title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: These widely varying temperature extremes are due to three main factors: temperature inversions, daylight, and wind direction. In winter, Fairbanks' low-lying location at the bottom of the Tanana Valley causes cold air to accumulate in and around the city. Warmer air rises to the tops of the hills north of Fairbanks, while the city itself experiences one of the biggest temperature inversions on Earth. Heating through sunlight is limited because of Fairbanks's high-latitude location. At the winter solstice, the center of the sun's disk is less than two degrees over the horizon (1.7 degrees) at the local noon (not the time zone noon). Fairbanks experiences 3 hours and 41 minutes of sunlight on December 21 and 22. At the summer solstice, about 182 days later, on June 20 and 21, Fairbanks receives 21 hours and 49 minutes of sunlight. After sunset, twilight is bright enough to allow daytime activities without any electric lights, since the center of the sun's disk is just 1.7 degrees below horizon. During winter, the direction of the wind also causes large temperature swings in Fairbanks. When the wind blows from any direction but the south, average weather ensues. Wind from the south can carry warm, moist air from the Gulf of Alaska, greatly warming temperatures. When coupled with a chinook wind, temperatures well above freezing often result: for example, in the record warm January 1981, Fairbanks’ average maximum was and 15 days had a maximum above freezing, whilst during a spell of sustained chinook winds from December 4 to 8, 1934 the temperature topped for five consecutive days.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: In addition to the chinook wind, Fairbanks experiences a handful of other unusual meteorological conditions. In summer, dense wildfire smoke accumulates in the Tanana Valley, affecting the weather and causing health concerns. When temperature inversions arise in winter, heavy ice fog often results. Ice fog occurs when air is too cold to absorb additional moisture, such as that released by automobile engines or human breath. Instead of dissipating, the water freezes into microscopic crystals that are suspended in the air, forming fog. Another one of Fairbanks' unusual occurrences is the prevalence of the aurora borealis, commonly called the northern lights, which are visible on average more than 200 days per year in the vicinity of Fairbanks. The northern lights are not visible in the summer months due to the 24 hour daylight of the midnight sun. Fairbanks also has extremely low seasonal lag; the year's warmest month is July, which averages only warmer than June. Average daily temperatures begin to fall by late July and more markedly in August, which on average is cooler than June.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: From 1949 to 2018, Fairbanks's mean annual temperature has risen by , a change comparable to the Alaska-wide average; winter was the season with the highest increase, at , while autumn had the smallest, at only . However, the mean annual temperature increase from 1976 to 2018 in Fairbanks stood at a more moderate ; this stepwise temperature change, also observed elsewhere in Alaska, is explained by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation shifting from a negative phase to a positive phase from 1976 onward.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the population of the city in 2011 was 32,036 people, 11,075 households, and 7,187 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 12,357 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 65.0% White, 10.0% Black or African American, 10.1% Native American or Alaska Native, 5.1% Asian (1.92% Filipino, 1.15% Korean, 0.62% Laotian, 0.37% Chinese, 0.35% Nepali), 0.8% Pacific Islander. In addition, 9.0% of the population identified as Hispanic or Latino. The population estimate for the Fairbanks North Star Borough was 99,192. The racial makeup of the North Star Borough was 78.2% White, 5.0% Black, 7.2% Alaska Native or Native American, 2.8% Asian, 0.4% Pacific Islander; 6.3% identified as Hispanic or Latino.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Of the 11,075 households, 39.9% had children under the age of 18, 47.2% were married couples living together, 12.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 35.1% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 6.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.56 and the average family size was 3.15.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The median age of the population was 28 years, with 9.6% under the age of 5, 26.0% under the age of 18, 14.7% from 18 to 24, 32.8% from 25 to 44, 16.4% from 45 to 64, and 7.3% who were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females, there were 105.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 108.2 males.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The median income for a household between 2007 and 2011 was $55,409. Males had a median income of $30,539 versus $26,577 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,814. About 7.4% of families and 10.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 11.6% of those under age 18 and 7.0% of those age 65 or over. The percentage of high school graduates or higher is 88%. 20.4% of the population 25 years and up had a bachelor's degree or higher.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Fairbanks' largest newspaper is the "Fairbanks Daily News-Miner", which also includes a weekly entertainment guide, Latitude 65. A few other periodicals also serve Fairbanks and the Fairbanks North Star Borough: "The Ester Republic" and the University of Alaska Fairbanks student newspaper, the "Sun Star".


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Fairbanks is also served by television and radio. Leading radio stations include AM Stations KFAR 660 talk radio, KCBF 820 ESPN Radio Network, KFBX 970 talk radio and KJNP 1170 religious radio. FM stations include 88.3 popular Christian, KUAC 89.9 National Public Radio, KSUA 91.5 University of Alaska, Fairbanks, KDJF ("CHET FM") 93.5 everything country KXLR 94.3 Alaska's new country KWDD 95.9 classic rock KYSC 96.9 soft rock, KWLF 98.1-"Wolf 98.1", top 40, KJNP-FM 100.3 religious radio, KAKQ-FM 101.1-"Magic 101.1" pop music, KIAK-FM 102.5 country music, KTDZ 103.9-"K-TED" adult hits, KKED 104.7 rock music, KQHE 92.7 religious talk, and KDFJ-LP 105.9 religious radio.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Fairbanks' major television affiliates are KATN (ABC) 2.1, Fox 2.2, The CW 2.3, KUAC-TV (PBS), KTVF (NBC), and KXDF-CD (CBS). Cable TV is available from GCI. Satellite TV from Dish Network and DirecTV are also available.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: There are many winter sports in Fairbanks, including cross-country skiing, and dog mushing. Fairbanks hosted the 2014 Arctic Winter Games from March 15–22, 2014. Fairbanks has hosted many different skiing events including the 2003 Junior Olympic Cross Country Ski Championship and the 2008 and 2009 U.S. Cross Country Distance Nationals. Fairbanks also has an annual 50k race called the Sonot Kkaazoot and the Fairbanks Town Series races which consists of four different races. The Chest Medicine Distance Series races consists of only 3 races.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Fairbanks is also home to the Yukon Quest, an international 1,000 mile sled dog race that is considered one of the toughest in the world. The race alternates its starting and finishing points each year between Fairbanks, Alaska and Whitehorse, Yukon.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Hockey is also present in Fairbanks. Two teams include the University of Alaska Fairbanks Nanooks men's team ice hockey, which plays at the Carlson Center, and the Fairbanks Ice Dogs. The Fairbanks Ice Dogs, a junior hockey team in the North American Hockey League, play at the Big Dipper Ice Arena. Prior to the formation of the Ice Dogs, the Fairbanks Gold Kings was formed as a league team by the Teamsters Local 959 in 1974. The team took on a life of its own beyond local league play, and played out of the Big Dipper for many years until moving to Colorado Springs, Colorado (becoming the Colorado Gold Kings) in 1998.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The Alaska Goldpanners is a summer collegiate / semi-pro baseball team, playing home games at Growden Memorial Park. The park is home to the annual Midnight Sun Game, an annual tradition since 1906, played without artificial lights starting after ten at night on the summer solstice.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Fairbanks is a regional center for most departments of the state of Alaska, though the vast majority of state jobs are based in either Anchorage or Juneau.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Fairbanks, unlike other larger cities in Alaska, still has separate borough and city governments. The City of Fairbanks was incorporated on November 10, 1903.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The Fairbanks North Star Borough, created by the Alaska Legislature under the Mandatory Borough Act of 1963, was incorporated on January 1, 1964.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The Fairbanks Police Department is the law enforcement agency responsible for the city. Since its establishment, three officers have died in the line of duty. The police department has also had trouble keeping their employees, as in 2021, the "Fairbanks Daily News-Miner" reported that "The Fairbanks Police Department hired 45 officers in the past five years and lost 50 in the same time frame." The department also reported that out of 45 sworn officer positions, only 34 were filled, or about 75%.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The majority of Fairbanks is politically conservative, with three distinct geographical areas representing differing ideological views. The western part of the city, centered on the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is Democratic-leaning. The downtown area and the eastern parts near Fort Wainwright are Republican-leaning, and the North Pole area farther east is even more conservative. Thus, many residents have noted that a neighborhood's position on the map of Fairbanks (west to east) mirrors its political orientation (left to right).


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The district centered on downtown Fairbanks typically votes for Republican candidates for president, although Joe Biden nearly won it in 2020. The boundaries of the district have changed slightly in the elections listed here.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Fairbanksans elected the first two Libertarian Party members to serve in a state legislature in the United States. Dick Randolph, who had previously served two terms in the Alaska House as a Republican, was first elected as a Libertarian in 1978 and re-elected in 1980. Ken Fanning was also elected to the House as a Libertarian in 1980. In the 1982 elections, Randolph ran unsuccessfully as the LP's nominee for Governor of Alaska, while Fanning lost re-election to the House to Democrat Niilo Koponen, following redistricting.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: At present, the Fairbanks area comprises two entire districts, and most of a third district, in the Alaska Senate. The state senators for the Fairbanks area are Democrat Scott Kawasaki and Republicans Robert Myers Jr. and Click Bishop. The area comprises five entire districts, and a portion of one other district, in the Alaska House. Representatives for the Fairbanks area are Democrats Adam Wool and David Guttenberg, along with Republicans Bart LeBon, Steve M. Thompson, and Mike Prax, appointed to fill the seat after Tammie Wilson resigned in early 2020 (both Republicans). Dave Talerico, a Republican member of the House who lives in the Denali Borough community of Healy, represents Richardson Highway communities beyond the North Pole area but within the Fairbanks North Star Borough boundaries. The election of Nov. 2020 saw the retirement of Talerico and the defeat of Coghill for newcomers to the political system.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Downtown Fairbanks also voted for Democrat Mark Begich in his campaigns for U.S. Senate and governor, and for independent Bill Walker as governor in 2014.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Electricity is provided by the Golden Valley Electric Association, an electric cooperative formed in 1946 to serve areas that the City of Fairbanks' Municipal Utilities System (FMUS) didn't serve. In 1997, GVEA purchased the electric distribution system from FMUS. The downtown coal fired power plant was also purchased by Usibelli Coal Mine under the subsidiary Aurora Energy and contracts to provide power to GVEA. There are four steam turbines fueled by coal. Interior Alaska is not connected to the electrical grid of the contiguous United States and Canada, but a 138kv transmission line constructed in 1985 connects Fairbanks with electric companies serving the Southcentral Alaska area: Matanuska Electric Association, Chugach Electric Association and Homer Electric Association. Until 2019, GVEA held the world record for the largest rechargeable battery BESS, which weighs approximately 1,300 tons. The battery was installed to help bridge the gaps that occur during power outages from the transmission line to Southcentral Alaska. The battery can provide 25 megawatts of electric for 15 minutes or provide power for 7 minutes to about 12,000 homes.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The University of Alaska Fairbanks operates its own coal-fired generating station on campus, providing electricity and steam heat to university buildings. As of 2019, a new fluidized bed 20 megawatt coal-fired power plant was completed, replacing the old dual boiler system


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Until 1996, telephone service was provided by the Fairbanks Municipal Utilities System (FMUS), owned by the City of Fairbanks. In that year, the voters in the City of Fairbanks authorized the sale of FMUS, which included telephone, electrical, and sewer and water. The telephone system was sold to PTI, a subsidiary of Pacific Power and Light, a subsidiary itself of PacifiCorp. However, PacifiCorp's purchase of The Energy Group, a diversified energy company with operations in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the U.S. with debt put pressure on PacifiCorp and they sold the telephone holdings to CenturyTel. CenturyTel didn't hang onto it long, not being interested in the Alaska portfolio they had acquired from PacifiCorp. They sold the telephone utility to Alaska Communications, Inc., a private company, some of whom were Alaskans involved in the prior PTI company. Alaska Communications (ACS) had promised that Fairbanks was to be the corporate headquarters with a new building at the corner of Cushman St. and 1st Avenue. That changed as, in the process of acquiring the Fairbanks based telephone utility, the Anchorage Telephone Utility came up for sale, ACS purchased it and Anchorage became the headquarters for Alaska Communications Systems.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: General Communications Inc. (GCI has competed against ACS in Fairbanks since 1997 with installation of an earth station on the site of the former satellite monitoring system of the European Space Research Organization, now the European Space Agency. GCI purchased ACS's mobile phone service from ACS in 2014, when ACS had a lot of debt. Other mobile providers are national companies AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: A pair of fiber optic cables provide long-distance telephone and Internet service. One parallels the Parks Highway and connects Fairbanks to Anchorage, while the other parallels the Richardson Highway and connects Fairbanks to Valdez. A third, spur fiber optic cable parallels the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and connects Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. In 2020, Matanuska Telephone Association's subsidiary MTA Fiber Holdings has recently completed the AlCan One fiber installation from its prior connections from Wasilla to Fairbanks and North Pole, continuing down the Alaska Highway to the Canadian border where it connects with Canadian carriers.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Broadband Internet access is provided by GCI, ACS, Ace Tekk and a handful of satellite Internet and wireless Internet services.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District operates public schools serving the City of Fairbanks and the Fairbanks North Star Borough. The school board is made up 10 members in total, three of which only have advisory votes. They are elected to three year terms.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: For the 2011-2012 school year, enrollment in the district was 14,260. For the 2021-2022 school year, enrollment was 12,268, down 14% from the 2011-2012 school year.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: In February 2022, the school board made several decisions, including one to close three elementary schools in the Fairbanks North Star Borough, which would save the district $3 million a year. The school district made the decision based a on $20 million budget shortfall. Alaska Public Media reported that "The district will also restructure district middle schools to encompass grades 6 through 8, while most elementary schools will become K-5 schools."


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: As the transportation hub for Interior Alaska, Fairbanks features extensive road, rail, and air connections to the rest of Alaska and Outside. At Fairbanks' founding, the only way to reach the new city was via steamboat on the Chena River. In 1904, money intended to improve the Valdez-Eagle Trail was diverted to build a branch trail, giving Fairbanks its first overland connection to the outside world. The resulting Richardson Highway was created in 1910 after Gen. Wilds P. Richardson upgraded it to a wagon road. In the 1920s, it was improved further and made navigable by automobiles, but it was not paved until 1957.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Fairbanks' road connections were improved in 1927, when the Steese Highway connected the city to the Yukon River at the gold-mining community of Circle. In 1942, the Alaska Highway connected the Richardson Highway to the Canadian road system, allowing road travel from the rest of the United States to Fairbanks, which is considered the unofficial end of the highway. Because of World War II, civilian traffic was not permitted on the highway until 1948.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a series of roads were built to connect Fairbanks to the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. The Elliott Highway was built in 1957 to connect Fairbanks to Livengood, southern terminus of the Dalton Highway, which ends in Deadhorse on the North Slope. West of the Dalton intersection, the Elliott Highway extends to Manley Hot Springs on the Tanana River. To improve logistics in Fairbanks during construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the George Parks Highway was built between Fairbanks and Palmer in 1971.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Until 1940, none of Fairbanks' surface streets were paved. The outbreak of World War II interrupted plans to pave most of the city's roads, and a movement toward large-scale paving did not begin until 1953, when the city paved 30 blocks of streets. During the late 1950s and the 1960s, the remainder of the city's streets were converted from gravel roads to asphalt surfaces. Few have been repaved since that time; a 2008 survey of city streets indicated the average age of a street in Fairbanks was 31 years.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Public transportation has been provided by the Metropolitan Area Commuter System, an agency of the borough government, since 1977. Bus service links much of the urban Fairbanks area, with most routes connecting at the downtown transit center. University Bus Lines, a private company, existed for several decades before MACS started. The company, which was owned first by Paul Greimann and later by Walt Conant, mainly linked downtown Fairbanks with the university campus and the military bases.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Fairbanks International Airport serves as a major hub for Alaska air travel. Several regional and charter airlines use or have used the location as their main base of operations due to its central location in the state. Commercial airlines also connect Fairbanks to the lower 48 and select international destinations. Fairbanks is the smallest city in the United States to be served by transatlantic flights, as Condor operates direct flight to Frankfurt in the summer tourist season.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: After large-scale gold mining began north of Fairbanks, miners wanted to build a railroad from the steamboat docks on the Chena River to the mine sites in the hills north of the city. The result was the Tanana Mines Railroad, which started operations in September 1905, using what had been the first steam locomotive in the Yukon Territory. In 1907, the railroad was reorganized and named the Tanana Valley Railroad. The railroad continued expanding until 1910, when the first gold boom began to falter and the introduction of automobiles into Fairbanks took business away from the railroad. Despite these problems, railroad backers envisioned a rail line extending from Fairbanks to Seward on the Gulf of Alaska, home to the Alaska Central Railway.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: In 1914, the US Congress appropriated $35 million for construction of the Alaska Railroad system, but work was delayed by the outbreak of World War I. Three years later, the Alaska Railroad purchased the Tanana Valley Railroad, which had suffered from the wartime economic problems. Rail workers built a line extending northwest from Fairbanks, then south to Nenana, where President Warren G. Harding hammered in the ceremonial final spike in 1923. The rail yards of the Tanana Valley Railroad were converted for use by the Alaska Railroad, and Fairbanks became the northern end of the line and its second-largest depot.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: From 1923 to 2004, the Alaska Railroad's Fairbanks terminal was in downtown Fairbanks, just north of the Chena River. In May 2005, the Alaska Railroad opened a new terminal northwest of downtown, and that terminal is in operation today. In summer, the railroad operates tourist trains to and from Fairbanks, and it operates occasional passenger trains throughout the year. The majority of its business through Fairbanks is freight. The railroad is planning an expansion of the rail line from Fairbanks to connect the city via rail with Delta Junction, about southeast.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Compared to communities of similar population, Fairbanks' crime rate (violent and property crimes combined) is higher than Alaska's average, which in turn is higher than the U.S. average.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Fairbanks similarly has a higher than average rate of rape and sexual assault, and in 2010 was ranked the third most dangerous U.S. city for women with 70 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: The city of Fairbanks and the greater Fairbanks area is home to a number of attractions and events, which draw visitors from outside of Alaska throughout the year. Summer tourist traffic primarily consists of cruise ship passengers who purchase package tours which include travel to Fairbanks. Many of these tourists spend one or more nights at a local hotel and visit one or more attractions. Tourism the rest of the year is mostly concentrated around the winter season, centered upon the northern lights, ice carving and winter sports. In addition, other events draw visitors from within Alaska, mostly from the community's trading area throughout Interior Alaska and the North Slope.


title: Fairbanks, Alaska

text: Alaska State Parks operates the "Chena River State Recreation Site", a park in the middle of Fairbanks with a campground, trails, and a boat launch. (There is a similarly named Chena River State Recreation Area, a much larger park, about outside Fairbanks)


title: Gregory House

text: Gregory House, M.D. is the titular protagonist of the American medical drama series "House". Created by David Shore and portrayed by English actor Hugh Laurie, he leads a team of diagnosticians and is the Head of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in Princeton, New Jersey.


title: Gregory House

text: House's character has been described as a misanthrope, cynic, narcissist, and curmudgeon, the last of which terms was named one of the top television words of 2005 in honor of the character.


title: Gregory House

text: In the series, the character's unorthodox diagnostic approaches, radical therapeutic motives, and stalwart rationality have resulted in much conflict between him and his colleagues. House is also often portrayed as lacking sympathy for his patients, a practice that allows him time to solve pathological enigmas. The character is partly inspired by Sherlock Holmes. A portion of the show's plot centers on House's habitual use of Vicodin to manage pain stemming from leg infarction involving his quadriceps muscle some years earlier, an injury that forces him to walk with a cane. This dependency is also one of the many parallels to Holmes, who was a habitual user of cocaine and other drugs.


title: Gregory House

text: The character received generally positive reviews and was included in several "best of" lists. Tom Shales of "The Washington Post" called House "the most electrifying character to hit television in years". For his portrayal, Laurie won various awards, including two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama, two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actor from Drama Series, two Satellite Awards for Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama, two TCA Awards for Individual Achievement in Drama, and has received a total of six Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.


title: Gregory House

text: Gregory House was born to John and Blythe House on June 11, 1959, or May 15, 1959. House is a military brat; his father served as a Marine Corps aviator and transferred often to other bases during House's childhood. House presumably picked up his affinity with languages during this period and shows a level of understanding of Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi, and Yiddish. One place in which his father was stationed was Egypt, where House developed a fascination with archaeology and treasure-hunting, which led him to keep his treasure-hunting tools well into adulthood. Another station was Japan, where a 14-year-old House discovered his vocation after a rock climbing incident with his friend. He witnessed the respect given to a "buraku" doctor who solved the case no other doctor could. He also spent some time in the Philippines, where he had dental surgery.


title: Gregory House

text: House loves his mother but hates his father, who he claims has an "insane moral compass", and deliberately attempts to avoid both parents. At one point (episode "One Day, One Room"), House tells a story of his parents leaving him with his grandmother, whose punishments constituted abuse. However, he later confesses it was his father who abused him. Due to this abuse, House never believed John was his biological father; at the age of 12, he inferred that a friend of the family with the same birthmark as himself was his real father. In the episode "Birthmarks", House discovers that John is indeed not his biological father after ordering a DNA test. After a second DNA test was performed in the episode "Love is Blind", House discovers that the man he assumed to be his biological father, Thomas Bell, was not either. The identity of his real father remains unknown.


title: Gregory House

text: House first attended Johns Hopkins University for his undergraduate years as a physics major. Before fully committing to medicine as his discipline, he considered getting a Ph.D. in physics, researching dark matter. He was accepted to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and excelled during his time there. He was a frontrunner for a prestigious and competitive internship at the Mayo Clinic, but another student, Philip Weber, reported House as cheating off of him, resulting in House's expulsion from Johns Hopkins and rejection from the internship. While appealing his expulsion, he studied at the University of Michigan Medical School and worked at a bookstore, where he met his future employer and love interest Lisa Cuddy, with whom he shared a night where "he gave her everything she asked for." Years later, Cuddy noted that House, although still a student, had already become "a legend" due to his diagnostic brilliance. After the appeal process, he was denied re-entry into Johns Hopkins. During a medical convention in New Orleans, House first saw his eventual best friend Dr. James Wilson. Wilson, who was going through his first divorce at the time, broke a mirror in frustration, and started a bar fight after a man repeatedly played "Leave a Tender Moment Alone" on a jukebox. Out of sheer boredom with the convention and to "have somebody to drink with", House paid for the damage, bailed him out, and hired an attorney to clear Wilson's name (which he failed to do), starting their professional and personal relationship. House identifies himself multiple times during the series as a "board-certified diagnostician with a double specialty in infectious disease and nephrology."


title: Gregory House

text: Approximately ten years before the beginning of the series, House entered into a relationship with Stacy Warner, a constitutional lawyer, after she shot him during a "Lawyers vs. Doctors" paintball match. Five years later, during a game of golf, he suffered an infarction in his right leg which went misdiagnosed for three days. House would eventually diagnose the infarction himself. An aneurysm in his thigh had clotted, leading to an infarction and causing his quadriceps muscle to become necrotic. House had the dead muscle bypassed to restore circulation to the remainder of his leg, risking organ failure and cardiac arrest. He was unwilling to allow an amputation, opting instead to endure excruciating post-operative pain to retain the use of his leg. However, after he was put into a chemically induced coma to sleep through the worst of the pain, Stacy, House's medical proxy, and Cuddy, who was House's doctor at the time, acted against his wishes and authorized a safer surgical middle-ground procedure between amputation and a bypass by removing just the dead muscle. This resulted in the partial loss of use in his leg and left House with a lesser, but still serious, level of pain for the rest of his life.


title: Gregory House

text: House could not forgive Stacy for making the decision after he obviously did not want it, and this was the reason Stacy eventually left him. House now suffers chronic pain in his thigh and uses a cane to aid his walking, though he often wields the cane for protection, pushing aside privacy curtains, stopping elevator doors, or knocking on doors. He also frequently takes Vicodin, a moderate to severe painkiller, to relieve his pain. House briefly breaks his dependency with psychiatric help, after he suffers a psychotic break. When Stacy makes her first appearance in season 1, she is married to a high school guidance counselor named Mark Warner. Although she and House have a brief intimate encounter during the second season, House eventually tells Stacy to go back to her husband, devastating her. In the season two finale "No Reason", the husband of one of House's former patients shoots him after his wife had committed suicide.


title: Gregory House

text: At the beginning of season three, House temporarily regains his ability to walk and run after receiving ketamine treatment for his gunshot injuries; however, the chronic pain in his leg comes back and House, who seems depressed because of the returning pain, once again takes painkillers and uses his cane. The other doctors speculate his cane and opiate re-usage are due to his psychological tendencies.


title: Gregory House

text: On a routine clinic visit, a police detective, Michael Tritter, is seen by House. He is seen in the hospital clinic for a condition related to his genitals. Tritter is seen chewing gum which House presumes is nicotine gum during their clinic encounter. House presumes his condition is related to dehydration caused by the nicotine gum and instructs Tritter to use either lubricant "or foreplay, if you're cheap." Tritter insists on a swab of his genitals to rule out any other etiology, to which House responds, "Sorry. Already met this month's quota for useless tests for stubborn idiots." Tritter then observes House taking pills from a bottle. House begins to exit the exam room. Detective Tritter kicks House's cane with his foot and states that House is acting like a bully. House does reluctantly swab the affected area and subsequently inserts a rectal thermometer in Detective Tritter's anus. House leaves the exam room and states at the nurses station, "Leaving early today. You ever get that thing where you're sure you forgot something? But you can't remember what? Can't be that important." He then discards the genital sample in the trash. Tritter launches an investigation into House's suspected drug abuse. The investigation slowly involves Cuddy, Wilson and House's diagnostics team, with Tritter using extreme measures to get information. House, being forcibly weaned off Vicodin to take a deal where he would be allowed to keep his medical license, goes to extreme lengths to manage his pain by stealing oxycodone from a cancer patient of Wilson's who had just died, giving Tritter what he needed to charge House. At the pretrial hearing, the judge decides House is not a danger to society and that his pain management for his leg is not as serious as Tritter made it seem. This conclusion is reached when Cuddy manufactures evidence and perjures herself to keep House out of jail.


title: Gregory House

text: During season five, House once again regains his ability to walk without pain after taking methadone but soon stops after nearly killing a patient due to an uncharacteristic medical error. At the end of season five, House's use of Vicodin reaches a level in which House starts hallucinating about a former fellowship candidate who is also Wilson's dead girlfriend, and a relationship with Cuddy. When House comes to the conclusion that his Vicodin abuse is making him hallucinate and is taking over his life, he checks himself into Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital. At the start of season six, after spending time in Mayfield, House stops taking pain medications and with the help of Dr. Darryl Nolan, finds other ways to deal with his pain and other aspects of his life. During his stay it is revealed by Dr. Nolan that House suffers from clinical depression, has antisocial tendencies, an inflated ego, and severe trust issues. Dr. Nolan at one point even took House to a gathering in an effort to make House open up to people. To help manage his pain House finds a short-lived hobby in cooking. Thirteen (Remy Hadley), Cuddy, and Wilson discover House is very good at his new hobby, attributing this to House thinking of ingredients in terms of chemistry.


title: Gregory House

text: House eventually finds the one thing that seems to help the pain go away: practicing medicine. After he diagnoses a patient online for his team (without their knowledge), and shows Dr. Nolan how this reduces his pain, Nolan suggests House resume his practice.


title: Gregory House

text: In season seven, when Cuddy, who is House's girlfriend at this point, has a brush with death, House goes back on Vicodin in order to cope with the fear of losing her. Near the end of season seven, House finds out the experimental drug he had been using caused fatal cancerous tumors in all of the lab rats in the experiment. He gets a CT scan of his leg and finds three tumors close to the surface of the skin in his leg. He goes home, cleans his bathroom, and attempts to perform surgery on his own leg to extract the tumors in his bathtub.


title: Gregory House

text: In season eight, House finds himself in jail after running his car into Cuddy's house, which was shown in the ending of the season finale of season seven. There he finds his need for Vicodin is a weakness when an inmate makes House steal twenty pills of Vicodin or be killed. Throughout season eight, House's therapeutic use of Vicodin becomes more habitual, similar to his use before season five.


title: Gregory House

text: The final season's opening episode partly explores what path an imprisoned House would take aside from practicing medicine, revealing physics as his other forte. The episode "Body & Soul" makes a nod to this with a reference to a particle physics text amongst his books, as mentioned by his then-wife Dominika Petrova. House fakes his own death in the series finale, thus giving up his ability to practice medicine, in order to spend time with Wilson, who has five months to live. He does this in order to avoid being sent back to prison for destroying an MRI machine in a prank gone wrong. The series ends with House and Wilson riding off into the countryside on motorcycles, as Dr. Chase takes over House's department.


title: Gregory House

text: House frequently shows off his cunning and biting wit, and enjoys picking people apart and mocking their weaknesses. House accurately deduces people's motives and histories from aspects of their personality, appearance, and behavior. His friend and colleague Wilson says that while some doctors have the "Messiah complex" (they need to "save the world"), House has the "Rubik's complex" (he needs to "solve the puzzle"). House typically waits as long as possible before meeting his patients. When he does, he shows an unorthodox bedside manner and uses unconventional treatments. However, he impresses them with rapid and accurate diagnoses after seemingly not paying attention. This skill is demonstrated in a scene where House diagnoses an entire waiting room full of patients in little over one minute on his way out of the hospital clinic. House, although rarely visiting his patients, demonstrates that he is more than capable of using practical medical skills: for example, occasionally taking part in operations and reacting quickly when a patient has a cardiac arrest in front of him. Critics have described the character as "moody", "bitter", "antagonistic", "misanthropic", "cynical", "grumpy", "maverick", "anarchist", "sociopath", and a "curmudgeon". The Global Language Monitor chose the word "curmudgeon" as the best way to describe the character.


title: Gregory House

text: Laurie describes House as a character who refuses to "obey the usual pieties of modern life" and expects to find a rare diagnosis when he is treating his patient. Many aspects of his personality are the antithesis of what might be expected from a doctor. Executive producer Katie Jacobs views House as a static character who is accustomed to living in misery. Jacobs has said that Dr. Wilson, his only friend in the show, and House both avoid mature relationships, which brings the two closer together. Leonard has said that Dr. Wilson is one of the few who voluntarily maintains a relationship with House, because he is free to criticize him.


title: Gregory House

text: Although House's crankiness is commonly misattributed to the chronic pain in his leg, both Stacy and Cuddy have said that he was the same before the infarction. To handle the chronic pain in his leg, House takes Vicodin every day, and as a result has developed an addiction to the drug. He refuses to admit that he has an addiction ("I do not have a pain management problem, I have a pain problem"). However, after winning a bet from Cuddy by not taking the drug for a week, he concedes that he has an addiction, but says that it is not a problem because it does not interfere with his work or life. In the 2009 season House goes through detox and his addiction goes into remission, so to speak. However, it does seem that House may have gotten over his addiction in the season 6 premiere. "House" creator David Shore told the "Seattle Times" in 2006 that Vicodin is "becoming less and less useful a tool for dealing with his pain, and it's something [the writers] are going to continue to deal with, continue to explore".


title: Gregory House

text: House openly talks about, and makes references to, pornography. In "Lines in the Sand", he returns the flirtations of an underage female who is a daughter of a clinic patient. He regularly engages the services of prostitutes, of which his former female diagnostic team member Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), who once had a crush on him, is aware. He also likes to gamble, frequently making wagers.


title: Gregory House

text: House speaks multiple languages, demonstrating fluency in English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Hindi, and Mandarin. He listens to jazz, plays the piano (as does Hugh Laurie) and has an interest in vintage electric guitars. House has often credited guitarist/songwriter Eric Clapton and composer Giacomo Puccini as his biggest musical influences, drawing parallels to those of Hugh Laurie's. He is an avid gamer with a preference for handhelds (owning two Sony PSPs and three Nintendo handhelds, two Game Boys and a DS), is known to attend monster truck pulls with Wilson, and watches the soap operas "General Hospital" and the fictional "Prescription Passion", as well as "Judge Judy". House is a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies and Philadelphia Flyers. He is also (as is Laurie) a motorcyclist, riding a Honda CBR1000RR Repsol Edition, license plate Y91, as seen in "Swan Song", "Help Me", "Deception" and "Post Mortem"; otherwise, he drives a Dodge Dynasty sedan.


title: Gregory House

text: House is an atheist. He openly and relentlessly mocks colleagues and patients who express any belief in religion, deeming such beliefs as illogical. He does not believe in an afterlife because he finds it is better to believe life "isn't just a test". However, in the season four episode "97 Seconds", he expresses sufficient interest in the possibility of an afterlife to electrocute himself in an effort to find out; he is dissatisfied with the results and denounces the possibility of an afterlife. This is also an example of House's tendency to self-experiment and submit to risky medical procedures in the name of truth. Over the course of the series, he disproves the effectiveness of a migraine cure by self-inducing a migraine and controlling the effects through drugs, undergoes a blood transfusion to assist with a diagnosis, and overdoses on physostigmine to improve his memory after sustaining head injuries, subsequently causing his heart to stop beating, then undergoes deep brain stimulation soon after. In "The Fix", he steals experimental medicine only tested in rats to try and regrow his thigh muscle, eliminating his pain. In the following episode, "After Hours", he finds out that the medicine causes tumors, and operates on himself in his bathtub based on a CT scan. Ultimately he is unable to continue and eventually brings in Cuddy, who sends him to the hospital.


title: Gregory House

text: House frequently says, "Everybody lies", but jokingly remarked he was lying when he said it. House criticizes social etiquette for lack of rational purpose and usefulness. Dr. Cameron states in the first episode of the first season "House doesn't believe in pretense... so he just says what he thinks". In the season three episode "Lines in the Sand", he explains how he envies an autistic patient because society allows the patient to forgo the niceties that he must suffer through. In the same episode, Dr. Wilson suggests House might have Asperger syndrome, which is characterized by a number of traits found in House, such as difficulty accepting the purpose of social rules, lack of concern for his physical appearance, and resistance to change; though he later reveals to House that he does not truly believe this, and that claiming this was a part of a ploy to soften Cuddy's opinion of House. House is a strong nonconformist and has little regard for how others perceive him. Throughout the series, he displays sardonic contempt for authority figures. House shows an almost constant disregard for his own appearance, possessing a permanent stubble and dressing informally in worn jeans, wrinkled shirts over rumpled T-shirts, and sneakers. He avoids wearing the standard white lab coat to avoid patients recognizing him as a doctor, preferring a shabby blazer or, less frequently, a motorcycle jacket.


title: Gregory House

text: House does not have much of a social life, and his only real friend is Dr. James Wilson. Wilson knew House before the infarction and looked after him when House's relationship with Stacy ended. Dr. Wilson's moving into House's apartment after his failed marriage in "Sex Kills" symbolizes his taking emotional refuge in his friend. Although they frequently analyze and criticize each other's motives, Wilson has risked his career to protect House, including having his job terminated in the first season as an effort of Edward Vogler to dismiss House, and having his practice damaged by Detective Michael Tritter in an investigation of House's narcotics consumption. House has quietly admitted, at several instances, that he is grateful for Wilson's presence, including referring to Wilson as his best friend. When Wilson resigns and moves away from both New Jersey and House's friendship in the season 5 premiere, House is desperate to have his friend back, and hires a private investigator (Michael Weston) to spy on him. The two ultimately reconcile at House's father's funeral in a scene similar to their first meeting, only this time Wilson breaks a stained glass window with what appears to be a bottle of wine or alcohol in a moment of anger directed at House. In the series finale, House fakes his death both to get out of going to prison and to spend five remaining months with Wilson before he dies of cancer, after having spent the past third of the season helping him through difficult, risky and ultimately unsuccessful treatments and reckless "bucket list" wishes.


title: Gregory House

text: Lisa Edelstein has said that despite his sardonic personality, House is a character who is reliant on people surrounding him. Edelstein says this characteristic is portrayed on several occasions in the third season, during which House's medical career is in jeopardy due to investigations by Det. Michael Tritter (David Morse), who arrests him for possessing narcotics. House's legal trouble ends when Edelstein's character, Lisa Cuddy, commits perjury during his hearing. In Season 5, a relationship with Cuddy begins to blossom, as they are unable to deny feelings between each other. They share a kiss in episode six "Joy" which sparked an ongoing romantic tension between them. When Cuddy's office is destroyed by a gunman and is being renovated, she moves into House's office in what Wilson believes to be an attempt to get closer to House. The two try to drive each other away, doing things to each other's office to make them worse, but in an uncharacteristically nice move, House has Cuddy's mother send her medical school desk for her new office as a surprise. Cuddy is touched by what he did, but is devastated when she spots him with a prostitute he hired, not knowing he had done so only to mess with Kutner and Taub. In the season finale "Both Sides Now" it is confirmed that House wishes to pursue a romantic relationship with Cuddy. In this same episode he believes he has slept with Cuddy and informs Dr. James Wilson the following morning. This however is revealed to be a psychosis, which is a side effect of his Vicodin abuse. The House-Cuddy story culminates in the season 6 finale, "Help Me", when Cuddy cancels her engagement to Lucas to face the inevitable realization of her loving House all along; they share a passionate kiss, thus hinting on mutual willingness to try to develop a real relationship. However, in season 7, this relationship is ended when House starts taking Vicodin again when he is faced with Cuddy possibly having a terminal illness. The season 6 finale “Help Me” shows that despite his personality, he cares a lot about his patients, especially those with whom he has formed an emotional bond. He cares to the point of almost relapsing back into his addiction to Vicodin but this is prevented by Cuddy confessing her love for House.


title: Gregory House

text: House has also been known to act as a mooch at times, frequently stealing food from Wilson. In "You Don't Want to Know", while House is searching for the cause of Thirteen's twitching, he claims to have stolen money from her wallet. In the same episode, Wilson later observes that House's blood type is AB, the universal recipient, reflecting his desire to take whatever he can. In another episode, he reveals to Wilson that he's been borrowing larger and larger sums of money from him without paying him back, just to see at what point Wilson would turn him down. In "Wilson's Heart", it was revealed that one of the reasons for Amber being on the bus with House during the fatal crash was that House fled Shari's Bar to stick Amber with his bar tab, only to leave his cane behind for Amber to return to him on the bus.


title: Gregory House

text: While the show was originally set to be a medical procedural, the idea changed when the writers started to explore the possibilities of a curmudgeonly title character. Shore traced the concept for the title character to his background as a patient at a teaching hospital. Shore recalled that "I knew, as soon as I left the room, they would be mocking me relentlessly [for my cluelessness...] and I thought that it would be interesting to see a character who actually did that before they left the room". Shore also based the character partly on himself: in a 2006 interview with "Maclean's" he explained that he has a "cynical and cold attitude lurking within" him, and almost always agrees with House's point of view. A central part of the show's premise was that the main character would be disabled in some way. The initial idea was for House to use a wheelchair, inspired by the 1960s police drama "Ironside", but Fox turned down this interpretation (for which the crew was later grateful). The wheelchair became a scar on House's face, which later turned into a bad leg necessitating the use of a cane. House usually holds his cane on the same side as his injured leg; Shore explained: "Some people feel more comfortable with the cane in the dominant arm, and that is acceptable". The cane tricks that are seen throughout the series are created by Laurie himself.


title: Gregory House

text: Cathy Crandall, costume designer for the show, created a look for the character that made it seem like he did not care about his clothing. She designed House with a wrinkled T-shirt, a blazer that is one size too short, faded and worn-in jeans and heather-gray rag socks. It was Laurie's idea to have the character wear sneakers, because he thought "a man with a cane needs functional shoes"; the Fox studios' wardrobe department kept thirty-seven pairs of Nike Shox on hand. House has worn T-shirts designed by famous designers such as Barking Irons and Lincoln Mayne, but also by less known designers such as Andrew Buckler and Taavo. The shirts are usually kept tied in a ball overnight to get them to wrinkle.


title: Gregory House

text: When casting for the part started, Shore was afraid that in "the wrong hands", House would "just be hateful". The casting directors were looking for someone who could, as Shore described, "do these horrible things and be somehow likable without just, you know, petting a kitten". When Laurie was asked to audition for the role of House, he was filming "Flight of the Phoenix" in Namibia. Laurie had no big expectations for the show, thinking that it would only "run for a few weeks". He planned to audition for the roles of both James Wilson and Gregory House. However, when he read that Wilson was a character with a "handsome open face", he decided to audition solely for the role of House. Laurie chose not to change his clothing, but to remain in the costume he wore for the film; he also decided not to shave his beard. He put together an audition tape of his own in a Namibian hotel bathroom, the only place with enough light, while his "Flight of the Phoenix" co-stars Jacob Vargas and Scott Michael Campbell held the camera. He improvised by using an umbrella for a cane. Laurie initially believed that James Wilson would be the protagonist of the show after reading the brief description of the character and did not find out that House was the main character until he read the full script of the pilot episode.


title: Gregory House

text: After he had watched casting tapes for the pilot episode, Bryan Singer grew frustrated and refused to consider any more British actors because of their flawed American accents. Although Singer compared Laurie's audition tape to an "Osama bin Laden video", he was impressed with Laurie's acting and, not knowing who he was, Singer was fooled by his American accent. He commented on how well the "American actor" was able to grasp the character, not knowing about Laurie's British nationality. Although Laurie's appearance was very different from the way Shore pictured House, when he watched the audition tape, he was equally impressed as Singer. More famous (in the American market) actors such as Denis Leary, Rob Morrow and Patrick Dempsey were also considered, but Singer, Shore, and executive producers Paul Attanasio and Katie Jacobs all thought Laurie was the best option and decided to cast him for the part. Laurie was the final actor to join the cast of "House". After he was chosen for the part, Laurie, whose father Ran Laurie was a doctor himself, said he felt guilty for "being paid more to become a fake version of my own father". While Laurie has used an American accent before in the "Stuart Little" films, he found it difficult to adopt for his role, saying that words such as "coronary artery" are particularly tricky to pronounce.


title: Gregory House

text: Similarities between House and the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes appear throughout the series; Shore explained that he was always a Sherlock Holmes fan, and found the character's traits of indifference to his clients unique. The resemblance is evident in various elements of the series' plot, such as House's reliance on psychology to solve a case, his reluctance to accept cases he does not find interesting and House's home address, 221B Baker Street, which is the same as Holmes'. Other similarities between the two characters are drug use (House battled a Vicodin addiction for years and Holmes was a recreational user of cocaine), successful detoxification (which proves to be only temporary in House's case), playing an instrument (Holmes plays the violin and House plays the guitar, piano, organ and harmonica) and a talent for accurately deducing people's motives and histories from aspects of their personality and appearance.


title: Gregory House

text: Shore has also explained that the name "House" is a play on the name "Holmes" via its phonetic similarity to the word "homes". The pun does not extend to the meaning of the names, as the surname "Holmes" actually denotes that its initial bearers lived near or worked with holly or holm-oak trees, such that "Holl[e]y" or "Oak[e]s" would be a more literal equivalent. Both Holmes and House each have one true friend, Dr. John Watson and Dr. James Wilson, respectively. Leonard has said that House and his character were originally intended to play the roles of Holmes and Watson in the series although he believes that House's team has assumed the Watson role. Shore has also said that Dr. House draws inspiration from Dr. Marc Chamberlain, a professor of neurology at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Dr. Joseph Bell (who was a teacher of Arthur Conan Doyle's and thus a chief source of inspiration for the creation of Holmes), who could "walk into a waiting room and diagnose people without speaking to them". In the season two finale "No Reason", House is shot by a man named Jack Moriarty, a name that coincides with Sherlock Holmes' adversary, Professor James Moriarty; likewise, in the fifth season, Wilson uses Irene Adler as the name for an imaginary love interest of House (a teacher by the name of Rebecca Adler was also the first patient Dr. House encounters in S1E1), the same name as the only female adversary Holmes ever encountered.


title: Gregory House

text: Throughout the series' run, the character received positive reviews. Tom Shales of "The Washington Post" called House "the most electrifying character to hit television in years".


title: Gregory House

text: House was featured on several best lists. In 2008, House was voted by BuddyTV second sexiest TV doctor ever, behind Dr. Doug Ross (George Clooney) from "ER". TV Overmind named House the best TV character of the last decade. In June 2010, "Entertainment Weekly" also named him one of the 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years. He also appeared in "Entertainment Weekly" "30 Great TV Doctors and Nurses". He was elected TV's Most Crushworthy Male Doctor over Doug Ross of "ER" in a poll held by "Zap2it". Fox News placed the character among the Best TV Doctors For Surgeon General.


title: Gregory House

text: For his portrayal, Hugh Laurie has won various awards, including two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama, two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actor from Drama Series, two Satellite Awards for Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama, and two TCA Awards for Individual Achievement in Drama. Laurie has also earned a total of six Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.


title: Pixel

text: In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.


title: Pixel

text: In most digital display devices, pixels are the smallest element that can be manipulated through software.


title: Pixel

text: Each pixel is a sample of an original image; more samples typically provide more accurate representations of the original. The intensity of each pixel is variable. In color imaging systems, a color is typically represented by three or four component intensities such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.


title: Pixel

text: In some contexts (such as descriptions of camera sensors), "pixel" refers to a single scalar element of a multi-component representation (called a "photosite" in the camera sensor context, although "sensel" is sometimes used), while in yet other contexts (like MRI) it may refer to a set of component intensities for a spatial position.


title: Pixel

text: The word "pixel" is a combination of "pix" (from "pictures", shortened to "pics") and "el" (for ""element""); similar formations with '"el"' include the words "voxel" and "texel". The word "pix" appeared in "Variety" magazine headlines in 1932, as an abbreviation for the word "pictures", in reference to movies. By 1938, "pix" was being used in reference to still pictures by photojournalists.


title: Pixel

text: The word "pixel" was first published in 1965 by Frederic C. Billingsley of JPL, to describe the picture elements of scanned images from space probes to the Moon and Mars. Billingsley had learned the word from Keith E. McFarland, at the Link Division of General Precision in Palo Alto, who in turn said he did not know where it originated. McFarland said simply it was "in use at the time" (circa 1963).


title: Pixel

text: The concept of a "picture element" dates to the earliest days of television, for example as ""Bildpunkt"" (the German word for "pixel", literally 'picture point') in the 1888 German patent of Paul Nipkow. According to various etymologies, the earliest publication of the term "picture element" itself was in "Wireless World" magazine in 1927, though it had been used earlier in various U.S. patents filed as early as 1911.


title: Pixel

text: Some authors explain "pixel" as "picture cell," as early as 1972. In graphics and in image and video processing, "pel" is often used instead of "pixel". For example, IBM used it in their Technical Reference for the original PC.


title: Pixel

text: Pixilation, spelled with a second "i", is an unrelated filmmaking technique that dates to the beginnings of cinema, in which live actors are posed frame by frame and photographed to create stop-motion animation. An archaic British word meaning "possession by spirits (pixies)", the term has been used to describe the animation process since the early 1950s; various animators, including Norman McLaren and Grant Munro, are credited with popularizing it.


title: Pixel

text: thought of as the smallest single component of a digital image. However, the definition is highly context-sensitive. For example, there can be "printed pixels" in a page, or pixels carried by electronic signals, or represented by digital values, or pixels on a display device, or pixels in a digital camera (photosensor elements). This list is not exhaustive and, depending on context, synonyms include pel, sample, byte, bit, dot, and spot. "Pixels" can be used as a unit of measure such as: 2400 pixels per inch, 640 pixels per line, or spaced 10 pixels apart.


title: Pixel

text: The measures dots per inch (dpi) and pixels per inch (ppi) are sometimes used interchangeably, but have distinct meanings, especially for printer devices, where dpi is a measure of the printer's density of dot (e.g. ink droplet) placement. For example, a high-quality photographic image may be printed with 600 ppi on a 1200 dpi inkjet printer. Even higher dpi numbers, such as the 4800 dpi quoted by printer manufacturers since 2002, do not mean much in terms of achievable resolution.


title: Pixel

text: The more pixels used to represent an image, the closer the result can resemble the original. The number of pixels in an image is sometimes called the resolution, though resolution has a more specific definition. Pixel counts can be expressed as a single number, as in a "three-megapixel" digital camera, which has a nominal three million pixels, or as a pair of numbers, as in a "640 by 480 display", which has 640 pixels from side to side and 480 from top to bottom (as in a VGA display) and therefore has a total number of 640 × 480 = 307,200 pixels, or 0.3 megapixels.


title: Pixel

text: The pixels, or color samples, that form a digitized image (such as a JPEG file used on a web page) may or may not be in one-to-one correspondence with screen pixels, depending on how a computer displays an image. In computing, an image composed of pixels is known as a "bitmapped image" or a "raster image". The word "raster" originates from television scanning patterns, and has been widely used to describe similar halftone printing and storage techniques.


title: Pixel

text: For convenience, pixels are normally arranged in a regular two-dimensional grid. By using this arrangement, many common operations can be implemented by uniformly applying the same operation to each pixel independently. Other arrangements of pixels are possible, with some sampling patterns even changing the shape (or kernel) of each pixel across the image. For this reason, care must be taken when acquiring an image on one device and displaying it on another, or when converting image data from one pixel format to another.


title: Pixel

text: Computers can use pixels to display an image, often an abstract image that represents a GUI. The resolution of this image is called the display resolution and is determined by the video card of the computer. LCD monitors also use pixels to display an image, and have a native resolution. Each pixel is made up of triads, with the number of these triads determining the native resolution. On some CRT monitors, the beam sweep rate may be fixed, resulting in a fixed native resolution. Most CRT monitors do not have a fixed beam sweep rate, meaning they do not have a native resolution at all - instead they have a set of resolutions that are equally well supported.To produce the sharpest images possible on an LCD, the user must ensure the display resolution of the computer matches the native resolution of the monitor.


title: Pixel

text: The pixel scale used in astronomy is the angular distance between two objects on the sky that fall one pixel apart on the detector (CCD or infrared chip). The scale measured in radians is the ratio of the pixel spacing and focal length of the preceding optics, . (The focal length is the product of the focal ratio by the diameter of the associated lens or mirror.)


title: Pixel

text: Because is usually expressed in units of arcseconds per pixel, because 1 radian equals (180/π) × 3600 ≈ 206,265 arcseconds, and because focal lengths are often given in millimeters and pixel sizes in micrometers which yields another factor of 1,000, the formula is often quoted as .


title: Pixel

text: The number of distinct colors that can be represented by a pixel depends on the number of bits per pixel (bpp). A 1 bpp image uses 1 bit for each pixel, so each pixel can be either on or off. Each additional bit doubles the number of colors available, so a 2 bpp image can have 4 colors, and a 3 bpp image can have 8 colors:


title: Pixel

text: For color depths of 15 or more bits per pixel, the depth is normally the sum of the bits allocated to each of the red, green, and blue components. Highcolor, usually meaning 16 bpp, normally has five bits for red and blue each, and six bits for green, as the human eye is more sensitive to errors in green than in the other two primary colors. For applications involving transparency, the 16 bits may be divided into five bits each of red, green, and blue, with one bit left for transparency. A 24-bit depth allows 8 bits per component. On some systems, 32-bit depth is available: this means that each 24-bit pixel has an extra 8 bits to describe its opacity (for purposes of combining with another image).


title: Pixel

text: Many display and image-acquisition systems are not capable of displaying or sensing the different color channels at the same site. Therefore, the pixel grid is divided into single-color regions that contribute to the displayed or sensed color when viewed at a distance. In some displays, such as LCD, LED, and plasma displays, these single-color regions are separately addressable elements, which have come to be known as subpixels, mostly RGB colors. For example, LCDs typically divide each pixel vertically into three subpixels. When the square pixel is divided into three subpixels, each subpixel is necessarily rectangular. In display industry terminology, subpixels are often referred to as "pixels", as they are the basic addressable elements in a viewpoint of hardware, and hence "pixel circuits" rather than "subpixel circuits" is used.


title: Pixel

text: Most digital camera image sensors use single-color sensor regions, for example using the Bayer filter pattern, and in the camera industry these are known as "pixels" just like in the display industry, not "subpixels".


title: Pixel

text: This latter approach, referred to as subpixel rendering, uses knowledge of pixel geometry to manipulate the three colored subpixels separately, producing an increase in the apparent resolution of color displays. While CRT displays use red-green-blue-masked phosphor areas, dictated by a mesh grid called the shadow mask, it would require a difficult calibration step to be aligned with the displayed pixel raster, and so CRTs do not use subpixel rendering.


title: Pixel

text: In graphic, web design, and user interfaces, a "pixel" may refer to a fixed length rather than a true pixel on the screen to accommodate different pixel densities. A typical definition, such as in CSS, is that a "physical" pixel is . Doing so makes sure a given element will display as the same size no matter what screen resolution views it.


title: Pixel

text: There may, however, be some further adjustments between a "physical" pixel and an on-screen logical pixel. As screens are viewed at difference distances (consider a phone, a computer display, and a TV), the desired length (a "reference pixel") is scaled relative to a reference viewing distance ( in CSS). In addition, as true screen pixel densities are rarely multiples of 96 dpi, some rounding is often applied so that a logical pixel is an integer amount of actual pixels. Doing so avoids render artifacts. The final "pixel" obtained after these two steps becomes the "anchor" to which all other absolute measurements (e.g. the "centimeter") are based on.


title: Pixel

text: A megapixel (MP) is a million pixels; the term is used not only for the number of pixels in an image but also to express the number of image sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of display elements of digital displays. For example, a camera that makes a 2048 × 1536 pixel image (3,145,728 finished image pixels) typically uses a few extra rows and columns of sensor elements and is commonly said to have "3.2 megapixels" or "3.4 megapixels", depending on whether the number reported is the "effective" or the "total" pixel count.


title: Pixel

text: Pixel is used to define the resolution of a photo. Photo resolution is calculated by multiplying the width and height of a sensor in pixel.


title: Pixel

text: Digital cameras use photosensitive electronics, either charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors, consisting of a large number of single sensor elements, each of which records a measured intensity level. In most digital cameras, the sensor array is covered with a patterned color filter mosaic having red, green, and blue regions in the Bayer filter arrangement so that each sensor element can record the intensity of a single primary color of light. The camera interpolates the color information of neighboring sensor elements, through a process called demosaicing, to create the final image. These sensor elements are often called "pixels", even though they only record one channel (only red or green or blue) of the final color image. Thus, two of the three color channels for each sensor must be interpolated and a so-called "N-megapixel" camera that produces an N-megapixel image provides only one-third of the information that an image of the same size could get from a scanner. Thus, certain color contrasts may look fuzzier than others, depending on the allocation of the primary colors (green has twice as many elements as red or blue in the Bayer arrangement).


title: Pixel

text: DxO Labs invented the Perceptual MegaPixel (P-MPix) to measure the sharpness that a camera produces when paired to a particular lens – as opposed to the MP a manufacturer states for a camera product, which is based only on the camera's sensor. The new P-MPix claims to be a more accurate and relevant value for photographers to consider when weighing up camera sharpness. As of mid-2013, the Sigma 35 mm f/1.4 DG HSM lens mounted on a Nikon D800 has the highest measured P-MPix. However, with a value of 23 MP, it still wipes off more than one-third of the D800's 36.3 MP sensor. In August 2019, Xiaomi released the Redmi Note 8 Pro as the world's first smartphone with 64 MP camera. On December 12, 2019 Samsung released Samsung A71 that also has a 64 MP camera. In late 2019, Xiaomi announced the first camera phone with 108 MP 1/1.33-inch across sensor. The sensor is larger than most of bridge camera with 1/2.3-inch across sensor.


title: Pixel

text: One new method to add megapixels has been introduced in a Micro Four Thirds System camera, which only uses a 16 MP sensor but can produce a 64 MP RAW (40 MP JPEG) image by making two exposures, shifting the sensor by a half pixel between them. Using a tripod to take level multi-shots within an instance, the multiple 16 MP images are then generated into a unified 64 MP image.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: The Black Cauldron is a 1985 American animated dark fantasy adventure film directed by Ted Berman and Richard Rich. It was produced by Walt Disney Productions in association with Silver Screen Partners II and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 25th Disney animated feature film, it is loosely based on the first two books in "The Chronicles of Prydain" by Lloyd Alexander, a series of five novels that are, in turn, based on Welsh mythology.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Set in the mythical land of Prydain during the Early Middle Ages, the film centers on a wicked emperor known as the Horned King, who hopes to secure an ancient magical cauldron that will aid him in his desire to conquer the world. He is opposed by young swineherder Taran, the young Princess Eilonwy, the harp-playing bard Fflewddur Fflam, and a friendly wild creature named Gurgi, who seek to destroy the cauldron to prevent the Horned King from ruling the world.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: The film is directed by Ted Berman and Richard Rich, who had directed Disney's previous animated film "The Fox and the Hound" (1981), and was the first Disney animated film to be recorded in Dolby Stereo. Disney acquired the film rights to the books in 1973 with production beginning in 1980 to be set for a Christmas 1984 release. During production, it had a severe editing process, particularly for its climactic sequence, which proved to be disturbing to children. The newly appointed Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered those scenes to be cut, fearing that it would alienate children, and as a result, it was delayed to 1985. It features the voices of Grant Bardsley, Susan Sheridan, Freddie Jones, Nigel Hawthorne, Arthur Malet, John Byner, Phil Fondacaro and John Hurt. The narration of the movie is provided by famed actor and director John Huston.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: It was the first Disney animated film to receive a PG rating as well as the first Disney animated film to feature computer-generated imagery. The film was distributed theatrically through Buena Vista Distribution on July 24, 1985 to mixed reviews, with critics voicing disapproval of its dark nature and disjointed writing, though the animation, soundtrack, and voice acting were praised. Being the most expensive animated film ever made at the time, it was a box-office bomb, grossing just $21 million against a budget of $44 million, putting the future of Disney's animation department in jeopardy. Because of its commercial failure, Disney did not release the film on home media until 1998. It has since gained a cult following.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: In the land of Prydain, Taran, a teenage boy and "assistant pig-keeper" on the small farm of Caer Dallben, home of Dallben the Enchanter, dreams of becoming a famous warrior. Dallben learns that the evil Horned King is searching for a mystical relic known as the Black Cauldron, which can create an invincible army of undead warriors: the "Cauldron-Born". Dallben fears that the Horned King might use his pig, Hen Wen, who has oracular powers, to locate the cauldron. Dallben directs Taran to take Hen Wen to safety; unfortunately, Taran's foolish daydreaming causes Hen Wen to be captured by Gwythaints, the Horned King's dragon-like creatures.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Taran follows them to the Horned King's castle and meets the pestering dog-like creature, Gurgi, who wants to be his friend. Frustrated by Gurgi's antics and cowardice, Taran leaves him. Taran sneaks into the castle and helps Hen Wen escape but is captured and thrown into the dungeon. Another captive named Princess Eilonwy frees him as she tries to escape. In the catacombs underneath the castle, Taran and Eilonwy discover the ancient burial chamber of a king. Taran arms himself with the king's sword which contains magic that allows him to effectively fight the Horned King's minions, thus fulfilling his dream. Along with a third prisoner, the comical middle-aged bard Fflewddur Fflam, they escape from the castle and are found by Gurgi. Upon learning that Taran has escaped, the Horned King orders his goblin and chief henchman, Creeper, to send the Gwythaints to follow and capture Taran along with his friends.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Following Hen Wen's trail, the four companions stumble into the underground kingdom of the Fair Folk who have Hen Wen under their protection. When the kindly King Eidilleg reveals the cauldron's location, Taran decides to destroy it. Eilonwy, Gurgi and Fflewddur agree to join him and Eidilleg's obnoxious right-hand man Doli is assigned to lead them to the Marshes of Morva while the Fair Folk escort Hen Wen back to Caer Dallben. At Morva, they learn the cauldron is held by three witches—the crafty leader Orddu, the greedy Orgoch, and the more benevolent Orwen (who falls in love with Fflewddur at first sight). Orddu agrees to trade the cauldron for Taran's sword and he reluctantly agrees, knowing that it will cost his chance for heroism. Before vanishing, the witches reveal the cauldron is indestructible, and its power can only be broken when someone willingly climbs into it, which will kill them. Doli angrily abandons the group. Although Taran feels foolish for trading the sword for nothing, his companions show their belief in him. Eilonwy and Taran almost kiss as Fflewddur and Gurgi happily watch. Suddenly they are found by the Horned King's minions who had followed them. Gurgi runs away before they take the cauldron and the three companions back to the castle. The Horned King uses the cauldron to raise the dead and his Cauldron-born army begins to pour out into the world while holding the trio prisoners in view of the cauldron.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Gurgi, deciding not to abandon his friends this time, sneaks into the castle and rescues them. Taran decides to jump into the cauldron to save everyone, but Gurgi stops him and jumps in instead, killing the Cauldron-born as well as himself. When the Horned King spots Taran, he blames him, saying that Taran has interfered for the last time, and throws the youth toward the cauldron. But the cauldron is out of control and consumes the Horned King in a tunnel of fire, killing him and destroying the castle, using up all its powers forever, as the companions escape.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: The three witches come to recover the now-inert Black Cauldron. Taran has finally realized Gurgi's true friendship while hailing him as a hero, and asks them to revive his friend in exchange for the cauldron, choosing to give up his magical sword permanently. Upon hearing Fflewddur's challenging remarks to demonstrate their powers, the reluctant witches honor the request, returning Gurgi to them. At first, Gurgi appears to be dead but is resurrected; much to everyone's joy. After they reunite, he pushes Taran and Eilonwy into a kiss. The four friends then journey back home to Caer Dallben where Dallben and Doli watch them in a vision created by Hen Wen, and Dallben finally praises Taran for his heroism.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Walt Disney Productions optioned Lloyd Alexander's five-volume series in 1971, and pre-production work began in 1973 when the film rights to Alexander's books were finally obtained. According to Ollie Johnston, it was he and Frank Thomas that convinced the studio to produce the movie, and that if it had been done properly, it might be "as good as "Snow White"". Because of the numerous storylines, and with over thirty characters in the original series, several story artists and animators worked on the film's development throughout the 1970s. When "The Rescuers" (1977) was completed, "The Black Cauldron" was tentatively scheduled to be released in 1980. Veteran artist Mel Shaw created inspirational conceptual pastel sketches, which future Disney president and CEO Ron Miller considered to be too advanced for the newly hired animators.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Therefore, by August 1978, the studio had pushed its release date back to Christmas 1984 due to their inability to animate realistic human characters; its original release date was later assumed by "The Fox and the Hound" (1981). During its development limbo, storyboard artist Vance Gerry was selected to create beat storyboards that would outline the plot, action, and locations. Having established the three principal characters, Gerry adapted the Horned King into a big-bellied Viking who had a red beard, fiery temper, and wore a steel helmet with two large horns. Meanwhile, the studio hired Rosemary Anne Sisson as they desired an experienced British screenwriter for the film.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Animator John Musker was the film's initial director, having been offered the position by production head Tom Wilhite. As director, Musker was assigned to expand several sequences in the first act, but they were eventually deemed too comedic. Musker explained, "...the older people I was working with didn't like any of my ideas." When production on "The Fox and the Hound" (1981) had wrapped, several feature animation directors Art Stevens, Richard Rich, Ted Berman, and Dave Michener became involved in "The Black Cauldron". When Miller decided too many people were involved, he decided Stevens was not appropriate to supervise the project so he contacted Joe Hale, who was a longtime layout artist at Disney Studios, to serve as producer.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: With Hale as producer, actual production on "The Black Cauldron" officially began in 1980. He tossed out visual character artwork submitted by Tim Burton, and along with Rich and Berman, they desired a "Sleeping Beauty" (1959)–style approach. Both directors brought Milt Kahl out of retirement to create new character designs for Taran, Eilonwy, Fflewddur Fflam, and the other principal characters. Hale and the story team (including two story artists David Jonas and Al Wilson that he added) heavily revised the film, by which they capsulized the stories of the first two books. They also made some considerable changes, which led to Sisson's departure as she developed creative differences with Hale and the directors.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Animators John Musker and Ron Clements, also citing creative differences, were removed from the project and began development on "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986). Displeased with Gerry's concept for the Horned King, Hale turned the Horned King into a thin creature donning a hood and carrying a spectral presence with shadowed face and glowing red eyes. His role was then expanded into a composite villain of several characters from the books. Taran and Eilonwy eventually acquired elements of the past designs and costumes of earlier Disney characters, especially the latter, who was drawn to resemble Princess Aurora.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: According to Musker, Gary Burghoff of "M*A*S*H" fame had auditioned as Gurgi. He tried numerous vocal iterations since Ted Berman had no idea how the character should sound like. After three hours, the directors grew frustrated and Burgoff, who had refused to leave, was thrown out of the studio. By 1982, John Byner, an impressionist, had been cast in the part. After Bryner was shown the character concepts for Gurgi, he felt inspired to add a "child's inflection" when creating the voice.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: In January 1981, Hayley Mills stated she was being considered for the voice of Eilonwy. That same year, Mills hosted an episode of NBC's "Disney's Wonderful World", in which she met with Hale and the directors to discuss the part. The role eventually went to Susan Sheridan. According to Sheridan, she recorded the voice on three separate trips to the Disney studios. In a 1983 Disney Channel special titled "Backstage at Disney", Hale stated that Jonathan Winters was voicing King Eidilleg. The role eventually went to Arthur Malet.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Shortly before the film's initially planned 1984 theatrical release, a test screening for the rough cut of "The Black Cauldron" was held at the studio's private theater in Burbank, California. After the film, particularly the climactic "cauldron-born" sequence, proved to be too intense and disturbing for the majority of the children in the audience (most of whom ran out of the theater in terror before it was even finished), the newly appointed Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered certain scenes from "The Black Cauldron" be cut, as a result of the length and the fear that their nature would alienate children. Since animated films were generally edited in storyboard form using Leica reels (later known as animatics: storyboards shot sequentially and set to temporary audio tracks), producer Joe Hale objected to Katzenberg's demands. Katzenberg responded by having the film brought into an edit bay and editing the film himself.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Informed of what Katzenberg was doing by Hale, the newly appointed Disney CEO Michael Eisner called Katzenberg in the editing room and convinced him to stop. Though he did what Eisner insisted, Katzenberg requested that the film be modified, and delayed its scheduled Christmas 1984 release to July 1985 so that the film could be reworked.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: The film was ultimately cut by twelve minutes, with existing scenes rewritten and reanimated for continuity. Many of the deleted scenes involved extended character interactions, but other edits involved violent content, including the undead "Cauldron-Born", who are used as the Horned King's army in the film's final act. While most of the scenes were seamlessly removed from the film, the Cauldron-Born sequence contains rather recognizable lapses because the removal of the scenes of the Cauldron-Born mauling the henchmen, as well as one of them being dissolved by the mist, creates a jump in the film's soundtrack.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Invented by David W. Spencer from the studio's still camera department, the animation photo transfer process (APT) was first used for "The Black Cauldron" which would enhance the technology by which the rough animation would be processed onto celluloid. First, the rough animation would be photographed onto high-contrast lithographic film, and the resulting negative would be copied onto the plastic cel sheets that would transfer lines and the colors which eventually eliminated the hand-inking process. However, as the APT-transferred line art would fade off of the cels over time, most of the film's animation was done using the xerographic process, which had been used by Disney since the late 1950s. Spencer would win a technical Academy Award for this process, but the computer would soon render the APT process obsolete.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: "The Black Cauldron" is notable for being Disney's first animated feature film to incorporate computer-generated imagery in its animation for bubbles, a boat, a floating orb of light, and the cauldron itself. Though "The Black Cauldron" was released a year before "The Great Mouse Detective", both films were in production simultaneously for some time and the computer graphics for the latter were done first. When producer Joe Hale heard about what was being done, the possibilities made him excited and he made the crew from "The Great Mouse Detective" project create some computer animation for his own film. For other effects, animator Don Paul used live action footage of dry ice mists to create the steam and smoke coming out of the cauldron.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Unlike most other Disney animated films, the film did not contain any songs. The score is composed and conducted by Elmer Bernstein; he used the ondes Martenot to build upon the dark mood of Prydain, an instrument he used in "Trading Places" (1983) and "Ghostbusters" (1984).


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Due to last minute revisions, much of Bernstein's score were cut from the film. In its minority, the score was re-recorded for the album original release by Varèse Sarabande in 1985, with the composer conducting the Utah Symphony Orchestra. The album soon fell out of print and many of the film's tracks did not resurface until a bootleg copy entitled "Taran" was supplied to soundtrack specialty outlets in 1986. The film tracks received their premiere release in 2012 as part of Intrada Records' partnership with Walt Disney Records to issue several Disney film soundtracks.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: For its initial release, the film became the first Disney animated film to receive a PG rating from the Motion Picture Association. It was also presented in Super Technirama 70—the first since "Sleeping Beauty"—and Dolby Stereo 70mm six-track surround sound. The film's initial theatrical release was accompanied by the Donald Duck short "Chips Ahoy".


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: "The Black Cauldron" was released in North America on July 24, 1985. Two days later, the film was also screened at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. While officially budgeted by Disney executives at $25 million, the film's production manager, Don Hahn, said in his documentary, "Waking Sleeping Beauty", that it cost $44 million to produce the film. The $44-million budget made it the most expensive animated film ever made at the time. The film grossed $21.3 million domestically. It resulted in a loss for Walt Disney Productions and put the future of the animation department in jeopardy (earning it the nickname "the film that almost killed Disney"). It was not distributed as a home video release for more than a decade after its theatrical run after its poor performance. Adding insult to injury, the film was also outgrossed by "The Care Bears Movie" ($22.9 million domestically), which was released four months earlier by the much-smaller Canadian animation studio Nelvana. The film was however more successful outside North America, notably in France, where it had 3,074,481 admissions and was the fifth most attended film of the year.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: The film was the last Disney animated film to be completed at the original Animation Building of the Walt Disney Studios (Walt Disney Productions) in Burbank, California. The animation department was moved to the Air Way facility in nearby Glendale in December 1984, and, following corporate restructuring, eventually returned to the Burbank studio in the mid-1990s at a new facility.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film had an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average score of . The critics' consensus reads: "Ambitious but flawed, "The Black Cauldron" is technically brilliant as usual, but lacks the compelling characters of other Disney animated classics." On Metacritic, the film had a weighted average score of 59 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Roger Ebert of "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, praising the film as "a rip-roaring tale of swords and sorcery, evil and revenge, magic and pluck and luck... And it takes us on a journey through a kingdom of some of the more memorable characters in any recent Disney film." He noted how "involving" the story was, and felt "the key to the movie is in the richness of the characterizations, and the two best characters, I think, are the Horned King and a fuzzy little creature named Gurgi."


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Charles Solomon of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that the "highly dimensional sound track, with its opulent Elmer Bernstein score and excellent vocal performances, is a technological work of art. But it is the animation itself with some of the best work the studio has produced since Walt Disney's death in 1966 that dazzles the viewer." He felt that if "its script and direction were equal to the animation, "Cauldron" would be a masterpiece to rank with "Snow White" and "Pinocchio", instead of the frustrating, beautiful, exciting and ultimately unsatisfying film that it is."


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Walter Goodman, reviewing for "The New York Times", praised the animation and John Hurt's performance, but believed "[p]eople old enough to recall their delight at earlier feature animations, no doubt burnished by memory, are not of course the audience at which "The Black Cauldron" is aimed. Nor, apparently, is it aimed at youngsters who have had a taste of more sophisticated animation of the "Star Wars" breed of movies."


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: London's "Time Out" magazine deemed it "a major disappointment", adding that "the charm, characterization and sheer good humor" found in previous Disney efforts "are sadly absent".


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Charles Champlin, also from the "Los Angeles Times", wrote that "The Black Cauldron" lacks "the simplicity and the clarity of great fairy tales, or the child-sized wonder of Margery Sharp's stories that became "The Rescuers", the last really successful Disney animated feature. One wonderful chase in the old riotously inventive slapstick tradition and two minor comic figures suggest the pleasures that can result when the inventing animators have a fertile ground to start from. But a lot of the way the film seems to be dutifully following a rather cumbersome and not overly attractive story."


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Jeffrey Katzenberg, then-chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, was dismayed by the product and the animators believed that it lacked "the humor, pathos, and the fantasy which had been so strong in Lloyd Alexander's work. The story had been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it was heartbreaking to see such wonderful material wasted."


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Lloyd Alexander, the author of the books on which the film was based, had a more complex reaction to the film:


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: First, I have to say, there is no resemblance between the movie and the book. Having said that, the movie in itself, purely as a movie, I found to be very enjoyable. I had fun watching it. What I would hope is that anyone who sees the movie would certainly enjoy it, but I'd also hope that they'd actually read the book. The book is quite different. It's a very powerful, very moving story, and I think people would find a lot more depth in the book.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: "The Black Cauldron" was first released on VHS in the United Kingdom in 1997, and in the United States on August 4, 1998, as part of the "Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection", in a pan-and-scan transfer, 13 years after its theatrical release. The film received a DVD release with a 2.20:1 non-anamorphic widescreen transfer in 2000, as part of the "Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection" line, featuring an art gallery, a new game "The Quest for the Black Cauldron", and the 1952 Donald Duck short "Trick or Treat".


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: In 2008, Disney announced a "Special Edition" DVD release of the film to be released in 2009, but was re-advertised as a "25th Anniversary Edition" and released on September 14, 2010, in the US and UK. It contained the original 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, the new "Witch's Challenge" game, an unfinished deleted scene, and all of the features from the 2000 DVD release.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: In November 2019, the film was released in 4K for the launch of Disney+. On May 4, 2021, the film was finally released on Blu-ray exclusively through Disney Movie Club.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: Costumed versions of the characters from the film have made occasional appearances at the Disney Parks and Resorts mostly in Fantasyland.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: In 1986, the eatery Lancer's Inn at Walt Disney World, was renamed Gurgi's Munchies and Crunchies. Eventually, in 1993 it was closed and then remodeled into Lumiere's Kitchen, The Village Fry Shoppe, and currently The Friar's Nook.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: On July 11, 1986, Tokyo Disneyland opened Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, a walk-through attraction in which the Horned King makes an appearance. The attraction was in operation until 2006. To tie in with the attraction's opening, a 14-day special event and castle show "The Mystery of Cinderella Castle" was featured on the Cinderella Castle Forecourt Stage, featuring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy, with Princess Aurora, Prince Phillip, and Maleficent from "Sleeping Beauty". During the battle against Maleficent's forces by Goofy, Donald, Phillip, and Aurora, a cameo appearance is made by Creeper with other Disney villains.


title: The Black Cauldron (film)

text: The video game "The Black Cauldron" was designed by Al Lowe of Sierra On-Line and released in 1986. It was made shortly after the first "King's Quest" game, so it resembles that adventure in many ways. Along with "The Dark Crystal" it remains one of only a few adventure games by Sierra to be based on films.


title: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

text: "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is a popular English lullaby. The lyrics are from an early-19th-century English poem written by Jane Taylor, "The Star". The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in "Rhymes for the Nursery", a collection of poems by Taylor and her sister Ann. It is sung to the tune of the French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman", which was published in 1761 and later arranged by several composers, including Mozart with Twelve Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman". The English lyrics have five stanzas, although only the first is widely known. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7666.


title: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

text: The song is in the public domain, and has many adaptations around the world, including the "Alphabet song" and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep".


title: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

text: The English lyrics were written as a poem by Jane Taylor (1783–1824) and published with the title "The Star" in "Rhymes for the Nursery" by Jane and her sister Ann Taylor (1782–1866) in London in 1806:


title: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

text: The lyrics from "The Star" were first published with the tune in "The Singing Master: First Class Tune Book" in 1838. When sung, the first two lines of the entire poem are repeated as a refrain after each stanza.


title: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

text: A parody of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" titled "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat" is recited by the Mad Hatter in of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".