight crew's cooperation to follow a predetermined flight path, but Cooper did not give the flight crew a specific path. Moreover, the flight crew proposed—and Cooper agreed—to alter the flight path, and fly from Seattle to Reno for refueling, and Cooper had no way of keeping an accomplice apprised of his changed plans. The low cloud cover and lack of visibility to the ground further complicated Cooper's ability to determine his location, establish a bearing, or see his landing zone.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Finally, the ransom money was never spent, and the recovered portion was found unused. \"Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open,\" said Carr. FBI agent Richard Tosaw theorized Cooper became incapacitated from hypothermia during his jump, landed in the Columbia River, and drowned. However, FBI agents were not unanimous in their assessments of Cooper's ultimate fate. A senior FBI agent anonymously opined in a 1976 article in The Seattle Times, \"I think [Cooper] made it. I think he slept in his own bed that night. It was a clear night. A lot of the country is pretty flat ... he could have just walked out. Right down the road. Hell, they weren't even looking for him there at the time. They thought he was somewhere else. He could just walk down the road.\"",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Conclusive evidence of Cooper's death has not been found. In the months following the Cooper hijacking, five men attempted copycat hijackings, and all five survived their parachute escapes. The survival of the copycats—several of whom faced circumstances and conditions similar to Cooper's jump—forced FBI lead case agent Ralph Himmelsbach to reevaluate his opinions and theories regarding Cooper's chances for survival. Himmelsbach cited three examples of hijackers who survived jumps in conditions similar to Cooper's escape: Martin McNally, Frederick Hahneman, and Richard LaPoint.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Hijacker Martin McNally jumped using only a reserve chute, without protective gear, at night, over Indiana. Unlike Cooper, who appeared to be familiar with parachutes, McNally had to be shown how to put on his parachute. Additionally, McNally's pilot increased the airspeed to 320 knots, nearly twice the airspeed of Flight 305 at the time of Cooper's jump. The increased windspeed caused a violent jump for McNally: The money bag was immediately torn from him, \"yet he had landed unharmed except for some superficial scratches and bruises\".",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "49-year-old Frederick Hahneman hijacked a 727 in Pennsylvania and survived after jumping at night into a Honduran jungle. A third copycat, Richard LaPoint, hijacked a 727 in Nevada. Wearing only trousers, a shirt, and cowboy boots, LaPoint jumped into the freezing January wind over northern Colorado and landed in the snow. In 2008, Himmelsbach admitted he originally thought Cooper had only a fifty-percent chance of survival, but subsequently revised his assessment.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "By 1976, most published legal analyses concurred the impending expiration of the statute of limitations for prosecution of the hijacker would make little difference: Since the statute's interpretation varies from case to case, and from court to court, a prosecutor could argue Cooper had forfeited legal immunity on any of several valid technical grounds. In November 1976, a Portland grand jury returned an indictment in absentia against \"John Doe, a.k.a. Dan Cooper\" for air piracy and violation of the Hobbs Act. The indictment formally initiated prosecution to be continued, should the hijacker be apprehended at any time in the future.",
"title": "Theories, hypotheses and conjecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Between 1971 and 2016, the FBI processed more than a thousand \"serious suspects\", including assorted publicity seekers and deathbed confessors.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Theodore Burdette Braden Jr. (1928–2007) was a Special Forces commando during the Vietnam War, a master skydiver, and a convicted felon. He was believed by many within the Special Forces community, both at the time of the hijacking and in subsequent years, to have been Cooper. Born in Ohio, Braden first joined the military at the age of 16 in 1944, serving with the 101st Airborne during World War II. He eventually became one of the military's leading parachutists, often representing the Army in international skydiving tournaments, and his military records list him as having made 911 jumps. During the 1960s, Braden was a team leader within the MACVSOG, a classified commando unit of Green Berets which conducted unconventional warfare operations during the Vietnam War. He also served as a military skydiving instructor, teaching HALO jumping techniques to members of Project Delta. Braden spent 23 months in Vietnam, conducting classified operations within both North and South Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia. In December 1966, Braden deserted his unit in Vietnam and made his way to the Congo to serve as a mercenary, but only served there a short time before being arrested by CIA agents and taken back to the United States for a court-martial. Despite having committed a capital offense by deserting in wartime, Braden was given an honorable discharge and barred from re-enlisting in the military in exchange for his continued secrecy about the MACVSOG program.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Braden was profiled in the October 1967 issue of Ramparts Magazine, wherein he was described by fellow Special Forces veteran and journalist Don Duncan as being someone with a \"secret death wish\" who \"continually places himself in unnecessary danger but always seems to get away with it\", specifically referring to Braden's disregard for military skydiving safety regulations. Duncan also claimed that during Braden's time in Vietnam, he was \"continuously involved in shady deals to make money.\" Following his military discharge in 1967, the details of Braden's life are largely unknown, but at the time of the hijacking he was a truck driver for Consolidated Freightways, which was headquartered in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland and not far from the suspected dropzone of Ariel, Washington. It is also known that at some point in the early 1970s he was investigated by the FBI for stealing $250,000 during a trucking scam he had allegedly devised, but he was never charged for this supposed crime. In 1980, Braden was indicted by a Federal grand jury for driving an 18-wheeler full of stolen goods from Arizona to Massachusetts, but it is unknown whether there was a conviction in that case. Two years later Braden was arrested in Pennsylvania for driving a stolen vehicle with fictitious plates and for having no driver's license. Braden eventually ended up being sent to Federal prison at some point during the late 1980s, serving time in Pennsylvania, but the precise crime is unknown.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Despite his ability as a soldier, he was not well liked personally and was described by a family member as \"the perfect combination of high intelligence and criminality\". From his time working covert operations in Vietnam, he likely would have possessed the then-classified knowledge about the ability and proper specifications for jumping from a 727, perhaps having done it himself on MACVSOG missions. Physically, Braden's military records list him at 5 ft 8 in (173 cm), which is shorter than the height description of at least 5 ft 10 in (178 cm) given by the two flight attendants, but this military measurement would have been taken in his stocking feet and he may have appeared somewhat taller in shoes. However, he possessed a dark complexion from years of outdoor military service, had short dark hair, a medium athletic build, and was 43 years of age at the time of the hijacking, which are features all in line with the descriptions of Cooper.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "In 2003, Minnesota resident Lyle Christiansen watched a television documentary about the Cooper hijacking and became convinced that his late brother Kenneth (1926–1994) was Cooper. After repeated futile attempts to convince the FBI and author and film director Nora Ephron (whom he hoped would make a movie about the case), he contacted private investigator Skipp Porteous in New York City. In 2010, Porteous published a book postulating that Christiansen was the hijacker. The following year, an episode of the History series Brad Meltzer's Decoded also summarized the circumstantial evidence linking Christiansen to the Cooper case.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Christiansen enlisted in the Army in 1944 and was trained as a paratrooper. World War II had ended by the time he was deployed in 1945, but he made occasional training jumps while stationed in Japan with occupation forces in the late 1940s. After leaving the Army, he joined Northwest Orient in 1954 as a laborer stationed at Northwest Airlines' Far East stopover on Shemya Island in the Aleutians. He subsequently became a flight attendant, and then a purser, based in Seattle. Christiansen was 45 years old at the time of the hijacking, but he was shorter (5 ft 8 in or 173 cm), thinner (150 pounds or 68 kg), than eyewitness descriptions of Cooper. Christiansen smoked (as did the hijacker) and displayed a fondness for bourbon (the drink Cooper had requested). Stewardess Florence Schaffner told author Geoffrey Gray that photos of Christiansen fit her memory of the hijacker's appearance more closely than those of other suspects she had been shown but could not conclusively identify him.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Despite the publicity generated by Porteous's book and the 2011 television documentary, the FBI stands by its position that Christiansen cannot be considered a prime suspect. It cites the poor match to eyewitness physical descriptions and a complete absence of direct incriminating evidence.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Bryant \"Jack\" Coffelt (1917–1975) was a con man, ex-convict, and purported government informant who claimed to have been the chauffeur and confidant of Abraham Lincoln's last undisputed descendant, great-grandson Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith. In 1972, he began claiming he was Cooper and attempted through an intermediary – a former cellmate named James Brown – to sell his story to a Hollywood production company. He said he landed near Mount Hood, about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Ariel, injuring himself and losing the ransom money in the process. Photos of Coffelt bear a resemblance to the composite drawings, although he was in his mid-fifties in 1971. He was reportedly in Portland on the day of the hijacking and sustained leg injuries around that time which were consistent with a skydiving mishap.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Coffelt's account was reviewed by the FBI, which concluded that it differed in several details from information that had not been made public and was therefore a fabrication. Brown continued peddling the story long after Coffelt died in 1975. Multiple media venues, including the CBS news program 60 Minutes, considered and rejected it.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Lynn Doyle \"L. D.\" Cooper (1931–1999), a leather worker and Korean War veteran, was proposed as a suspect in July 2011 by his niece, Marla Cooper. As an eight-year-old, she recalled Cooper and another uncle planning something \"very mischievous\", involving the use of \"expensive walkie-talkies\", at her grandmother's house in Sisters, Oregon, 150 miles (240 km) southeast of Portland. The next day Flight 305 was hijacked; and though the uncles ostensibly were turkey hunting, L. D. Cooper came home wearing a bloody shirt—the result, he said, of an auto accident. Later, Marla claimed, her parents came to believe that L. D. was the hijacker. She also recalled that her uncle, who died in 1999, was obsessed with the Canadian comic book hero Dan Cooper and \"had one of his comic books thumbtacked to his wall\"—although he was not a skydiver or paratrooper.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "In August 2011, New York magazine published an alternative witness sketch, reportedly based on a description by Flight 305 eyewitness Robert Gregory, depicting horn-rimmed sunglasses, a \"russet\"-colored suit jacket with wide lapels, and marcelled hair. The article observed that L. D. Cooper had wavy hair that looked marcelled (as did Duane Weber, see below). The FBI announced that no fingerprints had been found on a guitar strap made by L. D. Cooper. One week later, they added that his DNA did not match the partial DNA profile obtained from the hijacker's tie, but acknowledged that there is no certainty that the hijacker was the source of the organic material obtained from the tie.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Barbara Dayton (1926–2002), a recreational pilot and University of Washington librarian who was named Robert Dayton at birth, served in the U.S. Merchant Marine and then the Army during World War II. After discharge, Dayton worked with explosives in the construction field and aspired to a professional airline career, but could not obtain a commercial pilot's license.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Dayton underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1969, and changed her name to Barbara; she is believed to be the first person to undergo this surgery in Washington State. She claimed to have staged the hijacking two years later, presenting as a man, in order to \"get back\" at the airline industry and the FAA, whose insurmountable rules and conditions had prevented her from becoming an airline pilot. Dayton said that the ransom money was hidden in a cistern near Woodburn, Oregon, a suburban area south of Portland. She eventually recanted the entire story, ostensibly after learning that hijacking charges could still be brought. She also did not match the physical description particularly closely.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "William Pratt Gossett (1930–2003) was a Marine Corps, Army, and Army Air Forces veteran who had military service in Korea and Vietnam. His military experience included jump training and wilderness survival. Gossett was known to be obsessed with the Cooper hijacking. According to Galen Cook, a lawyer who has collected information related to Gossett for years, he once showed his sons a key to a Vancouver, British Columbia, safe deposit box which, he claimed, contained the long-missing ransom money.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "The FBI has no direct evidence implicating Gossett and cannot even reliably place him in the Pacific Northwest at the time of the hijacking. \"There is not one link to the D. B. Cooper case,\" said Special Agent Carr, \"other than the statements [Gossett] made to someone.\"",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Joe Lakich (1921–2017) was a retired U.S. Army Major and Korean War veteran whose daughter Susan Giffe was killed less than two months before the hijacking, as a consequence of a botched hostage negotiation conducted by the FBI. The events culminating in the death of Lakich's daughter would be studied by hostage negotiators for decades as an example of what not to do during a hostage situation. He and his wife later sued the FBI, and ultimately an Appeals Court ruled in their favor, holding that the FBI acted negligently during the hostage negotiation.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Lakich would become a Cooper suspect in large part due to the revelation that Cooper's tie contained microscopic particles of uncommon metals, such as unalloyed titanium. It is speculated that few people during that era would have contact with such materials, and that Cooper may have worked in a manufacturing environment working on electronics as engineer or manager. When the hijacking occurred, Lakich was working in Nashville as a production supervisor at an electronics capacitor factory and would have likely been exposed to the materials found on the tie. When Cooper was asked by Tina Mucklow why he was committing the hijacking, he replied: \"It's not because I have a grudge against your airlines, it's just because I have a grudge.\" It is believed by some that this \"grudge\" was Lakich's anger toward the FBI for their failed efforts at rescuing his daughter less than two months earlier.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "John Emil List (1925–2008) was an accountant and war veteran who murdered his wife, three teenage children, and 85-year-old mother in Westfield, New Jersey, fifteen days before the Cooper hijacking, withdrew $200,000 from his mother's bank account, and disappeared. He came to the attention of the Cooper task force due to the timing of his disappearance, multiple matches to the hijacker's description, and the reasoning that \"a fugitive accused of mass murder has nothing to lose\". After his capture in 1989, List denied any involvement in the Cooper hijacking: no substantial evidence implicates him, and the FBI no longer considers him a suspect. List died in prison in 2008.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Theodore Ernest Mayfield (1935–2015) was a Special Forces veteran, pilot, competitive skydiver, and skydiving instructor. He served time in 1994 for negligent homicide after two of his students died when their parachutes failed to open and was later found indirectly responsible for thirteen additional skydiving deaths due to faulty equipment and training. In 2010, he was sentenced to three years' probation for piloting a plane 26 years after losing his pilot's license and rigging certificates. He was suggested repeatedly as a suspect early in the investigation, according to FBI Agent Ralph Himmelsbach, who knew Mayfield from a prior dispute at a local airport. He was ruled out, based partly on the fact that he called Himmelsbach less than two hours after Flight 305 landed in Reno to volunteer advice on standard skydiving practices and possible landing zones, as well as information on local skydivers.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Richard McCoy (1942–1974) was an Army veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, first as a demolition expert and later with the Green Berets as a helicopter pilot. After his military service, he became a warrant officer in the Utah National Guard and an avid recreational skydiver, with aspirations of becoming a Utah State Trooper.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "On April 7, 1972, McCoy staged the best-known of the so-called \"copycat\" hijackings (see below). He boarded United Airlines' Flight 855 (a Boeing 727 with aft stairs) in Denver, Colorado, and, brandishing what later proved to be a paperweight resembling a hand grenade and an unloaded handgun, he demanded four parachutes and $500,000. After delivery of the money and parachutes at San Francisco International Airport, McCoy ordered the aircraft back into the sky and bailed out over Provo, Utah, leaving behind his handwritten hijacking instructions and his fingerprints on a magazine he had been reading.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "He was arrested on April 9 with the ransom cash in his possession and, after trial and conviction, received a 45-year sentence. Two years later, he escaped from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary with several accomplices by crashing a garbage truck through the main gate. Tracked down three months later in Virginia Beach, McCoy was killed in a shootout with FBI agents.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "In their 1991 book, D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, parole officer Bernie Rhodes and former FBI agent Russell Calame asserted that they had identified McCoy as Cooper. They cited obvious similarities in the two hijackings, claims by McCoy's family that the tie and mother-of-pearl tie clip left on the plane belonged to McCoy, and McCoy's own refusal to admit or deny that he was Cooper. A proponent of their claim was the FBI agent who killed McCoy. \"When I shot Richard McCoy,\" he said, \"I shot D. B. Cooper at the same time.\"",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Although there is no reasonable doubt that McCoy committed the Denver hijacking, the FBI does not consider him a suspect in the Cooper case because of mismatches in age and description, a level of skydiving skill well above that thought to be possessed by the hijacker, and credible evidence that McCoy was in Las Vegas on the day of the Portland hijacking, and at home in Utah the day after, having Thanksgiving dinner with his family.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "On November 11, 2022, independent researcher Eric Ulis held a press conference putting forward Vincent C. Petersen as a person of interest. While researching the spectrum analysis that was done on Cooper's tie, Ulis discovered 3 particles that appeared to be a very rare titanium antimony alloy. Petersen worked at a company named Rem-Cru, based in Midland, Pennsylvania, and later in metro Pittsburgh, that manufactured titanium-antimony alloys.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Sheridan Peterson (1926–2021) served in the Marine Corps during World War II and was later employed as a technical editor at Boeing, based in Seattle. Investigators took an interest in Peterson as a suspect soon after the skyjacking because of his experience as a smokejumper and love of taking physical risks, as well as his similar appearance and age (44) to the Cooper description.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Peterson often teased the media about whether he was really Cooper. Entrepreneur Eric Ulis, who spent years investigating the crime, said he was \"98% convinced\" that Peterson was Cooper; when pressed by FBI agents, Peterson insisted he was in Nepal at the time of the hijacking. He died in 2021.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "In an episode of History Channel's History's Greatest Mysteries, analysis of DNA found on the tie worn by Cooper indicated that Peterson was not a match for Cooper when compared to a DNA sample from one of Peterson's living daughters. Eric Ulis has since withdrawn his allegation that Peterson could have been Cooper.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Robert Wesley Rackstraw (1943–2019) was a retired pilot and ex-convict who served on an Army helicopter crew and other units during the Vietnam War. He came to the attention of the Cooper task force in February 1978, after he was arrested in Iran and deported to the U.S. to face explosives possession and check kiting charges. Several months later, while released on bail, Rackstraw attempted to fake his own death by radioing a false mayday call and telling controllers that he was bailing out of a rented plane over Monterey Bay. Police later arrested him in Fullerton, California, on an additional charge of forging federal pilot certificates; the plane he claimed to have ditched was found, repainted, in a nearby hangar. Cooper investigators noted his physical resemblance to Cooper composite sketches even though he was only 28 in 1971, military parachute training, and criminal record but eliminated him as a suspect in 1979 after no direct evidence of his involvement could be found.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "In 2016, Rackstraw re-emerged as a suspect in a History channel program, along with a book. On September 8, 2016, Thomas J. Colbert, the author of the book, and attorney Mark Zaid filed a lawsuit to compel the FBI to release its Cooper case file under the Freedom of Information Act. In 2017, Colbert and a group of volunteer investigators uncovered what they believed to be \"a decades-old parachute strap\" at an undisclosed location in the Pacific Northwest. This was followed later in 2017 with a piece of foam, which they suspected was part of Cooper's parachute backpack. In January 2018, Tom and Dawna Colbert reported that they had obtained a confession letter originally written in December 1971 containing codes that matched three units Rackstraw was a part of while in the Army.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "One of the Flight 305 flight attendants reportedly \"did not find any similarities\" between photos of Rackstraw from the 1970s and her recollection of Cooper's appearance. Rackstraw's attorney called the renewed allegations \"the stupidest thing I've ever heard\", and Rackstraw himself told People magazine, \"It's a lot of [expletive], and they know it is.\" The FBI declined further comment. Rackstraw stated in a 2017 phone interview that he lost his job over the 2016 investigations. Rackstraw said to Colbert, \"I told everybody I was [the hijacker]\", before explaining the admission was a stunt. He died in 2019.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Walter R. Reca (1933–2014) was a former military paratrooper and intelligence operative. He was proposed as a suspect by his friend Carl Laurin in 2018. In 2008, Reca told Laurin via a recorded phone call that he was the hijacker.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Reca gave Laurin permission in a notarized letter to share his story after his death. He also allowed Laurin to tape their phone conversations about the crime over a six-week period in late 2008. In over three hours of recordings, Reca shared details about his version of the hijacking. He also confessed to his niece, Lisa Story.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "From Reca's description of the terrain on his way to the drop zone, Laurin concluded that he landed near Cle Elum, Washington. After Reca described an encounter with a dump truck driver at a roadside cafe after he landed, Laurin located Jeff Osiadacz, who was driving his dump truck near Cle Elum the night of the hijacking and met a stranger at the Teanaway Junction Café just outside of town. The man asked Osiadacz to give his friend directions to the café over the phone, presumably to be picked up, and he complied. Laurin convinced Joe Koenig, a former member of the Michigan State Police, of Reca's guilt. Koenig later published a book on Cooper, titled Getting the Truth: I Am D.B. Cooper.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "These claims have aroused skepticism. Cle Elum is well north and east of Flight 305's known flight path, more than 150 miles (240 km) north of the drop zone assumed by most analysts, and even further from Tena Bar, where a portion of the ransom money was found. Reca was a military paratrooper and private skydiver with hundreds of jumps to his credit, in contradiction to the FBI's publicized profile of an amateur skydiver at best. Reca also did not resemble the composite portrait the FBI assembled, which Laurin and Osiadacz used to explain why Osiadacz's suspicions were not aroused at the time. In response to the allegations against Reca, the FBI said that it would be inappropriate to comment on specific tips provided to them, and that no evidence to date had proved the culpability of any suspect beyond a reasonable doubt.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "In November 2018, The Oregonian published an article proposing William J. Smith (1928–2018), of Bloomfield, New Jersey, as a suspect. The article was based on research conducted by an Army data analyst who sent his findings to the FBI in mid-2018. Smith, a New Jersey native, was a World War II veteran. After high school, he enlisted in the United States Navy and volunteered for combat air crew training. After his discharge, he worked for the Lehigh Valley Railroad and was affected by the Penn Central Transportation Company's bankruptcy in 1970, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history at that time. The article proposed that the loss of his pension created a grudge against the corporate establishment and transportation field, as well as a sudden need for money. Smith was 43 at the time of the hijacking. In his high school yearbook, a list of alumni killed in World War II lists an Ira Daniel Cooper, possibly the source for the hijacker's pseudonym. The analyst claimed that Smith's naval aviation experience would have given him knowledge of planes and parachutes, and his railroad experience would have helped him find railroad tracks and hop on a train to escape the area after landing.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "According to the analyst, aluminum spiral chips found on the clip-on tie could have come from a locomotive maintenance facility. Smith's information about the Seattle area may have come from his close friend Dan Clair, who was stationed at Fort Lewis during the war. The analyst noted that the man who claimed to be Cooper in Max Gunther's 1985 book identified himself as \"Dan LeClair\". Smith and Clair worked together for Conrail at Newark's Oak Island Yard. Smith retired from that facility as a yardmaster. The article noted that a picture of Smith on the Lehigh Valley Railroad website showed a \"remarkable resemblance\" to Cooper FBI sketches. The FBI said that it would be inappropriate to comment on tips related to Smith.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Duane L. Weber (1924–1995) was a World War II Army veteran who served time in at least six prisons from 1945 to 1968 for burglary and forgery. He was proposed as a suspect by his widow, Jo, based primarily on a deathbed confession: three days before he died in 1995, Weber told his wife, \"I am Dan Cooper.\" The name meant nothing to her, she said; but months later, a friend told her of its significance in the hijacking. She went to her local library to research Cooper, found Max Gunther's book, and discovered notations in the margins in her husband's handwriting. Like the hijacker, Weber drank bourbon and chain-smoked. Other circumstantial evidence included a 1979 trip to Seattle and the Columbia River, where his wife remembered him throwing a trash bag just upstream of Tina Bar.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Himmelsbach said, \"[Weber] does fit the physical description (and) does have the criminal background that I have always felt was associated with the case\", but did not believe Weber was Cooper. The FBI eliminated Weber as an active suspect in July 1998 when his fingerprints did not match any of those processed in the hijacked plane, and no other direct evidence could be found to implicate him. Later, his DNA also failed to match the samples recovered from Cooper's tie.",
"title": "Suspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "Cooper was among the first to attempt air piracy for personal gain, but merely eleven days prior to Cooper's hijack, Canadian Paul Joseph Cini hijacked an Air Canada DC-8 over Montana, but was overpowered by the crew when he put down his shotgun to strap on his parachute. Encouraged by Cooper's apparent success, fifteen similar hijackings—all unsuccessful—were attempted in 1972. Some notable examples from that year:",
"title": "Similar hijackings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "With the advent of universal luggage searches in 1973 (see Airport security), the general incidence of hijackings dropped dramatically. There were no further notable Cooper imitators until July 11, 1980, when Glenn K. Tripp seized Northwest Orient Flight 608 at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, demanding $600,000 ($100,000 by an independent account), two parachutes, and the assassination of his boss. A quick-thinking flight attendant drugged Tripp's alcoholic drink with Valium. After a ten-hour standoff, during which Tripp reduced his demands to three cheeseburgers and a ground vehicle in which to escape, he was apprehended. Tripp attempted to hijack the same Northwest flight on January 21, 1983, and this time demanded to be flown to Afghanistan. When the plane landed in Portland, he was shot and killed by FBI agents.",
"title": "Similar hijackings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Despite the initiation of the federal Sky Marshal Program the previous year, 31 hijackings were committed in U.S. airspace in 1972; 19 of them were for the specific purpose of extorting money. In 15 of the extortion cases, the hijackers also demanded parachutes. In early 1973, the FAA began requiring airlines to search all passengers and their bags. Amid multiple lawsuits charging that such searches violated Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, federal courts ruled that they were acceptable when applied universally and when limited to searches for weapons and explosives. Only two hijackings were attempted in 1973, both by psychiatric patients; one hijacker, Samuel Byck, intended to crash the airliner into the White House to kill President Nixon.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Due to multiple \"copycat\" hijackings in 1972, the FAA required that the exterior of all Boeing 727 aircraft be fitted with a spring-loaded device, later dubbed the \"Cooper vane\", that prevents lowering of the aft airstair during flight. The device consists of a flat blade of aluminum mounted on a pivot, which is spring-loaded to stay out of the way of the door when the craft is at rest, but aerodynamically rotates into position to prevent the door from being opened when the plane is traveling at flight speeds. Operation of the vane is automatic and cannot be overridden from within the aircraft. As a direct result of the hijacking, the installation of peepholes was mandated in all cockpit doors; this enables the cockpit crew to observe passengers without opening the cockpit door.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "In 1978, the hijacked 727-100 aircraft was sold by Northwest Orient to Piedmont Airlines, where it was re-registered N838N and continued in domestic carrier service. In 1984, it was purchased by the charter company Key Airlines, re-registered N29KA, and incorporated into the Air Force's civilian charter fleet that shuttled workers between Nellis Air Force Base and the Tonopah Test Range during the F-117 Nighthawk development program. In 1996, the aircraft was scrapped for parts in a Memphis aircraft boneyard.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "On April 23, 2013, Earl J. Cossey, who packed the four parachutes that were given to Cooper, was found dead in his home in Woodinville, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. His death was ruled a homicide due to blunt-force trauma to the head. The perpetrator remains unknown. Some commenters alleged possible links to the Cooper case, but authorities responded that they had no reason to believe that any such link exists. Woodinville officials later announced that burglary was most likely the motive for the crime.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "Himmelsbach famously called Cooper a \"rotten sleazy crook\", but his bold and unusual crime inspired a cult following that was expressed in song, film, and literature. Novelty shops sold t-shirts emblazoned with \"D. B. Cooper, Where Are You?\" Restaurants and bowling alleys in the Pacific Northwest hold regular Cooper-themed promotions and sell tourist souvenirs. A \"Cooper Day\" celebration has been held at the Ariel General Store and Tavern each November since 1974 with the exception of 2015, the year its owner, Dona Elliot, died.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Characters and situations inspired by Cooper have appeared in the story lines of the television series Prison Break, Justified, The Blacklist, NewsRadio, Leverage, Journeyman, Renegade, Numb3rs, Quincy, M.E., 30 Rock, Drunk History, Breaking Bad, and Loki, as well as the 1981 film The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper, the 2004 film Without a Paddle, and a book titled The Vesuvius Prophecy by Greg Cox, based on The 4400 TV series.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "An annual convention, known as CooperCon, is held every year in late November in Seattle, Washington. The event, founded by Cooper researcher Eric Ulis in 2018, is a multi-day gathering of Cooper researchers and enthusiasts. Originally held in Vancouver, Washington, it was moved to Seattle beginning in 2023. CooperCon took the place of the annual D. B. Cooper Days, which ended when the owner of the Ariel Store Pub died and the pub was forced to close.",
"title": "In popular culture"
}
]
| D. B. Cooper is a media epithet for an unidentified man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft, in United States airspace on November 24, 1971. During the flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, the hijacker told a flight attendant he was armed with a bomb, demanded $200,000 in ransom and requested four parachutes upon landing in Seattle. After releasing the passengers in Seattle, the hijacker instructed the flight crew to refuel the aircraft and begin a second flight to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. About 30 minutes after taking off from Seattle, the hijacker opened the aircraft's aft door, deployed the staircase, and parachuted into the night over southwestern Washington. The hijacker has never been found or conclusively identified. In 1980, a small portion of the ransom money was found along the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. The discovery of the money renewed public interest in the mystery, but yielded no additional information about the hijacker's identity or fate, and the remaining money was never recovered. The hijacker identified himself as Dan Cooper, but a reporter confused his name with another suspect and the hijacker subsequently became known as "D. B. Cooper". For 45 years after the hijacking, the Federal Bureau of Investigation maintained an active investigation and built an extensive case file, but ultimately did not reach any definitive conclusions. The crime remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation. The FBI speculates Cooper did not survive his jump, for several reasons: the inclement weather on the night of the hijacking, Cooper's unsuitable clothing and lack of proper skydiving equipment, the heavily wooded area into which he jumped, his apparent lack of detailed knowledge of his landing area, and the disappearance of the remaining ransom money, suggesting it was never spent. In July 2016, the FBI officially suspended active investigation of the NORJAK case, although reporters, enthusiasts, professional investigators, and amateur sleuths continue to pursue numerous theories for Cooper's identity, success, and fate. Cooper's hijacking—and several imitators in the following year—immediately initiated major upgrades to security measures for airports and commercial aviation. Metal detectors were installed at airports, baggage inspection became mandatory, and passengers who paid cash for tickets on the day of departure were selected for additional scrutiny. Boeing 727s were retrofitted with eponymous "Cooper vanes", specifically designed to prevent the aft staircase from being lowered in-flight. By 1973, aircraft hijacking incidents had decreased, as the new security measures dissuaded would-be hijackers whose only motive was money. | 2001-11-11T02:00:07Z | 2023-12-26T15:11:41Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper |
8,805 | Distributism | Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching principles, especially Pope Leo XIII's teachings in his encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931). It has influenced Anglo Christian Democratic movements, and has been recognized as one of many influences on the social market economy.
Distributism views laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative. Instead, it favours small independent craftsmen and producers; or, if that is not possible, economic mechanisms such as cooperatives and member-owned mutual organisations as well as small to medium enterprises and large-scale competition law reform such as antitrust regulations. Christian democratic political parties such as the American Solidarity Party have advocated distributism alongside social market economy in their economic policies and party platform.
According to distributists, the right to property is a fundamental right, and the means of production should be spread as widely as possible rather than being centralised under the control of the state (statocracy), a few individuals (plutocracy), or corporations (corporatocracy). Therefore, distributism advocates a society marked by widespread property ownership. Cooperative economist Race Mathews argues that such a system is key to creating a just social order.
Distributism has often been described in opposition to both laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism which distributists see as equally flawed and exploitative. Furthermore, some distributists argue that state capitalism and state socialism are the logical conclusion of capitalism as capitalism's concentrated powers eventually capture the state. Thomas Storck argues: "Both socialism and capitalism are products of the European Enlightenment and are thus modernising and anti-traditional forces. In contrast, distributism seeks to subordinate economic activity to human life as a whole, to our spiritual life, our intellectual life, our family life." A few distributists, including Dorothy Day, were influenced by the economic ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his mutualist economic theory. The lesser-known anarchist branch of distributism of Day and the Catholic Worker Movement can be considered a form of free-market libertarian socialism due to their opposition to state capitalism and state socialism.
Some have seen it more as an aspiration, successfully realised in the short term by the commitment to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity (built into financially independent local cooperatives and small family businesses). However, proponents also cite such periods as the Middle Ages as examples of the long-term historical viability of distributism. Particularly influential in the development of distributist theory were Catholic authors G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, the Chesterbelloc, two of distributism's earliest and strongest proponents.
In the early 21st century, Arthur W. Hunt III in The American Conservative and Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry in First Things speculated on Pope Francis's position on distributism after he denounced unfettered capitalism in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, in which he stated: "Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. ... A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which has taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits."
The mid-to-late 19th century witnessed an increase in the popularity of political Catholicism across Europe. According to historian Michael A. Riff, a common feature of these movements was opposition to secularism, capitalism, and socialism. In 1891 Pope Leo XIII promulgated Rerum novarum, in which he addressed the "misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class" and spoke of how "a small number of very rich men" had been able to "lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself". Affirmed in the encyclical was the right of all men to own property, the necessity of a system that allowed "as many as possible of the people to become owners", the duty of employers to provide safe working conditions and sufficient wages, and the right of workers to unionise. Common and government property ownership was expressly dismissed as a means of helping the poor.
Around the start of the 20th century, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc drew together the disparate experiences of the various cooperatives and friendly societies in Northern England, Ireland, and Northern Europe into a coherent political theory which specifically advocated widespread private ownership of housing and control of industry through owner-operated small businesses and worker-controlled cooperatives. In the United States in the 1930s, distributism was treated in numerous essays by Chesterton, Belloc and others in The American Review, published and edited by Seward Collins. Pivotal among Belloc's and Chesterton's other works regarding distributism are The Servile State and Outline of Sanity.
In Rerum novarum, Leo XIII states that people are likely to work harder and with greater commitment if they possess the land on which they labour, which in turn will benefit them and their families as workers will be able to provide for themselves and their household. He puts forward the idea that when men have the opportunity to possess property and work on it, they will "learn to love the very soil which yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of the good things for themselves and those that are dear to them". He also states that owning property is beneficial for a person and their family and is, in fact, a right due to God having "given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race".
G. K. Chesterton presents similar views in his 1910 book, What's Wrong with the World. Chesterton believes that whilst God has limitless capabilities, man has limited abilities in terms of creation. Therefore, man is entitled to own property and treat it as he sees fit, stating: "Property is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of heaven. But because he is not God, but only a graven image of God, his self-expression must deal with limits; properly with limits that are strict and even small."
According to Belloc, the distributive state (the state which has implemented distributism) contains "an agglomeration of families of varying wealth, but by far the greater number of owners of the means of production". This broader distribution does not extend to all property but only to productive property; that is, that property which produces wealth, namely, the things needed for man to survive. It includes land, tools, and so on. Distributism allows society to have public goods such as parks and transit systems. Distributists accept that wage labour will remain a small part of the economy, with small business owners hiring employees, usually young, inexperienced people.
Distributism requires either direct or indirect distribution of the means of production (productive assets)—in some ideological circles including the redistribution of wealth—to a wide portion of society instead of concentrating it in the hands of a minority of wealthy elites (as seen in its criticism of certain varieties of capitalism) or the hands of the state (as seen in its criticism of certain varieties of communism and socialism). More capitalist-oriented supporters support distributism-influenced social capitalism (also known as a social market economy), while more socialist-oriented supporters support distributism-influenced libertarian socialism. Examples of methods of distributism include direct productive property redistribution, taxation of excessive property ownership, and small-business subsidization.
Distributists advocate in favour of the return of a guild system to help regulate industries to promote moral standards of professional conduct and economic equality among members of a guild. Such moral standards of professional conduct would typically focus on business conduct, working conditions and other issues in relation to industry specific matters such as workplace training standards.
Distributism favours cooperative and mutual banking institutions such as credit unions, building societies and mutual banks. This is considered to be the preferred alternative to private banks.
G. K. Chesterton considered one's home and family the centrepiece of society. He recognized the family unit and home as centrepieces of living and believed that every man should have their property and home to enable him to raise and support his family. Distributists recognize that strengthening and protecting the family requires that society be nurturing.
Distributism puts great emphasis on the principle of subsidiarity. This principle holds that no larger unit (whether social, economic, or political) should perform a function that a smaller unit can perform. In Quadragesimo anno, Pope Pius XI provided the classical statement of the principle: "Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do".
The Democratic Labour Party of Australia espouses distributism and does not hold the view of favouring the elimination of social security who, for instance, wish to "[r]aise the level of student income support payments to the Henderson poverty line".
The American Solidarity Party has a platform of favouring an adequate social security system, stating: "We advocate for social safety nets that adequately provide for the material needs of the most vulnerable in society".
The position of distributists, when compared to other political philosophies, is somewhat paradoxical and complicated (see triangulation). Firmly entrenched in an organic but very English Catholicism, advocating culturally traditionalist and agrarian values, directly challenging the precepts of Whig history—Belloc was nonetheless an MP for the Liberal Party, and Chesterton once stated, "As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals".
Distributism does not favour one political order over another (political accidentalism). While some distributists such as Dorothy Day have been anarchists, it should be remembered that most Chestertonian distributists are opposed to the mere concept of anarchism. Chesterton thought that distributism would benefit from the discipline that theoretical analysis imposes and that distributism is best seen as a widely encompassing concept inside of which any number of interpretations and perspectives can fit. This concept should fit a political system broadly characterized by widespread ownership of productive property.
In the United States, the American Solidarity Party generally adheres to Distributist principles as its economic model. Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam view their Grand New Party, a roadmap for revising the Republican Party in the United States, as "a book written in the distributist tradition".
The Brazilian political party, Humanist Party of Solidarity, is a distributist party, alongside the National Distributist Party in England, and the Democratic Labour Party in Australia.
Distributism is known to have influenced the economist E. F. Schumacher, a convert to Catholicism.
The Mondragon Corporation, based in the Basque Country in a region of Spain and France, was founded by a Catholic priest, Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, who seems to have been influenced by the same Catholic social and economic teachings that inspired Belloc, Chesterton, Father Vincent McNabb, and the other founders of distributism.
Distributist ideas were put into practice by The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, a group of artists and craftsmen who established a community in Ditchling, Sussex, England, in 1920, with the motto "Men rich in virtue studying beautifulness living in peace in their houses". The guild sought to recreate an idealised medieval lifestyle in the manner of the Arts and Crafts Movement. It survived for almost 70 years until 1989.
The Big Society was the flagship policy idea of the 2010 UK Conservative Party general election manifesto. Some distributists claim that the rhetorical marketing of this policy was influenced by aphorisms of the distributist ideology and promotes distributism. It purportedly formed a part of the legislative programme of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching principles, especially Pope Leo XIII's teachings in his encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931). It has influenced Anglo Christian Democratic movements, and has been recognized as one of many influences on the social market economy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Distributism views laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative. Instead, it favours small independent craftsmen and producers; or, if that is not possible, economic mechanisms such as cooperatives and member-owned mutual organisations as well as small to medium enterprises and large-scale competition law reform such as antitrust regulations. Christian democratic political parties such as the American Solidarity Party have advocated distributism alongside social market economy in their economic policies and party platform.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "According to distributists, the right to property is a fundamental right, and the means of production should be spread as widely as possible rather than being centralised under the control of the state (statocracy), a few individuals (plutocracy), or corporations (corporatocracy). Therefore, distributism advocates a society marked by widespread property ownership. Cooperative economist Race Mathews argues that such a system is key to creating a just social order.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Distributism has often been described in opposition to both laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism which distributists see as equally flawed and exploitative. Furthermore, some distributists argue that state capitalism and state socialism are the logical conclusion of capitalism as capitalism's concentrated powers eventually capture the state. Thomas Storck argues: \"Both socialism and capitalism are products of the European Enlightenment and are thus modernising and anti-traditional forces. In contrast, distributism seeks to subordinate economic activity to human life as a whole, to our spiritual life, our intellectual life, our family life.\" A few distributists, including Dorothy Day, were influenced by the economic ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his mutualist economic theory. The lesser-known anarchist branch of distributism of Day and the Catholic Worker Movement can be considered a form of free-market libertarian socialism due to their opposition to state capitalism and state socialism.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Some have seen it more as an aspiration, successfully realised in the short term by the commitment to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity (built into financially independent local cooperatives and small family businesses). However, proponents also cite such periods as the Middle Ages as examples of the long-term historical viability of distributism. Particularly influential in the development of distributist theory were Catholic authors G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, the Chesterbelloc, two of distributism's earliest and strongest proponents.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the early 21st century, Arthur W. Hunt III in The American Conservative and Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry in First Things speculated on Pope Francis's position on distributism after he denounced unfettered capitalism in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, in which he stated: \"Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. ... A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which has taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits.\"",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The mid-to-late 19th century witnessed an increase in the popularity of political Catholicism across Europe. According to historian Michael A. Riff, a common feature of these movements was opposition to secularism, capitalism, and socialism. In 1891 Pope Leo XIII promulgated Rerum novarum, in which he addressed the \"misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class\" and spoke of how \"a small number of very rich men\" had been able to \"lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself\". Affirmed in the encyclical was the right of all men to own property, the necessity of a system that allowed \"as many as possible of the people to become owners\", the duty of employers to provide safe working conditions and sufficient wages, and the right of workers to unionise. Common and government property ownership was expressly dismissed as a means of helping the poor.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Around the start of the 20th century, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc drew together the disparate experiences of the various cooperatives and friendly societies in Northern England, Ireland, and Northern Europe into a coherent political theory which specifically advocated widespread private ownership of housing and control of industry through owner-operated small businesses and worker-controlled cooperatives. In the United States in the 1930s, distributism was treated in numerous essays by Chesterton, Belloc and others in The American Review, published and edited by Seward Collins. Pivotal among Belloc's and Chesterton's other works regarding distributism are The Servile State and Outline of Sanity.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In Rerum novarum, Leo XIII states that people are likely to work harder and with greater commitment if they possess the land on which they labour, which in turn will benefit them and their families as workers will be able to provide for themselves and their household. He puts forward the idea that when men have the opportunity to possess property and work on it, they will \"learn to love the very soil which yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of the good things for themselves and those that are dear to them\". He also states that owning property is beneficial for a person and their family and is, in fact, a right due to God having \"given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race\".",
"title": "Economic theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "G. K. Chesterton presents similar views in his 1910 book, What's Wrong with the World. Chesterton believes that whilst God has limitless capabilities, man has limited abilities in terms of creation. Therefore, man is entitled to own property and treat it as he sees fit, stating: \"Property is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of heaven. But because he is not God, but only a graven image of God, his self-expression must deal with limits; properly with limits that are strict and even small.\"",
"title": "Economic theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "According to Belloc, the distributive state (the state which has implemented distributism) contains \"an agglomeration of families of varying wealth, but by far the greater number of owners of the means of production\". This broader distribution does not extend to all property but only to productive property; that is, that property which produces wealth, namely, the things needed for man to survive. It includes land, tools, and so on. Distributism allows society to have public goods such as parks and transit systems. Distributists accept that wage labour will remain a small part of the economy, with small business owners hiring employees, usually young, inexperienced people.",
"title": "Economic theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Distributism requires either direct or indirect distribution of the means of production (productive assets)—in some ideological circles including the redistribution of wealth—to a wide portion of society instead of concentrating it in the hands of a minority of wealthy elites (as seen in its criticism of certain varieties of capitalism) or the hands of the state (as seen in its criticism of certain varieties of communism and socialism). More capitalist-oriented supporters support distributism-influenced social capitalism (also known as a social market economy), while more socialist-oriented supporters support distributism-influenced libertarian socialism. Examples of methods of distributism include direct productive property redistribution, taxation of excessive property ownership, and small-business subsidization.",
"title": "Economic theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Distributists advocate in favour of the return of a guild system to help regulate industries to promote moral standards of professional conduct and economic equality among members of a guild. Such moral standards of professional conduct would typically focus on business conduct, working conditions and other issues in relation to industry specific matters such as workplace training standards.",
"title": "Economic theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Distributism favours cooperative and mutual banking institutions such as credit unions, building societies and mutual banks. This is considered to be the preferred alternative to private banks.",
"title": "Economic theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "G. K. Chesterton considered one's home and family the centrepiece of society. He recognized the family unit and home as centrepieces of living and believed that every man should have their property and home to enable him to raise and support his family. Distributists recognize that strengthening and protecting the family requires that society be nurturing.",
"title": "Social theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Distributism puts great emphasis on the principle of subsidiarity. This principle holds that no larger unit (whether social, economic, or political) should perform a function that a smaller unit can perform. In Quadragesimo anno, Pope Pius XI provided the classical statement of the principle: \"Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do\".",
"title": "Social theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Democratic Labour Party of Australia espouses distributism and does not hold the view of favouring the elimination of social security who, for instance, wish to \"[r]aise the level of student income support payments to the Henderson poverty line\".",
"title": "Social theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The American Solidarity Party has a platform of favouring an adequate social security system, stating: \"We advocate for social safety nets that adequately provide for the material needs of the most vulnerable in society\".",
"title": "Social theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The position of distributists, when compared to other political philosophies, is somewhat paradoxical and complicated (see triangulation). Firmly entrenched in an organic but very English Catholicism, advocating culturally traditionalist and agrarian values, directly challenging the precepts of Whig history—Belloc was nonetheless an MP for the Liberal Party, and Chesterton once stated, \"As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals\".",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Distributism does not favour one political order over another (political accidentalism). While some distributists such as Dorothy Day have been anarchists, it should be remembered that most Chestertonian distributists are opposed to the mere concept of anarchism. Chesterton thought that distributism would benefit from the discipline that theoretical analysis imposes and that distributism is best seen as a widely encompassing concept inside of which any number of interpretations and perspectives can fit. This concept should fit a political system broadly characterized by widespread ownership of productive property.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In the United States, the American Solidarity Party generally adheres to Distributist principles as its economic model. Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam view their Grand New Party, a roadmap for revising the Republican Party in the United States, as \"a book written in the distributist tradition\".",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Brazilian political party, Humanist Party of Solidarity, is a distributist party, alongside the National Distributist Party in England, and the Democratic Labour Party in Australia.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Distributism is known to have influenced the economist E. F. Schumacher, a convert to Catholicism.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Mondragon Corporation, based in the Basque Country in a region of Spain and France, was founded by a Catholic priest, Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, who seems to have been influenced by the same Catholic social and economic teachings that inspired Belloc, Chesterton, Father Vincent McNabb, and the other founders of distributism.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Distributist ideas were put into practice by The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, a group of artists and craftsmen who established a community in Ditchling, Sussex, England, in 1920, with the motto \"Men rich in virtue studying beautifulness living in peace in their houses\". The guild sought to recreate an idealised medieval lifestyle in the manner of the Arts and Crafts Movement. It survived for almost 70 years until 1989.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Big Society was the flagship policy idea of the 2010 UK Conservative Party general election manifesto. Some distributists claim that the rhetorical marketing of this policy was influenced by aphorisms of the distributist ideology and promotes distributism. It purportedly formed a part of the legislative programme of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement.",
"title": "Influence"
}
]
| Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching principles, especially Pope Leo XIII's teachings in his encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931). It has influenced Anglo Christian Democratic movements, and has been recognized as one of many influences on the social market economy. Distributism views laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative. Instead, it favours small independent craftsmen and producers; or, if that is not possible, economic mechanisms such as cooperatives and member-owned mutual organisations as well as small to medium enterprises and large-scale competition law reform such as antitrust regulations. Christian democratic political parties such as the American Solidarity Party have advocated distributism alongside social market economy in their economic policies and party platform. | 2001-11-12T16:11:18Z | 2023-12-25T17:53:08Z | [
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]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism |
8,807 | Dehydroepiandrosterone | Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), also known as androstenolone, is an endogenous steroid hormone precursor. It is one of the most abundant circulating steroids in humans. DHEA is produced in the adrenal glands, the gonads, and the brain. It functions as a metabolic intermediate in the biosynthesis of the androgen and estrogen sex steroids both in the gonads and in various other tissues. However, DHEA also has a variety of potential biological effects in its own right, binding to an array of nuclear and cell surface receptors, and acting as a neurosteroid and modulator of neurotrophic factor receptors.
In the United States, DHEA is sold as an over-the-counter supplement, and medication called prasterone.
DHEA and other adrenal androgens such as androstenedione, although relatively weak androgens, are responsible for the androgenic effects of adrenarche, such as early pubic and axillary hair growth, adult-type body odor, increased oiliness of hair and skin, and mild acne. DHEA is potentiated locally via conversion into testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT) in the skin and hair follicles. Women with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS), who have a non-functional androgen receptor (AR) and are immune to the androgenic effects of DHEA and other androgens, have absent or only sparse/scanty pubic and axillary hair and body hair in general, demonstrating the role of DHEA and other androgens in body hair development at both adrenarche and pubarche.
DHEA is a weak estrogen. In addition, it is transformed into potent estrogens such as estradiol in certain tissues such as the vagina, and thereby produces estrogenic effects in such tissues.
As a neurosteroid and neurotrophin, DHEA has important effects in the central nervous system.
Although it functions as an endogenous precursor to more potent androgens such as testosterone and DHT, DHEA has been found to possess some degree of androgenic activity in its own right, acting as a low affinity (Ki = 1 μM), weak partial agonist of the androgen receptor (AR). However, its intrinsic activity at the receptor is quite weak, and on account of that, due to competition for binding with full agonists like testosterone, it can actually behave more like an antagonist depending on circulating testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT) levels, and hence, like an antiandrogen. However, its affinity for the receptor is very low, and for that reason, is unlikely to be of much significance under normal circumstances.
In addition to its affinity for the androgen receptor, DHEA has also been found to bind to (and activate) the ERα and ERβ estrogen receptors with Ki values of 1.1 μM and 0.5 μM, respectively, and EC50 values of >1 μM and 200 nM, respectively. Though it was found to be a partial agonist of the ERα with a maximal efficacy of 30–70%, the concentrations required for this degree of activation make it unlikely that the activity of DHEA at this receptor is physiologically meaningful. Remarkably however, DHEA acts as a full agonist of the ERβ with a maximal response similar to or actually slightly greater than that of estradiol, and its levels in circulation and local tissues in the human body are high enough to activate the receptor to the same degree as that seen with circulating estradiol levels at somewhat higher than their maximal, non-ovulatory concentrations; indeed, when combined with estradiol with both at levels equivalent to those of their physiological concentrations, overall activation of the ERβ was doubled.
DHEA does not bind to or activate the progesterone, glucocorticoid, or mineralocorticoid receptors. Other nuclear receptor targets of DHEA besides the androgen and estrogen receptors include the PPARα, PXR, and CAR. However, whereas DHEA is a ligand of the PPARα and PXR in rodents, it is not in humans. In addition to direct interactions, DHEA is thought to regulate a handful of other proteins via indirect, genomic mechanisms, including the enzymes CYP2C11 and 11β-HSD1 – the latter of which is essential for the biosynthesis of the glucocorticoids such as cortisol and has been suggested to be involved in the antiglucocorticoid effects of DHEA – and the carrier protein IGFBP1.
DHEA has been found to directly act on several neurotransmitter receptors, including acting as a positive allosteric modulator of the NMDA receptor, as a negative allosteric modulator of the GABAA receptor, and as an agonist of the σ1 receptor.
In 2011, the surprising discovery was made that DHEA, as well as its sulfate ester, DHEA-S, directly bind to and activate TrkA and p75, receptors of neurotrophins like nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), with high affinity. DHEA was subsequently also found to bind to TrkB and TrkC with high affinity, though it only activated TrkC not TrkB. DHEA and DHEA-S bound to these receptors with affinities in the low nanomolar range (around 5 nM), which were nonetheless approximately two orders of magnitude lower relative to highly potent polypeptide neurotrophins like NGF (0.01–0.1 nM). In any case, DHEA and DHEA-S both circulate at requisite concentrations to activate these receptors and were thus identified as important endogenous neurotrophic factors. They have since been labeled "steroidal microneurotrophins", due to their small-molecule and steroidal nature relative to their polypeptide neurotrophin counterparts. Subsequent research has suggested that DHEA and/or DHEA-S may in fact be phylogenetically ancient "ancestral" ligands of the neurotrophin receptors from early on in the evolution of the nervous system. The findings that DHEA binds to and potently activates neurotrophin receptors may explain the positive association between decreased circulating DHEA levels with age and age-related neurodegenerative diseases.
Similarly to pregnenolone, its synthetic derivative 3β-methoxypregnenolone (MAP-4343), and progesterone, DHEA has been found to bind to microtubule-associated protein 2 (MAP2), specifically the MAP2C subtype (Kd = 27 μM). However, it is unclear whether DHEA increases binding of MAP2 to tubulin like pregnenolone.
Some research has shown that DHEA levels are too low in people with ADHD, and treatment with methylphenidate or bupropion (stimulant type of medications) normalizes DHEA levels.
DHEA is an uncompetitive inhibitor of G6PDH (Ki = 17 μM; IC50 = 18.7 μM), and is able to lower NADPH levels and reduce NADPH-dependent free radical production. It is thought that this action may possibly be responsible for much of the antiinflammatory, antihyperplastic, chemopreventative, antihyperlipidemic, antidiabetic, and antiobesic, as well as certain immunomodulating activities of DHEA (with some experimental evidence to support this notion available). However, it has also been said that inhibition of G6PDH activity by DHEA in vivo has not been observed and that the concentrations required for DHEA to inhibit G6PDH in vitro are very high, thus making the possible contribution of G6PDH inhibition to the effects of DHEA uncertain.
DHEA supplements have been promoted in supplement form for its claimed cancer prevention properties; there is no scientific evidence to support these claims.
DHEA has been found to competitively inhibit TRPV1.
DHEA is produced in the zona reticularis of the adrenal cortex under the control of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and by the gonads under the control of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH). It is also produced in the brain. DHEA is synthesized from cholesterol via the enzymes cholesterol side-chain cleavage enzyme (CYP11A1; P450scc) and 17α-hydroxylase/17,20-lyase (CYP17A1), with pregnenolone and 17α-hydroxypregnenolone as intermediates. It is derived mostly from the adrenal cortex, with only about 10% being secreted from the gonads. Approximately 50 to 70% of circulating DHEA originates from desulfation of DHEA-S in peripheral tissues. DHEA-S itself originates almost exclusively from the adrenal cortex, with 95 to 100% being secreted from the adrenal cortex in women.
Regular exercise is known to increase DHEA production in the body. Calorie restriction has also been shown to increase DHEA in primates. Some theorize that the increase in endogenous DHEA brought about by calorie restriction is partially responsible for the longer life expectancy known to be associated with calorie restriction.
In the circulation, DHEA is mainly bound to albumin, with a small amount bound to sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG). The small remainder of DHEA not associated with albumin or SHBG is unbound and free in the circulation.
DHEA easily crosses the blood–brain barrier into the central nervous system.
DHEA is transformed into DHEA-S by sulfation at the C3β position via the sulfotransferase enzymes SULT2A1 and to a lesser extent SULT1E1. This occurs naturally in the adrenal cortex and during first-pass metabolism in the liver and intestines when exogenous DHEA is administered orally. Levels of DHEA-S in circulation are approximately 250 to 300 times those of DHEA. DHEA-S in turn can be converted back into DHEA in peripheral tissues via steroid sulfatase (STS).
The terminal half-life of DHEA is short at only 15 to 30 minutes. In contrast, the terminal half-life of DHEA-S is far longer, at 7 to 10 hours. As DHEA-S can be converted back into DHEA, it serves as a circulating reservoir for DHEA, thereby extending the duration of DHEA.
Metabolites of DHEA include DHEA-S, 7α-hydroxy-DHEA, 7β-hydroxy-DHEA, 7-keto-DHEA, 7α-hydroxyepiandrosterone, and 7β-hydroxyepiandrosterone, as well as androstenediol and androstenedione.
During pregnancy, DHEA-S is metabolized into the sulfates of 16α-hydroxy-DHEA and 15α-hydroxy-DHEA in the fetal liver as intermediates in the production of the estrogens estriol and estetrol, respectively.
Prior to puberty in humans, DHEA and DHEA-S levels elevate upon differentiation of the zona reticularis of the adrenal cortex. Peak levels of DHEA and DHEA-S are observed around age 20, which is followed by an age-dependent decline throughout life eventually back to prepubertal concentrations. Plasma levels of DHEA in adult men are 10 to 25 nM, in premenopausal women are 5 to 30 nM, and in postmenopausal women are 2 to 20 nM. Conversely, DHEA-S levels are an order of magnitude higher at 1–10 μM. Levels of DHEA and DHEA-S decline to the lower nanomolar and micromolar ranges in men and women aged 60 to 80 years.
DHEA levels are as follows:
As almost all DHEA is derived from the adrenal glands, blood measurements of DHEA-S/DHEA are useful to detect excess adrenal activity as seen in adrenal cancer or hyperplasia, including certain forms of congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Women with polycystic ovary syndrome tend to have elevated levels of DHEA-S.
DHEA, also known as androst-5-en-3β-ol-17-one, is a naturally occurring androstane steroid and a 17-ketosteroid. It is closely related structurally to androstenediol (androst-5-ene-3β,17β-diol), androstenedione (androst-4-ene-3,17-dione), and testosterone (androst-4-en-17β-ol-3-one). DHEA is the 5-dehydro analogue of epiandrosterone (5α-androstan-3β-ol-17-one) and is also known as 5-dehydroepiandrosterone or as δ-epiandrosterone.
The term "dehydroepiandrosterone" is ambiguous chemically because it does not include the specific positions within epiandrosterone at which hydrogen atoms are missing. DHEA itself is 5,6-didehydroepiandrosterone or 5-dehydroepiandrosterone. A number of naturally occurring isomers also exist and may have similar activities. Some isomers of DHEA are 1-dehydroepiandrosterone (1-androsterone) and 4-dehydroepiandrosterone. These isomers are also technically "DHEA", since they are dehydroepiandrosterones in which hydrogens are removed from the epiandrosterone skeleton.
Dehydroandrosterone (DHA) is the 3α-epimer of DHEA and is also an endogenous androgen.
DHEA was first isolated from human urine in 1934 by Adolf Butenandt and Kurt Tscherning. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), also known as androstenolone, is an endogenous steroid hormone precursor. It is one of the most abundant circulating steroids in humans. DHEA is produced in the adrenal glands, the gonads, and the brain. It functions as a metabolic intermediate in the biosynthesis of the androgen and estrogen sex steroids both in the gonads and in various other tissues. However, DHEA also has a variety of potential biological effects in its own right, binding to an array of nuclear and cell surface receptors, and acting as a neurosteroid and modulator of neurotrophic factor receptors.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In the United States, DHEA is sold as an over-the-counter supplement, and medication called prasterone.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "DHEA and other adrenal androgens such as androstenedione, although relatively weak androgens, are responsible for the androgenic effects of adrenarche, such as early pubic and axillary hair growth, adult-type body odor, increased oiliness of hair and skin, and mild acne. DHEA is potentiated locally via conversion into testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT) in the skin and hair follicles. Women with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS), who have a non-functional androgen receptor (AR) and are immune to the androgenic effects of DHEA and other androgens, have absent or only sparse/scanty pubic and axillary hair and body hair in general, demonstrating the role of DHEA and other androgens in body hair development at both adrenarche and pubarche.",
"title": "Biological function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "DHEA is a weak estrogen. In addition, it is transformed into potent estrogens such as estradiol in certain tissues such as the vagina, and thereby produces estrogenic effects in such tissues.",
"title": "Biological function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "As a neurosteroid and neurotrophin, DHEA has important effects in the central nervous system.",
"title": "Biological function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Although it functions as an endogenous precursor to more potent androgens such as testosterone and DHT, DHEA has been found to possess some degree of androgenic activity in its own right, acting as a low affinity (Ki = 1 μM), weak partial agonist of the androgen receptor (AR). However, its intrinsic activity at the receptor is quite weak, and on account of that, due to competition for binding with full agonists like testosterone, it can actually behave more like an antagonist depending on circulating testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT) levels, and hence, like an antiandrogen. However, its affinity for the receptor is very low, and for that reason, is unlikely to be of much significance under normal circumstances.",
"title": "Biological activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In addition to its affinity for the androgen receptor, DHEA has also been found to bind to (and activate) the ERα and ERβ estrogen receptors with Ki values of 1.1 μM and 0.5 μM, respectively, and EC50 values of >1 μM and 200 nM, respectively. Though it was found to be a partial agonist of the ERα with a maximal efficacy of 30–70%, the concentrations required for this degree of activation make it unlikely that the activity of DHEA at this receptor is physiologically meaningful. Remarkably however, DHEA acts as a full agonist of the ERβ with a maximal response similar to or actually slightly greater than that of estradiol, and its levels in circulation and local tissues in the human body are high enough to activate the receptor to the same degree as that seen with circulating estradiol levels at somewhat higher than their maximal, non-ovulatory concentrations; indeed, when combined with estradiol with both at levels equivalent to those of their physiological concentrations, overall activation of the ERβ was doubled.",
"title": "Biological activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "DHEA does not bind to or activate the progesterone, glucocorticoid, or mineralocorticoid receptors. Other nuclear receptor targets of DHEA besides the androgen and estrogen receptors include the PPARα, PXR, and CAR. However, whereas DHEA is a ligand of the PPARα and PXR in rodents, it is not in humans. In addition to direct interactions, DHEA is thought to regulate a handful of other proteins via indirect, genomic mechanisms, including the enzymes CYP2C11 and 11β-HSD1 – the latter of which is essential for the biosynthesis of the glucocorticoids such as cortisol and has been suggested to be involved in the antiglucocorticoid effects of DHEA – and the carrier protein IGFBP1.",
"title": "Biological activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "DHEA has been found to directly act on several neurotransmitter receptors, including acting as a positive allosteric modulator of the NMDA receptor, as a negative allosteric modulator of the GABAA receptor, and as an agonist of the σ1 receptor.",
"title": "Biological activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 2011, the surprising discovery was made that DHEA, as well as its sulfate ester, DHEA-S, directly bind to and activate TrkA and p75, receptors of neurotrophins like nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), with high affinity. DHEA was subsequently also found to bind to TrkB and TrkC with high affinity, though it only activated TrkC not TrkB. DHEA and DHEA-S bound to these receptors with affinities in the low nanomolar range (around 5 nM), which were nonetheless approximately two orders of magnitude lower relative to highly potent polypeptide neurotrophins like NGF (0.01–0.1 nM). In any case, DHEA and DHEA-S both circulate at requisite concentrations to activate these receptors and were thus identified as important endogenous neurotrophic factors. They have since been labeled \"steroidal microneurotrophins\", due to their small-molecule and steroidal nature relative to their polypeptide neurotrophin counterparts. Subsequent research has suggested that DHEA and/or DHEA-S may in fact be phylogenetically ancient \"ancestral\" ligands of the neurotrophin receptors from early on in the evolution of the nervous system. The findings that DHEA binds to and potently activates neurotrophin receptors may explain the positive association between decreased circulating DHEA levels with age and age-related neurodegenerative diseases.",
"title": "Biological activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Similarly to pregnenolone, its synthetic derivative 3β-methoxypregnenolone (MAP-4343), and progesterone, DHEA has been found to bind to microtubule-associated protein 2 (MAP2), specifically the MAP2C subtype (Kd = 27 μM). However, it is unclear whether DHEA increases binding of MAP2 to tubulin like pregnenolone.",
"title": "Biological activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Some research has shown that DHEA levels are too low in people with ADHD, and treatment with methylphenidate or bupropion (stimulant type of medications) normalizes DHEA levels.",
"title": "Biological activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "DHEA is an uncompetitive inhibitor of G6PDH (Ki = 17 μM; IC50 = 18.7 μM), and is able to lower NADPH levels and reduce NADPH-dependent free radical production. It is thought that this action may possibly be responsible for much of the antiinflammatory, antihyperplastic, chemopreventative, antihyperlipidemic, antidiabetic, and antiobesic, as well as certain immunomodulating activities of DHEA (with some experimental evidence to support this notion available). However, it has also been said that inhibition of G6PDH activity by DHEA in vivo has not been observed and that the concentrations required for DHEA to inhibit G6PDH in vitro are very high, thus making the possible contribution of G6PDH inhibition to the effects of DHEA uncertain.",
"title": "Biological activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "DHEA supplements have been promoted in supplement form for its claimed cancer prevention properties; there is no scientific evidence to support these claims.",
"title": "Biological activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "DHEA has been found to competitively inhibit TRPV1.",
"title": "Biological activity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "DHEA is produced in the zona reticularis of the adrenal cortex under the control of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and by the gonads under the control of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH). It is also produced in the brain. DHEA is synthesized from cholesterol via the enzymes cholesterol side-chain cleavage enzyme (CYP11A1; P450scc) and 17α-hydroxylase/17,20-lyase (CYP17A1), with pregnenolone and 17α-hydroxypregnenolone as intermediates. It is derived mostly from the adrenal cortex, with only about 10% being secreted from the gonads. Approximately 50 to 70% of circulating DHEA originates from desulfation of DHEA-S in peripheral tissues. DHEA-S itself originates almost exclusively from the adrenal cortex, with 95 to 100% being secreted from the adrenal cortex in women.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Regular exercise is known to increase DHEA production in the body. Calorie restriction has also been shown to increase DHEA in primates. Some theorize that the increase in endogenous DHEA brought about by calorie restriction is partially responsible for the longer life expectancy known to be associated with calorie restriction.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In the circulation, DHEA is mainly bound to albumin, with a small amount bound to sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG). The small remainder of DHEA not associated with albumin or SHBG is unbound and free in the circulation.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "DHEA easily crosses the blood–brain barrier into the central nervous system.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "DHEA is transformed into DHEA-S by sulfation at the C3β position via the sulfotransferase enzymes SULT2A1 and to a lesser extent SULT1E1. This occurs naturally in the adrenal cortex and during first-pass metabolism in the liver and intestines when exogenous DHEA is administered orally. Levels of DHEA-S in circulation are approximately 250 to 300 times those of DHEA. DHEA-S in turn can be converted back into DHEA in peripheral tissues via steroid sulfatase (STS).",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The terminal half-life of DHEA is short at only 15 to 30 minutes. In contrast, the terminal half-life of DHEA-S is far longer, at 7 to 10 hours. As DHEA-S can be converted back into DHEA, it serves as a circulating reservoir for DHEA, thereby extending the duration of DHEA.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Metabolites of DHEA include DHEA-S, 7α-hydroxy-DHEA, 7β-hydroxy-DHEA, 7-keto-DHEA, 7α-hydroxyepiandrosterone, and 7β-hydroxyepiandrosterone, as well as androstenediol and androstenedione.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "During pregnancy, DHEA-S is metabolized into the sulfates of 16α-hydroxy-DHEA and 15α-hydroxy-DHEA in the fetal liver as intermediates in the production of the estrogens estriol and estetrol, respectively.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Prior to puberty in humans, DHEA and DHEA-S levels elevate upon differentiation of the zona reticularis of the adrenal cortex. Peak levels of DHEA and DHEA-S are observed around age 20, which is followed by an age-dependent decline throughout life eventually back to prepubertal concentrations. Plasma levels of DHEA in adult men are 10 to 25 nM, in premenopausal women are 5 to 30 nM, and in postmenopausal women are 2 to 20 nM. Conversely, DHEA-S levels are an order of magnitude higher at 1–10 μM. Levels of DHEA and DHEA-S decline to the lower nanomolar and micromolar ranges in men and women aged 60 to 80 years.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "DHEA levels are as follows:",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "As almost all DHEA is derived from the adrenal glands, blood measurements of DHEA-S/DHEA are useful to detect excess adrenal activity as seen in adrenal cancer or hyperplasia, including certain forms of congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Women with polycystic ovary syndrome tend to have elevated levels of DHEA-S.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "DHEA, also known as androst-5-en-3β-ol-17-one, is a naturally occurring androstane steroid and a 17-ketosteroid. It is closely related structurally to androstenediol (androst-5-ene-3β,17β-diol), androstenedione (androst-4-ene-3,17-dione), and testosterone (androst-4-en-17β-ol-3-one). DHEA is the 5-dehydro analogue of epiandrosterone (5α-androstan-3β-ol-17-one) and is also known as 5-dehydroepiandrosterone or as δ-epiandrosterone.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The term \"dehydroepiandrosterone\" is ambiguous chemically because it does not include the specific positions within epiandrosterone at which hydrogen atoms are missing. DHEA itself is 5,6-didehydroepiandrosterone or 5-dehydroepiandrosterone. A number of naturally occurring isomers also exist and may have similar activities. Some isomers of DHEA are 1-dehydroepiandrosterone (1-androsterone) and 4-dehydroepiandrosterone. These isomers are also technically \"DHEA\", since they are dehydroepiandrosterones in which hydrogens are removed from the epiandrosterone skeleton.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Dehydroandrosterone (DHA) is the 3α-epimer of DHEA and is also an endogenous androgen.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "DHEA was first isolated from human urine in 1934 by Adolf Butenandt and Kurt Tscherning.",
"title": "History"
}
]
| Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), also known as androstenolone, is an endogenous steroid hormone precursor. It is one of the most abundant circulating steroids in humans. DHEA is produced in the adrenal glands, the gonads, and the brain. It functions as a metabolic intermediate in the biosynthesis of the androgen and estrogen sex steroids both in the gonads and in various other tissues. However, DHEA also has a variety of potential biological effects in its own right, binding to an array of nuclear and cell surface receptors, and acting as a neurosteroid and modulator of neurotrophic factor receptors. In the United States, DHEA is sold as an over-the-counter supplement, and medication called prasterone. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-13T12:41:29Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehydroepiandrosterone |
8,811 | Discrete Fourier transform | In mathematics, the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) converts a finite sequence of equally-spaced samples of a function into a same-length sequence of equally-spaced samples of the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT), which is a complex-valued function of frequency. The interval at which the DTFT is sampled is the reciprocal of the duration of the input sequence. An inverse DFT (IDFT) is a Fourier series, using the DTFT samples as coefficients of complex sinusoids at the corresponding DTFT frequencies. It has the same sample-values as the original input sequence. The DFT is therefore said to be a frequency domain representation of the original input sequence. If the original sequence spans all the non-zero values of a function, its DTFT is continuous (and periodic), and the DFT provides discrete samples of one cycle. If the original sequence is one cycle of a periodic function, the DFT provides all the non-zero values of one DTFT cycle.
The DFT is the most important discrete transform, used to perform Fourier analysis in many practical applications. In digital signal processing, the function is any quantity or signal that varies over time, such as the pressure of a sound wave, a radio signal, or daily temperature readings, sampled over a finite time interval (often defined by a window function). In image processing, the samples can be the values of pixels along a row or column of a raster image. The DFT is also used to efficiently solve partial differential equations, and to perform other operations such as convolutions or multiplying large integers.
Since it deals with a finite amount of data, it can be implemented in computers by numerical algorithms or even dedicated hardware. These implementations usually employ efficient fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithms; so much so that the terms "FFT" and "DFT" are often used interchangeably. Prior to its current usage, the "FFT" initialism may have also been used for the ambiguous term "finite Fourier transform".
The discrete Fourier transform transforms a sequence of N complex numbers { x n } := x 0 , x 1 , … , x N − 1 {\displaystyle \left\{\mathbf {x} _{n}\right\}:=x_{0},x_{1},\ldots ,x_{N-1}} into another sequence of complex numbers, { X k } := X 0 , X 1 , … , X N − 1 , {\displaystyle \left\{\mathbf {X} _{k}\right\}:=X_{0},X_{1},\ldots ,X_{N-1},} which is defined by
The transform is sometimes denoted by the symbol F {\displaystyle {\mathcal {F}}} , as in X = F { x } {\displaystyle \mathbf {X} ={\mathcal {F}}\left\{\mathbf {x} \right\}} or F ( x ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {F}}\left(\mathbf {x} \right)} or F x {\displaystyle {\mathcal {F}}\mathbf {x} } .
The DFT has many applications, including purely mathematical ones with no physical interpretation. But physically it can be related to signal processing as a discrete version (i.e. samples) of the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT), which is a continuous and periodic function. The DFT computes N equally-spaced samples of one cycle of the DTFT. (see Fig.2 and § Sampling the DTFT)
Eq.1 can also be evaluated outside the domain k ∈ [ 0 , N − 1 ] {\displaystyle k\in [0,N-1]} , and that extended sequence is N {\displaystyle N} -periodic. Accordingly, other sequences of N {\displaystyle N} indices are sometimes used, such as [ − N 2 , N 2 − 1 ] {\textstyle \left[-{\frac {N}{2}},{\frac {N}{2}}-1\right]} (if N {\displaystyle N} is even) and [ − N − 1 2 , N − 1 2 ] {\textstyle \left[-{\frac {N-1}{2}},{\frac {N-1}{2}}\right]} (if N {\displaystyle N} is odd), which amounts to swapping the left and right halves of the result of the transform.
Eq.1 can be interpreted or derived in various ways, for example:
which is also N {\displaystyle N} -periodic. In the domain n ∈ [0, N − 1], this is the inverse transform of Eq.1. In this interpretation, each X k {\displaystyle X_{k}} is a complex number that encodes both amplitude and phase of a complex sinusoidal component ( e i 2 π k n / N ) {\displaystyle \left(e^{i2\pi kn/N}\right)} of function x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} . (see Discrete Fourier series) The sinusoid's frequency is k cycles per N samples. Its amplitude and phase are:
The normalization factor multiplying the DFT and IDFT (here 1 and 1 N {\textstyle {\frac {1}{N}}} ) and the signs of the exponents are merely conventions, and differ in some treatments. The only requirements of these conventions are that the DFT and IDFT have opposite-sign exponents and that the product of their normalization factors be 1 N {\textstyle {\frac {1}{N}}} . A normalization of 1 N {\textstyle {\sqrt {\frac {1}{N}}}} for both the DFT and IDFT, for instance, makes the transforms unitary. A discrete impulse, x n = 1 {\displaystyle x_{n}=1} at n = 0 and 0 otherwise; might transform to X k = 1 {\displaystyle X_{k}=1} for all k (use normalization factors 1 for DFT and 1 N {\textstyle {\frac {1}{N}}} for IDFT). A DC signal, X k = 1 {\displaystyle X_{k}=1} at k = 0 and 0 otherwise; might inversely transform to x n = 1 {\displaystyle x_{n}=1} for all n {\displaystyle n} (use 1 N {\textstyle {\frac {1}{N}}} for DFT and 1 for IDFT) which is consistent with viewing DC as the mean average of the signal.
This example demonstrates how to apply the DFT to a sequence of length N = 4 {\displaystyle N=4} and the input vector
Calculating the DFT of x {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} } using Eq.1
results in
The discrete Fourier transform is an invertible, linear transformation
with C {\displaystyle \mathbb {C} } denoting the set of complex numbers. Its inverse is known as Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform (IDFT). In other words, for any N > 0 {\displaystyle N>0} , an N-dimensional complex vector has a DFT and an IDFT which are in turn N {\displaystyle N} -dimensional complex vectors.
The inverse transform is given by:
The DFT is a linear transform, i.e. if F ( { x n } ) k = X k {\displaystyle {\mathcal {F}}(\{x_{n}\})_{k}=X_{k}} and F ( { y n } ) k = Y k {\displaystyle {\mathcal {F}}(\{y_{n}\})_{k}=Y_{k}} , then for any complex numbers a , b {\displaystyle a,b} :
Reversing the time (i.e. replacing n {\displaystyle n} by N − n {\displaystyle N-n} ) in x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} corresponds to reversing the frequency (i.e. k {\displaystyle k} by N − k {\displaystyle N-k} ). Mathematically, if { x n } {\displaystyle \{x_{n}\}} represents the vector x then
If F ( { x n } ) k = X k {\displaystyle {\mathcal {F}}(\{x_{n}\})_{k}=X_{k}} then F ( { x n ∗ } ) k = X N − k ∗ {\displaystyle {\mathcal {F}}(\{x_{n}^{*}\})_{k}=X_{N-k}^{*}} .
This table shows some mathematical operations on x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} in the time domain and the corresponding effects on its DFT X k {\displaystyle X_{k}} in the frequency domain.
The vectors u k = [ e i 2 π N k n | n = 0 , 1 , … , N − 1 ] T {\displaystyle u_{k}=\left[\left.e^{{\frac {i2\pi }{N}}kn}\;\right|\;n=0,1,\ldots ,N-1\right]^{\mathsf {T}}} form an orthogonal basis over the set of N-dimensional complex vectors:
where δ k k ′ {\displaystyle \delta _{kk'}} is the Kronecker delta. (In the last step, the summation is trivial if k = k ′ {\displaystyle k=k'} , where it is 1 + 1 + ⋯ = N, and otherwise is a geometric series that can be explicitly summed to obtain zero.) This orthogonality condition can be used to derive the formula for the IDFT from the definition of the DFT, and is equivalent to the unitarity property below.
If X k {\displaystyle X_{k}} and Y k {\displaystyle Y_{k}} are the DFTs of x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} and y n {\displaystyle y_{n}} respectively then the Parseval's theorem states:
where the star denotes complex conjugation. Plancherel theorem is a special case of the Parseval's theorem and states:
These theorems are also equivalent to the unitary condition below.
The periodicity can be shown directly from the definition:
Similarly, it can be shown that the IDFT formula leads to a periodic extension.
Multiplying x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} by a linear phase e i 2 π N n m {\displaystyle e^{{\frac {i2\pi }{N}}nm}} for some integer m corresponds to a circular shift of the output X k {\displaystyle X_{k}} : X k {\displaystyle X_{k}} is replaced by X k − m {\displaystyle X_{k-m}} , where the subscript is interpreted modulo N (i.e., periodically). Similarly, a circular shift of the input x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} corresponds to multiplying the output X k {\displaystyle X_{k}} by a linear phase. Mathematically, if { x n } {\displaystyle \{x_{n}\}} represents the vector x then
The convolution theorem for the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT) indicates that a convolution of two sequences can be obtained as the inverse transform of the product of the individual transforms. An important simplification occurs when one of sequences is N-periodic, denoted here by y N , {\displaystyle y_{_{N}},} because DTFT { y N } {\displaystyle \scriptstyle {\text{DTFT}}\displaystyle \{y_{_{N}}\}} is non-zero at only discrete frequencies (see DTFT § Periodic data), and therefore so is its product with the continuous function DTFT { x } . {\displaystyle \scriptstyle {\text{DTFT}}\displaystyle \{x\}.} That leads to a considerable simplification of the inverse transform.
where x N {\displaystyle x_{_{N}}} is a periodic summation of the x {\displaystyle x} sequence: ( x N ) n ≜ ∑ m = − ∞ ∞ x ( n − m N ) . {\displaystyle (x_{_{N}})_{n}\ \triangleq \sum _{m=-\infty }^{\infty }x_{(n-mN)}.}
Customarily, the DFT and inverse DFT summations are taken over the domain [ 0 , N − 1 ] {\displaystyle [0,N-1]} . Defining those DFTs as X {\displaystyle X} and Y {\displaystyle Y} , the result is:
In practice, the x {\displaystyle x} sequence is usually length N or less, and y N {\displaystyle y_{_{N}}} is a periodic extension of an N-length y {\displaystyle y} -sequence, which can also be expressed as a circular function:
Then the convolution can be written as:
F − 1 { X ⋅ Y } n = ∑ ℓ = 0 N − 1 x ℓ ⋅ y ( n − ℓ ) mod N {\displaystyle {\mathcal {F}}^{-1}\left\{X\cdot Y\right\}_{n}=\sum _{\ell =0}^{N-1}x_{\ell }\cdot y_{_{(n-\ell )\operatorname {mod} N}}}
which gives rise to the interpretation as a circular convolution of x {\displaystyle x} and y . {\displaystyle y.} It is often used to efficiently compute their linear convolution. (see Circular convolution, Fast convolution algorithms, and Overlap-save)
Similarly, the cross-correlation of x {\displaystyle x} and y N {\displaystyle y_{_{N}}} is given by:
It has been shown that any linear transform that turns convolution into pointwise product is the DFT (up to a permutation of coefficients).
It can also be shown that:
The trigonometric interpolation polynomial
where the coefficients Xk are given by the DFT of xn above, satisfies the interpolation property p ( n / N ) = x n {\displaystyle p(n/N)=x_{n}} for n = 0 , … , N − 1 {\displaystyle n=0,\ldots ,N-1} .
For even N, notice that the Nyquist component X N / 2 N cos ( N π t ) {\textstyle {\frac {X_{N/2}}{N}}\cos(N\pi t)} is handled specially.
This interpolation is not unique: aliasing implies that one could add N to any of the complex-sinusoid frequencies (e.g. changing e − i t {\displaystyle e^{-it}} to e i ( N − 1 ) t {\displaystyle e^{i(N-1)t}} ) without changing the interpolation property, but giving different values in between the x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} points. The choice above, however, is typical because it has two useful properties. First, it consists of sinusoids whose frequencies have the smallest possible magnitudes: the interpolation is bandlimited. Second, if the x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} are real numbers, then p ( t ) {\displaystyle p(t)} is real as well.
In contrast, the most obvious trigonometric interpolation polynomial is the one in which the frequencies range from 0 to N − 1 {\displaystyle N-1} (instead of roughly − N / 2 {\displaystyle -N/2} to + N / 2 {\displaystyle +N/2} as above), similar to the inverse DFT formula. This interpolation does not minimize the slope, and is not generally real-valued for real x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} ; its use is a common mistake.
Another way of looking at the DFT is to note that in the above discussion, the DFT can be expressed as the DFT matrix, a Vandermonde matrix, introduced by Sylvester in 1867,
where ω N = e − i 2 π / N {\displaystyle \omega _{N}=e^{-i2\pi /N}} is a primitive Nth root of unity.
For example, in the case when N = 2 {\displaystyle N=2} , ω N = e − i π = − 1 {\displaystyle \omega _{N}=e^{-i\pi }=-1} , and
(which is a Hadamard matrix) or when N = 4 {\displaystyle N=4} as in the Discrete Fourier transform § Example above, ω N = e − i π / 2 = − i {\displaystyle \omega _{N}=e^{-i\pi /2}=-i} , and
The inverse transform is then given by the inverse of the above matrix,
With unitary normalization constants 1 / N {\textstyle 1/{\sqrt {N}}} , the DFT becomes a unitary transformation, defined by a unitary matrix:
where det ( ) {\displaystyle \det()} is the determinant function. The determinant is the product of the eigenvalues, which are always ± 1 {\displaystyle \pm 1} or ± i {\displaystyle \pm i} as described below. In a real vector space, a unitary transformation can be thought of as simply a rigid rotation of the coordinate system, and all of the properties of a rigid rotation can be found in the unitary DFT.
The orthogonality of the DFT is now expressed as an orthonormality condition (which arises in many areas of mathematics as described in root of unity):
If X is defined as the unitary DFT of the vector x, then
and the Parseval's theorem is expressed as
If we view the DFT as just a coordinate transformation which simply specifies the components of a vector in a new coordinate system, then the above is just the statement that the dot product of two vectors is preserved under a unitary DFT transformation. For the special case x = y {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} =\mathbf {y} } , this implies that the length of a vector is preserved as well — this is just Plancherel theorem,
A consequence of the circular convolution theorem is that the DFT matrix F diagonalizes any circulant matrix.
A useful property of the DFT is that the inverse DFT can be easily expressed in terms of the (forward) DFT, via several well-known "tricks". (For example, in computations, it is often convenient to only implement a fast Fourier transform corresponding to one transform direction and then to get the other transform direction from the first.)
First, we can compute the inverse DFT by reversing all but one of the inputs (Duhamel et al., 1988):
(As usual, the subscripts are interpreted modulo N; thus, for n = 0 {\displaystyle n=0} , we have x N − 0 = x 0 {\displaystyle x_{N-0}=x_{0}} .)
Second, one can also conjugate the inputs and outputs:
Third, a variant of this conjugation trick, which is sometimes preferable because it requires no modification of the data values, involves swapping real and imaginary parts (which can be done on a computer simply by modifying pointers). Define swap ( x n ) {\textstyle \operatorname {swap} (x_{n})} as x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} with its real and imaginary parts swapped—that is, if x n = a + b i {\displaystyle x_{n}=a+bi} then swap ( x n ) {\textstyle \operatorname {swap} (x_{n})} is b + a i {\displaystyle b+ai} . Equivalently, swap ( x n ) {\textstyle \operatorname {swap} (x_{n})} equals i x n ∗ {\displaystyle ix_{n}^{*}} . Then
That is, the inverse transform is the same as the forward transform with the real and imaginary parts swapped for both input and output, up to a normalization (Duhamel et al., 1988).
The conjugation trick can also be used to define a new transform, closely related to the DFT, that is involutory—that is, which is its own inverse. In particular, T ( x ) = F ( x ∗ ) / N {\displaystyle T(\mathbf {x} )={\mathcal {F}}\left(\mathbf {x} ^{*}\right)/{\sqrt {N}}} is clearly its own inverse: T ( T ( x ) ) = x {\displaystyle T(T(\mathbf {x} ))=\mathbf {x} } . A closely related involutory transformation (by a factor of 1 + i 2 {\textstyle {\frac {1+i}{\sqrt {2}}}} ) is H ( x ) = F ( ( 1 + i ) x ∗ ) / 2 N {\displaystyle H(\mathbf {x} )={\mathcal {F}}\left((1+i)\mathbf {x} ^{*}\right)/{\sqrt {2N}}} , since the ( 1 + i ) {\displaystyle (1+i)} factors in H ( H ( x ) ) {\displaystyle H(H(\mathbf {x} ))} cancel the 2. For real inputs x {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} } , the real part of H ( x ) {\displaystyle H(\mathbf {x} )} is none other than the discrete Hartley transform, which is also involutory.
The eigenvalues of the DFT matrix are simple and well-known, whereas the eigenvectors are complicated, not unique, and are the subject of ongoing research.
Consider the unitary form U {\displaystyle \mathbf {U} } defined above for the DFT of length N, where
This matrix satisfies the matrix polynomial equation:
This can be seen from the inverse properties above: operating U {\displaystyle \mathbf {U} } twice gives the original data in reverse order, so operating U {\displaystyle \mathbf {U} } four times gives back the original data and is thus the identity matrix. This means that the eigenvalues λ {\displaystyle \lambda } satisfy the equation:
Therefore, the eigenvalues of U {\displaystyle \mathbf {U} } are the fourth roots of unity: λ {\displaystyle \lambda } is +1, −1, +i, or −i.
Since there are only four distinct eigenvalues for this N × N {\displaystyle N\times N} matrix, they have some multiplicity. The multiplicity gives the number of linearly independent eigenvectors corresponding to each eigenvalue. (There are N independent eigenvectors; a unitary matrix is never defective.)
The problem of their multiplicity was solved by McClellan and Parks (1972), although it was later shown to have been equivalent to a problem solved by Gauss (Dickinson and Steiglitz, 1982). The multiplicity depends on the value of N modulo 4, and is given by the following table:
Otherwise stated, the characteristic polynomial of U {\displaystyle \mathbf {U} } is:
No simple analytical formula for general eigenvectors is known. Moreover, the eigenvectors are not unique because any linear combination of eigenvectors for the same eigenvalue is also an eigenvector for that eigenvalue. Various researchers have proposed different choices of eigenvectors, selected to satisfy useful properties like orthogonality and to have "simple" forms (e.g., McClellan and Parks, 1972; Dickinson and Steiglitz, 1982; Grünbaum, 1982; Atakishiyev and Wolf, 1997; Candan et al., 2000; Hanna et al., 2004; Gurevich and Hadani, 2008).
A straightforward approach is to discretize an eigenfunction of the continuous Fourier transform, of which the most famous is the Gaussian function. Since periodic summation of the function means discretizing its frequency spectrum and discretization means periodic summation of the spectrum, the discretized and periodically summed Gaussian function yields an eigenvector of the discrete transform:
The closed form expression for the series can be expressed by Jacobi theta functions as
Two other simple closed-form analytical eigenvectors for special DFT period N were found (Kong, 2008):
For DFT period N = 2L + 1 = 4K + 1, where K is an integer, the following is an eigenvector of DFT:
For DFT period N = 2L = 4K, where K is an integer, the following is an eigenvector of DFT:
The choice of eigenvectors of the DFT matrix has become important in recent years in order to define a discrete analogue of the fractional Fourier transform—the DFT matrix can be taken to fractional powers by exponentiating the eigenvalues (e.g., Rubio and Santhanam, 2005). For the continuous Fourier transform, the natural orthogonal eigenfunctions are the Hermite functions, so various discrete analogues of these have been employed as the eigenvectors of the DFT, such as the Kravchuk polynomials (Atakishiyev and Wolf, 1997). The "best" choice of eigenvectors to define a fractional discrete Fourier transform remains an open question, however.
If the random variable Xk is constrained by
then
may be considered to represent a discrete probability mass function of n, with an associated probability mass function constructed from the transformed variable,
For the case of continuous functions P ( x ) {\displaystyle P(x)} and Q ( k ) {\displaystyle Q(k)} , the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that
where D 0 ( X ) {\displaystyle D_{0}(X)} and D 0 ( x ) {\displaystyle D_{0}(x)} are the variances of | X | 2 {\displaystyle |X|^{2}} and | x | 2 {\displaystyle |x|^{2}} respectively, with the equality attained in the case of a suitably normalized Gaussian distribution. Although the variances may be analogously defined for the DFT, an analogous uncertainty principle is not useful, because the uncertainty will not be shift-invariant. Still, a meaningful uncertainty principle has been introduced by Massar and Spindel.
However, the Hirschman entropic uncertainty will have a useful analog for the case of the DFT. The Hirschman uncertainty principle is expressed in terms of the Shannon entropy of the two probability functions.
In the discrete case, the Shannon entropies are defined as
and
and the entropic uncertainty principle becomes
The equality is obtained for P n {\displaystyle P_{n}} equal to translations and modulations of a suitably normalized Kronecker comb of period A {\displaystyle A} where A {\displaystyle A} is any exact integer divisor of N {\displaystyle N} . The probability mass function Q m {\displaystyle Q_{m}} will then be proportional to a suitably translated Kronecker comb of period B = N / A {\displaystyle B=N/A} .
There is also a well-known deterministic uncertainty principle that uses signal sparsity (or the number of non-zero coefficients). Let ‖ x ‖ 0 {\displaystyle \left\|x\right\|_{0}} and ‖ X ‖ 0 {\displaystyle \left\|X\right\|_{0}} be the number of non-zero elements of the time and frequency sequences x 0 , x 1 , … , x N − 1 {\displaystyle x_{0},x_{1},\ldots ,x_{N-1}} and X 0 , X 1 , … , X N − 1 {\displaystyle X_{0},X_{1},\ldots ,X_{N-1}} , respectively. Then,
As an immediate consequence of the inequality of arithmetic and geometric means, one also has 2 N ≤ ‖ x ‖ 0 + ‖ X ‖ 0 {\displaystyle 2{\sqrt {N}}\leq \left\|x\right\|_{0}+\left\|X\right\|_{0}} . Both uncertainty principles were shown to be tight for specifically-chosen "picket-fence" sequences (discrete impulse trains), and find practical use for signal recovery applications.
It follows that for even N {\displaystyle N} X 0 {\displaystyle X_{0}} and X N / 2 {\displaystyle X_{N/2}} are real-valued, and the remainder of the DFT is completely specified by just N / 2 − 1 {\displaystyle N/2-1} complex numbers.
It is possible to shift the transform sampling in time and/or frequency domain by some real shifts a and b, respectively. This is sometimes known as a generalized DFT (or GDFT), also called the shifted DFT or offset DFT, and has analogous properties to the ordinary DFT:
Most often, shifts of 1 / 2 {\displaystyle 1/2} (half a sample) are used. While the ordinary DFT corresponds to a periodic signal in both time and frequency domains, a = 1 / 2 {\displaystyle a=1/2} produces a signal that is anti-periodic in frequency domain ( X k + N = − X k {\displaystyle X_{k+N}=-X_{k}} ) and vice versa for b = 1 / 2 {\displaystyle b=1/2} . Thus, the specific case of a = b = 1 / 2 {\displaystyle a=b=1/2} is known as an odd-time odd-frequency discrete Fourier transform (or O DFT). Such shifted transforms are most often used for symmetric data, to represent different boundary symmetries, and for real-symmetric data they correspond to different forms of the discrete cosine and sine transforms.
Another interesting choice is a = b = − ( N − 1 ) / 2 {\displaystyle a=b=-(N-1)/2} , which is called the centered DFT (or CDFT). The centered DFT has the useful property that, when N is a multiple of four, all four of its eigenvalues (see above) have equal multiplicities (Rubio and Santhanam, 2005)
The term GDFT is also used for the non-linear phase extensions of DFT. Hence, GDFT method provides a generalization for constant amplitude orthogonal block transforms including linear and non-linear phase types. GDFT is a framework to improve time and frequency domain properties of the traditional DFT, e.g. auto/cross-correlations, by the addition of the properly designed phase shaping function (non-linear, in general) to the original linear phase functions (Akansu and Agirman-Tosun, 2010).
The discrete Fourier transform can be viewed as a special case of the z-transform, evaluated on the unit circle in the complex plane; more general z-transforms correspond to complex shifts a and b above.
The ordinary DFT transforms a one-dimensional sequence or array x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} that is a function of exactly one discrete variable n. The multidimensional DFT of a multidimensional array x n 1 , n 2 , … , n d {\displaystyle x_{n_{1},n_{2},\dots ,n_{d}}} that is a function of d discrete variables n ℓ = 0 , 1 , … , N ℓ − 1 {\displaystyle n_{\ell }=0,1,\dots ,N_{\ell }-1} for ℓ {\displaystyle \ell } in 1 , 2 , … , d {\displaystyle 1,2,\dots ,d} is defined by:
where ω N ℓ = exp ( − i 2 π / N ℓ ) {\displaystyle \omega _{N_{\ell }}=\exp(-i2\pi /N_{\ell })} as above and the d output indices run from k ℓ = 0 , 1 , … , N ℓ − 1 {\displaystyle k_{\ell }=0,1,\dots ,N_{\ell }-1} . This is more compactly expressed in vector notation, where we define n = ( n 1 , n 2 , … , n d ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {n} =(n_{1},n_{2},\dots ,n_{d})} and k = ( k 1 , k 2 , … , k d ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {k} =(k_{1},k_{2},\dots ,k_{d})} as d-dimensional vectors of indices from 0 to N − 1 {\displaystyle \mathbf {N} -1} , which we define as N − 1 = ( N 1 − 1 , N 2 − 1 , … , N d − 1 ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {N} -1=(N_{1}-1,N_{2}-1,\dots ,N_{d}-1)} :
where the division n / N {\displaystyle \mathbf {n} /\mathbf {N} } is defined as n / N = ( n 1 / N 1 , … , n d / N d ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {n} /\mathbf {N} =(n_{1}/N_{1},\dots ,n_{d}/N_{d})} to be performed element-wise, and the sum denotes the set of nested summations above.
The inverse of the multi-dimensional DFT is, analogous to the one-dimensional case, given by:
As the one-dimensional DFT expresses the input x n {\displaystyle x_{n}} as a superposition of sinusoids, the multidimensional DFT expresses the input as a superposition of plane waves, or multidimensional sinusoids. The direction of oscillation in space is k / N {\displaystyle \mathbf {k} /\mathbf {N} } . The amplitudes are X k {\displaystyle X_{\mathbf {k} }} . This decomposition is of great importance for everything from digital image processing (two-dimensional) to solving partial differential equations. The solution is broken up into plane waves.
The multidimensional DFT can be computed by the composition of a sequence of one-dimensional DFTs along each dimension. In the two-dimensional case x n 1 , n 2 {\displaystyle x_{n_{1},n_{2}}} the N 1 {\displaystyle N_{1}} independent DFTs of the rows (i.e., along n 2 {\displaystyle n_{2}} ) are computed first to form a new array y n 1 , k 2 {\displaystyle y_{n_{1},k_{2}}} . Then the N 2 {\displaystyle N_{2}} independent DFTs of y along the columns (along n 1 {\displaystyle n_{1}} ) are computed to form the final result X k 1 , k 2 {\displaystyle X_{k_{1},k_{2}}} . Alternatively the columns can be computed first and then the rows. The order is immaterial because the nested summations above commute.
An algorithm to compute a one-dimensional DFT is thus sufficient to efficiently compute a multidimensional DFT. This approach is known as the row-column algorithm. There are also intrinsically multidimensional FFT algorithms.
For input data x n 1 , n 2 , … , n d {\displaystyle x_{n_{1},n_{2},\dots ,n_{d}}} consisting of real numbers, the DFT outputs have a conjugate symmetry similar to the one-dimensional case above:
where the star again denotes complex conjugation and the ℓ {\displaystyle \ell } -th subscript is again interpreted modulo N ℓ {\displaystyle N_{\ell }} (for ℓ = 1 , 2 , … , d {\displaystyle \ell =1,2,\ldots ,d} ).
The DFT has seen wide usage across a large number of fields; we only sketch a few examples below (see also the references at the end). All applications of the DFT depend crucially on the availability of a fast algorithm to compute discrete Fourier transforms and their inverses, a fast Fourier transform.
When the DFT is used for signal spectral analysis, the { x n } {\displaystyle \{x_{n}\}} sequence usually represents a finite set of uniformly spaced time-samples of some signal x ( t ) {\displaystyle x(t)\,} , where t {\displaystyle t} represents time. The conversion from continuous time to samples (discrete-time) changes the underlying Fourier transform of x ( t ) {\displaystyle x(t)} into a discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT), which generally entails a type of distortion called aliasing. Choice of an appropriate sample-rate (see Nyquist rate) is the key to minimizing that distortion. Similarly, the conversion from a very long (or infinite) sequence to a manageable size entails a type of distortion called leakage, which is manifested as a loss of detail (a.k.a. resolution) in the DTFT. Choice of an appropriate sub-sequence length is the primary key to minimizing that effect. When the available data (and time to process it) is more than the amount needed to attain the desired frequency resolution, a standard technique is to perform multiple DFTs, for example to create a spectrogram. If the desired result is a power spectrum and noise or randomness is present in the data, averaging the magnitude components of the multiple DFTs is a useful procedure to reduce the variance of the spectrum (also called a periodogram in this context); two examples of such techniques are the Welch method and the Bartlett method; the general subject of estimating the power spectrum of a noisy signal is called spectral estimation.
A final source of distortion (or perhaps illusion) is the DFT itself, because it is just a discrete sampling of the DTFT, which is a function of a continuous frequency domain. That can be mitigated by increasing the resolution of the DFT. That procedure is illustrated at § Sampling the DTFT.
The discrete Fourier transform is widely used with spatial frequencies in modeling the way that light, electrons, and other probes travel through optical systems and scatter from objects in two and three dimensions. The dual (direct/reciprocal) vector space of three dimensional objects further makes available a three dimensional reciprocal lattice, whose construction from translucent object shadows (via the Fourier slice theorem) allows tomographic reconstruction of three dimensional objects with a wide range of applications e.g. in modern medicine.
See § FFT filter banks and § Sampling the DTFT.
The field of digital signal processing relies heavily on operations in the frequency domain (i.e. on the Fourier transform). For example, several lossy image and sound compression methods employ the discrete Fourier transform: the signal is cut into short segments, each is transformed, and then the Fourier coefficients of high frequencies, which are assumed to be unnoticeable, are discarded. The decompressor computes the inverse transform based on this reduced number of Fourier coefficients. (Compression applications often use a specialized form of the DFT, the discrete cosine transform or sometimes the modified discrete cosine transform.) Some relatively recent compression algorithms, however, use wavelet transforms, which give a more uniform compromise between time and frequency domain than obtained by chopping data into segments and transforming each segment. In the case of JPEG2000, this avoids the spurious image features that appear when images are highly compressed with the original JPEG.
Discrete Fourier transforms are often used to solve partial differential equations, where again the DFT is used as an approximation for the Fourier series (which is recovered in the limit of infinite N). The advantage of this approach is that it expands the signal in complex exponentials e i n x {\displaystyle e^{inx}} , which are eigenfunctions of differentiation: d ( e i n x ) / d x = i n e i n x {\displaystyle {{\text{d}}{\big (}e^{inx}{\big )}}/{\text{d}}x=ine^{inx}} . Thus, in the Fourier representation, differentiation is simple—we just multiply by i n {\displaystyle in} . (However, the choice of n {\displaystyle n} is not unique due to aliasing; for the method to be convergent, a choice similar to that in the trigonometric interpolation section above should be used.) A linear differential equation with constant coefficients is transformed into an easily solvable algebraic equation. One then uses the inverse DFT to transform the result back into the ordinary spatial representation. Such an approach is called a spectral method.
Suppose we wish to compute the polynomial product c(x) = a(x) · b(x). The ordinary product expression for the coefficients of c involves a linear (acyclic) convolution, where indices do not "wrap around." This can be rewritten as a cyclic convolution by taking the coefficient vectors for a(x) and b(x) with constant term first, then appending zeros so that the resultant coefficient vectors a and b have dimension d > deg(a(x)) + deg(b(x)). Then,
Where c is the vector of coefficients for c(x), and the convolution operator ∗ {\displaystyle *\,} is defined so
But convolution becomes multiplication under the DFT:
Here the vector product is taken elementwise. Thus the coefficients of the product polynomial c(x) are just the terms 0, ..., deg(a(x)) + deg(b(x)) of the coefficient vector
With a fast Fourier transform, the resulting algorithm takes O(N log N) arithmetic operations. Due to its simplicity and speed, the Cooley–Tukey FFT algorithm, which is limited to composite sizes, is often chosen for the transform operation. In this case, d should be chosen as the smallest integer greater than the sum of the input polynomial degrees that is factorizable into small prime factors (e.g. 2, 3, and 5, depending upon the FFT implementation).
The fastest known algorithms for the multiplication of very large integers use the polynomial multiplication method outlined above. Integers can be treated as the value of a polynomial evaluated specifically at the number base, with the coefficients of the polynomial corresponding to the digits in that base (ex. 123 = 1 ⋅ 10 2 + 2 ⋅ 10 1 + 3 ⋅ 10 0 {\displaystyle 123=1\cdot 10^{2}+2\cdot 10^{1}+3\cdot 10^{0}} ). After polynomial multiplication, a relatively low-complexity carry-propagation step completes the multiplication.
When data is convolved with a function with wide support, such as for downsampling by a large sampling ratio, because of the Convolution theorem and the FFT algorithm, it may be faster to transform it, multiply pointwise by the transform of the filter and then reverse transform it. Alternatively, a good filter is obtained by simply truncating the transformed data and re-transforming the shortened data set.
The DFT can be interpreted as a complex-valued representation of the finite cyclic group. In other words, a sequence of n {\displaystyle n} complex numbers can be thought of as an element of n {\displaystyle n} -dimensional complex space C n {\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{n}} or equivalently a function f {\displaystyle f} from the finite cyclic group of order n {\displaystyle n} to the complex numbers, Z n ↦ C {\displaystyle \mathbb {Z} _{n}\mapsto \mathbb {C} } . So f {\displaystyle f} is a class function on the finite cyclic group, and thus can be expressed as a linear combination of the irreducible characters of this group, which are the roots of unity.
From this point of view, one may generalize the DFT to representation theory generally, or more narrowly to the representation theory of finite groups.
More narrowly still, one may generalize the DFT by either changing the target (taking values in a field other than the complex numbers), or the domain (a group other than a finite cyclic group), as detailed in the sequel.
Many of the properties of the DFT only depend on the fact that e − i 2 π N {\displaystyle e^{-{\frac {i2\pi }{N}}}} is a primitive root of unity, sometimes denoted ω N {\displaystyle \omega _{N}} or W N {\displaystyle W_{N}} (so that ω N N = 1 {\displaystyle \omega _{N}^{N}=1} ). Such properties include the completeness, orthogonality, Plancherel/Parseval, periodicity, shift, convolution, and unitarity properties above, as well as many FFT algorithms. For this reason, the discrete Fourier transform can be defined by using roots of unity in fields other than the complex numbers, and such generalizations are commonly called number-theoretic transforms (NTTs) in the case of finite fields. For more information, see number-theoretic transform and discrete Fourier transform (general).
The standard DFT acts on a sequence x0, x1, ..., xN−1 of complex numbers, which can be viewed as a function {0, 1, ..., N − 1} → C. The multidimensional DFT acts on multidimensional sequences, which can be viewed as functions
This suggests the generalization to Fourier transforms on arbitrary finite groups, which act on functions G → C where G is a finite group. In this framework, the standard DFT is seen as the Fourier transform on a cyclic group, while the multidimensional DFT is a Fourier transform on a direct sum of cyclic groups.
Further, Fourier transform can be on cosets of a group.
There are various alternatives to the DFT for various applications, prominent among which are wavelets. The analog of the DFT is the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). From the point of view of time–frequency analysis, a key limitation of the Fourier transform is that it does not include location information, only frequency information, and thus has difficulty in representing transients. As wavelets have location as well as frequency, they are better able to represent location, at the expense of greater difficulty representing frequency. For details, see comparison of the discrete wavelet transform with the discrete Fourier transform. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In mathematics, the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) converts a finite sequence of equally-spaced samples of a function into a same-length sequence of equally-spaced samples of the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT), which is a complex-valued function of frequency. The interval at which the DTFT is sampled is the reciprocal of the duration of the input sequence. An inverse DFT (IDFT) is a Fourier series, using the DTFT samples as coefficients of complex sinusoids at the corresponding DTFT frequencies. It has the same sample-values as the original input sequence. The DFT is therefore said to be a frequency domain representation of the original input sequence. If the original sequence spans all the non-zero values of a function, its DTFT is continuous (and periodic), and the DFT provides discrete samples of one cycle. If the original sequence is one cycle of a periodic function, the DFT provides all the non-zero values of one DTFT cycle.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The DFT is the most important discrete transform, used to perform Fourier analysis in many practical applications. In digital signal processing, the function is any quantity or signal that varies over time, such as the pressure of a sound wave, a radio signal, or daily temperature readings, sampled over a finite time interval (often defined by a window function). In image processing, the samples can be the values of pixels along a row or column of a raster image. The DFT is also used to efficiently solve partial differential equations, and to perform other operations such as convolutions or multiplying large integers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Since it deals with a finite amount of data, it can be implemented in computers by numerical algorithms or even dedicated hardware. These implementations usually employ efficient fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithms; so much so that the terms \"FFT\" and \"DFT\" are often used interchangeably. Prior to its current usage, the \"FFT\" initialism may have also been used for the ambiguous term \"finite Fourier transform\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The discrete Fourier transform transforms a sequence of N complex numbers { x n } := x 0 , x 1 , … , x N − 1 {\\displaystyle \\left\\{\\mathbf {x} _{n}\\right\\}:=x_{0},x_{1},\\ldots ,x_{N-1}} into another sequence of complex numbers, { X k } := X 0 , X 1 , … , X N − 1 , {\\displaystyle \\left\\{\\mathbf {X} _{k}\\right\\}:=X_{0},X_{1},\\ldots ,X_{N-1},} which is defined by",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The transform is sometimes denoted by the symbol F {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {F}}} , as in X = F { x } {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {X} ={\\mathcal {F}}\\left\\{\\mathbf {x} \\right\\}} or F ( x ) {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {F}}\\left(\\mathbf {x} \\right)} or F x {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {F}}\\mathbf {x} } .",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The DFT has many applications, including purely mathematical ones with no physical interpretation. But physically it can be related to signal processing as a discrete version (i.e. samples) of the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT), which is a continuous and periodic function. The DFT computes N equally-spaced samples of one cycle of the DTFT. (see Fig.2 and § Sampling the DTFT)",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Eq.1 can also be evaluated outside the domain k ∈ [ 0 , N − 1 ] {\\displaystyle k\\in [0,N-1]} , and that extended sequence is N {\\displaystyle N} -periodic. Accordingly, other sequences of N {\\displaystyle N} indices are sometimes used, such as [ − N 2 , N 2 − 1 ] {\\textstyle \\left[-{\\frac {N}{2}},{\\frac {N}{2}}-1\\right]} (if N {\\displaystyle N} is even) and [ − N − 1 2 , N − 1 2 ] {\\textstyle \\left[-{\\frac {N-1}{2}},{\\frac {N-1}{2}}\\right]} (if N {\\displaystyle N} is odd), which amounts to swapping the left and right halves of the result of the transform.",
"title": "Motivation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Eq.1 can be interpreted or derived in various ways, for example:",
"title": "Motivation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "which is also N {\\displaystyle N} -periodic. In the domain n ∈ [0, N − 1], this is the inverse transform of Eq.1. In this interpretation, each X k {\\displaystyle X_{k}} is a complex number that encodes both amplitude and phase of a complex sinusoidal component ( e i 2 π k n / N ) {\\displaystyle \\left(e^{i2\\pi kn/N}\\right)} of function x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} . (see Discrete Fourier series) The sinusoid's frequency is k cycles per N samples. Its amplitude and phase are:",
"title": "Motivation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The normalization factor multiplying the DFT and IDFT (here 1 and 1 N {\\textstyle {\\frac {1}{N}}} ) and the signs of the exponents are merely conventions, and differ in some treatments. The only requirements of these conventions are that the DFT and IDFT have opposite-sign exponents and that the product of their normalization factors be 1 N {\\textstyle {\\frac {1}{N}}} . A normalization of 1 N {\\textstyle {\\sqrt {\\frac {1}{N}}}} for both the DFT and IDFT, for instance, makes the transforms unitary. A discrete impulse, x n = 1 {\\displaystyle x_{n}=1} at n = 0 and 0 otherwise; might transform to X k = 1 {\\displaystyle X_{k}=1} for all k (use normalization factors 1 for DFT and 1 N {\\textstyle {\\frac {1}{N}}} for IDFT). A DC signal, X k = 1 {\\displaystyle X_{k}=1} at k = 0 and 0 otherwise; might inversely transform to x n = 1 {\\displaystyle x_{n}=1} for all n {\\displaystyle n} (use 1 N {\\textstyle {\\frac {1}{N}}} for DFT and 1 for IDFT) which is consistent with viewing DC as the mean average of the signal.",
"title": "Motivation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "This example demonstrates how to apply the DFT to a sequence of length N = 4 {\\displaystyle N=4} and the input vector",
"title": "Example"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Calculating the DFT of x {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {x} } using Eq.1",
"title": "Example"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "results in",
"title": "Example"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The discrete Fourier transform is an invertible, linear transformation",
"title": "Inverse transform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "with C {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {C} } denoting the set of complex numbers. Its inverse is known as Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform (IDFT). In other words, for any N > 0 {\\displaystyle N>0} , an N-dimensional complex vector has a DFT and an IDFT which are in turn N {\\displaystyle N} -dimensional complex vectors.",
"title": "Inverse transform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The inverse transform is given by:",
"title": "Inverse transform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The DFT is a linear transform, i.e. if F ( { x n } ) k = X k {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {F}}(\\{x_{n}\\})_{k}=X_{k}} and F ( { y n } ) k = Y k {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {F}}(\\{y_{n}\\})_{k}=Y_{k}} , then for any complex numbers a , b {\\displaystyle a,b} :",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Reversing the time (i.e. replacing n {\\displaystyle n} by N − n {\\displaystyle N-n} ) in x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} corresponds to reversing the frequency (i.e. k {\\displaystyle k} by N − k {\\displaystyle N-k} ). Mathematically, if { x n } {\\displaystyle \\{x_{n}\\}} represents the vector x then",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "If F ( { x n } ) k = X k {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {F}}(\\{x_{n}\\})_{k}=X_{k}} then F ( { x n ∗ } ) k = X N − k ∗ {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {F}}(\\{x_{n}^{*}\\})_{k}=X_{N-k}^{*}} .",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "This table shows some mathematical operations on x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} in the time domain and the corresponding effects on its DFT X k {\\displaystyle X_{k}} in the frequency domain.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The vectors u k = [ e i 2 π N k n | n = 0 , 1 , … , N − 1 ] T {\\displaystyle u_{k}=\\left[\\left.e^{{\\frac {i2\\pi }{N}}kn}\\;\\right|\\;n=0,1,\\ldots ,N-1\\right]^{\\mathsf {T}}} form an orthogonal basis over the set of N-dimensional complex vectors:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "where δ k k ′ {\\displaystyle \\delta _{kk'}} is the Kronecker delta. (In the last step, the summation is trivial if k = k ′ {\\displaystyle k=k'} , where it is 1 + 1 + ⋯ = N, and otherwise is a geometric series that can be explicitly summed to obtain zero.) This orthogonality condition can be used to derive the formula for the IDFT from the definition of the DFT, and is equivalent to the unitarity property below.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "If X k {\\displaystyle X_{k}} and Y k {\\displaystyle Y_{k}} are the DFTs of x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} and y n {\\displaystyle y_{n}} respectively then the Parseval's theorem states:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "where the star denotes complex conjugation. Plancherel theorem is a special case of the Parseval's theorem and states:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "These theorems are also equivalent to the unitary condition below.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The periodicity can be shown directly from the definition:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Similarly, it can be shown that the IDFT formula leads to a periodic extension.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Multiplying x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} by a linear phase e i 2 π N n m {\\displaystyle e^{{\\frac {i2\\pi }{N}}nm}} for some integer m corresponds to a circular shift of the output X k {\\displaystyle X_{k}} : X k {\\displaystyle X_{k}} is replaced by X k − m {\\displaystyle X_{k-m}} , where the subscript is interpreted modulo N (i.e., periodically). Similarly, a circular shift of the input x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} corresponds to multiplying the output X k {\\displaystyle X_{k}} by a linear phase. Mathematically, if { x n } {\\displaystyle \\{x_{n}\\}} represents the vector x then",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The convolution theorem for the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT) indicates that a convolution of two sequences can be obtained as the inverse transform of the product of the individual transforms. An important simplification occurs when one of sequences is N-periodic, denoted here by y N , {\\displaystyle y_{_{N}},} because DTFT { y N } {\\displaystyle \\scriptstyle {\\text{DTFT}}\\displaystyle \\{y_{_{N}}\\}} is non-zero at only discrete frequencies (see DTFT § Periodic data), and therefore so is its product with the continuous function DTFT { x } . {\\displaystyle \\scriptstyle {\\text{DTFT}}\\displaystyle \\{x\\}.} That leads to a considerable simplification of the inverse transform.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "where x N {\\displaystyle x_{_{N}}} is a periodic summation of the x {\\displaystyle x} sequence: ( x N ) n ≜ ∑ m = − ∞ ∞ x ( n − m N ) . {\\displaystyle (x_{_{N}})_{n}\\ \\triangleq \\sum _{m=-\\infty }^{\\infty }x_{(n-mN)}.}",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Customarily, the DFT and inverse DFT summations are taken over the domain [ 0 , N − 1 ] {\\displaystyle [0,N-1]} . Defining those DFTs as X {\\displaystyle X} and Y {\\displaystyle Y} , the result is:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In practice, the x {\\displaystyle x} sequence is usually length N or less, and y N {\\displaystyle y_{_{N}}} is a periodic extension of an N-length y {\\displaystyle y} -sequence, which can also be expressed as a circular function:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Then the convolution can be written as:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "F − 1 { X ⋅ Y } n = ∑ ℓ = 0 N − 1 x ℓ ⋅ y ( n − ℓ ) mod N {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {F}}^{-1}\\left\\{X\\cdot Y\\right\\}_{n}=\\sum _{\\ell =0}^{N-1}x_{\\ell }\\cdot y_{_{(n-\\ell )\\operatorname {mod} N}}}",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "which gives rise to the interpretation as a circular convolution of x {\\displaystyle x} and y . {\\displaystyle y.} It is often used to efficiently compute their linear convolution. (see Circular convolution, Fast convolution algorithms, and Overlap-save)",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Similarly, the cross-correlation of x {\\displaystyle x} and y N {\\displaystyle y_{_{N}}} is given by:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "It has been shown that any linear transform that turns convolution into pointwise product is the DFT (up to a permutation of coefficients).",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "It can also be shown that:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The trigonometric interpolation polynomial",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "where the coefficients Xk are given by the DFT of xn above, satisfies the interpolation property p ( n / N ) = x n {\\displaystyle p(n/N)=x_{n}} for n = 0 , … , N − 1 {\\displaystyle n=0,\\ldots ,N-1} .",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "For even N, notice that the Nyquist component X N / 2 N cos ( N π t ) {\\textstyle {\\frac {X_{N/2}}{N}}\\cos(N\\pi t)} is handled specially.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "This interpolation is not unique: aliasing implies that one could add N to any of the complex-sinusoid frequencies (e.g. changing e − i t {\\displaystyle e^{-it}} to e i ( N − 1 ) t {\\displaystyle e^{i(N-1)t}} ) without changing the interpolation property, but giving different values in between the x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} points. The choice above, however, is typical because it has two useful properties. First, it consists of sinusoids whose frequencies have the smallest possible magnitudes: the interpolation is bandlimited. Second, if the x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} are real numbers, then p ( t ) {\\displaystyle p(t)} is real as well.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In contrast, the most obvious trigonometric interpolation polynomial is the one in which the frequencies range from 0 to N − 1 {\\displaystyle N-1} (instead of roughly − N / 2 {\\displaystyle -N/2} to + N / 2 {\\displaystyle +N/2} as above), similar to the inverse DFT formula. This interpolation does not minimize the slope, and is not generally real-valued for real x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} ; its use is a common mistake.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Another way of looking at the DFT is to note that in the above discussion, the DFT can be expressed as the DFT matrix, a Vandermonde matrix, introduced by Sylvester in 1867,",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "where ω N = e − i 2 π / N {\\displaystyle \\omega _{N}=e^{-i2\\pi /N}} is a primitive Nth root of unity.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "For example, in the case when N = 2 {\\displaystyle N=2} , ω N = e − i π = − 1 {\\displaystyle \\omega _{N}=e^{-i\\pi }=-1} , and",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "(which is a Hadamard matrix) or when N = 4 {\\displaystyle N=4} as in the Discrete Fourier transform § Example above, ω N = e − i π / 2 = − i {\\displaystyle \\omega _{N}=e^{-i\\pi /2}=-i} , and",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The inverse transform is then given by the inverse of the above matrix,",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "With unitary normalization constants 1 / N {\\textstyle 1/{\\sqrt {N}}} , the DFT becomes a unitary transformation, defined by a unitary matrix:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "where det ( ) {\\displaystyle \\det()} is the determinant function. The determinant is the product of the eigenvalues, which are always ± 1 {\\displaystyle \\pm 1} or ± i {\\displaystyle \\pm i} as described below. In a real vector space, a unitary transformation can be thought of as simply a rigid rotation of the coordinate system, and all of the properties of a rigid rotation can be found in the unitary DFT.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The orthogonality of the DFT is now expressed as an orthonormality condition (which arises in many areas of mathematics as described in root of unity):",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "If X is defined as the unitary DFT of the vector x, then",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "and the Parseval's theorem is expressed as",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "If we view the DFT as just a coordinate transformation which simply specifies the components of a vector in a new coordinate system, then the above is just the statement that the dot product of two vectors is preserved under a unitary DFT transformation. For the special case x = y {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {x} =\\mathbf {y} } , this implies that the length of a vector is preserved as well — this is just Plancherel theorem,",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "A consequence of the circular convolution theorem is that the DFT matrix F diagonalizes any circulant matrix.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "A useful property of the DFT is that the inverse DFT can be easily expressed in terms of the (forward) DFT, via several well-known \"tricks\". (For example, in computations, it is often convenient to only implement a fast Fourier transform corresponding to one transform direction and then to get the other transform direction from the first.)",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "First, we can compute the inverse DFT by reversing all but one of the inputs (Duhamel et al., 1988):",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "(As usual, the subscripts are interpreted modulo N; thus, for n = 0 {\\displaystyle n=0} , we have x N − 0 = x 0 {\\displaystyle x_{N-0}=x_{0}} .)",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Second, one can also conjugate the inputs and outputs:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Third, a variant of this conjugation trick, which is sometimes preferable because it requires no modification of the data values, involves swapping real and imaginary parts (which can be done on a computer simply by modifying pointers). Define swap ( x n ) {\\textstyle \\operatorname {swap} (x_{n})} as x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} with its real and imaginary parts swapped—that is, if x n = a + b i {\\displaystyle x_{n}=a+bi} then swap ( x n ) {\\textstyle \\operatorname {swap} (x_{n})} is b + a i {\\displaystyle b+ai} . Equivalently, swap ( x n ) {\\textstyle \\operatorname {swap} (x_{n})} equals i x n ∗ {\\displaystyle ix_{n}^{*}} . Then",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "That is, the inverse transform is the same as the forward transform with the real and imaginary parts swapped for both input and output, up to a normalization (Duhamel et al., 1988).",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The conjugation trick can also be used to define a new transform, closely related to the DFT, that is involutory—that is, which is its own inverse. In particular, T ( x ) = F ( x ∗ ) / N {\\displaystyle T(\\mathbf {x} )={\\mathcal {F}}\\left(\\mathbf {x} ^{*}\\right)/{\\sqrt {N}}} is clearly its own inverse: T ( T ( x ) ) = x {\\displaystyle T(T(\\mathbf {x} ))=\\mathbf {x} } . A closely related involutory transformation (by a factor of 1 + i 2 {\\textstyle {\\frac {1+i}{\\sqrt {2}}}} ) is H ( x ) = F ( ( 1 + i ) x ∗ ) / 2 N {\\displaystyle H(\\mathbf {x} )={\\mathcal {F}}\\left((1+i)\\mathbf {x} ^{*}\\right)/{\\sqrt {2N}}} , since the ( 1 + i ) {\\displaystyle (1+i)} factors in H ( H ( x ) ) {\\displaystyle H(H(\\mathbf {x} ))} cancel the 2. For real inputs x {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {x} } , the real part of H ( x ) {\\displaystyle H(\\mathbf {x} )} is none other than the discrete Hartley transform, which is also involutory.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The eigenvalues of the DFT matrix are simple and well-known, whereas the eigenvectors are complicated, not unique, and are the subject of ongoing research.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Consider the unitary form U {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {U} } defined above for the DFT of length N, where",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "This matrix satisfies the matrix polynomial equation:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "This can be seen from the inverse properties above: operating U {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {U} } twice gives the original data in reverse order, so operating U {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {U} } four times gives back the original data and is thus the identity matrix. This means that the eigenvalues λ {\\displaystyle \\lambda } satisfy the equation:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Therefore, the eigenvalues of U {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {U} } are the fourth roots of unity: λ {\\displaystyle \\lambda } is +1, −1, +i, or −i.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Since there are only four distinct eigenvalues for this N × N {\\displaystyle N\\times N} matrix, they have some multiplicity. The multiplicity gives the number of linearly independent eigenvectors corresponding to each eigenvalue. (There are N independent eigenvectors; a unitary matrix is never defective.)",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The problem of their multiplicity was solved by McClellan and Parks (1972), although it was later shown to have been equivalent to a problem solved by Gauss (Dickinson and Steiglitz, 1982). The multiplicity depends on the value of N modulo 4, and is given by the following table:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Otherwise stated, the characteristic polynomial of U {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {U} } is:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "No simple analytical formula for general eigenvectors is known. Moreover, the eigenvectors are not unique because any linear combination of eigenvectors for the same eigenvalue is also an eigenvector for that eigenvalue. Various researchers have proposed different choices of eigenvectors, selected to satisfy useful properties like orthogonality and to have \"simple\" forms (e.g., McClellan and Parks, 1972; Dickinson and Steiglitz, 1982; Grünbaum, 1982; Atakishiyev and Wolf, 1997; Candan et al., 2000; Hanna et al., 2004; Gurevich and Hadani, 2008).",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "A straightforward approach is to discretize an eigenfunction of the continuous Fourier transform, of which the most famous is the Gaussian function. Since periodic summation of the function means discretizing its frequency spectrum and discretization means periodic summation of the spectrum, the discretized and periodically summed Gaussian function yields an eigenvector of the discrete transform:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The closed form expression for the series can be expressed by Jacobi theta functions as",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Two other simple closed-form analytical eigenvectors for special DFT period N were found (Kong, 2008):",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "For DFT period N = 2L + 1 = 4K + 1, where K is an integer, the following is an eigenvector of DFT:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "For DFT period N = 2L = 4K, where K is an integer, the following is an eigenvector of DFT:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The choice of eigenvectors of the DFT matrix has become important in recent years in order to define a discrete analogue of the fractional Fourier transform—the DFT matrix can be taken to fractional powers by exponentiating the eigenvalues (e.g., Rubio and Santhanam, 2005). For the continuous Fourier transform, the natural orthogonal eigenfunctions are the Hermite functions, so various discrete analogues of these have been employed as the eigenvectors of the DFT, such as the Kravchuk polynomials (Atakishiyev and Wolf, 1997). The \"best\" choice of eigenvectors to define a fractional discrete Fourier transform remains an open question, however.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "If the random variable Xk is constrained by",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "then",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "may be considered to represent a discrete probability mass function of n, with an associated probability mass function constructed from the transformed variable,",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "For the case of continuous functions P ( x ) {\\displaystyle P(x)} and Q ( k ) {\\displaystyle Q(k)} , the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "where D 0 ( X ) {\\displaystyle D_{0}(X)} and D 0 ( x ) {\\displaystyle D_{0}(x)} are the variances of | X | 2 {\\displaystyle |X|^{2}} and | x | 2 {\\displaystyle |x|^{2}} respectively, with the equality attained in the case of a suitably normalized Gaussian distribution. Although the variances may be analogously defined for the DFT, an analogous uncertainty principle is not useful, because the uncertainty will not be shift-invariant. Still, a meaningful uncertainty principle has been introduced by Massar and Spindel.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "However, the Hirschman entropic uncertainty will have a useful analog for the case of the DFT. The Hirschman uncertainty principle is expressed in terms of the Shannon entropy of the two probability functions.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In the discrete case, the Shannon entropies are defined as",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "and",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "and the entropic uncertainty principle becomes",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The equality is obtained for P n {\\displaystyle P_{n}} equal to translations and modulations of a suitably normalized Kronecker comb of period A {\\displaystyle A} where A {\\displaystyle A} is any exact integer divisor of N {\\displaystyle N} . The probability mass function Q m {\\displaystyle Q_{m}} will then be proportional to a suitably translated Kronecker comb of period B = N / A {\\displaystyle B=N/A} .",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "There is also a well-known deterministic uncertainty principle that uses signal sparsity (or the number of non-zero coefficients). Let ‖ x ‖ 0 {\\displaystyle \\left\\|x\\right\\|_{0}} and ‖ X ‖ 0 {\\displaystyle \\left\\|X\\right\\|_{0}} be the number of non-zero elements of the time and frequency sequences x 0 , x 1 , … , x N − 1 {\\displaystyle x_{0},x_{1},\\ldots ,x_{N-1}} and X 0 , X 1 , … , X N − 1 {\\displaystyle X_{0},X_{1},\\ldots ,X_{N-1}} , respectively. Then,",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "As an immediate consequence of the inequality of arithmetic and geometric means, one also has 2 N ≤ ‖ x ‖ 0 + ‖ X ‖ 0 {\\displaystyle 2{\\sqrt {N}}\\leq \\left\\|x\\right\\|_{0}+\\left\\|X\\right\\|_{0}} . Both uncertainty principles were shown to be tight for specifically-chosen \"picket-fence\" sequences (discrete impulse trains), and find practical use for signal recovery applications.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "It follows that for even N {\\displaystyle N} X 0 {\\displaystyle X_{0}} and X N / 2 {\\displaystyle X_{N/2}} are real-valued, and the remainder of the DFT is completely specified by just N / 2 − 1 {\\displaystyle N/2-1} complex numbers.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "It is possible to shift the transform sampling in time and/or frequency domain by some real shifts a and b, respectively. This is sometimes known as a generalized DFT (or GDFT), also called the shifted DFT or offset DFT, and has analogous properties to the ordinary DFT:",
"title": "Generalized DFT (shifted and non-linear phase)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Most often, shifts of 1 / 2 {\\displaystyle 1/2} (half a sample) are used. While the ordinary DFT corresponds to a periodic signal in both time and frequency domains, a = 1 / 2 {\\displaystyle a=1/2} produces a signal that is anti-periodic in frequency domain ( X k + N = − X k {\\displaystyle X_{k+N}=-X_{k}} ) and vice versa for b = 1 / 2 {\\displaystyle b=1/2} . Thus, the specific case of a = b = 1 / 2 {\\displaystyle a=b=1/2} is known as an odd-time odd-frequency discrete Fourier transform (or O DFT). Such shifted transforms are most often used for symmetric data, to represent different boundary symmetries, and for real-symmetric data they correspond to different forms of the discrete cosine and sine transforms.",
"title": "Generalized DFT (shifted and non-linear phase)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Another interesting choice is a = b = − ( N − 1 ) / 2 {\\displaystyle a=b=-(N-1)/2} , which is called the centered DFT (or CDFT). The centered DFT has the useful property that, when N is a multiple of four, all four of its eigenvalues (see above) have equal multiplicities (Rubio and Santhanam, 2005)",
"title": "Generalized DFT (shifted and non-linear phase)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The term GDFT is also used for the non-linear phase extensions of DFT. Hence, GDFT method provides a generalization for constant amplitude orthogonal block transforms including linear and non-linear phase types. GDFT is a framework to improve time and frequency domain properties of the traditional DFT, e.g. auto/cross-correlations, by the addition of the properly designed phase shaping function (non-linear, in general) to the original linear phase functions (Akansu and Agirman-Tosun, 2010).",
"title": "Generalized DFT (shifted and non-linear phase)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The discrete Fourier transform can be viewed as a special case of the z-transform, evaluated on the unit circle in the complex plane; more general z-transforms correspond to complex shifts a and b above.",
"title": "Generalized DFT (shifted and non-linear phase)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The ordinary DFT transforms a one-dimensional sequence or array x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} that is a function of exactly one discrete variable n. The multidimensional DFT of a multidimensional array x n 1 , n 2 , … , n d {\\displaystyle x_{n_{1},n_{2},\\dots ,n_{d}}} that is a function of d discrete variables n ℓ = 0 , 1 , … , N ℓ − 1 {\\displaystyle n_{\\ell }=0,1,\\dots ,N_{\\ell }-1} for ℓ {\\displaystyle \\ell } in 1 , 2 , … , d {\\displaystyle 1,2,\\dots ,d} is defined by:",
"title": "Multidimensional DFT"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "where ω N ℓ = exp ( − i 2 π / N ℓ ) {\\displaystyle \\omega _{N_{\\ell }}=\\exp(-i2\\pi /N_{\\ell })} as above and the d output indices run from k ℓ = 0 , 1 , … , N ℓ − 1 {\\displaystyle k_{\\ell }=0,1,\\dots ,N_{\\ell }-1} . This is more compactly expressed in vector notation, where we define n = ( n 1 , n 2 , … , n d ) {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {n} =(n_{1},n_{2},\\dots ,n_{d})} and k = ( k 1 , k 2 , … , k d ) {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {k} =(k_{1},k_{2},\\dots ,k_{d})} as d-dimensional vectors of indices from 0 to N − 1 {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {N} -1} , which we define as N − 1 = ( N 1 − 1 , N 2 − 1 , … , N d − 1 ) {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {N} -1=(N_{1}-1,N_{2}-1,\\dots ,N_{d}-1)} :",
"title": "Multidimensional DFT"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "where the division n / N {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {n} /\\mathbf {N} } is defined as n / N = ( n 1 / N 1 , … , n d / N d ) {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {n} /\\mathbf {N} =(n_{1}/N_{1},\\dots ,n_{d}/N_{d})} to be performed element-wise, and the sum denotes the set of nested summations above.",
"title": "Multidimensional DFT"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "The inverse of the multi-dimensional DFT is, analogous to the one-dimensional case, given by:",
"title": "Multidimensional DFT"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "As the one-dimensional DFT expresses the input x n {\\displaystyle x_{n}} as a superposition of sinusoids, the multidimensional DFT expresses the input as a superposition of plane waves, or multidimensional sinusoids. The direction of oscillation in space is k / N {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {k} /\\mathbf {N} } . The amplitudes are X k {\\displaystyle X_{\\mathbf {k} }} . This decomposition is of great importance for everything from digital image processing (two-dimensional) to solving partial differential equations. The solution is broken up into plane waves.",
"title": "Multidimensional DFT"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The multidimensional DFT can be computed by the composition of a sequence of one-dimensional DFTs along each dimension. In the two-dimensional case x n 1 , n 2 {\\displaystyle x_{n_{1},n_{2}}} the N 1 {\\displaystyle N_{1}} independent DFTs of the rows (i.e., along n 2 {\\displaystyle n_{2}} ) are computed first to form a new array y n 1 , k 2 {\\displaystyle y_{n_{1},k_{2}}} . Then the N 2 {\\displaystyle N_{2}} independent DFTs of y along the columns (along n 1 {\\displaystyle n_{1}} ) are computed to form the final result X k 1 , k 2 {\\displaystyle X_{k_{1},k_{2}}} . Alternatively the columns can be computed first and then the rows. The order is immaterial because the nested summations above commute.",
"title": "Multidimensional DFT"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "An algorithm to compute a one-dimensional DFT is thus sufficient to efficiently compute a multidimensional DFT. This approach is known as the row-column algorithm. There are also intrinsically multidimensional FFT algorithms.",
"title": "Multidimensional DFT"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "For input data x n 1 , n 2 , … , n d {\\displaystyle x_{n_{1},n_{2},\\dots ,n_{d}}} consisting of real numbers, the DFT outputs have a conjugate symmetry similar to the one-dimensional case above:",
"title": "Multidimensional DFT"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "where the star again denotes complex conjugation and the ℓ {\\displaystyle \\ell } -th subscript is again interpreted modulo N ℓ {\\displaystyle N_{\\ell }} (for ℓ = 1 , 2 , … , d {\\displaystyle \\ell =1,2,\\ldots ,d} ).",
"title": "Multidimensional DFT"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "The DFT has seen wide usage across a large number of fields; we only sketch a few examples below (see also the references at the end). All applications of the DFT depend crucially on the availability of a fast algorithm to compute discrete Fourier transforms and their inverses, a fast Fourier transform.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "When the DFT is used for signal spectral analysis, the { x n } {\\displaystyle \\{x_{n}\\}} sequence usually represents a finite set of uniformly spaced time-samples of some signal x ( t ) {\\displaystyle x(t)\\,} , where t {\\displaystyle t} represents time. The conversion from continuous time to samples (discrete-time) changes the underlying Fourier transform of x ( t ) {\\displaystyle x(t)} into a discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT), which generally entails a type of distortion called aliasing. Choice of an appropriate sample-rate (see Nyquist rate) is the key to minimizing that distortion. Similarly, the conversion from a very long (or infinite) sequence to a manageable size entails a type of distortion called leakage, which is manifested as a loss of detail (a.k.a. resolution) in the DTFT. Choice of an appropriate sub-sequence length is the primary key to minimizing that effect. When the available data (and time to process it) is more than the amount needed to attain the desired frequency resolution, a standard technique is to perform multiple DFTs, for example to create a spectrogram. If the desired result is a power spectrum and noise or randomness is present in the data, averaging the magnitude components of the multiple DFTs is a useful procedure to reduce the variance of the spectrum (also called a periodogram in this context); two examples of such techniques are the Welch method and the Bartlett method; the general subject of estimating the power spectrum of a noisy signal is called spectral estimation.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "A final source of distortion (or perhaps illusion) is the DFT itself, because it is just a discrete sampling of the DTFT, which is a function of a continuous frequency domain. That can be mitigated by increasing the resolution of the DFT. That procedure is illustrated at § Sampling the DTFT.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The discrete Fourier transform is widely used with spatial frequencies in modeling the way that light, electrons, and other probes travel through optical systems and scatter from objects in two and three dimensions. The dual (direct/reciprocal) vector space of three dimensional objects further makes available a three dimensional reciprocal lattice, whose construction from translucent object shadows (via the Fourier slice theorem) allows tomographic reconstruction of three dimensional objects with a wide range of applications e.g. in modern medicine.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "See § FFT filter banks and § Sampling the DTFT.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "The field of digital signal processing relies heavily on operations in the frequency domain (i.e. on the Fourier transform). For example, several lossy image and sound compression methods employ the discrete Fourier transform: the signal is cut into short segments, each is transformed, and then the Fourier coefficients of high frequencies, which are assumed to be unnoticeable, are discarded. The decompressor computes the inverse transform based on this reduced number of Fourier coefficients. (Compression applications often use a specialized form of the DFT, the discrete cosine transform or sometimes the modified discrete cosine transform.) Some relatively recent compression algorithms, however, use wavelet transforms, which give a more uniform compromise between time and frequency domain than obtained by chopping data into segments and transforming each segment. In the case of JPEG2000, this avoids the spurious image features that appear when images are highly compressed with the original JPEG.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Discrete Fourier transforms are often used to solve partial differential equations, where again the DFT is used as an approximation for the Fourier series (which is recovered in the limit of infinite N). The advantage of this approach is that it expands the signal in complex exponentials e i n x {\\displaystyle e^{inx}} , which are eigenfunctions of differentiation: d ( e i n x ) / d x = i n e i n x {\\displaystyle {{\\text{d}}{\\big (}e^{inx}{\\big )}}/{\\text{d}}x=ine^{inx}} . Thus, in the Fourier representation, differentiation is simple—we just multiply by i n {\\displaystyle in} . (However, the choice of n {\\displaystyle n} is not unique due to aliasing; for the method to be convergent, a choice similar to that in the trigonometric interpolation section above should be used.) A linear differential equation with constant coefficients is transformed into an easily solvable algebraic equation. One then uses the inverse DFT to transform the result back into the ordinary spatial representation. Such an approach is called a spectral method.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Suppose we wish to compute the polynomial product c(x) = a(x) · b(x). The ordinary product expression for the coefficients of c involves a linear (acyclic) convolution, where indices do not \"wrap around.\" This can be rewritten as a cyclic convolution by taking the coefficient vectors for a(x) and b(x) with constant term first, then appending zeros so that the resultant coefficient vectors a and b have dimension d > deg(a(x)) + deg(b(x)). Then,",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Where c is the vector of coefficients for c(x), and the convolution operator ∗ {\\displaystyle *\\,} is defined so",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "But convolution becomes multiplication under the DFT:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Here the vector product is taken elementwise. Thus the coefficients of the product polynomial c(x) are just the terms 0, ..., deg(a(x)) + deg(b(x)) of the coefficient vector",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "With a fast Fourier transform, the resulting algorithm takes O(N log N) arithmetic operations. Due to its simplicity and speed, the Cooley–Tukey FFT algorithm, which is limited to composite sizes, is often chosen for the transform operation. In this case, d should be chosen as the smallest integer greater than the sum of the input polynomial degrees that is factorizable into small prime factors (e.g. 2, 3, and 5, depending upon the FFT implementation).",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "The fastest known algorithms for the multiplication of very large integers use the polynomial multiplication method outlined above. Integers can be treated as the value of a polynomial evaluated specifically at the number base, with the coefficients of the polynomial corresponding to the digits in that base (ex. 123 = 1 ⋅ 10 2 + 2 ⋅ 10 1 + 3 ⋅ 10 0 {\\displaystyle 123=1\\cdot 10^{2}+2\\cdot 10^{1}+3\\cdot 10^{0}} ). After polynomial multiplication, a relatively low-complexity carry-propagation step completes the multiplication.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "When data is convolved with a function with wide support, such as for downsampling by a large sampling ratio, because of the Convolution theorem and the FFT algorithm, it may be faster to transform it, multiply pointwise by the transform of the filter and then reverse transform it. Alternatively, a good filter is obtained by simply truncating the transformed data and re-transforming the shortened data set.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "The DFT can be interpreted as a complex-valued representation of the finite cyclic group. In other words, a sequence of n {\\displaystyle n} complex numbers can be thought of as an element of n {\\displaystyle n} -dimensional complex space C n {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {C} ^{n}} or equivalently a function f {\\displaystyle f} from the finite cyclic group of order n {\\displaystyle n} to the complex numbers, Z n ↦ C {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {Z} _{n}\\mapsto \\mathbb {C} } . So f {\\displaystyle f} is a class function on the finite cyclic group, and thus can be expressed as a linear combination of the irreducible characters of this group, which are the roots of unity.",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "From this point of view, one may generalize the DFT to representation theory generally, or more narrowly to the representation theory of finite groups.",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "More narrowly still, one may generalize the DFT by either changing the target (taking values in a field other than the complex numbers), or the domain (a group other than a finite cyclic group), as detailed in the sequel.",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Many of the properties of the DFT only depend on the fact that e − i 2 π N {\\displaystyle e^{-{\\frac {i2\\pi }{N}}}} is a primitive root of unity, sometimes denoted ω N {\\displaystyle \\omega _{N}} or W N {\\displaystyle W_{N}} (so that ω N N = 1 {\\displaystyle \\omega _{N}^{N}=1} ). Such properties include the completeness, orthogonality, Plancherel/Parseval, periodicity, shift, convolution, and unitarity properties above, as well as many FFT algorithms. For this reason, the discrete Fourier transform can be defined by using roots of unity in fields other than the complex numbers, and such generalizations are commonly called number-theoretic transforms (NTTs) in the case of finite fields. For more information, see number-theoretic transform and discrete Fourier transform (general).",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "The standard DFT acts on a sequence x0, x1, ..., xN−1 of complex numbers, which can be viewed as a function {0, 1, ..., N − 1} → C. The multidimensional DFT acts on multidimensional sequences, which can be viewed as functions",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "This suggests the generalization to Fourier transforms on arbitrary finite groups, which act on functions G → C where G is a finite group. In this framework, the standard DFT is seen as the Fourier transform on a cyclic group, while the multidimensional DFT is a Fourier transform on a direct sum of cyclic groups.",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Further, Fourier transform can be on cosets of a group.",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "There are various alternatives to the DFT for various applications, prominent among which are wavelets. The analog of the DFT is the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). From the point of view of time–frequency analysis, a key limitation of the Fourier transform is that it does not include location information, only frequency information, and thus has difficulty in representing transients. As wavelets have location as well as frequency, they are better able to represent location, at the expense of greater difficulty representing frequency. For details, see comparison of the discrete wavelet transform with the discrete Fourier transform.",
"title": "Alternatives"
}
]
| In mathematics, the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) converts a finite sequence of equally-spaced samples of a function into a same-length sequence of equally-spaced samples of the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT), which is a complex-valued function of frequency. The interval at which the DTFT is sampled is the reciprocal of the duration of the input sequence. An inverse DFT (IDFT) is a Fourier series, using the DTFT samples as coefficients of complex sinusoids at the corresponding DTFT frequencies. It has the same sample-values as the original input sequence. The DFT is therefore said to be a frequency domain representation of the original input sequence. If the original sequence spans all the non-zero values of a function, its DTFT is continuous, and the DFT provides discrete samples of one cycle. If the original sequence is one cycle of a periodic function, the DFT provides all the non-zero values of one DTFT cycle. The DFT is the most important discrete transform, used to perform Fourier analysis in many practical applications. In digital signal processing, the function is any quantity or signal that varies over time, such as the pressure of a sound wave, a radio signal, or daily temperature readings, sampled over a finite time interval. In image processing, the samples can be the values of pixels along a row or column of a raster image. The DFT is also used to efficiently solve partial differential equations, and to perform other operations such as convolutions or multiplying large integers. Since it deals with a finite amount of data, it can be implemented in computers by numerical algorithms or even dedicated hardware. These implementations usually employ efficient fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithms; so much so that the terms "FFT" and "DFT" are often used interchangeably. Prior to its current usage, the "FFT" initialism may have also been used for the ambiguous term "finite Fourier transform". | 2001-11-13T20:37:06Z | 2023-11-16T18:22:44Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_Fourier_transform |
8,815 | Dual polyhedron | In geometry, every polyhedron is associated with a second dual structure, where the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges between pairs of vertices of one correspond to the edges between pairs of faces of the other. Such dual figures remain combinatorial or abstract polyhedra, but not all can also be constructed as geometric polyhedra. Starting with any given polyhedron, the dual of its dual is the original polyhedron.
Duality preserves the symmetries of a polyhedron. Therefore, for many classes of polyhedra defined by their symmetries, the duals belong to a corresponding symmetry class. For example, the regular polyhedra – the (convex) Platonic solids and (star) Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra – form dual pairs, where the regular tetrahedron is self-dual. The dual of an isogonal polyhedron (one in which any two vertices are equivalent under symmetries of the polyhedron) is an isohedral polyhedron (one in which any two faces are equivalent [...]), and vice versa. The dual of an isotoxal polyhedron (one in which any two edges are equivalent [...]) is also isotoxal.
Duality is closely related to polar reciprocity, a geometric transformation that, when applied to a convex polyhedron, realizes the dual polyhedron as another convex polyhedron.
There are many kinds of duality. The kinds most relevant to elementary polyhedra are polar reciprocity and topological or abstract duality.
In Euclidean space, the dual of a polyhedron P {\displaystyle P} is often defined in terms of polar reciprocation about a sphere. Here, each vertex (pole) is associated with a face plane (polar plane or just polar) so that the ray from the center to the vertex is perpendicular to the plane, and the product of the distances from the center to each is equal to the square of the radius.
When the sphere has radius r {\displaystyle r} and is centered at the origin (so that it is defined by the equation x 2 + y 2 + z 2 = r 2 {\displaystyle x^{2}+y^{2}+z^{2}=r^{2}} ), then the polar dual of a convex polyhedron P {\displaystyle P} is defined as
where q ⋅ p {\displaystyle q\cdot p} denotes the standard dot product of q {\displaystyle q} and p {\displaystyle p} .
Typically when no sphere is specified in the construction of the dual, then the unit sphere is used, meaning r = 1 {\displaystyle r=1} in the above definitions.
For each face plane of P {\displaystyle P} described by the linear equation
the corresponding vertex of the dual polyhedron P ∘ {\displaystyle P^{\circ }} will have coordinates ( x 0 , y 0 , z 0 ) {\displaystyle (x_{0},y_{0},z_{0})} . Similarly, each vertex of P {\displaystyle P} corresponds to a face plane of P ∘ {\displaystyle P^{\circ }} , and each edge line of P {\displaystyle P} corresponds to an edge line of P ∘ {\displaystyle P^{\circ }} . The correspondence between the vertices, edges, and faces of P {\displaystyle P} and P ∘ {\displaystyle P^{\circ }} reverses inclusion. For example, if an edge of P {\displaystyle P} contains a vertex, the corresponding edge of P ∘ {\displaystyle P^{\circ }} will be contained in the corresponding face.
For a polyhedron with a center of symmetry, it is common to use a sphere centered on this point, as in the Dorman Luke construction (mentioned below). Failing that, for a polyhedron with a circumscribed sphere, inscribed sphere, or midsphere (one with all edges as tangents), this can be used. However, it is possible to reciprocate a polyhedron about any sphere, and the resulting form of the dual will depend on the size and position of the sphere; as the sphere is varied, so too is the dual form. The choice of center for the sphere is sufficient to define the dual up to similarity.
If a polyhedron in Euclidean space has a face plane, edge line, or vertex lying on the center of the sphere, the corresponding element of its dual will go to infinity. Since Euclidean space never reaches infinity, the projective equivalent, called extended Euclidean space, may be formed by adding the required 'plane at infinity'. Some theorists prefer to stick to Euclidean space and say that there is no dual. Meanwhile, Wenninger (1983) found a way to represent these infinite duals, in a manner suitable for making models (of some finite portion).
The concept of duality here is closely related to the duality in projective geometry, where lines and edges are interchanged. Projective polarity works well enough for convex polyhedra. But for non-convex figures such as star polyhedra, when we seek to rigorously define this form of polyhedral duality in terms of projective polarity, various problems appear. Because of the definitional issues for geometric duality of non-convex polyhedra, Grünbaum (2007) argues that any proper definition of a non-convex polyhedron should include a notion of a dual polyhedron.
Any convex polyhedron can be distorted into a canonical form, in which a unit midsphere (or intersphere) exists tangent to every edge, and such that the average position of the points of tangency is the center of the sphere. This form is unique up to congruences.
If we reciprocate such a canonical polyhedron about its midsphere, the dual polyhedron will share the same edge-tangency points, and thus will also be canonical. It is the canonical dual, and the two together form a canonical dual compound.
For a uniform polyhedron, each face of the dual polyhedron may be derived from the original polyhedron's corresponding vertex figure by using the Dorman Luke construction.
Even when a pair of polyhedra cannot be obtained by reciprocation from each other, they may be called duals of each other as long as the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges of one correspond to the edges of the other, in an incidence-preserving way. Such pairs of polyhedra are still topologically or abstractly dual.
The vertices and edges of a convex polyhedron form a graph (the 1-skeleton of the polyhedron), embedded on the surface of the polyhedron (a topological sphere). This graph can be projected to form a Schlegel diagram on a flat plane. The graph formed by the vertices and edges of the dual polyhedron is the dual graph of the original graph.
More generally, for any polyhedron whose faces form a closed surface, the vertices and edges of the polyhedron form a graph embedded on this surface, and the vertices and edges of the (abstract) dual polyhedron form the dual graph of the original graph.
An abstract polyhedron is a certain kind of partially ordered set (poset) of elements, such that incidences, or connections, between elements of the set correspond to incidences between elements (faces, edges, vertices) of a polyhedron. Every such poset has a dual poset, formed by reversing all of the order relations. If the poset is visualized as a Hasse diagram, the dual poset can be visualized simply by turning the Hasse diagram upside down.
Every geometric polyhedron corresponds to an abstract polyhedron in this way, and has an abstract dual polyhedron. However, for some types of non-convex geometric polyhedra, the dual polyhedra may not be realizable geometrically.
Topologically, a self-dual polyhedron is one whose dual has exactly the same connectivity between vertices, edges and faces. Abstractly, they have the same Hasse diagram.
A geometrically self-dual polyhedron is not only topologically self-dual, but its polar reciprocal about a certain point, typically its centroid, is a similar figure. For example, the dual of a regular tetrahedron is another regular tetrahedron, reflected through the origin.
Every polygon (that is, a two-dimensional polyhedron) is topologically self-dual, since it has the same number of vertices as edges, and these are switched by duality. But it is not necessarily self-dual (up to rigid motion, for instance). Every polygon has a regular form which is geometrically self-dual about its intersphere: all angles are congruent, as are all edges, so under duality these congruences swap.
Similarly, every topologically self-dual convex polyhedron can be realized by an equivalent geometrically self-dual polyhedron, its canonical polyhedron, reciprocal about the center of the midsphere.
There are infinitely many geometrically self-dual polyhedra. The simplest infinite family are the canonical pyramids of n sides. Another infinite family, elongated pyramids, consists of polyhedra that can be roughly described as a pyramid sitting on top of a prism (with the same number of sides). Adding a frustum (pyramid with the top cut off) below the prism generates another infinite family, and so on.
There are many other convex, self-dual polyhedra. For example, there are 6 different ones with 7 vertices, and 16 with 8 vertices.
A self-dual non-convex icosahedron with hexagonal faces was identified by Brückner in 1900. Other non-convex self-dual polyhedra have been found, under certain definitions of non-convex polyhedra and their duals.
Duality can be generalized to n-dimensional space and dual polytopes; in two dimension these are called dual polygons.
The vertices of one polytope correspond to the (n − 1)-dimensional elements, or facets, of the other, and the j points that define a (j − 1)-dimensional element will correspond to j hyperplanes that intersect to give a (n − j)-dimensional element. The dual of an n-dimensional tessellation or honeycomb can be defined similarly.
In general, the facets of a polytope's dual will be the topological duals of the polytope's vertex figures. For the polar reciprocals of the regular and uniform polytopes, the dual facets will be polar reciprocals of the original's vertex figure. For example, in four dimensions, the vertex figure of the 600-cell is the icosahedron; the dual of the 600-cell is the 120-cell, whose facets are dodecahedra, which are the dual of the icosahedron.
The primary class of self-dual polytopes are regular polytopes with palindromic Schläfli symbols. All regular polygons, {a} are self-dual, polyhedra of the form {a,a}, 4-polytopes of the form {a,b,a}, 5-polytopes of the form {a,b,b,a}, etc.
The self-dual regular polytopes are:
The self-dual (infinite) regular Euclidean honeycombs are:
The self-dual (infinite) regular hyperbolic honeycombs are: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In geometry, every polyhedron is associated with a second dual structure, where the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges between pairs of vertices of one correspond to the edges between pairs of faces of the other. Such dual figures remain combinatorial or abstract polyhedra, but not all can also be constructed as geometric polyhedra. Starting with any given polyhedron, the dual of its dual is the original polyhedron.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Duality preserves the symmetries of a polyhedron. Therefore, for many classes of polyhedra defined by their symmetries, the duals belong to a corresponding symmetry class. For example, the regular polyhedra – the (convex) Platonic solids and (star) Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra – form dual pairs, where the regular tetrahedron is self-dual. The dual of an isogonal polyhedron (one in which any two vertices are equivalent under symmetries of the polyhedron) is an isohedral polyhedron (one in which any two faces are equivalent [...]), and vice versa. The dual of an isotoxal polyhedron (one in which any two edges are equivalent [...]) is also isotoxal.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Duality is closely related to polar reciprocity, a geometric transformation that, when applied to a convex polyhedron, realizes the dual polyhedron as another convex polyhedron.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "There are many kinds of duality. The kinds most relevant to elementary polyhedra are polar reciprocity and topological or abstract duality.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In Euclidean space, the dual of a polyhedron P {\\displaystyle P} is often defined in terms of polar reciprocation about a sphere. Here, each vertex (pole) is associated with a face plane (polar plane or just polar) so that the ray from the center to the vertex is perpendicular to the plane, and the product of the distances from the center to each is equal to the square of the radius.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "When the sphere has radius r {\\displaystyle r} and is centered at the origin (so that it is defined by the equation x 2 + y 2 + z 2 = r 2 {\\displaystyle x^{2}+y^{2}+z^{2}=r^{2}} ), then the polar dual of a convex polyhedron P {\\displaystyle P} is defined as",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "where q ⋅ p {\\displaystyle q\\cdot p} denotes the standard dot product of q {\\displaystyle q} and p {\\displaystyle p} .",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Typically when no sphere is specified in the construction of the dual, then the unit sphere is used, meaning r = 1 {\\displaystyle r=1} in the above definitions.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "For each face plane of P {\\displaystyle P} described by the linear equation",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "the corresponding vertex of the dual polyhedron P ∘ {\\displaystyle P^{\\circ }} will have coordinates ( x 0 , y 0 , z 0 ) {\\displaystyle (x_{0},y_{0},z_{0})} . Similarly, each vertex of P {\\displaystyle P} corresponds to a face plane of P ∘ {\\displaystyle P^{\\circ }} , and each edge line of P {\\displaystyle P} corresponds to an edge line of P ∘ {\\displaystyle P^{\\circ }} . The correspondence between the vertices, edges, and faces of P {\\displaystyle P} and P ∘ {\\displaystyle P^{\\circ }} reverses inclusion. For example, if an edge of P {\\displaystyle P} contains a vertex, the corresponding edge of P ∘ {\\displaystyle P^{\\circ }} will be contained in the corresponding face.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "For a polyhedron with a center of symmetry, it is common to use a sphere centered on this point, as in the Dorman Luke construction (mentioned below). Failing that, for a polyhedron with a circumscribed sphere, inscribed sphere, or midsphere (one with all edges as tangents), this can be used. However, it is possible to reciprocate a polyhedron about any sphere, and the resulting form of the dual will depend on the size and position of the sphere; as the sphere is varied, so too is the dual form. The choice of center for the sphere is sufficient to define the dual up to similarity.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "If a polyhedron in Euclidean space has a face plane, edge line, or vertex lying on the center of the sphere, the corresponding element of its dual will go to infinity. Since Euclidean space never reaches infinity, the projective equivalent, called extended Euclidean space, may be formed by adding the required 'plane at infinity'. Some theorists prefer to stick to Euclidean space and say that there is no dual. Meanwhile, Wenninger (1983) found a way to represent these infinite duals, in a manner suitable for making models (of some finite portion).",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The concept of duality here is closely related to the duality in projective geometry, where lines and edges are interchanged. Projective polarity works well enough for convex polyhedra. But for non-convex figures such as star polyhedra, when we seek to rigorously define this form of polyhedral duality in terms of projective polarity, various problems appear. Because of the definitional issues for geometric duality of non-convex polyhedra, Grünbaum (2007) argues that any proper definition of a non-convex polyhedron should include a notion of a dual polyhedron.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Any convex polyhedron can be distorted into a canonical form, in which a unit midsphere (or intersphere) exists tangent to every edge, and such that the average position of the points of tangency is the center of the sphere. This form is unique up to congruences.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "If we reciprocate such a canonical polyhedron about its midsphere, the dual polyhedron will share the same edge-tangency points, and thus will also be canonical. It is the canonical dual, and the two together form a canonical dual compound.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "For a uniform polyhedron, each face of the dual polyhedron may be derived from the original polyhedron's corresponding vertex figure by using the Dorman Luke construction.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Even when a pair of polyhedra cannot be obtained by reciprocation from each other, they may be called duals of each other as long as the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges of one correspond to the edges of the other, in an incidence-preserving way. Such pairs of polyhedra are still topologically or abstractly dual.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The vertices and edges of a convex polyhedron form a graph (the 1-skeleton of the polyhedron), embedded on the surface of the polyhedron (a topological sphere). This graph can be projected to form a Schlegel diagram on a flat plane. The graph formed by the vertices and edges of the dual polyhedron is the dual graph of the original graph.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "More generally, for any polyhedron whose faces form a closed surface, the vertices and edges of the polyhedron form a graph embedded on this surface, and the vertices and edges of the (abstract) dual polyhedron form the dual graph of the original graph.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "An abstract polyhedron is a certain kind of partially ordered set (poset) of elements, such that incidences, or connections, between elements of the set correspond to incidences between elements (faces, edges, vertices) of a polyhedron. Every such poset has a dual poset, formed by reversing all of the order relations. If the poset is visualized as a Hasse diagram, the dual poset can be visualized simply by turning the Hasse diagram upside down.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Every geometric polyhedron corresponds to an abstract polyhedron in this way, and has an abstract dual polyhedron. However, for some types of non-convex geometric polyhedra, the dual polyhedra may not be realizable geometrically.",
"title": "Kinds of duality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Topologically, a self-dual polyhedron is one whose dual has exactly the same connectivity between vertices, edges and faces. Abstractly, they have the same Hasse diagram.",
"title": "Self-dual polyhedra"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "A geometrically self-dual polyhedron is not only topologically self-dual, but its polar reciprocal about a certain point, typically its centroid, is a similar figure. For example, the dual of a regular tetrahedron is another regular tetrahedron, reflected through the origin.",
"title": "Self-dual polyhedra"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Every polygon (that is, a two-dimensional polyhedron) is topologically self-dual, since it has the same number of vertices as edges, and these are switched by duality. But it is not necessarily self-dual (up to rigid motion, for instance). Every polygon has a regular form which is geometrically self-dual about its intersphere: all angles are congruent, as are all edges, so under duality these congruences swap.",
"title": "Self-dual polyhedra"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Similarly, every topologically self-dual convex polyhedron can be realized by an equivalent geometrically self-dual polyhedron, its canonical polyhedron, reciprocal about the center of the midsphere.",
"title": "Self-dual polyhedra"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "There are infinitely many geometrically self-dual polyhedra. The simplest infinite family are the canonical pyramids of n sides. Another infinite family, elongated pyramids, consists of polyhedra that can be roughly described as a pyramid sitting on top of a prism (with the same number of sides). Adding a frustum (pyramid with the top cut off) below the prism generates another infinite family, and so on.",
"title": "Self-dual polyhedra"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "There are many other convex, self-dual polyhedra. For example, there are 6 different ones with 7 vertices, and 16 with 8 vertices.",
"title": "Self-dual polyhedra"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "A self-dual non-convex icosahedron with hexagonal faces was identified by Brückner in 1900. Other non-convex self-dual polyhedra have been found, under certain definitions of non-convex polyhedra and their duals.",
"title": "Self-dual polyhedra"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Duality can be generalized to n-dimensional space and dual polytopes; in two dimension these are called dual polygons.",
"title": "Dual polytopes and tessellations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The vertices of one polytope correspond to the (n − 1)-dimensional elements, or facets, of the other, and the j points that define a (j − 1)-dimensional element will correspond to j hyperplanes that intersect to give a (n − j)-dimensional element. The dual of an n-dimensional tessellation or honeycomb can be defined similarly.",
"title": "Dual polytopes and tessellations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In general, the facets of a polytope's dual will be the topological duals of the polytope's vertex figures. For the polar reciprocals of the regular and uniform polytopes, the dual facets will be polar reciprocals of the original's vertex figure. For example, in four dimensions, the vertex figure of the 600-cell is the icosahedron; the dual of the 600-cell is the 120-cell, whose facets are dodecahedra, which are the dual of the icosahedron.",
"title": "Dual polytopes and tessellations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The primary class of self-dual polytopes are regular polytopes with palindromic Schläfli symbols. All regular polygons, {a} are self-dual, polyhedra of the form {a,a}, 4-polytopes of the form {a,b,a}, 5-polytopes of the form {a,b,b,a}, etc.",
"title": "Dual polytopes and tessellations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The self-dual regular polytopes are:",
"title": "Dual polytopes and tessellations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The self-dual (infinite) regular Euclidean honeycombs are:",
"title": "Dual polytopes and tessellations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The self-dual (infinite) regular hyperbolic honeycombs are:",
"title": "Dual polytopes and tessellations"
}
]
| In geometry, every polyhedron is associated with a second dual structure, where the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges between pairs of vertices of one correspond to the edges between pairs of faces of the other. Such dual figures remain combinatorial or abstract polyhedra, but not all can also be constructed as geometric polyhedra. Starting with any given polyhedron, the dual of its dual is the original polyhedron. Duality preserves the symmetries of a polyhedron. Therefore, for many classes of polyhedra defined by their symmetries, the duals belong to a corresponding symmetry class. For example, the regular polyhedra – the (convex) Platonic solids and (star) Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra – form dual pairs, where the regular tetrahedron is self-dual. The dual of an isogonal polyhedron is an isohedral polyhedron, and vice versa. The dual of an isotoxal polyhedron is also isotoxal. Duality is closely related to polar reciprocity, a geometric transformation that, when applied to a convex polyhedron, realizes the dual polyhedron as another convex polyhedron. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-11-26T06:14:15Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_polyhedron |
8,816 | Double bass | The double bass (/ˈdʌbəl beɪs/), also known simply as the bass (/beɪs/), amongst other names, is the largest and, therefore, lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar in structure to the cello, it has four, although occasionally five, strings.
The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, viola, and cello, as well as the concert band, and is featured in concertos, solo, and chamber music in Western classical music. The bass is used in a range of other genres, such as jazz, blues, rock and roll, rockabilly, country music, bluegrass, tango, folk music and certain types of film and video game soundtracks.
Being a transposing instrument, the bass is typically notated one octave higher than tuned to avoid excessive ledger lines below the staff. The double bass is the only modern bowed string instrument that is tuned in fourths (like a bass guitar, viol, or the first four strings of a standard guitar), rather than fifths, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2.
The instrument's exact lineage is still a matter of some debate, with scholars divided on whether the bass is derived from the viol or the violin family.
The double bass is played with a bow (arco), or by plucking the strings (pizzicato), or via a variety of extended techniques. In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm. Classical music and jazz use the natural sound produced acoustically by the instrument, as does traditional bluegrass. In funk, blues, reggae, and related genres, the double bass is often amplified.
A person who plays this instrument is called a "bassist", "double bassist", "double bass player", "contrabassist", "contrabass player" or "bass player". The names contrabass and double bass refer (respectively) to the instrument's range, and to its use one octave lower than the cello (i.e. the cello part was the main bass line, and the "double bass" originally played a copy of the cello part; only later was it given an independent part). The terms for the instrument among classical performers are contrabass (which comes from the instrument's Italian name, contrabbasso), string bass (to distinguish it from brass bass instruments in a concert band, such as tubas), or simply bass.
In jazz, blues, rockabilly and other genres outside of classical music, this instrument is commonly called the upright bass, standup bass or acoustic bass to distinguish it from the (usually electric) bass guitar. In folk and bluegrass music, the instrument is also referred to as a "bass fiddle" or "bass violin" (or more rarely as "doghouse bass" or "bull fiddle" ). As a member of the violin-family of instruments, the construction of the upright bass is quite different from that of the acoustic bass guitar, as the latter is a derivative of the electric bass guitar, and usually built like a larger and sturdier variant of an acoustic guitar.
The double bass is sometimes confusingly called the violone, bass violin or bass viol.
A typical double bass stands around 180 cm (6 feet) from scroll to endpin. Whereas the traditional "full-size" (4⁄4 size) bass stands 74.8 inches, the more common 3⁄4 size bass (which has become the most widely used size in the modern era, even among orchestral players) stands 71.6 inches from scroll to endpin. Other sizes are also available, such as a 1⁄2 size or 1⁄4 size, which serve to accommodate a player's height and hand size. These names of the sizes do not reflect the true size relative to a "full size" bass; a 1⁄2 bass is not half the length of a 4⁄4 bass, but is only about 15% smaller.
Double basses are typically constructed from several types of wood, including maple for the back, spruce for the top, and ebony for the fingerboard. It is uncertain whether the instrument is a descendant of the viola da gamba or of the violin, but it is traditionally aligned with the violin family. While the double bass is nearly identical in construction to other violin family instruments, it also embodies features found in the older viol family.
The notes of the open strings are E1, A1, D2, and G2, the same as an acoustic or electric bass guitar. However, the resonance of the wood, combined with the violin-like construction and long scale length gives the double bass a much richer tone than the bass guitar, in addition to the ability to use a bow, while the fretless fingerboard accommodates smooth glissandos and legatos.
Like other violin and viol-family string instruments, the double bass is played either with a bow (arco) or by plucking the strings (pizzicato). When employing a bow, the player can either use it traditionally or strike the wood of the bow against the string. In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm, except for some solos and occasional written parts in modern jazz that call for bowing.
In classical pedagogy, almost all of the focus is on performing with the bow and producing a good bowed tone; there is little work done on developing significant pizzicato skills. Bowed notes in the lowest register of the instrument produce a dark, heavy, mighty, or even menacing effect, when played with a fortissimo dynamic; however, the same low pitches played with a delicate pianissimo can create a sonorous, mellow accompaniment line. Classical bass students learn all of the different bow articulations used by other string section players (e.g., violin and cello), such as détaché, legato, staccato, sforzato, martelé ("hammered"-style), sul ponticello, sul tasto, tremolo, spiccato and sautillé. Some of these articulations can be combined; for example, the combination of sul ponticello and tremolo can produce eerie, ghostly sounds. Classical bass players do play pizzicato parts in orchestra, but these parts generally require simple notes (quarter notes, half notes, whole notes), rather than rapid passages.
Classical players perform both bowed and pizz notes using vibrato, an effect created by rocking or quivering the left hand finger that is contacting the string, which then transfers an undulation in pitch to the tone. Vibrato is used to add expression to string playing. In general, very loud, low-register passages are played with little or no vibrato, as the main goal with low pitches is to provide a clear fundamental bass for the string section. Mid- and higher-register melodies are typically played with more vibrato. The speed and intensity of the vibrato is varied by the performer for an emotional and musical effect.
In jazz, rockabilly and other related genres, much or all of the focus is on playing pizzicato. In jazz and jump blues, bassists are required to play rapid pizzicato walking basslines for extended periods. Jazz and rockabilly bassists develop virtuoso pizzicato techniques that enable them to play rapid solos that incorporate fast-moving triplet and sixteenth note figures. Pizzicato basslines performed by leading jazz professionals are much more difficult than the pizzicato basslines that classical bassists encounter in the standard orchestral literature, which are typically whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, and occasional eighth note passages. In jazz and related styles, bassists often add semi-percussive "ghost notes" into basslines, to add to the rhythmic feel and to add fills to a bassline.
The double bass player stands, or sits on a high stool, and leans the instrument against their body, turned slightly inward to put the strings comfortably in reach. This stance is a key reason for the bass's sloped shoulders, which mark it apart from the other members of the violin family—the narrower shoulders facilitate playing the strings in their higher registers.
The double bass is generally regarded as a modern descendant of the string family of instruments that originated in Europe in the 15th century, and as such has been described as a bass Violin. Before the 20th century many double basses had only three strings, in contrast to the five to six strings typical of instruments in the viol family or the four strings of instruments in the violin family. The double bass's proportions are dissimilar to those of the violin and cello; for example, it is deeper (the distance from front to back is proportionally much greater than the violin). In addition, while the violin has bulging shoulders, most double basses have shoulders carved with a more acute slope, like members of the viol family. Many very old double basses have had their shoulders cut or sloped to aid playing with modern techniques. Before these modifications, the design of their shoulders was closer to instruments of the violin family.
The double bass is the only modern bowed string instrument that is tuned in fourths (like a viol), rather than fifths (see Tuning below). The instrument's exact lineage is still a matter of some debate, and the supposition that the double bass is a direct descendant of the viol family is one that has not been entirely resolved.
In his A New History of the Double Bass, Paul Brun asserts that the double bass has origins as the true bass of the violin family. He states that, while the exterior of the double bass may resemble the viola da gamba, the internal construction of the double bass is nearly identical to instruments in the violin family, and very different from the internal structure of viols.
Double bass professor Larry Hurst argues that the "modern double bass is not a true member of either the violin or viol families". He says that "most likely its first general shape was that of a violone, the largest member of the viol family. Some of the earliest basses extant are violones, (including C-shaped sound holes) that have been fitted with modern trappings." Some existing instruments, such as those by Gasparo da Salò, were converted from 16th-century six-string contrabass violoni.
There are two major approaches to the design outline shape of the double bass: the violin form (shown in the labelled picture in the construction section); and the viola da gamba form (shown in the header picture of this article). A third less common design, called the busetto shape, can also be found, as can the even more rare guitar or pear shape. The back of the instrument can vary from being a round, carved back similar to that of the violin, to a flat and angled back similar to the viol family.
The double bass features many parts that are similar to members of the violin family, including a wooden, carved bridge to support the strings, two f-holes, a tailpiece into which the ball ends of the strings are inserted (with the tailpiece anchored around the endpin mount), an ornamental scroll near the pegbox, a nut with grooves for each string at the junction of the fingerboard and the pegbox and a sturdy, thick sound post, which transmits the vibrations from the top of the instrument to the hollow body and supports the pressure of the string tension. Unlike the rest of the violin family, the double bass still reflects influences, and can be considered partly derived, from the viol family of instruments, in particular the violone, the lowest-pitched and largest bass member of the viol family. For example, the bass is tuned in fourths, like a viol, rather than in fifths, which is the standard in the violin group. Also, notice that the 'shoulders' meet the neck in a curve, rather than the sharp angle seen among violins. As with the other violin and viol family instruments that are played with a bow (and unlike mainly plucked or picked instruments like guitar), the double bass's bridge has an arc-like, curved shape. This is done because with bowed instruments, the player must be able to play individual strings. If the double bass were to have a flat bridge, it would be impossible to bow the A and D strings individually.
The double bass also differs from members of the violin family in that the shoulders are typically sloped and the back is often angled (both to allow easier access to the instrument, particularly in the upper range). Machine tuners are always fitted, in contrast to the rest of the violin family, where traditional wooden friction pegs are still the primary means of tuning. Lack of standardization in design means that one double bass can sound and look very different from another.
The double bass is closest in construction to violins, but has some notable similarities to the violone ("large viol"), the largest and lowest-pitched member of the viol family. Unlike the violone, however, the fingerboard of the double bass is unfretted, and the double bass has fewer strings (the violone, like most viols, generally had six strings, although some specimens had five or four). The fingerboard is made of ebony on high-quality instruments; on less expensive student instruments, other woods may be used and then painted or stained black (a process called "ebonizing"). The fingerboard is radiused using a curve, for the same reason that the bridge is curved: if the fingerboard and bridge were to be flat, then a bassist would not be able to bow the inner two strings individually. By using a curved bridge and a curved fingerboard, the bassist can align the bow with any of the four strings and play them individually. Unlike the violin and viola, but like the cello, the bass fingerboard is somewhat flattened out underneath the E string (the C string on cello), this is commonly known as a Romberg bevel. The vast majority of fingerboards cannot be adjusted by the performer; any adjustments must be made by a luthier. A very small number of expensive basses for professionals have adjustable fingerboards, in which a screw mechanism can be used to raise or lower the fingerboard height.
An important distinction between the double bass and other members of the violin family is the construction of the pegbox and the tuning mechanism. While the violin, viola, and cello all use friction pegs for tuning adjustments (tightening and loosening the string tension to raise or lower the string's pitch), the double bass has metal machine heads and gears. One of the challenges with tuning pegs is that the friction between the wood peg and the peg hole may become insufficient to hold the peg in place, particularly if the peg hole become worn and enlarged. The key on the tuning machine of a double bass turns a metal worm, which drives a worm gear that winds the string. Turning the key in one direction tightens the string (thus raising its pitch); turning the key the opposite direction reduces the tension on the string (thus lowering its pitch). While this development makes fine tuners on the tailpiece (important for violin, viola and cello players, as their instruments use friction pegs for major pitch adjustments) unnecessary, a very small number of bassists use them nevertheless. One rationale for using fine tuners on bass is that for instruments with the low C extension, the pulley system for the long string may not effectively transfer turns of the key into changes of string tension/pitch. At the base of the double bass is a metal rod with a spiked or rubberized end called the endpin, which rests on the floor. This endpin is generally thicker and more robust than that of a cello, because of the greater mass of the instrument.
The materials most often used in double bass construction for fully carved basses (the type used by professional orchestra bassists and soloists) are maple (back, neck, ribs), spruce (top), and ebony (fingerboard, tailpiece). The tailpiece may be made from other types of wood or non-wood materials. Less expensive basses are typically constructed with laminated (plywood) tops, backs, and ribs, or are hybrid models produced with laminated backs and sides and carved solid wood tops. Some 2010-era lower- to mid-priced basses are made of willow, student models constructed of Fiberglass were produced in the mid-20th century, and some (typically fairly expensive) basses have been constructed of carbon fiber.
Laminated (plywood) basses, which are widely used in music schools, youth orchestras, and in popular and folk music settings (including rockabilly, psychobilly, blues, etc.), are very resistant to humidity and heat, as well to the physical abuse they are apt to encounter in a school environment (or, for blues and folk musicians, to the hazards of touring and performing in bars). Another option is the hybrid body bass, which has a laminated back and a carved or solid wood top. It is less costly and somewhat less fragile (at least regarding its back) than a fully carved bass.
The soundpost and bass bar are components of the internal construction. All the parts of a double bass are glued together, except the soundpost, bridge, and tailpiece, which are held in place by string tension (although the soundpost usually remains in place when the instrument's strings are loosened or removed, as long as the bass is kept on its back. Some luthiers recommend changing only one string at a time to reduce the risk of the soundpost falling). If the soundpost falls, a luthier is needed to put the soundpost back into position, as this must be done with tools inserted into the f-holes; moreover, the exact placement of the soundpost under the bridge is essential for the instrument to sound its best. Basic bridges are carved from a single piece of wood, which is customized to match the shape of the top of each instrument. The least expensive bridges on student instruments may be customized just by sanding the feet to match the shape of the instrument's top. A bridge on a professional bassist's instrument may be ornately carved by a luthier.
Professional bassists are more likely to have adjustable bridges, which have a metal screw mechanism. This enables the bassist to raise or lower the height of the strings to accommodate changing humidity or temperature conditions. The metal tuning machines are attached to the sides of the pegbox with metal screws. While tuning mechanisms generally differ from the higher-pitched orchestral stringed instruments, some basses have non-functional, ornamental tuning pegs projecting from the side of the pegbox, in imitation of the tuning pegs on a cello or violin.
Famous double bass makers come from around the world and often represent varied national characteristics. The most highly sought (and expensive) instruments come from Italy and include basses made by Giovanni Paolo Maggini, Gasparo da Salò, the Testore family (Carlo Antonio, Carlo Giuseppe, Gennaro, Giovanni, Paulo Antonio), Celestino Puolotti, and Matteo Goffriller. French and English basses from famous makers are also sought out by players.
Several manufacturers make travel instruments, which are double basses that have features which reduce the size of the instrument so that the instrument will meet airline travel requirements. Travel basses are designed for touring musicians. One type of travel bass has a much smaller body than normal, while still retaining all of the features needed for playing. While these smaller-body instruments appear similar to electric upright basses, the difference is that small-body travel basses still have a fairly large hollow acoustic sound chamber, while many EUBs are solid body, or only have a small hollow chamber. A second type of travel bass has a hinged or removable neck and a regular sized body. The hinged or removable neck makes the instrument smaller when it is packed for transportation.
The history of the double bass is tightly coupled to the development of string technology, as it was the advent of overwound gut strings, which first rendered the instrument more generally practicable, as wound or overwound strings attain low notes within a smaller overall string diameter than non-wound strings. Professor Larry Hurst argues that had "it not been for the appearance of the overwound gut string in the 1650s, the double bass would surely have become extinct", because thicknesses needed for regular gut strings made the lower-pitched strings almost unplayable and hindered the development of fluid, rapid playing in the lower register.
Prior to the 20th century, double bass strings were usually made of catgut; however, steel has largely replaced it, because steel strings hold their pitch better and yield more volume when played with the bow. Gut strings are also more vulnerable to changes of humidity and temperature, and break more easily than steel strings.
Gut strings are nowadays mostly used by bassists who perform in baroque ensembles, rockabilly bands, traditional blues bands, and bluegrass bands. In some cases, the low E and A are wound in silver, to give them added mass. Gut strings provide the dark, "thumpy" sound heard on 1940s and 1950s recordings. The late Jeff Sarli, a blues upright bassist, said that "Starting in the 1950s, they began to reset the necks on basses for steel strings." Rockabilly and bluegrass bassists also prefer gut because it is much easier to perform the "slapping" upright bass style (in which the strings are percussively slapped and clicked against the fingerboard) with gut strings than with steel strings, because gut does not hurt the plucking fingers as much. A less expensive alternative to gut strings is nylon strings; the higher strings are pure nylon, and the lower strings are nylon wrapped in wire, to add more mass to the string, slowing the vibration, and thus facilitating lower pitches.
The change from gut to steel has also affected the instrument's playing technique over the last hundred years. Steel strings can be set up closer to the fingerboard and, additionally, strings can be played in higher positions on the lower strings and still produce clear tone. The classic 19th century Franz Simandl method does not use the low E string in higher positions because older gut strings, set up high over the fingerboard, could not produce clear tone in these higher positions. However, with modern steel strings, bassists can play with clear tone in higher positions on the low E and A strings, particularly when they use modern lighter-gauge, lower-tension steel strings.
The double bass bow comes in two distinct forms (shown below). The "French" or "overhand" bow is similar in shape and implementation to the bow used on the other members of the orchestral string instrument family, while the "German" or "Butler" bow is typically broader and shorter, and is held in a "hand shake" (or "hacksaw") position.
These two bows provide different ways of moving the arm and distributing force and weight on the strings. Proponents of the French bow argue that it is more maneuverable, due to the angle at which the player holds the bow. Advocates of the German bow claim that it allows the player to apply more arm weight on the strings. The differences between the two, however, are minute for a proficient player, and modern players in major orchestras use both bows.
The German bow (sometimes called the Butler bow) is the older of the two designs. The design of the bow and the manner of holding it descend from the older viol instrument family. With older viols, before frogs had screw threads to tighten the bow, players held the bow with two fingers between the stick and the hair to maintain tension of the hair. Proponents of the use of German bow claim that the German bow is easier to use for heavy strokes that require a lot of power.
Compared to the French bow, the German bow has a taller frog, and the player holds it with the palm angled upwards, as with the upright members of the viol family. When held in the traditionally correct manner, the thumb applies the necessary power to generate the desired sound. The index finger meets the bow at the point where the frog meets the stick. The index finger also applies an upward torque to the frog when tilting the bow. The little finger (or "pinky") supports the frog from underneath, while the ring finger and middle finger rest in the space between the hair and the shaft.
The French bow was not widely popular until its adoption by 19th-century virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini. This style is more similar to the traditional bows of the smaller string family instruments. It is held as if the hand is resting by the side of the performer with the palm facing toward the bass. The thumb rests on the shaft of the bow, next to the frog while the other fingers drape on the other side of the bow. Various styles dictate the curve of the fingers and thumb, as do the style of piece; a more pronounced curve and lighter hold on the bow is used for virtuoso or more delicate pieces, while a flatter curve and sturdier grip on the bow sacrifices some power for easier control in strokes such as detaché, spiccato, and staccato.
Double bass bows vary in length, ranging from 60 to 75 cm (24–30 in). In general, a bass bow is shorter and heavier than a cello bow. Pernambuco, also known as Brazilwood, is regarded as an excellent quality stick material, but due to its scarcity and expense, other materials are increasingly being used. Inexpensive student bows may be constructed of solid fiberglass, which makes the bow much lighter than a wooden bow (even too light to produce a good tone, in some cases). Student bows may also be made of the less valuable varieties of brazilwood. Snakewood and carbon fiber are also used in bows of a variety of different qualities. The frog of the double bass bow is usually made out of ebony, although snakewood and buffalo horn are used by some luthiers. The frog is movable, as it can be tightened or loosened with a knob (like all violin family bows). The bow is loosened at the end of a practice session or performance. The bow is tightened before playing, until it reaches a tautness that is preferred by the player. The frog on a quality bow is decorated with mother of pearl inlay.
Bows have a leather wrapping on the wooden part of the bow near the frog. Along with the leather wrapping, there is also a wire wrapping, made of gold or silver in quality bows. The hair is usually horsehair. Part of the regular maintenance of a bow is having the bow "rehaired" by a luthier with fresh horsehair and having the leather and wire wrapping replaced. The double bass bow is strung with either white or black horsehair, or a combination of the two (known as "salt and pepper"), as opposed to the customary white horsehair used on the bows of other string instruments. Some bassists argue that the slightly rougher black hair "grabs" the heavier, lower strings better. As well, some bassists and luthiers believe that it is easier to produce a smoother sound with the white variety. Red hair (chestnut) is also used by some bassists. Some of the lowest-quality, lowest cost student bows are made with synthetic hair. Synthetic hair does not have the tiny "barbs" that real horsehair has, so it does not "grip" the string well or take rosin well.
String players apply rosin to the bow hair so it "grips" the string and makes it vibrate. Double bass rosin is generally softer and stickier than violin rosin to allow the hair to grab the thicker strings better, but players use a wide variety of rosins that vary from quite hard (like violin rosin) to quite soft, depending on the weather, the humidity, and the preference of the player. The amount used generally depends on the type of music being performed as well as the personal preferences of the player. Bassists may apply more rosin in works for large orchestra (e.g., Brahms symphonies) than for delicate chamber works. Some brands of rosin, such as Wiedoeft or Pop's double bass rosin, are softer and more prone to melting in hot weather. Other brands, such as Carlsson or Nyman Harts double bass rosin, are harder and less prone to melting.
Owing to their relatively small diameters, the strings themselves do not move much air and therefore cannot produce much sound on their own. The vibrational energy of the strings must somehow be transferred to the surrounding air. To do this, the strings vibrate the bridge and this in turn vibrates the top surface. Very small amplitude but relatively large force variations (due to the cyclically varying tension in the vibrating string) at the bridge are transformed to larger amplitude ones by combination of bridge and body of the bass. The bridge transforms the high force, small amplitude vibrations to lower force higher amplitude vibrations on the top of the bass body. The top is connected to the back by means of a sound post, so the back also vibrates. Both the front and back transmit the vibrations to the air and act to match the impedance of the vibrating string to the acoustic impedance of the air.
Because the acoustic bass is a non-fretted instrument, any string vibration due to plucking or bowing will cause an audible sound due to the strings vibrating against the fingerboard near to the fingered position. This buzzing sound gives the note its character.
The lowest note of a double bass is an E1 (on standard four-string basses) at approximately 41 Hz or a C1 (≈33 Hz), or sometimes B0 (≈31 Hz), when five strings are used. This is within about an octave above the lowest frequency that the average human ear can perceive as a distinctive pitch. The top of the instrument's fingerboard range is typically near D5, two octaves and a fifth above the open pitch of the G string (G2), as shown in the range illustration found at the head of this article. Playing beyond the end of the fingerboard can be accomplished by pulling the string slightly to the side.
Double bass symphony parts sometimes indicate that the performer should play harmonics (also called flageolet tones), in which the bassist lightly touches the string–without pressing it onto the fingerboard in the usual fashion–in the location of a note and then plucks or bows the note. Bowed harmonics are used in contemporary music for their "glassy" sound. Both natural harmonics and artificial harmonics, where the thumb stops the note and the octave or other harmonic is activated by lightly touching the string at the relative node point, extend the instrument's range considerably. Natural and artificial harmonics are used in plenty of virtuoso concertos for the double bass.
Orchestral parts from the standard Classical repertoire rarely demand the double bass exceed a two-octave and a minor third range, from E1 to G3, with occasional A3s appearing in the standard repertoire (an exception to this rule is Orff's Carmina Burana, which calls for three octaves and a perfect fourth). The upper limit of this range is extended a great deal for 20th- and 21st-century orchestral parts (e.g., Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite (c.1933) bass solo, which calls for notes as high as D4 and E♭4). The upper range a virtuoso solo player can achieve using natural and artificial harmonics is hard to define, as it depends on the skill of the particular player. The high harmonic in the range illustration found at the head of this article may be taken as representative rather than normative.
Five-string instruments have an additional string, typically tuned to a low B below the E string (B0). On rare occasions, a higher string is added instead, tuned to the C above the G string (C3). Four-string instruments may feature the C extension extending the range of the E string downwards to C1 (sometimes B0).
Traditionally, the double bass is a transposing instrument. Since much of the double bass's range lies below the standard bass clef, it is notated an octave higher than it sounds to avoid having to use excessive ledger lines below the staff. Thus, when double bass players and cellists are playing from a combined bass-cello part, as used in many Mozart and Haydn symphonies, they will play in octaves, with the basses one octave below the cellos. This transposition applies even when bass players are reading the tenor and treble clef (which are used in solo playing and some orchestral parts). The tenor clef is also used by composers for cello and low brass parts. The use of tenor or treble clef avoids excessive ledger lines above the staff when notating the instrument's upper range. Other notation traditions exist. Italian solo music is typically written at the sounding pitch, and the "old" German method sounded an octave below where notation except in the treble clef, where the music was written at pitch.
The double bass is generally tuned in fourths, in contrast to other members of the orchestral string family, which are tuned in fifths (for example, the violin's four strings are, from lowest-pitched to highest-pitched: G–D–A–E). The standard tuning (lowest-pitched to highest-pitched) for bass is E–A–D–G, starting from E below second low C (concert pitch). This is the same as the standard tuning of a bass guitar and is one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of standard guitar tuning. Prior to the 19th-century, many double basses had only three strings; "Giovanni Bottesini (1821–1889) favored the three-stringed instrument popular in Italy at the time", because "the three-stringed instrument [was viewed as] being more sonorous". Many cobla bands in Catalonia still have players using traditional three-string double basses tuned A–D–G.
Throughout classical repertoire, there are notes that fall below the range of a standard double bass. Notes below low E appear regularly in the double bass parts found in later arrangements and interpretations of Baroque music. In the Classical era, the double bass typically doubled the cello part an octave below, occasionally requiring descent to C below the E of the four-string double bass. In the Romantic era and the 20th century, composers such as Wagner, Mahler, Busoni and Prokofiev also requested notes below the low E.
There are several methods for making these notes available to the player. Players with standard double basses (E–A–D–G) may play the notes below "E" an octave higher or if this sounds awkward, the entire passage may be transposed up an octave. The player may tune the low E string down to the lowest note required in the piece: D or C. Four-string basses may be fitted with a "low-C extension" (see below). Or the player may employ a five-string instrument, with the additional lower string tuned to C, or (more commonly in modern times) B, three octaves and a semitone below middle C. Several major European orchestras use basses with a fifth string.
Most professional orchestral players use four-string double basses with a C extension. This is an extra section of fingerboard mounted on the head of the bass. It extends the fingerboard under the lowest string and gives an additional four semitones of downward range. The lowest string is typically tuned down to C1, an octave below the lowest note on the cello (as it is quite common for a bass part to double the cello part an octave lower). More rarely this string may be tuned to a low B0, as a few works in the orchestral repertoire call for such a B, such as Respighi's The Pines of Rome. In rare cases, some players have a low B extension, which has B as its lowest note. There are several varieties of extensions:
In the simplest mechanical extensions, there are no mechanical aids attached to the fingerboard extension except a locking nut or "gate" for the E note. To play the extension notes, the player reaches back over the area under the scroll to press the string to the fingerboard. The advantage of this "fingered" extension is that the player can adjust the intonation of all of the stopped notes on the extension, and there are no mechanical noises from metal keys and levers. The disadvantage of the "fingered" extension is that it can be hard to perform rapid alternations between low notes on the extension and notes on the regular fingerboard, such as a bassline that quickly alternates between G1 and D1.
The simplest type of mechanical aid is the use of wooden "fingers" or "gates" that can be closed to press the string down and fret the C♯, D, E♭, or E notes. This system is particularly useful for basslines that have a repeating pedal point such as a low D because once the note is locked in place with the mechanical finger the lowest string sounds a different note when played open.
The most complicated mechanical aid for use with extensions is the mechanical lever system nicknamed the machine. This lever system, which superficially resembles the keying mechanism of reed instruments such as the bassoon, mounts levers beside the regular fingerboard (near the nut, on the E-string side), which remotely activate metal "fingers" on the extension fingerboard. The most expensive metal lever systems also give the player the ability to "lock" down notes on the extension fingerboard, as with the wooden "finger" system. One criticism of these devices is that they may lead to unwanted metallic clicking noises.
Once a mechanical "finger" of the wooden "finger" extension or the metal "finger" machine extension is locked down or depressed, it is not easy to make microtonal pitch adjustments or glissando effects, as is possible with a hand-fingered extension.
Five-string basses, in which the lowest string is normally B0, may use either a two semitone extension, providing a low A, or the very rare low G extension.
A small number of bass players tune their strings in fifths, like a cello but an octave lower (C1–G1–D2–A2 low to high). This tuning was used by the jazz player Red Mitchell and is used by some classical players, notably the Canadian bassist Joel Quarrington. Advocates of tuning the bass in fifths point out that all of the other orchestral strings are tuned in fifths (violin, viola, and cello), so this puts the bass in the same tuning approach. Fifth tuning provides a bassist with a wider range of pitch than a standard E–A–D–G bass, as it ranges (without an extension) from C1 to A2. Some players who use fifths tuning who play a five-string bass use an additional high E3 string (thus, from lowest to highest: C–G–D–A–E). Some fifth tuning bassists who only have a four string instrument and who are mainly performing soloistic works use the G–D–A–E tuning, thus omitting the low C string but gaining a high E. Some fifth tuning bassists who use a five-string use a smaller scale instrument, thus making fingering somewhat easier. The Berlioz–Strauss Treatise on Instrumentation (first published in 1844) states that "A good orchestra should have several four-string double-basses, some of them tuned in fifths and thirds." The book then shows a tuning of E1–G1–D2–A2) from bottom to top string. "Together with the other double-basses tuned in fourths, a combination of open strings would be available, which would greatly increase the sonority of the orchestra."
In classical solo playing the double bass is usually tuned a whole tone higher (F♯1–B1–E2–A2). This higher tuning is called "solo tuning", whereas the regular tuning is known as "orchestral tuning". Solo tuning strings are generally thinner than regular strings. String tension differs so much between solo and orchestral tuning that a different set of strings is often employed that has a lighter gauge. Strings are always labelled for either solo or orchestral tuning and published solo music is arranged for either solo or orchestral tuning. Some popular solos and concerti, such as the Koussevitsky Concerto are available in both solo and orchestral tuning arrangements. Solo tuning strings can be tuned down a tone to play in orchestra pitch, but the strings often lack projection in orchestral tuning and their pitch may be unstable.
Some contemporary composers specify highly specialized scordatura (intentionally changing the tuning of the open strings). Changing the pitch of the open strings makes different notes available as pedal points and harmonics. Berio, for example, asks the player to tune their strings E1–G♯1–D2–G2 in Sequenza XIVb and Scelsi asks for both F1–A1–D2–E2 and F1–A1–F2–E2 in Nuits. A variant and much less-commonly used form of solo tuning used in some Eastern European countries is (A1–D2–G2–C3), which omits the low E string from orchestral tuning and then adds a high C string. The tololoche in Mexico (a smaller variant of the double bass) also uses the A-D-G-C tuning. Some bassists with five-string basses use a high C3 string as the fifth string, instead of a low B0 string. Adding the high C string facilitates the performance of solo repertoire with a high tessitura (range). Another option is to utilize both a low C (or low B) extension and a high C string.
When choosing a bass with a fifth string, the player may decide between adding a higher-pitched string (a high C string) or a lower-pitched string (typically a low B). To accommodate the additional fifth string, the fingerboard is usually slightly widened, and the top slightly thicker, to handle the increased tension. Most five-string basses are therefore larger in size than a standard four-string bass. Some five-stringed instruments are converted four-string instruments. Because these do not have wider fingerboards, some players find them more difficult to finger and bow. Converted four-string basses usually require either a new, thicker top, or lighter strings to compensate for the increased tension.
The six-string double bass has both a high C and a low B, making it very useful, and it is becoming more practical after several updates. It is ideal for solo and orchestral playing because it has a more playable range. This can be achieved on a six-string violone in D by restringing it with double bass strings, making the tuning B0–E1–A1–D2–G2–C3.
Double bassists either stand or sit to play the instrument. The instrument height is set by adjusting the endpin such that the player can reach the desired playing zones of the strings with bow or plucking hand. Bassists who stand and bow sometimes set the endpin by aligning the first finger in either first or half position with eye level, although there is little standardization in this regard. Players who sit generally use a stool about the height of the player's trousers inseam length.
Traditionally, double bassists stood to play solo and sat to play in the orchestra or opera pit. Now, it is unusual for a player to be equally proficient in both positions, so some soloists sit (as with Joel Quarrington, Jeff Bradetich, Thierry Barbé, and others) and some orchestral bassists stand.
When playing in the instrument's upper range (above G3, the G below middle C), the player shifts the hand from behind the neck and flattens it out, using the side of the thumb to press down the string. This technique—also used on the cello—is called thumb position. While playing in thumb position, few players use the fourth (little) finger, as it is usually too weak to produce reliable tone (this is also true for cellists), although some extreme chords or extended techniques, especially in contemporary music, may require its use.
Rockabilly style can be very demanding on the plucking hand, due to rockabilly's use of "slapping" on the fingerboard. Performing on bass can be physically demanding, because the strings are under relatively high tension. Also, the space between notes on the fingerboard is large, due to scale length and string spacing, so players must hold their fingers apart for the notes in the lower positions and shift positions frequently to play basslines. As with all non-fretted string instruments, performers must learn to place their fingers precisely to produce the correct pitch. For bassists with shorter arms or smaller hands, the large spaces between pitches may present a significant challenge, especially in the lowest range, where the spaces between notes are largest. However, the increased use of playing techniques such as thumb position and modifications to the bass, such as the use of lighter-gauge strings at lower tension, have eased the difficulty of playing the instrument.
Bass parts have relatively fewer fast passages, double stops, or large jumps in range. These parts are usually given to the cello section, since the cello is a smaller instrument on which these techniques are more easily performed.
Until the 1990s, child-sized double basses were not widely available, and the large size of the bass prevented children from playing the instrument until they grew to a height and hand size that allowed them to play a 3⁄4-size model (the most common size). Starting in the 1990s, smaller 1⁄2, 1⁄4, 1⁄8, and even 1⁄16-sized instruments became more widely available, so children could start younger.
Despite the size of the instrument, it is not as loud as many other instruments, due to its low musical pitch. In a large orchestra, usually between four and eight bassists play the same bassline in unison to produce enough volume. In the largest orchestras, bass sections may have as many as ten or twelve players, but modern budget constraints make bass sections this large unusual.
When writing solo passages for the bass in orchestral or chamber music, composers typically ensure the orchestration is light so it does not obscure the bass. While amplification is rarely used in classical music, in some cases where a bass soloist performs a concerto with a full orchestra, subtle amplification called acoustic enhancement may be used. The use of microphones and amplifiers in a classical setting has led to debate within the classical community, as "...purists maintain that the natural acoustic sound of [Classical] voices [or] instruments in a given hall should not be altered".
In many genres, such as jazz and blues, players use amplification via a specialized amplifier and loudspeakers. A piezoelectric pickup connects to the amplifier with a 1⁄4-inch cable. Bluegrass and jazz players typically use less amplification than blues, psychobilly, or jam band players. In the latter cases, high overall volume from other amplifiers and instruments may cause unwanted acoustic feedback, a problem exacerbated by the bass's large surface area and interior volume. The feedback problem has led to technological fixes like electronic feedback eliminator devices (essentially an automated notch filter that identifies and reduces frequencies where feedback occurs) and instruments like the electric upright bass, which has playing characteristics like the double bass but usually little or no soundbox, which makes feedback less likely. Some bassists reduce the problem of feedback by lowering their onstage volume or playing further away from their bass amp speakers.
In rockabilly and psychobilly, percussively slapping the strings against the fingerboard is an important part of the bass playing style. Since piezoelectric pickups are not good at reproducing the sounds of strings being slapped against the fingerboard, bassists in these genres often use both piezoelectric pickups (for the low bass tone) and a miniature condenser mic (to pick up the percussive slapping sounds). These two signals are blended together using a simple mixer before the signal is sent to the bass amp.
The double bass's large size and relative fragility make it cumbersome to handle and transport. Most bassists use soft cases, referred to as gig bags, to protect the instrument during transport. These range from inexpensive, thin unpadded cases used by students (which only protect against scratches and rain) to thickly padded versions for professional players, which also protect against bumps and impacts. Some bassists carry their bow in a hard bow case; more expensive bass cases have a large pocket for a bow case. Players also may use a small cart and end pin-attached wheels to move the bass. Some higher-priced padded cases have wheels attached to the case. Another option found in higher-priced padded cases are backpack straps, to make it easier to carry the instrument.
Hard flight cases have cushioned interiors and tough exteriors of carbon fiber, graphite, fiberglass, or Kevlar. The cost of good hard cases–several thousand US dollars–and the high airline fees for shipping them tend to limit their use to touring professionals.
Double bass players use various accessories to help them to perform and rehearse. Three types of mutes are used in orchestral music: a wooden mute that slides onto the bridge, a rubber mute that attaches to the bridge and a wire device with brass weights that fits onto the bridge. The player uses the mute when the Italian instruction con sordino ("with mute") appears in the bass part, and removes it in response to the instruction senza sordino ("without mute"). With the mute on, the tone of the bass is quieter, darker, and more somber. Bowed bass parts with a mute can have a nasal tone. Players use a third type of mute, a heavy rubber practice mute, to practice quietly without disturbing others (e.g., in a hotel room).
A quiver is an accessory for holding the bow. It is often made of leather and it attaches to the bridge and tailpiece with ties or straps. It is used to hold the bow while a player plays pizzicato parts.
A wolf tone eliminator is used to lessen unwanted sympathetic vibrations in the part of a string between the bridge and the tailpiece which can cause tone problems for certain notes. It is a rubber tube cut down the side that is used with a cylindrical metal sleeve which also has a slot on the side. The metal cylinder has a screw and a nut that fastens the device to the string. Different placements of the cylinder along the string influence or eliminate the frequency at which the wolf tone occurs. It is essentially an attenuator that slightly shifts the natural frequency of the string (and/or instrument body) cutting down on the reverberation. The wolf tone occurs because the strings below the bridge sometimes resonate at pitches close to notes on the playing part of the string. When the intended note makes the below-the-bridge string vibrate sympathetically, a dissonant "wolf note" or "wolf tone" can occur. In some cases, the wolf tone is strong enough to cause an audible "beating" sound. The wolf tone often occurs with the note G♯ on the bass.
In orchestra, instruments tune to an A played by the oboist. Due to the three-octave gap between the oboist's tuning A and the open A string on the bass (for example, in an orchestra that tunes to 440 Hz, the oboist plays an A4 at 440 Hz and the open A1 of the bass is 55 Hz) it can be difficult to tune the bass by ear during the short period that the oboist plays the tuning note. Violinists, on the other hand, tune their A string to the same frequency as the oboist's tuning note. There is a method commonly used to tune a double bass in this context by playing the A harmonic on the D string (which is only an octave below the oboe A) and then matching the harmonics of the other strings. However, this method is not foolproof, since some basses' harmonics are not perfectly in tune with the open strings. To ensure the bass is in tune, some bassists use an electronic tuner that indicates pitch on a small display. Bassists who play in styles that use a bass amp, such as blues, rockabilly, or jazz, may use a stompbox-format electronic tuner, which mutes the bass pickup during tuning.
A double bass stand is used to hold the instrument in place and raise it a few inches off the ground. A wide variety of stands are available, and there is no one common design.
The double bass as a solo instrument enjoyed a period of popularity during the 18th century and many of the most popular composers from that era wrote pieces for the double bass. The double bass, then often referred to as the Violone, used different tunings from region to region. The "Viennese tuning" (A1–D2–F♯2–A2) was popular, and in some cases a fifth string or even sixth string was added (F1–A1–D2–F♯2–A2). The popularity of the instrument is documented in Leopold Mozart's second edition of his Violinschule, where he writes "One can bring forth difficult passages easier with the five-string violone, and I heard unusually beautiful performances of concertos, trios, solos, etc."
The earliest known concerto for double bass was written by Joseph Haydn c.1763, and is presumed lost in a fire at the Eisenstadt library. The earliest known existing concertos are by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, who composed two concertos for the double bass and a Sinfonia Concertante for viola and double bass. Other composers that have written concertos from this period include Johann Baptist Wanhal, Franz Anton Hoffmeister (3 concertos), Leopold Kozeluch, Anton Zimmermann, Antonio Capuzzi, Wenzel Pichl (2 concertos), and Johannes Matthias Sperger (18 concertos). While many of these names were leading figures to the music public of their time, they are generally unknown by contemporary audiences. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's concert aria, Per questa bella mano, K.612 for bass, double bass obbligato, and orchestra contains impressive writing for solo double bass of that period. It remains popular among both singers and double bassists today.
The double bass eventually evolved to fit the needs of orchestras that required lower notes and a louder sound. The leading double bassists from the mid-to-late 18th century, such as Josef Kämpfer, Friedrich Pischelberger, and Johannes Mathias Sperger employed the "Viennese" tuning. Bassist Johann Hindle (1792–1862), who composed a concerto for the double bass, pioneered tuning the bass in fourths, which marked a turning point for the double bass and its role in solo works. Bassist Domenico Dragonetti was a prominent musical figure and an acquaintance of Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven. His playing was known all the way from his homeland Italy to the Tsardom of Russia and he found a prominent place performing in concerts with the Philharmonic Society of London. Beethoven's friendship with Dragonetti may have inspired him to write difficult, separate parts for the double bass in his symphonies, such as the impressive passages in the third movement of the Fifth Symphony, the second movement of the Seventh Symphony, and last movement of the Ninth Symphony. These parts do not double the cello part.
Dragonetti wrote ten concertos for the double bass and many solo works for bass and piano. During Rossini's stay in London in the summer of 1824, he composed his popular Duetto for cello and double bass for Dragonetti and the cellist David Salomons. Dragonetti frequently played on a three string double bass tuned G–D–A from top to bottom. The use of only the top three strings was popular for bass soloists and principal bassists in orchestras in the 19th century, because it reduced the pressure on the wooden top of the bass, which was thought to create a more resonant sound. As well, the low E-strings used during the 19th century were thick cords made of gut, which were difficult to tune and play.
In the 19th century, the opera conductor, composer, and bassist Giovanni Bottesini was considered the "Paganini of the double bass" of his time, a reference to the violin virtuoso and composer. Bottesini's bass concertos were written in the popular Italian opera style of the 19th century, which exploit the double bass in a way that was not seen beforehand. They require virtuosic runs and great leaps to the highest registers of the instrument, even into the realm of natural and artificial harmonics. Many 19th century and early 20th century bassists considered these compositions unplayable, but in the 2000s, they are frequently performed. During the same time, a prominent school of bass players in the Czech region arose, which included Franz Simandl, Theodore Albin Findeisen, Josef Hrabe, Ludwig Manoly, and Adolf Mišek. Simandl and Hrabe were also pedagogues whose method books and studies remain in use in the 2000s.
The leading figure of the double bass in the early 20th century was Serge Koussevitzky, best known as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who popularized the double bass in modern times as a solo instrument. Because of improvements to the double bass with steel strings and better set-ups, the bass is now played at a more advanced level than ever before and more and more composers have written works for the double bass. In the mid-century and in the following decades, many new concerti were written for the double bass, including Nikos Skalkottas's Concerto (1942), Eduard Tubin's Concerto (1948), Lars-Erik Larsson's Concertino (1957), Gunther Schuller's Concerto (1962), Hans Werner Henze's Concerto (1966) and Frank Proto's Concerto No. 1 (1968).
The Solo For Contrabass is one of the parts of John Cage's Concert For Piano And Orchestra and can be played as a solo, or with any of the other parts both orchestral and/or piano. Similarly, his solo contrabass parts for the orchestral work Atlas Eclipticalis can also be performed as solos. Cage's indeterminate works such as Variations I, Variations II, Fontana Mix, Cartridge Music et al. can be arranged for a solo contrabassist. His work 26.1.1499 for a String Player is often realized by a solo contrabass player, although it can also be played by a violinist, violist, or cellist.
From the 1960s through the end of the century Gary Karr was the leading proponent of the double bass as a solo instrument and was active in commissioning or having hundreds of new works and concerti written especially for him. Karr was given Koussevitzky's famous solo double bass by Olga Koussevitsky and played it in concerts around the world for 40 years before, in turn, giving the instrument to the International Society of Bassists for talented soloists to use in concert. Another important performer in this period, Bertram Turetzky, commissioned and premiered more than 300 double bass works.
In the 1970s, 1980 and 1990s, new concerti included Nino Rota's Divertimento for Double Bass and Orchestra (1973), Alan Ridout's concerto for double bass and strings (1974), Jean Françaix's Concerto (1975), Frank Proto's Concerto No. 2, Einojuhani Rautavaara's Angel of Dusk (1980), Gian Carlo Menotti's Concerto (1983), Christopher Rouse's Concerto (1985), Henry Brant's Ghost Nets (1988) and Frank Proto's "Carmen Fantasy for Double Bass and Orchestra" (1991) and "Four Scenes after Picasso" Concerto No. 3 (1997). Peter Maxwell Davies' lyrical Strathclyde Concerto No. 7, for double bass and orchestra, dates from 1992.
In the first decade of the 21st century, new concerti include Frank Proto's "Nine Variants on Paganini" (2002), Kalevi Aho's Concerto (2005), John Harbison's Concerto for Bass Viol (2006), André Previn's Double Concerto for violin, double bass, and orchestra (2007) and John Woolrich's To the Silver Bow, for double bass, viola and strings (2014).
Reinhold Glière wrote an Intermezzo and Tarantella for double bass and piano, Op. 9, No. 1 and No. 2 and a Praeludium and Scherzo for double bass and piano, Op. 32 No. 1 and No. 2. Paul Hindemith wrote a rhythmically challenging Double Bass Sonata in 1949. Frank Proto wrote his Sonata "1963" for Double Bass and Piano. In the Soviet Union, Mieczysław Weinberg wrote his Sonata No. 1 for double bass solo in 1971. Giacinto Scelsi wrote two double bass pieces called Nuits in 1972, and then in 1976, he wrote Maknongan, a piece for any low-voiced instrument, such as double bass, contrabassoon, or tuba. Vincent Persichetti wrote solo works—which he called "Parables"—for many instruments. He wrote Parable XVII for Double Bass, Op. 131 in 1974. Sofia Gubaidulina penned a Sonata for double bass and piano in 1975. In 1976 American minimalist composer Tom Johnson wrote "Failing – a very difficult piece for solo string bass" in which the player has to perform an extremely virtuosic solo on the bass whilst simultaneously reciting a text which says how very difficult the piece is and how unlikely he or she is to successfully complete the performance without making a mistake.
In 1977 Dutch-Hungarian composer Geza Frid wrote a set of variations on The Elephant from Saint-Saëns' Le Carnaval des Animaux for scordatura Double Bass and string orchestra. In 1987 Lowell Liebermann wrote his Sonata for Contrabass and Piano Op. 24. Fernando Grillo wrote the "Suite No. 1" for double bass (1983/2005). Jacob Druckman wrote a piece for solo double bass entitled Valentine. US double bass soloist and composer Bertram Turetzky (born 1933) has performed and recorded more than 300 pieces written by and for him. He writes chamber music, baroque music, classical, jazz, renaissance music, improvisational music and world music
US minimalist composer Philip Glass wrote a prelude focused on the lower register that he scored for timpani and double bass. Italian composer Sylvano Bussotti, whose composing career spans from the 1930s to the first decade of the 21st century, wrote a solo work for bass in 1983 entitled Naked Angel Face per contrabbasso. Fellow Italian composer Franco Donatoni wrote a piece called Lem for contrabbasso in the same year. In 1989, French composer Pascal Dusapin (born 1955) wrote a solo piece called In et Out for double bass. In 1996, the Sorbonne-trained Lebanese composer Karim Haddad composed Ce qui dort dans l'ombre sacrée ("He who sleeps in the sacred shadows") for Radio France's Presence Festival. Renaud Garcia-Fons (born 1962) is a French double bass player and composer, notable for drawing on jazz, folk, and Asian music for recordings of his pieces like Oriental Bass (1997).
Two significant recent works written for solo bass include, Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms No.11 for double bass and electronic sounds and Elliott Carter's Figment III, for solo double bass. The German composer Gerhard Stäbler wrote Co-wie Kobalt (1989–90), "...a music for double bass solo and grand orchestra". Charles Wuorinen added several important works to the repertoire, Spinoff trio for double bass, violin and conga drums, and Trio for Bass Instruments double bass, tuba and bass trombone, and in 2007 Synaxis for double bass, horn, oboe and clarinet with timpani and strings. The suite "Seven Screen Shots" for double bass and piano (2005) by Ukrainian composer Alexander Shchetynsky has a solo bass part that includes many unconventional methods of playing. The German composer Claus Kühnl wrote Offene Weite / Open Expanse (1998) and Nachtschwarzes Meer, ringsum… (2005) for double bass and piano.In 1997 Joel Quarrington commissioned the American / Canadian composer Raymond Luedeke to write his "Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra", a piece he performed with The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, and, in a version for small orchestra, with The Nova Scotia Symphony Orchestra. Composer Raymond Luedeke also composed a work for double bass, flute, and viola with narration, "The Book of Questions", with text by Pablo Neruda.
In 2004 Italian double bassist and composer Stefano Scodanibbio made a double bass arrangement of Luciano Berio's 2002 solo cello work Sequenza XIV with the new title Sequenza XIVb.
Since there is no established instrumental ensemble that includes the double bass, its use in chamber music has not been as exhaustive as the literature for ensembles such as the string quartet or piano trio. Despite this, there is a substantial number of chamber works that incorporate the double bass in both small and large ensembles.
There is a small body of works written for piano quintet with the instrumentation of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. The most famous is Franz Schubert's Piano Quintet in A major, known as "The Trout Quintet" for its set of variations in the fourth movement of Schubert's Die Forelle. Other works for this instrumentation written from roughly the same period include those by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, George Onslow, Jan Ladislav Dussek, Louise Farrenc, Ferdinand Ries, Franz Limmer, Johann Baptist Cramer, and Hermann Goetz. Later composers who wrote chamber works for this quintet include Ralph Vaughan Williams, Colin Matthews, Jon Deak, Frank Proto, and John Woolrich. Slightly larger sextets written for piano, string quartet, and double bass have been written by Felix Mendelssohn, Mikhail Glinka, Richard Wernick, and Charles Ives.
In the genre of string quintets, there are a few works for string quartet with double bass. Antonín Dvořák's String Quintet in G major, Op.77 and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Serenade in G major, K.525 ("Eine kleine Nachtmusik") are the most popular pieces in this repertoire, along with works by Miguel del Aguila (Nostalgica for string quartet and bass), Darius Milhaud, Luigi Boccherini (3 quintets), Harold Shapero, and Paul Hindemith. Another example is Alistair Hinton's String Quintet (1969–77), which also includes a major part for solo soprano; at almost 170 minutes in duration, it is almost certainly the largest such work in the repertoire.
Slightly smaller string works with the double bass include six string sonatas by Gioachino Rossini, for two violins, cello, and double bass written at the age of twelve over the course of three days in 1804. These remain his most famous instrumental works and have also been adapted for wind quartet. Rossini and Dragonetti composed duos for cello and double bass, as did Johannes Matthias Sperger, a major soloist on the "Viennese" tuning instrument of the 18th century. Franz Anton Hoffmeister wrote four String Quartets for Solo Double Bass, Violin, Viola, and Cello in D Major. Frank Proto has written a Trio for Violin, Viola and Double Bass (1974), 2 Duos for Violin and Double Bass (1967 and 2005), and The Games of October for Oboe/English Horn and Double Bass (1991).
Larger works that incorporate the double bass include Beethoven's Septet in E♭ major, Op. 20, one of his most famous pieces during his lifetime, which consists of clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and bass. When the clarinetist Ferdinand Troyer commissioned a work from Franz Schubert for similar forces, he added one more violin for his Octet in F major, D.803. Paul Hindemith used the same instrumentation as Schubert for his own Octet. In the realm of even larger works, Mozart included the double bass in addition to 12 wind instruments for his "Gran Partita" Serenade, K.361 and Martinů used the double bass in his nonet for wind quintet, violin, viola, cello and double bass.
Other examples of chamber works that use the double bass in mixed ensembles include Sergei Prokofiev's Quintet in G minor, Op. 39 for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass; Miguel del Aguila's Malambo for bass flute and piano and for string quartet, bass and bassoon; Erwin Schulhoff's Concertino for flute/piccolo, viola, and double bass; Frank Proto's Afro-American Fragments for bass clarinet, cello, double bass and narrator and Sextet for clarinet and strings; Fred Lerdahl's Waltzes for violin, viola, cello, and double bass; Mohammed Fairouz's Litany for double bass and wind quartet; Mario Davidovsky's Festino for guitar, viola, cello, and double bass; and Iannis Xenakis's Morsima-Amorsima for piano, violin, cello, and double bass. There are also new music ensembles that utilize the double bass such as Time for Three and PROJECT Trio.
In the baroque and classical periods, composers typically had the double bass double the cello part in orchestral passages. A notable exception is Haydn, who composed solo passages for the double bass in his Symphonies No. 6 Le Matin, No. 7 Le midi, No. 8 Le Soir, No. 31 Horn Signal, and No. 45 Farewell—but who otherwise grouped bass and cello parts together. Beethoven paved the way for separate double bass parts, which became more common in the romantic era. The scherzo and trio from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony are famous orchestral excerpts, as is the recitative at the beginning of the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In many nineteenth century symphonies and concertos, the typical impact of separate bass and cello parts was that bass parts became simpler and cello parts got the melodic lines and rapid passage work.
A double bass section of a modern orchestra typically uses eight double bassists, usually in unison. Smaller orchestras may have four double basses, and in exceptional cases, bass sections may have as many as ten members. If some double bassists have low C extensions, and some have regular (low E) basses, those with the low C extensions may play some passages an octave below the regular double basses. Also, some composers write divided (divisi) parts for the basses, where upper and lower parts in the music are often assigned to "outside" (nearer the audience) and "inside" players. Composers writing divisi parts for bass often write perfect intervals, such as octaves and fifths, but in some cases use thirds and sixths.
Where a composition calls for a solo bass part, the principal bass invariably plays that part. The section leader (or principal) also determines the bowings, often based on bowings set out by the concertmaster. In some cases, the principal bass may use a slightly different bowing than the concertmaster, to accommodate the requirements of playing bass. The principal bass also leads entrances for the bass section, typically by lifting the bow or plucking hand before the entrance or indicating the entrance with the head, to ensure the section starts together. Major professional orchestras typically have an assistant principal bass player, who plays solos and leads the bass section if the principal is absent.
While orchestral bass solos are somewhat rare, there are some notable examples. Johannes Brahms, whose father was a double bass player, wrote many difficult and prominent parts for the double bass in his symphonies. Richard Strauss assigned the double bass daring parts, and his symphonic poems and operas stretch the instrument to its limits. "The Elephant" from Camille Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals is a satirical portrait of the double bass, and American virtuoso Gary Karr made his televised debut playing "The Swan" (originally written for the cello) with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The third movement of Gustav Mahler's first symphony features a solo for the double bass that quotes the children's song Frere Jacques, transposed into a minor key. Sergei Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite features a difficult and very high double bass solo in the "Romance" movement. Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra contains a prominent passage for the double bass section.
Ensembles made up entirely of double basses, though relatively rare, also exist, and several composers have written or arranged for such ensembles. Compositions for four double basses exist by Gunther Schuller, Jacob Druckman, James Tenney, Claus Kühnl, Robert Ceely, Jan Alm, Bernhard Alt, Norman Ludwin, Frank Proto, Joseph Lauber, Erich Hartmann, Colin Brumby, Miloslav Gajdos and Theodore Albin Findeisen. David A. Jaffe's "Who's on First?", commissioned by the Russian National Orchestra is scored for five double basses. Bertold Hummel wrote a Sinfonia piccola for eight double basses. Larger ensemble works include Galina Ustvolskaya's Composition No. 2, "Dies Irae" (1973), for eight double basses, piano, and wooden cube, José Serebrier's "George and Muriel" (1986), for solo bass, double bass ensemble, and chorus, and Gerhard Samuel's What of my music! (1979), for soprano, percussion, and 30 double basses.
Double bass ensembles include L'Orchestre de Contrebasses (6 members), Bass Instinct (6 members), Bassiona Amorosa (6 members), the Chicago Bass Ensemble (4+ members), Ludus Gravis founded by Daniele Roccato and Stefano Scodanibbio, The Bass Gang (4 members), the London Double Bass Ensemble (6 members) founded by members of the Philharmonia Orchestra of London who produced the LP Music Interludes by London Double Bass Ensemble on Bruton Music records, Brno Double Bass Orchestra (14 members) founded by the double bass professor at Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts and principal double bass player at Brno Philharmonic Orchestra – Miloslav Jelinek, and the ensembles of Ball State University (12 members), Shenandoah University, and the Hartt School of Music. The Amarillo Bass Base of Amarillo, Texas once featured 52 double bassists, and The London Double Bass Sound, who have released a CD on Cala Records, have 10 players.
In addition, the double bass sections of some orchestras perform as an ensemble, such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Lower Wacker Consort. There is an increasing number of published compositions and arrangements for double bass ensembles, and the International Society of Bassists regularly features double bass ensembles (both smaller ensembles as well as very large "mass bass" ensembles) at its conferences, and sponsors the biennial David Walter Composition Competition, which includes a division for double bass ensemble works.
Beginning around 1890, the early New Orleans jazz ensemble (which played a mixture of marches, ragtime, and Dixieland) was initially a marching band with a tuba or sousaphone (or occasionally bass saxophone) supplying the bass line. As the music moved into bars and brothels, the upright bass gradually replaced these wind instruments around the 1920s. Many early bassists doubled on both the brass bass (tuba) and string bass, as the instruments were then often referred to. Bassists played improvised "walking" bass lines—scale- and arpeggio-based lines that outlined the chord progression.
Because an unamplified upright bass is generally the quietest instrument in a jazz band, many players of the 1920s and 1930s used the slap style, slapping and pulling the strings to produce a rhythmic "slap" sound against the fingerboard. The slap style cuts through the sound of a band better than simply plucking the strings, and made the bass more easily heard on early sound recordings, as the recording equipment of that time did not favor low frequencies. For more about the slap style, see Modern playing styles, below.
Jazz bass players are expected to improvise an accompaniment line or solo for a given chord progression. They are also expected to know the rhythmic patterns that are appropriate for different styles (e.g., Afro-Cuban). Bassists playing in a big band must also be able to read written-out bass lines, as some arrangements have written bass parts.
Many upright bass players have contributed to the evolution of jazz. Examples include swing era players such as Jimmy Blanton, who played with Duke Ellington, and Oscar Pettiford, who pioneered the instrument's use in bebop. Paul Chambers (who worked with Miles Davis on the famous Kind of Blue album) achieved renown for being one of the first jazz bassists to play bebop solos with the bow. Terry Plumeri furthered the development of arco (bowed) solos, achieving horn-like technical freedom and a clear, vocal bowed tone, while Charlie Haden, best known for his work with Ornette Coleman, defined the role of the bass in Free Jazz.
A number of other bassists, such as Ray Brown, Slam Stewart and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, were central to the history of jazz. Stewart, who was popular with the beboppers, played his solos with a bow combined with octave humming. Notably, Charles Mingus was a highly regarded composer as well as a bassist noted for his technical virtuosity and powerful sound. Scott LaFaro influenced a generation of musicians by liberating the bass from contrapuntal "walking" behind soloists instead favoring interactive, conversational melodies. Since the commercial availability of bass amplifiers in the 1950s, jazz bassists have used amplification to augment the natural volume of the instrument.
While the electric bass guitar was used intermittently in jazz as early as 1951, beginning in the 1970s bassist Bob Cranshaw, playing with saxophonist Sonny Rollins, and fusion pioneers Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke began to commonly substitute the bass guitar for the upright bass. Apart from the jazz styles of jazz fusion and Latin-influenced jazz however, the upright bass is still the dominant bass instrument in jazz. The sound and tone of the plucked upright bass is distinct from that of the fretted bass guitar. The upright bass produces a different sound than the bass guitar, because its strings are not stopped by metal frets, instead having a continuous tonal range on the uninterrupted fingerboard. As well, bass guitars usually have a solid wood body, which means that their sound is produced by electronic amplification of the vibration of the strings, instead of the upright bass's acoustic reverberation.
Demonstrative examples of the sound of a solo double bass and its technical use in jazz can be heard on the solo recordings Emerald Tears (1978) by Dave Holland or Emergence (1986) by Miroslav Vitous. Holland also recorded an album with the representative title Music from Two Basses (1971) on which he plays with Barre Phillips while he sometimes switches to cello.
The string bass is the most commonly used bass instrument in bluegrass music and is almost always plucked, though some modern bluegrass bassists have also used a bow. The bluegrass bassist is part of the rhythm section, and is responsible for keeping a steady beat, whether fast, slow, in 4, 4 or 4 time. The bass also maintains the chord progression and harmony. The Engelhardt-Link (formerly Kay) brands of plywood laminate basses have long been popular choices for bluegrass bassists. Most bluegrass bassists use the 3⁄4 size bass, but the full-size and 5⁄8 size basses are also used.
Early pre-bluegrass traditional music was often accompanied by the cello. The cellist Natalie Haas points out that in the US, you can find "...old photographs, and even old recordings, of American string bands with cello". However, "The cello dropped out of sight in folk music, and became associated with the orchestra." The cello did not reappear in bluegrass until the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century. Some contemporary bluegrass bands favor the electric bass, because it is easier to transport than the large and somewhat fragile upright bass. However, the bass guitar has a different musical sound. Many musicians feel the slower attack and percussive, woody tone of the upright bass gives it a more "earthy" or "natural" sound than an electric bass, particularly when gut strings are used.
Common rhythms in bluegrass bass playing involve (with some exceptions) plucking on beats 1 and 3 in 4 time; beats 1 and 2 in 4 time, and on the downbeat in 4 time (waltz time). Bluegrass bass lines are usually simple, typically staying on the root and fifth of each chord throughout most of a song. There are two main exceptions to this rule. Bluegrass bassists often do a diatonic walkup or walkdown, in which they play every beat of a bar for one or two bars, typically when there is a chord change. In addition, if a bass player is given a solo, they may play a walking bass line with a note on every beat or play a pentatonic scale-influenced bassline.
An early bluegrass bassist to rise to prominence was Howard Watts (also known as Cedric Rainwater), who played with Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys beginning in 1944. The classical bassist Edgar Meyer has frequently branched out into newgrass, old-time, jazz, and other genres. "My all-time favorite is Todd Phillips", proclaimed Union Station bassist Barry Bales in April 2005. "He brought a completely different way of thinking about and playing bluegrass.
An upright bass was the standard bass instrument in traditional country western music. While the upright bass is still occasionally used in country music, the electric bass has largely replaced its bigger cousin in country music, especially in the more pop-infused country styles of the 1990s and 2000s, such as new country.
Slap-style bass is sometimes used in bluegrass bass playing. When bluegrass bass players slap the string by pulling it until it hits the fingerboard or hit the strings against the fingerboard, it adds the high-pitched percussive "clack" or "slap" sound to the low-pitched bass notes, sounding much like the clacks of a tap dancer. Slapping is a subject of minor controversy in the bluegrass scene. Even slapping experts such as Mike Bub say, "Don't slap on every gig", or in songs where it is not appropriate. As well, bluegrass bassists who play slap-style on live shows often slap less on records. Bub and his mentor Jerry McCoury rarely do slap bass on recordings. While bassists such as Jack Cook slap bass on the occasional faster "Clinch Mountain Boys song", bassists such as Gene Libbea, Missy Raines, Jenny Keel, and Barry Bales [rarely] slap bass.
Bluegrass bassist Mark Schatz, who teaches slap bass in his Intermediate Bluegrass Bass DVD acknowledges that slap bass "...has not been stylistically very predominant in the music I have recorded". He notes that "Even in traditional bluegrass slap bass only appears sporadically and most of what I've done has been on the more contemporary side of that (Tony Rice, Tim O'Brien)." Schatz states that he would be "... more likely to use it [slap] in a live situation than on a recording—for a solo or to punctuate a particular place in a song or tune where I wouldn't be obliterating someone's solo". Another bluegrass method, Learn to Play Bluegrass Bass, by Earl Gately, also teaches bluegrass slap bass technique. German bassist Didi Beck plays rapid triplet slaps, as demonstrated in this video.
In the early 1950s, the upright bass was the standard bass instrument in the emerging style of rock and roll music, Marshall Lytle of Bill Haley & His Comets being but one example. In the 1940s, a new style of dance music called rhythm and blues developed, incorporating elements of the earlier styles of blues and swing. Louis Jordan, the first innovator of this style, featured an upright bass in his group, the Tympany Five.
The upright bass remained an integral part of pop lineups throughout the 1950s, as the new genre of rock and roll was built largely upon the model of rhythm and blues, with strong elements also derived from jazz, country, and bluegrass. However, upright bass players using their instruments in these contexts faced inherent problems. They were forced to compete with louder horn instruments (and later amplified electric guitars), making bass parts difficult to hear. The upright bass is difficult to amplify in loud concert venue settings, because it can be prone to feedback howls. As well, the upright bass is large and awkward to transport, which also created transportation problems for touring bands. In some groups, the slap bass was utilized as band percussion in lieu of a drummer; such was the case with Bill Haley & His Saddlemen (the forerunner group to the Comets), which did not use drummers on recordings and live performances until late 1952; prior to this the slap bass was relied on for percussion, including on recordings such as Haley's versions of "Rock the Joint" and "Rocket 88".
In 1951, Leo Fender released his Precision Bass, the first commercially successful electric bass guitar. The electric bass was easily amplified with its built-in magnetic pickups, easily portable (less than a foot longer than an electric guitar), and easier to play in tune than an upright bass, thanks to the metal frets. In the 1960s and 1970s bands were playing at louder volumes and performing in larger venues. The electric bass was able to provide the huge, highly amplified stadium-filling bass tone that the pop and rock music of this era demanded, and the upright bass receded from the limelight of the popular music scene.
The upright bass began making a comeback in popular music in the mid-1980s, in part due to a renewed interest in earlier forms of folk and country music, as part of the roots rock and Americana trends. In the 1990s, improvements in pickups and amplifier designs for electro-acoustic horizontal and upright basses made it easier for bassists to get a good, clear amplified tone from an acoustic instrument. Some popular bands decided to anchor their sound with an upright bass instead of an electric bass, such as the Barenaked Ladies. A trend for "unplugged" performances on MTV, in which rock bands performed with solely acoustic instruments, further helped to enhance the public's interest in the upright bass and acoustic bass guitars.
Jim Creeggan of Barenaked Ladies primarily plays upright bass, although he has increasingly played bass guitar throughout the band's career. Chris Wyse of alternative rock group Owl uses a combination of electric and double bass. Athol Guy of the Australian folk/pop group The Seekers plays an upright bass. Shannon Birchall, of the Australian folk-rock group The John Butler Trio, makes extensive use of upright basses, performing extended live solos in songs such as Betterman. On the 2008 album In Ear Park by the indie/pop band Department of Eagles, a bowed upright bass is featured quite prominently on the songs "Teenagers" and "In Ear Park". Norwegian ompa-rock band Kaizers Orchestra use the upright bass exclusively both live and on their recordings.
French contemporary pop duet "What a day" uses double bass extended pizzicato technique with vocals and type writer
Hank Williams III's bass players (Jason Brown, Joe Buck and Zach Shedd, most notably) have used upright basses for recording as well as during the country and Hellbilly sets of Hank III's live performances before switching to electric bass for the Assjack set.
The late 1970s rockabilly-punk genre of psychobilly continued and expanded upon the rockabilly tradition of slap bass. Bassists such as Kim Nekroman and Geoff Kresge have developed the ability to play rapid slap bass that in effect turns the bass into a percussion instrument.
In popular music genres, the instrument is usually played with amplification and almost exclusively played with the fingers, pizzicato style. The pizzicato style varies between different players and genres. Some players perform with the sides of one, two, or three fingers, especially for walking basslines and slow tempo ballads, because this is purported to create a stronger and more solid tone. Some players use the more nimble tips of the fingers to play fast-moving solo passages or to pluck lightly for quiet tunes. The use of amplification allows the player to have more control over the tone of the instrument, because amplifiers have equalization controls that allow the bassist to accentuate certain frequencies (often the bass frequencies) while de-accentuating some frequencies (often the high frequencies, so that there is less finger noise).
An unamplified acoustic bass's tone is limited by the frequency responsiveness of the instrument's hollow body, which means that the very low pitches may not be as loud as the higher pitches. With an amplifier and equalization devices, a bass player can boost the low frequencies, which changes the frequency response. In addition, the use of an amplifier can increase the sustain of the instrument, which is particularly useful for accompaniment during ballads and for melodic solos with held notes.
In traditional jazz, swing, polka, rockabilly, and psychobilly music, it is sometimes played in the slap style. This is a vigorous version of pizzicato where the strings are "slapped" against the fingerboard between the main notes of the bass line, producing a snare drum-like percussive sound. The main notes are either played normally or by pulling the string away from the fingerboard and releasing it so that it bounces off the fingerboard, producing a distinctive percussive attack in addition to the expected pitch. Notable slap style bass players, whose use of the technique was often highly syncopated and virtuosic, sometimes interpolated two, three, four, or more slaps in between notes of the bass line.
"Slap style" may have influenced electric bass guitar players who, from the mid-sixties (particularly Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone), developed a technique called slap and pop that used the thumb of the plucking hand to hit the string, making a slapping sound but still letting the note ring, and the index or middle finger of the plucking hand to pull the string back so it hits the fretboard, achieving the pop sound described above. Motown bass player James Jamerson routinely used a double bass for enhancement of the electric bass in post-production ("sweetening") of recorded tracks and vice versa in many instances.
Some of the most influential contemporary classical double bass players are known as much for their contributions to pedagogy as for their performing skills, such as US bassist Oscar G. Zimmerman (1910–1987), known for his teaching at the Eastman School of Music and, for 44 summers at the Interlochen National Music Camp in Michigan and French bassist François Rabbath (b. 1931) who developed a new bass method that divided the entire fingerboard into six positions. Bassists noted for their virtuoso solo skills include American pedagogue and performer Gary Karr (b. 1941), Finnish composer Teppo Hauta-Aho (b. 1941), Italian composer Fernando Grillo, and US player-composer Edgar Meyer. For a longer list, see the List of contemporary classical double bass players.
Notable jazz bassists from the 1940s to the 1950s included bassist Jimmy Blanton (1918–1942) whose short tenure in the Duke Ellington Swing band (cut short by his death from tuberculosis) introduced new melodic and harmonic solo ideas for the instrument; bassist Ray Brown (1926–2002), known for backing Beboppers Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and Charlie Parker, and forming the Modern Jazz Quartet; hard bop bassist Ron Carter (born 1937), who has appeared on 3,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, including LPs by Thelonious Monk and Wes Montgomery and many Blue Note Records artists; and Paul Chambers (1935–1969), a member of the Miles Davis Quintet (including the landmark modal jazz recording Kind of Blue) and many other 1950s and 1960s rhythm sections, was known for his virtuosic improvisations.
The experimental post 1960s era, and free jazz and jazz-rock fusion, produced several influential bassists. Charles Mingus (1922–1979), who was also a composer and bandleader, produced music that fused hard bop with black gospel music, free jazz, and classical music. Free jazz and post-bop bassist Charlie Haden (1937–2014) is best known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, and for his role in the 1970s-era Liberation Music Orchestra, an experimental group. Eddie Gómez and George Mraz, who played with Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson, respectively, and are both acknowledged to have furthered expectations of pizzicato fluency and melodic phrasing. Fusion virtuoso Stanley Clarke (born 1951) is notable for his dexterity on both the upright bass and the electric bass. Terry Plumeri is noted for his horn-like arco fluency and vocal-sounding tone.
In the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, one of the new "young lions" was Christian McBride (born 1972), who has performed with a range of veterans ranging from McCoy Tyner to fusion gurus Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, and who has released albums such as 2003's Vertical Vision. Another young bassist of note is Esperanza Spalding (born 1984) who, at 27 years of age, had already won a Grammy for Best New Artist.
In addition to being a noted classical player, Edgar Meyer is well known in bluegrass and newgrass circles. Todd Phillips is another prominent bluegrass player. Well-known rockabilly bassists include Bill Black, Marshall Lytle (with Bill Haley & His Comets) and Lee Rocker (with 1980s-era rockabilly revivalists the Stray Cats).
Notable rockabilly revivalists and psychobilly performers from the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century include Scott Owen (from the Australian band The Living End), Jimbo Wallace (from the US band Reverend Horton Heat), Kim Nekroman (Nekromantix), Patricia Day (HorrorPops), Geoff Kresge (Tiger Army, ex-AFI). Willie Dixon (1915–1992) was one of the most notable figures in the history of rhythm and blues. In addition to being an upright bassist, he wrote dozens of R&B hits and worked as a producer. He also plays bass on numerous Chuck Berry's rock and roll hits. Many other rockabilly bands like El Rio Trio (from the Netherlands) also use this instrument in their work. See also the List of double bassists in popular music.
The pedagogy and training for the double bass varies widely by genre and country. Classical double bass has a history of pedagogy dating back several centuries, including teaching manuals, studies, and progressive exercises that help students to develop the endurance and accuracy of the left hand, and control for the bowing hand. Classical training methods vary by country: many of the major European countries are associated with specific methods (e.g., the Edouard Nanny method in France or the Franz Simandl method in Germany). In classical training, the majority of the instruction for the right hand focuses on the production of bowing tone; little time is spent studying the varieties of pizzicato tone.
In contrast, in genres that mainly or exclusively use pizzicato (plucking), such as jazz and blues, a great deal of time and effort is focused on learning the varieties of different pizzicato styles used for music of different styles of tempi. For example, in jazz, aspiring bassists have to learn how to perform a wide range of pizzicato tones, including using the sides of the fingers to create a full, deep sound for ballads, using the tips of the fingers for fast walking basslines or solos, and performing a variety of percussive ghost notes by raking muted or partially muted strings.
Of all of the genres, classical and jazz have the most established and comprehensive systems of instruction and training. In the classical milieu, children can begin taking private lessons on the instrument and performing in children's or youth orchestras. Teens who aspire to becoming professional classical bassists can continue their studies in a variety of formal training settings, including colleges, conservatories, and universities. Colleges offer certificates and diplomas in bass performance.
Conservatories, which are the standard musical training system in France and in Quebec (Canada) provide lessons and amateur orchestral experience for double bass players. Universities offer a range of double bass programs, including bachelor's degrees, Master of Music degrees, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. As well, there are a variety of other training programs such as classical summer camps and orchestral, opera, or chamber music training festivals, which give students the opportunity to play a wide range of music.
Bachelor's degrees in bass performance (referred to as B.Mus. or B.M.) are four-year programs that include individual bass lessons, amateur orchestra experience, and a sequence of courses in music history, music theory, and liberal arts courses (e.g., English literature), which give the student a more well-rounded education. Usually, bass performance students perform several recitals of solo double bass music, such as concertos, sonatas, and Baroque suites.
Master of music degrees (M.mus.) in double bass performance consist of private lessons, ensemble experience, coaching in playing orchestral double bass parts, and graduate courses in music history and music theory, along with one or two solo recitals. A Master's degree in music (referred to as an M.Mus. or M.M.) is often a required credential for people who wish to become a professor of double bass at a university or conservatory.
Doctor of Musical Arts (referred to as D.M.A., DMA, D.Mus.A. or A.Mus.D.) degrees in double bass performance provide an opportunity for advanced study at the highest artistic and pedagogical level, requiring usually an additional 54+ credit hours beyond a master's degree (which is about 30+ credits beyond a bachelor's degree). For this reason, admission is highly selective. Examinations in music history, music theory, ear training/dictation, and an entrance examination-recital, are required. Students perform a number of recitals (around six), including a lecture-recital with an accompanying doctoral dissertation, advanced coursework, and a minimum B average are other typical requirements of a D.M.A. program.
Throughout the early history of jazz, double bass players either learned the instrument informally, or from getting classical training early on, as in the case of Ron Carter and Charles Mingus. In the 1980s and 1990s, colleges and universities began to introduce diplomas and degrees in jazz performance. Students in jazz diploma or Bachelor of Music programs take individual bass lessons, get experience in small jazz combos with coaching from an experienced player, and play in jazz big bands. As with classical training programs, jazz programs also include classroom courses in music history and music theory. In a jazz program, these courses focus on the different eras of jazz history. such as Swing, Bebop, and fusion. The theory courses focus on the musical skills used in jazz improvisation and in jazz comping (accompanying) and the composition of jazz tunes. There are also jazz summer camps and training festivals/seminars, which offer students the chance to learn new skills and styles.
In other genres, such as blues, rockabilly, and psychobilly, the pedagogical systems and training sequences are not as formalized and institutionalized. There are not degrees in blues bass performance, or conservatories offering multiple-year diplomas in rockabilly bass. However, there are a range of books, playing methods, and, since the 1990s, instructional DVDs (e.g., on how to play rockabilly-style slap bass). As such, performers in these other genres tend to come from a variety of routes, including informal learning by using bass method books or DVDs, taking private lessons and coaching, and learning from records and CDs. In some cases, blues or rockabilly bassists may have obtained some initial training through the classical or jazz pedagogy systems (e.g., youth orchestra or high school big band). In genres such as tango, which use a lot of bowed passages and jazz-style pizzicato lines, the bassists tend to come from classical or jazz training routes.
Careers in double bass vary widely by genre and by region or country. Most bassists earn their living from a mixture of performance and teaching jobs. The first step to getting most performance jobs is by playing at an audition. In some styles of music, such as jazz-oriented stage bands, bassists may be asked to sight read printed music or perform standard pieces (e.g., a jazz standard such as Now's the Time) with an ensemble. Similarly, in a rock or blues band, auditionees may be asked to play various rock or blues standards. An upright bassist auditioning for a blues band might be asked to play in a Swing-style walking bassline, a rockabilly-style "slapping" bassline (in which the strings are percussively struck against the fingerboard) and a 1950s ballad with long held notes. A person auditioning for a role as a bassist in some styles of pop or rock music may be expected to demonstrate the ability to perform harmony vocals as a backup singer. In some pop and rock groups, the bassist may be asked to play other instruments from time to time, such as electric bass, keyboards or acoustic guitar. The ability to play electric bass is widely expected in country groups, in case the band is performing a classic rock or new country song.
In classical music, bassists audition for playing jobs in orchestras and for admission into university or Conservatory programs or degrees. At a classical bass audition, the performer typically plays a movement from a J.S. Bach suite for solo cello or a movement from a bass concerto and a variety of excerpts from the orchestral literature. The excerpts are typically the most technically challenging parts of bass parts and bass solos from the orchestral literature. Some of the most commonly requested orchestral excerpts at bass auditions are from Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 5, 7 and 9; Strauss's Ein Heldenleben and Don Juan; Mozart's Symphonies Nos. 35, 39 and 40; Brahms' Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2; Stravinsky's Pulcinella; Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5; Ginastera's Variaciones Concertante; Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4; Mahler's Symphony No. 2; J. S. Bach's Suite No. 2 in B; Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4; and the bass solos from Verdi's opera Otello, Mahler's Symphony No. 1, Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra and Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Suite. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The double bass (/ˈdʌbəl beɪs/), also known simply as the bass (/beɪs/), amongst other names, is the largest and, therefore, lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar in structure to the cello, it has four, although occasionally five, strings.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, viola, and cello, as well as the concert band, and is featured in concertos, solo, and chamber music in Western classical music. The bass is used in a range of other genres, such as jazz, blues, rock and roll, rockabilly, country music, bluegrass, tango, folk music and certain types of film and video game soundtracks.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Being a transposing instrument, the bass is typically notated one octave higher than tuned to avoid excessive ledger lines below the staff. The double bass is the only modern bowed string instrument that is tuned in fourths (like a bass guitar, viol, or the first four strings of a standard guitar), rather than fifths, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The instrument's exact lineage is still a matter of some debate, with scholars divided on whether the bass is derived from the viol or the violin family.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The double bass is played with a bow (arco), or by plucking the strings (pizzicato), or via a variety of extended techniques. In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm. Classical music and jazz use the natural sound produced acoustically by the instrument, as does traditional bluegrass. In funk, blues, reggae, and related genres, the double bass is often amplified.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "A person who plays this instrument is called a \"bassist\", \"double bassist\", \"double bass player\", \"contrabassist\", \"contrabass player\" or \"bass player\". The names contrabass and double bass refer (respectively) to the instrument's range, and to its use one octave lower than the cello (i.e. the cello part was the main bass line, and the \"double bass\" originally played a copy of the cello part; only later was it given an independent part). The terms for the instrument among classical performers are contrabass (which comes from the instrument's Italian name, contrabbasso), string bass (to distinguish it from brass bass instruments in a concert band, such as tubas), or simply bass.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In jazz, blues, rockabilly and other genres outside of classical music, this instrument is commonly called the upright bass, standup bass or acoustic bass to distinguish it from the (usually electric) bass guitar. In folk and bluegrass music, the instrument is also referred to as a \"bass fiddle\" or \"bass violin\" (or more rarely as \"doghouse bass\" or \"bull fiddle\" ). As a member of the violin-family of instruments, the construction of the upright bass is quite different from that of the acoustic bass guitar, as the latter is a derivative of the electric bass guitar, and usually built like a larger and sturdier variant of an acoustic guitar.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The double bass is sometimes confusingly called the violone, bass violin or bass viol.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "A typical double bass stands around 180 cm (6 feet) from scroll to endpin. Whereas the traditional \"full-size\" (4⁄4 size) bass stands 74.8 inches, the more common 3⁄4 size bass (which has become the most widely used size in the modern era, even among orchestral players) stands 71.6 inches from scroll to endpin. Other sizes are also available, such as a 1⁄2 size or 1⁄4 size, which serve to accommodate a player's height and hand size. These names of the sizes do not reflect the true size relative to a \"full size\" bass; a 1⁄2 bass is not half the length of a 4⁄4 bass, but is only about 15% smaller.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Double basses are typically constructed from several types of wood, including maple for the back, spruce for the top, and ebony for the fingerboard. It is uncertain whether the instrument is a descendant of the viola da gamba or of the violin, but it is traditionally aligned with the violin family. While the double bass is nearly identical in construction to other violin family instruments, it also embodies features found in the older viol family.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The notes of the open strings are E1, A1, D2, and G2, the same as an acoustic or electric bass guitar. However, the resonance of the wood, combined with the violin-like construction and long scale length gives the double bass a much richer tone than the bass guitar, in addition to the ability to use a bow, while the fretless fingerboard accommodates smooth glissandos and legatos.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Like other violin and viol-family string instruments, the double bass is played either with a bow (arco) or by plucking the strings (pizzicato). When employing a bow, the player can either use it traditionally or strike the wood of the bow against the string. In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm, except for some solos and occasional written parts in modern jazz that call for bowing.",
"title": "Playing style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In classical pedagogy, almost all of the focus is on performing with the bow and producing a good bowed tone; there is little work done on developing significant pizzicato skills. Bowed notes in the lowest register of the instrument produce a dark, heavy, mighty, or even menacing effect, when played with a fortissimo dynamic; however, the same low pitches played with a delicate pianissimo can create a sonorous, mellow accompaniment line. Classical bass students learn all of the different bow articulations used by other string section players (e.g., violin and cello), such as détaché, legato, staccato, sforzato, martelé (\"hammered\"-style), sul ponticello, sul tasto, tremolo, spiccato and sautillé. Some of these articulations can be combined; for example, the combination of sul ponticello and tremolo can produce eerie, ghostly sounds. Classical bass players do play pizzicato parts in orchestra, but these parts generally require simple notes (quarter notes, half notes, whole notes), rather than rapid passages.",
"title": "Playing style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Classical players perform both bowed and pizz notes using vibrato, an effect created by rocking or quivering the left hand finger that is contacting the string, which then transfers an undulation in pitch to the tone. Vibrato is used to add expression to string playing. In general, very loud, low-register passages are played with little or no vibrato, as the main goal with low pitches is to provide a clear fundamental bass for the string section. Mid- and higher-register melodies are typically played with more vibrato. The speed and intensity of the vibrato is varied by the performer for an emotional and musical effect.",
"title": "Playing style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In jazz, rockabilly and other related genres, much or all of the focus is on playing pizzicato. In jazz and jump blues, bassists are required to play rapid pizzicato walking basslines for extended periods. Jazz and rockabilly bassists develop virtuoso pizzicato techniques that enable them to play rapid solos that incorporate fast-moving triplet and sixteenth note figures. Pizzicato basslines performed by leading jazz professionals are much more difficult than the pizzicato basslines that classical bassists encounter in the standard orchestral literature, which are typically whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, and occasional eighth note passages. In jazz and related styles, bassists often add semi-percussive \"ghost notes\" into basslines, to add to the rhythmic feel and to add fills to a bassline.",
"title": "Playing style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The double bass player stands, or sits on a high stool, and leans the instrument against their body, turned slightly inward to put the strings comfortably in reach. This stance is a key reason for the bass's sloped shoulders, which mark it apart from the other members of the violin family—the narrower shoulders facilitate playing the strings in their higher registers.",
"title": "Playing style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The double bass is generally regarded as a modern descendant of the string family of instruments that originated in Europe in the 15th century, and as such has been described as a bass Violin. Before the 20th century many double basses had only three strings, in contrast to the five to six strings typical of instruments in the viol family or the four strings of instruments in the violin family. The double bass's proportions are dissimilar to those of the violin and cello; for example, it is deeper (the distance from front to back is proportionally much greater than the violin). In addition, while the violin has bulging shoulders, most double basses have shoulders carved with a more acute slope, like members of the viol family. Many very old double basses have had their shoulders cut or sloped to aid playing with modern techniques. Before these modifications, the design of their shoulders was closer to instruments of the violin family.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The double bass is the only modern bowed string instrument that is tuned in fourths (like a viol), rather than fifths (see Tuning below). The instrument's exact lineage is still a matter of some debate, and the supposition that the double bass is a direct descendant of the viol family is one that has not been entirely resolved.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In his A New History of the Double Bass, Paul Brun asserts that the double bass has origins as the true bass of the violin family. He states that, while the exterior of the double bass may resemble the viola da gamba, the internal construction of the double bass is nearly identical to instruments in the violin family, and very different from the internal structure of viols.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Double bass professor Larry Hurst argues that the \"modern double bass is not a true member of either the violin or viol families\". He says that \"most likely its first general shape was that of a violone, the largest member of the viol family. Some of the earliest basses extant are violones, (including C-shaped sound holes) that have been fitted with modern trappings.\" Some existing instruments, such as those by Gasparo da Salò, were converted from 16th-century six-string contrabass violoni.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "There are two major approaches to the design outline shape of the double bass: the violin form (shown in the labelled picture in the construction section); and the viola da gamba form (shown in the header picture of this article). A third less common design, called the busetto shape, can also be found, as can the even more rare guitar or pear shape. The back of the instrument can vary from being a round, carved back similar to that of the violin, to a flat and angled back similar to the viol family.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The double bass features many parts that are similar to members of the violin family, including a wooden, carved bridge to support the strings, two f-holes, a tailpiece into which the ball ends of the strings are inserted (with the tailpiece anchored around the endpin mount), an ornamental scroll near the pegbox, a nut with grooves for each string at the junction of the fingerboard and the pegbox and a sturdy, thick sound post, which transmits the vibrations from the top of the instrument to the hollow body and supports the pressure of the string tension. Unlike the rest of the violin family, the double bass still reflects influences, and can be considered partly derived, from the viol family of instruments, in particular the violone, the lowest-pitched and largest bass member of the viol family. For example, the bass is tuned in fourths, like a viol, rather than in fifths, which is the standard in the violin group. Also, notice that the 'shoulders' meet the neck in a curve, rather than the sharp angle seen among violins. As with the other violin and viol family instruments that are played with a bow (and unlike mainly plucked or picked instruments like guitar), the double bass's bridge has an arc-like, curved shape. This is done because with bowed instruments, the player must be able to play individual strings. If the double bass were to have a flat bridge, it would be impossible to bow the A and D strings individually.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The double bass also differs from members of the violin family in that the shoulders are typically sloped and the back is often angled (both to allow easier access to the instrument, particularly in the upper range). Machine tuners are always fitted, in contrast to the rest of the violin family, where traditional wooden friction pegs are still the primary means of tuning. Lack of standardization in design means that one double bass can sound and look very different from another.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The double bass is closest in construction to violins, but has some notable similarities to the violone (\"large viol\"), the largest and lowest-pitched member of the viol family. Unlike the violone, however, the fingerboard of the double bass is unfretted, and the double bass has fewer strings (the violone, like most viols, generally had six strings, although some specimens had five or four). The fingerboard is made of ebony on high-quality instruments; on less expensive student instruments, other woods may be used and then painted or stained black (a process called \"ebonizing\"). The fingerboard is radiused using a curve, for the same reason that the bridge is curved: if the fingerboard and bridge were to be flat, then a bassist would not be able to bow the inner two strings individually. By using a curved bridge and a curved fingerboard, the bassist can align the bow with any of the four strings and play them individually. Unlike the violin and viola, but like the cello, the bass fingerboard is somewhat flattened out underneath the E string (the C string on cello), this is commonly known as a Romberg bevel. The vast majority of fingerboards cannot be adjusted by the performer; any adjustments must be made by a luthier. A very small number of expensive basses for professionals have adjustable fingerboards, in which a screw mechanism can be used to raise or lower the fingerboard height.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "An important distinction between the double bass and other members of the violin family is the construction of the pegbox and the tuning mechanism. While the violin, viola, and cello all use friction pegs for tuning adjustments (tightening and loosening the string tension to raise or lower the string's pitch), the double bass has metal machine heads and gears. One of the challenges with tuning pegs is that the friction between the wood peg and the peg hole may become insufficient to hold the peg in place, particularly if the peg hole become worn and enlarged. The key on the tuning machine of a double bass turns a metal worm, which drives a worm gear that winds the string. Turning the key in one direction tightens the string (thus raising its pitch); turning the key the opposite direction reduces the tension on the string (thus lowering its pitch). While this development makes fine tuners on the tailpiece (important for violin, viola and cello players, as their instruments use friction pegs for major pitch adjustments) unnecessary, a very small number of bassists use them nevertheless. One rationale for using fine tuners on bass is that for instruments with the low C extension, the pulley system for the long string may not effectively transfer turns of the key into changes of string tension/pitch. At the base of the double bass is a metal rod with a spiked or rubberized end called the endpin, which rests on the floor. This endpin is generally thicker and more robust than that of a cello, because of the greater mass of the instrument.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The materials most often used in double bass construction for fully carved basses (the type used by professional orchestra bassists and soloists) are maple (back, neck, ribs), spruce (top), and ebony (fingerboard, tailpiece). The tailpiece may be made from other types of wood or non-wood materials. Less expensive basses are typically constructed with laminated (plywood) tops, backs, and ribs, or are hybrid models produced with laminated backs and sides and carved solid wood tops. Some 2010-era lower- to mid-priced basses are made of willow, student models constructed of Fiberglass were produced in the mid-20th century, and some (typically fairly expensive) basses have been constructed of carbon fiber.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Laminated (plywood) basses, which are widely used in music schools, youth orchestras, and in popular and folk music settings (including rockabilly, psychobilly, blues, etc.), are very resistant to humidity and heat, as well to the physical abuse they are apt to encounter in a school environment (or, for blues and folk musicians, to the hazards of touring and performing in bars). Another option is the hybrid body bass, which has a laminated back and a carved or solid wood top. It is less costly and somewhat less fragile (at least regarding its back) than a fully carved bass.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The soundpost and bass bar are components of the internal construction. All the parts of a double bass are glued together, except the soundpost, bridge, and tailpiece, which are held in place by string tension (although the soundpost usually remains in place when the instrument's strings are loosened or removed, as long as the bass is kept on its back. Some luthiers recommend changing only one string at a time to reduce the risk of the soundpost falling). If the soundpost falls, a luthier is needed to put the soundpost back into position, as this must be done with tools inserted into the f-holes; moreover, the exact placement of the soundpost under the bridge is essential for the instrument to sound its best. Basic bridges are carved from a single piece of wood, which is customized to match the shape of the top of each instrument. The least expensive bridges on student instruments may be customized just by sanding the feet to match the shape of the instrument's top. A bridge on a professional bassist's instrument may be ornately carved by a luthier.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Professional bassists are more likely to have adjustable bridges, which have a metal screw mechanism. This enables the bassist to raise or lower the height of the strings to accommodate changing humidity or temperature conditions. The metal tuning machines are attached to the sides of the pegbox with metal screws. While tuning mechanisms generally differ from the higher-pitched orchestral stringed instruments, some basses have non-functional, ornamental tuning pegs projecting from the side of the pegbox, in imitation of the tuning pegs on a cello or violin.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Famous double bass makers come from around the world and often represent varied national characteristics. The most highly sought (and expensive) instruments come from Italy and include basses made by Giovanni Paolo Maggini, Gasparo da Salò, the Testore family (Carlo Antonio, Carlo Giuseppe, Gennaro, Giovanni, Paulo Antonio), Celestino Puolotti, and Matteo Goffriller. French and English basses from famous makers are also sought out by players.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Several manufacturers make travel instruments, which are double basses that have features which reduce the size of the instrument so that the instrument will meet airline travel requirements. Travel basses are designed for touring musicians. One type of travel bass has a much smaller body than normal, while still retaining all of the features needed for playing. While these smaller-body instruments appear similar to electric upright basses, the difference is that small-body travel basses still have a fairly large hollow acoustic sound chamber, while many EUBs are solid body, or only have a small hollow chamber. A second type of travel bass has a hinged or removable neck and a regular sized body. The hinged or removable neck makes the instrument smaller when it is packed for transportation.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The history of the double bass is tightly coupled to the development of string technology, as it was the advent of overwound gut strings, which first rendered the instrument more generally practicable, as wound or overwound strings attain low notes within a smaller overall string diameter than non-wound strings. Professor Larry Hurst argues that had \"it not been for the appearance of the overwound gut string in the 1650s, the double bass would surely have become extinct\", because thicknesses needed for regular gut strings made the lower-pitched strings almost unplayable and hindered the development of fluid, rapid playing in the lower register.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Prior to the 20th century, double bass strings were usually made of catgut; however, steel has largely replaced it, because steel strings hold their pitch better and yield more volume when played with the bow. Gut strings are also more vulnerable to changes of humidity and temperature, and break more easily than steel strings.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Gut strings are nowadays mostly used by bassists who perform in baroque ensembles, rockabilly bands, traditional blues bands, and bluegrass bands. In some cases, the low E and A are wound in silver, to give them added mass. Gut strings provide the dark, \"thumpy\" sound heard on 1940s and 1950s recordings. The late Jeff Sarli, a blues upright bassist, said that \"Starting in the 1950s, they began to reset the necks on basses for steel strings.\" Rockabilly and bluegrass bassists also prefer gut because it is much easier to perform the \"slapping\" upright bass style (in which the strings are percussively slapped and clicked against the fingerboard) with gut strings than with steel strings, because gut does not hurt the plucking fingers as much. A less expensive alternative to gut strings is nylon strings; the higher strings are pure nylon, and the lower strings are nylon wrapped in wire, to add more mass to the string, slowing the vibration, and thus facilitating lower pitches.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The change from gut to steel has also affected the instrument's playing technique over the last hundred years. Steel strings can be set up closer to the fingerboard and, additionally, strings can be played in higher positions on the lower strings and still produce clear tone. The classic 19th century Franz Simandl method does not use the low E string in higher positions because older gut strings, set up high over the fingerboard, could not produce clear tone in these higher positions. However, with modern steel strings, bassists can play with clear tone in higher positions on the low E and A strings, particularly when they use modern lighter-gauge, lower-tension steel strings.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The double bass bow comes in two distinct forms (shown below). The \"French\" or \"overhand\" bow is similar in shape and implementation to the bow used on the other members of the orchestral string instrument family, while the \"German\" or \"Butler\" bow is typically broader and shorter, and is held in a \"hand shake\" (or \"hacksaw\") position.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "These two bows provide different ways of moving the arm and distributing force and weight on the strings. Proponents of the French bow argue that it is more maneuverable, due to the angle at which the player holds the bow. Advocates of the German bow claim that it allows the player to apply more arm weight on the strings. The differences between the two, however, are minute for a proficient player, and modern players in major orchestras use both bows.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The German bow (sometimes called the Butler bow) is the older of the two designs. The design of the bow and the manner of holding it descend from the older viol instrument family. With older viols, before frogs had screw threads to tighten the bow, players held the bow with two fingers between the stick and the hair to maintain tension of the hair. Proponents of the use of German bow claim that the German bow is easier to use for heavy strokes that require a lot of power.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Compared to the French bow, the German bow has a taller frog, and the player holds it with the palm angled upwards, as with the upright members of the viol family. When held in the traditionally correct manner, the thumb applies the necessary power to generate the desired sound. The index finger meets the bow at the point where the frog meets the stick. The index finger also applies an upward torque to the frog when tilting the bow. The little finger (or \"pinky\") supports the frog from underneath, while the ring finger and middle finger rest in the space between the hair and the shaft.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The French bow was not widely popular until its adoption by 19th-century virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini. This style is more similar to the traditional bows of the smaller string family instruments. It is held as if the hand is resting by the side of the performer with the palm facing toward the bass. The thumb rests on the shaft of the bow, next to the frog while the other fingers drape on the other side of the bow. Various styles dictate the curve of the fingers and thumb, as do the style of piece; a more pronounced curve and lighter hold on the bow is used for virtuoso or more delicate pieces, while a flatter curve and sturdier grip on the bow sacrifices some power for easier control in strokes such as detaché, spiccato, and staccato.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Double bass bows vary in length, ranging from 60 to 75 cm (24–30 in). In general, a bass bow is shorter and heavier than a cello bow. Pernambuco, also known as Brazilwood, is regarded as an excellent quality stick material, but due to its scarcity and expense, other materials are increasingly being used. Inexpensive student bows may be constructed of solid fiberglass, which makes the bow much lighter than a wooden bow (even too light to produce a good tone, in some cases). Student bows may also be made of the less valuable varieties of brazilwood. Snakewood and carbon fiber are also used in bows of a variety of different qualities. The frog of the double bass bow is usually made out of ebony, although snakewood and buffalo horn are used by some luthiers. The frog is movable, as it can be tightened or loosened with a knob (like all violin family bows). The bow is loosened at the end of a practice session or performance. The bow is tightened before playing, until it reaches a tautness that is preferred by the player. The frog on a quality bow is decorated with mother of pearl inlay.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Bows have a leather wrapping on the wooden part of the bow near the frog. Along with the leather wrapping, there is also a wire wrapping, made of gold or silver in quality bows. The hair is usually horsehair. Part of the regular maintenance of a bow is having the bow \"rehaired\" by a luthier with fresh horsehair and having the leather and wire wrapping replaced. The double bass bow is strung with either white or black horsehair, or a combination of the two (known as \"salt and pepper\"), as opposed to the customary white horsehair used on the bows of other string instruments. Some bassists argue that the slightly rougher black hair \"grabs\" the heavier, lower strings better. As well, some bassists and luthiers believe that it is easier to produce a smoother sound with the white variety. Red hair (chestnut) is also used by some bassists. Some of the lowest-quality, lowest cost student bows are made with synthetic hair. Synthetic hair does not have the tiny \"barbs\" that real horsehair has, so it does not \"grip\" the string well or take rosin well.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "String players apply rosin to the bow hair so it \"grips\" the string and makes it vibrate. Double bass rosin is generally softer and stickier than violin rosin to allow the hair to grab the thicker strings better, but players use a wide variety of rosins that vary from quite hard (like violin rosin) to quite soft, depending on the weather, the humidity, and the preference of the player. The amount used generally depends on the type of music being performed as well as the personal preferences of the player. Bassists may apply more rosin in works for large orchestra (e.g., Brahms symphonies) than for delicate chamber works. Some brands of rosin, such as Wiedoeft or Pop's double bass rosin, are softer and more prone to melting in hot weather. Other brands, such as Carlsson or Nyman Harts double bass rosin, are harder and less prone to melting.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Owing to their relatively small diameters, the strings themselves do not move much air and therefore cannot produce much sound on their own. The vibrational energy of the strings must somehow be transferred to the surrounding air. To do this, the strings vibrate the bridge and this in turn vibrates the top surface. Very small amplitude but relatively large force variations (due to the cyclically varying tension in the vibrating string) at the bridge are transformed to larger amplitude ones by combination of bridge and body of the bass. The bridge transforms the high force, small amplitude vibrations to lower force higher amplitude vibrations on the top of the bass body. The top is connected to the back by means of a sound post, so the back also vibrates. Both the front and back transmit the vibrations to the air and act to match the impedance of the vibrating string to the acoustic impedance of the air.",
"title": "Mechanism of sound production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Because the acoustic bass is a non-fretted instrument, any string vibration due to plucking or bowing will cause an audible sound due to the strings vibrating against the fingerboard near to the fingered position. This buzzing sound gives the note its character.",
"title": "Specific sound and tone production mechanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The lowest note of a double bass is an E1 (on standard four-string basses) at approximately 41 Hz or a C1 (≈33 Hz), or sometimes B0 (≈31 Hz), when five strings are used. This is within about an octave above the lowest frequency that the average human ear can perceive as a distinctive pitch. The top of the instrument's fingerboard range is typically near D5, two octaves and a fifth above the open pitch of the G string (G2), as shown in the range illustration found at the head of this article. Playing beyond the end of the fingerboard can be accomplished by pulling the string slightly to the side.",
"title": "Pitch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Double bass symphony parts sometimes indicate that the performer should play harmonics (also called flageolet tones), in which the bassist lightly touches the string–without pressing it onto the fingerboard in the usual fashion–in the location of a note and then plucks or bows the note. Bowed harmonics are used in contemporary music for their \"glassy\" sound. Both natural harmonics and artificial harmonics, where the thumb stops the note and the octave or other harmonic is activated by lightly touching the string at the relative node point, extend the instrument's range considerably. Natural and artificial harmonics are used in plenty of virtuoso concertos for the double bass.",
"title": "Pitch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Orchestral parts from the standard Classical repertoire rarely demand the double bass exceed a two-octave and a minor third range, from E1 to G3, with occasional A3s appearing in the standard repertoire (an exception to this rule is Orff's Carmina Burana, which calls for three octaves and a perfect fourth). The upper limit of this range is extended a great deal for 20th- and 21st-century orchestral parts (e.g., Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite (c.1933) bass solo, which calls for notes as high as D4 and E♭4). The upper range a virtuoso solo player can achieve using natural and artificial harmonics is hard to define, as it depends on the skill of the particular player. The high harmonic in the range illustration found at the head of this article may be taken as representative rather than normative.",
"title": "Pitch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Five-string instruments have an additional string, typically tuned to a low B below the E string (B0). On rare occasions, a higher string is added instead, tuned to the C above the G string (C3). Four-string instruments may feature the C extension extending the range of the E string downwards to C1 (sometimes B0).",
"title": "Pitch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Traditionally, the double bass is a transposing instrument. Since much of the double bass's range lies below the standard bass clef, it is notated an octave higher than it sounds to avoid having to use excessive ledger lines below the staff. Thus, when double bass players and cellists are playing from a combined bass-cello part, as used in many Mozart and Haydn symphonies, they will play in octaves, with the basses one octave below the cellos. This transposition applies even when bass players are reading the tenor and treble clef (which are used in solo playing and some orchestral parts). The tenor clef is also used by composers for cello and low brass parts. The use of tenor or treble clef avoids excessive ledger lines above the staff when notating the instrument's upper range. Other notation traditions exist. Italian solo music is typically written at the sounding pitch, and the \"old\" German method sounded an octave below where notation except in the treble clef, where the music was written at pitch.",
"title": "Pitch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The double bass is generally tuned in fourths, in contrast to other members of the orchestral string family, which are tuned in fifths (for example, the violin's four strings are, from lowest-pitched to highest-pitched: G–D–A–E). The standard tuning (lowest-pitched to highest-pitched) for bass is E–A–D–G, starting from E below second low C (concert pitch). This is the same as the standard tuning of a bass guitar and is one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of standard guitar tuning. Prior to the 19th-century, many double basses had only three strings; \"Giovanni Bottesini (1821–1889) favored the three-stringed instrument popular in Italy at the time\", because \"the three-stringed instrument [was viewed as] being more sonorous\". Many cobla bands in Catalonia still have players using traditional three-string double basses tuned A–D–G.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Throughout classical repertoire, there are notes that fall below the range of a standard double bass. Notes below low E appear regularly in the double bass parts found in later arrangements and interpretations of Baroque music. In the Classical era, the double bass typically doubled the cello part an octave below, occasionally requiring descent to C below the E of the four-string double bass. In the Romantic era and the 20th century, composers such as Wagner, Mahler, Busoni and Prokofiev also requested notes below the low E.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "There are several methods for making these notes available to the player. Players with standard double basses (E–A–D–G) may play the notes below \"E\" an octave higher or if this sounds awkward, the entire passage may be transposed up an octave. The player may tune the low E string down to the lowest note required in the piece: D or C. Four-string basses may be fitted with a \"low-C extension\" (see below). Or the player may employ a five-string instrument, with the additional lower string tuned to C, or (more commonly in modern times) B, three octaves and a semitone below middle C. Several major European orchestras use basses with a fifth string.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Most professional orchestral players use four-string double basses with a C extension. This is an extra section of fingerboard mounted on the head of the bass. It extends the fingerboard under the lowest string and gives an additional four semitones of downward range. The lowest string is typically tuned down to C1, an octave below the lowest note on the cello (as it is quite common for a bass part to double the cello part an octave lower). More rarely this string may be tuned to a low B0, as a few works in the orchestral repertoire call for such a B, such as Respighi's The Pines of Rome. In rare cases, some players have a low B extension, which has B as its lowest note. There are several varieties of extensions:",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In the simplest mechanical extensions, there are no mechanical aids attached to the fingerboard extension except a locking nut or \"gate\" for the E note. To play the extension notes, the player reaches back over the area under the scroll to press the string to the fingerboard. The advantage of this \"fingered\" extension is that the player can adjust the intonation of all of the stopped notes on the extension, and there are no mechanical noises from metal keys and levers. The disadvantage of the \"fingered\" extension is that it can be hard to perform rapid alternations between low notes on the extension and notes on the regular fingerboard, such as a bassline that quickly alternates between G1 and D1.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The simplest type of mechanical aid is the use of wooden \"fingers\" or \"gates\" that can be closed to press the string down and fret the C♯, D, E♭, or E notes. This system is particularly useful for basslines that have a repeating pedal point such as a low D because once the note is locked in place with the mechanical finger the lowest string sounds a different note when played open.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The most complicated mechanical aid for use with extensions is the mechanical lever system nicknamed the machine. This lever system, which superficially resembles the keying mechanism of reed instruments such as the bassoon, mounts levers beside the regular fingerboard (near the nut, on the E-string side), which remotely activate metal \"fingers\" on the extension fingerboard. The most expensive metal lever systems also give the player the ability to \"lock\" down notes on the extension fingerboard, as with the wooden \"finger\" system. One criticism of these devices is that they may lead to unwanted metallic clicking noises.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Once a mechanical \"finger\" of the wooden \"finger\" extension or the metal \"finger\" machine extension is locked down or depressed, it is not easy to make microtonal pitch adjustments or glissando effects, as is possible with a hand-fingered extension.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Five-string basses, in which the lowest string is normally B0, may use either a two semitone extension, providing a low A, or the very rare low G extension.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "A small number of bass players tune their strings in fifths, like a cello but an octave lower (C1–G1–D2–A2 low to high). This tuning was used by the jazz player Red Mitchell and is used by some classical players, notably the Canadian bassist Joel Quarrington. Advocates of tuning the bass in fifths point out that all of the other orchestral strings are tuned in fifths (violin, viola, and cello), so this puts the bass in the same tuning approach. Fifth tuning provides a bassist with a wider range of pitch than a standard E–A–D–G bass, as it ranges (without an extension) from C1 to A2. Some players who use fifths tuning who play a five-string bass use an additional high E3 string (thus, from lowest to highest: C–G–D–A–E). Some fifth tuning bassists who only have a four string instrument and who are mainly performing soloistic works use the G–D–A–E tuning, thus omitting the low C string but gaining a high E. Some fifth tuning bassists who use a five-string use a smaller scale instrument, thus making fingering somewhat easier. The Berlioz–Strauss Treatise on Instrumentation (first published in 1844) states that \"A good orchestra should have several four-string double-basses, some of them tuned in fifths and thirds.\" The book then shows a tuning of E1–G1–D2–A2) from bottom to top string. \"Together with the other double-basses tuned in fourths, a combination of open strings would be available, which would greatly increase the sonority of the orchestra.\"",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In classical solo playing the double bass is usually tuned a whole tone higher (F♯1–B1–E2–A2). This higher tuning is called \"solo tuning\", whereas the regular tuning is known as \"orchestral tuning\". Solo tuning strings are generally thinner than regular strings. String tension differs so much between solo and orchestral tuning that a different set of strings is often employed that has a lighter gauge. Strings are always labelled for either solo or orchestral tuning and published solo music is arranged for either solo or orchestral tuning. Some popular solos and concerti, such as the Koussevitsky Concerto are available in both solo and orchestral tuning arrangements. Solo tuning strings can be tuned down a tone to play in orchestra pitch, but the strings often lack projection in orchestral tuning and their pitch may be unstable.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Some contemporary composers specify highly specialized scordatura (intentionally changing the tuning of the open strings). Changing the pitch of the open strings makes different notes available as pedal points and harmonics. Berio, for example, asks the player to tune their strings E1–G♯1–D2–G2 in Sequenza XIVb and Scelsi asks for both F1–A1–D2–E2 and F1–A1–F2–E2 in Nuits. A variant and much less-commonly used form of solo tuning used in some Eastern European countries is (A1–D2–G2–C3), which omits the low E string from orchestral tuning and then adds a high C string. The tololoche in Mexico (a smaller variant of the double bass) also uses the A-D-G-C tuning. Some bassists with five-string basses use a high C3 string as the fifth string, instead of a low B0 string. Adding the high C string facilitates the performance of solo repertoire with a high tessitura (range). Another option is to utilize both a low C (or low B) extension and a high C string.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "When choosing a bass with a fifth string, the player may decide between adding a higher-pitched string (a high C string) or a lower-pitched string (typically a low B). To accommodate the additional fifth string, the fingerboard is usually slightly widened, and the top slightly thicker, to handle the increased tension. Most five-string basses are therefore larger in size than a standard four-string bass. Some five-stringed instruments are converted four-string instruments. Because these do not have wider fingerboards, some players find them more difficult to finger and bow. Converted four-string basses usually require either a new, thicker top, or lighter strings to compensate for the increased tension.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The six-string double bass has both a high C and a low B, making it very useful, and it is becoming more practical after several updates. It is ideal for solo and orchestral playing because it has a more playable range. This can be achieved on a six-string violone in D by restringing it with double bass strings, making the tuning B0–E1–A1–D2–G2–C3.",
"title": "Tuning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Double bassists either stand or sit to play the instrument. The instrument height is set by adjusting the endpin such that the player can reach the desired playing zones of the strings with bow or plucking hand. Bassists who stand and bow sometimes set the endpin by aligning the first finger in either first or half position with eye level, although there is little standardization in this regard. Players who sit generally use a stool about the height of the player's trousers inseam length.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Traditionally, double bassists stood to play solo and sat to play in the orchestra or opera pit. Now, it is unusual for a player to be equally proficient in both positions, so some soloists sit (as with Joel Quarrington, Jeff Bradetich, Thierry Barbé, and others) and some orchestral bassists stand.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "When playing in the instrument's upper range (above G3, the G below middle C), the player shifts the hand from behind the neck and flattens it out, using the side of the thumb to press down the string. This technique—also used on the cello—is called thumb position. While playing in thumb position, few players use the fourth (little) finger, as it is usually too weak to produce reliable tone (this is also true for cellists), although some extreme chords or extended techniques, especially in contemporary music, may require its use.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Rockabilly style can be very demanding on the plucking hand, due to rockabilly's use of \"slapping\" on the fingerboard. Performing on bass can be physically demanding, because the strings are under relatively high tension. Also, the space between notes on the fingerboard is large, due to scale length and string spacing, so players must hold their fingers apart for the notes in the lower positions and shift positions frequently to play basslines. As with all non-fretted string instruments, performers must learn to place their fingers precisely to produce the correct pitch. For bassists with shorter arms or smaller hands, the large spaces between pitches may present a significant challenge, especially in the lowest range, where the spaces between notes are largest. However, the increased use of playing techniques such as thumb position and modifications to the bass, such as the use of lighter-gauge strings at lower tension, have eased the difficulty of playing the instrument.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Bass parts have relatively fewer fast passages, double stops, or large jumps in range. These parts are usually given to the cello section, since the cello is a smaller instrument on which these techniques are more easily performed.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Until the 1990s, child-sized double basses were not widely available, and the large size of the bass prevented children from playing the instrument until they grew to a height and hand size that allowed them to play a 3⁄4-size model (the most common size). Starting in the 1990s, smaller 1⁄2, 1⁄4, 1⁄8, and even 1⁄16-sized instruments became more widely available, so children could start younger.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Despite the size of the instrument, it is not as loud as many other instruments, due to its low musical pitch. In a large orchestra, usually between four and eight bassists play the same bassline in unison to produce enough volume. In the largest orchestras, bass sections may have as many as ten or twelve players, but modern budget constraints make bass sections this large unusual.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "When writing solo passages for the bass in orchestral or chamber music, composers typically ensure the orchestration is light so it does not obscure the bass. While amplification is rarely used in classical music, in some cases where a bass soloist performs a concerto with a full orchestra, subtle amplification called acoustic enhancement may be used. The use of microphones and amplifiers in a classical setting has led to debate within the classical community, as \"...purists maintain that the natural acoustic sound of [Classical] voices [or] instruments in a given hall should not be altered\".",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In many genres, such as jazz and blues, players use amplification via a specialized amplifier and loudspeakers. A piezoelectric pickup connects to the amplifier with a 1⁄4-inch cable. Bluegrass and jazz players typically use less amplification than blues, psychobilly, or jam band players. In the latter cases, high overall volume from other amplifiers and instruments may cause unwanted acoustic feedback, a problem exacerbated by the bass's large surface area and interior volume. The feedback problem has led to technological fixes like electronic feedback eliminator devices (essentially an automated notch filter that identifies and reduces frequencies where feedback occurs) and instruments like the electric upright bass, which has playing characteristics like the double bass but usually little or no soundbox, which makes feedback less likely. Some bassists reduce the problem of feedback by lowering their onstage volume or playing further away from their bass amp speakers.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In rockabilly and psychobilly, percussively slapping the strings against the fingerboard is an important part of the bass playing style. Since piezoelectric pickups are not good at reproducing the sounds of strings being slapped against the fingerboard, bassists in these genres often use both piezoelectric pickups (for the low bass tone) and a miniature condenser mic (to pick up the percussive slapping sounds). These two signals are blended together using a simple mixer before the signal is sent to the bass amp.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The double bass's large size and relative fragility make it cumbersome to handle and transport. Most bassists use soft cases, referred to as gig bags, to protect the instrument during transport. These range from inexpensive, thin unpadded cases used by students (which only protect against scratches and rain) to thickly padded versions for professional players, which also protect against bumps and impacts. Some bassists carry their bow in a hard bow case; more expensive bass cases have a large pocket for a bow case. Players also may use a small cart and end pin-attached wheels to move the bass. Some higher-priced padded cases have wheels attached to the case. Another option found in higher-priced padded cases are backpack straps, to make it easier to carry the instrument.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Hard flight cases have cushioned interiors and tough exteriors of carbon fiber, graphite, fiberglass, or Kevlar. The cost of good hard cases–several thousand US dollars–and the high airline fees for shipping them tend to limit their use to touring professionals.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Double bass players use various accessories to help them to perform and rehearse. Three types of mutes are used in orchestral music: a wooden mute that slides onto the bridge, a rubber mute that attaches to the bridge and a wire device with brass weights that fits onto the bridge. The player uses the mute when the Italian instruction con sordino (\"with mute\") appears in the bass part, and removes it in response to the instruction senza sordino (\"without mute\"). With the mute on, the tone of the bass is quieter, darker, and more somber. Bowed bass parts with a mute can have a nasal tone. Players use a third type of mute, a heavy rubber practice mute, to practice quietly without disturbing others (e.g., in a hotel room).",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "A quiver is an accessory for holding the bow. It is often made of leather and it attaches to the bridge and tailpiece with ties or straps. It is used to hold the bow while a player plays pizzicato parts.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "A wolf tone eliminator is used to lessen unwanted sympathetic vibrations in the part of a string between the bridge and the tailpiece which can cause tone problems for certain notes. It is a rubber tube cut down the side that is used with a cylindrical metal sleeve which also has a slot on the side. The metal cylinder has a screw and a nut that fastens the device to the string. Different placements of the cylinder along the string influence or eliminate the frequency at which the wolf tone occurs. It is essentially an attenuator that slightly shifts the natural frequency of the string (and/or instrument body) cutting down on the reverberation. The wolf tone occurs because the strings below the bridge sometimes resonate at pitches close to notes on the playing part of the string. When the intended note makes the below-the-bridge string vibrate sympathetically, a dissonant \"wolf note\" or \"wolf tone\" can occur. In some cases, the wolf tone is strong enough to cause an audible \"beating\" sound. The wolf tone often occurs with the note G♯ on the bass.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In orchestra, instruments tune to an A played by the oboist. Due to the three-octave gap between the oboist's tuning A and the open A string on the bass (for example, in an orchestra that tunes to 440 Hz, the oboist plays an A4 at 440 Hz and the open A1 of the bass is 55 Hz) it can be difficult to tune the bass by ear during the short period that the oboist plays the tuning note. Violinists, on the other hand, tune their A string to the same frequency as the oboist's tuning note. There is a method commonly used to tune a double bass in this context by playing the A harmonic on the D string (which is only an octave below the oboe A) and then matching the harmonics of the other strings. However, this method is not foolproof, since some basses' harmonics are not perfectly in tune with the open strings. To ensure the bass is in tune, some bassists use an electronic tuner that indicates pitch on a small display. Bassists who play in styles that use a bass amp, such as blues, rockabilly, or jazz, may use a stompbox-format electronic tuner, which mutes the bass pickup during tuning.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "A double bass stand is used to hold the instrument in place and raise it a few inches off the ground. A wide variety of stands are available, and there is no one common design.",
"title": "Playing and performance considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The double bass as a solo instrument enjoyed a period of popularity during the 18th century and many of the most popular composers from that era wrote pieces for the double bass. The double bass, then often referred to as the Violone, used different tunings from region to region. The \"Viennese tuning\" (A1–D2–F♯2–A2) was popular, and in some cases a fifth string or even sixth string was added (F1–A1–D2–F♯2–A2). The popularity of the instrument is documented in Leopold Mozart's second edition of his Violinschule, where he writes \"One can bring forth difficult passages easier with the five-string violone, and I heard unusually beautiful performances of concertos, trios, solos, etc.\"",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The earliest known concerto for double bass was written by Joseph Haydn c.1763, and is presumed lost in a fire at the Eisenstadt library. The earliest known existing concertos are by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, who composed two concertos for the double bass and a Sinfonia Concertante for viola and double bass. Other composers that have written concertos from this period include Johann Baptist Wanhal, Franz Anton Hoffmeister (3 concertos), Leopold Kozeluch, Anton Zimmermann, Antonio Capuzzi, Wenzel Pichl (2 concertos), and Johannes Matthias Sperger (18 concertos). While many of these names were leading figures to the music public of their time, they are generally unknown by contemporary audiences. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's concert aria, Per questa bella mano, K.612 for bass, double bass obbligato, and orchestra contains impressive writing for solo double bass of that period. It remains popular among both singers and double bassists today.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The double bass eventually evolved to fit the needs of orchestras that required lower notes and a louder sound. The leading double bassists from the mid-to-late 18th century, such as Josef Kämpfer, Friedrich Pischelberger, and Johannes Mathias Sperger employed the \"Viennese\" tuning. Bassist Johann Hindle (1792–1862), who composed a concerto for the double bass, pioneered tuning the bass in fourths, which marked a turning point for the double bass and its role in solo works. Bassist Domenico Dragonetti was a prominent musical figure and an acquaintance of Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven. His playing was known all the way from his homeland Italy to the Tsardom of Russia and he found a prominent place performing in concerts with the Philharmonic Society of London. Beethoven's friendship with Dragonetti may have inspired him to write difficult, separate parts for the double bass in his symphonies, such as the impressive passages in the third movement of the Fifth Symphony, the second movement of the Seventh Symphony, and last movement of the Ninth Symphony. These parts do not double the cello part.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Dragonetti wrote ten concertos for the double bass and many solo works for bass and piano. During Rossini's stay in London in the summer of 1824, he composed his popular Duetto for cello and double bass for Dragonetti and the cellist David Salomons. Dragonetti frequently played on a three string double bass tuned G–D–A from top to bottom. The use of only the top three strings was popular for bass soloists and principal bassists in orchestras in the 19th century, because it reduced the pressure on the wooden top of the bass, which was thought to create a more resonant sound. As well, the low E-strings used during the 19th century were thick cords made of gut, which were difficult to tune and play.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In the 19th century, the opera conductor, composer, and bassist Giovanni Bottesini was considered the \"Paganini of the double bass\" of his time, a reference to the violin virtuoso and composer. Bottesini's bass concertos were written in the popular Italian opera style of the 19th century, which exploit the double bass in a way that was not seen beforehand. They require virtuosic runs and great leaps to the highest registers of the instrument, even into the realm of natural and artificial harmonics. Many 19th century and early 20th century bassists considered these compositions unplayable, but in the 2000s, they are frequently performed. During the same time, a prominent school of bass players in the Czech region arose, which included Franz Simandl, Theodore Albin Findeisen, Josef Hrabe, Ludwig Manoly, and Adolf Mišek. Simandl and Hrabe were also pedagogues whose method books and studies remain in use in the 2000s.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "The leading figure of the double bass in the early 20th century was Serge Koussevitzky, best known as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who popularized the double bass in modern times as a solo instrument. Because of improvements to the double bass with steel strings and better set-ups, the bass is now played at a more advanced level than ever before and more and more composers have written works for the double bass. In the mid-century and in the following decades, many new concerti were written for the double bass, including Nikos Skalkottas's Concerto (1942), Eduard Tubin's Concerto (1948), Lars-Erik Larsson's Concertino (1957), Gunther Schuller's Concerto (1962), Hans Werner Henze's Concerto (1966) and Frank Proto's Concerto No. 1 (1968).",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The Solo For Contrabass is one of the parts of John Cage's Concert For Piano And Orchestra and can be played as a solo, or with any of the other parts both orchestral and/or piano. Similarly, his solo contrabass parts for the orchestral work Atlas Eclipticalis can also be performed as solos. Cage's indeterminate works such as Variations I, Variations II, Fontana Mix, Cartridge Music et al. can be arranged for a solo contrabassist. His work 26.1.1499 for a String Player is often realized by a solo contrabass player, although it can also be played by a violinist, violist, or cellist.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "From the 1960s through the end of the century Gary Karr was the leading proponent of the double bass as a solo instrument and was active in commissioning or having hundreds of new works and concerti written especially for him. Karr was given Koussevitzky's famous solo double bass by Olga Koussevitsky and played it in concerts around the world for 40 years before, in turn, giving the instrument to the International Society of Bassists for talented soloists to use in concert. Another important performer in this period, Bertram Turetzky, commissioned and premiered more than 300 double bass works.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "In the 1970s, 1980 and 1990s, new concerti included Nino Rota's Divertimento for Double Bass and Orchestra (1973), Alan Ridout's concerto for double bass and strings (1974), Jean Françaix's Concerto (1975), Frank Proto's Concerto No. 2, Einojuhani Rautavaara's Angel of Dusk (1980), Gian Carlo Menotti's Concerto (1983), Christopher Rouse's Concerto (1985), Henry Brant's Ghost Nets (1988) and Frank Proto's \"Carmen Fantasy for Double Bass and Orchestra\" (1991) and \"Four Scenes after Picasso\" Concerto No. 3 (1997). Peter Maxwell Davies' lyrical Strathclyde Concerto No. 7, for double bass and orchestra, dates from 1992.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In the first decade of the 21st century, new concerti include Frank Proto's \"Nine Variants on Paganini\" (2002), Kalevi Aho's Concerto (2005), John Harbison's Concerto for Bass Viol (2006), André Previn's Double Concerto for violin, double bass, and orchestra (2007) and John Woolrich's To the Silver Bow, for double bass, viola and strings (2014).",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Reinhold Glière wrote an Intermezzo and Tarantella for double bass and piano, Op. 9, No. 1 and No. 2 and a Praeludium and Scherzo for double bass and piano, Op. 32 No. 1 and No. 2. Paul Hindemith wrote a rhythmically challenging Double Bass Sonata in 1949. Frank Proto wrote his Sonata \"1963\" for Double Bass and Piano. In the Soviet Union, Mieczysław Weinberg wrote his Sonata No. 1 for double bass solo in 1971. Giacinto Scelsi wrote two double bass pieces called Nuits in 1972, and then in 1976, he wrote Maknongan, a piece for any low-voiced instrument, such as double bass, contrabassoon, or tuba. Vincent Persichetti wrote solo works—which he called \"Parables\"—for many instruments. He wrote Parable XVII for Double Bass, Op. 131 in 1974. Sofia Gubaidulina penned a Sonata for double bass and piano in 1975. In 1976 American minimalist composer Tom Johnson wrote \"Failing – a very difficult piece for solo string bass\" in which the player has to perform an extremely virtuosic solo on the bass whilst simultaneously reciting a text which says how very difficult the piece is and how unlikely he or she is to successfully complete the performance without making a mistake.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "In 1977 Dutch-Hungarian composer Geza Frid wrote a set of variations on The Elephant from Saint-Saëns' Le Carnaval des Animaux for scordatura Double Bass and string orchestra. In 1987 Lowell Liebermann wrote his Sonata for Contrabass and Piano Op. 24. Fernando Grillo wrote the \"Suite No. 1\" for double bass (1983/2005). Jacob Druckman wrote a piece for solo double bass entitled Valentine. US double bass soloist and composer Bertram Turetzky (born 1933) has performed and recorded more than 300 pieces written by and for him. He writes chamber music, baroque music, classical, jazz, renaissance music, improvisational music and world music",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "US minimalist composer Philip Glass wrote a prelude focused on the lower register that he scored for timpani and double bass. Italian composer Sylvano Bussotti, whose composing career spans from the 1930s to the first decade of the 21st century, wrote a solo work for bass in 1983 entitled Naked Angel Face per contrabbasso. Fellow Italian composer Franco Donatoni wrote a piece called Lem for contrabbasso in the same year. In 1989, French composer Pascal Dusapin (born 1955) wrote a solo piece called In et Out for double bass. In 1996, the Sorbonne-trained Lebanese composer Karim Haddad composed Ce qui dort dans l'ombre sacrée (\"He who sleeps in the sacred shadows\") for Radio France's Presence Festival. Renaud Garcia-Fons (born 1962) is a French double bass player and composer, notable for drawing on jazz, folk, and Asian music for recordings of his pieces like Oriental Bass (1997).",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Two significant recent works written for solo bass include, Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms No.11 for double bass and electronic sounds and Elliott Carter's Figment III, for solo double bass. The German composer Gerhard Stäbler wrote Co-wie Kobalt (1989–90), \"...a music for double bass solo and grand orchestra\". Charles Wuorinen added several important works to the repertoire, Spinoff trio for double bass, violin and conga drums, and Trio for Bass Instruments double bass, tuba and bass trombone, and in 2007 Synaxis for double bass, horn, oboe and clarinet with timpani and strings. The suite \"Seven Screen Shots\" for double bass and piano (2005) by Ukrainian composer Alexander Shchetynsky has a solo bass part that includes many unconventional methods of playing. The German composer Claus Kühnl wrote Offene Weite / Open Expanse (1998) and Nachtschwarzes Meer, ringsum… (2005) for double bass and piano.In 1997 Joel Quarrington commissioned the American / Canadian composer Raymond Luedeke to write his \"Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra\", a piece he performed with The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, and, in a version for small orchestra, with The Nova Scotia Symphony Orchestra. Composer Raymond Luedeke also composed a work for double bass, flute, and viola with narration, \"The Book of Questions\", with text by Pablo Neruda.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In 2004 Italian double bassist and composer Stefano Scodanibbio made a double bass arrangement of Luciano Berio's 2002 solo cello work Sequenza XIV with the new title Sequenza XIVb.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Since there is no established instrumental ensemble that includes the double bass, its use in chamber music has not been as exhaustive as the literature for ensembles such as the string quartet or piano trio. Despite this, there is a substantial number of chamber works that incorporate the double bass in both small and large ensembles.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "There is a small body of works written for piano quintet with the instrumentation of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. The most famous is Franz Schubert's Piano Quintet in A major, known as \"The Trout Quintet\" for its set of variations in the fourth movement of Schubert's Die Forelle. Other works for this instrumentation written from roughly the same period include those by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, George Onslow, Jan Ladislav Dussek, Louise Farrenc, Ferdinand Ries, Franz Limmer, Johann Baptist Cramer, and Hermann Goetz. Later composers who wrote chamber works for this quintet include Ralph Vaughan Williams, Colin Matthews, Jon Deak, Frank Proto, and John Woolrich. Slightly larger sextets written for piano, string quartet, and double bass have been written by Felix Mendelssohn, Mikhail Glinka, Richard Wernick, and Charles Ives.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In the genre of string quintets, there are a few works for string quartet with double bass. Antonín Dvořák's String Quintet in G major, Op.77 and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Serenade in G major, K.525 (\"Eine kleine Nachtmusik\") are the most popular pieces in this repertoire, along with works by Miguel del Aguila (Nostalgica for string quartet and bass), Darius Milhaud, Luigi Boccherini (3 quintets), Harold Shapero, and Paul Hindemith. Another example is Alistair Hinton's String Quintet (1969–77), which also includes a major part for solo soprano; at almost 170 minutes in duration, it is almost certainly the largest such work in the repertoire.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Slightly smaller string works with the double bass include six string sonatas by Gioachino Rossini, for two violins, cello, and double bass written at the age of twelve over the course of three days in 1804. These remain his most famous instrumental works and have also been adapted for wind quartet. Rossini and Dragonetti composed duos for cello and double bass, as did Johannes Matthias Sperger, a major soloist on the \"Viennese\" tuning instrument of the 18th century. Franz Anton Hoffmeister wrote four String Quartets for Solo Double Bass, Violin, Viola, and Cello in D Major. Frank Proto has written a Trio for Violin, Viola and Double Bass (1974), 2 Duos for Violin and Double Bass (1967 and 2005), and The Games of October for Oboe/English Horn and Double Bass (1991).",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Larger works that incorporate the double bass include Beethoven's Septet in E♭ major, Op. 20, one of his most famous pieces during his lifetime, which consists of clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and bass. When the clarinetist Ferdinand Troyer commissioned a work from Franz Schubert for similar forces, he added one more violin for his Octet in F major, D.803. Paul Hindemith used the same instrumentation as Schubert for his own Octet. In the realm of even larger works, Mozart included the double bass in addition to 12 wind instruments for his \"Gran Partita\" Serenade, K.361 and Martinů used the double bass in his nonet for wind quintet, violin, viola, cello and double bass.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Other examples of chamber works that use the double bass in mixed ensembles include Sergei Prokofiev's Quintet in G minor, Op. 39 for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass; Miguel del Aguila's Malambo for bass flute and piano and for string quartet, bass and bassoon; Erwin Schulhoff's Concertino for flute/piccolo, viola, and double bass; Frank Proto's Afro-American Fragments for bass clarinet, cello, double bass and narrator and Sextet for clarinet and strings; Fred Lerdahl's Waltzes for violin, viola, cello, and double bass; Mohammed Fairouz's Litany for double bass and wind quartet; Mario Davidovsky's Festino for guitar, viola, cello, and double bass; and Iannis Xenakis's Morsima-Amorsima for piano, violin, cello, and double bass. There are also new music ensembles that utilize the double bass such as Time for Three and PROJECT Trio.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "In the baroque and classical periods, composers typically had the double bass double the cello part in orchestral passages. A notable exception is Haydn, who composed solo passages for the double bass in his Symphonies No. 6 Le Matin, No. 7 Le midi, No. 8 Le Soir, No. 31 Horn Signal, and No. 45 Farewell—but who otherwise grouped bass and cello parts together. Beethoven paved the way for separate double bass parts, which became more common in the romantic era. The scherzo and trio from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony are famous orchestral excerpts, as is the recitative at the beginning of the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In many nineteenth century symphonies and concertos, the typical impact of separate bass and cello parts was that bass parts became simpler and cello parts got the melodic lines and rapid passage work.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "A double bass section of a modern orchestra typically uses eight double bassists, usually in unison. Smaller orchestras may have four double basses, and in exceptional cases, bass sections may have as many as ten members. If some double bassists have low C extensions, and some have regular (low E) basses, those with the low C extensions may play some passages an octave below the regular double basses. Also, some composers write divided (divisi) parts for the basses, where upper and lower parts in the music are often assigned to \"outside\" (nearer the audience) and \"inside\" players. Composers writing divisi parts for bass often write perfect intervals, such as octaves and fifths, but in some cases use thirds and sixths.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Where a composition calls for a solo bass part, the principal bass invariably plays that part. The section leader (or principal) also determines the bowings, often based on bowings set out by the concertmaster. In some cases, the principal bass may use a slightly different bowing than the concertmaster, to accommodate the requirements of playing bass. The principal bass also leads entrances for the bass section, typically by lifting the bow or plucking hand before the entrance or indicating the entrance with the head, to ensure the section starts together. Major professional orchestras typically have an assistant principal bass player, who plays solos and leads the bass section if the principal is absent.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "While orchestral bass solos are somewhat rare, there are some notable examples. Johannes Brahms, whose father was a double bass player, wrote many difficult and prominent parts for the double bass in his symphonies. Richard Strauss assigned the double bass daring parts, and his symphonic poems and operas stretch the instrument to its limits. \"The Elephant\" from Camille Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals is a satirical portrait of the double bass, and American virtuoso Gary Karr made his televised debut playing \"The Swan\" (originally written for the cello) with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The third movement of Gustav Mahler's first symphony features a solo for the double bass that quotes the children's song Frere Jacques, transposed into a minor key. Sergei Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite features a difficult and very high double bass solo in the \"Romance\" movement. Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra contains a prominent passage for the double bass section.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Ensembles made up entirely of double basses, though relatively rare, also exist, and several composers have written or arranged for such ensembles. Compositions for four double basses exist by Gunther Schuller, Jacob Druckman, James Tenney, Claus Kühnl, Robert Ceely, Jan Alm, Bernhard Alt, Norman Ludwin, Frank Proto, Joseph Lauber, Erich Hartmann, Colin Brumby, Miloslav Gajdos and Theodore Albin Findeisen. David A. Jaffe's \"Who's on First?\", commissioned by the Russian National Orchestra is scored for five double basses. Bertold Hummel wrote a Sinfonia piccola for eight double basses. Larger ensemble works include Galina Ustvolskaya's Composition No. 2, \"Dies Irae\" (1973), for eight double basses, piano, and wooden cube, José Serebrier's \"George and Muriel\" (1986), for solo bass, double bass ensemble, and chorus, and Gerhard Samuel's What of my music! (1979), for soprano, percussion, and 30 double basses.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Double bass ensembles include L'Orchestre de Contrebasses (6 members), Bass Instinct (6 members), Bassiona Amorosa (6 members), the Chicago Bass Ensemble (4+ members), Ludus Gravis founded by Daniele Roccato and Stefano Scodanibbio, The Bass Gang (4 members), the London Double Bass Ensemble (6 members) founded by members of the Philharmonia Orchestra of London who produced the LP Music Interludes by London Double Bass Ensemble on Bruton Music records, Brno Double Bass Orchestra (14 members) founded by the double bass professor at Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts and principal double bass player at Brno Philharmonic Orchestra – Miloslav Jelinek, and the ensembles of Ball State University (12 members), Shenandoah University, and the Hartt School of Music. The Amarillo Bass Base of Amarillo, Texas once featured 52 double bassists, and The London Double Bass Sound, who have released a CD on Cala Records, have 10 players.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "In addition, the double bass sections of some orchestras perform as an ensemble, such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Lower Wacker Consort. There is an increasing number of published compositions and arrangements for double bass ensembles, and the International Society of Bassists regularly features double bass ensembles (both smaller ensembles as well as very large \"mass bass\" ensembles) at its conferences, and sponsors the biennial David Walter Composition Competition, which includes a division for double bass ensemble works.",
"title": "Classical repertoire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Beginning around 1890, the early New Orleans jazz ensemble (which played a mixture of marches, ragtime, and Dixieland) was initially a marching band with a tuba or sousaphone (or occasionally bass saxophone) supplying the bass line. As the music moved into bars and brothels, the upright bass gradually replaced these wind instruments around the 1920s. Many early bassists doubled on both the brass bass (tuba) and string bass, as the instruments were then often referred to. Bassists played improvised \"walking\" bass lines—scale- and arpeggio-based lines that outlined the chord progression.",
"title": "Use in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Because an unamplified upright bass is generally the quietest instrument in a jazz band, many players of the 1920s and 1930s used the slap style, slapping and pulling the strings to produce a rhythmic \"slap\" sound against the fingerboard. The slap style cuts through the sound of a band better than simply plucking the strings, and made the bass more easily heard on early sound recordings, as the recording equipment of that time did not favor low frequencies. For more about the slap style, see Modern playing styles, below.",
"title": "Use in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Jazz bass players are expected to improvise an accompaniment line or solo for a given chord progression. They are also expected to know the rhythmic patterns that are appropriate for different styles (e.g., Afro-Cuban). Bassists playing in a big band must also be able to read written-out bass lines, as some arrangements have written bass parts.",
"title": "Use in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Many upright bass players have contributed to the evolution of jazz. Examples include swing era players such as Jimmy Blanton, who played with Duke Ellington, and Oscar Pettiford, who pioneered the instrument's use in bebop. Paul Chambers (who worked with Miles Davis on the famous Kind of Blue album) achieved renown for being one of the first jazz bassists to play bebop solos with the bow. Terry Plumeri furthered the development of arco (bowed) solos, achieving horn-like technical freedom and a clear, vocal bowed tone, while Charlie Haden, best known for his work with Ornette Coleman, defined the role of the bass in Free Jazz.",
"title": "Use in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "A number of other bassists, such as Ray Brown, Slam Stewart and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, were central to the history of jazz. Stewart, who was popular with the beboppers, played his solos with a bow combined with octave humming. Notably, Charles Mingus was a highly regarded composer as well as a bassist noted for his technical virtuosity and powerful sound. Scott LaFaro influenced a generation of musicians by liberating the bass from contrapuntal \"walking\" behind soloists instead favoring interactive, conversational melodies. Since the commercial availability of bass amplifiers in the 1950s, jazz bassists have used amplification to augment the natural volume of the instrument.",
"title": "Use in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "While the electric bass guitar was used intermittently in jazz as early as 1951, beginning in the 1970s bassist Bob Cranshaw, playing with saxophonist Sonny Rollins, and fusion pioneers Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke began to commonly substitute the bass guitar for the upright bass. Apart from the jazz styles of jazz fusion and Latin-influenced jazz however, the upright bass is still the dominant bass instrument in jazz. The sound and tone of the plucked upright bass is distinct from that of the fretted bass guitar. The upright bass produces a different sound than the bass guitar, because its strings are not stopped by metal frets, instead having a continuous tonal range on the uninterrupted fingerboard. As well, bass guitars usually have a solid wood body, which means that their sound is produced by electronic amplification of the vibration of the strings, instead of the upright bass's acoustic reverberation.",
"title": "Use in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Demonstrative examples of the sound of a solo double bass and its technical use in jazz can be heard on the solo recordings Emerald Tears (1978) by Dave Holland or Emergence (1986) by Miroslav Vitous. Holland also recorded an album with the representative title Music from Two Basses (1971) on which he plays with Barre Phillips while he sometimes switches to cello.",
"title": "Use in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "The string bass is the most commonly used bass instrument in bluegrass music and is almost always plucked, though some modern bluegrass bassists have also used a bow. The bluegrass bassist is part of the rhythm section, and is responsible for keeping a steady beat, whether fast, slow, in 4, 4 or 4 time. The bass also maintains the chord progression and harmony. The Engelhardt-Link (formerly Kay) brands of plywood laminate basses have long been popular choices for bluegrass bassists. Most bluegrass bassists use the 3⁄4 size bass, but the full-size and 5⁄8 size basses are also used.",
"title": "Use in bluegrass and country"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Early pre-bluegrass traditional music was often accompanied by the cello. The cellist Natalie Haas points out that in the US, you can find \"...old photographs, and even old recordings, of American string bands with cello\". However, \"The cello dropped out of sight in folk music, and became associated with the orchestra.\" The cello did not reappear in bluegrass until the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century. Some contemporary bluegrass bands favor the electric bass, because it is easier to transport than the large and somewhat fragile upright bass. However, the bass guitar has a different musical sound. Many musicians feel the slower attack and percussive, woody tone of the upright bass gives it a more \"earthy\" or \"natural\" sound than an electric bass, particularly when gut strings are used.",
"title": "Use in bluegrass and country"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Common rhythms in bluegrass bass playing involve (with some exceptions) plucking on beats 1 and 3 in 4 time; beats 1 and 2 in 4 time, and on the downbeat in 4 time (waltz time). Bluegrass bass lines are usually simple, typically staying on the root and fifth of each chord throughout most of a song. There are two main exceptions to this rule. Bluegrass bassists often do a diatonic walkup or walkdown, in which they play every beat of a bar for one or two bars, typically when there is a chord change. In addition, if a bass player is given a solo, they may play a walking bass line with a note on every beat or play a pentatonic scale-influenced bassline.",
"title": "Use in bluegrass and country"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "An early bluegrass bassist to rise to prominence was Howard Watts (also known as Cedric Rainwater), who played with Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys beginning in 1944. The classical bassist Edgar Meyer has frequently branched out into newgrass, old-time, jazz, and other genres. \"My all-time favorite is Todd Phillips\", proclaimed Union Station bassist Barry Bales in April 2005. \"He brought a completely different way of thinking about and playing bluegrass.",
"title": "Use in bluegrass and country"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "An upright bass was the standard bass instrument in traditional country western music. While the upright bass is still occasionally used in country music, the electric bass has largely replaced its bigger cousin in country music, especially in the more pop-infused country styles of the 1990s and 2000s, such as new country.",
"title": "Use in bluegrass and country"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Slap-style bass is sometimes used in bluegrass bass playing. When bluegrass bass players slap the string by pulling it until it hits the fingerboard or hit the strings against the fingerboard, it adds the high-pitched percussive \"clack\" or \"slap\" sound to the low-pitched bass notes, sounding much like the clacks of a tap dancer. Slapping is a subject of minor controversy in the bluegrass scene. Even slapping experts such as Mike Bub say, \"Don't slap on every gig\", or in songs where it is not appropriate. As well, bluegrass bassists who play slap-style on live shows often slap less on records. Bub and his mentor Jerry McCoury rarely do slap bass on recordings. While bassists such as Jack Cook slap bass on the occasional faster \"Clinch Mountain Boys song\", bassists such as Gene Libbea, Missy Raines, Jenny Keel, and Barry Bales [rarely] slap bass.",
"title": "Use in bluegrass and country"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Bluegrass bassist Mark Schatz, who teaches slap bass in his Intermediate Bluegrass Bass DVD acknowledges that slap bass \"...has not been stylistically very predominant in the music I have recorded\". He notes that \"Even in traditional bluegrass slap bass only appears sporadically and most of what I've done has been on the more contemporary side of that (Tony Rice, Tim O'Brien).\" Schatz states that he would be \"... more likely to use it [slap] in a live situation than on a recording—for a solo or to punctuate a particular place in a song or tune where I wouldn't be obliterating someone's solo\". Another bluegrass method, Learn to Play Bluegrass Bass, by Earl Gately, also teaches bluegrass slap bass technique. German bassist Didi Beck plays rapid triplet slaps, as demonstrated in this video.",
"title": "Use in bluegrass and country"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "In the early 1950s, the upright bass was the standard bass instrument in the emerging style of rock and roll music, Marshall Lytle of Bill Haley & His Comets being but one example. In the 1940s, a new style of dance music called rhythm and blues developed, incorporating elements of the earlier styles of blues and swing. Louis Jordan, the first innovator of this style, featured an upright bass in his group, the Tympany Five.",
"title": "Use in popular music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "The upright bass remained an integral part of pop lineups throughout the 1950s, as the new genre of rock and roll was built largely upon the model of rhythm and blues, with strong elements also derived from jazz, country, and bluegrass. However, upright bass players using their instruments in these contexts faced inherent problems. They were forced to compete with louder horn instruments (and later amplified electric guitars), making bass parts difficult to hear. The upright bass is difficult to amplify in loud concert venue settings, because it can be prone to feedback howls. As well, the upright bass is large and awkward to transport, which also created transportation problems for touring bands. In some groups, the slap bass was utilized as band percussion in lieu of a drummer; such was the case with Bill Haley & His Saddlemen (the forerunner group to the Comets), which did not use drummers on recordings and live performances until late 1952; prior to this the slap bass was relied on for percussion, including on recordings such as Haley's versions of \"Rock the Joint\" and \"Rocket 88\".",
"title": "Use in popular music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "In 1951, Leo Fender released his Precision Bass, the first commercially successful electric bass guitar. The electric bass was easily amplified with its built-in magnetic pickups, easily portable (less than a foot longer than an electric guitar), and easier to play in tune than an upright bass, thanks to the metal frets. In the 1960s and 1970s bands were playing at louder volumes and performing in larger venues. The electric bass was able to provide the huge, highly amplified stadium-filling bass tone that the pop and rock music of this era demanded, and the upright bass receded from the limelight of the popular music scene.",
"title": "Use in popular music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "The upright bass began making a comeback in popular music in the mid-1980s, in part due to a renewed interest in earlier forms of folk and country music, as part of the roots rock and Americana trends. In the 1990s, improvements in pickups and amplifier designs for electro-acoustic horizontal and upright basses made it easier for bassists to get a good, clear amplified tone from an acoustic instrument. Some popular bands decided to anchor their sound with an upright bass instead of an electric bass, such as the Barenaked Ladies. A trend for \"unplugged\" performances on MTV, in which rock bands performed with solely acoustic instruments, further helped to enhance the public's interest in the upright bass and acoustic bass guitars.",
"title": "Use in popular music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Jim Creeggan of Barenaked Ladies primarily plays upright bass, although he has increasingly played bass guitar throughout the band's career. Chris Wyse of alternative rock group Owl uses a combination of electric and double bass. Athol Guy of the Australian folk/pop group The Seekers plays an upright bass. Shannon Birchall, of the Australian folk-rock group The John Butler Trio, makes extensive use of upright basses, performing extended live solos in songs such as Betterman. On the 2008 album In Ear Park by the indie/pop band Department of Eagles, a bowed upright bass is featured quite prominently on the songs \"Teenagers\" and \"In Ear Park\". Norwegian ompa-rock band Kaizers Orchestra use the upright bass exclusively both live and on their recordings.",
"title": "Use in popular music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "French contemporary pop duet \"What a day\" uses double bass extended pizzicato technique with vocals and type writer",
"title": "Use in popular music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "Hank Williams III's bass players (Jason Brown, Joe Buck and Zach Shedd, most notably) have used upright basses for recording as well as during the country and Hellbilly sets of Hank III's live performances before switching to electric bass for the Assjack set.",
"title": "Use in popular music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "The late 1970s rockabilly-punk genre of psychobilly continued and expanded upon the rockabilly tradition of slap bass. Bassists such as Kim Nekroman and Geoff Kresge have developed the ability to play rapid slap bass that in effect turns the bass into a percussion instrument.",
"title": "Use in popular music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "In popular music genres, the instrument is usually played with amplification and almost exclusively played with the fingers, pizzicato style. The pizzicato style varies between different players and genres. Some players perform with the sides of one, two, or three fingers, especially for walking basslines and slow tempo ballads, because this is purported to create a stronger and more solid tone. Some players use the more nimble tips of the fingers to play fast-moving solo passages or to pluck lightly for quiet tunes. The use of amplification allows the player to have more control over the tone of the instrument, because amplifiers have equalization controls that allow the bassist to accentuate certain frequencies (often the bass frequencies) while de-accentuating some frequencies (often the high frequencies, so that there is less finger noise).",
"title": "Modern playing styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "An unamplified acoustic bass's tone is limited by the frequency responsiveness of the instrument's hollow body, which means that the very low pitches may not be as loud as the higher pitches. With an amplifier and equalization devices, a bass player can boost the low frequencies, which changes the frequency response. In addition, the use of an amplifier can increase the sustain of the instrument, which is particularly useful for accompaniment during ballads and for melodic solos with held notes.",
"title": "Modern playing styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "In traditional jazz, swing, polka, rockabilly, and psychobilly music, it is sometimes played in the slap style. This is a vigorous version of pizzicato where the strings are \"slapped\" against the fingerboard between the main notes of the bass line, producing a snare drum-like percussive sound. The main notes are either played normally or by pulling the string away from the fingerboard and releasing it so that it bounces off the fingerboard, producing a distinctive percussive attack in addition to the expected pitch. Notable slap style bass players, whose use of the technique was often highly syncopated and virtuosic, sometimes interpolated two, three, four, or more slaps in between notes of the bass line.",
"title": "Modern playing styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "\"Slap style\" may have influenced electric bass guitar players who, from the mid-sixties (particularly Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone), developed a technique called slap and pop that used the thumb of the plucking hand to hit the string, making a slapping sound but still letting the note ring, and the index or middle finger of the plucking hand to pull the string back so it hits the fretboard, achieving the pop sound described above. Motown bass player James Jamerson routinely used a double bass for enhancement of the electric bass in post-production (\"sweetening\") of recorded tracks and vice versa in many instances.",
"title": "Modern playing styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Some of the most influential contemporary classical double bass players are known as much for their contributions to pedagogy as for their performing skills, such as US bassist Oscar G. Zimmerman (1910–1987), known for his teaching at the Eastman School of Music and, for 44 summers at the Interlochen National Music Camp in Michigan and French bassist François Rabbath (b. 1931) who developed a new bass method that divided the entire fingerboard into six positions. Bassists noted for their virtuoso solo skills include American pedagogue and performer Gary Karr (b. 1941), Finnish composer Teppo Hauta-Aho (b. 1941), Italian composer Fernando Grillo, and US player-composer Edgar Meyer. For a longer list, see the List of contemporary classical double bass players.",
"title": "Double bassists"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Notable jazz bassists from the 1940s to the 1950s included bassist Jimmy Blanton (1918–1942) whose short tenure in the Duke Ellington Swing band (cut short by his death from tuberculosis) introduced new melodic and harmonic solo ideas for the instrument; bassist Ray Brown (1926–2002), known for backing Beboppers Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and Charlie Parker, and forming the Modern Jazz Quartet; hard bop bassist Ron Carter (born 1937), who has appeared on 3,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, including LPs by Thelonious Monk and Wes Montgomery and many Blue Note Records artists; and Paul Chambers (1935–1969), a member of the Miles Davis Quintet (including the landmark modal jazz recording Kind of Blue) and many other 1950s and 1960s rhythm sections, was known for his virtuosic improvisations.",
"title": "Double bassists"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "The experimental post 1960s era, and free jazz and jazz-rock fusion, produced several influential bassists. Charles Mingus (1922–1979), who was also a composer and bandleader, produced music that fused hard bop with black gospel music, free jazz, and classical music. Free jazz and post-bop bassist Charlie Haden (1937–2014) is best known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, and for his role in the 1970s-era Liberation Music Orchestra, an experimental group. Eddie Gómez and George Mraz, who played with Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson, respectively, and are both acknowledged to have furthered expectations of pizzicato fluency and melodic phrasing. Fusion virtuoso Stanley Clarke (born 1951) is notable for his dexterity on both the upright bass and the electric bass. Terry Plumeri is noted for his horn-like arco fluency and vocal-sounding tone.",
"title": "Double bassists"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "In the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, one of the new \"young lions\" was Christian McBride (born 1972), who has performed with a range of veterans ranging from McCoy Tyner to fusion gurus Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, and who has released albums such as 2003's Vertical Vision. Another young bassist of note is Esperanza Spalding (born 1984) who, at 27 years of age, had already won a Grammy for Best New Artist.",
"title": "Double bassists"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "In addition to being a noted classical player, Edgar Meyer is well known in bluegrass and newgrass circles. Todd Phillips is another prominent bluegrass player. Well-known rockabilly bassists include Bill Black, Marshall Lytle (with Bill Haley & His Comets) and Lee Rocker (with 1980s-era rockabilly revivalists the Stray Cats).",
"title": "Double bassists"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "Notable rockabilly revivalists and psychobilly performers from the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century include Scott Owen (from the Australian band The Living End), Jimbo Wallace (from the US band Reverend Horton Heat), Kim Nekroman (Nekromantix), Patricia Day (HorrorPops), Geoff Kresge (Tiger Army, ex-AFI). Willie Dixon (1915–1992) was one of the most notable figures in the history of rhythm and blues. In addition to being an upright bassist, he wrote dozens of R&B hits and worked as a producer. He also plays bass on numerous Chuck Berry's rock and roll hits. Many other rockabilly bands like El Rio Trio (from the Netherlands) also use this instrument in their work. See also the List of double bassists in popular music.",
"title": "Double bassists"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "The pedagogy and training for the double bass varies widely by genre and country. Classical double bass has a history of pedagogy dating back several centuries, including teaching manuals, studies, and progressive exercises that help students to develop the endurance and accuracy of the left hand, and control for the bowing hand. Classical training methods vary by country: many of the major European countries are associated with specific methods (e.g., the Edouard Nanny method in France or the Franz Simandl method in Germany). In classical training, the majority of the instruction for the right hand focuses on the production of bowing tone; little time is spent studying the varieties of pizzicato tone.",
"title": "Pedagogy and training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "In contrast, in genres that mainly or exclusively use pizzicato (plucking), such as jazz and blues, a great deal of time and effort is focused on learning the varieties of different pizzicato styles used for music of different styles of tempi. For example, in jazz, aspiring bassists have to learn how to perform a wide range of pizzicato tones, including using the sides of the fingers to create a full, deep sound for ballads, using the tips of the fingers for fast walking basslines or solos, and performing a variety of percussive ghost notes by raking muted or partially muted strings.",
"title": "Pedagogy and training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Of all of the genres, classical and jazz have the most established and comprehensive systems of instruction and training. In the classical milieu, children can begin taking private lessons on the instrument and performing in children's or youth orchestras. Teens who aspire to becoming professional classical bassists can continue their studies in a variety of formal training settings, including colleges, conservatories, and universities. Colleges offer certificates and diplomas in bass performance.",
"title": "Pedagogy and training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "Conservatories, which are the standard musical training system in France and in Quebec (Canada) provide lessons and amateur orchestral experience for double bass players. Universities offer a range of double bass programs, including bachelor's degrees, Master of Music degrees, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. As well, there are a variety of other training programs such as classical summer camps and orchestral, opera, or chamber music training festivals, which give students the opportunity to play a wide range of music.",
"title": "Pedagogy and training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "Bachelor's degrees in bass performance (referred to as B.Mus. or B.M.) are four-year programs that include individual bass lessons, amateur orchestra experience, and a sequence of courses in music history, music theory, and liberal arts courses (e.g., English literature), which give the student a more well-rounded education. Usually, bass performance students perform several recitals of solo double bass music, such as concertos, sonatas, and Baroque suites.",
"title": "Pedagogy and training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "Master of music degrees (M.mus.) in double bass performance consist of private lessons, ensemble experience, coaching in playing orchestral double bass parts, and graduate courses in music history and music theory, along with one or two solo recitals. A Master's degree in music (referred to as an M.Mus. or M.M.) is often a required credential for people who wish to become a professor of double bass at a university or conservatory.",
"title": "Pedagogy and training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "Doctor of Musical Arts (referred to as D.M.A., DMA, D.Mus.A. or A.Mus.D.) degrees in double bass performance provide an opportunity for advanced study at the highest artistic and pedagogical level, requiring usually an additional 54+ credit hours beyond a master's degree (which is about 30+ credits beyond a bachelor's degree). For this reason, admission is highly selective. Examinations in music history, music theory, ear training/dictation, and an entrance examination-recital, are required. Students perform a number of recitals (around six), including a lecture-recital with an accompanying doctoral dissertation, advanced coursework, and a minimum B average are other typical requirements of a D.M.A. program.",
"title": "Pedagogy and training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "Throughout the early history of jazz, double bass players either learned the instrument informally, or from getting classical training early on, as in the case of Ron Carter and Charles Mingus. In the 1980s and 1990s, colleges and universities began to introduce diplomas and degrees in jazz performance. Students in jazz diploma or Bachelor of Music programs take individual bass lessons, get experience in small jazz combos with coaching from an experienced player, and play in jazz big bands. As with classical training programs, jazz programs also include classroom courses in music history and music theory. In a jazz program, these courses focus on the different eras of jazz history. such as Swing, Bebop, and fusion. The theory courses focus on the musical skills used in jazz improvisation and in jazz comping (accompanying) and the composition of jazz tunes. There are also jazz summer camps and training festivals/seminars, which offer students the chance to learn new skills and styles.",
"title": "Pedagogy and training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "In other genres, such as blues, rockabilly, and psychobilly, the pedagogical systems and training sequences are not as formalized and institutionalized. There are not degrees in blues bass performance, or conservatories offering multiple-year diplomas in rockabilly bass. However, there are a range of books, playing methods, and, since the 1990s, instructional DVDs (e.g., on how to play rockabilly-style slap bass). As such, performers in these other genres tend to come from a variety of routes, including informal learning by using bass method books or DVDs, taking private lessons and coaching, and learning from records and CDs. In some cases, blues or rockabilly bassists may have obtained some initial training through the classical or jazz pedagogy systems (e.g., youth orchestra or high school big band). In genres such as tango, which use a lot of bowed passages and jazz-style pizzicato lines, the bassists tend to come from classical or jazz training routes.",
"title": "Pedagogy and training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "Careers in double bass vary widely by genre and by region or country. Most bassists earn their living from a mixture of performance and teaching jobs. The first step to getting most performance jobs is by playing at an audition. In some styles of music, such as jazz-oriented stage bands, bassists may be asked to sight read printed music or perform standard pieces (e.g., a jazz standard such as Now's the Time) with an ensemble. Similarly, in a rock or blues band, auditionees may be asked to play various rock or blues standards. An upright bassist auditioning for a blues band might be asked to play in a Swing-style walking bassline, a rockabilly-style \"slapping\" bassline (in which the strings are percussively struck against the fingerboard) and a 1950s ballad with long held notes. A person auditioning for a role as a bassist in some styles of pop or rock music may be expected to demonstrate the ability to perform harmony vocals as a backup singer. In some pop and rock groups, the bassist may be asked to play other instruments from time to time, such as electric bass, keyboards or acoustic guitar. The ability to play electric bass is widely expected in country groups, in case the band is performing a classic rock or new country song.",
"title": "Careers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "In classical music, bassists audition for playing jobs in orchestras and for admission into university or Conservatory programs or degrees. At a classical bass audition, the performer typically plays a movement from a J.S. Bach suite for solo cello or a movement from a bass concerto and a variety of excerpts from the orchestral literature. The excerpts are typically the most technically challenging parts of bass parts and bass solos from the orchestral literature. Some of the most commonly requested orchestral excerpts at bass auditions are from Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 5, 7 and 9; Strauss's Ein Heldenleben and Don Juan; Mozart's Symphonies Nos. 35, 39 and 40; Brahms' Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2; Stravinsky's Pulcinella; Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5; Ginastera's Variaciones Concertante; Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4; Mahler's Symphony No. 2; J. S. Bach's Suite No. 2 in B; Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4; and the bass solos from Verdi's opera Otello, Mahler's Symphony No. 1, Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra and Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Suite.",
"title": "Careers"
}
]
| The double bass, also known simply as the bass, amongst other names, is the largest and, therefore, lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra. Similar in structure to the cello, it has four, although occasionally five, strings. The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, viola, and cello, as well as the concert band, and is featured in concertos, solo, and chamber music in Western classical music. The bass is used in a range of other genres, such as jazz, blues, rock and roll, rockabilly, country music, bluegrass, tango, folk music and certain types of film and video game soundtracks. Being a transposing instrument, the bass is typically notated one octave higher than tuned to avoid excessive ledger lines below the staff. The double bass is the only modern bowed string instrument that is tuned in fourths, rather than fifths, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2. The instrument's exact lineage is still a matter of some debate, with scholars divided on whether the bass is derived from the viol or the violin family. The double bass is played with a bow (arco), or by plucking the strings (pizzicato), or via a variety of extended techniques. In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm. Classical music and jazz use the natural sound produced acoustically by the instrument, as does traditional bluegrass. In funk, blues, reggae, and related genres, the double bass is often amplified. | 2001-11-14T04:43:33Z | 2023-12-25T02:43:50Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bass |
8,817 | Deicide (band) | Deicide is an American death metal band formed in Tampa, Florida in 1987 by drummer/composer Steve Asheim and guitarist brothers Eric and Brian Hoffman as "Carnage", then hiring bassist/vocalist/lyricist Glen Benton and becoming "Amon". They would later change the band name to Deicide in 1989. The band rose to mainstream success in 1992 with their second album Legion, and is credited as the second-best-selling death metal band of the Soundscan Era, after Cannibal Corpse. Since their debut album in 1990, Deicide has released twelve studio albums, one live album, two compilation albums and two live DVDs. In November 2003, their first two albums, Deicide and Legion, were ranked second and third place respectively in best-selling death metal albums of the SoundScan era. Deicide is known for their lyrics, which cover topics such as Satanism, anti-Christianity and blasphemy. Their lyrics have resulted in bans, lawsuits and criticism from religious groups and the public.
Deicide was formed in Tampa, Florida on July 21, 1987, after guitarist Brian Hoffman called Glen Benton, replying to an advertisement the latter had placed in a local music magazine. Hoffman and his brother, along with drummer Steve Asheim, had previously played together as the band "Carnage", which was in need of a bassist and vocalist. Carnage played cover songs by Slayer, Exodus, Celtic Frost and Dark Angel.
The new band, called Amon, consisted of Benton (bass and vocals), Hoffman, Hoffman's brother Eric (guitars) and Steve Asheim (drums). Within a month, they had recorded the Feasting the Beast 8-track demo in Benton's garage and had started playing the occasional gig in the Tampa area. In 1989, Amon recorded their second demo, Sacrificial, at Morrisound with producer Scott Burns.
Malevolent Creation guitarist Phil Fasciana recalls an early Carnage show: "It was like Slayer intensified a thousand times." "I guess Carnage had hollowed out a mannequin and filled it with fuckin' blood and guts from a butcher shop... and then they threw the fuckin' thing on the floor. Morbid Angel had these pit bulls with them back then and they were just tearing the meat up. It was a really weird scene, man. There was blood and meat everywhere."
Benton reportedly stormed into Roadrunner Records' A&R man Monte Conner's office and presented him with the demo, saying, "Sign us, you fucking asshole!" The next day contracts were issued to the band. Although this version of events was later denied by Benton, who claimed he indeed visited the office but never used profanities. In 1989 the band's name was changed to Deicide at the request of Roadrunner Records.
Deicide then released their self-titled debut album, also produced by Scott Burns at Morrisound, in 1990. Their debut featured re-recorded versions of all six of the Sacrificial tunes that had secured them their record deal.
Both the Hoffman brothers tended to play technical solos at fast speeds and with overlapping riffs, which gave Deicide the definitive heavy sound and complex song structures. This lineup remained intact until November 25, 2004, in the wake of increasing animosity between Glen Benton and the Hoffmans allegedly in regards to royalties and publishing. The Hoffman brothers later went on to reform Amon.
Shortly after, the guitar roles were then filled by former Cannibal Corpse guitarist Jack Owen, and Vital Remains guitarist Dave Suzuki. Following the tour, Suzuki was replaced by guitarist Ralph Santolla. Santolla stated he was a Catholic, which had received a small amount of shock and ridicule from some metal fans. In spite of this, Deicide's eighth studio album The Stench of Redemption, which was released on August 22, 2006, received rave reviews.
In January 2007, Benton left the European tour and returned home to the United States as a result of legal issues at home. Asheim announced that Seth van Loo, from opening act Severe Torture, and Garbaty "Yaha", from the Polish death metal band Dissenter, would be replacing Benton starting on January 9 in the Netherlands, until Benton could rejoin the tour. Benton rejoined the band in Paris on January 13. On May 24, 2007, it was announced Ralph Santolla had left Deicide. Subsequently, he joined Florida's Obituary and appears on their album Xecutioner's Return as well as the tour. On July 20, 2007, guitarist Jack Owen announced that Deicide would be "on hiatus" and he had joined Ohio based death/thrash combo Estuary for touring purposes. The band embarked on a Balkan tour, dubbed "Balkans AssassiNation Tour", in October 2007 alongside Krisiun, Incantation and Inactive Messiah.
By November 2007, Deicide began work on their ninth studio album at Florida's Morrisound Studios. Entitled Till Death Do Us Part, the follow-up to The Stench of Redemption, promised to be the band's "most savage and aggressive [offering] to date", according to a press release. Drummer Steve Asheim recorded drum tracks and Benton started recording vocals in December 2007. In April 2008, two songs off the album were posted online. It was finally released on April 28, 2008. As the record was coming out, Benton considered retiring from music, in the midst of personal matters including a custody battle.
On January 6, 2009, Deicide posted a blog on their official Myspace page saying they had signed a worldwide record deal with Century Media, with Ralph Santolla returning to the band for a European tour. They were said to be working on material for a summer 2010 release. In early 2009, they toured with Vital Remains and Order of Ennead. Guitarist Kevin Quirion of Order of Ennead joined the band in the summer of 2009.
In June 2010, Glen Benton revealed that the next Deicide album was to be titled To Hell with God. It was produced by Mark Lewis at Audiohammer Studios in Sanford, Florida, and was released on February 15, 2011.
Deicide released their eleventh studio album, In the Minds of Evil, on November 26, 2013.
In November 2016, it was apparent that guitarist Jack Owen had been replaced by Monstrosity guitarist Mark English without an official announcement made by the band. Owen went on to join Six Feet Under in February 2017.
On October 9, 2014, The Village Voice reported that Deicide had started working on new material for their twelfth studio album. On March 10, 2017, Deicide announced a short U.S. tour which would begin in May and also issued an update on the album: "the new record is almost completed, right now its down to scheduling, this run of shows were setting up is to introduce and work in our new guitarist Mark English, that and I need a break from this thing called Florida…". The album, titled Overtures of Blasphemy, was released on September 14, 2018.
On June 6, 2018, former guitarist Ralph Santolla died due to complications following a heart attack and was taken off life support since being in a coma for a week.
In February 2019, Deicide parted ways with guitarist Mark English and replaced him with Autumn's End vocalist/guitarist Chris Cannella.
On April 17, 2021, the band performed in front of an audience of full capacity at The Verona in New Port Richey amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as all restrictions for businesses were lifted and mask mandate enforcements for local cities in Florida were removed as the state was moved into Stage 3 in late September 2020. A U.S. tour followed soon after, with Kataklysm, Internal Bleeding and Begat the Nephilim.
On January 19, 2022, it was announced guitarist Chris Cannella had left the band and was replaced by Taylor Nordberg.
Deicide has received considerable controversy relating to their albums and lyrics, which include vehement anti-Christian themes, such as "Death to Jesus", "Fuck Your God", "Kill the Christian", "Behead the Prophet" and "Scars of the Crucifix", among others. Drummer Asheim said, "The whole point of Satanic music is to blaspheme against the Church", "I don't believe in or worship a devil. Life is short enough without having to waste it doing this whole organised praying, hoping, wishing-type thing on some superior being".
Most of the controversy surrounded frontman Benton for a rash of shocking interviews and wild statements. Benton has repeatedly branded an inverted cross into his forehead on at least 12 different occasions. During an interview with NME magazine, he shot and killed a squirrel with a pellet gun to prevent any further damage to his electrical system in the attic at the location the interview was held. This act garnered negative attention from critics and some animal rights activists. Benton had professed beliefs in theistic Satanism during Deicide's early years, claimed to slaughter rodents for fun, and that he held beliefs in demonic possession and that he was possessed. Such statements had eventually been concluded as tongue-in-cheek and little more than sensationalism by band members questioned alternatively. Additionally, Benton claimed in the early 1990s that he would commit suicide at the age of 33 to "mirror" a lifespan opposite that of Jesus Christ. However, he passed that age in 2000 and did not commit suicide, rebutting in 2006 that these statements had been "asinine remarks" and that "only cowards and losers" choose to kill themselves.
Deicide has been banned from playing in several venues (such as Valparaiso, Chile over a promotional poster featuring Jesus Christ with a bullet hole in his forehead) and with various festivals such as Hellfest, after several graves had been spray-painted with "When Satan Rules His World", a reference to a song from Deicide's 1995 album Once upon the Cross. In addition, their music video for "Homage for Satan", which features blood-splattered zombies on a rampaging mission to capture a priest, was banned from UK music TV channel Scuzz.
In 1992, Deicide was on tour in Europe with Atrocity from Germany and Gorefest, a Dutch death metal band. In Stockholm, during the Gorefest set, a bomb was discovered on-stage. It exploded in the club in which they were playing. The bomb was located to the rear of the stage, behind a heavy, fireproof door. The explosion was big enough to deform the door and blow it off its hinges. Deicide managed to play three songs before the police decided to stop the concert and evacuate the club. At first, Benton blamed that attack on the Norwegian black metal scene, where Deicide's brand of death metal was despised. Many people blamed animal rights activists who were angered at Deicide's lyrical themes of animal sacrifice.
Media related to Deicide at Wikimedia Commons | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Deicide is an American death metal band formed in Tampa, Florida in 1987 by drummer/composer Steve Asheim and guitarist brothers Eric and Brian Hoffman as \"Carnage\", then hiring bassist/vocalist/lyricist Glen Benton and becoming \"Amon\". They would later change the band name to Deicide in 1989. The band rose to mainstream success in 1992 with their second album Legion, and is credited as the second-best-selling death metal band of the Soundscan Era, after Cannibal Corpse. Since their debut album in 1990, Deicide has released twelve studio albums, one live album, two compilation albums and two live DVDs. In November 2003, their first two albums, Deicide and Legion, were ranked second and third place respectively in best-selling death metal albums of the SoundScan era. Deicide is known for their lyrics, which cover topics such as Satanism, anti-Christianity and blasphemy. Their lyrics have resulted in bans, lawsuits and criticism from religious groups and the public.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Deicide was formed in Tampa, Florida on July 21, 1987, after guitarist Brian Hoffman called Glen Benton, replying to an advertisement the latter had placed in a local music magazine. Hoffman and his brother, along with drummer Steve Asheim, had previously played together as the band \"Carnage\", which was in need of a bassist and vocalist. Carnage played cover songs by Slayer, Exodus, Celtic Frost and Dark Angel.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The new band, called Amon, consisted of Benton (bass and vocals), Hoffman, Hoffman's brother Eric (guitars) and Steve Asheim (drums). Within a month, they had recorded the Feasting the Beast 8-track demo in Benton's garage and had started playing the occasional gig in the Tampa area. In 1989, Amon recorded their second demo, Sacrificial, at Morrisound with producer Scott Burns.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Malevolent Creation guitarist Phil Fasciana recalls an early Carnage show: \"It was like Slayer intensified a thousand times.\" \"I guess Carnage had hollowed out a mannequin and filled it with fuckin' blood and guts from a butcher shop... and then they threw the fuckin' thing on the floor. Morbid Angel had these pit bulls with them back then and they were just tearing the meat up. It was a really weird scene, man. There was blood and meat everywhere.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Benton reportedly stormed into Roadrunner Records' A&R man Monte Conner's office and presented him with the demo, saying, \"Sign us, you fucking asshole!\" The next day contracts were issued to the band. Although this version of events was later denied by Benton, who claimed he indeed visited the office but never used profanities. In 1989 the band's name was changed to Deicide at the request of Roadrunner Records.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Deicide then released their self-titled debut album, also produced by Scott Burns at Morrisound, in 1990. Their debut featured re-recorded versions of all six of the Sacrificial tunes that had secured them their record deal.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Both the Hoffman brothers tended to play technical solos at fast speeds and with overlapping riffs, which gave Deicide the definitive heavy sound and complex song structures. This lineup remained intact until November 25, 2004, in the wake of increasing animosity between Glen Benton and the Hoffmans allegedly in regards to royalties and publishing. The Hoffman brothers later went on to reform Amon.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Shortly after, the guitar roles were then filled by former Cannibal Corpse guitarist Jack Owen, and Vital Remains guitarist Dave Suzuki. Following the tour, Suzuki was replaced by guitarist Ralph Santolla. Santolla stated he was a Catholic, which had received a small amount of shock and ridicule from some metal fans. In spite of this, Deicide's eighth studio album The Stench of Redemption, which was released on August 22, 2006, received rave reviews.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In January 2007, Benton left the European tour and returned home to the United States as a result of legal issues at home. Asheim announced that Seth van Loo, from opening act Severe Torture, and Garbaty \"Yaha\", from the Polish death metal band Dissenter, would be replacing Benton starting on January 9 in the Netherlands, until Benton could rejoin the tour. Benton rejoined the band in Paris on January 13. On May 24, 2007, it was announced Ralph Santolla had left Deicide. Subsequently, he joined Florida's Obituary and appears on their album Xecutioner's Return as well as the tour. On July 20, 2007, guitarist Jack Owen announced that Deicide would be \"on hiatus\" and he had joined Ohio based death/thrash combo Estuary for touring purposes. The band embarked on a Balkan tour, dubbed \"Balkans AssassiNation Tour\", in October 2007 alongside Krisiun, Incantation and Inactive Messiah.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "By November 2007, Deicide began work on their ninth studio album at Florida's Morrisound Studios. Entitled Till Death Do Us Part, the follow-up to The Stench of Redemption, promised to be the band's \"most savage and aggressive [offering] to date\", according to a press release. Drummer Steve Asheim recorded drum tracks and Benton started recording vocals in December 2007. In April 2008, two songs off the album were posted online. It was finally released on April 28, 2008. As the record was coming out, Benton considered retiring from music, in the midst of personal matters including a custody battle.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "On January 6, 2009, Deicide posted a blog on their official Myspace page saying they had signed a worldwide record deal with Century Media, with Ralph Santolla returning to the band for a European tour. They were said to be working on material for a summer 2010 release. In early 2009, they toured with Vital Remains and Order of Ennead. Guitarist Kevin Quirion of Order of Ennead joined the band in the summer of 2009.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In June 2010, Glen Benton revealed that the next Deicide album was to be titled To Hell with God. It was produced by Mark Lewis at Audiohammer Studios in Sanford, Florida, and was released on February 15, 2011.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Deicide released their eleventh studio album, In the Minds of Evil, on November 26, 2013.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In November 2016, it was apparent that guitarist Jack Owen had been replaced by Monstrosity guitarist Mark English without an official announcement made by the band. Owen went on to join Six Feet Under in February 2017.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "On October 9, 2014, The Village Voice reported that Deicide had started working on new material for their twelfth studio album. On March 10, 2017, Deicide announced a short U.S. tour which would begin in May and also issued an update on the album: \"the new record is almost completed, right now its down to scheduling, this run of shows were setting up is to introduce and work in our new guitarist Mark English, that and I need a break from this thing called Florida…\". The album, titled Overtures of Blasphemy, was released on September 14, 2018.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On June 6, 2018, former guitarist Ralph Santolla died due to complications following a heart attack and was taken off life support since being in a coma for a week.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In February 2019, Deicide parted ways with guitarist Mark English and replaced him with Autumn's End vocalist/guitarist Chris Cannella.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "On April 17, 2021, the band performed in front of an audience of full capacity at The Verona in New Port Richey amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as all restrictions for businesses were lifted and mask mandate enforcements for local cities in Florida were removed as the state was moved into Stage 3 in late September 2020. A U.S. tour followed soon after, with Kataklysm, Internal Bleeding and Begat the Nephilim.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "On January 19, 2022, it was announced guitarist Chris Cannella had left the band and was replaced by Taylor Nordberg.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Deicide has received considerable controversy relating to their albums and lyrics, which include vehement anti-Christian themes, such as \"Death to Jesus\", \"Fuck Your God\", \"Kill the Christian\", \"Behead the Prophet\" and \"Scars of the Crucifix\", among others. Drummer Asheim said, \"The whole point of Satanic music is to blaspheme against the Church\", \"I don't believe in or worship a devil. Life is short enough without having to waste it doing this whole organised praying, hoping, wishing-type thing on some superior being\".",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Most of the controversy surrounded frontman Benton for a rash of shocking interviews and wild statements. Benton has repeatedly branded an inverted cross into his forehead on at least 12 different occasions. During an interview with NME magazine, he shot and killed a squirrel with a pellet gun to prevent any further damage to his electrical system in the attic at the location the interview was held. This act garnered negative attention from critics and some animal rights activists. Benton had professed beliefs in theistic Satanism during Deicide's early years, claimed to slaughter rodents for fun, and that he held beliefs in demonic possession and that he was possessed. Such statements had eventually been concluded as tongue-in-cheek and little more than sensationalism by band members questioned alternatively. Additionally, Benton claimed in the early 1990s that he would commit suicide at the age of 33 to \"mirror\" a lifespan opposite that of Jesus Christ. However, he passed that age in 2000 and did not commit suicide, rebutting in 2006 that these statements had been \"asinine remarks\" and that \"only cowards and losers\" choose to kill themselves.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Deicide has been banned from playing in several venues (such as Valparaiso, Chile over a promotional poster featuring Jesus Christ with a bullet hole in his forehead) and with various festivals such as Hellfest, after several graves had been spray-painted with \"When Satan Rules His World\", a reference to a song from Deicide's 1995 album Once upon the Cross. In addition, their music video for \"Homage for Satan\", which features blood-splattered zombies on a rampaging mission to capture a priest, was banned from UK music TV channel Scuzz.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1992, Deicide was on tour in Europe with Atrocity from Germany and Gorefest, a Dutch death metal band. In Stockholm, during the Gorefest set, a bomb was discovered on-stage. It exploded in the club in which they were playing. The bomb was located to the rear of the stage, behind a heavy, fireproof door. The explosion was big enough to deform the door and blow it off its hinges. Deicide managed to play three songs before the police decided to stop the concert and evacuate the club. At first, Benton blamed that attack on the Norwegian black metal scene, where Deicide's brand of death metal was despised. Many people blamed animal rights activists who were angered at Deicide's lyrical themes of animal sacrifice.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Media related to Deicide at Wikimedia Commons",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Deicide is an American death metal band formed in Tampa, Florida in 1987 by drummer/composer Steve Asheim and guitarist brothers Eric and Brian Hoffman as "Carnage", then hiring bassist/vocalist/lyricist Glen Benton and becoming "Amon". They would later change the band name to Deicide in 1989. The band rose to mainstream success in 1992 with their second album Legion, and is credited as the second-best-selling death metal band of the Soundscan Era, after Cannibal Corpse. Since their debut album in 1990, Deicide has released twelve studio albums, one live album, two compilation albums and two live DVDs. In November 2003, their first two albums, Deicide and Legion, were ranked second and third place respectively in best-selling death metal albums of the SoundScan era. Deicide is known for their lyrics, which cover topics such as Satanism, anti-Christianity and blasphemy. Their lyrics have resulted in bans, lawsuits and criticism from religious groups and the public. | 2001-11-14T18:45:22Z | 2023-12-25T13:16:07Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deicide_(band) |
8,822 | Daniel Williamson | Daniel Williamson may refer to: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Daniel Williamson may refer to:",
"title": ""
}
]
| Daniel Williamson may refer to: Danny Williamson (footballer), former English footballer
A DJ, stage name LTJ Bukem
Daniel Alexander Williamson (1823–1903), British artist | 2022-12-05T18:14:47Z | [
"Template:Hndis"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Williamson |
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