title: Perpetual motion

text: The principles of thermodynamics are so well established, both theoretically and experimentally, that proposals for perpetual motion machines are universally met with disbelief on the part of physicists. Any proposed perpetual motion design offers a potentially instructive challenge to physicists: one is certain that it cannot work, so one must explain "how" it fails to work. The difficulty (and the value) of such an exercise depends on the subtlety of the proposal; the best ones tend to arise from physicists' own thought experiments and often shed light upon certain aspects of physics. So, for example, the thought experiment of a Brownian ratchet as a perpetual motion machine was first discussed by Gabriel Lippmann in 1900 but it was not until 1912 that Marian Smoluchowski gave an adequate explanation for why it cannot work. However, during that twelve-year period scientists did not believe that the machine was possible. They were merely unaware of the exact mechanism by which it would inevitably fail.


title: Perpetual motion

text: In the mid-19th-century Henry Dircks investigated the history of perpetual motion experiments, writing a vitriolic attack on those who continued to attempt what he believed to be impossible:


title: Perpetual motion

text: Some common ideas recur repeatedly in perpetual motion machine designs. Many ideas that continue to appear today were stated as early as 1670 by John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester and an official of the Royal Society. He outlined three potential sources of power for a perpetual motion machine, " Extractions", "Magnetical Virtues" and "the Natural Affection of Gravity".


title: Perpetual motion

text: The seemingly mysterious ability of magnets to influence motion at a distance without any apparent energy source has long appealed to inventors. One of the earliest examples of a magnetic motor was proposed by Wilkins and has been widely copied since: it consists of a ramp with a magnet at the top, which pulled a metal ball up the ramp. Near the magnet was a small hole that was supposed to allow the ball to drop under the ramp and return to the bottom, where a flap allowed it to return to the top again. However, if the magnet is to be strong enough to pull the ball up the ramp, it cannot then be weak enough to allow gravity to pull it through the hole. Faced with this problem, more modern versions typically use a series of ramps and magnets, positioned so the ball is to be handed off from one magnet to another as it moves. The problem remains the same.


title: Perpetual motion

text: Gravity also acts at a distance, without an apparent energy source, but to get energy out of a gravitational field (for instance, by dropping a heavy object, producing kinetic energy as it falls) one has to put energy in (for instance, by lifting the object up), and some energy is always dissipated in the process. A typical application of gravity in a perpetual motion machine is Bhaskara's wheel in the 12th century, whose key idea is itself a recurring theme, often called the overbalanced wheel: moving weights are attached to a wheel in such a way that they fall to a position further from the wheel's center for one half of the wheel's rotation, and closer to the center for the other half. Since weights further from the center apply a greater torque, it was thought that the wheel would rotate forever. However, since the side with weights further from the center has fewer weights than the other side, at that moment, the torque is balanced and perpetual movement is not achieved. The moving weights may be hammers on pivoted arms, or rolling balls, or mercury in tubes; the principle is the same.


title: Perpetual motion

text: Another theoretical machine involves a frictionless environment for motion. This involves the use of diamagnetic or electromagnetic levitation to float an object. This is done in a vacuum to eliminate air friction and friction from an axle. The levitated object is then free to rotate around its center of gravity without interference. However, this machine has no practical purpose because the rotated object cannot do any work as work requires the levitated object to cause motion in other objects, bringing friction into the problem. Furthermore, a "perfect" vacuum is an unattainable goal since both the container and the object itself would slowly vaporize, thereby degrading the vacuum.


title: Perpetual motion

text: To extract work from heat, thus producing a perpetual motion machine of the second kind, the most common approach (dating back at least to Maxwell's demon) is "unidirectionality". Only molecules moving fast enough and in the right direction are allowed through the demon's trap door. In a Brownian ratchet, forces tending to turn the ratchet one way are able to do so while forces in the other direction are not. A diode in a heat bath allows through currents in one direction and not the other. These schemes typically fail in two ways: either maintaining the unidirectionality costs energy (requiring Maxwell's demon to perform more thermodynamic work to gauge the speed of the molecules than the amount of energy gained by the difference of temperature caused) or the unidirectionality is an illusion and occasional big violations make up for the frequent small non-violations (the Brownian ratchet will be subject to internal Brownian forces and therefore will sometimes turn the wrong way).


title: Perpetual motion

text: Buoyancy is another frequently misunderstood phenomenon. Some proposed perpetual-motion machines miss the fact that to push a volume of air down in a fluid takes the same work as to raise a corresponding volume of fluid up against gravity. These types of machines may involve two chambers with pistons, and a mechanism to squeeze the air out of the top chamber into the bottom one, which then becomes buoyant and floats to the top. The squeezing mechanism in these designs would not be able to do enough work to move the air down, or would leave no excess work available to be extracted.


title: Perpetual motion

text: Proposals for such inoperable machines have become so common that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has made an official policy of refusing to grant patents for perpetual motion machines without a working model. The USPTO Manual of Patent Examining Practice states:


title: Perpetual motion

text: The filing of a patent application is a clerical task, and the USPTO will not refuse filings for perpetual motion machines; the application will be filed and then most probably rejected by the patent examiner, after he has done a formal examination. Even if a patent is granted, it does not mean that the invention actually works, it just means that the examiner believes that it works, or was unable to figure out why it would not work.


title: Perpetual motion

text: The United Kingdom Patent Office has a specific practice on perpetual motion; Section 4.05 of the UKPO Manual of Patent Practice states:


title: Perpetual motion

text: Examples of decisions by the UK Patent Office to refuse patent applications for perpetual motion machines include:


title: Perpetual motion

text: The European Patent Classification (ECLA) has classes including patent applications on perpetual motion systems: ECLA classes "F03B17/04: Alleged perpetua mobilia ..." and "F03B17/00B: [... machines or engines] (with closed loop circulation or similar : ... Installations wherein the liquid circulates in a closed loop; Alleged perpetua mobilia of this or similar kind ...".


title: Perpetual motion

text: As "perpetual motion" can exist only in isolated systems, and since true isolated systems do not exist, there are no real "perpetual motion" devices. However, there are concepts and technical drafts that propose "perpetual motion", but on closer analysis it is revealed that they actually "consume" some sort of natural resource or latent energy, such as the phase changes of water or other fluids or small natural temperature gradients, or simply cannot sustain indefinite operation. In general, extracting work from these devices is impossible.


title: Perpetual motion

text: In some cases a thought (or "gedanken") experiment appears to suggest that perpetual motion may be possible through accepted and understood physical processes. However, in all cases, a flaw has been found when all of the relevant physics is considered. Examples include:


title: Perpetual motion

text: Despite being dismissed as pseudoscientific, perpetual motion machines have become the focus of conspiracy theories, alleging that they are being hidden from the public by corporations or governments, who would lose economic control if a power source capable of producing energy cheaply was made available.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The flag of Scotland (; , also known as St Andrew's Cross or the Saltire) is the national flag of Scotland, which consists of a white saltire defacing a blue field. The Saltire, rather than the Royal Standard of Scotland, is the correct flag for all private individuals and corporate bodies to fly. It is also, where possible, flown from Scottish Government buildings every day from 8:00 am until sunset, with certain exceptions.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: Use of the flag is first recorded with the illustration of a heraldic flag in Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount's "Register of Scottish Arms," c. 1542. It is possible that this is based on a precedent of the late 15th century, the use of a white saltire in the canton of a blue flag reputedly made by Queen Margaret, wife of James III (1451–1488).


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The heraldic term for an X-shaped cross is a 'saltire', from the old French word or (itself derived from the Latin "saltatorium"), a word for both a type of stile constructed from two cross pieces and a type of cross-shaped stirrup-cord. In heraldic language, the Scottish flag may be blazoned "azure", a saltire "argent". The tincture of the Saltire can appear as either silver ("argent") or white. However, the term "azure" does not refer to a particular shade of blue.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: Throughout the history of fabric production natural dyes have been used to apply a form of colour, with dyes from plants, including indigo and woad, having dozens of compounds whose proportions may vary according to soil type and climate; therefore giving rise to variations in shade. In the case of the Saltire, variations in shades of blue have resulted in the background of the flag ranging from sky blue to navy blue. When incorporated as part of the Union Flag during the 17th century, the dark blue applied to Union Flags destined for maritime use was possibly selected on the basis of the durability of darker dyes, with this dark blue shade eventually becoming standard on Union Flags both at sea and on land. Some flag manufacturers selected the same navy blue colour trend of the Union Flag for the Saltire itself, leading to a variety of shades of blue being depicted on the flag of Scotland.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: These variations in shade eventually led to calls to standardise the colour of Scotland's national flag, and in 2003 a committee of the Scottish Parliament met to examine a petition that the Scottish Executive adopt the Pantone 300 colour as a standard (note that this blue is of a lighter shade than the Pantone 280 of the Union Flag). Having taken advice from a number of sources, including the office of the Lord Lyon King of Arms, the committee recommended that the optimum shade of blue for the Saltire be Pantone 300. Recent versions of the Saltire have therefore largely converged on this official recommendation (Pantone 300 is #005EB8 as hexadecimal web colours).


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The flag proportions are not fixed but 3:5 is most commonly used, as with other flags of the countries of the United Kingdom (flag manufacturers themselves may adopt alternative ratios, including 1:2 or 2:3). Lord Lyon King of Arms states that 5:4 is suitable. The ratio of the width of the bars of the saltire in relation to the width of the field is specified in heraldry in relation to shield width rather than flag width. However, this ratio, though not rigid, is specified as one-third to one-fifth of the width of the field.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The 1320 Declaration of Arbroath cites Scotland's conversion to Christianity by St. Andrew, "the first to be an Apostle". Depiction of the saint being crucified on a decussate cross was seen on seals in Scotland from 1180 onwards and was used on a seal of the Guardians of Scotland, dated 1286. Bishop William de Lamberton (r. 1297–1328) also used the crucified figure of the saint in his seal.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The saltire (decussate cross, diagonal cross) was used as a field sign in the medieval period without any connection to Saint Andrew. The connection between the field sign and the legendary mode of crucifixion of the saint may originate in Scotland, in the late 14th century. The Parliament of Scotland decreed in 1385 that every Scottish and French soldier (fighting against the English under Richard II) "shall have a sign before and behind, namely a white St. Andrew's Cross".


title: Flag of Scotland

text: James Douglas, 2nd Earl of Douglas at the Battle of Otterburn (1388) reportedly used a pennon with a saltire at the hoist. Similarly, white saltire was shown in the canton of the ""Blue Blanket of the Trades of Edinburgh"", reputedly made by Queen Margaret, wife of James III (1451–1488). This is the flag of the Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh, and the focal point of the Riding of the Marches ceremony held in the city each year.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: Use of the white "Sanct Androis cors" on blue as a naval flag is recorded for 1507, for the carrack "Great Michael". As a heraldic flag, the white saltire on a blue field is first shown in 1542, in the armorial of David Lyndsay. Here, the royal arms are supported by two unicorns, each holding the saltire banner.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The Scottish Government has ruled that the Saltire should, where possible, fly on all its buildings every day from 8am until sunset. An exception is made for United Kingdom "national days", when on buildings where only one flagpole is present the Saltire shall be lowered and replaced with the Union Flag. Such flag days are standard throughout the United Kingdom, with the exception of Merchant Navy Day (3 September) which is a specific flag day in Scotland during which the Red Ensign of the Merchant Navy may be flown on land in place of either the Saltire or Union Flag.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: A further Scottish distinction from the UK flag days is that on Saint Andrew's Day (30 November) the Union Flag will only be flown where a building has more than one flagpole; the Saltire will not be lowered to make way for the Union Flag where a single flagpole is present. If there are two or more flagpoles present, the Saltire may be flown in addition to the Union Flag but not in a superior position. This distinction arose after Members of the Scottish Parliament complained that Scotland was the only country in the world where the potential existed for the citizens of a country to be unable to fly their national flag on their country's national day. In recent years, embassies of the United Kingdom have also flown the Saltire to mark St Andrew's Day. Many bodies of the Scottish Government use the flag as a design basis for their logo. For example, Safer Scotland's emblem depicts a lighthouse shining beams in a saltire shape onto a blue sky. Other Scottish bodies, both private and public, have also used the saltire in similar ways.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The seven British Army Infantry battalions of the Scottish Division, plus the Scots Guards and Royal Scots Dragoon Guards regiments, use the Saltire in a variety of forms. Combat and transport vehicles of these Army units may be adorned with a small, (130x80mm approx.), representation of the Saltire; such decals being displayed on the front and/or rear of the vehicle (on tanks these may also be displayed on the vehicle turret). In Iraq, during both Operation Granby and the subsequent Operation Telic, the Saltire was seen to be flown from the communications whip antenna of vehicles belonging to these units. Funerals, conducted with full military honours, of casualties of these operations in Iraq, plus those killed in operations in Afghanistan, have also been seen to include the Saltire being draped over the coffin of the deceased on such occasions.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: In the battle for "hearts and minds" in Iraq, the Saltire was again used by the British Army as a means of distinguishing troops belonging to Scottish regiments from other coalition forces, in the hope of fostering better relations with the civilian population in the area south west of Baghdad. Leaflets were distributed to Iraqi civilians, by members of the Black Watch, depicting troops and vehicles set against a backdrop of the Saltire.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: Immediately prior to, and following, the merger in March 2006 of Scotland's historic infantry regiments to form a single Royal Regiment of Scotland, a multi-million-pound advertising campaign was launched in Scotland in an attempt to attract recruits to join the reorganised and simultaneously rebranded "Scottish Infantry". The recruitment campaign employed the Saltire in the form of a logo; the words "Scottish Infantry. Forward As One." being placed next to a stylised image of the Saltire. For the duration of the campaign, this logo was used in conjunction with the traditional Army recruiting logo; the words "Army. Be The Best." being placed beneath a stylised representation of the Union Flag. Despite this multi-media campaign having had mixed results in terms of overall success, the Saltire continues to appear on a variety of Army recruiting media used in Scotland.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: Other uses of the Saltire by the Army include the cap badge design of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, which consists of a (silver) Saltire, surmounted by a (gilt) lion rampant and ensigned with a representation of the Crown of Scotland (this same design, save for the Crown, is used on both the Regimental flag and tactical recognition flash of the Royal Regiment of Scotland). The badge of the No. 679 (The Duke of Connaught's) Squadron Army Air Corps bears a Saltire between two wreaths ensigned 'Scottish Horse', an honour they received in 1971 which originated through their links with the Royal Artillery. The Officer Training Corps units attached to universities in Edinburgh and Glasgow, plus the Tayforth University OTC, all feature the Saltire in their cap badge designs.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy adorned three of their aircraft with the Saltire. Specifically, the Westland Sea King Mk5 aircraft of HMS "Gannet", operating in the Search and Rescue (SAR) role from Royal Naval Air Station Prestwick, Ayrshire, displayed a Saltire decal on the nose of each aircraft.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: Although not represented in the form of a flag, the No. 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force uses the Saltire surmounted by a lion rampant as the device shown on the squadron crest. The station crest of the former RAF Leuchars, Fife, also showed the Saltire, in this case surmounted by a sword. The crest of the former RAF East Fortune, East Lothian, also showed a sword surmounting the Saltire, however, unlike Leuchars, this sword was shown inverted and the station crest of the former RAF Turnhouse, Edinburgh, showed a Saltire surmounted by an eagle's head. The East of Scotland Universities Air Squadron crest features a Saltire surmounted by an open book; the book itself being supported by red lions rampant.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: In Scotland, the Saltire can be flown at any time by any individual, company, local authority, hospital or school without obtaining express consent. Many local authorities in Scotland fly the Saltire from Council Buildings. However, in 2007 Angus Council approved a proposal to replace the Saltire on Council Buildings with a new Angus flag, based on the council's coat of arms. This move led to public outcry across Scotland with more than 7,000 people signing a petition opposing the council's move, leading to a compromise whereby the Angus flag would not replace but be flown alongside the Saltire on council buildings.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: In the United Kingdom, owners of vehicles registered in Great Britain have the option of displaying the Saltire on the vehicle registration plate, in conjunction with the letters "SCO" or alternatively the word "Scotland". In 1999, the Royal Mail issued a series of pictorial stamps for Scotland, with the '2nd' value stamp depicting the Flag of Scotland. In Northern Ireland, sections of the Protestant community routinely employ the Saltire as a means of demonstrating and celebrating their Ulster-Scots heritage.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: In 2017 the Unicode Consortium approved emoji support for the Flag of Scotland following a proposal from Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia and Owen Williams of BBC Wales in 2016. This was added to major smartphone platforms alongside the flags of England and Wales in the same year. Prior to this update, The Telegraph reported that users had "been able to send emojis of the Union Flag, but not of the individual nations".


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The Saltire is one of the key components of the Union Flag which, since its creation in 1606, has appeared in various forms following the Flag of Scotland and Flag of England first being merged to mark the Union of the Crowns, an event occurred in 1603 when James VI, King of Scots, acceded to the thrones of both England and Ireland upon the death of Elizabeth I of England. The proclamation by King James, made on 12 April 1606, which led to the creation of the Union Flag states:


title: Flag of Scotland

text: However, in objecting strongly to the form and pattern of Union Flag designed by the College of Arms and approved by King James, whereby the cross of Saint George surmounted that of Saint Andrew, regarded in Scotland as a slight upon the Scottish nation, a great number of shipmasters and ship-owners in Scotland took up the matter with John Erskine, 19th Earl of Mar, and encouraged him to send a letter of complaint, dated 7 August 1606, to James VI, via the Privy Council of Scotland, stating:


title: Flag of Scotland

text: Despite the drawings described in this letter as showing drafts of the two new patterns, together with any royal response to the complaint which may have accompanied them, having been lost, (possibly in the 1834 Burning of Parliament), other evidence exists, at least on paper, of a Scottish variant whereby the Scottish cross appears uppermost. Whilst, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, this design is considered by most vexillologists to have been "unofficial", there is reason to believe that such flags were employed during the 17th century for use on Scottish vessels at sea. This flag's design is also described in the 1704 edition of "The Present State of the Universe" by John Beaumont, Junior, which contains as an appendix "The Ensigns, Colours or Flags of the Ships at Sea: Belonging to The several Princes and States in the World".


title: Flag of Scotland

text: On land, evidence suggesting use of this flag appears in the depiction of Edinburgh Castle by John Slezer, in his series of engravings entitled "Theatrum Scotiae", c. 1693. Appearing in later editions of "Theatrum Scotiae", the "North East View of Edinburgh Castle" engraving depicts the "Scotch" (to use the appropriate adjective of that period) version of the Union Flag flying from the Castle Clock Tower. A reduced view of this engraving, with the flag similarly detailed, also appears on the "Plan of Edenburgh, Exactly Done". However, on the engraving entitled "North Prospect of the City of Edenburgh" the detail of the flag, when compared to the aforementioned engravings, appears indistinct and lacks any element resembling a saltire. The reduced version of the "North Prospect ...", as shown on the "Plan of Edenburgh, Exactly Done", does however display the undivided arm of a saltire and is thereby suggestive of the Scottish variant.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: On 17 April 1707, just two weeks prior to the Acts of Union coming into effect, Sir Henry St George, Garter King of Arms, presented several designs to Queen Anne and her Privy Council for consideration as the flag of the soon to be unified Kingdom of Great Britain. At the request of the Scots representatives, the designs for consideration included that version of Union Flag showing the Cross of Saint Andrew uppermost; identified as being the ""Scots union flagg as said to be used by the Scots"". However, Queen Anne and her Privy Council approved Sir Henry's original effort (pattern "one") showing the Cross of Saint George uppermost.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: From 1801, in order to symbolise the union of the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland a new design, which included the St Patrick's Cross, was adopted for the flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. A manuscript compiled from 1785 by William Fox, and in possession of the Flag Research Center, includes a full plate showing ""the scoth union"" flag with the addition of the cross of St. Patrick. This could imply that there was still some insistence on a Scottish variant after 1801.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: Despite its unofficial and historic status the Scottish Union Flag continues to be produced by flag manufacturers, and its unofficial use by private citizens on land has been observed. In 2006 historian David R. Ross called for Scotland to once again adopt this design in order to "reflect separate national identities across the UK". However, the 1801 design of the Union Flag remains the official flag of the entire United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: Several flags outside of the United Kingdom are based on the Scottish saltire. In Canada, an inverse representation of the flag (i.e. a blue saltire on a white field), combined with the shield from the royal arms of the Kingdom of Scotland, forms the modern flag of the province of Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia (Latin for "New Scotland") was the first colonial venture of the Kingdom of Scotland in the Americas. By contrast, the saltire logo of St. Andrew's First Aid is red on white rather than white on blue, in alteration of the Red Cross. Also, the Colombian department of the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina uses a pale-blue version because the name of principal island ("San Andrés", Saint Andrew), though also by the first settlers from Scottish origin.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The Dutch municipality of Sint-Oedenrode, named after the Scottish princess Saint Oda, uses a version of the flag of Scotland, defaced with a gold castle having on both sides a battlement.


title: Flag of Scotland

text: The "Royal Standard of Scotland", also known as the "Banner of the King of Scots" or more commonly the "Lion Rampant of Scotland", is the Scottish Royal Banner of Arms. Used historically by the King of Scots, the Royal Standard of Scotland differs from Scotland's national flag, the Saltire, in that its correct use is restricted by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland to only a few Great Officers of State who officially represent The Sovereign in Scotland. However, a 1934 Royal Warrant for George V's silver jubilee which authorised waving of hand-held versions continues to be relied upon by fans at sports events and other public occasions. It is also used in an official capacity at Royal residences in Scotland when the Sovereign is not present.


title: Information Age

text: The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, Silicon Age, or New Media Age) is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century, characterized by a rapid epochal shift from traditional industry established by the Industrial Revolution to an economy primarily based upon information technology. The onset of the Information Age has been associated with the development of the transistor in 1947, the basic building block of modern electronics; the optical amplifier in 1957, the basis of long-distance fiber optic communications; and Unix time measured from the start of Jan. 1, 1970, the basis of Coordinated Universal Time and Network Time Protocol which now synchronizes all computers connected to the Internet.


title: Information Age

text: According to the United Nations Public Administration Network, the Information Age was formed by capitalizing on computer microminiaturization advances, which led to modernized information systems and internet communications as the driving force of social evolution.


title: Information Age

text: Library expansion was calculated in 1945 by Fremont Rider to double in capacity every 16 years where sufficient space made available. He advocated replacing bulky, decaying printed works with miniaturized microform analog photographs, which could be duplicated on-demand for library patrons and other institutions.


title: Information Age

text: Rider did not foresee, however, the digital technology that would follow decades later to replace analog microform with digital imaging, storage, and transmission media, whereby vast increases in the rapidity of information growth would be made possible through automated, potentially-lossless digital technologies. Accordingly, "Moore's law", formulated around 1965, would calculate that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.


title: Information Age

text: By the early 1980s, along with improvements in computing power, the proliferation of the smaller and less expensive personal computers allowed for immediate access to information and the ability to share and store it. Connectivity between computers within organizations enabled access to greater amounts of information.


title: Information Age

text: The world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally compressed) exabytes (EB) in 1986 to 15.8 EB in 1993; over 54.5 EB in 2000; and to 295 (optimally compressed) EB in 2007. This is the informational equivalent to less than one 730-megabyte (MB) CD-ROM per person in 1986 (539 MB per person); roughly four CD-ROM per person in 1993; twelve CD-ROM per person in the year 2000; and almost sixty-one CD-ROM per person in 2007. It is estimated that the world's capacity to store information has reached 5 zettabytes in 2014, the informational equivalent of 4,500 stacks of printed books from the earth to the sun.


title: Information Age

text: The amount of digital data stored appears to be growing approximately exponentially, reminiscent of Moore's law. As such, "Kryder's law" prescribes that the amount of storage space available appears to be growing approximately exponentially.


title: Information Age

text: The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 432 exabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986; 715 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1993; 1.2 (optimally compressed) zettabytes in 2000; and 1.9 zettabytes in 2007, the information equivalent of 174 newspapers per person per day.


title: Information Age

text: The world's effective capacity to exchange information through two-way telecommunication networks was 281 petabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986; 471 petabytes in 1993; 2.2 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2000; and 65 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007, the information equivalent of 6 newspapers per person per day. In the 1990s, the spread of the Internet caused a sudden leap in access to and ability to share information in businesses and homes globally. Technology was developing so quickly that a computer costing $3000 in 1997 would cost $2000 two years later and $1000 the following year.


title: Information Age

text: The world's technological capacity to compute information with humanly guided general-purpose computers grew from 3.0 × 10 MIPS in 1986, to 4.4 × 10 MIPS in 1993; to 2.9 × 10 MIPS in 2000; to 6.4 × 10 MIPS in 2007. An article featured in the journal "Trends in Ecology and Evolution" in 2016 reported that:


title: Information Age

text: Genetic code may also be considered part of the information revolution. Now that sequencing has been computerized, genome can be rendered and manipulated as data. This started with DNA sequencing, invented by Walter Gilbert and Allan Maxam in 1976-1977 and Frederick Sanger in 1977, grew steadily with the Human Genome Project, initially conceived by Gilbert and finally, the practical applications of sequencing, such as gene testing, after the discovery by Myriad Genetics of the BRCA1 breast cancer gene mutation. Sequence data in Genbank has grown from the 606 genome sequences registered in December 1982 to the 231 million genomes in August 2021. An additional 13 trillion incomplete sequences are registered in the Whole Genome Shotgun submission database as of August 2021. The information contained in these registered sequences has doubled every 18 months.


title: Information Age

text: During rare times in human history, there have been periods of innovation that have transformed human life. The Neolithic Age, the Scientific Age and the Industrial Age all, ultimately, induced discontinuous and irreversible changes in the economic, social and cultural elements of the daily life of most people. Traditionally, these epochs have taken place over hundreds, or in the case of the Neolithic Revolution, thousands of years, whereas the Information Age swept to all parts of the globe in just a few years. The reason for its rapid adoption is the rapidly advancing speed of information exchange.


title: Information Age

text: Between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago during the Neolithic period, humans began to domesticate animals, began to farm grains and to replace stone tools with ones made of metal. These innovations allowed nomadic hunter-gatherers to settle down. Villages formed along the Yangtze River in China in 6,500 B.C., the Nile River region of Africa and in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in 6,000 B.C. Cities emerged between 6,000 B.C. and 3,500 B.C. The development of written communication (cuneiform in Sumeria and hieroglyphs in Egypt in 3,500 B.C. and writing in Egypt in 2,560 B.C. and in Minoa and China around 1,450 B.C.) enabled ideas to be preserved for extended periods to spread extensively. In all, Neolithic developments, augmented by writing as an information tool, laid the groundwork for the advent of civilization.


title: Information Age

text: The Scientific Age began in the period between Galileo's 1543 proof that the planets orbit the sun and Newton's publication of the laws of motion and gravity in "Principia" in 1697. This age of discovery continued through the 18th Century, accelerated by widespread use of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg.


title: Information Age

text: The Industrial Age began in Great Britain in 1760 and continued into the mid-19th Century. It altered many aspects of life around the world. The invention of machines such as the mechanical textile weaver by Edmund Cartwrite, the rotating shaft steam engine by James Watt and the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, along with processes for mass manufacturing, came to serve the needs of a growing global population. The Industrial Age harnessed steam and waterpower to reduce the dependence on animal and human physical labor as the primary means of production. Thus, the core of the Industrial Revolution was the generation and distribution of energy from coal and water to produce steam and, later in the 20th Century, electricity.


title: Information Age

text: The Information Age also requires electricity to power the global networks of computers that process and store data. However, what dramatically accelerated the pace of adoption of The Information Age, as compared to previous ones, was the speed by which knowledge could be transferred and pervaded the entire human family in a few short decades. This acceleration came about with the adoptions of a new form of power. Beginning in 1972, engineers devised ways to harness light to convey data through fiber optic cable. Today, light-based optical networking systems at the heart of telecom networks and the Internet span the globe and carry most of the information traffic to and from users and data storage systems.


title: Information Age

text: There are different conceptualizations of the Information Age. Some focus on the evolution of information over the ages, distinguishing between the Primary Information Age and the Secondary Information Age. Information in the Primary Information Age was handled by newspapers, radio and television. The Secondary Information Age was developed by the Internet, satellite televisions and mobile phones. The Tertiary Information Age was emerged by media of the Primary Information Age interconnected with media of the Secondary Information Age as presently experienced.


title: Information Age

text: Others classify it in terms of the well-established Schumpeterian long waves or Kondratiev waves. Here authors distinguish three different long-term metaparadigms, each with different long waves. The first focused on the transformation of material, including stone, bronze, and iron. The second, often referred to as industrial revolution, was dedicated to the transformation of energy, including water, steam, electric, and combustion power. Finally, the most recent metaparadigm aims at transforming information. It started out with the proliferation of communication and stored data and has now entered the age of algorithms, which aims at creating automated processes to convert the existing information into actionable knowledge.


title: Information Age

text: Eventually, Information and communication technology (ICT)—i.e. computers, computerized machinery, fiber optics, communication satellites, the Internet, and other ICT tools—became a significant part of the world economy, as the development of optical networking and microcomputers greatly changed many businesses and industries. Nicholas Negroponte captured the essence of these changes in his 1995 book, "Being Digital," in which he discusses the similarities and differences between products made of atoms and products made of bits.


title: Information Age

text: The Information Age has affected the workforce in several ways, such as compelling workers to compete in a global job market. One of the most evident concerns is the replacement of human labor by computers that can do their jobs faster and more effectively, thus creating a situation in which individuals who perform tasks that can easily be automated are forced to find employment where their labor is not as disposable. This especially creates issue for those in industrial cities, where solutions typically involve lowering working time, which is often highly resisted. Thus, individuals who lose their jobs may be pressed to move up into joining "mind workers" (e.g. engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, professors, scientists, executives, journalists, consultants), who are able to compete successfully in the world market and receive (relatively) high wages.


title: Information Age

text: Along with automation, jobs traditionally associated with the middle class (e.g. assembly line, data processing, management, and supervision) have also begun to disappear as result of outsourcing. Unable to compete with those in developing countries, production and service workers in post-industrial (i.e. developed) societies either lose their jobs through outsourcing, accept wage cuts, or settle for low-skill, low-wage service jobs. In the past, the economic fate of individuals would be tied to that of their nation's. For example, workers in the United States were once well paid in comparison to those in other countries. With the advent of the Information Age and improvements in communication, this is no longer the case, as workers must now compete in a global job market, whereby wages are less dependent on the success or failure of individual economies.


title: Information Age

text: In effectuating a globalized workforce, the internet has just as well allowed for increased opportunity in developing countries, making it possible for workers in such places to provide in-person services, therefore competing directly with their counterparts in other nations. This competitive advantage translates into increased opportunities and higher wages.


title: Information Age

text: The Information Age has affected the workforce in that automation and computerization have resulted in higher productivity coupled with net job loss in manufacturing. In the United States, for example, from January 1972 to August 2010, the number of people employed in manufacturing jobs fell from 17,500,000 to 11,500,000 while manufacturing value rose 270%.


title: Information Age

text: Although it initially appeared that job loss in the industrial sector might be partially offset by the rapid growth of jobs in information technology, the recession of March 2001 foreshadowed a sharp drop in the number of jobs in the sector. This pattern of decrease in jobs would continue until 2003, and data has shown that, overall, technology creates more jobs than it destroys even in the short run.


title: Information Age

text: Industry has become more information-intensive while less labor- and capital-intensive. This has left important implications for the workforce, as workers have become increasingly productive as the value of their labor decreases. For the system of capitalism itself, the value of labor decreases, the value of capital increases.


title: Information Age

text: In the classical model, investments in human and financial capital are important predictors of the performance of a new venture. However, as demonstrated by Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, it now seems possible for a group of relatively inexperienced people with limited capital to succeed on a large scale.


title: Information Age

text: The Information Age was enabled by technology developed in the Digital Revolution, which was itself enabled by building on the developments of the Technological Revolution.


title: Information Age

text: The onset of the Information Age can be associated with the development of transistor technology. The concept of a field-effect transistor was first theorized by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in 1925. The first practical transistor was the point-contact transistor, invented by the engineers Walter Houser Brattain and John Bardeen while working for William Shockley at Bell Labs in 1947. This was a breakthrough that laid the foundations for modern technology. Shockley's research team also invented the bipolar junction transistor in 1952. The most widely used type of transistor is the metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), invented by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1960. The complementary MOS (CMOS) fabrication process was developed by Frank Wanlass and Chih-Tang Sah in 1963.


title: Information Age

text: Before the advent of electronics, mechanical computers, like the Analytical Engine in 1837, were designed to provide routine mathematical calculation and simple decision-making capabilities. Military needs during World War II drove development of the first electronic computers, based on vacuum tubes, including the Z3, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, Colossus computer, and ENIAC.


title: Information Age

text: The invention of the transistor enabled the era of mainframe computers (1950s–1970s), typified by the IBM 360. These large, room-sized computers provided data calculation and manipulation that was much faster than humanly possible, but were expensive to buy and maintain, so were initially limited to a few scientific institutions, large corporations, and government agencies.


title: Information Age

text: The germanium integrated circuit (IC) was invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in 1958. The silicon integrated circuit was then invented in 1959 by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor, using the planar process developed by Jean Hoerni, who was in turn building on Mohamed Atalla's silicon surface passivation method developed at Bell Labs in 1957. Following the invention of the MOS transistor by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959, the MOS integrated circuit was developed by Fred Heiman and Steven Hofstein at RCA in 1962. The silicon-gate MOS IC was later developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968. With the advent of the MOS transistor and the MOS IC, transistor technology rapidly improved, and the ratio of computing power to size increased dramatically, giving direct access to computers to ever smaller groups of people.


title: Information Age

text: The first commercial single-chip microprocessor launched in 1971, the Intel 4004, which was developed by Federico Faggin using his silicon-gate MOS IC technology, along with Marcian Hoff, Masatoshi Shima and Stan Mazor.


title: Information Age

text: Along with electronic arcade machines and home video game consoles pioneered by Nolan Bushnell in the 1970s, the development of personal computers like the Commodore PET and Apple II (both in 1977) gave individuals access to the computer. But data sharing between individual computers was either non-existent or largely manual, at first using punched cards and magnetic tape, and later floppy disks.


title: Information Age

text: The first developments for storing data were initially based on photographs, starting with microphotography in 1851 and then microform in the 1920s, with the ability to store documents on film, making them much more compact. Early information theory and Hamming codes were developed about 1950, but awaited technical innovations in data transmission and storage to be put to full use.


title: Information Age

text: Magnetic-core memory was developed from the research of Frederick W. Viehe in 1947 and An Wang at Harvard University in 1949. With the advent of the MOS transistor, MOS semiconductor memory was developed by John Schmidt at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1964. In 1967, Dawon Kahng and Simon Sze at Bell Labs described in 1967 how the floating gate of an MOS semiconductor device could be used for the cell of a reprogrammable ROM. Following the invention of flash memory by Fujio Masuoka at Toshiba in 1980, Toshiba commercialized NAND flash memory in 1987.


title: Information Age

text: Copper wire cables transmitting digital data connected computer terminals and peripherals to mainframes, and special message-sharing systems leading to email, were first developed in the 1960s. Independent computer-to-computer networking began with ARPANET in 1969. This expanded to become the Internet (coined in 1974). Access to the Internet improved with the invention of the World Wide Web in 1991. The capacity expansion from dense wave division multiplexing, optical amplification and optical networking in the mid-1990s led to record data transfer rates. By 2018, optical networks routinely delivered 30.4 terabits/s over a fiber optic pair, the data equivalent of 1.2 million simultaneous 4K HD video streams.


title: Information Age

text: MOSFET scaling, the rapid miniaturization of MOSFETs at a rate predicted by Moore's law, led to computers becoming smaller and more powerful, to the point where they could be carried. During the 1980s1990s, laptops were developed as a form of portable computer, and personal digital assistants (PDAs) could be used while standing or walking. Pagers, widely used by the 1980s, were largely replaced by mobile phones beginning in the late 1990s, providing mobile networking features to some computers. Now commonplace, this technology is extended to digital cameras and other wearable devices. Starting in the late 1990s, tablets and then smartphones combined and extended these abilities of computing, mobility, and information sharing. Metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) image sensors, which first began appearing in the late 1960s, led to the transition from analog to digital imaging, and from analog to digital cameras, during the 1980s–1990s. The most common image sensors are the charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor and the CMOS (complementary MOS) active-pixel sensor (CMOS sensor).


title: Information Age

text: Electronic paper, which has origins in the 1970s, allows digital information to appear as paper documents.


title: Information Age

text: By 1976, there were several firms racing to introduce the first truly successful commercial personal computers. Three machines, the Apple II, PET 2001 and TRS-80 were all released in 1977, becoming the most popular by late 1978. "Byte" magazine later referred to Commodore, Apple, and Tandy as the "1977 Trinity". Also in 1977, Sord Computer Corporation released the Sord M200 Smart Home Computer in Japan.


title: Information Age

text: Steve Wozniak (known as "Woz"), a regular visitor to Homebrew Computer Club meetings, designed the single-board Apple I computer and first demonstrated it there. With specifications in hand and an order for 100 machines at US$500 each from the Byte Shop, Woz and his friend Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer.


title: Information Age

text: About 200 of the machines sold before the company announced the Apple II as a complete computer. It had color graphics, a full QWERTY keyboard, and internal slots for expansion, which were mounted in a high quality streamlined plastic case. The monitor and I/O devices were sold separately. The original Apple II operating system was only the built-in BASIC interpreter contained in ROM. Apple DOS was added to support the diskette drive; the last version was "Apple DOS 3.3".


title: Information Age

text: Its higher price and lack of floating point BASIC, along with a lack of retail distribution sites, caused it to lag in sales behind the other Trinity machines until 1979, when it surpassed the PET. It was again pushed into 4th place when Atari introduced its popular Atari 8-bit systems.


title: Information Age

text: Despite slow initial sales, the Apple II's lifetime was about eight years longer than other machines, and so accumulated the highest total sales. By 1985 2.1 million had sold and more than 4 million Apple II's were shipped by the end of its production in 1993.


title: Information Age

text: Optical communication plays a crucial role in communication networks. Optical communication provides the transmission backbone for the telecommunications and computer networks that underlie the Internet, the foundation for the Digital Revolution and Information Age.


title: Information Age

text: The two core technologies are the optical fiber and light amplification (the optical amplifier). In 1953, Bram van Heel demonstrated image transmission through bundles of optical fibers with a transparent cladding. The same year, Harold Hopkins and Narinder Singh Kapany at Imperial College succeeded in making image-transmitting bundles with over 10,000 optical fibers, and subsequently achieved image transmission through a 75 cm long bundle which combined several thousand fibers.


title: Information Age

text: Gordon Gould invented the optical amplifier and the laser, and also established the first optical telecommunications company, Optelecom, to design communication systems. The firm was a co-founder in Ciena Corp., the venture that popularized the optical amplifier with the introduction of the first dense wave division multiplexing system. This massive scale communication technology has emerged as the common basis of all telecommunication networks and, thus, a foundation of the Information Age.


title: Information Age

text: Manuel Castells captures the significance of the Information Age in "The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture" when he writes of our global interdependence and the new relationships between economy, state and society, what he calls "a new society-in-the-making." He cautions that just because humans have dominated the material world, does not mean that the Information Age is the end of history:


title: Peloponnese

text: The Peloponnese (), Peloponnesus (; ,(), or Morea is a peninsula and geographic region in southern Greece. It is connected to the central part of the country by the Isthmus of Corinth land bridge which separates the Gulf of Corinth from the Saronic Gulf. From the late Middle Ages until the 19th century the peninsula was known as the Morea (), (Morèas) a name still in colloquial use in its demotic form (), (Moriàs).


title: Peloponnese

text: The peninsula is divided among three administrative regions: most belongs to the Peloponnese region, with smaller parts belonging to the West Greece and Attica regions.


title: Peloponnese

text: The Peloponnese is a peninsula located at the southern tip of the mainland, in area, and constitutes the southernmost part of mainland Greece. It is connected to the mainland by the Isthmus of Corinth, where the Corinth Canal was constructed in 1893. However, it is also connected to the mainland by several bridges across the canal, including two submersible bridges at the north and the south end. Near the northern tip of the peninsula, there is another bridge, the Rio–Antirrio bridge (completed 2004). Indeed, the Peloponnese is rarely, if ever, referred to as an island.


title: Peloponnese

text: The peninsula has a mountainous interior and deeply indented coasts. The Peloponnese possesses four south-pointing peninsulas, the Messenian, the Mani, the Cape Malea (also known as Epidaurus Limera), and the Argolid in the far northeast of the Peloponnese. Mount Taygetus in the south is the highest mountain in the Peloponnese, at . Οther important mountains include Cyllene in the northeast (), Aroania in the north (), Erymanthos () and Panachaikon in the northwest (), Mainalon in the center (), and Parnon in the southeast (). The entire peninsula is earthquake prone and has been the site of many earthquakes in the past.


title: Peloponnese

text: The longest river is the Alfeios in the west (110 km), followed by the Evrotas in the south (82 km), and also the Pineios, also in the west (70 km). Extensive lowlands are found only in the west, except for the Evrotas valley in the south and the Argolid in the northeast. The Peloponnese is home to numerous spectacular beaches, which are a major tourist draw.


title: Peloponnese

text: Two groups of islands lie off the Peloponnesian coast: the Argo-Saronic Islands to the east, and the Ionian to the west. The island of Kythira, off the Epidaurus Limeira peninsula to the south of the Peloponnese, is considered to be part of the Ionian Islands. The island of Elafonisos used to be part of the peninsula but was separated following the major quake of 365 AD.


title: Peloponnese

text: Since antiquity, and continuing to the present day, the Peloponnese has been divided into seven major regions: Achaea (north), Corinthia (northeast), Argolis (east), Arcadia (center), Laconia (southeast), Messenia (southwest), and Elis (west). Each of these regions is headed by a city. The largest city is Patras (pop. 170,000) in Achaia, followed by Kalamata (pop. 55,000) in Messenia.


title: Peloponnese

text: The peninsula has been inhabited since prehistoric times. Its modern name derives from ancient Greek mythology, specifically the legend of the hero Pelops, who was said to have conquered the entire region. The name "Peloponnesos" means "Island of Pelops".


title: Peloponnese

text: The Mycenaean civilization, mainland Greece's (and Europe's) first major civilization, dominated the Peloponnese in the Bronze Age from the palaces of Mycenae, Pylos and Tiryns; among others. The Mycenaean civilization collapsed suddenly at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Archeological research has found that many of its cities and palaces show signs of destruction. The subsequent period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, is marked by an absence of written records.


title: Peloponnese

text: In 776 BC, the first Olympic Games were held at Olympia, in the western Peloponnese and this date is sometimes used to denote the beginning of the classical period of Greek antiquity. During classical antiquity, the Peloponnese was at the heart of the affairs of ancient Greece, possessed some of its most powerful city-states, and was the location of some of its bloodiest battles.


title: Peloponnese

text: The major cities of Sparta, Corinth, Argos and Megalopolis were all located on the Peloponnese, and it was the homeland of the Peloponnesian League. Soldiers from the peninsula fought in the Persian Wars, and it was also the scene of the Peloponnesian War of 431–404 BC. The entire Peloponnese with the notable exception of Sparta joined Alexander's expedition against the Persian Empire.


title: Peloponnese

text: Along with the rest of Greece, the Peloponnese fell to the expanding Roman Republic in 146 BC, when the Romans razed the city of Corinth and massacred its inhabitants. The Romans created the province of Achaea comprising the Peloponnese and central Greece. During the Roman period, the peninsula remained prosperous but became a provincial backwater, relatively cut off from the affairs of the wider Roman world.


title: Peloponnese

text: After the partition of the Empire in 395, the Peloponnese became a part of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire. The devastation of Alaric's raid in 396–397 led to the construction of the Hexamilion wall across the Isthmus of Corinth. Through most of late antiquity, the peninsula retained its urbanized character: in the 6th century, Hierocles counted 26 cities in his "Synecdemus". By the latter part of that century, however, building activity seems to have stopped virtually everywhere except Constantinople, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Athens. This has traditionally been attributed to calamities such as plague, earthquakes and Slavic invasions. However, more recent analysis suggests that urban decline was closely linked with the collapse of long-distance and regional commercial networks that underpinned and supported late antique urbanism in Greece, as well as with the generalized withdrawal of imperial troops and administration from the Balkans.


title: Peloponnese

text: The scale of the Slavic invasion and settlement in the 7th and 8th centuries remains a matter of dispute, although it is nowadays considered much smaller than previously thought. The Slavs did occupy most of the peninsula, as evidenced by the abundance of Slavic toponyms, but these toponyms accumulated over centuries rather than as a result of an initial "flood" of Slavic invasions, and many appeared to have been mediated by speakers of Greek, or in mixed Slavic-Greek compounds.


title: Peloponnese

text: Fewer Slavic toponyms appear on the eastern coast, which remained in Byzantine hands and was included in the "thema" of Hellas, established by Justinian II c. 690. While traditional historiography has dated the arrival of Slavs to southern Greece to the late 6th century, according to Florin Curta there is no evidence for a Slavic presence in the Peloponnese until after c. 700 AD, when Slavs may have been allowed to settle in specific areas that had been depopulated.


title: Peloponnese

text: Relations between the Slavs and Greeks were probably peaceful apart from intermittent uprisings. There was also a continuity of the Peloponnesian Greek population. This is especially true in Mani and Tsakonia, where Slavic incursions were minimal, or non-existent. Being agriculturalists, the Slavs probably traded with the Greeks, who remained in the towns, while Greek villages continued to exist in the interior, governing themselves, possibly paying tribute to the Slavs. The first attempt by the Byzantine imperial government to re-assert its control over the independent Slavic tribes of the Peloponnese occurred in 783, with the logothete Staurakios' overland campaign from Constantinople into Greece and the Peloponnese, which according to Theophanes the Confessor made many prisoners and forced the Slavs to pay tribute.


title: Peloponnese

text: From the mid-9th century, following a Slavic revolt and attack on Patras, a determined Hellenization process was carried out. According to the "Chronicle of Monemvasia", in 805 the Byzantine governor of Corinth went to war with the Slavs, exterminated them, and allowed the original inhabitants to claim their lands. They regained control of the city of Patras and the region was re-settled with Greeks. Many Slavs were transported to Asia Minor, and many Asian, Sicilian and Calabrian Greeks were resettled in the Peloponnese. By the turn of the 9th century, the entire Peloponnese was formed into the new "thema" of Peloponnesos, with its capital at Corinth.


title: Peloponnese

text: The imposition of Byzantine rule over the Slavic enclaves may have largely been a process of Christianization and accommodating Slavic chieftains into the Imperial fold, as literary, epigraphic and sigillographic evidence testify to Slavic "archontes" participating in Imperial affairs. By the end of the 9th century, the Peloponnese was culturally and administratively Greek again, except for a few small Slavic tribes in the mountains such as the Melingoi and Ezeritai. Although they were to remain relatively autonomous until Ottoman times, such tribes were the exception rather than the rule. Even the Melingoi and Ezeritai, however, could speak Greek and appear to have been Christian.


title: Peloponnese

text: The success of the Hellenization campaign also shows that the Slavs had settled among many Greeks, in contrast to areas further north in what is now Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia, as those areas could not be Hellenized when they were recovered by the Byzantines in the early 11th century. A 2017-human genetics study showed that the Peloponnesians have little admixture with populations of the Slavic homeland and are much closer to Sicilians and southern Italians.


title: Peloponnese

text: Apart from the troubled relations with the Slavs, the coastal regions of the Peloponnese suffered greatly from repeated Arab raids following the Arab capture of Crete in the 820s and the establishment of a corsair emirate there. After the island was recovered by Byzantium in 961 however, the region entered a period of renewed prosperity, where agriculture, commerce, and urban industry flourished.


title: Peloponnese

text: In 1205, following the destruction of the Byzantine Empire by the forces of the Fourth Crusade, the Crusaders under William of Champlitte and Geoffrey of Villehardouin marched south through mainland Greece and conquered the Peloponnese against sporadic local Greek resistance. The Franks then founded the Principality of Achaea, nominally a vassal of the Latin Empire, while the Venetians occupied several strategically important ports around the coast such as Navarino and Coron, which they retained into the 15th century. The Franks popularized the name "Morea" for the peninsula, which first appears as the name of a small bishopric in Elis during the 10th century. Its etymology is disputed, but it is most commonly held to be derived from the mulberry tree ("morea"), whose leaves are similar in shape to the peninsula.


title: Peloponnese

text: In 1208, William I founded a commission at Andravida consisted of Latin bishops, two bannerets and five Greek magnates and chaired by himself, to assess the land and divide it, according to Latin practice, in fiefs. The result was divide the country into twelve baronies, mostly centred around a newly constructed castle—a testament to the fact that the Franks were a military elite amidst a potentially hostile Greek population. The twelve temporal barons were joined by seven ecclesiastic lords, headed by the Latin Archbishop of Patras. Each of the latter was granted a number of estates as knightly fiefs, with the Archbishop receiving eight, the other bishops four each, and likewise four granted to each of the military orders: the Templars, Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights. Shortly after 1260, a thirteenth barony, that of Arcadia (modern Kyparissia) was established, which was also a personal fief of the Villehardouins. The barons retained considerable powers and privileges, so that the Prince was not an absolute sovereign but rather a "first among equals" among them. Thus they had the right to construct a castle without the Prince's permission, or to decree capital punishment. Since Salic Law was not adopted in Achaea, women could also inherit the fiefs.


title: Peloponnese

text: Frankish supremacy in the peninsula, however, received a critical blow after the Battle of Pelagonia, when William II of Villehardouin was forced to cede the newly constructed fortress and palace at Mystras near ancient Sparta to a resurgent Byzantium. At this point, the emperor concluded an agreement with the captive prince: William and his men would be set free in exchange for an oath of fealty, and for the cession of Monemvasia, Grand Magne, and Mystras. The handover was effected in 1262, and henceforth Mystras was the seat of the governor of the Byzantine territories in the Morea. Initially this governor ("kephale") was changed every year, but after 1308 they started being appointed for longer terms. Almost immediately on his return to the Morea, William of Villehardouin renounced his oath to the emperor, and warfare broke out between Byzantines and Franks. The first Byzantine attempts to subdue the Principality of Achaea were beaten back in the battles of Prinitsa and Makryplagi, but the Byzantines were firmly ensconced in Laconia. Warfare became endemic, and the Byzantines slowly pushed the Franks back. The insecurity engendered by the raids and counter-raids caused the inhabitants of Lacedaemon to abandon their exposed city and settle at Mystras, in a new town built under the shadow of the fortress.


title: Peloponnese

text: While Mystras served as the provincial capital from this time, it became a royal capital in 1349 CE, when the first despot was appointed to rule over the Morea. The Byzantine Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, reorganized the territory in 1349 to establish it as an appanage for his son, the Despot Manuel Kantakouzenos. Around that time, the Ottoman Turks began raiding the Peloponnese, but their raids intensified only after 1387 when the energetic Evrenos Bey took control. Exploiting the quarrels between Byzantines and Franks, he plundered across the peninsula and forced both the Byzantine despots and the remaining Frankish rulers to acknowledge Ottoman suzerainty and pay tribute. This situation lasted until the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, after which Ottoman power was for a time checked. From 1349 until its surrender to the Ottoman Turks on 31 May 1460, Mystras was the residence of a Despot who ruled over the Byzantine Morea, known as the "Despotate of the Morea". For the larger portion of his reign, Manuel maintained peaceful relations with his Latin neighbors and secured a long period of prosperity for the area. Greco-Latin cooperation included an alliance to contain the raids of the Ottoman Sultan Murad I into Morea in the 1360s. The rival Palaiologos dynasty seized the Morea after Manuel's death in 1380, with Theodore I Palaiologos becoming despot in 1383.


title: Peloponnese

text: Theodore I ruled until 1407, consolidating Byzantine rule and coming to terms with his more powerful neighbours—particularly the expansionist Ottoman Empire, whose suzerainty he recognised. Subsequent despots were the sons of the Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, brother of the despot Theodore: Theodore II, Constantine, Demetrios, and Thomas. As Latin power in the Peloponnese waned during the 15th century, the Despotate of the Morea expanded to incorporate the entire peninsula in 1430 with territory being acquired by dowry settlements, and the conquest of Patras by Constantine. However, in 1446 the Ottoman Sultan Murad II destroyed the Byzantine defences—the Hexamilion wall at the Isthmus of Corinth. His attack opened the peninsula to invasion, though Murad died before he could exploit this. His successor Mehmed II "the Conqueror" captured the Byzantine capital Constantinople in 1453. The despots, Demetrios Palaiologos and Thomas Palaiologos, brothers of the last emperor, failed to send him any aid, as Morea was recovering from a recent Ottoman attack. Their own incompetence resulted in the Morea revolt of 1453–1454 led by Manuel Kantakouzenos against them, during which they invited in Ottoman troops to help them put down the revolt. At this time, the Greek "archons" made peace Mehmed. After more years of incompetent rule by the despots, their failure to pay their annual tribute to the Sultan, and finally their own revolt against Ottoman rule, Mehmed came into the Morea in May 1460. Demetrios ended up a prisoner of the Ottomans and his younger brother Thomas fled. By the end of the summer the Ottomans had achieved the submission of virtually all cities possessed by the Greeks.


title: Peloponnese

text: Ottoman incursions into the Morea resumed under Turahan Bey after 1423. Despite the reconstruction of the Hexamilion wall at the Isthmus of Corinth, the Ottomans under Murad II breached it in 1446, forcing the Despots of the Morea to re-acknowledge Ottoman suzerainty, and again under Turahan in 1452 and 1456. Following the occupation of the Duchy of Athens in 1456, the Ottomans occupied a third of the Peloponnese in 1458, and Sultan Mehmed II extinguished the remnants of the Despotate in 1460. A few holdouts remained for a time. The rocky peninsula of Monemvasia refused to surrender, and it was first ruled for a brief time by a Catalan corsair. When the population drove him out, they obtained the consent of Thomas to submit to the Pope's protection before the end of 1460. The Mani Peninsula at the south end of the Morea resisted under a loose coalition of the local clans, and that area then came under Venice's rule. The last holdout was Salmeniko, in the Morea's northwest. Graitzas Palaiologos was the military commander there, stationed at Salmeniko Castle. While the town eventually surrendered, Graitzas and his garrison and some town residents held out in the castle until July 1461, when they escaped and reached Venetian territory. Only the Venetian fortresses of Modon, Coron, Navarino, Monemvasia, Argos and Nauplion escaped Ottoman control.


title: Peloponnese

text: The same period was also marked by the migration and settlement of Christian Albanians to parts of Central Greece and the Peloponnese, a group that eventually become known as the Arvanites The Albanians settled in successive waves, often invited by the local rulers. They start appearing more frequently in the historical record from during the second part of the 14th century, when they were being offered arable land, pasture and favorable taxation in exchange for military service. One of the larger groups of Albanian settlers, amounting to 10.000, settled the Peloponnese during the reign of Theodore I Palaiologos, first in Arcadia and subsequently in other regions around Messenia, Argolis, Elis and Achaia. Around 1418, a second large group arrived, possibly fleeing Aetolia, Acarnania and Arta, where Albanian political power had been defeated. The settling Albanians lived in tribes spread out into small villages, practicing nomadic lifestyles based on pastoralism and animal husbandry. By the mid-15th century, they formed a substantial part of the population of the Peloponnesus. Military sources of the era (1425) report about 30,000 Albanian men who could carry arms in the Peloponnese. The Greeks tended to live in large villages and cities, while Albanians in small villages.


title: Peloponnese

text: Following Ottoman conquest, many Albanians fled to Italy, settling primarily in nowadays Arbereshe villages of Calabria and Sicily. On the other hand, in an effort to control the remaining Albanians, during the second half of the 15th century, the Ottomans adopted favorable tax policies towards them were adopted, likely in continuation of similar Byzantine practices. This policy had been discontinued by the early 16th century. Throughout the Ottoman–Venetian wars, many Albanians died or were captured in service to the Venetians; at Nafpaktos, Nafplio, Argos, Methoni, Koroni and Pylos. Furthermore, 8,000 Albanian stratioti, most of them along with their families, left the Peloponnese to continue their military service under the Republic of Venice or the Kingdom of Naples. At the end of the Ottoman–Venetian wars, a large number of Albanians had fled from the Peloponnese to Sicily.


title: Peloponnese

text: In the second half of the 19th century, out of the approximately 730,000 (per the Greek census of 1879) inhabitants of the Peloponnese, and the three neighboring islands of Poros, Hydra and Spetses, Arvanites numbered 90,253 (or 12.3%) in total according to Alfred Philippson; while in a critical response to Philippson's study the same year, Christos Koryllos supported 50,352 (or 6.9%) for the Peloponnese and 20,685 for the three aforementioned islands, totalling 71,037 (or 9.7%).


title: Peloponnese

text: The Venetian fortresses were conquered in a series of Ottoman-Venetian Wars: the first war, lasting from 1463 to 1479, saw much fighting in the Peloponnese, resulting in the loss of Argos, while Modon and Coron fell in 1500 during the second war. Coron and Patras were captured in a crusading expedition in 1532, led by the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria, but this provoked another war in which the last Venetian possessions on the Greek mainland were lost.


title: Peloponnese

text: Following the Ottoman conquest, the peninsula was made into a province ("sanjak"), with 109 "ziamets" and 342 "timars". During the first period of Ottoman rule (1460–1687), the capital was first in Corinth (Turk. "Gördes"), later in Leontari ("Londari"), Mystras ("Misistire") and finally in Nauplion (Tr. "Anaboli"). Sometime in the mid-17th century, the Morea became the centre of a separate "eyalet", with Patras ("Ballibadra") as its capital. Until the death of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1570, the Christian population (counted at some 42,000 families c. 1550) managed to retain some privileges and Islamization was slow, mostly among the Albanians or the estate owners who were integrated into the Ottoman feudal system.


title: Peloponnese

text: Although they quickly came to control most of the fertile lands, Muslims remained a distinct minority. Christian communities retained a large measure of self-government, but the entire Ottoman period was marked by a flight of the Christian population from the plains to the mountains. This occasioned the rise of the "klepht"s, armed brigands and rebels, in the mountains, as well as the corresponding institution of the government-funded "armatoloi" to check the "klephts" activities.


title: Peloponnese

text: With the outbreak of the "Great Turkish War" in 1683, the Venetians under Francesco Morosini occupied the entire peninsula by 1687, and received recognition by the Ottomans in the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699). The Venetians established their province as the "Kingdom of the Morea" (It. "Regno di Morea"), but their rule proved unpopular, and when the Ottomans invaded the peninsula in 1715, most local Greeks welcomed them. The Ottoman reconquest was easy and swift, and was recognized by Venice in the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718.


title: Peloponnese

text: The Peloponnese now became the core of the Morea Eyalet, headed by the "Mora valesi", who until 1780 was a pasha of the first rank (with three horsetails) and held the title of vizier. After 1780 and until the Greek War of Independence, the province was headed by a "muhassil". The pasha of the Morea was aided by several subordinate officials, including a Christian translator ("dragoman"), who was the senior Christian official of the province. As during the first Ottoman period, the Morea was divided into 22 districts or beyliks. The capital was first at Nauplion, but after 1786 at Tripolitza (Tr. "Trabliçe").


title: Peloponnese

text: The Greeks of the Peloponnese rose against the Ottomans with Russian aid during the so-called "Orlov Revolt" of 1770, but it was swiftly and brutally suppressed by bands of Muslim Albanian mercenaries hired by the Ottomans. Referred to by the local Greek populace as "Turk-Albanians", those forces had also destroyed many cities and towns in Epirus during the 1769–70 revolt there. The Peloponnese suffered more than any other Greek inhabited area by irregular Albanian gangs during the decades following. In Patras nearly no one was left alive after the Turkish-Albanian invasion. The city of Mystras was left in ruins and the metropolitan bishop Ananias was executed despite having saved the life of several Turks during the uprising. A great number of local Greeks were killed by the Albanian groups, while children were sold to slavery.


title: Peloponnese

text: The Ottoman government was unable to pay the wages the Albanian mercenaries demanded for their service, causing the latter to ravage the region even after revolt had been put down. In 1774 the Russo-Turkish War ended with the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca which granted general amnesty to the population. Nevertheless, attacks by Muslim Albanian mercenaries in the region continued not only against the Greek population but also against Turks. The extensive destruction and lack of control in the Peloponnese forced the central Ottoman government to send a regular Turkish military force to suppress those Albanian troops in 1779, and eventually drive them out from Peloponnese. As a result of the invasion by those mercenary groups the local population had to found refugee in the mountains of Peloponnese to avoid persecution. The total population decreased during this time, while the Muslim element in it increased.


title: Peloponnese

text: As such Greek resistance in the peninsula was reinforced and powerful groups of klephts were formed under the clans of Zacharias, Melios, Petmezas and Kolokotronis. Klephtic songs of that era describe the resistance activities. Nevertheless, through the privileges granted with the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, especially the right for the Christians to trade under the Russian flag, led to a considerable economic flowering of the local Greeks, which, coupled with the increased cultural contacts with Western Europe (Modern Greek Enlightenment) and the inspiring ideals of the French Revolution, laid the groundwork for the Greek War of Independence.


title: Peloponnese

text: The Peloponnesians played a major role in the Greek War of Independence – the war began in the Peloponnese, when rebels took control of Kalamata on March 23, 1821. The Greek insurgents made rapid progress and the entire peninsula was under Greek control within a few months, except for a few coastal forts and the main Turkish garrison at Tripolitsa. The fighting was fierce and marked by atrocities on both sides; eventually the entire Muslim population was either massacred or fled to the forts. The capture of Tripolitsa in September 1821 marked a turning point. Rivalries among the insurgents eventually erupted into civil war in 1824, which enabled the Ottoman Egyptian vassal Ibrahim Pasha to land in the peninsula in 1825.


title: Peloponnese

text: The Peloponnese peninsula was the scene of fierce fighting and extensive devastation following the arrival of Ibrahim's Egyptian troops. Partly as a result of the atrocities committed by Ibrahim, the UK, France, and the Russian Empire decided to intervene in favor of the Greeks. The decisive naval Battle of Navarino was fought in 1827 off Pylos on the west coast of the Peloponnese, where a combined British, French and Russian fleet decisively defeated the Turko-Egyptian fleet. Subsequently, a French expeditionary corps cleared the last Turko-Egyptian forces from the peninsula in 1828. The city of Nafplion, on the east coast of the peninsula, became the first capital of the independent Greek state. By the conclusion of the war, the entire Muslim population of the newly independent Greek state, including the Peloponnese, had been exterminated or had fled.


title: Peloponnese

text: During the 19th and early 20th century, the region became relatively poor and economically isolated. A significant part of its population emigrated to the larger cities of Greece, especially Athens, and other countries such as the United States and Australia. It was badly affected by the Second World War and Greek Civil War, experiencing some of the worst atrocities committed in Greece during those conflicts. Living standards improved dramatically throughout Greece after the country accedes to the European Union in 1981.


title: Peloponnese

text: The Corinth Canal was completed in the late 19th century, linking the Aegean Sea with the Gulf of Corinth and the Ionian. In 2001, the Rio-Antirio Bridge was completed, linking the western Peloponnese to western Greece. In late August 2007, large parts of Peloponnese suffered from wildfires, which caused severe damage in villages and forests and the death of 77 people. The impact of the fires to the environment and economy of the region are still unknown. It is thought to be one of the largest environmental disasters in modern Greek history.


title: Peloponnese

text: The Peloponnese possesses many important archaeological sites dating from the Bronze Age through to the Middle Ages. Among the most notable are:


title: Peloponnese

text: Several notable Peloponnese wines have Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status. The Mantineia region makes a white wine made from Moschofilero, the Nemea wine region makes renowned red wines from the Agiorgitiko grape, and fortified red wine is made in the region around the city of Patras from Mavrodafni grapes.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: Main Hoon Na () is a 2004 Indian Hindi-language masala film written and directed by Farah Khan in her directorial debut. The film stars Shah Rukh Khan, Sushmita Sen, Sunil Shetty, Amrita Rao and Zayed Khan, and follows Major Ram Sharma, who is sent on a undercover mission as a university student to protect a general's daughter from a dangerous rogue soldier.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: The film began development in 2001, and faced a number of delays during production. "Main Hoon Na" is notable for approaching the Indo-Pakistani conflict from a neutral perspective. It was filmed at St. Paul's School and the surrounding state of West Bengal. The film is also the first produced and distributed by Red Chillies Entertainment, and is produced by Gauri Khan.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: Initially scheduled for release in 2003, "Main Hoon Na" released on 30 April 2004. It proved to be a major commercial success at the box office, grossing ₹84 crore, thus becoming the second highest-grossing Indian film of 2004, only surpassed by another Shah Rukh Khan-starrer "Veer-Zaara". It received positive reviews from critics, who praised its direction, action sequences. humor, soundtrack, and performances of the cast.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: At the 50th Filmfare Awards, "Main Hoon Na" received 12 nominations, including Best Film, Best Director (Farah), Best Actor (Shah Rukh), Best Supporting Actress (Rao), Best Supporting Actor (Zayed) and Best Villain (Shetty), winning Best Music Director (Anu Malik).


title: Main Hoon Na

text: Over an attempt to de-escalate tensions between the two nations, India and Pakistan launch "Project Milaap", a prisoner exchange program. Raghavan Dutta, a former Indian special forces soldier discharged for murdering Pakistani citizens in revenge for the murder of his son, fires a shot at Gen. Bakshi, but Brigadier Shekhar Sharma takes the bullet at a press conference. Raghavan runs a militant group with a former comrade Captain Khan, set against peace between the two rival countries. On his deathbed, Shekhar informs his son, fellow soldier Major Ram, of his other son Lakshman, and asks Ram to reconcile with his family as they had separated very long ago because Shekhar had cheated on his wife with Ram's mother. Meanwhile, Ram's boss, Gen. Bakshi, sends him undercover to protect his daughter Sanjana, who studies at St Pauls College in Darjeeling. Ram is initially hesitant to go there but agrees when Bakshi informs him that Lakshman also studies there. Ram finds it tough to adjust to college life because he is much older than everyone else. He encounters Sanjana and her love interest Lucky but both don't want to know him for this reason.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: Meanwhile, another college student helps Ram hack the college computer to find out who Lakshman is, only to find that Lucky is in fact Lakshman. During a marathon, Lakshman is saved from falling off the university's roof by Ram. The two of them and Sanjana then become friends, and Ram moves in with Lakshman and his mother, Madhu. Outside a cinema, Ram saves his classmate, Percy, from an assassination attempt by Khan; Ram captures him, but his own true identity is found out by Raghavan, who arrives at the university masquerading as a teacher. Ram also brings Madhu and Lakshman closer by helping them bond during his stay there. Ram falls in love with his chemistry professor, Chandni, while Lakshman falls in love with Sanjana (after Ram and Chandni give her a makeover). At prom, Raghavan orders a kidnapping on Chandni, but she is saved by Ram. After meeting with Sanjana, Ram requests Raghavan to drop the pair to her father at her hostel, where Sanjana reconciles with her father. After this night, Sanjana and Chandni discover Ram's true identity. Raghavan reveals Ram's true identity to Lakshman and his mother and when they confront him, Ram informs them that his father's last wish implored him to reconcile with his family. As they are not ready to accept him yet, he leaves their home and the university.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: Raghavan then holds the university hostage, demanding the cancelation of Project Milaap. Upon being informed, Ram immediately returns to the university. Before fully entering the hostage situation, he encounters Madhu and apologizes. Knowing what he's about to do, she accepts him as a son. Accompanying Khan, Ram enters the building, and is subsequently shot by Khan. Ram survives, changes Khan's mind about his allegiances, and proceeds to kill the guards, thus freeing the students. Raghavan shoots Khan dead at point blank range for his betrayal. A fight ensues between Ram and Raghavan and Ram kills Raghavan by removing the safety pin from Raghavan's hand grenade. Lakshman helps Ram escape from the ensuing explosion from aboard a helicopter and the two happily embrace as brothers. Meanwhile, Project Milaap is a success and all the prisoners are exchanged triumphantly. Ram and Lakshman go and immerse their father's ashes together, as Madhu tearfully looks on. Finally, Lakshman is allowed to graduate alongside Ram and the entire university rejoice.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: The film was planned by Farah Khan and Shahrukh Khan in 2001. The shooting of the film had to begin in October 2001 but later that year, Shahrukh Khan got badly injured while shooting an action sequence for "" (2002) due to which he suffered pain in filming for his other projects. He was later sent to the UK for treatment and the film was subsequently shelved. The film was later revived in 2003 after Shahrukh Khan came back from the UK; Farah Khan wanted to name it "The Outsider". After some of her friends suggested that the title she wants matches that of a 1983 Hollywood film, she finalized the title "Main Hoon Na" for the film though Shahrukh Khan was unhappy at that time with the title, thinking the title was incomplete, but later changed his mind after listening to the recording of the film's title song.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: At a time when the film was revived in 2003, Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar, and Sohail Khan were considered for Lucky's role. Due to unknown reasons, none of the three accepted the film; Zayed Khan was later signed. Ameesha Patel was offered Sanju's role but rejected the character due to date issues, as did then-newcomer Ayesha Takia when she was also approached who also declined, after which Amrita Rao was finalized for the role.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: Shah Rukh Khan asked Farah Khan to approach Kamal Haasan, suggesting that Haasan owed him a favor for his role in "Hey Ram" (2000). Haasan heard the script but turned down the role citing that it would portray him as an anti-national.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: It received positive reviews from critics, who praised its direction, action sequences. humor, soundtrack and performances of the cast.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: Film analyst Taran Adarsh praised the film for being funny, emotional and full of action, describing it as "a wholesome entertainer that has something for everyone."


title: Main Hoon Na

text: Jamie Russell wrote in his review in the "BBC", "A bonkers 'masala' movie, "Main Hoon Na" could be the mutant offspring of "Grease" (1978) and "The Matrix" (1999). Part-thriller, part high-school comedy and all Bollywood musical, it's the directorial debut of Farah Khan."


title: Main Hoon Na

text: "Main Hoon Na" was the second-highest grossing Indian film of 2004 behind "Veer-Zaara" (also a Shahrukh Khan-starrer set against India-Pakistan backdrop). It made in India and an additional in the overseas market.


title: Main Hoon Na

text: The music was composed by Anu Malik. The lyrics were provided by Javed Akhtar. The soundtrack earned Malik his second Filmfare Award for Best Music Director. According to the Indian trade website "Box Office India", with around 2.1 million units sold, the film's soundtrack album was the one of the highest selling Bollywood soundtracks of the year. Sonu Nigam received several award nominations and won an MTV Immies Best Male Playback Singer Award.


title: Blond

text: Blond (male) or blonde (female), also referred to as fair hair, is a hair color characterized by low levels of the dark pigment eumelanin. The resultant visible hue depends on various factors, but always has some yellowish color. The color can be from the very pale blond (caused by a patchy, scarce distribution of pigment) to reddish "strawberry" blond or golden-brownish ("sandy") blond colors (the latter with more eumelanin). Occasionally, the state of being blond, and specifically the occurrence of blond traits in a predominantly dark or colored population are referred to as blondism.


title: Blond

text: Because hair color tends to darken with age, natural blond hair is significantly less common in adulthood. Naturally-occurring blond hair is primarily found in people living in or descended from people who lived in the northern half of Europe, and may have evolved alongside the development of light skin that enables more efficient synthesis of vitamin D, due to northern Europe's lower levels of sunlight. Blond hair has also developed in other populations, although it is usually not as common, and can be found among natives of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, among the Berbers of North Africa, and among some Asians.


title: Blond

text: In Western culture, blonde hair has long been associated with beauty and vitality. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, was described as having blonde hair. In ancient Greece and Rome, blonde hair was frequently associated with prostitutes, who dyed their hair using saffron dyes in order to attract customers. The Greeks stereotyped Thracians and slaves as blond and the Romans associated blondness with the Celts and the Germans to the north. In the ancient Greek world, Homer's Iliad presented Achilles as what was then the ideal male warrior: handsome, tall, strong, and blond. In western Europe during the Middle Ages, long, blonde hair was idealized as the paragon of female beauty. The Norse goddess Sif and the medieval heroine Iseult were both significantly portrayed as blonde and, in medieval artwork, Eve, Mary Magdalene, and the Virgin Mary are often shown with blonde hair. In contemporary Western culture, blonde women are often negatively stereotyped as beautiful, but unintelligent.


title: Blond

text: The word "blond" is first documented in English in 1481 and derives from Old French , , meaning 'a colour midway between golden and light chestnut'. It gradually eclipsed the native term "fair", of same meaning, from Old English , causing "fair" later to become a general term for 'light complexioned'. This earlier use of "fair" survives in the proper name Fairfax, from Old English meaning 'blond hair'.


title: Blond

text: The word "blond" has two possible origins. Some linguists say it comes from Medieval Latin , meaning 'yellow', from Old Frankish which would relate it to Old English meaning 'grey-haired', from / meaning 'to mix' (compare: "blend"). Also, Old English meant 'dyed', as ancient Germanic warriors were noted for dyeing their hair. However, linguists who favor a Latin origin for the word say that Medieval Latin was a vulgar pronunciation of Latin , also meaning 'yellow'. Most authorities, especially French, attest to the Frankish origin. The word was reintroduced into English in the 17th century from French, and was for some time considered French; in French, is a feminine "adjective"; it describes a woman with blond hair.


title: Blond

text: "Blond", with its continued gender-varied usage, is one of few adjectives in written English to retain separate lexical genders. The two forms, however, are pronounced identically. American Heritage's "Book of English Usage" propounds that, insofar as "a blonde" can be used to describe a woman but not a man who is merely said to possess blond(e) hair, the term is an example of a "sexist stereotype [whereby] women are primarily defined by their physical characteristics." The "Oxford English Dictionary" ("OED") records that the phrase "big blond beast" was used in the 20th-century to refer specifically "to men" "of the Nordic type" (that is to say, blond-haired). The "OED" also records that blond as an adjective is especially used with reference to women, in which case it is likely to be spelt "blonde", citing three Victorian usages of the term. The masculine version is used in the plural, in "blonds of the European race", in a citation from 1833 "Penny cyclopedia", which distinguishes genuine blondness as a Caucasian feature distinct from albinism.


title: Blond

text: By the early 1990s, "blonde moment" or being a "dumb blonde" had come into common parlance to mean "an instance of a person, esp. a woman... being foolish or scatter-brained." Another hair color word of French origin, "brunette" (from the same Germanic root that gave "brown"), functions in the same way in orthodox English. The "OED" gives "brunet" as meaning 'dark-complexioned' or a 'dark-complexioned person', citing a comparative usage of "brunet" and "blond" to Thomas Henry Huxley in saying, "The present contrast of blonds and brunets existed among them." "Brunette" can be used, however, like "blonde", to describe a mixed-gender populace. The "OED" quotes Grant Allen, "The nation which resulted... being sometimes blonde, sometimes brunette."


title: Blond

text: "Blond" and "blonde" are also occasionally used to refer to objects that have a color reminiscent of fair hair. For example, the "OED" records its use in 19th-century poetic diction to describe flowers, "a variety of clay ironstone of the coal measures", "the colour of raw silk", a breed of ray, lager beer, and pale wood.


title: Blond

text: Various subcategories of blond hair have been defined to describe the different shades and sources of the hair color more accurately. Common examples include the following:


title: Blond

text: And bleached blond, bottle blond, or peroxide blond are terms used to refer to artificially-colored blond hair.


title: Blond

text: A typical explanation found in the scientific literature for the adaptation of light hair is related to the adaptation of light skin, and in turn the requirement for vitamin D synthesis and northern Europe's seasonally reduced solar radiation.


title: Blond

text: Ancient DNA analysis (ADNA) has revealed that the oldest fossil known to carry the derived KITLG allele, which is responsible for blond hair in modern Europeans, is a 17,000 year old Ancient North Eurasian specimen from eastern Siberia.


title: Blond

text: Geneticist David Reich said that the hundreds of millions of copies of this SNP, the classic European blond hair mutation, entered continental Europe by way of a massive population migration from the Eurasian steppe, by a people who had substantial Ancient North Eurasian ancestry.


title: Blond

text: Ancient North Eurasian admixture is present in mesolithic fossils from Northern Europe, and is linked to the prediction of blond hair in stone-age Scandinavians by ancient DNA analysis.


title: Blond

text: Gavin Evans analyzed several years of research on the origin of European blond hair, and concluded that the widespread presence of blond hair in Europe is largely due to the territorial expansions of the "all-conquering" Western Steppe Herders; who carried the genes for blond hair.


title: Blond

text: A review article published in 2020 analyzes fossil data from a wide variety of published sources. The authors affirm the previous statements, noting that Ancient North Eurasian-derived populations carried the derived blond hair allele to Europe, and that the "massive spread" of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists likely caused the "rapid selective sweep in European populations toward light skin and hair."


title: Blond

text: There is some evidence that natural Blond hair is associated with high levels of prenatal testosterone.


title: Blond

text: Blond hair is most common in light-skinned infants and children, so much so that the term "baby blond" is often used for very light colored hair. Babies may be born with blond hair even among groups where adults rarely have blond hair, although such natural hair usually falls out quickly. Blond hair tends to turn darker with age, and many children's blond hair turns light, medium, or dark brown, before or during their adult years. Because blond hair tends to turn brown with age, natural blond hair is significantly less common in adulthood; according to the sociologist Christie Davies, only around five percent of adults in Europe and North America are naturally blond. A study conducted in 2003 concluded that only four percent of American adults are naturally blond. A significant number of Caucasian women dye their hair blonde, perhaps a higher percentage than for any other hair color.


title: Blond

text: The pigmentation of both hair and eyes is lightest around the Baltic Sea, and darkness increases regularly and almost concentrically around this region.