title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: In 1946, a year after the war formally ended, the New York State Legislature passed a bill that called for a "world trade center" to be established. This trade center would increase New York City's role in transatlantic trade. The World Trade Corporation was founded, and a board was appointed by New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey to develop plans for the project. Less than four months after the board was named, plans for a "world trade center" were put on hold. By then, architect John Eberson and his son Drew had devised a plan that included 21 buildings over a ten-block area, at an estimated cost of $150 million. However, projections determined that such a complex would not be profitable due to a lack of demand; one estimated that the World Trade Center project would only be successful if at least 4,800 of the United States' largest 6,000 companies were involved. In 1949, the World Trade Corporation was dissolved by the New York State Legislature.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Meanwhile, the Financial District of Lower Manhattan was left out of the economic boom of financial industries there. Lower Manhattan also saw less economic growth than Midtown because many workers moved to the suburbs, and they found it easier to commute to midtown than to downtown. The writer Paul Goldberger states that the Financial District, in particular, was devoid of "almost any kind of urban amenity", including entertainment, cultural hubs, or housing. Commercial industries along the ports of Lower Manhattan were also being replaced with industries elsewhere. David Rockefeller, who led urban renewal efforts in Lower Manhattan, constructed the One Chase Manhattan Plaza in a bid to bring jobs back. Rockefeller believed that the area would lose its status as the nation's financial hub if it were not redeveloped. However, the skyscraper, which opened in 1960, attracted far fewer tenants than expected.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: In 1958, Rockefeller established the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association (DLMA), which commissioned Skidmore, Owings and Merrill to draw up plans for revitalizing Lower Manhattan. The plans, made public in late June 1960, called for a World Trade Center to be built on a site along the East River, at the South Street Seaport, one of the Lower Manhattan ports that had seen a continuous decline in business over the past decade. The site would be bounded clockwise from the south by Old Slip, Water Street, Fulton Street, and South Street, and the complex itself would be located on "a two-story platform that would supersede and displace the conventional street grid". The proposed complex included a exhibition hall, as well as a 50- to 70-story building with a hotel located on some of its upper floors. Other amenities would include a theater, shops, and restaurants. The plan also called for a new securities exchange building, which the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association hoped would house the New York Stock Exchange.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: David Rockefeller suggested that the Port Authority would be a logical choice for taking on the project because it had experience with similar large engineering projects, and also because the Port Authority, rather than Rockefeller, would be paying for the complex's construction. Rockefeller argued that the Trade Center would provide great benefits in facilitating and increasing volume of international commerce coming through the Port of New York and New Jersey. David's brother, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, formally asked the Port Authority to investigate the feasibility of this proposal. Given the importance of New York City in global commerce, Port Authority director Austin J. Tobin remarked that the proposed project should be "the" World Trade Center, and not just a generic "world trade center". Tobin commissioned an aide, Richard Sullivan, to lead a study on the feasibility of building a World Trade Center.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Sullivan published his study, "A World Trade Center in the Port of New York", on March 10, 1961. The report recommended building a trade center along the waterfront to facilitate commerce within the Port of New York. The study also stated that Rockefeller's suggested site near the South Street Seaport was the most ideal location for the trade center, but did not take locals' possible objections into account. The Port Authority formally backed the project the next day.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The States of New York and New Jersey also needed to approve the project, given their control and oversight role of the Port Authority. Objections to the plan came from New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner, who resented that New York would be getting the $355 million project. Meyner would only agree if his own state were able to benefit. He was particularly concerned about ridership on New Jersey's Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (H&M). The H&M's ridership had declined substantially from a high of 113 million riders in 1927 to 26 million in 1958, after new automobile tunnels and bridges opened across the Hudson River. The H&M's Hudson Terminal, a large and mostly decrepit office-building complex along Manhattan's Lower West Side, was located in a neighborhood referred to as the Radio Row, which was also seeing a general decline due to a loss of transportation options. The ferries across the Hudson River, which had seen 51 million annual riders in 1920, had stopped running, while the area's elevated lines were being dismantled in favor of high-speed subways. For many years, New Jersey residents and elected officials had proposed that the Port Authority purchase the H&M Railroad, but each time, the Port Authority had refused. Meyner suggested that he would support the plans for the World Trade Center project if the Port Authority took over the H&M. The Port Authority then started conducting another study on Meyner's suggestion of a H&M takeover.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: In February 1961, Governor Rockefeller introduced a bill that would combine the H&M's $70 million acquisition with the $335 million trade center at South Street. Even though Nelson Rockefeller had been warned of the hastiness of the deal, owing to the fact that it highlighted the price disparity between the two agreements, the New York state legislature approved the bill anyway. Subsequently, negotiations with Governor Meyner regarding the World Trade Center project reached a stalemate. Months later, Sullivan was contacted by a colleague, Sidney Schachter, who had surveyed Hudson Terminal. After taking a walk around the Radio Row neighborhood, Schachter concluded that the site could be used for the World Trade Center. This would carry multiple benefits: the obsolete Hudson Terminal could be replaced with more modern office buildings; the H&M would get a new railway terminal; and the World Trade Center could be built without objections from New Jersey. Through the end of the year, the Port Authority continued to investigate the feasibility of taking over the H&M.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: In December 1961, Tobin had several meetings with newly elected New Jersey Governor Richard J. Hughes. They ultimately agreed to a proposal to shift the World Trade Center project to the site of the H&M's Hudson Terminal. The new location not only was closer to New Jersey, but also was able to utilize the unused air rights above the Hudson Terminal: although other developers were theoretically allowed to build atop the terminal, none had done so. In acquiring the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, the Port Authority would also acquire the Hudson Terminal and other buildings, which were deemed obsolete. On January 22, 1962, the two states reached an agreement to allow the Port Authority to take over the railroad and to build the World Trade Center on Manhattan's lower west side. As part of the deal, the Port Authority renamed the H&M "Port Authority Trans-Hudson", or PATH for short. The New Jersey state legislature approved this deal in February 1962. After the World Trade Center legislation was approved by the New Jersey legislature, Chairman Tobin formed the World Trade Office to develop and operate the trade center, appointing Guy F. Tozzoli to lead the new office.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The new site constituted a mostly trapezoidal plot of land, with an extension on the north that resembled a "cork". The bulk of the land was a twelve-block area bounded by Vesey, Church, Liberty, and West Streets on the north, east, south, and west, respectively. All of these blocks would be combined to form the superblock upon which the World Trade Center was built. The "cork" was a smaller trapezoid bounded clockwise from the north by Barclay Street, West Broadway, Vesey Street, and Washington Street. This would become the site of 7 World Trade Center, although that building was not added until much later. The two blocks to the west and east of the "cork" were occupied by the New York Telephone Company Building and the Federal Building, respectively.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The site for the World Trade Center was the location of Radio Row, which was home to 323 commercial or industrial tenants, over one thousand offices, many small businesses, and approximately 100 residents. Estimates indicated that either 17,200 or 30,000 employees worked within the area that was to be occupied by the World Trade Center, and that the businesses employing them made a combined $300 million in profits every year. The World Trade Center plans involved evicting these business owners, some of whom strongly dissented to the forced relocation. The group protesting against the evictions was led by Oscar Nadel, one of the business owners who was facing eviction. Newspapers published stories about small-business owners who would be affected by the evictions, while residents and tenants went around the neighborhood, carrying the effigy of a "Mr. Small Businessman" in a mock funeral.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The Port Authority opened an office to assist tenants with relocation; although this offer was accepted by some tenants, it was protested by others. The agency refused to meet with large groups of merchants, instead saying that concerned tenants meet with Port Authority officials one-by-one. Nadel believed that this would allow the Port Authority to convince individual tenants to move out, thus causing an exodus of merchants from the area. As the merchants' "de facto" spokesperson, he requested a meeting with Tobin directly. However, when the meeting did occur in mid-June 1962, Nadel immediately rejected Tobin's proposal to give him a storefront space in the World Trade Center. Two weeks later, a group representing approximately 325 shops and 1,000 other affected small businesses filed an injunction, challenging the Port Authority's power of eminent domain, or the takeover of private property for public use.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The dispute with local business owners went through the court system to the New York State Court of Appeals. Although several lower courts refused to hear the merchants' cases, they also ruled that the World Trade Center did not serve a "public purpose" and that the plan had caused harm to Radio Row merchants, contrary to what Tobin had claimed. In response, Tobin announced that the lower courts had ruled on the constitutional question of "public purpose", prompting an appellate judge to issue a public rebuke for Tobin's "extramural misrepresentation" of the outcome. Tobin changed his offer to the merchants, offering to relocate them to a new electronics complex and delay demolition until 1964. However, in public, he acted as though the judges had already ruled in his favor on the constitutional question. In February 1963, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the World Trade Center did not constitute a "public purpose", thereby nullifying the Port Authority's land acquisition. The Port Authority immediately appealed, and in April, the same court reversed its previous decision, upholding the Port Authority's right of eminent domain and saying that the project had a "public purpose". The merchants then appealed to the United States Supreme Court. On November 12, 1963, the Supreme Court rejected the case, stating that it lacked proof of needing federal action.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Under the state law, the Port Authority was required to assist business owners in relocating, something it had been doing since 1962. However, many business owners regarded what the Port Authority offered as inadequate. Questions continued while the World Trade Center was constructed, as to whether the Port Authority really ought to take on the project, described by some as a "mistaken social priority."


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: After New Jersey approved of the World Trade Center project, the Port Authority started looking for tenants. First, the agency approached the United States Customs Service because the Customs Service had been dissatisfied with its current headquarters, the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House on the tip of Lower Manhattan. The Port Authority then solicited the New York state government, since there were too few private companies willing to move to the World Trade Center. The World Trade Center's planners were concerned that the World Trade Center would be underused, because at the time, less than 3.8% of the United States' gross national product came from international trade, and corporations with a worldwide presence comprised four-fifths of that sector. In January 1964, the Port Authority certified a deal with the New York state government to relocate some offices to the World Trade Center. The Port Authority began signing commercial tenants in the spring and summer of 1964, including several banks. The Port Authority signed the United States Customs Service as a tenant a year later.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: After considering these facts, Tobin and Tozzoli determined that the only way to make the World Trade Center appealing to private entities was to make the trade center the world's largest. This resulted in an enlargement of plans for the entire trade center, which was originally supposed to include only of floor space. After the release of the feasibility report for the new site, this figure increased to at least of floor space, making the World Trade Center about as large as the Pentagon, the world's largest office building at the time. However, after directing his staff to inspect the proposed trade center's new site at Radio Row, Tobin decided to increase the amount of floor space further, to at least . Fearing controversy, Tobin kept this plan secret from the public.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Tozzoli dismissed the three planners who had worked on the original World Trade Center study, due to their lack of creative designs for the World Trade Center complex. He then went to Seattle to meet with architect Minoru Yamasaki. Tozzoli had a general idea of what should be in the trade center, but had not yet devised the specific details of the design. Prior to this meeting, Yamasaki's only high-rise construction project was the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company's 30-story tower in Detroit. As a result, Yamasaki initially thought that the offer for him to build a $280,000,000 world trade center in New York City was a typo. After it was clarified that the offer was not made in error, Yamasaki presented his "big and unmistakable, yet intimate and humane" proposal for the trade center to the Port Authority board in June 1962. The author Paul Goldberger wrote that Yamasaki "presented himself as an aesthete" to the Port Authority board, which was mostly composed of engineers. Following this meeting, a group of Port Authority planners began looking through Yamasaki's prior projects.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: On September 20, 1962, after an exhaustive search for architects, the Port Authority announced the selection of Yamasaki as lead architect, and Emery Roth & Sons as associate architects. Originally, Yamasaki submitted to the Port Authority a concept incorporating twin towers, but with each building only 80 stories tall. Yamasaki remarked that the "obvious alternative, a group of several large buildings, would have looked like a housing project."


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The Port Authority mandated that of office space be included in the new World Trade Center, but tasked Yamasaki with determining how to arrange that space. As a result, Yamasaki tested out different possible designs, including spreading out the space across three or four towers, as well as condensing the space within two 80-story towers. His other plans included a single, very large tower and ten moderately large buildings. He favored the 80-story twin-tower plan, but found that it did not meet the Port Authority's requirements. At the time, it was not considered economical to build an office building with more than 80 floors.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Another major limiting factor in the buildings' designs was elevators. As the building got taller, more elevators were needed to service the building, which required more elevator banks that in turn took up space. Yamasaki and the engineers decided to use a new system that included sky lobbies, which are floors where people can switch from a large-capacity express elevator, which goes only to the sky lobbies, to a local elevator that goes to each floor in a section. Thus, the local elevators can be stacked within the same elevator shaft. Located on the 44th and 78th floors of each tower, the sky lobbies enabled the elevators to be used efficiently, while also increasing the amount of usable space on each floor from 62 to 75 percent by reducing the number of required elevator shafts. The World Trade Center towers were the second supertall buildings to use sky lobbies, after the John Hancock Center in Chicago. This system was inspired by the New York City Subway, whose lines include local stations, where only local trains stop, and express stations, where all trains stop. This allowed the towers' heights to be increased to 110 floors without the top floors being economically unfeasible.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Yamasaki's final design for the World Trade Center was unveiled to the public on January 18, 1964, with an eight-foot model. The towers had a square plan, approximately 207 feet (63 m) in dimension on each side. The buildings were designed with narrow office windows, only 18 inches (45 cm) wide, which reflected on Yamasaki's fear of heights and desire to make building occupants feel secure. The windows only covered 30% of the buildings' exteriors, making them look like solid metal slabs from a distance, though this was also a byproduct of the structural systems that held up the towers. Yamasaki's design called for the building facades to be sheathed in aluminum-alloy.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Yamasaki, who had previously designed Saudi Arabia's Dhahran International Airport with the Saudi Binladin Group, incorporated features of Arabic architecture into the design of the World Trade Center. The plaza was modelled after Mecca, incorporating features such as a vast delineated square, a fountain, and a radial circular pattern. Yamasaki described the plaza as "a mecca, a great relief from the narrow streets and sidewalks of the Wall Street area." He also incorporated other features of Arabic architecture into the building design, including pointed arches, interweaving tracery of prefabricated concrete, a minaret like flight tower, and arabesque patterns.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The World Trade Center design brought criticism of its aesthetics from the American Institute of Architects and other groups. Lewis Mumford, author of "The City in History" and other works on urban planning, criticized the project and described it and other new skyscrapers as "just glass-and-metal filing cabinets." Television broadcasters raised concerns that the World Trade Center twin towers would cause interference in television reception for viewers in the New York City area, who were getting their broadcasts from the Empire State Building at that time. In response to these concerns, the Port Authority offered to provide new television transmission facilities at the World Trade Center. The Linnaean Society of the American Museum of Natural History also opposed the Trade Center project, citing hazards the buildings would impose on migrating birds.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The structural engineering firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson worked to implement Yamasaki's design, developing a framed-tube structural system that was used in the buildings. The Port Authority's Engineering Department served as foundation engineers, Joseph R. Loring & Associates as electrical engineers, and Jaros, Baum & Bolles (JB&B) as mechanical engineers. Tishman Realty & Construction Company was the general contractor on the World Trade Center project. Guy F. Tozzoli, director of the World Trade Department at the Port Authority, and Rino M. Monti, the Port Authority's Chief Engineer, oversaw the project.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: As an interstate agency, the Port Authority was not subject to local laws and regulations of the City of New York, including building codes. Nonetheless, the Port Authority required architects and structural engineers to follow the New York City building codes. At the time when the World Trade Center was planned, new building codes were being devised to replace the 1938 version that was still in place. The structural engineers ended up following draft versions of the new 1968 building codes, which incorporated "advanced techniques" in building design.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The World Trade Center towers included many structural engineering innovations in skyscraper design and construction, which allowed the buildings to reach new heights and become the tallest in the world. Traditionally, skyscrapers used a skeleton of columns distributed throughout the interior to support building loads, with interior columns disrupting the floor space. The framed-tube concept, earlier introduced by Bangladeshi-American structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, was a major innovation, allowing open floor plans and more space to rent.The tube-frame design required 40 percent less structural steel than conventional building designs. The buildings used high-strength, load-bearing perimeter steel columns which acted as Vierendeel trusses. Although the columns themselves were lightweight, they were spaced closely together, forming a strong, rigid wall structure. There were 59 perimeter columns, narrowly spaced, on each side of the buildings. In all, the perimeter walls of the towers were on each side, and the corners were beveled. The perimeter columns were designed to provide support for virtually all lateral loads (such as wind loads) and to share the gravity loads with the core columns. Structural analysis of major portions of the World Trade Center were computed on an IBM 1620.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The perimeter structure was constructed of prefabricated modular pieces, which consisted of three columns, three stories tall, connected by spandrel plates. The perimeter columns had a square cross section, on a side, and were constructed of welded steel plate. The thickness of the plates and grade of structural steel varied over the height of the tower, ranging from 36,000 to 100,000 pounds per square inch (260 to 670 MPa). The thickness of the steel plates decreased with height because they were required to support lesser amounts of building mass and wind loads on higher floors. However, the steel grade increased with height. Columns were made of higher grades than spandrels. Steel grade was higher near the corner. From the 7th floor to the ground level, and down to the foundation, the columns were spaced apart to accommodate doorways. All columns were placed on bedrock, which, unlike that in Midtown Manhattan, where the bedrock is shallow, is at 65–85 feet (20–26 m) below the surface.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The spandrel plates, typically deep, were welded to the exterior columns to create the modular pieces off-site at the fabrication shop. Each of the modular pieces weigh 22 tons, was wide and tall, and extended for two full floors and half of two more floors. Adjacent modules were bolted together, with the splices occurring at mid-span of the columns and spandrels. The spandrel plates were located at each floor, transmitting shear stress between columns, allowing them to work together in resisting lateral loads. Other than at the mechanical floors, the joints between modules were staggered vertically, so the column splices between adjacent modules were not at the same floor.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The building's core housed the elevator and utility shafts, restrooms, three stairwells, and other support spaces. The core of each tower was a rectangular area 87 by 135 feet (27 by 41 m), and contained 47 steel columns running from the bedrock to the top of the tower. The North Tower's structural core was oriented with the long axis east to west, while the South Tower's was oriented north to south.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The core columns supported about half the towers' weight. The core was surrounded by a girder to which were connected the inner ends of the floor trusses. The 16 columns which supported the long span trusses were particularly large, accounting for half of the core's loads. Of this, 40 percent came from the corner columns which supported the transfer trusses. Conversely, the seven innermost columns were quite small, carrying only about 3 percent.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The columns were made almost exclusively of 36ksi or 42ksi steel, and gradually switched from rectangular box sections to tapering box sections to wide flange sections at higher floors. Typical columns were box columns for most of their height. Box columns maintained a constant width of predominantly , , or . In the lower third of the building, they also maintained a constant depth of predominantly . The smallest columns were wide flange sections for most of their height. Wide flange sections were mostly 14 inch, followed by 12 inch sections. 42ksi and higher steel grades were predominantly present in these columns.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: All elevators were located in the core. Each building had three stairwells, also in the core, except on the mechanical floors where the two outside stairwells temporarily left the core in order to avoid the express elevator machine rooms, and then rejoined the core by means of a transfer corridor. It was this arrangement that allowed Stairwell A of the South Tower to remain passable after the aircraft impact on September 11, 2001.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The large, column-free space between the perimeter and core was bridged by prefabricated floor trusses. The floors supported their own weight, as well as live loads, provided lateral stability to the exterior walls, and distributed wind loads among the exterior walls. The floors consisted of thick lightweight concrete slabs laid on a fluted steel deck with shear connections for composite action. A grid of lightweight bridging trusses and main trusses supported the floors. The trusses had a span of in the long-span areas and in the short span area. The trusses connected to the perimeter at alternate columns, and were on centers. The top chords of the trusses were bolted to seats welded to the spandrels on the exterior side and a channel welded to the core columns on the interior side. The floors were connected to the perimeter spandrel plates with viscoelastic dampers, which helped reduce the amount of sway felt by building occupants.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Hat trusses (or "outrigger truss") located from the 107th floor to the top of the buildings were designed to support a tall communication antenna on top of each building. Only the north tower, 1 World Trade Center, actually had an antenna fitted, which was added in 1978. The truss system consisted of six trusses along the long axis of the core and four along the short axis. This truss system allowed some load redistribution between the perimeter and core columns and supported the transmission tower.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The framed-tube design using steel core and perimeter columns protected with sprayed-on fire resistant material created a relatively lightweight structure that would sway more in response to the wind, compared to traditional structures such as the Empire State Building that have thick, heavy masonry for fireproofing of steel structural elements. During the design process, wind tunnel tests were done at Colorado State University and at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom to establish design wind pressures that the World Trade Center towers could be subjected to and structural response to those forces. Experiments were also done to evaluate how much sway occupants could tolerate. Subjects were recruited for "free eye exams," while the real purpose of the experiment was to subject them to simulated building sway and find out how much they could comfortably tolerate. Many subjects did not respond well, experiencing dizziness and other ill effects. One of the chief engineers Leslie Robertson worked with Canadian engineer Alan G. Davenport to develop viscoelastic dampers to absorb some of the sway. These viscoelastic dampers, used throughout the structures at the joints between floor trusses and perimeter columns, along with some other structural modifications reduced the building sway to an acceptable level.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The structural engineers on the project also considered the possibility that an aircraft could crash into the building. In July 1945, a B-25 bomber that was lost in the fog had crashed into the 78th and 79th floors of the Empire State Building. A year later, another airplane crashed into the 40 Wall Street building, and there was another close call at the Empire State Building. In designing the World Trade Center, Leslie Robertson considered the scenario of the impact of a jet airliner, the Boeing 707, which might be lost in the fog, seeking to land at JFK or at Newark airports. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found a three-page white paper that mentioned another aircraft impact analysis, involving impact of a jet at , was indeed considered, but NIST could not locate the documentary evidence of the aircraft impact analysis.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Sprayed-fire resistant materials (SFRMs) were used to protect some structural steel elements in the towers, including all floor trusses and beams. Gypsum wallboard in combination with SFRMs, or in some cases gypsum wallboard alone, was used to protect core columns. Vermiculite plaster was used on the interior-side and SFRMs on the other three sides of the perimeter columns for fire protection. The 1968 New York City building codes were more lenient in some aspects of fire protection, such as allowing three exit stairwells in the World Trade Center towers, instead of six as required under older building codes. In April 1970, the New York City Department of Air Resources ordered the World Trade Center's contractors to stop the spraying of asbestos as an insulating material.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: More fireproofing was added after a fire in February 1975 that spread to six floors before being extinguished. After the 1993 bombing, inspections found fireproofing to be deficient. The Port Authority was in the process of replacing it, but replacement had been completed on only 18 floors in the North Tower, including all the floors affected by the aircraft impact and fires on September 11, and on 13 floors in the South Tower, although only three of these floors (77, 78, and 85) were directly affected by the aircraft impact.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The 1968 New York City building codes did not require sprinklers for high-rise buildings, except for underground spaces. In accordance with building codes, sprinklers were originally installed only in the underground parking structures of the World Trade Center. Following a major fire in February 1975, the Port Authority decided to start installing sprinklers throughout the buildings. By 1993, nearly all of the South Tower and 85 percent of the North Tower had sprinklers installed and the entire complex was retrofitted by 2001.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Even once the agreement between the states of New Jersey, New York, and the Port Authority had been finalized in 1962, the World Trade Center plan faced continued controversy. New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. did not like that the city had a very small stake in the trade center's planning process. Wagner had heard of the revised West Side site through the "Newark Evening News", and he stated that the Port Authority had regarded the city as an "outsider rather than the central figure" during the planning process. Wagner wanted the agreement to be delayed until the city could express its opinion regarding the deal. The city and Port Authority hosted a series of meetings to discuss the details of the World Trade Center. However, the city was at a disadvantage since it only had jurisdiction over the streets in the World Trade Center site, but had no say in the site's condemnations. The city used this fact as leverage once private developers announced their opposition to the project.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: By 1964, by which time the intended scale of the scheme had been made public with plans for twin 110-story towers, private real estate developers and members of the Real Estate Board of New York also expressed concerns about the World Trade Center's much-"subsidized" office space going on the open market, competing with the many vacancies in the private sector. One notable critic was Lawrence Wien, a co-owner of the Empire State Building, which would lose its title of tallest building in the world. Wien organized a group of builders into a group called the "Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center" to demand that the project be scaled down. This group approached the city for assistance in trying to reduce the size of the World Trade Center project. They claimed that the large amount of floor space in the World Trade Center would create an excess of real estate, causing a reduction in other developers' profits. The city and developers used a myriad of arguments to stall construction for two years.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Wagner's successor, John Lindsay, and the New York City Council raised concerns about the limited extent that the Port Authority involved the city in the negotiations and deliberations. Negotiations between the New York City government and the Port Authority were centered on tax issues: the Port Authority offered to pay the city an extra $4 million per year in exchange for foregoing tax payments, while the city wanted four times the amount the Port Authority was offering. This dispute went on for two years, during which time the projected price of the World Trade Center increased sharply. The original estimates put forth by the Port Authority had the costs for construction of the World Trade Center at $350 million—an optimistic figure. In December 1966, the Port Authority announced increased cost estimates, bringing the estimated total to $575 million. This announcement brought criticism of the project from private real estate developers, "The New York Times", and others in New York City. The critics stated that the Port Authority figure was an unrealistically low estimate, and they estimated the project would end up costing $750 million. By the time the World Trade Center twin towers were ultimately completed, the total costs to the Port Authority had reached $900 million.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: By July 1966, neither the city or the Port Authority were able to come to an agreement. However, negotiations soon resumed, and a final agreement was made on August 3, 1966. As part of the agreement, the Port Authority would make annual payments to the City, in lieu of taxes, for the portion of the World Trade Center leased to private tenants. As part of the agreement, the city would build the New York Passenger Ship Terminal in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, while the Port Authority would build the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. In subsequent years, the payments would rise as the real estate tax rate increased. The project would be financed through tax-exempt bonds issued by the Port Authority.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: In March 1965, the Port Authority began acquiring property at the World Trade Center site. The Ajax Wrecking and Lumber Corporation was hired for the demolition work, which began on March 21, 1965, to clear the site for construction of the World Trade Center.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Groundbreaking was on August 5, 1966, marking the beginning of construction of the World Trade Center's foundations. The site of the World Trade Center was located on landfill, with the bedrock located below grade. In order to construct the World Trade Center, it was necessary to build "The Bathtub", with the slurry wall along the West Street side of the site, to keep water from the Hudson River out. This method was used in place of conventional dewatering methods because lowering the groundwater table would cause large settlements of nearby buildings not built on deep foundations.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The slurry method involved digging a trench, and as excavation proceeded, filling the space with a slurry mixture. The mixture, composed of bentonite, plugged holes and kept water out. When the trench was dug out, a steel cage was inserted and concrete was poured in, forcing the slurry out. The slurry method was devised by Port Authority chief engineer John M. Kyle Jr. Towards the end of 1966, work began on building the slurry wall, led by Montreal-based Icanda, a subsidiary of an Italian engineering firm, Impresa Costruzioni Opere Specializzate (I.C.O.S.). It took fourteen months for the slurry wall to be completed, which was necessary before excavation of material from the interior of the site could begin. The original Hudson Tubes, which carried PATH trains into Hudson Terminal, remained in service as elevated tunnels until 1971 when a new PATH station was built.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Construction work on the North Tower began in August 1968 with construction beginning on the South Tower by January 1969. In January 1967, the Pacific Car and Foundry Company, Laclede Steel Company, Granite City Steel Company, and Karl Koch Erecting Company were awarded $74 million in contracts to supply steel for the project. The Port Authority chose to use many different steel suppliers, bidding on smaller portions of steel, rather than buy larger amounts from a single source such as Bethlehem Steel or U.S. Steel as a cost-saving measure. Karl Koch was also hired to do all the work of erecting the steel, and a contract for work on the aluminum facade was awarded to the Aluminum Company of America. Tishman Realty & Construction was hired in February 1967 to oversee construction of the project.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Extensive use of prefabricated parts for the perimeter framing and floor truss systems helped speed up the construction process and reduce costs, while providing greater quality control. Steel components were freighted into a Penn Central (later Conrail and now CSX) yard in Jersey City. From there, they were brought in the early morning hours through the Holland Tunnel to the construction site, then lifted into place by a crane. Larger pieces were brought to the construction site by tugboats. A special type of crane, suitable for constructing such tall buildings, that used hydraulics to lift components and provided its own power was used in construction of the World Trade Center. The Favco Standard 2700 Crane, manufactured by Favelle Mort Ltd. of New South Wales, Australia was informally called a "kangaroo crane."


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: In 1970, tugboat workers went on strike, halting the transport of material to the construction site. The Port Authority attempted other means of transporting material, including via helicopter. When this method was tried, the helicopter lost its load of steel into the Kill Van Kull. Some other mishaps occurred during the construction process, including disruption of telephone service in Lower Manhattan when telephone cables were crushed by pile drivers. On March 16, 1970, an explosion injured six workers when a truck hit a propane tank. In all, 60 workers were killed in construction accidents while the World Trade Center was being built.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The topping out ceremony of the North Tower (1 World Trade Center) took place on December 23, 1970, while the South Tower (2 World Trade Center)'s ceremony occurred on July 19, 1971. The first tenants moved into the North Tower on December 15, 1970, and into the South Tower in January 1972. The buildings were dedicated on April 4, 1973; Tobin, who had resigned the year before, was absent from the ceremonies.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Building the World Trade Center involved excavating of material. Rather than transporting this material at great costs out to sea or to landfills in New Jersey, the fill material was used to expand the Manhattan shoreline across West Street. Work to demolish the piers began on January 5, 1967, including Pier 7 to Pier 11 which were all constructed around 1910. The demolition work moved forward, despite conflicts between David Rockefeller, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and Mayor John Lindsay regarding plans for Battery Park City. Landfill material from the World Trade Center was used to add land, and a cellular cofferdam was constructed to retain the material. The result was a extension into the Hudson River, running six blocks or . This land was a "gift" to New York City, allowing more tax-generating developments in Battery Park City.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: The World Trade Center complex included four other smaller buildings constructed during the 1970s and early 1980s. 3 World Trade Center was a 22-story building, which was home to the Marriott World Trade Center. It was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in 1978–79. 4 World Trade Center, 5 World Trade Center, and 6 World Trade Center were all 8–9 story buildings that were designed by the same team as the Twin Towers, including Minoru Yamasaki; Emery Roth & Sons; and Skilling, Helle, Christiansen, Robertson. 7 World Trade Center was built in the mid-1980s, just north of the main World Trade Center site. The 47-story building was designed by Emery, Roth & Sons, and constructed on top of a Con Edison power substation.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Over time, numerous structural modifications were made to suit the needs of tenants in the Twin Towers. Modifications were made in accordance with the Port Authority's "Tenant Alteration Review Manual" and were reviewed by the Port Authority to ensure the changes did not compromise structural integrity of the buildings. In many instances, openings were cut in the floors to accommodate new stairways to connect tenant floors. Some steel beams in the core were reinforced and strengthened to accommodate heavy live loads, such as large amounts of heavy files that tenants had on their floors.


title: Construction of the World Trade Center

text: Repairs to structural elements on the lower levels of 1 WTC were made following the 1993 bombing. The greatest damage occurred on levels B1 and B2, with significant structural damage also on level B3. Primary structural columns were not damaged, but secondary steel members experienced some damage. Floors that were blown out needed to be repaired to restore the structural support they provided to columns. The slurry wall was in peril following the bombing and loss of the floor slabs which provided lateral support to counteract pressure from Hudson River water on the other side. The refrigeration plant on sublevel B5, which provided air conditioning to the entire World Trade Center complex, was heavily damaged and replaced with a temporary system for the summer of 1993. The fire alarm system for the entire complex needed to be replaced, after critical wiring and signaling in the original system was destroyed in the 1993 bombing. Installation of the new system took years to complete; replacement of some components was still underway in September 2001, at the time of the attacks that ultimately destroyed the complex.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is a song written in 1943 by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical "Meet Me in St. Louis". Frank Sinatra later recorded a version with modified lyrics. In 2007, ASCAP ranked it the third most performed Christmas song during the preceding five years that had been written by ASCAP members.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 2004 it finished at No. 76 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs rankings of the top tunes in American cinema.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: The song was written in 1943 for the then-upcoming film "Meet Me in St. Louis", for which MGM had hired Martin and Blane to write several songs. Martin was vacationing in a house in the neighborhood of Southside in Birmingham, Alabama that his father Hugh Martin had designed for his mother as a honeymoon cottage, located just down the street from his birthplace, and which later became the home of Martin and his family in 1923. The song first appeared in a scene in which a family is distraught by the father's plans to move to New York City for a job promotion, leaving behind their beloved home in St. Louis, Missouri, just before the long-anticipated 1904 World's Fair begins. In a scene set on Christmas Eve, Judy Garland's character, Esther, sings the song to cheer up her despondent five-year-old sister, Tootie, played by Margaret O'Brien.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: Some of the original lyrics penned by Martin were rejected before filming began. When presented with the original draft lyric, Garland, her co-star Tom Drake and director Vincente Minnelli criticized the song as depressing, and asked Martin to change the lyrics. Though he initially resisted, Martin made several changes to make the song more upbeat. For example, the lines "It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past" became "Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight". Garland's version of the song, which was also released as a single by Decca Records, became popular among United States troops serving in World War II; her performance at the Hollywood Canteen brought many soldiers to tears.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 1957, Frank Sinatra asked Martin to revise the line "Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow." He told Martin, "The name of my album is "A Jolly Christmas". Do you think you could jolly up that line for me?" Martin's new line was "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough." Martin made several other alterations, changing from the future tense to the present, so that the song's focus is a celebration of present happiness, rather than anticipation of a better future. (However, Sinatra had recorded the original song's lyrics in 1948.) On "The Judy Garland Show Christmas Special", Garland sang the song to her children Joey and Lorna Luft with Sinatra's alternate lyrics.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 2001, Martin, occasionally active as a pianist with religious ministries since the 1980s, wrote an entirely new set of lyrics to the song with John Fricke, "Have Yourself a Blessed Little Christmas," a religious version of the secular Christmas standard. The song was recorded by female gospel vocalist Del Delker with Martin accompanying her on piano.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 2002, NewSong lead singer Michael O'Brien noted the line "through the years, we all will be together if the Lord allows," which was part of the original song, was purged and replaced with "if the fates allow" to remove religious reference when the song was released. He noted while a pastor in a California church in 1990 that he had met Martin, who played piano at the church where O'Brien was serving for an evening, and the pastor was told, "That's the original way I wrote it, so I want you to sing it this way."


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: Although Ralph Blane is credited with writing the music for many of Martin's songs, Martin claimed in his autobiography that he wrote both music and lyrics to all of the songs in "Meet Me in St. Louis" and that "all of the so-called Martin and Blane songs (except for "Best Foot Forward") were written entirely by me (solo) without help from Ralph or anybody else." His explanation for allowing Blane equal credit for the songs was: "I was reasonably content to let him receive equal screen credit, sheet music credit, ASCAP royalties, etc., mainly because this bizarre situation was caused by my naive and atrocious lack of business acumen."


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 2009, Keyshia Cole reached number 58 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart with a version of the song.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 2012, this song is featured in the fourth season of the Fox musical-comedy series "Glee" for the Christmas episode "Glee, Actually". Jacob Artist (Jake Puckerman), Chris Colfer (Kurt Hummel), Darren Criss (Blaine Anderson), Heather Morris (Brittany Pierce), Chord Overstreet (Sam Evans), and Mark Salling (Noah Puckerman) recorded vocals for this version. Melissa Benoist (Marley Rose) sang all of Morris's lines in the episode version.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 2014, English singer Sam Smith released a cover version which debuted at number 90 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, the first time a version of the song had charted on the "Billboard" list. The song reached top ten on the US and Canadian adult contemporary charts and on the US Holiday chart. It also peaked inside the top forty in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 2016, Josh Groban reached number 1 on the US Adult Contemporary charts with a version of the song.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 2017, Phoebe Bridgers covered the song and released it on her 2020 "If We Make It Through December" EP.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 2018, John Legend reached number 1 on the US Adult Contemporary charts with a version of the song from his album "A Legendary Christmas", featuring Esperanza Spalding on duet vocals.


title: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

text: In 1995, American singer Lorna Luft recorded a cover of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" which was reworked as a "virtual duet" with her mother Judy Garland. It was produced by Gordon Lorenz and released as a CD single only in the UK by Carlton Sounds label. A music video featured Luft performing the song in a studio interspersed with classic footage of Garland singing to a then 11-year-old Luft on the 1963 Christmas episode of her CBS variety television series "The Judy Garland Show", all placed on the same screen.


title: I Ran (So Far Away)

text: "I Ran (So Far Away)", also released as "I Ran", is a song by English new wave band A Flock of Seagulls. It was released in 1982 as their third single and it was the second single from their self-titled debut album. It topped the chart in Australia, and reached number seven in New Zealand and number nine in the United States, although it failed to make the top 40 in the band's home country (United Kingdom). However, the song was certified silver by the BPI.


title: I Ran (So Far Away)

text: In an article for "Rolling Stone" titled, "Anglomania: The Second British Invasion", Parke Puterbaugh wrote of the impact of the song's music video on its US chart success, "Fronted by a singer-synth player with a haircut stranger than anything you'd be likely to encounter in a month of poodle shows, A Flock of Seagulls struck gold on the first try."


title: I Ran (So Far Away)

text: Lead vocalist Mike Score says that there were two main sources of inspiration for "I Ran (So Far Away)". The members of A Flock of Seagulls would regularly visit Eric's Club in Liverpool, where one of the bands had a song called "I Ran". Score noted that because A Flock of Seagulls would rehearse right after returning from Eric's, the song title and chorus may have gotten stuck in his head. Another idea came from a poster at a Zoo Records office. The band had gone there with the intent of securing a recording contract, and they wanted to use the poster, which featured a man and a woman running away from a flying saucer, as the cover for their first album, "A Flock of Seagulls" (1982). This depiction also helped spark the song's unusual space-like lyrics.


title: I Ran (So Far Away)

text: "I Ran (So Far Away)" was recorded at Battery Studios in London with producer Mike Howlett. It is a new wave and synth-pop song, with a run time of five minutes and seven seconds. According to the sheet music, the song moves at a quick tempo of 145 beats per minute. With a chord progression of A-G-A-G in the verses and F-G-A in the choruses, the song is written in the key of A minor. During the song's introduction and musical interludes, short guitar riffs are played, which make use of echo. Guitarist Paul Reynolds had joined the band after the music was already written, so the short guitar riffs were added for Reynolds to play. Lyrically, "I Ran (So Far Away)" is about a man who sees an attractive woman and attempts to run away from his feelings. Before this happens, the man sees an aurora in the sky, and he and the woman are abducted by aliens.


title: I Ran (So Far Away)

text: The single was promoted by a distinctive music video directed by Tony van den Ende in which the band members performed in a room covered in aluminium foil and mirrors. The cameras used to film the video are clearly visible in many of the background reflections, their stands also covered in foil. The video is an homage to Brian Eno and Robert Fripp's "(No Pussyfooting)" album cover, which was also portrayed by the Strokes in the video for their single, "The End Has No End," two decades later. The video received heavy rotation on MTV in the summer of 1982, and helped the single to become a hit.


title: I Ran (So Far Away)

text: As Dave Thompson has pointed out, the song was "punningly political at a time when Iran itself was making headlines around the clock". The song, the music video, and the band were an "irresistible" package for American audiences, and by the summer of 1982, "America was clutching A Flock of Seagulls to its heart". According to Maz Jobrani, the release of the song was a "disaster" for Iranian-American children like himself. They were cruelly teased by other American children with the song's misheard chorus: "I-ran, I-ran so far away."


title: I Ran (So Far Away)

text: The band toured the United States extensively to promote the single, supporting Squeeze on their 1982 tour. As well as reaching number 9 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, "I Ran" peaked at number 3 on the Top Tracks chart and number 8 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart. Subsequently, the album reached number 10 on the "Billboard" 200.


title: I Ran (So Far Away)

text: In the VH1 special "100 Greatest Songs of the '80s," "I Ran" was listed at No. 55 on the countdown, while on the VH1 special "100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the 80s", the song was listed at No. 2.


title: I Ran (So Far Away)

text: Although considered a 1980s new wave classic, the song experienced something of a revival in 2002 as the signature theme for the video game "", being played during the game's television commercials and during gameplay as one of the songs in the playlist for radio station "Wave 103".


title: I Ran (So Far Away)

text: The song's apparent references to Iran were highlighted again in the fall of 2007, when the long-running American television show "Saturday Night Live" ran a parody version of the song that expressly mocked current Iranian policies like Holocaust denial.


title: Exile (American band)

text: Exile is an American band originally formed in 1963. In the 1970s, they were known as a rock band that had a major hit single with "Kiss You All Over" in 1978. After several lineup changes, the band was re-launched as a country act that achieved additional success in the 1980s and '90s. J.P. Pennington is the only current member of the band remaining from its early days.


title: Exile (American band)

text: The origins of Exile were with a high school band in Richmond, Kentucky, called the Fascinations, which featured singer Jimmy Stokley. In 1963, the Fascinations merged with another local band and became Jimmy Stokley and the Exiles, with singer/guitarist J.P. Pennington, then age 14, joining a short time later. They toured regionally with the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars in 1965. Their name was later shortened to The Exiles, apparently to show support for Cuban refugees.


title: Exile (American band)

text: After high school, the band moved to Lexington, Kentucky, and recorded several singles for Date Records, Columbia and RCA between 1968 and 1973. In 1973 the name was shortened again to Exile, with Stokley on lead vocals, Pennington on vocals and guitar, Buzz Cornelison on keyboards, Billy Luxon on trumpet and percussion, Bernie Faulkner on organ and sax, Kenny Weir on bass, and Bobby Johns on drums. This version of the band released a self-titled album on Wooden Nickel Records in 1973. They toured regionally for the next several years and had a minor pop hit with "Try It On" in 1977.


title: Exile (American band)

text: In 1978, Exile consisted of Stokley, Pennington, and Cornelison, plus second keyboardist Marlon Hargis, bassist Sonny LeMaire, and drummer Steve Goetzman. This lineup signed with Warner Brothers and released the album "Mixed Emotions". The disco-influenced single "Kiss You All Over", written by the album's producer Mike Chapman and his songwriting partner Nicky Chinn, topped the American singles chart for four weeks and also reached the top ten in a dozen European countries. The song attracted some controversy for its risqué lyrics, while Stokley gained media attention as a flamboyant and charismatic frontman.


title: Exile (American band)

text: The success of "Kiss You All Over" resulted in invitations for Exile to tour with Heart, Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac, and other leading rock acts of the period. The follow-up album "All There Is" yielded the minor hit single "The Part of Me That Needs You Most", which reached the top ten in South Africa and New Zealand in 1979.


title: Exile (American band)

text: Jimmy Stokley left the band in 1980 and was replaced by Les Taylor prior to recording sessions for the band's next album, "Don't Leave Me this Way". Stokley died at age 41 on August 13, 1985, due to complications from hepatitis, and was later inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame with a speech by J.P. Pennington. Another longtime member, keyboardist Buzz Cornelison, also departed in the early 1980s. Meanwhile, in 1981, the band released their final album under the Warner Brothers label, "Heart and Soul", featuring their original recording of the Chapman/Chinn-penned title track, which would become a big hit for Huey Lewis and the News several years later. Exile's version was released as a single but failed to crack the Hot 100.


title: Exile (American band)

text: At this point, under the leadership of Pennington, Exile was revamped as a country band with a southern rock flavor. This version of the band signed with Epic Records in 1983 and had a top 40 country single with their first Epic release, "High Cost of Leaving". Some of their songs were covered by other country artists, including Janie Fricke and Alabama, the latter of whom would turn Exile's "The Closer You Get" (from their 1980 album "Don't Leave Me This Way") into a #1 Country & Western single in 1983. Starting in 1983, Exile had three consecutive top ten albums on the "Billboard" Country Albums chart ("Exile", "Kentucky Hearts", and "Hang On to Your Heart", with the second of those reaching number one), and from 1983 to 1987 ten out of eleven singles reached number one on the "Billboard" Country Singles chart, making them one of the biggest country artists of the decade. They also received thirteen award nominations from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association.


title: Exile (American band)

text: Pennington and Taylor left the band in 1990, leaving it with no remaining members from its rock period. A new lineup featuring singer/guitarist Paul Martin signed with Arista Records and scored some more country hit singles, but they were dropped by Arista after the 1991 album "Justice" and disbanded in 1993. Twenty-one former members gathered for a farewell concert at the Grand Ole Opry.


title: Exile (American band)

text: After leaving Exile in 1990, J.P. Pennington and Les Taylor both signed solo deals and achieved minor hit singles on the U.S. country charts. Pennington and Taylor performed together on stage in 1995 and decided to resurrect the Exile name. The new version of the band, led by Pennington and Taylor with a shifting cast of sidemen, continued to tour the nostalgia circuit. Since the 1990s the group has released several live albums, plus the new album "Wrapped Up in Your Arms for Christmas" in 2016"."


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs, officially known as Questions to the Prime Minister, while colloquially known as Prime Minister's Question Time) is a constitutional convention in the United Kingdom, currently held as a single session every Wednesday at noon when the House of Commons is sitting, during which the prime minister answers questions from members of Parliament (MPs).The Institute for Government has described PMQs as 'the most distinctive and internationally famous feature of British politics.'


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: Although prime ministers have answered questions in parliament for centuries, until the 1880s, questions to the prime minister were treated the same as questions to other ministers of the Crown: asked without notice, on days when ministers were available, in whatever order MPs rose to ask them. In 1881 fixed time-limits for questions were introduced and questions to the prime minister were moved to the last slot of the day as a courtesy to the 72-year-old prime minister at the time, William Ewart Gladstone, so he could come to the Commons later in the day. In 1953, when Winston Churchill (in his late 70s at the time) was prime minister, it was agreed that questions would be submitted on fixed days (Tuesdays and Thursdays).


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: A Procedure Committee report in 1959 recommended that questions to the prime minister be taken in two fixed-period, 15-minute slots on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. The recommendations were put into practice under Harold Macmillan during a successful experiment from 18 July 1961 to the end of the session on 4 August. The very first question was delivered by Labour MP Fenner Brockway, asking to which minister the UK ambassador to South Africa would be responsible. In response to the prime minister's answer, Brockway said "May I express our appreciation of this new arrangement for answering Questions and the hope that it will be convenient for the Prime Minister as well as useful to the House?" PMQs were made permanent in the following parliamentary session, with the first of these on 24 October 1961.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: The style and culture of PMQs has changed gradually over time. According to former Speaker Selwyn Lloyd, the now famous disorderly behaviour of MPs during PMQs first arose as a result of the personal animosity between Harold Wilson and Edward Heath; before this PMQs had been lively but comparatively civilised. In the past, prime ministers often opted to transfer questions to the relevant minister, and Leaders of the Opposition did not always take their allocated number of questions in some sessions, sometimes opting not to ask any questions at all. This changed during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, when the prime minister chose not to transfer any questions to other members of her Cabinet, and Labour leader Neil Kinnock began asking more questions than his predecessors. His successor, John Smith, established the precedent of always taking his full allocation of questions.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: One of Tony Blair's first acts as prime minister was to replace the two 15-minute sessions with a single 30-minute session on Wednesdays, initially at 3 p.m. but since 2003 at noon. The allocated number of questions in each session for the Leader of the Opposition was doubled from three to six, and the leader of the third-largest party in the Commons was given two questions as opposed to one question beforehand. The first PMQs to use this new format took place on 21 May 1997.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: During the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government from 2010 to 2015, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, as a member of the government, did not ask questions during PMQs. Instead, the leader of the second largest parliamentary opposition party at the time, Nigel Dodds of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), usually asked a single question later in the session, followed by at least one MP from another party such as the Scottish National Party or Plaid Cymru.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: Backbench MPs wishing to ask a question must enter their names on the Order Paper. The names of entrants are then shuffled in a ballot to produce a random order in which they will be called by the Speaker. The Speaker will then call on MPs to put their questions, usually in an alternating fashion: one MP from the government benches is followed by one from the opposition benches. MPs who are not selected may be chosen to ask a supplementary question if they "catch the eye" of the Speaker, which is done by standing and sitting immediately before the prime minister gives an answer.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: The leader of the opposition usually asks six questions at PMQs, either as a whole block or in two separate groups of three. If the first question is asked by a government backbencher, the Leader of the Opposition is the second MP to ask questions. If the first question is asked by an opposition MP, this will be followed by a question from a government MP and then by the questions from the Leader of the Opposition. The leader of the third largest parliamentary party (the Liberal Democrats from 1988 to 2010 and the Scottish National Party from 2015) would then ask two questions.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: The first formal question on the Order Paper, posed by simply saying "number one, Mr [Madam] Speaker", is usually to ask the Prime Minister "if he [she] will list his [her] engagements for the day". The prime minister usually replies:


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: In the Prime Minister's absence the Deputy Prime Minister (or First Secretary of State) usually replies:


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: The reason for such a question is that, historically, the prime minister may be questioned only as to those matters for which they are directly responsible. Such matters are relatively few in number, because many substantive matters are handled by the other Cabinet ministers. By requiring the prime minister to list his or her engagements, the members may then inquire whether the Prime Minister ought to be engaged in some other activity or be taking some other action.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: Before listing the day's engagements, the prime minister sometimes extends condolences or offers congratulations after significant events. During the Iraq War, Tony Blair introduced the practice of naming any British military personnel who had been killed in service since the last time he addressed the House. This practice was continued by Blair's successors as prime minister. After this, the MP may ask a supplementary question about any subject that might occupy the Prime Minister's time. Most MPs table the same engagements question and so after it has been asked for the first time, any other MPs who have tabled the same question are simply called to ask an untabled question, meaning that the Prime Minister will not know what questions will be asked.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: Occasionally the first question tabled is on a specific area of policy, not the engagements question. This, though, is quite rare as it would allow the Prime Minister to prepare a response in advance; the non-descript question allows some chance of catching him or her out with an unexpected supplementary question.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: At times of national or personal tragedy or crisis, PMQs have been temporarily suspended. The last such suspension occurred on 25 February 2009 when the Speaker, at the request of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, suspended the Commons as a mark of respect following the unexpected death of Opposition leader David Cameron's son. Prime Minister's Questions was also suspended following the sudden death of the leader of the Labour Party, John Smith, in 1994.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: PMQs has been filmed since 1989, and has been broadcast live since 1990. It is broadcast live in the United Kingdom on the BBC Two and BBC Parliament television channels. It is also broadcast outside the United Kingdom, most notably on the international pay television network BBC World News and the US cable network C-SPAN.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: If the prime minister is away on official business when PMQs is scheduled, their role is usually filled by the deputy prime minister or first secretary of state. If these offices are not occupied or the deputy prime minister is not available, the next most senior member of the Cabinet will receive questions (such as the first secretary of state or the deputy leader of the government party). In the absence of the Leader of the Opposition, the opposition questions will be usually led by the next highest-ranking member of the Shadow Cabinet. From 1992 to 2020, a convention was in place that if either the prime minister or the leader of the Opposition is absent, the other faction would nominate someone to stand, meaning that both sides were stood in for. This precedent was broken at Keir Starmer's first PMQs as leader of the Opposition, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hospitalised due to illness with COVID-19. Dominic Raab, as first secretary of state, stood in for Johnson. On 16 September 2020, a member of Starmer's household displayed COVID-19 symptoms, meaning he was self-isolating. As a result, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Shadow First Secretary of State Angela Rayner stood in for him putting questions to Johnson. Before 1992, the replacement would often question the prime minister or vice versa. For example, Roy Hattersley, the deputy leader of the Labour Party between 1983 and 1992, stood in for Neil Kinnock facing Margaret Thatcher on 38 occasions between February 1984 and July 1990.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: Boris Johnson also became the first prime minister to answer PMQs outside the chamber virtually after having been told to isolate after meeting with Lee Anderson who later tested positive for COVID-19. Keir Starmer became the first leader of the opposition to ask questions remotely a month later after a member of his office staff contracted COVID-19.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: During the Cameron–Clegg coalition, Nick Clegg answered 15 PMQs and William Hague twice, all opposite Harriet Harman. Harman had previously in her capacity as the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and de facto Deputy Prime Minister, answered PMQs for Gordon Brown on 10 occasions between April 2008 and March 2010, all opposite William Hague. During the Second Cameron ministry, George Osborne answered three times, opposite Angela Eagle. In the Second May ministry, Damian Green replied twice, opposite Emily Thornberry, while David Lidington did so six times, opposite Thornberry and Rebecca Long-Bailey. On 2 October 2019, Diane Abbott became the first Black MP to stand for PMQs and ask the six main questions when she challenged the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, in his capacity as first secretary of state.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: The most high-profile contributors at Prime Minister's Questions are the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition, who speak opposite each other at the dispatch box. Regular, fixed sessions have taken place since 1961, and the list below outlines the prime ministers since 1961 and Opposition party leaders they faced across the floor of the House of Commons, as well as the secondary opposition leader since 1997 (usually the leader of third largest party within the House of Commons):


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister's Questions is broadcast live via cameras within the Press Gallery inside the House of Commons on domestic national television channels BBC Two, the BBC News Channel, BBC Parliament and Sky News. It is also broadcast live on the national radio station BBC Radio 5 Live.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: In the United States, Prime Minister's Questions is broadcast live on the national C-SPAN television network. C-SPAN also has an archive of Prime Minister's Questions coverage going back to 1989 when it was first televised. There is no live radio coverage of Prime Minister's Questions in that country.


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: Prime Minister's Questions has been spoofed on the American late-night television sketch comedy "Saturday Night Live".


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: In a C-SPAN interview in 1991, shortly after the network started to broadcast PMQs, US President George H. W. Bush said, "I count my blessings for the fact I don't have to go into that pit that John Major stands in, nose-to-nose with the opposition, all yelling at each other."


title: Prime Minister's Questions

text: Worldwide, Prime Minister's Questions is broadcast live via the official British Parliament website parliamentlive.tv, in visual and audio form.


title: Félix Guattari

text: Pierre-Félix Guattari ( , ; 30 April 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næss, and is best known for his literary and philosophical collaborations with Deleuze, most notably "Anti-Oedipus" (1972) and "A Thousand Plateaus" (1980), the two volumes of their theoretical work "Capitalism and Schizophrenia".


title: Félix Guattari

text: Guattari was born in Villeneuve-les-Sablons, a working-class suburb of northwest Paris, France. His father was a factory manager and he was engaged in Trotskyist political activism as a teenager, before studying and training under (and was analyzed by) the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in the early 1950s. Subsequently, he worked all his life at the experimental psychiatric clinic of La Borde under the direction of Lacan's pupil, the psychiatrist Jean Oury. He first met Oury at a private psychiatric clinic in Saumery in the Loire region at the suggestion of Oury's brother Fernand, who had been Guattari's high school teacher. Guattari followed Oury to La Borde in 1955, two years after it had been established. La Borde was a venue for conversation among many students of philosophy, psychology, ethnology, and social work.


title: Félix Guattari

text: One particularly novel orientation developed at La Borde consisted of the suspension of the classical analyst/analysand pair in favour of an open confrontation in group therapy. In contrast to the Freudian school's individualistic style of analysis, this practice studied the dynamics of several subjects in complex interaction. It led Guattari into a broader philosophical exploration of, and political engagement with, a vast array of intellectual and cultural domains (philosophy, ethnology, linguistics, architecture, etc.).


title: Félix Guattari

text: From 1955 to 1965, Guattari edited and contributed to "La Voie Communiste" ("Communist Way"), a Trotskyist newspaper. He supported anti-colonialist struggles as well as the Italian Autonomists. Guattari also took part in the G.T.P.S.I., which gathered many psychiatrists at the beginning of the 1960s and created the Association of Institutional Psychotherapy in November 1965. It was at the same time that he founded, along with other militants, the F.G.E.R.I. (Federation of Groups for Institutional Study & Research) and its review "Recherche" ("Research"), working on philosophy, psychoanalysis, ethnology, education, mathematics, architecture, etc. The F.G.E.R.I. came to represent aspects of the multiple political and cultural engagements of Guattari: the Group for Young Hispanics, the Franco-Chinese Friendships (in the times of the people's communes), the opposition activities with the wars in Algeria and Vietnam, the participation in the M.N.E.F., with the U.N.E.F., the policy of the offices of psychological academic aid (B.A.P.U.), the organization of the University Working Groups (G.T.U.), but also the reorganizations of the training courses with the Centers of Training to the Methods of Education Activities (C.E.M.E.A.) for psychiatric male nurses, as well as the formation of a Fellowship of Nurses (Amicales d'infirmiers) (in 1958), the studies on architecture and the projects of construction of a day hospital for "students and young workers".


title: Félix Guattari

text: In 1967, he appeared as one of the founders of OSARLA (Organization of solidarity and Aid to the Latin-American Revolution). In 1968, Guattari met Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Jean-Jacques Lebel, and Julian Beck. He was involved in the large-scale French protests of May 1968, starting from the Movement of 22 March. It was in the aftermath of 1968 that Guattari met Gilles Deleuze at the University of Vincennes. Then he began to lay the groundwork for "Anti-Oedipus" (1972), which Michel Foucault described as "an introduction to the non-fascist life" in his preface to the book. In 1970, he created ), which developed the approach explored in the "Recherches" journal. In 1973, Guattari was tried and fined for committing an "outrage to public decency" for publishing an issue of "Recherches" on homosexuality. In 1977, he created the CINEL for "new spaces of freedom" before joining the environmental movement with his "ecosophy" in the 1980s.


title: Félix Guattari

text: In his last book, "Chaosmosis" (1992), Guattari returned to the question of subjectivity: "How to produce it, collect it, enrich it, reinvent it permanently in order to make it compatible with mutant Universes of value?" This concern runs through all of his works, from "Psychoanalysis and Transversality" (a collection of articles from 1957 to 1972), through "Years of Winter" (1980–1986) and "Schizoanalytic Cartographies" (1989), to his collaboration with Deleuze, "What is Philosophy?" (1991). In "Chaosmosis", Guattari proposes an analysis of subjectivity in terms of four functors: (1) material, energetic, and semiotic fluxes; (2) concrete and abstract machinic phyla; (3) virtual universes of value; and (4) finite existential territories. This scheme attempts to grasp the heterogeneity of components involved in the production of subjectivity, as Guattari understands it, which include both signifying semiotic components as well as "a-signifying semiological dimensions" (which work "in parallel or independently of" any signifying function that they may have).


title: Félix Guattari

text: On 29 August 1992, two weeks after an interview for the Greek television curated by Yiorgos Veltsos, Guattari died in La Borde from a heart attack.


title: Félix Guattari

text: In 1995, the posthumous release of Guattari's "Chaosophy" published essays and interviews concerning Guattari's work as director of the experimental La Borde clinic and his collaborations with Deleuze. The collection includes essays such as "Balance-Sheet Program for Desiring Machines," cosigned by Deleuze (with whom he coauthored "Anti-Oedipus" and "A Thousand Plateaus"), and "Everybody Wants To Be a Fascist." It provides an introduction to Guattari's theories on "schizoanalysis", a process that develops Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis but which pursues a more experimental and collective approach towards analysis.


title: Félix Guattari

text: In 1996, another collection of Guattari's essays, lectures, and interviews, "Soft Subversions", was published, which traces the development of his thought and activity throughout the 1980s ("the winter years"). His analyses of art, cinema, youth culture, economics, and power formations, develop concepts such as "micropolitics," "schizoanalysis," and "becoming-woman," which aim to liberate subjectivity and open up new horizons for political and creative resistance to the standardizing and homogenizing processes of global capitalism (which he calls "Integrated World Capitalism") in the "post-media era." For example, he used the term "micropolitics" to delimit a certain level of observation of social practices (the unconscious economy, where there is a certain flexibility in the expression of desire and institution) and, practically, to define, in a segregated world, the field of intervention of "people who work to interest themselves in the discourse of the other."


title: Félix Guattari

text: Note: Many of the essays found in these works have been individually translated and can be found in the English collections.


title: Honeypot ant

text: Honeypot ants, also called honey ants, are ants which have specialised workers (repletes, plerergates, or rotunds) that are gorged with food to the point that their abdomens swell enormously. Other ants then extract nourishment from them, through the process of trophallaxis. They function as living larders. Honeypot ants belong to any of several genera, including "Myrmecocystus" and "Camponotus". They were first documented in 1881 by Henry C. McCook, and described further in 1908 by William Morton Wheeler.


title: Honeypot ant

text: Many insects, notably honey bees and some wasps, collect and store liquid for use at a later date. However, these insects store their food within their nest or in combs. Honey ants are unique in using their own bodies as living storage, used later by their fellow ants when food is otherwise scarce. When the liquid stored inside a honeypot ant is needed, the worker ants stroke the antennae of the honeypot ant, causing the honeypot ant to regurgitate the stored liquid from its crop.


title: Honeypot ant

text: The abdomen of species like "Camponotus inflatus" consists of hard dorsal sclerites (stiff plates) connected by a softer, more flexible arthrodial membrane. When the abdomen is empty, the arthrodial membrane is folded and the sclerites overlap, but when the abdomen fills the arthrodial membrane becomes fully stretched, leaving the sclerites widely separated.


title: Honeypot ant

text: "Myrmecocystus" nests are found in a variety of arid or semiarid environments. Some species live in extremely hot deserts, others reside in transitional habitats, and still other species can be found in woodlands which are somewhat cool but still very dry for a large part of the year. For instance, the well-studied "Myrmecocystus mexicanus" resides in the arid and semiarid habitats of the southwestern United States. Sterile workers in this species act as plerergates or repletes during times of food scarcity. When the plerergates are fully engorged, they become immobile and hang from the ceilings of the underground nests. Other workers drain them of their liquid food stores to feed the rest of the colony. Plerergates can live anywhere in the nest, but in the wild, they are found deep underground, unable to move, swollen to the size of grapes.


title: Honeypot ant

text: In "Camponotus inflatus" in Australia, repletes formed 49% (516 ants) of a colony of 1063 ants, and 46% (1835 ants) of a colony of 4019 ants. The smaller colony contained six wingless queens. The larger colony had 66 chambers containing repletes, with a maximum of 191 repletes in a chamber. The largest replete was 15 millimetres long and had a mass of 1.4 grams. The nest had a maximum depth of 1.7 metres, and tunnels stretched 2.4 metres from the nest entrance. The workers went out foraging during daylight to collect nectar from "Mulga" nectaries, and meat from the carcass of a "Tiliqua" blue-tongued lizard.


title: Honeypot ant

text: Honeypot ants such as "Melophorus bagoti" and "Camponotus" spp. are edible insects and form an occasional part of the diet of various Indigenous Australians. These people scrape the surface to locate the ants' vertical tunnels, and then dig as much as two metres deep to find the honeypots. Papunya, in Australia's Northern Territory, is named after a honey ant creation story, or Dreaming, which belongs to the people there, such as the Warlpiri. The honey ants were celebrated in the Western Desert Art Movement's "The Honey Ant Mural", painted in 1971.


title: Clique

text: A clique (, , or ), in the social sciences, is a group of individuals who interact with one another and share similar interests. Interacting with cliques is part of normative social development regardless of gender, ethnicity, or popularity. Although cliques are most commonly studied during adolescence and middle childhood development, they exist in all age groups. They are often bound together by shared social characteristics such as ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Examples of common or stereotypical adolescent cliques include athletes, nerds, and "outsiders".


title: Clique

text: Typically, people in a clique will not have a completely open friend group and can, therefore, "ban" members if they do something considered unacceptable, such as talking to someone disliked. Some cliques tend to isolate themselves as a group and view themselves as superior to others, which can be demonstrated through bullying and other antisocial behaviors.


title: Clique

text: Within the concepts of sociology, cliques are a formation of two or more individuals who share bonding characteristics that allow for them to identify with one another to form a social network. Those within the group communicate and associate with one another more than those outside of the group. The formation of cliques can be identified within different social environments throughout the course of their lives. One person may be part of multiple cliques, each forming and functioning independently from one another. Cliques are relevant in society due to the social influence or peer pressure that results from the interactions with individuals who share a common characteristic. The outcomes associated with clique formations may be endless, with varying degrees of influence. So, a formal clique, such as a professional organization, would have a different kind of influence as compared to a social clique consisting of close friends.


title: Clique

text: In their article "Social Isolation In America", Paolo Parigi and Warner Henson II define social isolation as "the degree of apartness of an entity; [which] may have structural or subjective interpretations." Social isolation may occur when cliques set themselves apart from other groups.


title: Clique

text: A clique can also involve a high degree of social commitment to a specific group. A stronger level of commitment results in an individual having a reduced amount of interaction with other social groups. Cliquish behavior often involves repetition concerning activities, vernacular, preferences, and manner, resulting in conflict with other cliques, creating "outsiders." Individuals can also experience social isolation within their own clique if their values and/or behavior begin to differ from the rest of the group.


title: Clique

text: Different factors affect the way cliques are established and who is included within their membership. In some cases, people are subconsciously placed in a clique by association. For example, joining a basketball team usually causes others to perceive you as an "athlete automatically." Many people may gravitate toward a clique subconsciously through how they are perceived or whom they may be associated with.


title: Clique

text: Sharing similar interests is the most common way cliques are formed. As people interact with each other doing the simple things they enjoy doing, they may find themselves drifting towards or becoming attracted to others who share the same passion. This usually causes one to gain confidence by being surrounded by people who share similar interests, and it may cause an individual to feel more socially accepted.


title: Clique

text: Ethnicity usually plays a role according to the setting or time frame. In today's society, race still is prevalent, and therefore, cliques solely based on race have been formed.


title: Clique

text: Members of cliques often create their own distinct dress code and uniquely communicate with one another. As a result, this makes a clique unique and reassures each member that they belong to that specific group. As these cliques come together, it isn't hard to distinguish one from the other. For example, Deadheads, the followers of the band The Grateful Dead, identify one another with various forms of tie-dyed clothing.


title: Clique

text: Interactions among members of a clique can also lead to organized social events, such as parties, significant dates, or private meetings. Clique members have a strong commitment to their respective groups. In regards to this, being present at social events is seen as mandatory. Considering this, it shows the firmness of cliques and how people ultimately conform to these specific groups.


title: Clique

text: Tina Abbott in her book "Social and Personality Development" describes how these members conform to their specific group. "Conformity to peer groups is a prerequisite to achieving independence and autonomy as an adult... As the young person struggles to become independent from their parents, they use the security provided by the peer group and the self-confidence that comes with it, to take the final step towards independence".


title: Clique

text: Homophily is how people tend to link up with others because they share similar characteristics. The existence of homophily is also very prevalent in today's society. This concept can be seen as a possible main cause of clique formation.


title: Clique

text: On the subject of homophily, people come together and link up for many different reasons. The most typical reason is people who are close in a location easily bond with each other. Also, people who meet through the family, workplace, or any activity that places people in contact with others often form personal relationships.


title: Clique

text: This involves meeting new people to form relationships and work together to gain better opportunities. Some people find that being associated with a clique is a way to find or gain a better chance at success. For example, many join a sorority or fraternity to gain an advantage at getting a job because they may be hired by someone affiliated. Cliques go hand in hand in the way people network and are especially prevalent for those looking for jobs.


title: Clique

text: Every clique has some form of organization that makes up the network of social interaction. Informal clique networks are groups that do not have a legitimate organizational structure in which they can be established and dissolved in a shorter time period. An informal clique may consist of a person's friend group or co-workers while also identifying other more informal groups, such as criminal gangs. On the other hand, a formal clique is a group with a socially accepted organization that is hierarchical in structure. A formal clique is composed of members who have identifiable roles and interactions with one another and is found in numerous professional organizations, businesses, and even family structure. Culture is a very influential factor in the organization of clique structures because the boundaries established through differences in cultural aspects are persistent, even when the membership varies from time to time. For example, the differences in language, beliefs, traditions, etc. have always created a distinct separation or boundary between groups of people even though the group members are constantly changing.


title: Clique

text: The formation and deformation of clique structures do not end with adolescence, even though the number of interactions with clique groups decreases, and the type of groups may change. As individuals become adults, their social interpretations alter, and their cliques originate from their immediate environment, rather than from common social characteristics. A clique should not be confused with a crowd because the smaller size and specific boundaries of a group is what causes the group formation to be considered a clique. A clique can develop in several different ways and within environments that consist of individuals who interact regularly. The structural cohesion of the clique is the constant face-to-face interaction between members that can either create or dissolve the group, depending upon the level of interaction. If face-to-face interaction is regularly established, then cohesion between individuals will form. However, if the face-to-face interaction depreciates, then the cohesive social bond between said individuals will eventually dissolve.


title: Clique

text: A clique may inhibit external social influence by impacting the emotions, opinions, or behaviors of group members. There are many ways in which the perception of information between members in a clique can influence other members on a greater level than if they had received the same information from a different source. For example, receiving information from a close friend or family member is interpreted and responded to differently from receiving the same information from someone who is not within the clique structure. The satisfaction, interaction, and closeness of an individual's clique groups develop and change throughout the years. Yet, there is always a constant morphing of both the individual and the group as time goes on.


title: Remote keyless system

text: A remote keyless system (RKS), also known as keyless entry or remote central locking, is an electronic lock that controls access to a building or vehicle by using an electronic remote control (activated by a handheld device or automatically by proximity).


title: Remote keyless system

text: Widely used in automobiles, an RKS performs the functions of a standard car key without physical contact. When within a few yards of the car, pressing a button on the remote can lock or unlock the doors, and may perform other functions.


title: Remote keyless system

text: A remote keyless system can include both "remote keyless entry" (RKE), which unlocks the doors, and "remote keyless ignition" (RKI), which starts the engine.


title: Remote keyless system

text: One of the first introductions was in 1980 on the Ford Thunderbird, Mercury Cougar, Lincoln Continental Mark VI, and Lincoln Town Car, which Ford called "Keyless Entry System" (later renamed SecuriCode). It was a keypad on the driver-side exterior door above the door handle. It consisted of a keypad with five buttons that when the code was entered, would unlock the driver's door, with subsequent code entries to unlock all doors, and the trunk. Nissan offered the same technology on the Nissan Maxima and Nissan Fairlady beginning in 1984, essentially using the same approach as Ford, with the addition of being able to roll the windows down and open the optional moonroof from outside the vehicle on the door handle installed keypad on both the driver's and front passengers door.


title: Remote keyless system

text: The remote keyless systems using a handheld transmitter first began appearing on the French made Renault Fuego in 1982, and as an option on several American Motors vehicles in 1983, including the Renault Alliance. The feature gained its first widespread availability in the U.S. on several General Motors vehicles in 1989.


title: Remote keyless system

text: Keyless remotes contain a short-range radio transmitter, and must be within a certain range, usually 5–20 meters, of the car to work. When a button is pushed, it sends a coded signal by radio waves to a receiver unit in the car, which locks or unlocks the door. Most RKEs operate at a frequency of 315 MHz for North America-made cars and at 433.92 MHz for European, Japanese and Asian cars. Modern systems since the mid-1990s implement encryption as well as rotating entry codes to prevent car thieves from intercepting and spoofing the signal. Earlier systems used infrared instead of radio signals to unlock the vehicle, such as systems found on Mercedes-Benz, BMW and other manufacturers.