title: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

text: At the Sixth Party Congress of the KDP in July 1964, representatives from the Ahmad-Talabani faction were arrested upon arrival. A few days later Mulla Mustafa sent his son, Idris Barzani with a large force to drive Ahmad, Talabani, and their 4,000 or so followers into exile in Iran. With this, Mulla Mustafa had finally achieved undisputed control of the KDP.


title: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

text: After the defeat of the Kurds in the 1974–1975 Revolt, on 22 May 1975, Talabani met in a coffee shop called Gligla, in Aum Rmana, Damascus, with Fuad Mausm, Adel Murad, and Abdul Razaq Faily. That day, the PUK announced its formation via Syrian and Lebanese media. The day after, Talabani visited Berlin in West Germany and met three other co-founders, Nawshirwan Mustafa, Omar Shekhmus, and Kamal Fwad, and some other activists. On 1 June 1975, the PUK was announced again in Berlin, and thus it was decided that 1 June is the anniversary date of the founding of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).


title: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

text: The PUK was a coalition of at least five separate political entities, the most significant of which were Talabani and his closest followers, Nawshirwan Mustafa's clandestine Marxist-Leninist group Komala, and the Kurdistan Socialist Movement (KSM), formed as a result of a series of meetings within the cadres of the Aylul Revolution who took refuge in Iran in 1975, including Omer Dababa, Ali Askari, Dr. Khalid, Ali Hazhar, Kardo Galali, Ibrahim Ahmad, Jamal Agha, Rasul Mamand, Mala Nasih, Abdulrahman Gomashini, Milazm Tahir, Ali Wali and Kamal Mihedeen. The PUK served as an umbrella organization unifying various trends within the Kurdish political movement in Iraq.


title: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

text: The PUK received grassroots support from the urban intellectual classes of Iraqi Kurdistan upon its establishment, partly due to five of its seven founding members being Ph.D. holders and academics. In the early 1980s, the PUK evolved and broadened its appeal to all sections of Iraqi Kurdish society, especially the rural classes.


title: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

text: In 1992, the constituent groups within the PUK merged into a unified political movement that affirmed its social-democratic identity and affiliation. Their communique ascribed the collapse of the revolt to "the inability of the feudalist, tribalist, bourgeois rightist and capitulationist Kurdish leadership".


title: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

text: Since the first Gulf War, the PUK has jointly administered Kurdistan Region with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). However, in 1994 the parties engaged in a three-year conflict, known as the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War. The conflict ended with US mediation, and reconciliation was eventually achieved.


title: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

text: A Co-Presidents are elected by the General Leadership Council. The PUK has 36 branches throughout Iraqi Kurdistan and draws membership from a broad cross-section of Kurdish society. The membership of the PUK, based on statistics compiled in September 1998, stands at 800,280 members and associates. The PUK contested the 1992 elections for the Kurdistan National Assembly, and the party list acquired 423,682 votes of the total of 957,469 valid votes cast - giving the PUK commanding majority in three of Kurdistan Region's four provinces. The PUK is a member of the Socialist International. Kosrat Rasul Ali was elected as the leader of the Supreme Political Council at the party congress in December 2019 and Lahur Talabany and Bafel Talabany were elected as Co-Presidents in February 2020 to lead the party.


title: George Pérez

text: George Pérez (; June 9, 1954 – May 6, 2022) was an American comic book artist and writer, who worked primarily as a penciller. He came to prominence in the 1970s penciling "Fantastic Four" and "The Avengers" for Marvel Comics. In the 1980s he penciled "The New Teen Titans", which became one of DC Comics' top-selling series. He penciled DC's landmark limited series "Crisis on Infinite Earths", followed by relaunching "Wonder Woman" as both writer and penciller for the rebooted series. In the meantime, he worked on other comics published by Marvel, DC, and other companies into the 2010s. He was known for his detailed and realistic rendering, and his facility with complex crowd scenes.


title: George Pérez

text: George Pérez was born on June 9, 1954, in the South Bronx, New York City, to Jorge Guzman Pérez and Luz Maria Izquierdo, who were both from Caguas, Puerto Rico, but met after settling in New Jersey while searching for job opportunities. They married in October 1954 and subsequently moved to New York, where Jorge worked in the meat packing industry while Luz was a homemaker. George's younger brother David was born in May 1955. Both brothers aspired at a young age to be artists with George beginning to draw at the age of five.


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez's first involvement with the professional comics industry was as artist Rich Buckler's assistant in 1973, and he made his professional debut in Marvel Comics' "Astonishing Tales" #25 (Aug. 1974) as penciler of an untitled two-page satire of Buckler's character Deathlok, star of that comic's main feature. Soon Pérez became a Marvel regular, penciling a run of "Sons of the Tiger", a serialized action-adventure strip published in Marvel's long-running "Deadly Hands of Kung Fu" magazine and authored by Bill Mantlo. He and Mantlo co-created the White Tiger (comics' first Puerto Rican superhero), a character that soon appeared in Marvel's color comics, most notably the Spider-Man titles.


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez came to prominence with Marvel's superhero-team comic "The Avengers", starting with issue #141. In the 1970s, Pérez illustrated several other Marvel titles, including "Creatures on the Loose", featuring the Man-Wolf; "The Inhumans"; and "Fantastic Four". Writer Roy Thomas and Pérez crafted a metafictional story for "Fantastic Four" #176 (Nov. 1976) in which the Impossible Man visited the offices of Marvel Comics and met numerous comics creators. While most of Pérez' "Fantastic Four" issues were written by Roy Thomas or Len Wein, it would be a "Fantastic Four Annual" where he would have his first major collaboration with writer Marv Wolfman. Pérez drew the first part of writer Jim Shooter's "The Korvac Saga", which featured nearly every Avenger who had joined the team up to that point. Shooter and Pérez introduced the character of Henry Peter Gyrich, the Avengers' liaison to the United States National Security Council in the second chapter of that same storyline. Writer David Michelinie and Pérez created the Taskmaster in "The Avengers" #195 (May 1980).


title: George Pérez

text: In 1980, while still drawing "The Avengers" for Marvel, Pérez began working for their rival DC Comics. Offered the art chores for the launch of "The New Teen Titans", written by Wolfman, Pérez's real incentive was the opportunity to draw "Justice League of America" (an ambition of Pérez's which "seemed like a natural progress from the "Avengers""). Long-time "Justice League" artist Dick Dillin died right around that time, providing an opportunity for Pérez to step in as regular artist. While Pérez's stint on the "JLA" was popular with fans, he received greater attention for his work on "The New Teen Titans", which was launched in a special preview in "DC Comics Presents" #26 (October 1980). This incarnation of the Titans was intended to be DC's answer to Marvel's increasingly popular "X-Men" comic, and it became highly successful. A "New Teen Titans" drug awareness comic book sponsored by the Keebler Company and drawn by Pérez was published in cooperation with The President's Drug Awareness Campaign in 1983. In August 1984, a second series of "The New Teen Titans" was launched by Wolfman and Pérez. Moreover, Pérez's facility with layouts, details, and faces improved enormously during his four years on the book, making him one of the most popular artists in comics as evidenced by the numerous industry awards he would receive during this time. (See Awards section below.)


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez took a leave of absence from "The New Teen Titans" in 1984 to focus on his next project with Marv Wolfman, DC's 1985 50th-anniversary event, "Crisis on Infinite Earths". "Crisis" purportedly featured every single character DC owned, in a story which radically restructured the DC universe's continuity. Pérez was inked on the series by Dick Giordano, Mike DeCarlo, and Jerry Ordway. After "Crisis", Pérez inked the final issue of "Superman" (issue #423) in September 1986, over Curt Swan's pencils, for part one of the two-part story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" by writer Alan Moore. The following month, Pérez was one of the artists on "Batman" #400 (October 1986). Wolfman and Pérez teamed again to produce the "History of the DC Universe" limited series to summarize the revised history of their fictional universe. Pérez drew the cover for the "DC Heroes" roleplaying game (1985) from Mayfair Games as well as the cover for the fourth edition of the "Champions" roleplaying game (1989) from Hero Games.


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez played a key role in the 1987 reboot of the Wonder Woman franchise. Writer Greg Potter spent several months working with editor Janice Race on new concepts for the character, before being joined by Pérez. Inspired by John Byrne and Frank Miller's work on refashioning Superman and Batman, Pérez came in as the plotter and penciler of the series, which tied the character more closely to the Greek gods and jettisoned many other elements of her history. Pérez at first worked with Potter and Len Wein on the stories, but eventually took over the full scripting chores. Later, Mindy Newell joined Pérez as co-writer for nearly a year. While not as popular as either "Titans" or "Crisis", the series was a very successful relaunch of one of DC's flagship characters. Pérez would work on the title for five years, leaving as artist after issue #24, but remaining as writer up to issue #62, leaving in 1992. Pérez returned to the character in 2001, co-writing a two-part story in issues #168–169 with writer/artist Phil Jimenez. Pérez also drew the cover for "Wonder Woman" #600 (Aug. 2010) as well as some interior art. For the successful 2017 "Wonder Woman" feature film, director Patty Jenkins would credit Pérez's work on the title character as a major influence, on par with the work of the original creator, William Moulton Marston.


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez returned as co-plotter/penciller of "The New Teen Titans" with issue #50 (Dec. 1988), with the series being renamed "The New Titans", rewriting the origin of Wonder Girl, following the retcons in "Crisis on Infinite Earths". Pérez remained as penciller with the book through to issue #55, 57, and 60, while only providing layouts for issues 58–59, and 61, with artist Tom Grummett finishing pencils and Bob McLeod as inker.  The storyline "A Lonely Place of Dying" crossed over with the "Batman" series and introduced Tim Drake as the new Robin. Pérez remained as inker for the cover art to issues #62–67 and co-plotted the stories for #66–67 before departing from the "Titans" series once again.


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez was involved with Superman in various times over his career, including his tenure on "Justice League of America" years before. In "Action Comics" #544 (June 1983), he designed Lex Luthor's trademark battlesuit. These new designs for the villain were featured as part of the licensed action figure toyline the "Super Powers Collection" and remain in use in today's DC Comics continuity. Pérez pencilled "DC Comics Presents" #61 (Sept. 1983) which featured a Superman/OMAC team-up. A few years later, Pérez inked John Byrne's pencils for the Superman/Wonder Woman story in "Action Comics" #600 (March 1988). He drew portions of "Action Comics Annual" #2 (1989) before taking over the title with issue #643 (July 1989). His work duties on "Action Comics" would change from writer/penciller, to co-writer/breakdowns, to providing breakdowns, with writer Roger Stern scripting stories and artists Brett Breeding and Kerry Gammill provided finishing art, while Pérez drew all covers during his run on the title, with the exception for issue #646 with interior pencils by Keith Giffen. With writer Stern, he co-created the character Maxima who first appeared in "Action Comics" #645 (September 1989). In the double-size anniversary issue #650 in February 1990, Pérez penciled and inked an eight page flashback story depicting Superman's first post-"Crisis" encounter with the Justice League of America. Pérez briefly wrote "Adventures of Superman", providing plots for issues #457–59 (Aug. 1989 – Oct. 1989), and inks for issue #461 (Dec. 1989). Due to an already heavy workload while doing both "Wonder Woman" and "Superman" at the same time, he left "Action Comics" with issue #652 (April 1990).


title: George Pérez

text: It was during this run in 1991 that Pérez encountered problems working with DC. Pérez has stated that since the storyline's inception, which ran through the "Wonder Woman" comic and crossed over into others, he had trouble writing the "War of the Gods" storyline, mostly due to editorial problems. Pérez felt that DC was not doing enough to celebrate Wonder Woman's 50-year anniversary. To make matters worse in his eyes, DC did not place "War of the Gods" in newsstand distribution, which meant that the comic book could only be found in comics specialty shops. Pérez had built up a plot to marry the characters Steve Trevor and Etta Candy in his final issue. When he discovered that DC editors had decided to not only pass the "Wonder Woman" title's writing to William Messner-Loebs and have Messner-Loebs write the final wedding scene, Pérez quit the title and separated himself from DC for several years. In 1992, he was guest inker on "Deathstroke the Terminator" issues #10–11.


title: George Pérez

text: Also in 1991, Pérez signed on to pencil the six-issue limited series "Infinity Gauntlet" for Marvel Comics, which was written by Jim Starlin. However, due to the turbulence happening concurrently with "War of the Gods", this was a very stressful personal period for Pérez, and he was not able to finish penciling the entire run of "Infinity Gauntlet", leaving the project part way through issue #4. The "Infinity Gauntlet" editorial team decided to find a replacement artist to finish the miniseries, and Ron Lim was the artist chosen (although Pérez offered to remain on as the inker over Lim's cover art for the remainder of the miniseries).


title: George Pérez

text: Because of the debacles over "War of the Gods" and "The Infinity Gauntlet", Pérez began to gain a reputation as a creator who could not finish projects as planned. Furthering that impression, he worked with independent comic book publishers Malibu Comics, drawing "Break-Thru" and "Ultraforce" (both titles were part of Malibu's Ultraverse imprint), and then working at Tekno Comix drawing "I-Bots". However, despite being paid well by both publishers, he had no enthusiasm drawing the characters, and lost interest in drawing the titles.


title: George Pérez

text: In the 1990s, Pérez left the spotlight, although he worked on several projects, including working on the "Jurassic Park" comic book adaptation of the movie for Topps Comics in 1993, adapted by Walt Simonson and pencilled by Gil Kane, with Pérez as inker, but most notably at Marvel Comics with "Sachs and Violens" and "Hulk: Future Imperfect", both written by Peter David. David has named Pérez his favorite artistic collaborator, and one of the three artists whose art has mostly closely matched the visuals he conceived when writing a comic book script (the others being Leonard Kirk and Dale Keown).


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez returned to DC Comics in October 1996 for another incarnation of the "Teen Titans". "Teen Titans" vol. 2 was written and penciled by Dan Jurgens, with Pérez as inker for the first 15 issues of its twenty four-issue run. The series ended in September 1998.


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez had a stint as writer of "Silver Surfer" vol. 2 #111–123 (December 1995 – December 1996). He would also write the crossover special "Silver Surfer/Superman" in 1996. Pérez finally returned to a major ongoing title for the third series of "The Avengers", written by Kurt Busiek, where he remained for nearly three years, again receiving critical and fan acclaim for his polished and dynamic art. After leaving the series, he and Busiek produced the long-awaited "JLA/Avengers" inter-company crossover, which saw print in late 2003. A JLA/Avengers crossover was to have been published in the 1980s, but differences between DC and Marvel forced the comic to be canceled. As the artist on the story, Pérez had drawn approximately 21 pages of the original crossover, which were not published until the 2004 hardcover edition of "JLA/Avengers: The Collector's Edition".


title: George Pérez

text: In 1997, Pérez began writing and illustrating "Crimson Plague", a creator-owned science fiction story about an alien with ultra-toxic blood, with the first issue published by Event Comics. In June 2000, that issue was re-published by Gorilla Comics – a publishing imprint he co-owned with several other creators – with additional material and pages, with a follow-up issue published in September. Pérez cited the debt he'd acquired self-publishing as the reason for discontinuing the series. Artwork from the unpublished third issue was included in "George Pérez Storyteller".


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez worked for new publisher CrossGen early in the 2000s, penciling four issues of "CrossGen Chronicles". His main project for the company was penciling "Solus", which was intended to be an ongoing series, but was cancelled after eight issues due to CrossGen's bankruptcy.


title: George Pérez

text: In May 2006, Pérez illustrated the cover art to one of the alternative covers to the direct market release of the annual "Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide" (36th edition) featuring "Wonder Woman". He was guest artist for an issue of "JSA" #82 (April 2006) and was cover artist from issues #82–87. He drew the first ten issues of DC's "The Brave and the Bold" (vol. 2) in 2007 with writer Mark Waid. Pérez worked on "Infinite Crisis", a follow-up to "Crisis on Infinite Earths", as a fill-in artist. He worked on "" in 2008–2009, thus contributing to every chapter of DC's "Crisis" trilogy. He worked with Marv Wolfman on a direct-to-DVD movie adaptation of the "Judas Contract" story arc from "Teen Titans", scheduled for 2017.


title: George Pérez

text: He was co-chair of the board of the comic industry charity The Hero Initiative and served on its Disbursement Committee. In 2005, an animated version of Pérez made a cameo appearance in the "Teen Titans" episode titled "Go", which was an adaptation of his "The New Teen Titans" #1. In the episode "For Real" André LeBlanc attacks a bank called "Bank of Pérez". In "City of Heroes", an MMORPG about superheroes, an entire zone within the game (Pérez Park) is named after him.


title: George Pérez

text: In September 2011, DC launched a new "Superman" series written by Pérez, who also provided breakdowns and cover art, with interior art by Jesús Merino and Nicola Scott. Pérez remained until issue #6. The "New Teen Titans: Games" hardcover graphic novel was published the same month reuniting the creative team of Wolfman and Pérez. He was the inker of the new "Green Arrow" series, also launched in the same timeframe, over artist Dan Jurgens' pencils, reuniting the mid-1990s "Teen Titans" art team. Pérez and Kevin Maguire were alternating artists on a "Worlds' Finest" revival written by Paul Levitz.


title: George Pérez

text: In July 2012, Pérez explained his departure from "Superman" as a reaction to the level of editorial oversight he experienced. This included inconsistent reasons given for rewrites of his material, the inability of editors to explain to him basic aspects of the New 52 Superman's status quo (such as whether his adoptive parents were still alive), and restrictions imposed by having to be consistent with "Action Comics", which was set five years earlier than "Superman", a situation complicated by "Action" writer Grant Morrison having not been forthcoming about their plans.


title: George Pérez

text: From September 2014 to December 2016, Pérez wrote and drew six issues of his own creation "Sirens", published by BOOM! Studios. It is a science fiction miniseries dedicated to a group of women with extraordinary powers, who fight against evil across time and space.


title: George Pérez

text: In January 2019, Pérez announced that he was formally retiring due to various health issues, and would continue to produce only a limited number of convention-style head sketches on commission, and attend a limited number of conventions.


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez was married to Carol Flynn. He had no children. He had a brother David, and a niece and nephew.


title: George Pérez

text: In October 2013, Pérez revealed that he would soon undergo laser and injection surgeries to address hemorrhaging in his left eye that had effectively made him blind in that eye. By the following June, the procedures were not yet completed, but his condition had improved to the point that he was able to resume his work. In May 2017, he was admitted to a hospital with chest pains due to a heart attack while traveling to a convention, and had a coronary stent fitted. By January 2019, Perez was dealing with multiple health issues, including diabetes and problems with his vision and his heart.


title: George Pérez

text: In December 2021, he revealed that after undergoing surgery for a blockage in his liver, he had been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Given a prognosis of 6 to 12 months, he chose not to pursue treatment. In early 2022, both DC and Marvel included tributes to him and his work in their comics, and jointly approved a limited-run reprint of the 2003 "JLA/Avengers" story he illustrated (long tied up by disagreements between the rival publishers), as a benefit for The Hero Initiative.


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez died on May 6, 2022, due to complications from pancreatic cancer. His friend Constance Eza wrote the next day that the 67-year-old artist "passed away yesterday, peacefully at home" with his wife Carol and their family by his side. An open memorial service was held at MegaCon Orlando on May 22.


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez won a 1979 Eagle Award (with Jim Shooter, Sal Buscema, and David Wenzel) for Best Continued Story for his work on "The Avengers" #167–168 and 170–177. In 1980 he won the Eagle Award for Best Comicbook Cover for "Avengers" #185. He won the Eagle Award for Favourite Artist (penciller) in 1986. Pérez received an Inkpot Award in 1983.


title: George Pérez

text: In 1985, DC Comics named Pérez as one of the honorees in the company's 50th anniversary publication "Fifty Who Made DC Great".


title: George Pérez

text: His work (with Marv Wolfman and Romeo Tanghal), earned "The New Teen Titans" #50 a nomination for the 1985 Jack Kirby Award for Best Single Issue. His collaboration with Wolfman earned "Crisis on Infinite Earths" the Jack Kirby Award for Best Finite Series in both 1985 and 1986.


title: George Pérez

text: Pérez has won several "Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Awards". He won the "Favorite Artist" award in 1983 and 1985 and "Favorite Penciler" in 1987. In addition, he won the "Favorite Cover Artist" award three consecutive years 1985–1987. "Crisis on Infinite Earths" won the award for "Favorite Limited Series" in 1985.


title: George Pérez

text: In 2022, Pérez was awarded the Inkwell Awards Stacey Aragon Special Recognition Award (SASRA) for his lifetime achievement in inking.


title: Chicago (album)

text: Chicago (retroactively known as Chicago II) is the second studio album by Chicago-based American rock band Chicago. Like their debut album, "Chicago Transit Authority", this was a double album. It was their first album under the name Chicago (the band's prior name, Chicago Transit Authority, was changed due to a threatened lawsuit from the actual mass-transit operator bearing the same name) and the first to use the now ubiquitous cursive Chicago logo on the cover.


title: Chicago (album)

text: Released in January 1970 on Columbia Records, "Chicago" was commercially successful. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in April of the same year of its release, and certified platinum in 1991. It reached No. 4 on the album charts in the United States and No. 6 on the album charts in the UK, and produced three top ten singles on the "Billboard" Hot 100. The album received three Grammy Award nominations - for Album of the Year, Contemporary Vocal Group, and Best Album Cover. It was voted best album of 1970 by readers of "Cash Box" magazine, and the 1971 best small-combo LP by readers of "Playboy" magazine.


title: Chicago (album)

text: The album was released in 1970 after the band had shortened its name from "The Chicago Transit Authority" following the release of their self-titled debut album the previous year, in order to avoid legal action being threatened by the actual mass-transit company. The official title of the album is "Chicago", although it came to be known as Chicago II, keeping it in line with the succession of Roman numeral-titled albums that officially began with "Chicago III" in 1971.


title: Chicago (album)

text: "Chicago Transit Authority" was a success, yet "Chicago" is considered by many to be the group's breakthrough album, yielding three singles that made it into the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100, including "Make Me Smile" (number 9), "Colour My World" (number 7), and "25 or 6 to 4" (number 4).


title: Chicago (album)

text: "Chicago" was released in January 1970 on Columbia Records and was an instant hit, reaching number 4 on the Billboard 200 in the United States and number 6 in the UK. Columbia Records was very active in promoting its quadraphonic four-channel surround-sound format in the mid-1970s, and nine of Chicago's first ten albums were made available in quad. The quad mix features elements not heard in the standard stereo mix, including additional guitar work from virtuoso Terry Kath in "25 Or 6 To 4" and a different vocal take from Lamm in "Wake Up Sunshine," which reveals a different lyric in the song's last line.


title: Chicago (album)

text: In 2002, "Chicago" was remastered and reissued on one CD by Rhino Records with the single versions of "Make Me Smile" and "25 or 6 to 4" as bonus tracks. Rhino released a DVD-Audio version of the album in 2003, featuring both Advanced Resolution Stereo and 5.1 surround sound mixes. In 2016, British producer and musician Steven Wilson remixed Chicago from the original multitrack tapes. This version was released on January 27, 2017 by Rhino Records. A vinyl edition of the remix cut by Kevin Gray was released on August 11, 2017. Robert Lamm stated in an interview that the album has been nominated for the Grammy Hall of Fame more than once.


title: Chicago (album)

text: In a 2015 article, "Classic Rock Review" says the album saw Chicago's, "full immersion into mainstream success while still building on their fusion of rock, funk and jazz."


title: Chicago (album)

text: In Danny Seraphine's book "Street Player", he describes it this way: "In between the dates of our touring schedule, we somehow found the opportunity to jump into CBS Studios in Los Angeles and record a second album in August 1969. Whereas the first record was a compilation of raw energy, we took a more controlled approach to our new effort."


title: Chicago (album)

text: The centerpiece of the album was the 13-minute song cycle "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon" written by trombone player James Pankow, from which came the singles "Make Me Smile" and "Colour My World". Guitarist Terry Kath also participated in an extended classically styled cycle of four pieces, three of which were co-written by arranger, composer, and pianist Peter Matz. Politically outspoken keyboardist Robert Lamm expresses his qualms in "It Better End Soon", another modular piece. Bassist Peter Cetera contributed his first song to Chicago with "Where Do We Go From Here?".


title: Chicago (album)

text: The album was produced by James William Guercio, who was Chicago's producer for its first eleven albums, and was recorded in less than a month, during August 1969.


title: Chicago (album)

text: In 1970, James Pankow said about the album, " 'We . . . think it is better recorded and better played than the first. None of us feel, though, that we are really a recording group yet. We are all scared in the studio. We are really a live group.' "


title: Chicago (album)

text: The Chicago logo, which made its first appearance on the cover of this album, was designed by John Berg and fashioned by Nick Fasciano, who were both nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Album Cover for their efforts. John Berg said the Coca-Cola logo was the inspiration for the Chicago logo. The cover art work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The band's official web site labels the cover design, "silver bar."


title: Chicago (album)

text: The double-LP album's inner cover includes the playlist, the entire lyrics to "It Better End Soon", a "Producer's Note" stating, "This endeavor should be experienced sequentially", and a declaration written by Robert Lamm, "With this album, we dedicate ourselves, our futures and our energies to the people of the revolution. And the revolution in all of its forms."


title: Chicago (album)

text: Contemporary reviews for the album were mixed. In his review for the "Chicago Sun Times", writer Al Rudis says Chicago's second album "confirms" that "Chicago is one of the most exciting, most original, and most accomplished jazz-rock groups in existence." whereas in a review for "The Village Voice", Robert Christgau gave a review of "Chicago" as a "D+" and called it "sterile and stupid", writing that if "Duke Ellington never got away with an extended work for horns and meaningfulness, [what] makes James William Guercio and the self-designated revolutionaries who are his cohorts think they can?"


title: Chicago (album)

text: There have been positive retrospective reviews. Lindsay Planer from AllMusic gave the album four-and-a-half out of five stars and said its songs "underscore the solid foundation of complex jazz changes with heavy electric rock & roll that the band so brazenly forged on the first set". Jim Beviglia, writing for "American Songwriter," said, "50 years after its release, "Chicago II" still stands as the one of the band’s signature achievements. ...Listening to "Chicago II" now, it is remarkable just how smoothly the various pieces blend together."


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: "Sing a Song of Sixpence" is an English nursery rhyme, perhaps originating in the 18th century. It is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as number 13191. The sixpence in the rhyme is a British coin that was first minted in 1551.


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: The rhyme's origins are uncertain. References have been inferred in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" (c. 1602), (), where Sir Toby Belch tells a clown: "Come on; there is sixpence for you: let's have a song" and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 1614 play "Bonduca", which contains the line "Whoa, here's a stir now! Sing a song o' sixpence!"


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: In the past it has often been attributed to George Steevens (1736–1800), who used it in a pun at the expense of Poet Laureate Henry James Pye (1745–1813) in 1790, but the first verse had already appeared in print in "Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book", published in London around 1744, in the form:


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: The next printed version that survives, from around 1780, has two verses and the boys have been replaced by birds. A version of the modern four verses is first extant in "Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus" published in 1784, which ends with a magpie attacking the unfortunate maid. Fifth verses with the happier endings began to be added from the middle of the 19th century.


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: The final line of the fourth verse is sometimes slightly varied, with nose "pecked" or "nipped" off. One of the following additional verses is often added to moderate the ending:


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: Many interpretations have been placed on this rhyme. It is known that a 16th-century amusement was to place live birds in a pie, as a form of entremet. An Italian cookbook from 1549 (translated into English in 1598) contained such a recipe: "to make pies so that birds may be alive in them and fly out when it is cut up" and this was referred to in a cook book of 1725 by John Nott. The wedding of Marie de' Medici and Henry IV of France in 1600 contains some interesting parallels. "The first surprise, though, came shortly before the starter—when the guests sat down, unfolded their napkins and saw songbirds fly out. The highlight of the meal was sherbets of milk and honey, which were created by Buontalenti."


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: In their 1951 "The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes", Iona and Peter Opie write that the rhyme has been tied to a variety of historical events or folklorish symbols such as the queen symbolizing the moon, the king the sun, and the blackbirds the number of hours in a day; or, as the authors indicate, the blackbirds have been seen as an allusion to monks during the period of the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII, with Catherine of Aragon representing the queen, and Anne Boleyn the maid. The rye and the birds have been seen to represent a tribute sent to Henry VII, and on another level, the term "pocketful of rye" may in fact refer to an older term of measurement. The number 24 has been tied to the Reformation and the printing of the English Bible with 24 letters. From a folklorish tradition, the blackbird taking the maid's nose has been seen as a demon stealing her soul.


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: No corroborative evidence has been found to support these theories and given that the earliest version has only one stanza and mentions "naughty boys" and not blackbirds, they can only be applicable if it is assumed that more recently printed versions accurately preserve an older tradition.


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: Although there is no interpretation that is proven as true, there is however one that is explicitly proven false. That one is the story that Blackbeard the pirate created "Sing a Song of Sixpence" with its lyrics as a code to recruit crew for his pirate ship. That tale is actually false and Blackbeard had nothing to do with the song. This story was created in 1999 by the website Snopes (which normally proves or debunks urban legends) part of a series of fabricated urban legends known as "The Repository of Lost Legends" (whose initials read "TROLL") as red herrings to test people's common sense with an outlandish story. All the Lost Legends are fictional and the Lost Legend about "Sing a Song of Sixpence" is no exception.


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: In this deliberate misinterpretation of "Sing a Song of Sixpence" and its lyrics, the "Sixpence" referred to a Sixpence coin (a decent amount of money in Blackbeard's time) and the "pocketful of rye" was a bag ("pocket") with whiskey ("rye", one of the ingredients of whiskey) to drink, that captain Blackbeard gave to each pirate in his crew as a salary everyday..htm The "blackbirds" were pirates that work for Blackbeard and them "Baked in a pie" is the pirates setting up a ruse to raid a nearby ship to capture it. The pie opening and the birds singing refers to the end of the ruse and start of the raid on the nearby ship. The "dainty dish" was the ship that easily captured by the pirates after the raid and the "king" in both instances of the word in the song refer to Blackbeard himself. The lyrics "The king was in his counting house, Counting out his money" was about how Blackbeard was wealthy enough to pay his crew their daily Sixpence and whiskey salary regardless if they captured ships that day or not. The Snopes page claims that this was especially attractive to pirates because as most pirate captains didn't pay salaries and pirate raids were often unsuccessful, it was a common occurrence that pirate ships were forced to return to shore after several months due to lack of funds. The "Queen" mentioned was in fact Blackbeard's ship, called "Queen Anne's Revenge" and the mention of the queen "Eating bread and honey" is Queen Anne's Revenge taking in supplies at port to prepare for a cruse. The "maid" is a prize ship (a ship specifically chosen to get raided), the "garden" is the Caribbean Sea (where Blackbeard and his crew carried out their raids) and the "clothes" are the prize ship sails. The mention of another "blackbird" pulling off the maid's nose from her face is Blackbeard bragging about his plans to raid the prize ship. The version of "Sing a Song of Sixpence" on Snopes does not have any verse where the maid's nose is reattached to her face. Every Lost Legend had a link to a page explaining it was fictional and the reason for posting it.


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: In 2003, the TV series "Mostly True Stories?: Urban Legends Revealed" used this story as a true or false question before a commercial break when it asked "Was the nursery rhyme 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' used as a code to recruit pirates?". After the break, the show mistakenly claimed it was "true" and mentioned its supposed connection to Blackbeard implying that Snopes was used by the show's producers as a source. Snopes then posted a page about the mistake on their "Media goofs" section noting that whoever made the show apparently did not see the explanation and had fallen for a story that was fictional.


title: Sing a Song of Sixpence

text: In later airings of the episode, the answer was corrected so say that the Blackbeard connection was "false" with Snopes' page on Mostly True Stories? was edited to note the correction. According to Snopes, no public statement was made about the mistake by the show's producers.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The Norden Mk. XV, known as the Norden M series in U.S. Army service, is a bombsight that was used by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and the United States Navy during World War II, and the United States Air Force in the Korean and the Vietnam Wars. It was an early tachometric design that directly measured the aircraft's ground speed and direction, which older bombsights could only estimate with lengthy manual procedures. The Norden further improved on older designs by using an analog computer that continuously recalculated the bomb's impact point based on changing flight conditions, and an autopilot that reacted quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Together, these features promised unprecedented accuracy for daytime bombing from high altitudes. During prewar testing the Norden demonstrated a circular error probable (CEP) of , an astonishing performance for that period. This precision would enable direct attacks on ships, factories, and other point targets. Both the Navy and the USAAF saw it as a means to conduct successful high-altitude bombing. For example, an invasion fleet could be destroyed long before it could reach U.S. shores.


title: Norden bombsight

text: To protect these advantages, the Norden was granted the utmost secrecy well into the war, and was part of a production effort on a similar scale to the Manhattan Project: the overall cost (both R&D and production) was $1.1 billion, as much as 2/3 of the latter or over a quarter of the production cost of all B-17 bombers. The Norden was not as secret as believed; both the British SABS and German Lotfernrohr 7 worked on similar principles, and details of the Norden had been passed to Germany even before the war started.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Under combat conditions the Norden did not achieve its expected precision, yielding an average CEP in 1943 of (a CEP of 1200 feet means 16% of all bombs dropped land within 1000 feet of the target), similar to other Allied and German results. Both the Navy and Air Forces had to give up using pinpoint attacks. The Navy turned to dive bombing and skip bombing to attack ships, while the Air Forces developed the lead bomber procedure to improve accuracy, and adopted area bombing techniques for ever-larger groups of aircraft. Nevertheless, the Norden's reputation as a pin-point device endured, due in no small part to Norden's own advertising of the device after secrecy was reduced late in the war.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The Norden saw reduced use in the post–World War II period after radar-based targeting was introduced, but the need for accurate daytime attacks kept it in service, especially during the Korean War. The last combat use of the Norden was in the U.S. Navy's VO-67 squadron, which used it to drop sensors onto the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1967. The Norden remains one of the best-known bombsights.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The Norden sight was designed by Carl Norden, a Dutch engineer educated in Switzerland who emigrated to the U.S. in 1904. In 1911, Norden joined Sperry Gyroscope to work on ship gyrostabilizers, and then moved to work directly for the U.S. Navy as a consultant. At the Navy, Norden worked on a catapult system for a proposed flying bomb that was never fully developed, but this work introduced various Navy personnel to Norden's expertise with gyro stabilization.


title: Norden bombsight

text: World War I bomb sight designs had improved rapidly, with the ultimate development being the Course Setting Bomb Sight, or CSBS. This was essentially a large mechanical calculator that directly represented the wind triangle using three long pieces of metal in a triangular arrangement. The hypotenuse of the triangle was the line the aircraft needed to fly along in order to arrive over the target in the presence of wind, which, before the CSBS, was an intractable problem. Almost all air forces adopted some variation of the CSBS as their standard inter-war bomb sight, including the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army, who used a version designed by Georges Estoppey, the D-series.


title: Norden bombsight

text: It was already realized that one major source of error in bombing was leveling the aircraft enough so the bombsight pointed straight down. Even small errors in leveling could produce dramatic errors in bombing, so the Navy began a series of developments to add a gyroscopic stabilizer to various bomb sight designs. This led to orders for such designs from Estoppey, Inglis (working with Sperry) and Seversky. Norden was asked to provide an external stabilizer for the Navy's existing Mark III designs.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Although the CSBS and similar designs allowed the calculation of the proper flight angle needed to correct for windage, they did so by looking downward out of the aircraft, so the correct angle was not easily visible to the pilot. In early bombers, the bomb aimer was normally positioned in front of the pilot and could indicate corrections using hand signals, but as aircraft grew larger it became common for the pilot and bomb aimer to be separated. This led to the introduction of the pilot direction indicator, or PDI. These consisted of a pair of electrical pointers mounted in a standard diameter instrument panel mount. The bombardier used switches to move the pointer on his unit to indicate the direction of the target, which was duplicated on the unit in front of the pilot so he could maneuver the aircraft to follow suit.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Norden's first attempt at an improved bombsight was actually an advance in PDI design. His idea was to remove the manual electrical switches used to move the pointer and use the entire bombsight itself as the indicator. He proposed attaching a low-power sighting telescope to a gyro platform that would keep the telescope pointed at the same azimuth, correcting for the aircraft's movements. The bombardier would simply rotate the telescope left or right to follow the target. This motion would cause the gyros to precess, and this signal would drive the PDI automatically. The pilot would follow the PDI as before.


title: Norden bombsight

text: To time the drop, Norden used an idea already in use on other bombsights, the "equal distance" concept. This was based on the observation that the time needed to travel a certain distance over the ground would remain relatively constant during the bomb run, as the wind would not be expected to change dramatically over a short period of time. If you could accurately mark out a distance on the ground, or in practice, an angle in the sky, timing the passage over that distance would give you all the information needed to time the drop.


title: Norden bombsight

text: In Norden's version of the system, the bombardier first looked up the expected time it would take for the bombs to fall from the current altitude. This time was set into a countdown stopwatch, and the bombardier waited for the target to line up with a crosshair in the telescope. When the target passed through the crosshair, the timer was started, and the bombardier then rotated the telescope around its vertical axis to track the target as they approached it. This movement was linked to a second crosshair through a gearing system that caused the second to move twice as fast as the first. The bombardier continued moving the telescope until the timer ran out. The second crosshair was now at the correct aiming angle, or "range angle"; the bombardier waited for the target to pass through the second crosshair to time the drop.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The first prototype of this design, known to the Navy as the Mark XI, was delivered to the Navy's proving grounds in Virginia in 1924. In testing, the system proved disappointing. The circular error probable (CEP), a circle into which 50% of the bombs would fall, was wide from only altitude. This was an error of over 3.6%, somewhat worse than existing systems. Moreover, bombardiers universally complained that the device was far too hard to use. Norden worked tirelessly on the design, and by 1928 the accuracy had improved to 2% of altitude, enough that the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance placed a $348,000 contract for the devices.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Norden was known for his confrontational and volatile nature. He often worked 16-hour days and thought little of anyone who did not. Navy officers began to refer to him as "Old Man Dynamite". During development, the Navy suggested that Norden consider taking on a partner to handle the business and leave Norden free to develop on the engineering side. They recommended former Army colonel Theodore Barth, an engineer who had been in charge of gas mask production during World War I. The match-up was excellent, as Barth had the qualities Norden lacked: charm, diplomacy, and a head for business. The two became close friends.


title: Norden bombsight

text: In December 1927, the United States Department of War was granted permission to use a bridge over the Pee Dee River in North Carolina for target practice, as it would soon be sunk in the waters of a new dam. The 1st Provisional Bombardment Squadron, equipped with Keystone LB-5 bombers, attacked the bridge over a period of five days, flying 20 missions a day in perfect weather and attacking at altitudes from . After this massive effort, the middle section of the bridge finally fell on the last day. However, the effort as a whole was clearly a failure in any practical sense.


title: Norden bombsight

text: About the same time as the operation was being carried out, General James Fechet replaced General Mason Patrick as commander of the USAAC. He received a report on the results of the test, and on 6 January 1928 sent out a lengthy memo to Brigadier General William Gillmore, chief of the Material Division at Wright Field, stating:


title: Norden bombsight

text: He went on to request information on every bombsight then used at Wright, as well as "the Navy's newest design". However, the Mark XI was so secret that Gillmore was not aware Fechet was referring to the Norden. Gilmore produced contracts for twenty-five examples of an improved version of the Seversky C-1, the C-3, and six prototypes of a new design known as the Inglis L-1. The L-1 never matured, and Inglis later helped Seversky to design the improved C-4.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The wider Army establishment became aware of the Mark XI in 1929 and was eventually able to buy an example in 1931. Their testing mirrored the Navy's experience; they found that the gyro stabilization worked and the sight was accurate, but it was also "entirely too complicated" to use. The Army turned its attention to further upgraded versions of their existing prototypes, replacing the older vector bombsight mechanisms with the new synchronous method of measuring the proper dropping angle.


title: Norden bombsight

text: While the Mk. XI was reaching its final design, the Navy learned of the Army's efforts to develop a synchronous bombsight, and asked Norden to design one for them. Norden was initially unconvinced this was workable, but the Navy persisted and offered him a development contract in June 1929. Norden retreated to his mother's house in Zurich and returned in 1930 with a working prototype. Lieutenant Frederick Entwistle, the Navy's chief of bombsight development, judged it revolutionary.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The new design, the Mark XV, was delivered in production quality in the summer of 1931. In testing it proved to eliminate all of the problems of the earlier Mk. XI design. From altitude the prototype delivered a CEP of , while even the latest production Mk. XI's were . At higher altitudes, a series of 80 bomb runs demonstrated a CEP of . In a test on 7 October 1931, the Mk. XV dropped 50% of its bombs on a static target, the USS "Pittsburgh", while a similar aircraft with the Mk. XI had only 20% of its bombs hit.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Moreover, the new system was dramatically simpler to use. After locating the target in the sighting system, the bombardier simply made fine adjustments using two control wheels throughout the bomb run. There was no need for external calculation, lookup tables or pre-run measurementseverything was carried out automatically through an internal wheel-and-disc calculator. The calculator took a short time to settle on a solution, with setups as short as six seconds, compared to the 50 needed for the Mk. XI to measure its ground speed. In most cases, the bomb run needed to be only 30 seconds long.


title: Norden bombsight

text: In spite of this success, the design also demonstrated several serious problems. In particular, the gyroscopic platform had to be levelled out before use using several spirit levels, and then checked and repeatedly reset for accuracy. Worse, the gyros had a limited degree of movement, and if the plane banked far enough the gyro would reach its limit and have to be re-set from scratch – something that could happen even due to strong turbulence. If the gyros were found to be off, the levelling procedure took as long as eight minutes. Other minor problems were the direct current electric motors which drove the gyroscopes, whose brushes wore down quickly and left carbon dust throughout the interior of the device, and the positioning of the control knobs, which meant the bombardier could only adjust side-to-side or up-and-down aim at a time, not both. But in spite of all of these problems, the Mark XV was so superior to any other design that the Navy ordered it into production.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Carl L. Norden Company incorporated in 1931, supplying the sights under a dedicated source contract. In effect, the company was owned by the Navy. In 1934 the newly-forming GHQ Air Force, the purchasing arm of the U.S. Army Air Corps, selected the Norden for their bombers as well, referring to it as the M-1. However, due to the dedicated source contract, the Army had to buy the sights from the Navy. This was not only annoying for inter-service rivalry reasons, but the Air Corps' higher-speed bombers demanded several changes to the design, notably the ability to aim the sighting telescope further forward to give the bombardier more time to set up. The Navy was not interested in these changes, and would not promise to work them into the production lines. Worse, Norden's factories were having serious problems keeping up with demand for the Navy alone, and in January 1936, the Navy suspended all shipments to the Army.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Mk. XV's were initially installed with the same automatic PDI as the earlier Mk. XI. In practice, it was found that the pilots had a very difficult time keeping the aircraft stable enough to match the accuracy of the bombsight. Starting in 1932 and proceeding in fits and starts for the next six years, Norden developed the Stabilized Bombing Approach Equipment (SBAE), a mechanical autopilot that attached to the bombsight. However, it was not a true "autopilot", in that it could not fly the aircraft by itself. By rotating the bombsight in relationship to the SBAE, the SBAE could account for wind and turbulence and calculate the appropriate directional changes needed to bring the aircraft onto the bomb run far more precisely than a human pilot. The minor adaptations needed on the bombsight itself produced what the Army referred to as the M-4 model.


title: Norden bombsight

text: In 1937 the Army, faced with the continuing supply problems with the Norden, once again turned to Sperry Gyroscope to see if they could come up with a solution. Their earlier models had all proved unreliable, but they had continued working with the designs throughout this period and had addressed many of the problems. By 1937, Orland Esval had introduced a new AC-powered electrical gyroscope that spun at 30,000 RPM, compared to the Norden's 7,200 , which dramatically improved the performance of the inertial platform. The use of three-phase AC power and inductive pickup eliminated the carbon brushes, and further simplified the design. Carl Frische had developed a new system to automatically level the platform, eliminating the time-consuming process needed on the Norden. The two collaborated on a new design, adding a second gyro to handle heading changes, and named the result the Sperry S-1. Existing supplies of Nordens continued to be supplied to the USAAC's B-17s, while the S-1 equipped the B-24Es being sent to the 15th Air Force.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Some B-17s had been equipped with a simple heading-only autopilot, the Sperry A-3. The company had also been working on an all-electronic model, the A-5, which stabilized in all three directions. By the early 1930s, it was being used in a variety of Navy aircraft to excellent reviews. By connecting the outputs of the S-1 bombsight to the A-5 autopilot, Sperry produced a system similar to the M-4/SBAE, but it reacted far more quickly. The combination of the S-1 and A-5 so impressed the Army that on 17 June 1941 they authorized the construction of a factory and noted that "in the future all production models of bombardment airplanes be equipped with the A-5 Automatic Pilot and have provisions permitting the installation of either the M-Series [Norden] Bombsight or the S-1 Bombsight".


title: Norden bombsight

text: By 1938, information about the Norden had worked its way up the Royal Air Force chain of command and was well known within that organization. The British had been developing a similar bombsight known as the Automatic Bomb Sight, but combat experience in 1939 demonstrated the need for it to be stabilized. Work was under way as the Stabilized Automatic Bomb Sight (SABS), but it would not be available until 1940 at the earliest, and likely later. Even then, it did not feature the autopilot linkage of the Norden, and would thus find it difficult to match the Norden's performance in anything but smooth air. Acquiring the Norden became a major goal.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The RAF's first attempt, in the spring of 1938, was rebuffed by the U.S. Navy. Air Chief Marshal Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, commanding RAF Bomber Command, demanded Air Ministry action. They wrote to George Pirie, the British air attaché in Washington, suggesting he approach the U.S. Army with an offer of an information exchange with their own SABS. Pirie replied that he had already looked into this, and was told that the U.S. Army had no licensing rights to the device as it was owned by the U.S. Navy. The matter was not helped by a minor diplomatic issue that flared up in July when a French air observer was found to be on board a crashed Douglas Aircraft Company bomber, forcing President Roosevelt to promise no further information exchanges with foreign powers.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Six months later, after a change of leadership within the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics, on 8 March 1939 Pirie was once again instructed to ask the U.S. Navy about the Norden, this time enhancing the deal with offers of British power-operated turrets. However, Pirie expressed concern as he noted the Norden had become as much political as technical, and its relative merits were being publicly debated in Congress weekly while the U.S. Navy continued to say the Norden was "the United States' most closely guarded secret".


title: Norden bombsight

text: The RAF's desires were only further goaded on 13 April 1939, when Pirie was invited to watch an air demonstration at Fort Benning where the painted outline of a battleship was the target:


title: Norden bombsight

text: The three following B-17s also hit the target, and then a flight of a dozen Douglas B-18 Bolos placed most of their bombs in a separate square outlined on the ground.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Another change of management within the Bureau of Aeronautics had the effect of making the U.S. Navy more friendly to British overtures, but no one was willing to fight the political battle needed to release the design. The Navy brass was concerned that giving the Norden to the RAF would increase its chances of falling into German hands, which could put the U.S.'s own fleet at risk. The UK Air Ministry continued increasing pressure on Pirie, who eventually stated there was simply no way for him to succeed, and suggested the only way forward would be through the highest diplomatic channels in the Foreign Office. Initial probes in this direction were also rebuffed. When a report stated that the Norden's results were three to four times as good as their own bombsights, the Air Ministry decided to sweeten the pot and suggested they offer information on radar in exchange. This too was rebuffed.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The matter eventually worked its way to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who wrote personally to President Roosevelt asking for the Norden, but even this was rejected. The reason for these rejections was more political than technical, but the U.S. Navy's demands for secrecy were certainly important. They repeated that the design would be released only if the British could demonstrate the basic concept was common knowledge, and therefore not a concern if it fell into German hands. The British failed to convince them, even after offering to equip their examples with a variety of self-destruct devices.


title: Norden bombsight

text: This may have been ameliorated by the winter of 1939, at which point a number of articles about the Norden appeared in the U.S. popular press with reasonably accurate descriptions of its basic workings. But when these were traced back to the press corps at the U.S. Army Air Corps, the U.S. Navy was apoplectic. Instead of accepting it was now in the public domain, any discussion about the Norden was immediately shut down. This drove both the British Air Ministry and Royal Navy to increasingly anti-American attitudes when they considered sharing their own developments, notably newer ASDIC systems. By 1940 the situation on scientific exchange was entirely deadlocked as a result.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Looking for ways around the deadlock, Henry Tizard sent Archibald Vivian Hill to the U.S. to take a survey of U.S. technical capability in order to better assess what technologies the U.S. would be willing to exchange. This effort was the start on the path that led to the famous Tizard Mission in late August 1940. Ironically, by the time the Mission was being planned, the Norden had been removed from the list of items to be discussed, and Roosevelt personally noted this was due largely to political reasons. Ultimately, although Tizard was unable to convince the U.S. to release the design, he was able to request information about its external dimensions and details on the mounting system so it could be easily added to British bombers if it were released in the future.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The conversion of Norden Laboratories Corporation's New York City engineering lab to a production factory was a long process. Before the war, skilled craftsmen, most of them German or Italian immigrants, hand-made almost every part of the 2,000-part machine. Between 1932 and 1938, the company produced only 121 bombsights per year. During the first year after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Norden produced 6,900 bombsights, three-quarters of which went to the U.S. Navy.


title: Norden bombsight

text: When Norden heard of the U.S. Army's dealings with Sperry, Theodore Barth called a meeting with the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy at their factory in New York City. Barth offered to build an entirely new factory just to supply the U.S. Army, but the U.S. Navy refused this. Instead, the U.S. Army suggested that Norden adapt their sight to work with Sperry's A-5, which Barth refused. Norden actively attempted to make the bombsight incompatible with the A-5, and it was not until 1942 that the impasse was finally solved by farming out autopilot production to Honeywell Regulator, who combined features of the Norden-mounted SBAE with the aircraft-mounted A-5 to produce what the U.S. Army referred to as "Automatic Flight Control Equipment" (AFCE) the unit would later be redesigned as the C-1. The Norden, now connected with the aircraft's built-in autopilot, had the ability to allow the bombardier alone to fully control minor movements of the aircraft during the bombing run.


title: Norden bombsight

text: By May 1943 the U.S. Navy was complaining that they had a surplus of devices, with full production turned over to the USAAF. After investing more than $100 million in Sperry bombsight manufacturing plants, the USAAF concluded that the Norden M-series was far superior in accuracy, dependability, and design. Sperry contracts were canceled in November 1943. When production ended a few months later, 5,563 Sperry bombsight-autopilot combinations had been built, most of which were installed in Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Expansion of Norden bombsight production to a final total of six factories took several years. The U.S. Army Air Forces demanded additional production to meet their needs, and eventually arranged for the Victor Adding Machine company to gain a manufacturing license, and then Remington Rand. Ironically, during this period the U.S. Navy abandoned the Norden in favor of dive bombing, reducing the demand. By the end of the war, Norden and its subcontractors had produced 72,000 M-9 bombsights for the U.S. Army Air Force alone, costing $8,800 each.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Typical bombsights of the pre-war era worked on the "vector bombsight" principle introduced with the World War I Course Setting Bomb Sight. These systems consisted of a slide rule-type calculator that was used to calculate the effects of the wind on the bomber based on simple vector arithmetic. The mathematical principles are identical to those on the E6B calculator used to this day.


title: Norden bombsight

text: In operation, the bombardier would first take a measurement of the wind speed using one of a variety of methods, and then dial that speed and direction into the bombsight. This would move the sights to indicate the direction the plane should fly to take it directly over the target with any cross-wind taken into account, and also set the angle of the iron sights to account for the wind's effect on ground speed.


title: Norden bombsight

text: These systems had two primary problems in terms of accuracy. The first was that there were several steps that had to be carried out in sequence in order to set up the bombsight correctly, and there was limited time to do all of this during the bomb run. As a result, the accuracy of the wind measurement was always limited, and errors in setting the equipment or making the calculations were common. The second problem was that the sight was attached to the aircraft, and thus moved about during maneuvers, during which time the bombsight would not point at the target. As the aircraft had to maneuver in order to make the proper approach, this limited the time allowed to accurately make corrections. This combination of issues demanded a long bomb run.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Experiments had shown that adding a stabilizer system to a vector bombsight would roughly double the accuracy of the system. This would allow the bombsight to remain level while the aircraft maneuvered, giving the bombardier more time to make his adjustments, as well as reducing or eliminating mis-measurements when sighting off of non-level sights. However, this would not have any effect on the accuracy of the wind measurements, nor the calculation of the vectors. The Norden attacked all of these problems.


title: Norden bombsight

text: To improve the calculation time, the Norden used a mechanical computer inside the bombsight to calculate the range angle of the bombs. By simply dialing in the aircraft's altitude and heading, along with estimates of the wind speed and direction (in relation to the aircraft), the computer would automatically, and quickly, calculate the aim point. This not only reduced the time needed for the bombsight setup but also dramatically reduced the chance for errors. This attack on the accuracy problem was by no means unique; several other bombsights of the era used similar calculators. It was the way the Norden used these calculations that differed.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Conventional bombsights are set up pointing at a fixed angle, the range angle, which accounts for the various effects on the trajectory of the bomb. To the operator looking through the sights, the crosshairs indicate the location on the ground the bombs would impact if released at that instant. As the aircraft moves forward, the target approaches the crosshairs from the front, moving rearward, and the bombardier releases the bombs as the target passes through the line of the sights. One example of a highly automated system of this type was the RAF's Mark XIV bomb sight.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The Norden worked in an entirely different fashion, based on the "synchronous" or "tachometric" method. Internally, the calculator continually computed the impact point, as was the case for previous systems. However, the resulting range angle was not displayed directly to the bombardier or dialed into the sights. Instead, the bombardier used the sighting telescope to locate the target long in advance of the drop point. A separate section of the calculator used the inputs for altitude and airspeed to determine the angular velocity of the target, the speed at which it would be seen drifting backward due to the forward motion of the aircraft. The output of this calculator drove a rotating prism at that angular speed in order to keep the target centered in the telescope. In a properly adjusted Norden, the target remains motionless in the sights.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The Norden thus calculated two angles: the range angle based on the altitude, airspeed and ballistics; and the current angle to the target, based on the ground speed and heading of the aircraft. The difference between these two angles represented the "correction" that needed to be applied to bring the aircraft over the proper drop point. If the aircraft was properly aligned with the target on the bomb run, the difference between the range and target angles would be continually reduced, eventually to zero (within the accuracy of the mechanisms). At this moment the Norden automatically dropped the bombs.


title: Norden bombsight

text: In practice, the target failed to stay centered in the sighting telescope when it was first set up. Instead, due to inaccuracies in the estimated wind speed and direction, the target would drift in the sight. To correct for this, the bombardier would use fine-tuning controls to slowly cancel out any motion through trial and error. These adjustments had the effect of updating the measured ground speed used to calculate the motion of the prisms, slowing the visible drift. Over a short period of time of continual adjustments, the drift would stop, and the bombsight would now hold an extremely accurate measurement of the exact ground speed and heading. Better yet, these measurements were being carried out on the bomb run, not before it, and helped eliminate inaccuracies due to changes in the conditions as the aircraft moved. And by eliminating the manual calculations, the bombardier was left with much more time to adjust his measurements, and thus settle at a much more accurate result.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The angular speed of the prism changes with the range of the target: consider the reverse situation, the apparent high angular speed of an aircraft passing overhead compared to its apparent speed when it is seen at a longer distance. In order to properly account for this non-linear effect, the Norden used a system of slip-disks similar to those used in differential analysers. However, this slow change at long distances made it difficult to fine-tune the drift early in the bomb run. In practice, bombardiers would often set up their ground speed measurements in advance of approaching the target area by selecting a convenient "target" on the ground that was closer to the bomber and thus had more obvious motion in the sight. These values would then be used as the initial setting when the target was later sighted.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The Norden bombsight consisted of two primary parts, the gyroscopic stabilization platform on the left side, and the mechanical calculator and sighting head on the right side. They were essentially separate instruments, connecting through the sighting prism. The sighting eyepiece was located in the middle, between the two, in a less than convenient location that required some dexterity to use.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Before use, the Norden's stabilization platform had to be "righted", as it slowly drifted over time and no longer kept the sight pointed vertically. Righting was accomplished through a time-consuming process of comparing the platform's attitude to small spirit levels seen through a glass window on the front of the stabilizer. In practice, this could take as long as eight and a half minutes. This problem was made worse by the fact that the platform's range of motion was limited, and could be "tumbled" even by strong turbulence, requiring it to be reset again. This problem seriously upset the usefulness of the Norden, and led the RAF to reject it once they received examples in 1942. Some versions included a system that quickly righted the platform, but this "Automatic Gyro Leveling Device" proved to be a maintenance problem, and was removed from later examples.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Once the stabilizer was righted, the bombardier would then dial in the initial setup for altitude, speed, and direction. The prism would then be "clutched out" of the computer, allowing it to be moved rapidly to search for the target on the ground. Later Nordens were equipped with a reflector sight to aid in this step. Once the target was located the computer was clutched in and started moving the prism to follow the target. The bombardier would begin making adjustments to the aim. As all of the controls were located on the right, and had to be operated while sighting through the telescope, another problem with the Norden is that the bombardier could only adjust either the vertical or horizontal aim at a given time, his other arm was normally busy holding himself up above the telescope.


title: Norden bombsight

text: On top of the device, to the right of the sight, were two final controls. The first was the setting for "trail", which was pre-set at the start of the mission for the type of bombs being used. The second was the "index window" which displayed the aim point in numerical form. The bombsight calculated the current aim point internally and displayed this as a sliding pointer on the index. The current sighting point, where the prism was aimed, was also displayed against the same scale. In operation, the sight would be set far in advance of the aim point, and as the bomber approached the target the sighting point indicator would slowly slide toward the aim point. When the two met, the bombs were automatically released. The aircraft was moving over , so even minor interruptions in timing could dramatically affect aim.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Early examples, and most used by the Navy, had an output that directly drove a Pilot Direction Indicator meter in the cockpit. This eliminated the need to manually signal the pilot, as well as eliminating the possibility of error.


title: Norden bombsight

text: In U.S. Army Air Forces use, the Norden bombsight was attached to its autopilot base, which was in turn connected with the aircraft's autopilot. The Honeywell C-1 autopilot could be used as an autopilot by the flight crew during the journey to the target area through a control panel in the cockpit, but was more commonly used under direct command of the bombardier. The Norden's box-like autopilot unit sat behind and below the sight and attached to it at a single rotating pivot. After control of the aircraft was passed to the bombardier during the bomb run, he would first rotate the entire Norden so the vertical line in the sight passed through the target. From that point on, the autopilot would attempt to guide the bomber so it followed the course of the bombsight, and pointed the heading to zero out the drift rate, fed to it through a coupling. As the aircraft turned onto the correct angle, a belt and pulley system rotated the sight back to match the changing heading. The autopilot was another reason for the Norden's accuracy, as it ensured the aircraft quickly followed the correct course and kept it on that course much more accurately than the pilots could.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Later in the war, the Norden was combined with other systems to widen the conditions for successful bombing. Notable among these was the radar system called the H2X (Mickey), which were used directly with the Norden bombsight. The radar proved most accurate in coastal regions, as the water surface and the coastline produced a distinctive radar echo.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The Norden bombsight was developed during a period of United States non-interventionism when the dominant U.S. military strategy was the defense of the U.S. and its possessions. A considerable amount of this strategy was based on stopping attempted invasions by sea, both with direct naval power, and starting in the 1930s, with USAAC airpower. Most air forces of the era invested heavily in dive bombers or torpedo bombers for these roles, but these aircraft generally had limited range; long-range strategic reach would require the use of an aircraft carrier. The Army felt the combination of the Norden and B-17 Flying Fortress presented an alternate solution, believing that small formations of B-17s could successfully attack shipping at long distances from the USAAC's widespread bases. The high altitudes the Norden allowed would help increase the range of the aircraft, especially if equipped with a turbocharger, as with each of the four Wright Cyclone 9 radial engines of the B-17.


title: Norden bombsight

text: In 1940, Barth claimed that "we do not regard a 15 foot (4.6 m) square... as being a very difficult target to hit from an altitude of ". At some point the company started using the pickle barrel imagery, to reinforce the bombsight's reputation. After the device became known about publicly in 1942, the Norden company in 1943 rented Madison Square Garden and folded their own show in between the presentations of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Their show involved dropping a wooden "bomb" into a pickle barrel, at which point a pickle popped out.


title: Norden bombsight

text: These claims were greatly exaggerated; in 1940 the average score for an Air Corps bombardier was a circular error of from , not from . Real-world performance was poor enough that the Navy de-emphasized level attacks in favor of dive bombing almost immediately. The Grumman TBF Avenger could mount the Norden, like the preceding Douglas TBD Devastator, but combat use was disappointing and eventually described as "hopeless" during the Guadalcanal Campaign. In spite of giving up on the device in 1942, bureaucratic inertia meant they were supplied as standard equipment until 1944.


title: Norden bombsight

text: USAAF anti-shipping operations in the Far East were generally unsuccessful. In early operations during the Battle of the Philippines, B-17s claimed to have sunk one minesweeper and damaged two Japanese transports, the cruiser , and the destroyer . However, all of these ships are known to have suffered no damage from air attack during that period. In other early battles, including the Battle of Coral Sea or Battle of Midway, no claims were made at all, although some hits were seen on docked targets. The USAAF eventually replaced all of their anti-shipping B-17s with other aircraft, and came to use the skip bombing technique in direct low-level attacks.


title: Norden bombsight

text: As U.S. participation in the war started, the U.S. Army Air Forces drew up widespread and comprehensive bombing plans based on the Norden. They believed the B-17 had a 1.2% probability of hitting a target from , meaning that 220 bombers would be needed for a 93% probability of one or more hits. This was not considered a problem, and the USAAF forecast the need for 251 combat groups to provide enough bombers to fulfill their comprehensive pre-war plans.


title: Norden bombsight

text: After earlier combat trials proved troublesome, the Norden bombsight and its associated AFCE were used on a wide scale for the first time on the 18 March 1943 mission to Bremen-Vegesack, Germany. The 303d Bombardment Group dropped 76% of its load within a ring, representing a CEP well under . As at sea, many early missions over Europe demonstrated varied results; on wider inspection, only 50% of American bombs fell within a of the target, and American flyers estimated that as many as 90% of bombs could miss their targets. The average CEP in 1943 was , meaning that only 16% of the bombs fell within of the aiming point. A bomb, standard for precision missions after 1943, had a lethal radius of only .


title: Norden bombsight

text: Faced with these poor results, Curtis LeMay started a series of reforms in an effort to address the problems. In particular, he introduced the "combat box" formation in order to provide maximum defensive firepower by densely packing the bombers. As part of this change, he identified the best bombardiers in his command and assigned them to the lead bomber of each box. Instead of every bomber in the box using their Norden individually, the lead bombardiers were the only ones actively using the Norden, and the rest of the box followed in formation and then dropped their bombs when they saw the lead's leaving his aircraft. Although this spread the bombs over the area of the combat box, this could still improve accuracy over individual efforts. It also helped stop a problem where various aircraft, all slaved to their autopilots on the same target, would drift into each other. These changes did improve accuracy, which suggests that much of the problem is attributable to the bombardier. However, precision attacks still proved difficult or impossible.


title: Norden bombsight

text: When Jimmy Doolittle took over command of the 8th Air Force from Ira Eaker in early 1944, precision bombing attempts were dropped. Area bombing, like the RAF efforts, were widely used with 750 and then 1000 bomber raids against large targets. The main targets were railroad marshaling yards (27.4% of the bomb tonnage dropped), airfields (11.6%), oil refineries (9.5%), and military installations (8.8%). To some degree the targets were secondary missions; Doolittle used the bombers as an irresistible target to draw up Luftwaffe fighters into the ever-increasing swarms of Allied long-distance fighters. As these missions broke the Luftwaffe, missions were able to be carried out at lower altitudes or especially in bad weather when the H2X radar could be used. In spite of abandoning precision attacks, accuracy nevertheless improved. By 1945, the 8th was putting up to 60% of its bombs within , a CEP of about .


title: Norden bombsight

text: Still pursuing precision attack, various remotely guided weapons were developed, notably the AZON and VB-3 Razon bombs and similar weapons.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The Norden operated by mechanically turning the viewpoint so the target remained stationary in the display. The mechanism was designed for the low angular rate encountered at high altitudes, and thus had a relatively low range of operational speeds. The Norden could not rotate the sight fast enough for bombing at low altitude, for instance. Typically this was solved by removing the Norden completely and replacing it with simpler sighting systems.


title: Norden bombsight

text: A good example of its replacement was the refitting of the Doolittle Raiders with a simple iron sight. Designed by Capt. C. Ross Greening, the sight was mounted to the existing pilot direction indicator, allowing the bombardier to make corrections remotely, like the bombsights of an earlier era.


title: Norden bombsight

text: However, the Norden combined two functions, aiming and stabilization. While the former was not useful at low altitudes, the latter could be even more useful, especially if flying in rough air near the surface. This led James "Buck" Dozier to mount a Doolittle-like sight on top of the stabilizer in the place of the sighting head in order to attack German submarines in the Caribbean Sea. This proved extraordinarily useful and was soon used throughout the fleet.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Since the Norden was considered a critical wartime instrument, bombardiers were required to take an oath during their training stating that they would defend its secret with their own life if necessary. In case the plane should make an emergency landing on enemy territory, the bombardier would have to shoot the important parts of the Norden with a gun to disable it. The Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bomber was originally equipped with flotation bags in the wings to aid the aircrew's escape after ditching, but they were removed once the Pacific War began; this ensured that the aircraft would sink, taking the Norden with it.


title: Norden bombsight

text: After each completed mission, bomber crews left the aircraft with a bag which they deposited in a safe ("the Bomb Vault"). This secure facility ("the AFCE and Bombsight Shop") was typically in one of the base's Nissen hut (Quonset hut) support buildings. The Bombsight Shop was manned by enlisted men who were members of a Supply Depot Service Group ("Sub Depot") attached to each USAAF bombardment group. These shops not only guarded the bombsights but performed critical maintenance on the Norden and related control equipment. This was probably the most technically skilled ground-echelon job, and certainly the most secret, of all the work performed by Sub Depot personnel. The non-commissioned officer in charge and his staff had to have a high aptitude for understanding and working with mechanical devices.


title: Norden bombsight

text: As the end of World War II neared, the bombsight was gradually downgraded in its secrecy; however, it was not until 1944 that the first public display of the instrument occurred.


title: Norden bombsight

text: In spite of the security precautions, the entire Norden system had been passed to the Germans before the war started. Herman W. Lang, a German spy, had been employed by the Carl L. Norden Company. During a visit to Germany in 1938, Lang conferred with German military authorities and reconstructed plans of the confidential materials from memory. In 1941, Lang, along with the 32 other German agents of the Duquesne Spy Ring, was arrested by the FBI and convicted in the largest espionage prosecution in U.S. history. He received a sentence of 18 years in prison on espionage charges and a two-year concurrent sentence under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.


title: Norden bombsight

text: German instruments were fairly similar to the Norden, even before World War II. A similar set of gyroscopes provided a stabilized platform for the bombardier to sight through, although the complex interaction between the bombsight and autopilot was not used. The Carl Zeiss Lotfernrohr 7, or Lotfe 7, was an advanced mechanical system similar to the Norden bombsight, although in form it was more similar to the Sperry S-1. It started replacing the simpler Lotfernrohr 3 and BZG 2 in 1942, and emerged as the primary late-war bombsight used in most "Luftwaffe" level bombers. The use of the autopilot allowed single-handed operation, and was key to bombing use of the single-crewed Arado Ar 234.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Postwar analysis placed the overall accuracy of daylight precision attacks with the Norden at about the same level as radar bombing efforts. The 8th Air Force put 31.8% of its bombs within from an average altitude of , the 15th Air Force averaged 30.78% from , and the 20th Air Force against Japan averaged 31% from .


title: Norden bombsight

text: Many factors have been put forth to explain the Norden's poor real-world performance. Over Europe, the cloud cover was a common explanation, although performance did not improve even in favorable conditions. Over Japan, bomber crews soon discovered strong winds at high altitudes, the so-called jet streams, but the Norden bombsight worked only for wind speeds with minimal wind shear. Additionally, the bombing altitude over Japan reached up to , but most of the testing had been done well below . This extra altitude compounded factors that could previously be ignored; the shape of and even the paint on the bomb changed its aerodynamic properties and, at that time, nobody knew how to calculate the trajectory of bombs that reached supersonic speeds during their fall.


title: Norden bombsight

text: The RAF developed their own designs. Having moved to night bombing, where visual accuracy was difficult under even the best conditions, they introduced the much simpler Mark XIV bomb sight. This was designed not for accuracy above all, but ease of use in operational conditions. In testing in 1944, it was found to offer a CEP of , about what the Norden was offering at that time. This led to a debate within the RAF whether to use their own tachometric design, the Stabilized Automatic Bomb Sight, or use the Mk. XIV on future bombers. The Mk. XIV ultimately served into the 1960s while the SABS faded from service as the Lancaster and Lincoln bombers fitted with it were retired.


title: Norden bombsight

text: In the postwar era, the United States mostly stopped developing new precision bombsights. Initially this was because of the war's end but, as budgets increased during the Cold War, the deployment of nuclear weapons meant accuracies of around were sufficient, well within the capabilities of existing radar bombing systems. Only one major bombsight of note was developed, the Y-4 developed on the Boeing B-47 Stratojet. This sight combined the images of the radar and a lens system in front of the aircraft, allowing them to be directly compared at once through a binocular eyepiece.


title: Norden bombsight

text: Bombsights on older aircraft, like the Boeing B-29 Superfortress and the later B-50, were left in their wartime state. When the Korean War began, these aircraft were pressed into service and the Norden once again became the USAF's primary bombsight. This occurred again when the Vietnam War started; in this case retired World War II technicians had to be called up in order to make the bombsights operational again. Its last use in combat was by the Naval Air Observation Squadron Sixty-Seven (VO-67), during the Vietnam War. The bombsights were used in Operation Igloo White for implanting Air-Delivered Seismic Intrusion Detectors (ADSID) along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The Diamond Sutra (Sanskrit: "Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra") is a Mahāyāna (Buddhist) sutra from the genre of "Prajñāpāramitā" ('perfection of wisdom') sutras. Translated into a variety of languages over a broad geographic range, the "Diamond Sūtra" is one of the most influential Mahayana sutras in East Asia, and it is particularly prominent within the Chan (or Zen) tradition, along with the "Heart Sutra".


title: Diamond Sutra

text: A copy of the Tang dynasty–Chinese version of the "Diamond Sūtra" was found among the Dunhuang manuscripts in 1900 by Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu and sold to Aurel Stein in 1907. They are dated back to 11 May 868. It is, in the words of the British Library, "the earliest dated printed book".


title: Diamond Sutra

text: It is also the first known creative work with an explicit public domain dedication, as its colophon at the end states that it was created "for universal free distribution".


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The Sanskrit title for the sūtra is the "Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra", which may be translated roughly as the "Vajra Cutter Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra" or "The Perfection of Wisdom Text that Cuts Like a Thunderbolt". In English, shortened forms such as "Diamond Sūtra" and "Vajra Sūtra" are common. The title relies on the power of the vajra (diamond or thunderbolt, but also an abstract term for a powerful weapon) to cut things as a metaphor for the type of wisdom that cuts and shatters illusions to get to ultimate reality. The sutra is also called by the name "Triśatikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra" (300 lines Perfection of Insight sutra).


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The "Diamond Sūtra" is highly regarded in East Asian countries with traditions of Mahayana Buddhism. Translations of this title into the languages of some of these countries include:


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The exact date of the composition of the "Diamond Sūtra" in Sanskrit is uncertain—arguments for the 2nd and 5th centuries have been made. The first Chinese translation dates to the early 5th century, but, by this point, the 4th or 5th century monks Asanga and Vasubandhu seem to have already authored authoritative commentaries on its content.


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The Vajracchedika sutra was an influential work in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. Early translations into a number of languages have been found in locations across Central and East Asia, suggesting that the text was widely studied and translated. In addition to Chinese translations, translations of the text and commentaries were made into Tibetan, and translations, elaborations, and paraphrases survive in a number of Central Asian languages.


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The first translation of the "Diamond Sūtra" into Chinese is thought to have been made in 401 by the venerated and prolific translator Kumārajīva. Kumārajīva's translation style is distinctive, possessing a flowing smoothness that reflects his prioritization on conveying the meaning as opposed to precise literal rendering. The Kumārajīva translation has been particularly highly regarded over the centuries, and it is this version that appears on the 868 Dunhuang scroll. It is the most widely used and chanted Chinese version.


title: Diamond Sutra

text: In addition to the Kumārajīva translation, a number of later translations exist. The "Diamond Sūtra" was again translated from Sanskrit into Chinese by Bodhiruci in 509, Paramārtha in 558, Dharmagupta (twice, in 590 and in 605~616), Xuanzang (twice, in 648 and in 660~663), and Yijing in 703.


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang visited a Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda monastery at Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in the 7th century. Using Xuanzang's travel accounts, modern archaeologists have identified the site of this monastery. Birchbark manuscript fragments of several Mahāyāna sūtras have been discovered at the site, including the "Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra" (MS 2385), and these are now part of the Schøyen Collection. This manuscript was written in the Sanskrit language, and written in an ornate form of the Gupta script. This same Sanskrit manuscript also contains the "Medicine Buddha Sūtra" ("Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabhārāja Sūtra").


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The "Diamond Sūtra" gave rise to a culture of artwork, sūtra veneration, and commentaries in East Asian Buddhism. By the end of the Tang Dynasty (907) in China there were over 80 commentaries written on it (only 32 survive), such as those by prominent Chinese Buddhists like Sengzhao, Xie Lingyun, Zhiyi, Jizang, Kuiji and Zongmi. Copying and recitation of the "Diamond Sutra" was a widespread devotional practice, and stories attributing miraculous powers to these acts are recorded in Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Mongolian sources.


title: Diamond Sutra

text: One of the best known commentaries is the "Exegesis on the Diamond Sutra" by Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of the Chan School. The "Diamond Sutra" features prominently in the 1st chapter of the Platform Sutra, the religious biography of Huineng, where hearing its recitation is supposed to have triggered the enlightening insight that led Huineng to abandon his life as a woodcutter to become a Buddhist monk.


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The "Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sutra" contains the discourse of the Buddha to a senior monk, Subhuti. Its major themes are anatman (not-self), the emptiness of all phenomena (though the term 'śūnyatā' itself does not appear in the text), the liberation of all beings without attachment and the importance of spreading and teaching the "Diamond Sūtra" itself. In his commentary on the "Diamond Sūtra", Hsing Yun describes the four main points from the sūtra as giving without attachment to self, liberating beings without notions of self and other, living without attachment, and cultivating without attainment. According to Shigenori Nagatomo, the major goal of the "Diamond Sūtra" is: "an existential project aiming at achieving and embodying a non-discriminatory basis for knowledge" or "the emancipation from the fundamental ignorance of not knowing how to experience reality as it is".


title: Diamond Sutra

text: In the sūtra, the Buddha has finished his daily walk to Sravasti with the monks to gather offerings of food, and he sits down to rest. Elder Subhūti comes forth and asks the Buddha: "How, Lord, should one who has set out on the bodhisattva path take his stand, how should he proceed, how should he control the mind?"


title: Diamond Sutra

text: What follows is a dialogue regarding the nature of the "perfection of insight" ("Prajñāpāramitā") and the nature of ultimate reality (which is illusory and empty). The Buddha begins by answering Subhuti by stating that he will bring all living beings to final nirvana, but that after this "no living being whatsoever has been brought to extinction". This is because a bodhisattva does not see beings through reified concepts such as "person", "soul" or "self", but sees them through the lens of perfect understanding, as empty of inherent, unchanging self.


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The Buddha continues his exposition with similar statements which use negation to point out the emptiness of phenomena, merit, the Dharma (Buddha's teaching), the stages of enlightenment and the Buddha himself. Japanese Buddhologist Hajime Nakamura calls this negation the "logic of not" ("na prthak"). Further examples of the "Diamond Sūtra" via negativa include statements such as:


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The Buddha is generally thought to be trying to help Subhūti unlearn his preconceived, limited notions of the nature of reality. Emphasizing that all phenomena are ultimately illusory, he teaches that true enlightenment cannot be grasped until one has set aside attachment to them in any form.


title: Diamond Sutra

text: Another reason why the Buddha makes use of negation is that language reifies concepts and this can lead to attachment to those concepts, but true wisdom is seeing that nothing is fixed or stable, hence according to the "Diamond Sūtra" thoughts such as "I have obtained the state of an Arhat" or "I will bring living beings to nirvana" do not even occur in an enlightened one's mind because this would be "seizing upon a self ... seizing upon a living being, seizing upon a soul, seizing upon a person".


title: Diamond Sutra

text: The sutra goes on to state that anyone who says such things should not be called a bodhisattva. According to David Kalupahana the goal of the "Diamond Sūtra" is "one colossal attempt to avoid the extremist use of language, that is, to eliminate any ontological commitment to concepts while at the same time retaining their pragmatic value, so as not to render them totally empty of meaning".