title: Ken Russell

text: In 2007, Russell produced "A Kitten for Hitler", a short film hosted by the Comedybox.tv website. Russell commented that "Ten years ago, while working on "The South Bank Show", Melvyn Bragg and I had a heated discussion on the pros and cons of film censorship. Broadly speaking, Melvyn was against it, while I, much to his surprise, was absolutely for it. He then dared me to write a script that I thought should be banned. I accepted the challenge and a month or so later sent him a short subject entitled "A Kitten for Hitler". 'Ken,' he said, 'if ever you make this film and it is shown, you will be lynched.' "


title: Ken Russell

text: Russell joined the cast of the British reality television show "Celebrity Big Brother" in January 2007, at the start of the series, but left voluntarily within a week after an altercation with fellow housemate Jade Goody. At the age of 79, he was then the oldest person to be a contestant on the programme.


title: Ken Russell

text: Russell and his wife Elize "Lisi" Tribble were invited by New York film writer Shade Rupe on a six-week journey across North America, beginning with a Lifetime Achievement Award given by Mitch Davis at the Fantasia film festival on 20 July 2010, followed by a screening of Russell's most notorious film, "The Devils". The next day, a near complete 35mm print retrospective of Russell's work at the Cinémathèque québécoise including "Billion Dollar Brain", "Women in Love", "The Music Lovers", "Crimes of Passion", "The Rainbow", "Whore", and many more found projection along with an exhibition of several of Russell's photographs from the 1950s. The next stop was Russellmania! at the Lincoln Center, a nine-film overview of Russell's work from "Women in Love" through "Valentino", with Russell present at each evening screening for a nearly sold-out weeklong festival. On 30 July 2010, for the opening night, Russell was joined by Vanessa Redgrave for a 40th anniversary screening of "The Devils" and the next evening saw "The Music Lovers" and "Women in Love" projected with Russell in attendance. Tommy Tune joined Russell the next evening for "The Boy Friend" and followed the screening with a live stage dance number from the film.


title: Ken Russell

text: The American Cinematheque in Los Angeles next hosted Russell at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica with screenings of "The Devils" and "Altered States" with Charles Haid and Stuart Baird in attendance, and "Tommy" and "Lisztomania" at the Egyptian the following evening. Director Mick Garris extended an invitation and Russell, Tribble, and Rupe joined the Masters of Horror for one of their rarified dinners. The tour wrapped up in Toronto at the Rue Morgue Festival of Fear and a packed screening of "The Devils" at the Bloor Cinema hosted by Richard Crouse.


title: Ken Russell

text: In 2008, he made his New York directorial debut with the Off-Broadway production of "Mindgame" at the SoHo Playhouse produced by Monica Tidwell, a thriller by Anthony Horowitz and starring Keith Carradine, Lee Godart and Kathleen McNenny.


title: Ken Russell

text: Towards the end of his life, Russell was planning a remake of the 1976 erotic musical comedy "Alice in Wonderland".


title: Ken Russell

text: Russell converted to Roman Catholicism during the 1950s; he described "The Devils" as being the "last nail in the coffin of my Catholic faith."


title: Ken Russell

text: He was married four times. His first marriage, to costume designer Shirley Kingdon from 1958 to 1978, produced four sons and a daughter. He was married to Vivian Jolly from 1984 to 1991 (the wedding celebrant being Anthony Perkins, who had been ordained in the Universal Life Church); the couple had a son and daughter. He was married to the actress and former ballerina Hetty Baynes from 1992 to 1997; the couple had a son. His first three marriages ended in divorce. He married American actress and artist Elize "Lisi" Tribble in 2001, and the marriage lasted until his death.


title: Ken Russell

text: Ken Russell died on 27 November 2011 at the age of 84, having suffered a series of strokes; he was survived by his wife and eight children. Before his death, he left his entire estate to his wife.


title: Ken Russell

text: Besides books on film-making and the British film industry, Russell also wrote "A British Picture: An Autobiography" (1989; published in the US as "Altered States: The Autobiography of Ken Russell", 1991). He also published six novels, including four on the sex lives of composers – "Beethoven Confidential", "Brahms Gets Laid", "Elgar: The Erotic Variations", and "Delius: A Moment with Venus".


title: Ken Russell

text: "Mike and Gaby's Space Gospel" is a science-fiction rewriting of "Genesis". His last novel, also science-fiction and published in 2006, is called "Violation". It is a very violent future-shock tale of an England where football has become the national religion.


title: Ken Russell

text: Before achieving success in the film industry, Russell was a stills photographer for a period. An exhibition displaying some of Russell's work was on display during the summer of 2007 in central London's Proud Galleries in The Strand, London. The exhibition, entitled "Ken Russell's Lost London Rediscovered: 1951–1957", included photos taken in and around London, with many of the pictures being taken in the Portobello Road area of London. An exhibition "Ken Russell: Filmmaker, Photographer" ran at several galleries in 2010.


title: Ken Russell

text: In the late-1980s, Russell directed the music video for "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", a song written and produced by Jim Steinman for his Pandora's Box project. The production featured a range of erotic imagery, including studded bras and spiked codpieces. He had also directed Elton John's video for "Nikita" which featured a scene of John wearing the same boots he wore as the Pinball Wizard in the film adaptation of The Who's "Tommy".


title: Ken Russell

text: Light-hearted references to Russell often allude to sexual and religious (frequently Catholic) images in his work.


title: Ken Russell

text: In his 1973 novel "The Honorary Consul", English novelist Graham Greene includes a passage in which a "Conservative Member of Parliament had described the British entry [in the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina] by some man named Russell as pornographic."


title: In situ

text: In situ (; often not italicized in English) is a Latin phrase that translates literally to "on site" or "in position." It can mean "locally", "on site", "on the premises", or "in place" to describe where an event takes place and is used in many different contexts. For example, in fields such as physics, geology, chemistry, or biology, "in situ" may describe the way a measurement is taken, that is, in the same place the phenomenon is occurring without isolating it from other systems or altering the original conditions of the test. The opposite of "in situ" is "ex situ".


title: In situ

text: In the aerospace industry, equipment on-board aircraft must be tested "in situ", or in place, to confirm everything functions properly as a system. Individually, each piece may work but interference from nearby equipment may create unanticipated problems. Special test equipment is available for this "in situ" testing. It can also refer to repairs made to the aircraft structure or flight controls while still in place.


title: In situ

text: In archaeology, "in situ" refers to an artifact that has not been moved from its original place of deposition. In other words, it is stationary, meaning "still." An artifact being "in situ" is critical to the interpretation of that artifact and, consequently, of the culture which formed it. Once an artifact's 'find-site' has been recorded, the artifact can then be moved for conservation, further interpretation and display. An artifact that is not discovered "in situ" is considered out of context and as not providing an accurate picture of the associated culture. However, the out-of-context artifact can provide scientists with an example of types and locations of "in situ" artifacts yet to be discovered. When excavating a burial site or surface deposit "in situ" refers to cataloging, recording, mapping, photographing human remains in the position they are discovered.


title: In situ

text: The label "in situ" indicates only that the object has not been "newly" moved. Thus, an archaeological "in situ" find may be an object that was historically looted from another place, an item of "booty" of a past war, a traded item, or otherwise of foreign origin. Consequently, the "in situ" find site may still not reveal its provenance, but with further detective work may help uncover links that otherwise would remain unknown. It is also possible for archaeological layers to be reworked on purpose or by accident (by humans, natural forces or animals). For example, in a Tell mound, where layers are not typically uniform or horizontal, or in land cleared or tilled for farming.


title: In situ

text: The term "in situ" is often used to describe ancient sculpture that was carved in place such as the Sphinx or Petra. This distinguishes it from statues that were carved and moved like the Colossi of Memnon, which was moved in ancient times.


title: In situ

text: In art, "in situ" refers to a work of art made specifically for a host site, or that a work of art takes into account the site in which it is installed or exhibited. For a more detailed account see: Site-specific art. The term can also refer to a work of art created at the site where it is to be displayed, rather than one created in the artist's studio and then installed elsewhere ("e.g.," a sculpture carved "in situ"). In architectural sculpture the term is frequently employed to describe sculpture that is carved on a building, frequently from scaffolds, after the building has been erected.


title: In situ

text: A fraction of the globular star clusters in our galaxy, as well as those in other massive galaxies, might have formed "in situ". The rest might have been accreted from now-defunct dwarf galaxies.


title: In situ

text: In astronomy, "in situ" also refers to "in situ" planet formation, in which planets are hypothesized to have formed at the orbital distance they are currently observed


title: In situ

text: In biology and biomedical engineering, "in situ" means to examine the phenomenon exactly in place where it occurs (i.e., without moving it to some special medium).


title: In situ

text: In the case of observations or photographs of living animals, it means that the organism was observed (and photographed) in the wild, exactly as it was found and exactly where it was found. This means it was not taken out of the area. The organism had not been moved to another (perhaps more convenient) location such as an aquarium.


title: In situ

text: This phrase "in situ" when used in laboratory science such as cell science can mean something intermediate between "in vivo" and "in vitro". For example, examining a cell within a whole organ intact and under perfusion may be "in situ" investigation. This would not be "in vivo" as the donor is sacrificed by experimentation, but it would not be the same as working with the cell alone (a common scenario for "in vitro" experiments).


title: In situ

text: "In vitro" was among the first attempts to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze natural occurrences in the lab. Eventually, the limitation of "in vitro" experimentation was that they were not conducted in natural environments. To compensate for this problem, "in vivo" experimentation allowed testing to occur in the original organism or environment. To bridge the dichotomy of benefits associated with both methodologies, "in situ" experimentation allowed the controlled aspects of "in vitro" to become coalesced with the natural environmental compositions of "in vivo" experimentation.


title: In situ

text: In conservation of genetic resources, ""in situ" conservation" (also "on-site conservation") is the process of protecting an endangered plant or animal species in its natural habitat, as opposed to "ex situ" conservation (also "off-site conservation").


title: In situ

text: There are numerous situations in which chemical intermediates are synthesized "in situ" in various processes. This may be done because the species is unstable, and cannot be isolated, or simply out of convenience. Examples of the former include the Corey-Chaykovsky reagent and adrenochrome.


title: In situ

text: In biomedical engineering, protein nanogels made by the "in situ" polymerization method provide a versatile platform for storage and release of therapeutic proteins. It has tremendous applications for cancer treatment, vaccination, diagnosis, regenerative medicine, and therapies for loss-of-function genetic diseases.


title: In situ

text: In chemical engineering, "in situ" often refers to industrial plant "operations or procedures that are performed in place." For example, aged catalysts in industrial reactors may be regenerated in place ("in situ") without being removed from the reactors.


title: In situ

text: In architecture and building, "in situ" refers to construction which is carried out at the building site using raw materials. Compare that with "prefabricated" construction, in which building components are made in a factory and then transported to the building site for assembly. For example, concrete slabs may be "in situ" (also "cast-in-place") or "prefabricated".


title: In situ

text: "In situ" techniques are often more labor-intensive, and take longer, but the materials are cheaper, and the work is versatile and adaptable. "Prefabricated" techniques are usually much quicker, therefore saving money on labour costs, but factory-made parts can be expensive. They are also inflexible, and must often be designed on a grid, with all details fully calculated in advance. Finished units may require special handling due to excessive dimensions.


title: In situ

text: The phrase may also refer to those assets which are present at or near a project site. In this case, it is used to designate the state of an unmodified sample taken from a given stockpile.


title: In situ

text: Site construction usually involves grading the existing soil surface so that material is "cut" out of one area and "filled" in another area creating a flat pad on an existing slope. The term "in situ" distinguishes soil still in its existing condition from soil modified (filled) during construction. The differences in the soil properties for supporting building loads, accepting underground utilities, and infiltrating water persist indefinitely.


title: In situ

text: . For example, a file backup may be restored over a running system, without needing to take the system down to perform the restore. In the context of a database, a restore would allow the database system to continue to be available to users while a restore happened. An "in situ" upgrade would allow an operating system, firmware or application to be upgraded while the system was still running, perhaps without the need to reboot it, depending on the sophistication of the system.


title: In situ

text: Another use of the term in-situ that appears in Computer Science focuses primarily on the use of technology and user interfaces to provide continuous access to situationally relevant information in various locations and contexts. Examples include athletes viewing biometric data on smartwatches to improve their performance, a presenter looking at tips on a smart glass to reduce their speaking rate during a speech, or technicians receiving online and stepwise instructions for repairing an engine.


title: In situ

text: An algorithm is said to be an "in situ" algorithm, or in-place algorithm, if the extra amount of memory required to execute the algorithm is O(1), that is, does not exceed a constant no matter how large the input ---except for space for recursive calls on the "call stack." Typically such an algorithm operates on data objects directly in place rather than making copies of them.


title: In situ

text: For example, heapsort is an "in situ" sorting algorithm, which sorts the elements of an array in place. Quicksort is an "in situ" sorting algorithm, but in the worst case it requires linear space on the call stack (this can be reduced to log space). Merge sort is generally not written as an "in situ" algorithm.


title: In situ

text: In designing user interfaces, , for example, if a word processor displays an image and allows the image to be edited without launching a separate image editor, this is called "in situ editing."


title: In situ

text: AJAX partial page data updates is another example of "in situ" in a Web UI/UX context. "Web 2.0" included AJAX and the concept of asynchronous requests to servers to replace a portion of a web page with new data, without reloading


title: In situ

text: the entire page, as the early HTML model dictated. Arguably, "all" asynchronous data transfers or "any" background task is "in situ" as the normal state is normally unaware of background tasks, usually notified on completion


title: In situ

text: With big data, in situ data would mean bringing the computation to where data is located, rather than the other way like in traditional RDBMS systems where data is moved to computational space. This is also known as in-situ processing.


title: In situ

text: In design and advertising the term typically means the superimposing of theoretical design elements onto photographs of real world locations. This is a pre-visualization tool to aid in illustrating a proof of concept.


title: In situ

text: In physical geography and the Earth sciences, "in situ" typically describes natural material or processes prior to transport. For example, "in situ" is used in relation to the distinction between weathering and erosion, the difference being that erosion requires a transport medium (such as wind, ice, or water), whereas weathering occurs "in situ". Geochemical processes are also often described as occurring to material "in situ".


title: In situ

text: In economics, "in situ" is used when referring to the "in place" storage of a product, usually a natural resource. More generally, it refers to any situation where there is no out-of-pocket cost to store the product so that the only storage cost is the opportunity cost of waiting longer to get your money when the product is eventually sold. Examples of "in situ" storage would be oil and gas wells, all types of mineral and gem mines, stone quarries, timber that has reached an age where it could be harvested, and agricultural products that do not need a physical storage facility such as hay.


title: In situ

text: In electrochemistry, the phrase in situ refers to performing electrochemical experiments under operating conditions of the electrochemical cell, i.e., under potential control. This is opposed to doing ex situ experiments that are performed under the absence of potential control. Potential control preserves the electrochemical environment essential to maintain the double layer structure intact and the electron transfer reactions occurring at that particular potential in the electrode/electrolyte interphasial region.


title: In situ

text: "In situ" can refer to where a clean up or remediation of a polluted site is performed using and simulating the natural processes in the soil, contrary to "ex situ" where contaminated soil is excavated and cleaned elsewhere, off site.


title: In situ

text: In experimental physics "in situ" typically refers to a method of data collection or manipulation of a sample without exposure to an external environment. For example, the Si(111) 7x7 surface reconstruction is visible using a scanning tunneling microscope when it is prepared and analyzed "in situ".


title: In situ

text: In psychology experiments, "in situ" typically refers to those experiments done in a field setting as opposed to a laboratory setting.


title: In situ

text: In gastronomy, "in situ" refers to the art of cooking with the different resources that are available at the site of the event. Here a person is not going to the restaurant, but the restaurant comes to the person's home.


title: In situ

text: In legal contexts, "in situ" is often used for its literal meaning. For example, in Hong Kong, ""in situ" land exchange" involves the government exchanging the original or expired lease of a piece of land with a new grant or re-grant with the same piece of land or a portion of that.


title: In situ

text: In the field of recognition of governments under public international law the term "in situ" is used to distinguish between an exiled government and a government with effective control over the territory, i.e. the government "in situ".


title: In situ

text: In linguistics, specifically syntax, an element may be said to be "in situ" if it is pronounced in the position where it is interpreted. For example, questions in languages such as Chinese have "in situ" wh-elements, with structures comparable to "John bought what?" with "what" in the same position in the sentence as the grammatical object would be in its affirmative counterpart (for example, "John bought bread"). An example of an English wh-element that is not "in situ" (see wh-movement): "What did John buy?"


title: In situ

text: In literature "in situ" is used to describe a condition. The Rosetta Stone, for example, was originally erected in a courtyard, for public viewing. Most pictures of the famous stone are not "in situ" pictures of it erected, as it would have been originally. The stone was uncovered as part of building material, within a wall. Its in situ condition today is that it is erected, vertically, on public display at the British Museum in London, England.


title: In situ

text: In cancer/oncology: "in situ" means that malignant cells are present as a tumor but have not metastasized, or invaded beyond the layer or tissue type where it arose. This can happen anywhere in the body, such as the skin, breast tissue, or lung. For example, a cancer of epithelial origin with such features is called "carcinoma in situ", and is defined as not having invaded beyond the basement membrane.


title: In situ

text: In anatomy: "in situ" refers to viewing structures as they appear in normal healthy bodies. For example, one can open up a cadaver's abdominal cavity and view the liver "in situ" or one can look at an isolated liver that has been removed from the cadaver's body.


title: In situ

text: In nursing, "in situ" describes any devices or appliances on the patient's body that remain in their desired and optimal position.


title: In situ

text: In medical simulation, "in situ" refers to the practice of clinical professionals using high fidelity patient simulators to train for clinical practice in patient care environments, such as wards, operating rooms, and other settings, rather than in dedicated simulation training facilities.


title: In situ

text: In biomedical, protein nanogels made by the in situ polymerization method provide a versatile platform for storage and release of therapeutic proteins. It has tremendous applications for cancer treatment, vaccination, diagnosis, regenerative medicine, and therapies for loss-of-function genetic diseases.


title: In situ

text: "In situ leaching" or "in situ recovery" refers to the mining technique of injecting lixiviant underground to dissolve ore and bringing the pregnant leach solution to surface for extraction. Commonly used in uranium mining but has also been used for copper mining.


title: In situ

text: "In situ" refers to recovery techniques which apply heat or solvents to heavy crude oil or bitumen reservoirs beneath the earth's crust. There are several varieties of "in situ" techniques, but the ones which work best in the oil sands use heat (steam).


title: In situ

text: The most common type of "in situ" petroleum production is referred to as SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage) this is becoming very popular in the Alberta Oil Sands.


title: In situ

text: In radio frequency (RF) transmission systems, "in situ" is often used to describe the location of various components while the system is in its standard transmission mode, rather than operation in a test mode. For example, if an "in situ" wattmeter is used in a commercial broadcast transmission system, the wattmeter can accurately measure power while the station is "on air."


title: In situ

text: Future space exploration or terraforming may rely on obtaining supplies "in situ", such as previous plans to power the Orion space vehicle with fuel minable on the moon. The Mars Direct mission concept is based primarily on the "in situ" fuel production using Sabatier reaction.


title: In situ

text: In the space sciences, "in situ" refers to measurements of the particle and field environment that the satellite is embedded in, such as the detection of energetic particles in the solar wind, or magnetic field measurements from a magnetometer.


title: In situ

text: In vacuum technology, "in situ" baking refers to heating parts of the vacuum system while they are under vacuum in order to drive off volatile substances that may be absorbed or adsorbed on the walls so they cannot cause outgassing.


title: In situ

text: The term "in situ", used as "repair in situ," means to repair a vehicle at the place where it has a breakdown.


title: Fort Hood

text: Fort Hood is a United States Army post located near Killeen, Texas. Named after Confederate General John Bell Hood, it is located halfway between Austin and Waco, about from each, within the U.S. state of Texas. The post is the headquarters of III Armored Corps and First Army Division West and is home to the 1st Cavalry Division and 3rd Cavalry Regiment, among others. It is one of the U.S. Army installations named for Confederate soldiers to be renamed by the Commission on the Naming of Items of the Department of Defense that Commemorate the Confederate States of America or Any Person Who Served Voluntarily with the Confederate States of America. On 24 May 2022 the commission recommended the fort be renamed to Fort Cavazos, named after Gen. Richard E. Cavazos, a native Texan and the US Army’s first Hispanic four-star general. The recommendation report was finalized and submitted to Congress on 1 October 2022, giving the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin the authority to rename the post to Fort Cavazos.


title: Fort Hood

text: Its origin was the need for wide-open space to test and train with World War II tank destroyers. The War Department announced the location in January 1942, and the initial completion was set for that August. As originally constructed, Fort Hood had an area of , with billeting for 6,007 officers and 82,610 enlisted personnel. The main cantonment of Fort Hood had a total population of 53,416 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. Fort Hood is the most populous U.S. military installation in the world. The main business area is in Bell County, with the training countryside area of the post in Coryell County. In April 2014, the Fort Hood website lists 45,414 assigned soldiers and 8,900 civilian employees with Fort Hood covering .


title: Fort Hood

text: During World War II, tank destroyers were developed to counter German mobile armored units. These were mobile anti-tank guns on armored halftracks or specially developed tanks. Wide-open space was needed for the tank destroyer testing and training, which Texas had in abundance. Andrew Davis (A.D.) Bruce was assigned to organize a new Tank Destroyer Tactical and Firing Center, and he chose Killeen, Texas for the new camp. The War Department announced the selection on 15 January 1942. An initial acquisition of was made, and it was estimated that the camp would cost $22.8 million for the land, facilities, and development of utilities. The date of completion was set for 15 August 1942.


title: Fort Hood

text: About 300 families had to move from their homes to make room for the camp area and the communities of Clear Creek, Elijah, and Antelope were demolished to facilitate construction of the base. The old Sugar Loaf community, historically called the "Cradle of Killeen," provided the city with many of its first citizens in 1882. All that remains of the community is the mountain from which it took its name, located in the Fort Hood area. To lessen the burden of moving, the Army agreed to allow land to be used for grazing for a nominal grazing fee. This grazing arrangement still continues today.


title: Fort Hood

text: In mid-August, the camp was occupied and the official opening took place on 18 September 1942. Camp Hood was named in February for the Confederate General John Bell Hood, who commanded Hood's Texas Brigade during the American Civil War, part of a series of new training camps named for distinguished military leaders together with Camps Carson, Campbell and Atterbury.


title: Fort Hood

text: The original facilities provided housing and training sites for nearly 38,000 troops. In January 1943, an additional in Bell County and in Coryell County near Gatesville, Texas were purchased. The site near Gatesville was known as the sub-camp and later as North Camp Hood. During the war years, North Camp Hood housed nearly 40,000 troops and 4,000 prisoners of war, and was the site for the southern branch of the United States Disciplinary Barracks.


title: Fort Hood

text: At the end of 1942, there were about 45,000 troops living and training at Camp Hood and in late June 1943 it peaked at almost 95,000 troops, which was maintained until early 1944.


title: Fort Hood

text: In 1944, the number of tank destroyer battalions in training at Camp Hood declined rapidly. Field artillery battalions and the Infantry Replacement Training Center replaced them in March 1944. By September, the Infantry Center was the largest activity on post with 31,545 troops. The total camp population on the last day of 1944 was 50,228.


title: Fort Hood

text: During the last year of World War II Camp Hood's mission shifted and its population drastically decreased. As the war came to an end, troop training slowed and equipment reclamation and demobilization were prioritized. A separation center was established in September 1945, and as the year ended, post strength had fallen to 1,807 prisoners and about 11,000 troops. The Infantry Replacement Training Center was officially shut down on 7 January 1946.


title: Fort Hood

text: The 2nd and 20th Armored Divisions were sent to Camp Hood after returning from Europe in January 1946, but the 20th was soon inactivated, leaving less than 5,000 at the post. The 2nd Armored would remain at the post until its inactivation at the end of the Cold War. Camp Hood was retained postwar as an armored training center and on 15 April 1950 was officially renamed Fort Hood as a result of its permanent status.


title: Fort Hood

text: In mid-1954, III Corps moved from California to Fort Hood. The Corps supervised the training of combat units at Fort Hood and other Fourth Army stations from 1954 to 1959 when III Corps was inactivated. Probably the most famous trainee to come through Fort Hood was Elvis Presley, arriving on 28 March 1958. Other than receiving record amounts of mail (3–4 bags per day), he was treated like all other trainees. On 19 September, Presley shipped out for Germany.


title: Fort Hood

text: During this period, the 4th Armored Division was reactivated and deployed to Germany as part of the "Gyroscope" concept of unit movement.


title: Fort Hood

text: In September 1961, Fort Hood again became the home for the III Corps, and in February 1962, III Corps was assigned as part of the U.S. Army Strategic Army Corps (STRAC). At the same time, the basing of the 1st Armored Division there made it a two-division post. On 15 June 1963 Killeen Base was turned over to the Army.


title: Fort Hood

text: During the late 1960s, Fort Hood trained and deployed a number of units and individuals for duty in Vietnam. As the United States ended its role in the conflict, thousands of returning soldiers completed their active duty with one of the divisions. During this time, the post was modernized. On 13 September 1965, Darnall Hospital opened. In 1970, construction began on Palmer Theater and Venable Village was dedicated. Modern barracks were springing up around post. The wood buildings of Fort Hood were replaced with brick structures.


title: Fort Hood

text: In April 1968, more than 40 African American GIs, who objected to being sent to occupy riot-damaged Black neighborhoods in Chicago following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., were court martialed and jailed by the US Army. Many of the soldiers were decorated and wounded veterans who had completed tours of duty in Vietnam.


title: Fort Hood

text: In October 1969, Killeen Base was designated as West Fort Hood and the airfield's name was designated as Robert Gray Army Airfield. The base was named after a Killeen native who was a pilot of a B-25 bomber on the famous Doolittle Raid in Tokyo in 1942. He was killed later in World War II flying combat missions. With the redesignation came a change in mission at West Fart Hood. Nuclear weapons were removed; they had been secretly kept there since 1947.


title: Fort Hood

text: In 1971, the colors of the 1st Cavalry Division came to Fort Hood from Vietnam, resulting in the reflagging of the 1st Armored Division, the colors of which were sent to Germany to reflag the 4th Armored Division.


title: Fort Hood

text: From 23 December 1972, to 19 January 1973, elements of the 13th Support Brigade deployed to the 1972 Nicaragua earthquake to assist in disaster relief serving at Camp Christine, Managua, Nicaragua.


title: Fort Hood

text: Since the early 1970s, Fort Hood has played a major role in the training, testing, and introduction of new equipment, tactics, and organizations. The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command's Test and Experimentation Command (now the U.S. Army Operational Test Command), located at West Fort Hood has been a primary player. Fort Hood fielded the M1 Abrams tank, M2/3 Bradley Infantry/Cavalry Fighting Vehicle, the Multiple Launch rocket System (MLRS), and the AH-64 Apache helicopter.


title: Fort Hood

text: In January 1975, the 1st Cavalry Division was reorganized, as the Army's newest armored division. Since fielding the M-1 Abrams in 1980, force modernization has continued as a major focus. The 1st Cavalry became the first division to field the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Humvee, the Multiple Launch Rocket System and Mobile Subscriber Equipment (MSE) tactical communications.


title: Fort Hood

text: In August 1990, Fort Hood was alerted for deployments to Southwest Asia as part of the joint forces participating in Operation Desert Shield. The deployment to Saudi Arabia began in September, extending into mid-October.


title: Fort Hood

text: On 21 May 1991, with the reactivation of its 3rd Brigade ("Greywolf") the 1st Cavalry Division became the largest division in the Army upon its return to the United States. In October 1992, the Engineer Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division was reactivated. Through the Engineer Restructuring Initiative, the nucleus of the brigade was formed around the 8th Engineer Battalion. The 20th Engineer Battalion was brought from Fort Campbell, KY, to join the brigade, and the 91st Engineer Battalion was activated to complete the brigade.


title: Fort Hood

text: In November 1992, the unit designations for the battalions remaining from the former "Tiger" Brigade of the 2nd Armored Division were returned prior to the activation of the division at Fort Hood on 2 December 1992. This action was done to realign the historical designations of units to their parent divisions. On 29 November 1992, the 3rd Battalion, 41st Infantry was designated as the 1st Battalion, 9th Cavalry; 1st Battalion, 67th Armor to 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry, and 1st Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery to 2nd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery. On 16 December 1992, 1st Cavalry Division units designated to accomplish realignments for historical purposes and included the 1st Battalion, 32nd Armor reflagged as 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry; 3rd Battalion, 32nd Armor to 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry; and Battery A, 333rd Field Artillery to Battery B, 26th Field Artillery.


title: Fort Hood

text: During the post war periods called Operation Desert Calm and Operation Provide Comfort, Fort Hood units continued to serve in the Persian Gulf area. From December 1992 to May 1993, Fort Hood soldiers deployed to Somalia for Operation Restore Hope to command and control the Joint Task Force Support Command. In the fall of 1994, Fort Hood units participated in the largest deployment since Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm executed split base operations in the Caribbean Basin, Central America and Southwest Asia, in support of Operations Vigilant Warrior and Sea Signal V, as well as other contingency operations.


title: Fort Hood

text: 13th Corps Support Command Commander Brig. Gen. Billy K. Solomon deployed along with a portion of the headquarters in December 1992 to Mogadishu to serve as the nucleus of Joint Task Force Support Command. Their major units included the 593rd Support Group (Fort Lewis), 36th Engineer Group (Fort Benning), 7th Transportation Group (Fort Eustis), and 62d Medical Group (Fort Lewis). The command headquarters returned to Fort Hood in May 1993.


title: Fort Hood

text: As a result of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) reductions, the 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized), then located at Fort Polk Louisiana, was reflagged as the 2nd Armored Division in late 1992. By mid-1993, the division at Fort Hood had completed changes of unit names to those associated with the 5th Division, and began participation in the early stages of the Army's Experimental Force, Force XXI.


title: Fort Hood

text: In 1995, the 2nd Armored Division was reflagged as the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. Twenty-five years after making its home in Colorado, the 4th Infantry Division was again restationed to meet the Army's requirements but this move would be quite different from others. It became a split-based organization with six brigades and three separate battalions stationed at Fort Hood and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team remaining at Fort Carson. By December 1995, the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) assumed responsibility as the Army's Experimental Force (Force XXI), and on 15 December 1995, its colors were unfurled for the first time over central Texas and Fort Hood.


title: Fort Hood

text: Since the 1990s, Fort Hood units have supported Operation Joint Endeavor in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In October 1998, The 1st Cavalry Division was the first United States division to assume authority of the Multinational Division (North) area of operation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The mission was to conduct operations to enforce the military provisions set forth by the Dayton Peace Accords.


title: Fort Hood

text: In 1998, the Ironhorse Division was designated to be the Army's first Multi-Component unit. The main objective being to enhance Total Force integration, optimize the unique capabilities of each component, and improve the overall readiness of the Army. The program was developed to leverage the strengths of the Army's three components (active, reserve and National Guard). As such, 515 positions within the division have been designated as reserve component. These positions include individuals, a unit from the Wyoming National Guard and dual-mission units from the Texas Army National Guard.


title: Fort Hood

text: In addition to peacekeeping efforts, Fort Hood units routinely participate in national and international disaster relief efforts. Hours after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, III Corps units were ready to move out to provide assistance. Fort Hood units also aided Managua, Nicaragua, after an earthquake ravaged the city.


title: Fort Hood

text: During the 1990s, Fort Hood continued an extensive building program to modernize the post. This modernization continues today, with emphasis on quality of life, force projection and training. The Robertson Blood Center, Soldier Development Center, and a new commissary at Warrior Way have been completed. Many other improvements were made to improve the Power Projection Mission of the post such as improvements to the railhead and the runway at Gray Army Airfield. Training ranges have been upgraded.


title: Fort Hood

text: At the beginning of the 21st century, the Army's modernization was in full swing. Some of these new advances in technology and war fighting included the fielding of the M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank, the M2A2 Operation Desert Storm (ODS) Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, the M109A6 Paladin howitzer, the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, the AH-64D Apache Longbow Helicopter, and the M6 Bradley Linebacker.


title: Fort Hood

text: Fort Hood was the first installation selected to privatize post housing under the residential communities initiative. Under this initiative, new housing units, remodeled housing and community improvements will be added to the post.


title: Fort Hood

text: In 2001, the War on Terror became a prime focus. Fort Hood transitioned from an open to a closed post with the help of military police from reserve units. The 1st Cavalry sent additional troops to Kuwait to protect against possible aggressive actions from Iraq. The 4003rd Garrison Support Reserve unit fills vacancies left by deploying units at Fort Hood. Fort Hood has a key role as a training base for mobilizing Reserve and National Guard units to support the Homeland Defense effort.


title: Fort Hood

text: Many Fort Hood units have deployed to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom, and to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom. In December 2003, the 4th Infantry Division captured Saddam Hussein. In the spring of 2004, the 1st Cavalry Division followed the 4th Infantry Division deploying to Iraq. Task Force ODIN was created at Ft. Hood.


title: Fort Hood

text: In September 2005, 13th COSCOM and key enablers were called to support Joint Task Force Katrina/Rita hurricane relief and went on to serve as the senior joint logistical support command for JTF Katrina. 13th COSCOM eventually provided one hundred million rations, collected human remains with dignity, executed emergency engineering operations, transported, distributed and stored over one billion dollars in humanitarian relief from both non-governmental and federal sources from across the nation.


title: Fort Hood

text: In 2009, Fort Carson, Colorado's First Army Division West re-stationed to Fort Hood in order to consolidate its mission to conduct reserve component mobilization training and validation for deployment, switching places with 4th Infantry Division, which relocated to Fort Carson.


title: Fort Hood

text: On 12 June 2007, the body of Lawrence George Sprader, Jr was found at about 8:30 p.m. in a brushy area located within the Central Texas Army post's training ground. He had gone missing for days while conducting an exercise for testing basic map-reading and navigation skills. A massive search had been conducted, with over 3,000 parties scouring the countryside. According to autopsy records, he had died from hyperthermia and dehydration. According to an Army investigatory report, there were "a multitude of procedural violations, judgment errors and alleged acts of misconduct by Army trainers that not only contributed to Sprader's death but put some 300 other soldiers in danger that day, including about two dozen who required medical attention."


title: Fort Hood

text: On 5 November 2009 a gunman, who regarded himself as a mujahid waging "jihad" against the United States, opened fire in the Soldier Readiness Center of Fort Hood and killed 13 people while wounding 32 others. Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army Major and psychiatrist, was the gunman. He was shot and then arrested by Department of the Army police officers Sergeant Mark Todd and Sergeant Kimberly Munley.


title: Fort Hood

text: Eyewitnesses to the actual events said: "...Major Hasan wheeled on Sergeant Munley as she rounded the corner of a building and shot her, putting her on the ground. Then Major Hasan turned his back on her and started putting another magazine into his semiautomatic pistol. It was at that moment that Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, a veteran police officer, rounded another corner of the building, found Major Hasan fumbling with his weapon and shot him."


title: Fort Hood

text: In 2013, Hasan was convicted of thirteen counts of premeditated murder and thirty-two counts of attempted premeditated murder for the thirty soldiers and two civilian police officers injured in the shooting. On 23 August 2013, Hasan was found guilty on all charges and was sentenced to death.


title: Fort Hood

text: A memorial site in Killeen, featuring 13 granite columns inscribed with the names and likenesses of the victims, was dedicated in March, 2016. The memorial was financed by donations and built by volunteers.


title: Fort Hood

text: Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, an AWOL private, was arrested near Fort Hood, and in a statement by the police chief of Killeen, Texas, the man told investigators that he wanted to attack fellow soldiers at the military post. At his trial in August 2012, Abdo stated, through a cloth mask, "I will continue until the day the dead are called to account for their deeds." Abdo was sentenced to life in prison for the plot.


title: Fort Hood

text: On 2 April 2014, a shooting spree occurred at several locations on the base, leaving three people dead and fourteen others wounded. The gunman then died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was later identified as 34-year-old Ivan Lopez, an Iraq War veteran.


title: Fort Hood

text: A sexual assault prevention officer on the base, Sergeant 1st Class Gregory McQueen, was dishonorably discharged in March 2015, having been convicted of organizing a prostitution ring.


title: Fort Hood

text: Currently, Fort Hood has nearly 65,000 soldiers and family members and serves as a home for the following units: Headquarters III Corps; First Army Division West; the 1st Cavalry Division; 13th Sustainment Command (formerly 13th Corps Support Command); 89th Military Police Brigade; 504th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade; 85th Civil Affairs Brigade; 1st Medical Brigade; and the 69th Air Defense Artillery Brigade. Fort Hood also includes Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center and the Medical And Dental Activities as tenant units.


title: Fort Hood

text: , Killeen, Texas, started a land-use study to "identify and mitigate compatibility and encroachment issues that may impact training, operations".


title: Fort Hood

text: In 2020, a debate around renaming US military bases named after Confederate generals emerged during protests sparked from the murder of George Floyd. Fort Hood is one such base at the center of the controversy.


title: Fort Hood

text: 39 soldiers died or went missing in 2020. The killing of Vanessa Guillén at Fort Hood in April 2020 brought national attention to the base and the broader culture of sexual harassment in the military. Hundreds of people protested at the gates of Fort Hood in June demanding justice for Guillén. In August, a San Antonio man was arrested and charged with making terroristic threats after threatening to commit a mass shooting at Fort Hood in retaliation for Guillén's killing. 14 commanders were subsequently fired or suspended with Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy citing "leadership failures". An investigation by Fort Hood Independent Review Committee (FHIRC), a panel McCarthy established, found that there was a "permissive environment for sexual assault and sexual harassment at Fort Hood." Army regulation AR-600-20 (24 July 2020) now requires the filing of commander's critical information reports (CCIRs) 8 days after a SHARP (sexual harassment/assault response & prevention) complaint by a victim.


title: Fort Hood

text: Fort Hood CID investigators assigned to their cases are hampered by a checklist mentality from their beginnings as junior investigators straight out of initial training from Fort Leonard Wood, according to the FHIRC report. The majority of CID investigators are then detailed to protective services for senior Pentagon officials, thereby moving straight to middle management CID positions without the requisite experience in criminal investigation. After Carlton L Chee was the 28th death of 2020 in September, Congress launched an investigation of Fort Hood citing the deaths and other felonies that occurred on the fort between 2014-2019. Commanders at the FORSCOM, III Corps, and Fort Hood levels now have specific actions to complete upon a Sexual assault review board complaint. CID is being restructured: a civilian director reporting directly to the secretary of the Army will oversee criminal probes. The Provost Marshal and the Military Police will no longer undertake criminal investigations. A new branch like those in the Air Force and Navy for Special Agents will be instituted. FORSCOM now requires the selection of investigating officers from outside an installation's brigade-sized element, which is processing a complaint.


title: Fort Hood

text: More than 100 night vision goggles (NVGs) from an arms room were stolen during March til May 2021; several dozen were offered for sale on the Internet, from a reseller in Corpus Christi, Texas as of 9 July 2021; some devices had already been sold and shipped. CID and Homeland security believe the NVGs were stolen from shipping containers at Fort Hood.


title: Fort Hood

text: Fort Hood has served as a hub for anti-war activity during both the Vietnam War (e.g. the "Fort Hood Three" incident) and the War on Terror.


title: Fort Hood

text: From 1968 to 1973, the Oleo Strut was a G.I. coffeehouse located near post in Killeen, Texas. The coffee house was featured in the documentary "Sir! No Sir!".


title: Fort Hood

text: In 2009, the tradition of the Oleo Strut continued when the Under the Hood Café opened. The location serves as an outreach center for antiwar activists to reach out to area soldiers, and provide them with support. Under the Hood Café announced on 10 November 2014 that it would close by the end of the year.


title: Fort Hood

text: Recently several soldiers supported by Under the Hood have taken public acts of resistance, including Amnesty International prisoner of conscience Travis Bishop.


title: Fort Hood

text: As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 28,295 people, 2,893 households, and 2,720 families residing in the Fort Hood CDP.


title: Fort Hood

text: As of the census of 2000, there were 33,711 people, 5,819 households, and 5,679 families residing in the Fort Hood CDP. The population density was 2,255.7 people per square mile (870.6/km). There were 5,941 housing units at an average density of 397.5 per square mile (153.4/km). The racial makeup of the CDP was 50.7% White, 31.6% African American, 1.2% Native American, 2.1% Asian, 0.8% Pacific Islander, 8.7% from other races, and 4.8% from two or more races. 16.7% of the population were Hispanics or Latinos of any race.


title: Fort Hood

text: There were 5,818 households, out of which 87.6% had children under the age of eighteen living with them, 87.1% were married couples living together, 8.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 2.4% were non-families. Two percent of all households were made up of individuals, and 0.0% had someone living alone who is sixty-five years of age or older. The average household size was 3.92 and the average family size was 3.95.


title: Fort Hood

text: The age distribution was 33.3% under the age of eighteen, 32.3% from eighteen to twenty-four, 33.1% from twenty-five to forty-four, 1.2% from forty-five to sixty-four, and 0.1% who were sixty-five years of age or older. The median age was twenty-one years. For every one hundred females there were 163.4 males. For every one hundred females over the age of eighteen there were 209.4 males. All of these statistics are typical for military bases.


title: Fort Hood

text: The median income for a household on the base was $32,552, and the median income for a family was $32,296. Males had a median income of $18,884 versus $17,101 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $11,078. 9.5% of the population and 8.3% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 11.0% of those under the age of eighteen and 25.8% of those sixty-five and older were living below the poverty line.


title: Fort Hood

text: Fort Hood is a large United States military installation; it is the home of III Armored Corps, 1st Cavalry Division, 13th Sustainment Command, First Army Division West, 3rd Cavalry Regiment, 1st Medical Brigade and many other Forces Command and other units.


title: Fort Hood

text: The 4th Infantry Division completed its move from Fort Hood to Fort Carson, Colorado, exchanging positions with several units. The 4th Infantry Division Museum closed at Fort Hood for the last time on 29 May 2009 to complete its move to Colorado although most of the outdoor pieces remained at Fort Hood as part of the new 3CR Museum.


title: Fort Hood

text: Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, Fort Hood was billed as the largest military base in the free world (Fort Benning is larger in personnel, Fort Bliss in land area). During peacetime, Fort Hood is a gated post, with the 1st Cavalry Division Museum, the Belton Lake Outdoor Recreation Area (BLORA), and a number of other facilities that are open to the public. Access to the cantonments became restricted starting in July 2001. However, passes are available to visit the two museums on post, and the lake area remains open to the public without restriction since it is outside the cantonments. Various events, including the annual Independence Day celebration, which has one of the largest fireworks displays in the country, are open to the public.


title: Fort Hood

text: Shortly after the 2000 census, responsibility for post housing was turned over to privatized partnership with Actus Lend Lease. Under the terms of the contract, most of the housing has been remodeled or rebuilt, and hundreds of new units have been built or are in the process of being built, operating as Fort Hood Family Housing. The nine schools on Fort Hood are part of the Killeen Independent School District.


title: Fort Hood

text: Fort Hood consists of three sections: the main cantonment, West Fort Hood, and North Fort Hood. The main cantonment is bounded by Killeen on the east and Copperas Cove on the west. The Fort Hood main cantonment area, otherwise referred to as Main post, holds its own airfield, Hood Army Airfield. North Fort Hood is bounded by Gatesville to the northwest. West Fort Hood, bounded by Killeen and Copperas Cove, includes Fort Hood's second airfield, Robert Gray Army Airfield, which has been expanded for civilian use (Killeen–Fort Hood Regional Airport (GRK)) and additional training areas. To the east and southeast, the reservation is bounded by Harker Heights, Nolanville, Belton, and Morgan's Point Resort.


title: Hel (location)

text: Hel (Old Norse: ) is an afterlife location in Norse mythology and paganism. It is ruled over by a being of the same name, Hel. In late Icelandic sources, varying descriptions of Hel are given and various figures are described as being buried with items that will facilitate their journey to Hel after their death. In the "Poetic Edda", Brynhildr's trip to Hel after her death is described and Odin, while alive, also visits Hel upon his horse Sleipnir. In the "Prose Edda", Baldr goes to Hel on his death and subsequently Hermóðr uses Sleipnir to attempt to retrieve him.


title: Hel (location)

text: The Old Norse feminine proper noun "Hel" is identical to the name of the entity that presides over the realm, Old Norse "Hel". The word has cognates in all branches of the Germanic languages, including Old English "hell" (and thus Modern English "hell"), Old Frisian "helle", Old Saxon "hellia", Old High German "hella", and Gothic "𐌷𐌰𐌻𐌾𐌰". All forms ultimately derive from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic feminine noun *"haljō" ('concealed place, the underworld'). In turn, the Proto-Germanic form derives from the o-grade form of the Proto-Indo-European root *"kel-", *"kol"-: 'to cover, conceal, save'.


title: Hel (location)

text: The term is etymologically related to Modern English "hall" and therefore also "Valhalla", an afterlife 'hall of the slain' in Norse Mythology. "Hall" and its numerous Germanic cognates derive from Proto-Germanic *"hallō" 'covered place, hall', from Proto-Indo-European *"kol-".


title: Hel (location)

text: Related early Germanic terms and concepts include Proto-Germanic *"halja-rūnō(n)", a feminine compound noun, and *"halja-wītjan", a neutral compound noun. This form is reconstructed from the Latinized Gothic plural noun *"haliurunnae" (attested by Jordanes; according to philologist Vladimir Orel, meaning 'witches'), Old English "helle-rúne" ('sorceress, necromancer', according to Orel), and Old High German "helli-rūna" 'magic'. The compound is composed of two elements: *"haljō" and *"rūnō", the Proto-Germanic precursor to Modern English "rune". The second element in the Gothic "haliurunnae" may however instead be an agent noun from the verb "rinnan" ("to run, go"), which would make its literal meaning "one who travels to the netherworld".


title: Hel (location)

text: Proto-Germanic *"halja-wītjan" is reconstructed from Old Norse "hel-víti" 'hell', Old English "helle-wíte" 'hell-torment, hell', Old Saxon "helli-wīti" 'hell', and the Middle High German feminine noun "helle-wīze". The compound is a compound of *"haljō" (discussed above) and *"wītjan" (reconstructed from forms such as Old English "witt" 'right mind, wits', Old Saxon "gewit" 'understanding', and Gothic "un-witi" 'foolishness, understanding').


title: Hel (location)

text: In reference to Hel, in the poem "Völuspá", a völva states that Hel will play an important role in Ragnarök. The Völva states that a crowing "sooty-red cock from the halls of Hel" is one of three cocks that will signal one of the beginning events of Ragnarök. The other two are Fjalar in Jotunheim and Gullinkambi in Valhalla.


title: Hel (location)

text: In "Grímnismál" stanza 31, Hel is listed as existing beneath one of the three roots of the world tree Yggdrasil. One of the other two leads to the frost jötnar and the third to Mankind. In "Guðrúnarkviða I", as Herborg tells of her grief in having prepared funeral arrangements for various members of her family, her children and her husbands, described it as "arranging their journey to Hel".


title: Hel (location)

text: In the short poem "Helreið Brynhildar", Hel is directly referenced as a location in the title, translating to "Brynhild's Hel-Ride". While riding along a road on the border of Hel in a lavish cart (the cart her corpse was burnt within), Brynhildr encounters a dead giantess at a burial mound belonging to her. This results in a heated exchange, during which Brynhildr tells of her life.


title: Hel (location)

text: In "Baldrs draumar", Odin rides to the edge of Hel to investigate nightmares that Baldr has had. He uses a spell to bring to life the corpse of a Völva. Odin introduces himself under a false name and pretense and asks for information from the völva relating to Baldr's dreams. The völva reluctantly proceeds to produce prophecies regarding the events of Ragnarök.


title: Hel (location)

text: The poem gives some information regarding the geographic location of Hel in parallel to the description in the Prose Edda, which may be related to the fact that it was not included in the Codex Regius but is instead a later addition. Niflhel is mentioned as being just outside Hel. The bloody Garmr makes an appearance, encountering Odin on Odin's ride to Hel. Odin continues down the road and approaches Hel, which is described as the "high hall of Hel." There he proceeds to the grave of the Völva near the eastern doors where the descriptions of Hel end.


title: Hel (location)

text: In the "Prose Edda", more detailed information is given about the location, including a detailed account of a venture to the region after the death of the god Baldr. Snorri's descriptions of Hel in the "Prose Edda" are not corroborated outside "Baldrs draumar", which does not appear in the original Codex Regius but is a later addition often included with modern editions of the "Poetic Edda".


title: Hel (location)

text: In the book "Gylfaginning", Hel is introduced in chapter 3 as a location where "evil men" go upon death, and into Niflhel. The chapter further details that Hel is in the ninth of the Nine Worlds.


title: Hel (location)

text: In chapter 34, Hel, the being is introduced. Snorri writes that Hel was cast down into Hel by Odin who "made her ruler over Nine Worlds". Snorri further writes that there Hel is located in Niflheim. Here it is related that she could give out lodging and items to those sent to her that have died of disease or old age. A very large dwelling is described as existing in Niflheim owned by Hel with huge walls and gates. The within of this place is called Éljúðnir, where Hel is described as having a servant, a slave and various possessions.


title: Hel (location)

text: At the end of chapter 49, the death of Baldr and Nanna is described. Hermóðr, described as Baldr's brother in this source, sets out for Hel on horseback to retrieve the deceased Baldr. To enter Hel, Hermóðr rides for nine nights through "valleys so deep and dark that he saw nothing" until he arrives at the river Gjöll ("Noisy") and the Gjöll bridge. The bridge is described as having a roof made of shining gold. Hermóðr then proceeds to cross it. Hermóðr encounters Móðguð, who is the guard of the bridge ("Furious Battler").


title: Hel (location)

text: Móðguð speaks to Hermóðr and comments that the bridge echoes beneath him more than the entire party of five people who had just passed. This is a reference to Baldr, Nanna and those that were burnt in their funeral pyre passing over the bridge on death. Móðguð also says that the dead in Hel appear as a different color than the living and tells him that to get to Hel he must go "down and to the North" where he would find the Road to Hel.


title: Hel (location)

text: Continuing along the Road to Hel, Hermóðr encounters the Gates of Hel. Hermóðr remounts, spurs Sleipnir, and the two bound far over it. Hermóðr proceeds further beyond the gates for some distance before arriving at the hall, dismounting and entering. There Hermóðr sees Baldr sitting in a "seat of honor" and Hermóðr spends a night in Hel. The following day, Hermóðr presses Hel, the being, to allow Baldr to leave. Hel gives him an offer and then Baldr leads him out of the hall. Baldr then gives Hermóðr various gifts from Nanna and himself to bring from Hel to the living Æsir. Hermóðr then retraces his path back to the land of the living. Hel's offer fails and in chapter 50, Loki is blamed for Baldr remaining in Hel.


title: Hel (location)

text: In chapter 53, Hel is mentioned a final time in the "Prose Edda". Here, Höðr and Baldr are mentioned as returning from Hel in a post-Ragnarök world:


title: Hel (location)

text: Book I of "Gesta Danorum" contains an account of what has often been interpreted as a trip to Hel. While having dinner, King Hadingus is visited by a woman bearing stalks of hemlock who asks him if he knows where such fresh herbs grow in winter. Hadingus wants to know; so the woman muffles him with her cloak, pulls him into the ground, and they vanish. Saxo reasons that the gods wished for Hadingus to visit in the flesh where he will go when he dies.


title: Hel (location)

text: The two penetrate a dark and misty cloud, and then continue along a path worn from heavy use over the ages. The two see men wearing rich-looking robes, and nobles wearing purple. Passing them, they finally reach sunny regions where the herbs the woman presented Hadingus grow.


title: Hel (location)

text: Hadingus and the woman continue until they arrived at a river of blue-black water that is fast-moving, full of rapids, and filled with various weapons. They cross the bridge, and see two "strongly-matched" armies meeting. Hadingus asks the woman about their identity, and she responds that they are men that have met their death by sword, and that they present an everlasting display of their destruction while attempting to equal the activity of their past lives.


title: Hel (location)

text: Moving forward, the two encounter a wall that they cannot find a way over. The woman attempts to leap over it, but despite her slender and wrinkled body, cannot. The woman removes the head of a cock that she was carrying and throws it over the wall. The bird crows immediately; it has returned to life. Hadingus returns to his wife, and foils a threat by pirates.


title: Hel (location)

text: Hilda Ellis Davidson, writing on Snorri's unique description of Hel in his Prose Edda, states that "it seems likely that Snorri's account of the underworld is chiefly his own work" and that the idea that the dead entering Hel who have died of sickness and old age may have been an attempt on Snorri's part to reconcile the tradition with his description of Valhalla, citing that "the one detailed account of Hel" that Snorri gives is that of Baldr entering Hel without dying of old age or sickness. Davidson writes that Snorri was potentially using a "rich source" unknown to us for his description of Hel, though it may not have told him very much about the location beyond that it was a hall and that Snorri's description of Hel may at times be influenced by Christian teachings about the after-life.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: The ThinkPad T series is a line of laptop computers. Originally developed by IBM, and introduced in 2000, the brand was sold along with the rest of IBM's consumer computer division to Chinese technology company Lenovo in 2005, who have continued to produce and market succeeding models.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: IBM introduced the T series as part of their ThinkPad brand in 2000. The laptop was meant to cater to users working with multiple networks and in different environments. This resulted in the development of the IBM Embedded Security Subsystem.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: From the time of its inception, the series was designed to balance speed and mobility. Despite a 14.1-inch screen, similar to desktops at the time, the titanium composite body on the laptop was designed to keep the weight as low as possible. Users were also given options to swap components for mobility, like a DVD player, writeable CD drive or numeric keypads.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: The ThinkPad T20 was released by IBM as the 14.1-inch successor to the 13.3-inch ThinkPad 600 laptops. With a weight of , the T20 was the lightest laptop offering with a screen size of . With the addition of an internal 8x DVD-ROM drive, the weight remained as low as .


title: ThinkPad T series

text: In October 2000, the ThinkPad T20 was upgraded and released as the ThinkPad T21 laptop with the Intel Mobile Pentium III (800 MHz) CPU. The 14.1-inch LCD display offered a higher resolution of . The hard disk space offered was a 32GBhigh for the time.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: Further minor refinements were made to the T2X series resulting in the T22 and finally in 2002 with the T23 a Pentium III-M 1.13 GHz "Tualatin" having 128MiB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: The ThinkPad T30 was released in May 2002, with options for the Intel Mobile Pentium 4-M processor with the Intel 845MP Mobile Chipset. Additional options included the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 video controller with 16 MiB graphics memory, a 14.1-inch LCD display with a resolution of , and 1 GiB PC2100 RAM. This was complemented by a 60 GB hard drive and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive, making it a powerful laptop.Announced in March 2003, the ThinkPad T40p represented the first in the T series' "performance" class of laptops. The ThinkPad T40p offered ATI Mobility 9000 with 64 MiB VRAM, a 14.1-inch LCD display with resolution, a maximum of 2 GiB PC2100 RAM, and a 60 GB IDE hard disk. The design was followed by the T41 and T41p and the T42 and T42p (ATI Mobility 7500, 9600, and FireGL T2), with almost complete parts interchangeability, except for the fan (normal or p-series), keyboard (14.1" or 15"), screen (14.1" or 15"), and screen inverter. The 15-inch T42 and T42p models were offered with an optional or "FlexView" IPS LCD display.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: Launched in April 2005, the ThinkPad T43 and T43p laptops were the last T-series laptops manufactured for IBM. The major improvement was a move to lower-cost DDR2 RAM and a bus speed increase from 400 MHz to 533 MHz. The CPU also was the first to have the XD bit, making it the first Thinkpad that could run Windows 8.x and Windows 10.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: In December 2004 Lenovo of China announced the acquisition of the IBM PC division including the ThinkPad brand (at the time, 40% of the PC division was working in China.) ThinkPads were being made by Lenovo's arch-rival Great Wall Technology.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: Lenovo released the ThinkPad T60 and T60p laptops in February 2006. While designed and manufactured by Lenovo, the T60 and the T60p still featured the IBM logo on the machines. In May 2007, the T61 and T61p laptops slowly phased out IBM logos in favor of the ThinkPad logo. It also was the first T Series notebook to adopt widescreen resolution as a mainstream option; the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio screens was also offered as an alternative at the time but mass industry adoption of the widescreen standard meant that it was the last ThinkPad of its kind to use the 4:3 standard.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: The naming convention for the T Series was changed by Lenovo following the release of the ThinkPad T400 and T500 in July 2008. The Txxp models (like the T61p) were replaced by Lenovo's ThinkPad W Series laptops. Designed as mobile workstations, the W series grew to become Lenovo's line of performance-oriented laptops. The T series remains Lenovo's premier line of laptops, aimed at corporate and enterprise users and is praised by users for its outstanding Linux compatibility. The T-p lineup later returned as an irregular T##0p line with only T440p, T460p, T470p and T540p models.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: The Lenovo ThinkPad 25th anniversary edition was released on Oct. 5, 2017. It was based on the ThinkPad T470, but brought back the classic 7-row keyboard.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: In 2018, Lenovo introduced the ThinkPad A485, which officially isn't part of the T Series, but it uses the same housing and has the same build quality as the T480. It offers a 2nd generation AMD Ryzen Pro processor (namely the 2500U), and because of the AMD platform, it lacks Thunderbolt 3 support, but has USB-C support. The A475 had been similarly released in 2017 as a variation of the T470, but with AMD Carrizo or Bristol Ridge. In 2019 Lenovo officially introduced the AMD CPU in the T Series, and differentiated it with the digit 5 at the end of the model number (i.e. T495). From 2020 onwards, the naming scheme changed again, after the letter "T" comes the screen size in inches, then a Generation number (i.e. T14 Gen 1), just like with the X1 series. There is no more differentiation in model number for the AMD processors.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: PCWorld said that the ThinkPad T20 “packs a bigger screen, a more comfortable keyboard, and a larger set of useful features into a smaller package than any of its competitors.” The Web site epinions.com said that the ThinkPad T20 was “worth the wait” giving it 4.5 stars out of 5.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: In a review of the ThinkPad T60, Notebook Review called the T-series laptops the “flagship of the ThinkPad brand”, aimed at corporate professionals. Some of the T-series characteristics as listed by notebookreview.com include durability, security, usability, and performance.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: The ThinkPad T410 was awarded 4.5 out of 5 stars by Notebook Review upon release. The review noted the centering of the screen, eliminating the thick bezel on one side and the thin bezel on the other. The review indicated that the pros were the speed, battery life, and wide selection of ports. The cons were minor distortions on the screen when flexed, and the high pitched fan. WIRED also reviewed the T410 laptop positively, saying that “Lenovo's thoughtful ThinkPad is a near-perfect machine”.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: The PC Advisor review of the ThinkPad T510 called the lack of alterations to the traditional design a good thing. It also highlighted the professional appearance and ‘sturdy build quality’, indicating that this makes the laptop stand out from others in the market.


title: ThinkPad T series

text: The T420 and T520 laptops were different from their predecessors mainly through an upgrade to Intel's Sandy Bridge processors. The T420 received a total score of 85% from the Notebook Check web site. The fan noise was noticeably reduced, as indicated by a reviewer from PCWorld. The T-series laptops, the T420, the T420s, and the T520, have been lauded for their battery life – up to 30 hours with a 9-cell battery slice.


title: Sound film

text: A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923.


title: Sound film

text: The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid-to-late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as "talking pictures", or "talkies", were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie (although it had only limited sound sequences) was "The Jazz Singer", which premiered on October 6, 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures.


title: Sound film

text: By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. In the United States, they helped secure Hollywood's position as one of the world's most powerful cultural/commercial centers of influence (see Cinema of the United States). In Europe (and, to a lesser degree, elsewhere), the new development was treated with suspicion by many filmmakers and critics, who worried that a focus on dialogue would subvert the unique aesthetic virtues of silent cinema. In Japan, where the popular film tradition integrated silent movie and live vocal performance ("benshi"), talking pictures were slow to take root. Conversely, in India, sound was the transformative element that led to the rapid expansion of the nation's film industry.


title: Sound film

text: The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the concept of cinema itself. On February 27, 1888, a couple of days after photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge gave a lecture not far from the laboratory of Thomas Edison, the two inventors met privately. Muybridge later claimed that on this occasion, six years before the first commercial motion picture exhibition, he proposed a scheme for sound cinema that would combine his image-casting zoopraxiscope with Edison's recorded-sound technology. No agreement was reached, but within a year Edison commissioned the development of the Kinetoscope, essentially a "peep-show" system, as a visual complement to his cylinder phonograph. The two devices were brought together as the Kinetophone in 1895, but individual, cabinet viewing of motion pictures was soon to be outmoded by successes in film projection.


title: Sound film

text: In 1899, a projected sound-film system known as Cinemacrophonograph or Phonorama, based primarily on the work of Swiss-born inventor François Dussaud, was exhibited in Paris; similar to the Kinetophone, the system required individual use of earphones. An improved cylinder-based system, Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, was developed by Clément-Maurice Gratioulet and Henri Lioret of France, allowing short films of theater, opera, and ballet excerpts to be presented at the Paris Exposition in 1900. These appear to be the first publicly exhibited films with projection of both image and recorded sound. Phonorama and yet another sound-film system—Théâtroscope—were also presented at the Exposition.


title: Sound film

text: Three major problems persisted, leading to motion pictures and sound recording largely taking separate paths for a generation. The primary issue was synchronization: pictures and sound were recorded and played back by separate devices, which were difficult to start and maintain in tandem. Sufficient playback volume was also hard to achieve. While motion picture projectors soon allowed film to be shown to large theater audiences, audio technology before the development of electric amplification could not project satisfactorily to fill large spaces. Finally, there was the challenge of recording fidelity. The primitive systems of the era produced sound of very low quality unless the performers were stationed directly in front of the cumbersome recording devices (acoustical horns, for the most part), imposing severe limits on the sort of films that could be created with live-recorded sound.


title: Sound film

text: Cinematic innovators attempted to cope with the fundamental synchronization problem in a variety of ways. An increasing number of motion picture systems relied on gramophone records—known as sound-on-disc technology. The records themselves were often referred to as "Berliner discs", after one of the primary inventors in the field, German-American Emile Berliner. In 1902, Léon Gaumont demonstrated his sound-on-disc Chronophone, involving an electrical connection he had recently patented, to the French Photographic Society. Four years later, Gaumont introduced the Elgéphone, a compressed-air amplification system based on the Auxetophone, developed by British inventors Horace Short and Charles Parsons. Despite high expectations, Gaumont's sound innovations had only limited commercial success. Despite some improvements, they still did not satisfactorily address the three basic issues with sound film and were expensive as well. For some years, American inventor E. E. Norton's Cameraphone was the primary competitor to the Gaumont system (sources differ on whether the Cameraphone was disc- or cylinder-based); it ultimately failed for many of the same reasons that held back the Chronophone.


title: Sound film

text: In 1913, Edison introduced a new cylinder-based synch-sound apparatus known, just like his 1895 system, as the Kinetophone. Instead of films being shown to individual viewers in the Kinetoscope cabinet, they were now projected onto a screen. The phonograph was connected by an intricate arrangement of pulleys to the film projector, allowing—under ideal conditions—for synchronization. However, conditions were rarely ideal, and the new, improved Kinetophone was retired after little more than a year. By the mid-1910s, the groundswell in commercial sound motion picture exhibition had subsided. Beginning in 1914, "The Photo-Drama of Creation", promoting Jehovah's Witnesses' conception of humankind's genesis, was screened around the United States: eight hours worth of projected visuals involving both slides and live action, synchronized with separately recorded lectures and musical performances played back on phonograph.


title: Sound film

text: Meanwhile, innovations continued on another significant front. In 1900, as part of the research he was conducting on the photophone, the German physicist Ernst Ruhmer recorded the fluctuations of the transmitting arc-light as varying shades of light and dark bands onto a continuous roll of photographic film. He then determined that he could reverse the process and reproduce the recorded sound from this photographic strip by shining a bright light through the running filmstrip, with the resulting varying light illuminating a selenium cell. The changes in brightness caused a corresponding change to the selenium's resistance to electrical currents, which was used to modulate the sound produced in a telephone receiver. He called this invention the photographophone, which he summarized as: "It is truly a wonderful process: sound becomes electricity, becomes light, causes chemical actions, becomes light and electricity again, and finally sound."


title: Sound film

text: Ruhmer began a correspondence with the French-born, London-based Eugene Lauste, who had worked at Edison's lab between 1886 and 1892. In 1907, Lauste was awarded the first patent for sound-on-film technology, involving the transformation of sound into light waves that are photographically recorded direct onto celluloid. As described by historian Scott Eyman,


title: Sound film

text: It was a double system, that is, the sound was on a different piece of film from the picture... In essence, the sound was captured by a microphone and translated into light waves via a light valve, a thin ribbon of sensitive metal over a tiny slit. The sound reaching this ribbon would be converted into light by the shivering of the diaphragm, focusing the resulting light waves through the slit, where it would be photographed on the side of the film, on a strip about a tenth of an inch wide.


title: Sound film

text: In 1908, Lauste purchased a photographophone from Ruhmer, with the intention of perfecting the device into a commercial product. Though sound-on-film would eventually become the universal standard for synchronized sound cinema, Lauste never successfully exploited his innovations, which came to an effective dead end. In 1914, Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt was granted German patent 309,536 for his sound-on-film work; that same year, he apparently demonstrated a film made with the process to an audience of scientists in Berlin. Hungarian engineer Denes Mihaly submitted his sound-on-film Projectofon concept to the Royal Hungarian Patent Court in 1918; the patent award was published four years later. Whether sound was captured on cylinder, disc, or film, none of the available technology was adequate for big-league commercial purposes, and for many years the heads of the major Hollywood film studios saw little benefit in producing sound motion pictures.


title: Sound film

text: A number of technological developments contributed to making sound cinema commercially viable by the late 1920s. Two involved contrasting approaches to synchronized sound reproduction, or playback:


title: Sound film

text: In 1919, American inventor Lee De Forest was awarded several patents that would lead to the first optical sound-on-film technology with commercial application. In De Forest's system, the sound track was photographically recorded onto the side of the strip of motion picture film to create a composite, or "married", print. If proper synchronization of sound and picture was achieved in recording, it could be absolutely counted on in playback. Over the next four years, he improved his system with the help of equipment and patents licensed from another American inventor in the field, Theodore Case.


title: Sound film

text: At the University of Illinois, Polish-born research engineer Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner was working independently on a similar process. On June 9, 1922, he gave the first reported U.S. demonstration of a sound-on-film motion picture to members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. As with Lauste and Tigerstedt, Tykociner's system would never be taken advantage of commercially; however, De Forest's soon would.


title: Sound film

text: On April 15, 1923, at the New York City's Rivoli Theater, the first commercial screening of motion pictures with sound-on-film took place. This would become the future standard. It consisted of a set of short films varying in length and featuring some of the most popular stars of the 1920s (including Eddie Cantor, Harry Richman, Sophie Tucker, and George Jessel among others) doing stage performances such as vaudevilles, musical acts, and speeches which accompanied the screening of the silent feature film "Bella Donna". All of them were presented under the banner of De Forest Phonofilms. The set included the 11-minute short film "From far Seville" starring Concha Piquer. In 2010, a copy of the tape was found in the U.S. Library of Congress, where it is currently preserved. Critics attending the event praised the novelty but not the sound quality which received negative reviews in general. That June, De Forest entered into an extended legal battle with an employee, Freeman Harrison Owens, for title to one of the crucial Phonofilm patents. Although De Forest ultimately won the case in the courts, Owens is today recognized as a central innovator in the field. The following year, De Forest's studio released the first commercial dramatic film shot as a talking picture—the two-reeler "Love's Old Sweet Song", directed by J. Searle Dawley and featuring Una Merkel. However, phonofilm's stock in trade was not original dramas but celebrity documentaries, popular music acts, and comedy performances. President Calvin Coolidge, opera singer Abbie Mitchell, and vaudeville stars such as Phil Baker, Ben Bernie, Eddie Cantor and Oscar Levant appeared in the firm's pictures. Hollywood remained suspicious, even fearful, of the new technology. As "Photoplay" editor James Quirk put it in March 1924, "Talking pictures are perfected, says Dr. Lee De Forest. "So" is castor oil." De Forest's process continued to be used through 1927 in the United States for dozens of short Phonofilms; in the UK it was employed a few years longer for both shorts and features by British Sound Film Productions, a subsidiary of British Talking Pictures, which purchased the primary Phonofilm assets. By the end of 1930, the Phonofilm business would be liquidated.


title: Sound film

text: In Europe, others were also working on the development of sound-on-film. In 1919, the same year that DeForest received his first patents in the field, three German inventors, Josef Engl (1893–1942), Hans Vogt (1890–1979), and Joseph Massolle (1889–1957), patented the Tri-Ergon sound system. On September 17, 1922, the Tri-Ergon group gave a public screening of sound-on-film productions—including a dramatic talkie, "Der Brandstifter" ("The Arsonist") —before an invited audience at the Alhambra Kino in Berlin. By the end of the decade, Tri-Ergon would be the dominant European sound system. In 1923, two Danish engineers, Axel Petersen and Arnold Poulsen, patented a system that recorded sound on a separate filmstrip running parallel with the image reel. Gaumont licensed the technology and briefly put it to commercial use under the name Cinéphone.


title: Sound film

text: Domestic competition, however, eclipsed Phonofilm. By September 1925, De Forest and Case's working arrangement had fallen through. The following July, Case joined Fox Film, Hollywood's third largest studio, to found the Fox-Case Corporation. The system developed by Case and his assistant, Earl Sponable, given the name Movietone, thus became the first viable sound-on-film technology controlled by a Hollywood movie studio. The following year, Fox purchased the North American rights to the Tri-Ergon system, though the company found it inferior to Movietone and virtually impossible to integrate the two different systems to advantage. In 1927, as well, Fox retained the services of Freeman Owens, who had particular expertise in constructing cameras for synch-sound film.


title: Sound film

text: Parallel with improvements in sound-on-film technology, a number of companies were making progress with systems that recorded movie sound on phonograph discs. In sound-on-disc technology from the era, a phonograph turntable is connected by a mechanical interlock to a specially modified film projector, allowing for synchronization. In 1921, the Photokinema sound-on-disc system developed by Orlando Kellum was employed to add synchronized sound sequences to D. W. Griffith's failed silent film "Dream Street". A love song, performed by star Ralph Graves, was recorded, as was a sequence of live vocal effects. Apparently, dialogue scenes were also recorded, but the results were unsatisfactory and the film was never publicly screened incorporating them. On May 1, 1921, "Dream Street" was re-released, with love song added, at New York City's Town Hall theater, qualifying it—however haphazardly—as the first feature-length film with a live-recorded vocal sequence. However, the sound quality was very poor and no other theaters could show the sound version of the film as no one had the Photokinema sound system installed. On Sunday, May 29, "Dream Street" opened at the Shubert Crescent Theater in Brooklyn with a program of short films made in Phonokinema. However, business was poor, and the program soon closed.


title: Sound film

text: In 1925, Sam Warner of Warner Bros., then a small Hollywood studio with big ambitions, saw a demonstration of the Western Electric sound-on-disc system and was sufficiently impressed to persuade his brothers to agree to experiment with using this system at New York City's Vitagraph Studios, which they had recently purchased. The tests were convincing to the Warner Brothers, if not to the executives of some other picture companies who witnessed them. Consequently, in April 1926 the Western Electric Company entered into a contract with Warner Brothers and W. J. Rich, a financier, giving them an exclusive license for recording and reproducing sound pictures under the Western Electric system. To exploit this license the Vitaphone Corporation was organized with Samuel L. Warner as its president.


title: Sound film

text: Vitaphone, as this system was now called, was publicly introduced on August 6, 1926, with the premiere of "Don Juan"; the first feature-length movie to employ a synchronized sound system of any type throughout, its soundtrack contained a musical score and added sound effects, but no recorded dialogue—in other words, it had been staged and shot as a silent film. Accompanying "Don Juan", however, were eight shorts of musical performances, mostly classical, as well as a four-minute filmed introduction by Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, all with live-recorded sound. These were the first true sound films exhibited by a Hollywood studio. Warner Bros.' "The Better 'Ole", technically similar to "Don Juan", followed in October.


title: Sound film

text: Sound-on-film would ultimately win out over sound-on-disc because of a number of fundamental technical advantages:


title: Sound film

text: Nonetheless, in the early years, sound-on-disc had the edge over sound-on-film in two substantial ways:


title: Sound film

text: The third crucial set of innovations marked a major step forward in both the live recording of sound and its effective playback:


title: Sound film

text: In 1913, Western Electric, the manufacturing division of AT&T, acquired the rights to the de Forest audion, the forerunner of the triode vacuum tube. Over the next few years they developed it into a predictable and reliable device that made electronic amplification possible for the first time. Western Electric then branched-out into developing uses for the vacuum tube including public address systems and an electrical recording system for the recording industry. Beginning in 1922, the research branch of Western Electric began working intensively on recording technology for both sound-on-disc and sound-on film synchronised sound systems for motion-pictures.


title: Sound film

text: The engineers working on the sound-on-disc system were able to draw on expertise that Western Electric already had in electrical disc recording and were thus able to make faster initial progress. The main change required was to increase the playing time of the disc so that it could match that of a standard reel of 35 mm film. The chosen design used a disc nearly 16 inches (about 40 cm) in diameter rotating at 33 1/3 rpm. This could play for 11 minutes, the running time of 1000 ft of film at 90 ft/min (24 frames/s). Because of the larger diameter the minimum groove velocity of 70 ft/min (14 inches or 356 mm/s) was only slightly less than that of a standard 10-inch 78 rpm commercial disc.


title: Sound film

text: In 1925, the company publicly introduced a greatly improved system of electronic audio, including sensitive condenser microphones and rubber-line recorders (named after the use of a rubber damping band for recording with better frequency response onto a wax master disc). That May, the company licensed entrepreneur Walter J. Rich to exploit the system for commercial motion pictures; he founded Vitagraph, in which Warner Bros. acquired a half interest, just one month later. In April 1926, Warners signed a contract with AT&T for exclusive use of its film sound technology for the redubbed Vitaphone operation, leading to the production of "Don Juan" and its accompanying shorts over the following months. During the period when Vitaphone had exclusive access to the patents, the fidelity of recordings made for Warners films was markedly superior to those made for the company's sound-on-film competitors. Meanwhile, Bell Labs—the new name for the AT&T research operation—was working at a furious pace on sophisticated sound amplification technology that would allow recordings to be played back over loudspeakers at theater-filling volume. The new moving-coil speaker system was installed in New York's Warners Theatre at the end of July and its patent submission, for what Western Electric called the No. 555 Receiver, was filed on August 4, just two days before the premiere of "Don Juan".


title: Sound film

text: Late in the year, AT&T/Western Electric created a licensing division, Electrical Research Products Inc. (ERPI), to handle rights to the company's film-related audio technology. Vitaphone still had legal exclusivity, but having lapsed in its royalty payments, effective control of the rights was in ERPI's hands. On December 31, 1926, Warners granted Fox-Case a sublicense for the use of the Western Electric system; in exchange for the sublicense, both Warners and ERPI received a share of Fox's related revenues. The patents of all three concerns were cross-licensed. Superior recording and amplification technology was now available to two Hollywood studios, pursuing two very different methods of sound reproduction. The new year would finally see the emergence of sound cinema as a significant commercial medium.


title: Sound film

text: In 1929 a "new RCA Photophone portable sound and picture reproducing system" was described in the industry journal Projection Engineering. In Australia, Hoyts and Gilby Talkies Pty., Ltd were touring talking pictures to country towns. The same year the White Star Line installed talking picture equipment on the s.s. Majestic. The features shown on the first voyage were "Show Boat" and "Broadway."


title: Sound film

text: In February 1927, an agreement was signed by five leading Hollywood movie companies: Famous Players-Lasky (soon to be part of Paramount), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal, First National, and Cecil B. DeMille's small but prestigious Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC). The five studios agreed to collectively select just one provider for sound conversion, and then waited to see what sort of results the front-runners came up with. In May, Warner Bros. sold back its exclusivity rights to ERPI (along with the Fox-Case sublicense) and signed a new royalty contract similar to Fox's for use of Western Electric technology. Fox and Warners pressed forward with sound cinema, moving in different directions both technologically and commercially: Fox moved into newsreels and then scored dramas, while Warners concentrated on talking features. Meanwhile, ERPI sought to corner the market by signing up the five allied studios.


title: Sound film

text: The big sound film sensations of the year all took advantage of preexisting celebrity. On May 20, 1927, at New York City's Roxy Theater, Fox Movietone presented a sound film of the takeoff of Charles Lindbergh's celebrated flight to Paris, recorded earlier that day. In June, a Fox sound newsreel depicting his return welcomes in New York City and Washington, D.C., was shown. These were the two most acclaimed sound motion pictures to date. In May, as well, Fox had released the first Hollywood fiction film with synchronized dialogue: the short "They're Coming to Get Me", starring comedian Chic Sale. After rereleasing a few silent feature hits, such as "Seventh Heaven", with recorded music, Fox came out with its first original Movietone feature on September 23: "", by acclaimed German director F. W. Murnau. As with "Don Juan", the film's soundtrack consisted of a musical score and sound effects (including, in a couple of crowd scenes, "wild", nonspecific vocals).


title: Sound film

text: Then, on October 6, 1927, Warner Bros.' "The Jazz Singer" premiered. It was a smash box office success for the mid-level studio, earning a total of $2.625 million in the United States and abroad, almost a million dollars more than the previous record for a Warner Bros. film. Produced with the Vitaphone system, most of the film does not contain live-recorded audio, relying, like "Sunrise" and "Don Juan", on a score and effects. When the movie's star, Al Jolson, sings, however, the film shifts to sound recorded on the set, including both his musical performances and two scenes with ad-libbed speech—one of Jolson's character, Jakie Rabinowitz (Jack Robin), addressing a cabaret audience; the other an exchange between him and his mother. The "natural" sounds of the settings were also audible. Though the success of "The Jazz Singer" was due largely to Jolson, already established as one of U.S. biggest music stars, and its limited use of synchronized sound hardly qualified it as an innovative sound film (let alone the "first"), the movie's profits were proof enough to the industry that the technology was worth investing in.