Election.

The President of Israel is elected by an absolute majority in the Knesset, by secret ballot. If no candidate receives an absolute majority of votes in the first round of voting, a second round, in which only the two most-voted candidates in the first round may participate, is held; the top vote-getter in the second round is the winner. From 1949 to 2000, the president was elected for a five-year term, and was allowed to serve up to two terms in office. Since 2000, the president serves a single seven-year term.  Any Israeli resident citizen is eligible to run for President. The office falls vacant upon completion of a term, death, resignation, or the decision of three-quarters of the Knesset to remove the president on grounds of misconduct or incapacity. Presidential tenure is not keyed to that of the Knesset, in order to assure continuity in government and the non-partisan character of the office. There is no vice president in the Israeli governmental system. If the president is temporarily incapacitated, or leaves office, the speaker of the Knesset becomes acting president.  The first presidential election took place on 16 February 1949, and the winner was Chaim Weizmann. The second took place in 1951, as at the time presidential terms were linked to the length of the Knesset term (the first Knesset lasted only two years). Another election took place the following year after Weizmann's death.  Since then, elections have been held in 1957, 1962, 1963 (an early election following Yitzhak Ben-Zvi's death), 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2000, 2007, and 2014. Six elections (1951, 1957, 1962, 1968, 1978, and 1988) have taken place with no opposition candidate, although a vote was still held.

Powers and responsibilities.

The powers of the President of Israel are generally equivalent to those held by heads of state in other parliamentary democracies and are largely dictated by Basic Law: The Presidency, which was passed in 1964. The Basic Law: The Government also includes sections on the powers of the president with reference to the government. The president signs every law (except those that pertain to the president's powers) and international or bilateral treaties approved by the Knesset. In addition, the president endorses the credentials of ambassadors and receives the credentials of foreign diplomats, appoints the Governor of the Bank of Israel, the State Comptroller upon recommendation of the Knesset House Committee, members of the Council on Higher Education, the National Academy of Science, the Broadcasting Authority, the Authority to Rehabilitate Prisoners, the Chief Rabbinical Council, the Wolf Foundation, the president of Magen David Adom, the president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and ceremonially appoints the Prime Minister. The president also has the power to pardon or commute the sentences of both soldiers and civilians, and ceremonially appoints judges to courts, including the Supreme Court, after appointment by the Judicial Selection Committee.  In addition, paragraph 29a of "The Government" basic law also states that the president must consent to the dissolution of the Knesset at the request of the Prime Minister when the government has lost its majority and can therefore no longer function effectively.  Unlike most presidents in parliamentary republics, the President of Israel is not even the "nominal" chief executive. explicitly vests executive power in the Government (as the Cabinet is officially called). Presidential powers are usually exercised based on the recommendation of appropriate government ministers.  The president's most important role, in practice, is to help lead the process of forming a government. Israel's electoral system and fractured political landscape make it all but impossible for one party to govern alone, let alone win an outright majority of Knesset seats. After each election, the president consults with party leaders to determine who is most likely to command a majority in the Knesset.

Other roles.

The president awards the Israel Prize on Yom Ha'atzmaut and the Wolf Prize. The president also serves as the main speaker at the opening ceremonies of the half-yearly Knesset conference, as well as at the annual official ceremonies for Yom Hazikaron and Yom HaShoah.

Presidential backgrounds.

Most Israeli presidents were involved in national politics or Zionist activities before taking office. Some were also distinguished in other fields. For example, Chaim Weizmann was a leading research chemist who founded the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot; Zalman Shazar was an author, poet, and journalist; and Chaim Herzog was a military leader, attorney, and diplomat.  The first Israeli presidents were born in the former Russian Empire, which was true of much of the leadership in the early days of the state. The first native-born president, as well as the first with a Sephardi background, was Yitzhak Navon. The first president with a Western European background was Chaim Herzog, who originally came from Belfast, United Kingdom. The first president with a Mizrahi background was Moshe Katsav, who was born in Iran.

Political affiliation.

All Israeli presidents from Yitzhak Ben-Zvi to Ezer Weizman were members of, or associated with, the Labor Party and its predecessors, and have been considered politically moderate. Moshe Katsav was the first Likud president. These tendencies were especially significant in the April 1978 election of Labor's Yitzhak Navon, following the inability of the governing Likud coalition to elect its candidate to the presidency. Israeli observers believed that, in counterbalance to Prime Minister Menachem Begin's polarizing leadership, Navon, the country's first president of Sephardi origin, provided Israel with unifying symbolic leadership at a time of great political controversy and upheaval. In 1983, Navon decided to re-enter Labor politics after five years of non-partisan service as president, and Chaim Herzog (previously head of military intelligence and Ambassador of Israel to the United Nations) succeeded him as Israel's sixth president. Likud's Moshe Katsav's victory over Labor's Shimon Peres in 2000 (by secret ballot) was an upset.  Albert Einstein, a Jew, but not an Israeli citizen, was offered the presidency in 1952, but turned it down, stating: "I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it. All my life I have dealt with objective matters, hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official functions." Ehud Olmert was reported to be considering offering the presidency to another non-Israeli, Elie Wiesel, but he was said to be "very not interested".

The President of the State of Israel (, "Nesi Medinat Yisra'el", or, "Nesi HaMedina"; literally, "President of the State") is the head of state of Israel. The position is largely a ceremonial figurehead role, with executive power vested in the Government and the Prime Minister. The current president is Reuven Rivlin, who took office on 24 July 2014. Presidents are elected by the Knesset for a single seven-year term.

Prezident Státu Izrael (:, "nesi ha-medina", doslova „prezident státu“) je izraelská hlava státu. Tato funkce je z větší části ceremoniální s tím, že výkonná moc je v rukou premiéra. Současným prezidentem je Re'uven Rivlin, který do úřadu nastoupil 24. července 2014. Prezidenta volí Kneset na sedmileté funkční období, které lze vykonávat pouze jedenkrát.


History.

1970–1973: Formation and early albums.

In 1968, Roy Wood — guitarist, vocalist and songwriter of The Move — had an idea to form a new band that would use violins, cellos, string basses, horns and woodwinds to give their music a classical sound, taking rock music in the direction to "pick up where The Beatles left off". The orchestral instruments would be the main focus, rather than the guitars. Jeff Lynne, frontman of fellow Birmingham group The Idle Race, was excited by the concept. When Trevor Burton left The Move in February 1969, Lynne was asked by Wood to join, only to say no, as he was still focused on finding success with his band. But in January 1970, when Carl Wayne quit the band, Lynne accepted Wood's second invitation to join, on the condition that they focus their energy on the new project.  On 12 July 1970, when Wood added multiple cellos to a Lynne-penned song intended to be a Move B-side, the new concept became a reality and "10538 Overture" became the first Electric Light Orchestra song. The original plan was to end The Move following the release of the "Looking On" album at the end of 1970, crossing over to the new unit in the new year, but to help finance the fledgling band, one further Move album, "Message from the Country", was also recorded during the lengthy ELO recordings and released in mid-1971. The resulting debut album "The Electric Light Orchestra" was released in December 1971. Only the trio of Wood, Lynne and Bevan played on all songs, with Bill Hunt supplying the French Horn parts and Steve Woolam playing violin. It was released in the United States in March 1972 as "No Answer". The name was chosen after a record company secretary had tried to ring the UK company to get the name of the album. They were unavailable so she left a note reading "No answer". "10538 Overture" became a UK top-ten hit. With both band's albums in the stores simultaneously, The Move and ELO both appeared on television during this period.  ELO's debut concert took place on 16 April 1972 at the Greyhound Pub in Croydon, Surrey, with a line-up of Wood, Lynne, Bevan, Bill Hunt (keyboards/French horn), Andy Craig (cello), Mike Edwards (cello), Wilfred Gibson (violin), Hugh McDowell (cello), and Richard Tandy (bass). However, this line-up did not last for long. First Craig departed, and then Wood, during the recordings for the band's second LP. Taking Hunt and McDowell with him, Wood left the band to form Wizzard. Both cited problems with their manager, Don Arden, whom Wood felt failed in his role, and an unsatisfactory tour of Italy, where the cellos and violins could not be heard over the electric instruments. However, Arden would manage Wizzard, despite Wood's negative comments towards Arden. Despite predictions from the music press that the band would fold without Wood, who had been the driving force behind the creation of ELO, Lynne stepped up to lead the band, with Bevan, Edwards, Gibson and Tandy (who had switched from bass to keyboards to replace Hunt) remaining from the previous line-up, and new recruits Mike de Albuquerque and Colin Walker joining the band on bass and cello, respectively.  The new line-up performed at the 1972 Reading Festival on 12 August 1972. Barcus Berry instrument pick-ups, now sported by the band's string trio, allowed them to have proper amplification on stage for their instruments, which had previously been all but drowned out by the electrified instruments. The band released their second album, "ELO 2" in early 1973, which produced their second UK top 10 and their first US chart single, an elaborate version of the Chuck Berry classic "Roll Over Beethoven" (which also incorporated the first movement of Beethoven's own Fifth Symphony). ELO also made their first appearance on "American Bandstand". During the recording of the third album, Gibson was let go after a dispute over money, Mik Kaminski joined as violinist, and Walker left since touring was keeping him away from his family too much. Remaining cellist Edwards finished the cello parts for the album. The resulting album, "On the Third Day", was released in late 1973, with the American version featuring the popular single "Showdown". After leaving Wizzard, Hugh McDowell returned as the group's second cellist, also in late 1973.

1974–1982: Global success and concept albums.

For the band's fourth album, "Eldorado", a concept album about a daydreamer, Lynne stopped multi-tracking strings and hired Louis Clark as string arranger with an orchestra and choir. The first single off the album, "Can't Get It Out of My Head", became their first US top 10 hit, and "Eldorado, A Symphony" became ELO's first gold album. Mike de Albuquerque departed the band during the recording sessions as he wished to spend more time with his family, and consequently much of the bass on the album was performed by Lynne.  Following the release of "Eldorado", Kelly Groucutt was recruited as bassist and in early 1975, Melvyn Gale replaced Edwards on cello. The line-up stabilised as the band took to a decidedly more accessible sound. ELO had become successful in the US at this point and the group was a star attraction on the stadium and arena circuit, and regularly appeared on "The Midnight Special" more than any other band in that show's history with four appearances (in 1973, 1975, 1976 and 1977).  "Face the Music" was released in 1975, producing the hit singles "Evil Woman", their third UK top 10, and "Strange Magic". The opening instrumental "Fire on High", with its mix of strings and acoustic guitars, saw heavy exposure as the theme music for the American television program "CBS Sports Spectacular" in the mid-1970s. The group toured extensively from 3 February to 13 April 1976, playing 68 shows in 76 days in the US.  Their sixth album, the platinum selling "A New World Record", became their first UK top ten album when it was released in 1976. It contained the hit singles "Livin' Thing", "Telephone Line", "Rockaria!" and "Do Ya", the last a re-recording of a Move song recorded for that group's final single. The band toured in support in the US only from September 1976 to April 1977 with a break in December, then an "American Music Awards" show appearance on 31 January 1977, plus a one-off gig in San Diego in August 1977. Casey Kasem said that the Electric Light Orchestra is the "World's first touring rock 'n' roll chamber group" before he played "Livin' Thing" at #28.  "A New World Record" was followed by a multi-platinum selling album, the double-LP "Out of the Blue", in 1977. "Out of the Blue" featured the singles "Turn to Stone", "Sweet Talkin' Woman", "Mr. Blue Sky", and "Wild West Hero", each becoming a hit in the United Kingdom. The band then set out on a nine-month, 92-date world tour, with an enormous set and a hugely expensive space ship stage with fog machines and a laser display. In the United States the concerts were billed as "The Big Night" and were their largest to date, with 62,000 people seeing them at Cleveland Stadium. "The Big Night" went on to become the highest-grossing live concert tour in music history up to that point (1978). The band played at London's Wembley Arena for eight straight sold-out nights during the tour, another record at that time.  In 1979, the multi-platinum album "Discovery" was released, reaching number one on the UK Albums Chart. Although the biggest hit on the album (and ELO's biggest hit overall) was the rock song "Don't Bring Me Down", the album was noted for its heavy disco influence. "Discovery" also produced the hits "Shine a Little Love", their first and only no. 1 hit from 1972 to the present with any of the 4 major or minor US singles charts on "Radio & Records (R&R)", "Last Train to London", "Confusion" and "The Diary of Horace Wimp". Another song, "Midnight Blue", was released as a single in Southeast Asia. The band recorded promotional videos for all the songs on the album. By the end of 1979, ELO had reached the peak of their stardom, selling millions of albums and singles, and even inspiring a parody/tribute song on the Randy Newman album "Born Again", titled "The Story of a Rock and Roll Band". During 1979 Jeff Lynne also turned down an invitation for ELO to headline the August 1979 Knebworth Festival concerts. That allowed Led Zeppelin the chance to headline instead.  In 1980, Jeff Lynne was asked to write for the soundtrack of the musical film "Xanadu" and provided half of the songs, with the other half written by John Farrar and performed by the film's star Olivia Newton-John. The movie performed poorly at the box office, but the soundtrack did exceptionally well, eventually going double platinum. The album spawned hit singles from both Newton-John ("Magic", a No. 1 hit in the United States, and "Suddenly" with Cliff Richard) and ELO ("I'm Alive", which went gold, "All Over the World" and "Don't Walk Away"). The title track, performed by both Newton-John and ELO, is ELO's only song to top the singles chart in the United Kingdom. More than a quarter of a century later, "Xanadu", a Broadway musical, based on the film, opened on 10 July 2007 at the Helen Hayes Theatre to uniformly good reviews. It received 4 Tony Award nominations. The musical received its UK premiere in London in October 2015. Casey Kasem called The Electric Light Orchestra a "7-man supergroup" and "amazing" for hitting The Top 40 a remarkable 6 times in a one-year period from August 1979 to August 1980 before playing "All Over the World" at #23  In 1981, ELO's sound changed again with the science fiction concept album "Time", a throwback to earlier, more progressive rock albums like "Eldorado". With the string section now departed, synthesisers took a dominating role, as was the trend in the larger music scene of the time; although studio strings were present on some of the tracks conducted by Rainer Pietsch, the overall soundscape had a more electronic feel in keeping with the futuristic nature of the album. "Time" topped the UK charts for two weeks and was the last ELO studio album to be certified platinum in the United Kingdom until "Alone in the Universe" in 2015. Singles from the album included "Hold On Tight", "Twilight", "The Way Life's Meant to Be", "Here Is the News" and "Ticket to the Moon". The band embarked on their last world tour to promote the LP. For the tour Kaminski returned to the line-up on violin, whilst Louis Clark (synthesizers) and Dave Morgan (guitar, keyboards, synthesizers, vocals) also joined the on stage lineup. Clark had previously handled string arrangements for the band.

1983–1986: "Secret Messages", "Balance of Power", disbanding.

Jeff Lynne wanted to follow "Time" with a double album, but CBS blocked his plan on the grounds that a double vinyl album would be too expensive in the oil crisis and not sell as well as a single record, so as a result, the new album was edited down from double album to a single disc and released as "Secret Messages" in 1983 (many of the out-takes were later released on "Afterglow" or as b-sides of singles). The album was a hit in the UK reaching the top 5; but its release was undermined by a string of bad news that there would be no tour to promote the LP and Lynne, discouraged by the dwindling crowds on the "Time" tour, CBS's order to cut "Secret Messages" down to one disc and his falling out with manager Don Arden (he would eventually leave Arden and Jet by 1985), decided to end ELO in late 1983. Drummer Bevan moved on to play drums for Black Sabbath and bassist Groucutt, unhappy with no touring income that year, decided to sue Lynne and Jet Records in November 1983, eventually resulting in a settlement for the sum of £300,000 (equivalent to £994,300 in 2018). "Secret Messages" debuted at number four in the United Kingdom, but it fell off the charts, failing to catch fire with a lack of hit singles in the UK (though "Rock 'n' Roll Is King" was a sizeable hit in UK, the US and Australia) and a lukewarm media response.  That same year, Lynne moved into production work, having already produced two tracks for Dave Edmunds' album "Information", and he would go on to produce six cuts from his next one, "Riff Raff", in 1984 and one cut on the Everly Brothers reunion album "EB 84".  Lynne and Tandy also recorded tracks for the 1984 "Electric Dreams" soundtrack under Lynne's name; however, Lynne was contractually obliged to make one more ELO album. So Lynne, Bevan and Tandy returned to the studio in 1985 as a three-piece (with Christian Schneider playing saxophone on some tracks and Lynne again doubling on bass in addition to his usual guitar in the absence of an official bass player) to record "Balance of Power", released early in 1986. Though the single "Calling America" placed in the Top 30 in the United Kingdom (number 28) and Top 20 in the States, subsequent singles failed to chart. The album lacked actual classical strings, which were replaced once again by synthesizers, played by Tandy.  The band was then rejoined by Kaminski, Clark and Morgan, adding Martin Smith on bass guitar, and proceeded to perform a small number of live ELO performances in 1986, including shows in England and Germany along with US appearances on "American Bandstand", "Solid Gold", then at Disneyland that summer. The Birmingham Heart Beat Charity Concert 1986 was a charity concert organised by Bevan in ELO's hometown of Birmingham on 15 March 1986, and ELO performed. A hint of Lynne's future was seen when George Harrison appeared onstage during the encore at Heartbeat, joining in the all-star jam of "Johnny B. Goode". ELO's last performance for several years occurred on 13 July 1986 in Stuttgart, Germany playing as opening act to Rod Stewart. With Lynne no longer under contractual obligation to attend further scheduled performances, ELO effectively disbanded after that final show in Stuttgart in 1986, but there was no announcement made of it for the next two years, during which George Harrison's Lynne-produced album "Cloud Nine" and the pair's follow-up (with Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty as Traveling Wilburys) "Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1" were released.

1989-1999: ELO Part II.

Bev Bevan (under an agreement with Lynne, who co-owned the ELO name with him) continued on in 1989 as ELO Part II, initially with no other former ELO members, but with ELO's main orchestra conductor, Louis Clark. Bevan also recruited Eric Troyer, Pete Haycock, and Neil Lockwood. ELO Part II released their debut album "Electric Light Orchestra Part Two" in May 1991. Mik Kaminski, Kelly Groucutt and Hugh McDowell joined the band for the first tour in 1991. McDowell left after that tour. Bevan, Groucutt, Kaminski and Clark recorded a second album, "Moment of Truth", in 1994 with Troyer and new member Phil Bates. Haycock and Lockwood had departed by then. This lineup toured extensively up to 1999. Bevan retired from the line-up in 1999 and sold his share of the ELO name to Jeff Lynne in 2000, after Lynne had expressed his dismay that in certain areas the band were billed as 'ELO', rather than with '...Part II' added, suggesting it was the original outfit. After Bevan left, the band continued after they changed its name to The Orchestra.

2000–2001: Reformation.

Lynne's comeback with ELO began in 2000 with the release of a retrospective box set, "Flashback", containing three CDs of remastered tracks and a handful of out-takes and unfinished works, most notably a new version of ELO's only UK number one hit "Xanadu". In 2001 "Zoom," ELO's first album since 1986, was released. Though billed and marketed as an ELO album, the only returning member other than Lynne was Tandy, who performed on one track. Guest musicians included former Beatles Ringo Starr and George Harrison. Upon completion of the album, Lynne reformed the band with completely new members, including his then-girlfriend Rosie Vela (who had released her own album, "Zazu", in 1986) and announced that ELO would tour again. Former ELO member Tandy rejoined the band a short time afterwards for two television live performances: "VH1 Storytellers" and a PBS concert shot at CBS Television City, later titled "Zoom Tour Live", was released on DVD. Besides Lynne, Tandy and Vela, the new live ELO lineup included: Gregg Bissonette (drums, backing vocals), Matt Bissonette (bass guitar, backing vocals), Marc Mann (guitars, keyboards, backing vocals), Peggy Baldwin (cello), and Sarah O'Brien (cello). But the planned tour was cancelled.

2001–2013: Non-performing work, reissues and miniature reunions.

For the next six years, Harvest and Epic/Legacy reissued ELO's back catalogue. Included amongst the remastered album tracks were unreleased songs and outtakes, including two new singles. The first was "Surrender" which registered on the lower end of the UK Singles Chart at number 81, some 30 years after it was written in 1976. The other single was "Latitude 88 North".  On 9 August 2010, Eagle Rock Entertainment released "Live – The Early Years" in the UK as a DVD compilation that included "Fusion – Live in London" (1976) along with never before released live performances at "Brunel University" (1973) and on a German TV show "Rockpalast" (1974). The US had a slightly edited release on 24 August 2010. "The Essential Electric Light Orchestra" artwork was re-jigged to feature two different covers. The US and Australian releases shared one design, while the rest of the world featured the other for a new double album release in October 2011.  "" was released on 8 October 2012. It is an album of new recordings of ELO's greatest hits by Lynne; along with a new song "Point of No Return", released to coincide with Lynne's second solo album release "Long Wave". These new 2012 albums contained advertisement cards, announcing the re-release of expanded and remastered versions of both the 2001 album "Zoom" and Lynne's debut solo album "Armchair Theatre", originally released in 1990. Both albums were re-released in April 2013 with various bonus tracks. Also released was the live album, "Electric Light Orchestra Live", showcasing songs from the Zoom tour. All three releases also featured new studio recordings as bonus tracks.  Lynne and Tandy reunited again on 12 November 2013 to perform, under the name Jeff Lynne and Friends, "Livin' Thing" and "Mr. Blue Sky" at the Children in Need Rocks concert at Hammersmith Eventim Apollo, London. The backing orchestra was the BBC Concert Orchestra, with Chereene Allen on lead violin.

2014–present: Jeff Lynne's ELO.

The success of the Children in Need performance was followed by support from BBC Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans, who had Lynne as his on-air guest and asked his listeners if they wanted to see ELO perform. The 50,000 tickets for the resulting BBC Radio 2's "Festival in a Day" in Hyde Park on 14 September 2014 sold out in 15 minutes. Billed as "Jeff Lynne's ELO", Lynne and Tandy were backed by the Take That/Gary Barlow band from the Children in Need concert, led by Mike Stevens and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Lynne chose to use the name as a response to ELO offshoot, tribute and imitation bands, (ELO Part II, the Orchestra, OrKestra and the Music of ELO) who repeatedly used ELO for promoting their own tours. Chereene Allen was the lead violinist for the band. The development of modern digital processing added a smoother finish to the work, which led Lynne to reconsider his preference for studio work, hinting at a UK tour in 2015.  On 8 February 2015, Jeff Lynne's ELO played at the Grammy Awards for the first time. They performed a medley of "Evil Woman" and "Mr. Blue Sky" with Ed Sheeran, who introduced them as "A man and a band who I love".  On 10 September 2015, it was announced that a new ELO album would be released. The album was to be under the moniker of Jeff Lynne's ELO, with the band signed to Columbia Records. "Alone in the Universe" was released on 13 November 2015. The album was ELO's first album of new material in nearly 15 years. The first track, and single, "When I Was a Boy" was made available for streaming on the same day and a music video for the song was also released. A small promotional tour followed the album's release which saw ELO perform a full concert for "BBC Radio 2" along with ELO's first two shows in the United States in 30 years, both which sold out very quickly. ELO also made rare US television appearances on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon", "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and "CBS This Morning". A 19-date European tour was announced for 2016, with the band playing the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival on 26 June 2016.  In 2017 they played their "Alone in the Universe" tour. That same year, on 7 April, they played at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as they were inducted during the 32nd Annual Induction Ceremony.  The band continued to tour in 2018 in North America and Europe. A video was created for the City of Birmingham which used the original recording of "Mr. Blue Sky" as its music; this was played at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony during the handover presentation of Birmingham 2022.  On 22 October 2018 Lynne announced that ELO would embark on a 2019 North American tour from June to August 2019.  ELO released their 14th album, "From Out of Nowhere" on 1 November 2019.

Legacy and influence.

According to music journalist Simon Price, ELO was "arguably the most uncool, even defiantly anti-cool, of the lot and have been the slowest to be rehabilitated since... They've been sampled by dozens upon dozens of acts, from Company Flow to the Pussycat Dolls, if you go looking. Every now and then in my journalistic career, it's been possible to coax a contemporary band to admit to an ELO influence, the Flaming Lips and Super Furry Animals being two examples. But the band with arguably, the greatest amount of ELO DNA are outside the rock genre altogether: Daft Punk."  In November 2016, Jeff Lynne's ELO won Band of the Year at the Classic Rock Roll of Honour Awards. In October 2016, ELO were nominated for the 2017 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the first time. It was the first time the Hall had announced in advance the members of bands who would be inducted; the members of ELO listed were Jeff Lynne, Roy Wood, Bev Bevan and Richard Tandy. On 20 December 2016, it was announced ELO had been elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2017.

Personnel.

Principal members

The Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) are an English rock band formed in Birmingham in 1970 by songwriters-multi-instrumentalists Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood with drummer Bev Bevan. Their music is characterised by a fusion of Beatlesque pop, classical arrangements and futuristic iconography. After Wood's departure in 1972, Lynne became the band's sole leader, arranging and producing every album while writing nearly all of their original material. For their initial tenure, Lynne, Bevan and keyboardist Richard Tandy were the group's only consistent members.

Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) je britská rocková hudební skupina z Birminghamu. Působila zejména mezi lety 1971 a 1986, kdy vydala 11 řadových alb. Předákem kapely je Jeff Lynne, který skupinu znovuobnovil v roce 2012. Poslední čtrnácté album From Out of Nowhere skupina vydala v roce 2019. Její hudební styl bývá označován jako symfonický rock.


Terminology.

The study of the writing in surviving manuscripts, the "hand", is termed palaeography. The traditional abbreviations are MS for manuscript and MSS for manuscripts, while the forms MS., ms or ms. for singular, and MSS., mss or mss. for plural (with or without the full stop, all uppercase or all lowercase) are also accepted. The second "s" is not simply the plural; by an old convention, it doubles the last letter of the abbreviation to express the plural, just as "pp." means "pages".  A manuscript may be a codex (i.e. bound as a book) or a scroll. Illuminated manuscripts are enriched with pictures, border decorations, elaborately embossed initial letters or full-page illustrations.

Reproduction.

The mechanical reproduction of a manuscript is called facsimile. Digital reproductions can be called (high-resolution) scans or digital images.

History.

Before the inventions of printing, in China by woodblock and in Europe by movable type in a printing press, all written documents had to be both produced and reproduced by hand. Historically, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls ("volumen" in Latin) or books ("codex", plural "codices"). Manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchment, on papyrus, and on paper. In Russia birch bark documents as old as from the 11th century have survived. In India, the palm leaf manuscript, with a distinctive long rectangular shape, was used from ancient times until the 19th century.  Paper spread from China via the Islamic world to Europe by the 14th century, and by the late 15th century had largely replaced parchment for many purposes. When Greek or Latin works were published, numerous professional copies were made simultaneously by scribes in a scriptorium, each making a single copy from an original that was declaimed aloud.  The oldest written manuscripts have been preserved by the perfect dryness of their Middle Eastern resting places, whether placed within sarcophagi in Egyptian tombs, or reused as mummy-wrappings, discarded in the middens of Oxyrhynchus or secreted for safe-keeping in jars and buried (Nag Hammadi library) or stored in dry caves (Dead Sea scrolls). Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on palm leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Roman library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum.  Ironically, the manuscripts that were being most carefully preserved in the libraries of antiquity are virtually all lost. Papyrus has a life of at most a century or two in relatively moist Italian or Greek conditions; only those works copied onto parchment, usually after the general conversion to Christianity, have survived, and by no means all of those.  Originally, all books were in manuscript form. In China, and later other parts of East Asia, woodblock printing was used for books from about the 7th century. The earliest dated example is the Diamond Sutra of 868. In the Islamic world and the West, all books were in manuscript until the introduction of movable type printing in about 1450. Manuscript copying of books continued for a least a century, as printing remained expensive. Private or government documents remained hand-written until the invention of the typewriter in the late 19th century. Because of the likelihood of errors being introduced each time a manuscript was copied, the filiation of different versions of the same text is a fundamental part of the study and criticism of all texts that have been transmitted in manuscript.  In Southeast Asia, in the first millennium, documents of sufficiently great importance were inscribed on soft metallic sheets such as copperplate, softened by refiner's fire and inscribed with a metal stylus. In the Philippines, for example, as early as 900AD, specimen documents were not inscribed by stylus, but were punched much like the style of today's dot-matrix printers. This type of document was rare compared to the usual leaves and bamboo staves that were inscribed. However, neither the leaves nor paper were as durable as the metal document in the hot, humid climate. In Burma, the kammavaca, Buddhist manuscripts, were inscribed on brass, copper or ivory sheets, and even on discarded monk robes folded and lacquered. In Italy some important Etruscan texts were similarly inscribed on thin gold plates: similar sheets have been discovered in Bulgaria. Technically, these are all inscriptions rather than manuscripts.  In the Western world, from the classical period through the early centuries of the Christian era, manuscripts were written without spaces between the words (scriptio continua), which makes them especially hard for the untrained to read. Extant copies of these early manuscripts written in Greek or Latin and usually dating from the 4th century to the 8th century, are classified according to their use of either all upper case or all lower case letters. Hebrew manuscripts, such as the Dead Sea scrolls make no such differentiation. Manuscripts using all upper case letters are called majuscule, those using all lower case are called minuscule. Usually, the majuscule scripts such as uncial are written with much more care. The scribe lifted his pen between each stroke, producing an unmistakable effect of regularity and formality. On the other hand, while minuscule scripts can be written with pen-lift, they may also be cursive, that is, use little or no pen-lift.

Islamic world.

Islamic manuscripts were produced in different ways depending on their use and time period. Parchment (vellum) was a common way to produce manuscripts. Manuscripts eventually transitioned to using paper in later centuries with the diffusion of paper making in the Islamic empire. When Muslims encountered paper in Central Asia, its use and production spread to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa during the 8th century.

Scripts.

The development of scripts in the Islamic empire, demonstrates the transition from an oral culture to convey information to written. Traditionally speaking in the Islamic empire, Arabic calligraphy was the common form of recording texts. Calligraphy is the practice or art of decorative handwriting. The demand for calligraphy in the early stages of the Islamic empire (circa 7-8th century) can be attributed to a need to produce Qur'an manuscripts. During the Umayyad period, Kufic scrips were typically seen in Qur'an manuscripts.

Genres.

Islamic manuscripts include a variety of topics such as religious, medical, astrological, and literature.

Religious.

A common religious manuscript would be a copy of the Qur'an, which is the sacred book of Islam. The Qur'an is believed by Muslims to be a divine revelation (the word of god) to the prophet Muhammed, revealed to him by Archangel Gabriel. Qur'an manuscripts can vary in form and function. Certain manuscripts were larger in size for ceremonial purposes, others being smaller and more transportable. An example of a Qur'an manuscript is the Blue Koran. The Blue Koran is ceremonial in nature, which a Hafiz would utilize. It has gold Kufic script, on parchment dyed blue with indigo. Many Qur'an manuscripts are divided into 30 equal sections (juz) to be able to be read over the course of 30 days. The Chinese practice of writing on paper, presented to the Islamic world around the 8th century, enabled Qur'ans to be begin to be written on paper. The decrease in production costs of Qur'an manuscripts due to the transition from parchment to paper enabled Qur'ans to be utilized more frequently for personal use/worship, rather than just ceremonial settings.

Scientific.

Many early illustrated Arabic manuscripts are affiliated with scientific subjects. Scientific manuscripts discuss a variety of topics including but not limited to astronomy, astrology, anatomy, botany, and zoology. The development of early illustrated scientific manuscripts began under the Islamic Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad in approximately the mid 8th century. This development is primarily attributed to the translation of Greek scientific and learned works, and the pursuit of original scholarship in science, medicine, and philosophy in Arabic. An example of an Arabic scientific manuscript is the "Book of the Fixed Stars" by Abd al-Rahman b. Umar al-Sufi. This manuscript is a catalog of stars and their constellations, commissioned by the patron the Buyid prince Adud al-Dawla. The "Book of the Fixed Stars" based most of its content on Ptolemy's "Mathematik Syntaxis" (Almagest), which was translated from Greek to Arabic during the 9th century. Al-Sufi's included his own observations of Ptolemy's material into this manuscript as well.

Western world.

Most surviving pre-modern manuscripts use the codex format (as in a modern book), which had replaced the scroll by Late Antiquity. Parchment or vellum, as the best type of parchment is known, had also replaced papyrus, which was not nearly so long lived and has survived to the present only in the extremely dry conditions of Egypt, although it was widely used across the Roman world. Parchment is made of animal skin, normally calf, sheep, or goat, but also other animals. With all skins, the quality of the finished product is based on how much preparation and skill was put into turning the skin into parchment. Parchment made from calf or sheep was the most common in Northern Europe, while civilizations in Southern Europe preferred goatskin. Often, if the parchment is white or cream in color and veins from the animal can still be seen, it is calfskin. If it is yellow, greasy or in some cases shiny, then it was made from sheepskin.  For a step-by step process of how these books were prepared, including copying and illumination, watch this video provided by the Getty Museum.  Vellum comes from the Latin word vitulinum which means "of calf"/ "made from calf". For modern parchment makers and calligraphers, and apparently often in the past, the terms parchment and vellum are used based on the different degrees of quality, preparation and thickness, and not according to which animal the skin came from, and because of this, the more neutral term "membrane" is often used by modern academics, especially where the animal has not been established by testing.  Because they are books, pre-modern manuscripts are best described using bibliographic rather than archival standards. The standard endorsed by the American Library Association is known as AMREMM. A growing digital catalog of pre-modern manuscripts is Digital Scriptorium, hosted by the University of California at Berkeley.

Scripts.

Merovingian script, or "Luxeuil minuscule", is named after an abbey in Western France, the Luxeuil Abbey, founded by the Irish missionary St Columba ca. 590. Caroline minuscule is a calligraphic script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Latin alphabet could be easily recognized by the literate class from different regions. It was used in the Holy Roman Empire between approximately 800 and 1200. Codices, classical and Christian texts, and educational material were written in Carolingian minuscule throughout the Carolingian Renaissance. The script developed into blackletter and became obsolete, though its revival in the Italian renaissance forms the basis of more recent scripts. In "Introduction to Manuscript Studies", Clemens and Graham associate the beginning of this text coming from the Abby of Saint-Martin at Tours.  Caroline Minuscule arrived in England in the second half of the 10th century. Its adoption there, replacing Insular script, was encouraged by the importation of continental European manuscripts by Saints Dunstan, Aethelwold, and Oswald. This script spread quite rapidly, being employed in many English centres for copying Latin texts. English scribes adapted the Carolingian script, giving it proportion and legibility. This new revision of the Caroline Minuscule was called English Protogothic Bookhand. Another script that is derived from the Caroline Minuscule was the German Protogothic Bookhand. It originated in southern Germany during the second half of the 12th century. All the individual letters are Caroline; but just as with English Protogothic Bookhand it evolved. This can be seen most notably in the arm of the letter h. It has a hairline that tapers out by curving to the left. When first read the German Protogothic h looks like the German Protogothic b. Many more scripts sprang out of the German Protogothic Bookhand. After those came Bastard Anglicana, which is best described as:  The coexistence in the Gothic period of formal hands employed for the copying of books and cursive scripts used for documentary purposes eventually resulted in cross-fertilization between these two fundamentally different writing styles. Notably, scribes began to upgrade some of the cursive scripts. A script that has been thus formalized is known as a "bastard" script (whereas a bookhand that has had cursive elements fused onto it is known as a hybrid script). The advantage of such a script was that it could be written more quickly than a pure bookhand; it thus recommended itself to scribes in a period when demand for books was increasing and authors were tending to write longer texts. In England during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, many books were written in the script known as Bastard Anglicana.

Genres.

From ancient texts to medieval maps, anything written down for study would have been done with manuscripts. Some of the most common genres were bibles, religious commentaries, philosophy, law and government texts.

Bibles.

"The Bible was the most studied book of the Middle Ages". The Bible was the center of medieval religious life. Along with the Bible came scores of commentaries. Commentaries were written in volumes, with some focusing on just single pages of scripture. Across Europe, there were universities that prided themselves on their biblical knowledge. Along with universities, certain cities also had their own celebrities of biblical knowledge during the medieval period.

Book of hours.

A book of hours is a type of devotional text which was widely popular during the Middle Ages. They are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscripts. Each book of hours contain a similar collection of texts, prayers, and psalms but decoration can vary between each and each example. Many have minimal illumination, often restricted to ornamented initials, but books of hours made for wealthier patrons can be extremely extravagant with full-page miniatures. These books were used for owners to recite prayers privately eight different times, or hours, of the day.

Liturgical books and calendars.

Along with Bibles, large numbers of manuscripts made in the Middle Ages were revieved in Church. Due to the complex church system of rituals and worship these books were the most elegantly written and finely decorated of all medieval manuscripts. Liturgical books usually came in two varieties. Those used during mass and those for divine office.  Most liturgical books came with a calendar in the front. This served as a quick reference point for important dates in Jesus' life and to tell church officials which saints were to be honored and on what day. The format of the liturgical calendar was as follows:  "an example of a medieval liturgical calendar"  Almost all medieval calendars give each day's date according to the Roman method of reckoning time. In the Roman system, each month had three fixed points known as Kalends (Kal), the Nones and the Ides. The Nones fell on the fifth of the month in January, February, April, June, August, September, November and December, but on the seventh of the month in March, May, July and October. The Ides fell on the thirteenth in those months in which the Nones fell on the fifth, and the fifteenth in the other four months. All other days were dated by the number of days by which they preceded one of those fixed points.

Modern variations.

In the context of library science, a manuscript is defined as any hand-written item in the collections of a library or an archive. For example, a library's collection of hand-written letters or diaries is considered a manuscript collection. Such manuscript collections are described in finding aids, similar to an index or table of contents to the collection, in accordance with national and international content standards such as and ISAD(G).  In other contexts, however, the use of the term "manuscript" no longer necessarily means something that is hand-written. By analogy a "typescript" has been produced on a typewriter.

Publishing.

In book, magazine, and music publishing, a manuscript is an autograph or copy of a work, written by an author, composer or copyist. Such manuscripts generally follow standardized typographic and formatting rules, in which case they can be called fair copy (whether original or copy). The staff paper commonly used for handwritten music is, for this reason, often called "manuscript paper".

Film and theatre.

In film and theatre, a manuscript, or "script" for short, is an author's or dramatist's text, used by a theatre company or film crew during the production of the work's performance or filming. More specifically, a motion picture manuscript is called a screenplay; a television manuscript, a teleplay; a manuscript for the theatre, a stage play; and a manuscript for audio-only performance is often called a radio play, even when the recorded performance is disseminated via non-radio means.

Insurance.

In insurance, a manuscript policy is one that is negotiated between the insurer and the policyholder, as opposed to an off-the-shelf form supplied by the insurer.

Repositories.

Major U.S. repositories of medieval manuscripts include: Many European libraries have far larger collections.

A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document that is written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten — as opposed to being mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has come to be understood to further include "any" written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from its rendition as a printed version of the same. Before the arrival of printing, all documents and books were manuscripts. Manuscripts are not defined by their contents, which may combine writing with mathematical calculations, maps, music notation, explanatory figures or illustrations.

Rukopis (též manuskript) je v knihovnictví jakýkoliv dokument psaný rukou, tedy nikoliv vytištěný nebo reprodukovaný jiným způsobem. Termín může označovat také sdělení, které je zaznamenané rukou jinak než psaním, například nápisy vydlabané na tvrdém materiálu, nebo vyryté v omítce, stiletem ve voskové destičce či klínové písmo vytvořené ostrým rydlem na ploché destičce z nepálené hlíny. Výraz "manuskript" je odvozen z latinského "manu scriptus" neboli "napsáno rukou".


Theories containing cosmic strings.

In string theory, the role of cosmic strings can be played by the fundamental strings (or F-strings) themselves that define the theory perturbatively, by D-strings which are related to the F-strings by weak-strong or so called S-duality, or higher-dimensional D-, NS- or M-branes that are partially wrapped on compact cycles associated to extra spacetime dimensions so that only one non-compact dimension remains.  The prototypical example of a quantum field theory with cosmic strings is the Abelian Higgs model. The quantum field theory and string theory cosmic strings are expected to have many properties in common, but more research is needed to determine the precise distinguishing features. The F-strings for instance are fully quantum-mechanical and do not have a classical definition, whereas the field theory cosmic strings are almost exclusively treated classically.

Dimensions.

Cosmic strings, if they exist, would be extremely thin with diameters of the same order of magnitude as that of a proton, i.e., or smaller. Given that this scale is much smaller than any cosmological scale these strings are often studied in the zero-width, or Nambu–Goto approximation. Under this assumption strings behave as one-dimensional objects and obey the Nambu–Goto action, which is classically equivalent to the Polyakov action that defines the bosonic sector of superstring theory.  In field theory, the string width is set by the scale of the symmetry breaking phase transition. In string theory, the string width is set (in the simplest cases) by the fundamental string scale, warp factors (associated to the spacetime curvature of an internal six-dimensional spacetime manifold) and/or the size of internal compact dimensions. (In string theory, the universe is either 10- or 11-dimensional, depending on the strength of interactions and the curvature of spacetime.)

Gravitation.

A string is a geometrical deviation from Euclidean geometry in spacetime characterized by an angular deficit: a circle around the outside of a string would comprise a total angle less than 360°. From the general theory of relativity such a geometrical defect must be in tension, and would be manifested by mass. Even though cosmic strings are thought to be extremely thin, they would have immense density, and so would represent significant gravitational wave sources. A cosmic string about a kilometer in length may be more massive than the Earth.  However general relativity predicts that the gravitational potential of a straight string vanishes: there is no gravitational force on static surrounding matter. The only gravitational effect of a straight cosmic string is a relative deflection of matter (or light) passing the string on opposite sides (a purely topological effect). A closed cosmic string gravitates in a more conventional way.  During the expansion of the universe, cosmic strings would form a network of loops, and in the past it was thought that their gravity could have been responsible for the original clumping of matter into galactic superclusters. It is now calculated that their contribution to the structure formation in the universe is less than 10%.

Negative mass cosmic string.

The standard model of a cosmic string is a geometrical structure with an angle deficit, which thus is in tension and hence has positive mass. In 1995, Visser "et al." proposed that cosmic strings could theoretically also exist with angle excesses, and thus negative tension and hence negative mass. The stability of such exotic matter strings is problematic; however, they suggested that if a negative mass string were to be wrapped around a wormhole in the early universe, such a wormhole could be stabilized sufficiently to exist in the present day.

Super-critical cosmic string.

The exterior geometry of a (straight) cosmic string can be visualized in an embedding diagram as follows: Focusing on the two-dimensional surface perpendicular to the string, its geometry is that of a cone which is obtained by cutting out a wedge of angle δ and gluing together the edges. The angular deficit δ is linearly related to the string tension (= mass per unit length), i.e. the larger the tension, the steeper the cone. Therefore, δ reaches 2π for a certain critical value of the tension, and the cone degenerates to a cylinder. (In visualizing this setup one has to think of a string with a finite thickness.) For even larger, "super-critical" values, δ exceeds 2π and the (two-dimensional) exterior geometry closes up (it becomes compact), ending in a conical singularity.  However, this static geometry is unstable in the super-critical case (unlike for sub-critical tensions): Small perturbations lead to a dynamical spacetime which expands in axial direction at a constant rate. The 2D exterior is still compact, but the conical singularity can be avoided, and the embedding picture is that of a growing cigar. For even larger tensions (exceeding the critical value by approximately a factor of 1.6), the string cannot be stabilized in radial direction anymore.  Realistic cosmic strings are expected to have tensions around 6 orders of magnitude below the critical value, and are thus always sub-critical. However, the inflating cosmic string solutions might be relevant in the context of brane cosmology, where the string is promoted to a 3-brane (corresponding to our universe) in a six-dimensional bulk.

Observational evidence.

It was once thought that the gravitational influence of cosmic strings might contribute to the large-scale clumping of matter in the universe, but all that is known today through galaxy surveys and precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fits an evolution out of random, gaussian fluctuations. These precise observations therefore tend to rule out a significant role for cosmic strings and currently it is known that the contribution of cosmic strings to the CMB cannot be more than 10%.  The violent oscillations of cosmic strings generically lead to the formation of cusps and kinks. These in turn cause parts of the string to pinch off into isolated loops. These loops have a finite lifespan and decay (primarily) via gravitational radiation. This radiation which leads to the strongest signal from cosmic strings may in turn be detectable in gravitational wave observatories. An important open question is to what extent do the pinched off loops backreact or change the initial state of the emitting cosmic string—such backreaction effects are almost always neglected in computations and are known to be important, even for order of magnitude estimates.  Gravitational lensing of a galaxy by a straight section of a cosmic string would produce two identical, undistorted images of the galaxy. In 2003 a group led by Mikhail Sazhin reported the accidental discovery of two seemingly identical galaxies very close together in the sky, leading to speculation that a cosmic string had been found. However, observations by the Hubble Space Telescope in January 2005 showed them to be a pair of similar galaxies, not two images of the same galaxy. A cosmic string would produce a similar duplicate image of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, which it was thought might have been detectable by the Planck Surveyor mission. However, a 2013 analysis of data from the Planck mission failed to find any evidence of cosmic strings.  A piece of evidence supporting cosmic string theory is a phenomenon noticed in observations of the "double quasar" called Q0957+561A,B. Originally discovered by Dennis Walsh, Bob Carswell, and Ray Weymann in 1979, the double image of this quasar is caused by a galaxy positioned between it and the Earth. The gravitational lens effect of this intermediate galaxy bends the quasar's light so that it follows two paths of different lengths to Earth. The result is that we see two images of the same quasar, one arriving a short time after the other (about 417.1 days later). However, a team of astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics led by Rudolph Schild studied the quasar and found that during the period between September 1994 and July 1995 the two images appeared to have no time delay; changes in the brightness of the two images occurred simultaneously on four separate occasions. Schild and his team believe that the only explanation for this observation is that a cosmic string passed between the Earth and the quasar during that time period traveling at very high speed and oscillating with a period of about 100 days.  Currently the most sensitive bounds on cosmic string parameters come from the non-detection of gravitational waves by Pulsar timing array data. The earthbound Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and especially the space-based gravitational wave detector Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will search for gravitational waves and are likely to be sensitive enough to detect signals from cosmic strings, provided the relevant cosmic string tensions are not too small.

String theory and cosmic strings.

During the early days of string theory both string theorists and cosmic string theorists believed that there was no direct connection between superstrings and cosmic strings (the names were chosen independently by analogy with ordinary string). The possibility of cosmic strings being produced in the early universe was first envisioned by quantum field theorist Tom Kibble in 1976, and this sprouted the first flurry of interest in the field. In 1985, during the first superstring revolution, Edward Witten contemplated on the possibility of fundamental superstrings having been produced in the early universe and stretched to macroscopic scales, in which case (following the nomenclature of Tom Kibble) they would then be referred to as cosmic superstrings. He concluded that had they been produced they would have either disintegrated into smaller strings before ever reaching macroscopic scales (in the case of Type I superstring theory), they would always appear as boundaries of domain walls whose tension would force the strings to collapse rather than grow to cosmic scales (in the context of heterotic superstring theory), or having a characteristic energy scale close to the Planck energy they would be produced before cosmological inflation and hence be diluted away with the expansion of the universe and not be observable.  Much has changed since these early days, primarily due to the second superstring revolution. It is now known that string theory in addition to the fundamental strings which define the theory perturbatively also contains other one-dimensional objects, such as D-strings, and higher-dimensional objects such as D-branes, NS-branes and M-branes partially wrapped on compact internal spacetime dimensions, while being spatially extended in one non-compact dimension. The possibility of large compact dimensions and large warp factors allows strings with tension much lower than the Planck scale. Furthermore, various dualities that have been discovered point to the conclusion that actually all these apparently different types of string are just the same object as it appears in different regions of parameter space. These new developments have largely revived interest in cosmic strings, starting in the early 2000s.  In 2002, Henry Tye and collaborators predicted the production of cosmic superstrings during the last stages of brane inflation, a string theory construction of the early universe that gives leads to an expanding universe and cosmological inflation. It was subsequently realized by string theorist Joseph Polchinski that the expanding Universe could have stretched a "fundamental" string (the sort which superstring theory considers) until it was of intergalactic size. Such a stretched string would exhibit many of the properties of the old "cosmic" string variety, making the older calculations useful again. As theorist Tom Kibble remarks, "string theory cosmologists have discovered cosmic strings lurking everywhere in the undergrowth". Older proposals for detecting cosmic strings could now be used to investigate superstring theory.  Superstrings, D-strings or the other stringy objects mentioned above stretched to intergalactic scales would radiate gravitational waves, which could be detected using experiments like LIGO and especially the space-based gravitational wave experiment LISA. They might also cause slight irregularities in the cosmic microwave background, too subtle to have been detected yet but possibly within the realm of future observability.  Note that most of these proposals depend, however, on the appropriate cosmological fundamentals (strings, branes, etc.), and no convincing experimental verification of these has been confirmed to date. Cosmic strings nevertheless provide a window into string theory. If cosmic strings are observed which is a real possibility for a wide range of cosmological string models this would provide the first experimental evidence of a string theory model underlying the structure of spacetime.

Detection of Cosmic Strings network.

There are many attempts to detect the footprint of cosmic strings network  (e.g. of 1-dimensional topological defect: a cosmic string)

Cosmic strings are hypothetical 1-dimensional topological defects which may have formed during a symmetry breaking phase transition in the early universe when the topology of the vacuum manifold associated to this symmetry breaking was not simply connected. It is expected that at least one string per Hubble volume is formed. Their existence was first contemplated by the theoretical physicist Tom Kibble in the 1970s.

Kosmická struna je topologický defekt vznikající pravděpodobně v raném vesmíru jako důsledek fázového přechodu vakua spojeného s narušením kalibrační symetrie. Jde o tenkou velmi hustou trubici přibližně průměru protonu, která je buďto uzavřená, nebo nekonečná. Uzavřené struny se mají tendenci vyzařovat ve formě gravitačních vln. Fakt, že topologické defekty (především monopóly) nebyly ve vesmíru pozorovány vysvětlila, uspokojivě až inflační teorie – během inflační fáze byly „odfouknuty“ za hranici dnes pozorovatelného vesmíru.


Early life.

Leopold Joseph Charles Dominique Agapet Hyacinthe was the son of Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, and his wife Eleonora Maria Josefa of Austria, a half-sister of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor.  At the time of Leopold's birth, Lorraine and Bar had been occupied by Louis XIV of France, forcing his parents to move into exile to Austria, where they lived under the protection of the Emperor. Therefore, Leopold was born in the palace of Innsbruck and received his first name in honour of the Emperor. Leopold grew up in Innsbruck, while his father would be engaged in defending Vienna against the Turks.  In 1690, his father died and eleven-year-old Leopold inherited the still occupied Duchies. His mother, trying to fulfil her husband's last wishes of returning her children to their patrimony, appealed to the Reichstag in Regensburg to restore her son to Lorraine. Leopold was sent to Vienna to receive a military education under the supervision of the Emperor. In Vienna, he grew up with his cousins, the Archdukes Joseph and Charles, both future Emperors. Leopold was also created a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece that year.  Like his father before him, he entered the Imperial Army and, aged eighteen, took part in the Siege of Timișoara in 1694. Three years later, he received the command of the Army of the Rhine.

Duke of Lorraine.

On 30 October 1697, the Nine Years' War (aka, War of the League of Augsburg) ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick.  The treaty restored the Duchies of Lorraine and Bar to the House of Lorraine, as Leopold's mother had hoped; she died four days later in Vienna. On 17 August 1698, Duke Leopold made a triumphant entry into his capital Nancy. He reconstructed and repopulated his war-stricken duchy, encouraging immigration. At the end of his reign the duchy was safe and prosperous.  In his foreign policy, Leopold tried to further good relations with France and to appease his powerful neighbor. On 13 October 1698 at the Palace of Fontainebleau, Leopold married Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans, the niece of Louis XIV, who had offered a dowry of 900,000 livres to the penniless Duke. Elisabeth Charlotte turned out to be a caring mother and gave birth to fifteen children, of whom five survived into adulthood. Three of them died within a week in May 1711 due to a smallpox outbreak at the Château de Lunéville, the country seat of the Dukes of Lorraine.  Despite Leopold's diplomatic attempts, his capital, Nancy, was occupied by foreign troops during the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–1713). Fearing for his family, Leopold relocated the court to the Château de Lunéville, where Leopold rebuilt the castle as the "Versailles of Lorraine". It was here that his first child Leopold was born in 1700.  In 1703, the Duke introduced the "Code Léopold" regulating the government of the Duchy. A number of crimes were punishable with death by burning, such as witchcraft, coin forgery, arson, and sexual acts "contrary to nature". Also, those guilty of aggravated theft of sacred objects from a church could be condemned to be burnt alive. He tried to install his eldest daughter, Elisabeth Charlotte, as Abbess of Remiremont but failed due to the opposition of Pope Clement XI.  Leopold's marital life was troubled in 1706, when he took Anne-Marguerite de Lignéville, Princess of Beauvau-Craon as his mistress, and enriched her family. Elisabeth Charlotte however, following her mother's advice, remained silent.  In 1708, Leopold had claimed the Duchy of Montferrat as the closest relative of his cousin, Charles III Gonzaga, erstwhile Duke of Mantua, who had been deposed and then died without male issue. However, the Emperor had already promised Montferrat to the Dukes of Savoy but wishing to compensate the House of Lorraine, he gave the Duchy of Teschen in Silesia to Leopold.  In 1710, Leopold and his wife visited Paris to attend the marriage of Elisabeth Charlotte's niece Marie Louise Elisabeth to the Duke of Berry, and were among the guests of the lavish banquet at the Palais du Luxembourg. During the visit, Leopold, as a "foreign prince", received the style of "Royal Highness".  In 1719, Leopold bought the County of Ligny-en-Barrois from his cousin, Charles Henry of Vaudemont. During his reign a new security system was put in place all around Lorraine. He tried to abolish serfdom but the redemption payments were too high for the peasantry, even when Leopold halved it. On New Year's Eve 1719 he freed his own serfs without redemption, hoping in vain the nobility would follow his example.  In 1721, Leopold arranged for his son and heir, Leopold Clement, to receive an education at Vienna. He also intended to forge relations with Archduchess Maria Theresa, the heiress of Emperor Charles VI. However, Leopold Clement died shortly afterwards at Lunéville and in his stead, the younger son Francis Stephen went to Vienna, where he married Maria Theresa. Francis would become Emperor and his descendants, the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, would rule Austria until 1918.  In 1725, Leopold tried to marry off his daughter Anne Charlotte to the young King Louis XV, but Louis Henry, Duke of Bourbon, then prime minister, prevented a union with a descendant of the rival House of Orléans. Then, Elisabeth Charlotte tried to arrange her daughter's marriage to her first cousin, the recently widowed Louis, Duke of Orléans, but Louis refused. All proposals of marriage being either ignored or declined, Anne Charlotte later became Abbess of the monasteries Remiremont and Essen.  In March 1729, Leopold caught a fever while walking at the Château at Ménil near Lunéville. He returned to Lunéville where he died on 27 March, aged 49.

Issue.

Leopold had 15 children:

Leopold (11 September 1679 – 27 March 1729), surnamed "the Good", was Duke of Lorraine and Bar from 1690 to his death. He is the ancestor of all rulers of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, including all Emperors of Austria.

Leopold Josef Lotrinský, zvaný „Dobrý“, (11. září 1679 Innsbruck – 27. března 1729 Lunéville) byl Lotrinský vévoda (1690–1729) a otec císaře Svaté říše římské Františka I. Štěpána, manžela Marie Terezie. V roce 1722 dostal od římského císaře a českého krále Karla VI. lénem Těšínské knížectví.


Early life.

Chevalier was born on September 12, 1888 in Paris. His father was a French house painter. His mother, Joséphine van den Bosch, was French of Belgian descent.  He worked a number of jobs: a carpenter's apprentice, electrician, printer, and even as a doll painter. He started in show business in 1901. He was singing, unpaid, at a café when a member of the theatre saw him and suggested he try for a local musical. He got the part. Chevalier made a name as a mimic and a singer. His act in l'Alcazar in Marseille was so successful, he made a triumphant rearrival in Paris.  In 1909, he became the partner of the biggest female star in France, Fréhel. However, due to her alcoholism and drug addiction, their liaison ended in 1911. Chevalier then started a relationship with 36-year-old Mistinguett at the Folies Bergère, where he was her 23-year-old dance partner; they eventually played out a public romance.

World War I.

When World War I broke out, Chevalier was in the middle of his national service, already in the front line, where he was wounded by shrapnel in the back in the first weeks of combat and was taken as a prisoner of war in Germany for two years. While imprisoned he learned English, but with a Leeds accent from his fellow British prisoners. In 1916, he was released through the secret intervention of Mistinguett's admirer, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, the only king of a neutral country who was related to both the British and German royal families.  In 1917, Chevalier became a star in le Casino de Paris and played before British soldiers and Americans. He discovered jazz and ragtime and started thinking about touring the United States. In the prison camp, he had studied English and had an advantage over other French artists. He went to London, where he found new success at the Palace Theatre, even though he still sang in French.

Paris and Hollywood.

After the war, Chevalier went back to Paris and created several songs still known today, such as "Valentine" (1924). He played in a few pictures, including Chaplin's "A Woman of Paris" (a rare drama for Chaplin, in which his character of The Tramp does not appear) and made an impression in the operetta "Dédé". He met the American composers George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and brought "Dédé" to Broadway in 1922. The same year he met Yvonne Vallée, a young dancer, who became his wife in 1927.  When Douglas Fairbanks was on honeymoon in Paris in 1920, he offered him star billing with his new wife Mary Pickford, but Chevalier doubted his own talent for silent movies (his previous ones had largely failed). When sound arrived, he made his Hollywood debut in 1928. He signed a contract with Paramount Pictures and played his first American role in "Innocents of Paris". In 1930, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in "The Love Parade" (1929) and "The Big Pond" (1930). "The Big Pond" gave Chevalier his first big American hit songs: "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight" with words and music by Al Lewis and Al Sherman, plus "A New Kind of Love" (or "The Nightingales"). He collaborated with film director Ernst Lubitsch. He appeared in Paramount's all-star revue film "Paramount on Parade" (1930).  While Chevalier was under contract with Paramount, his name was so recognized that his passport was featured in the Marx Brothers film "Monkey Business" (1931). In this sequence, each brother uses Chevalier's passport, and tries to sneak off the ocean liner where they were stowaways by claiming to be the singer—with unique renditions of "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me" with its line "If the nightingales could sing like you". In 1931, Chevalier starred in a musical called "The Smiling Lieutenant" with Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins. Despite the disdain audiences held for musicals in 1931, it proved a successful film.  In 1932, he starred with Jeanette MacDonald in Paramount's film musical "One Hour With You", which became a success and one of the films instrumental in making musicals popular again. Due to its popularity, Paramount starred Maurice Chevalier in another musical called "Love Me Tonight" (also 1932), and again co-starring Jeanette MacDonald. It is about a tailor who falls in love with a princess when he goes to a castle to collect a debt and is mistaken for a baron. Featuring songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, it was directed by Rouben Mamoulian, who, with the help of the songwriters, was able to put into the score his ideas of the integrated musical (a musical which blends songs and dialogue so the songs advance the plot). It is considered one of the greatest film musicals of all time. In 1934, he starred in the first sound film of the Franz Lehár operetta "The Merry Widow", one of his best-known films, though he felt his role was too narrow and repetitive. He then signed with MGM for "The Man from the Folies Bergère", his own favourite of his films. After a disagreement over his star-billing, he returned to France in 1935 to resume his music-hall career.  Even when he was the highest-paid star in Hollywood, Chevalier had a reputation as a penny-pincher. When filming at Paramount, he balked at parking his car in the Paramount lot at ten cents a day. After bargaining, he managed to get five cents per day. Another story is told of Chevalier (a smoker) having a conversation with someone who offered him a cigarette. He took it, said "Thank you", put it in his pocket, and continued with the conversation. But in Hollywood he seemed to be a divided character. When not playing around with young chorus-girls, he actually felt quite lonely, and sought the company of Adolphe Menjou and Charles Boyer, also French, but both much better educated than Chevalier. Boyer in particular introduced him to art galleries and good literature, and Chevalier would try to copy him as the man of taste. But at other times, he would'revert to type' as the bitter and impoverished street-kid he basically was. When performing in English, he always put on a heavy French accent, although his normal spoken English was quite fluent and sounded more American.  In 1937, Chevalier married the dancer Nita Raya. He had several successes, such as his revue "Paris en Joie" in the Casino de Paris. A year later, he performed in "Amours de Paris". His songs remained big hits, such as "Prosper" (1935), "Ma Pomme" (1936) and "Ça fait d'excellents français" (1939).

World War II.

During World War II, Chevalier kept performing on the stage in France. In 1941, he appeared in a successful revue in the Casino de Paris, "Bonjour Paris", which was Nazi propaganda, reassuring the public that nothing had basically changed under the occupation. Songs like "Ça sent si bon la France" and "La Chanson du maçon" became hits. The Nazis knew that he was harbouring a Jewish family in the south of France, and put pressure on him to perform in Berlin and sing for the collaborating radio station Radio Paris. He refused, but did perform for prisoners of war in Germany at the same camp where he had been held captive in World War I, and succeeded in getting ten French soldiers freed in exchange.  In 1942, Chevalier was named on a list of French collaborators with Germany to be killed during the war, or tried after it. That year he returned to La Bocca, near Cannes, but returned to the capital city in September. In 1944 when Allied forces freed France, Chevalier was accused of collaboration. The August 28, 1944, issue of "Stars and Stripes", the daily newspaper of U.S. armed forces in the European Theater of Operations, reported in error that "Maurice Chevalier Slain By Maquis, Patriots Say". Even though he was acquitted by a French convened court, the English-speaking press remained hostile and he was refused a visa for several years. In a review of the 1969 Oscar-nominated documentary film about French collaboration "Le chagrin et la pitié" ("The Sorrow and the Pity"), Simon Heffer draws attention to “a clip of Maurice Chevalier explaining, entirely dishonestly, to an anglophone audience how he had not collaborated.”

After World War II.

In his own country, however, he was still popular. In 1946, he split from Nita Ray and started writing his memoirs, which took many years to complete.  He started to collect and paint art, and acted in "Le silence est d'or (Man About Town)" (1946) by René Clair. He still toured throughout the United States and other parts of the world, then returned to France in 1948.  In 1944, he had already participated in a Communist demonstration in Paris. He was therefore even less popular in the U.S. during the McCarthyism period; in 1951, he was refused re-entry into the U.S. because he had signed the Stockholm Appeal.  In 1949, he performed in Stockholm in a Communist benefit against nuclear arms. Also in 1949, Chevalier was the subject of the first official roast at the New York Friars' Club, although celebrities had been informally "roasted" at banquets since 1910.  In 1952, he bought a large property in Marnes-la-Coquette, near Paris, and named it La Louque, as a homage to his mother's nickname. He started a relationship in 1952 with Janie Michels, a young divorcee with three children. In 1954, after the McCarthy era abated Chevalier was welcomed back in the United States. His first full American tour was in 1955, with Vic Schoen as arranger and musical director. The Billy Wilder film "Love in the Afternoon" (1957) with Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper, was his first Hollywood film in more than 20 years.  In 1957, Chevalier was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.  Chevalier appeared in the movie musical "Gigi" (1958) with Leslie Caron and Hermione Gingold, with whom he shared the song "I Remember It Well", and several Walt Disney films. The success of "Gigi" prompted Hollywood to give him an Academy Honorary Award that year for achievements in entertainment. In 1957, he appeared as himself in an episode of "The Jack Benny Program" titled "Jack in Paris". He also appeared as himself in an episode of "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour", titled "Lucy Goes to Mexico".

Final years.

In the early 1960s, he toured the United States and between 1960 and 1963 made eight films, including "Can-Can" (1960) with Frank Sinatra. In 1961, he starred in the drama "Fanny" with Leslie Caron and Charles Boyer, an updated version of Marcel Pagnol's "Marseilles Trilogy." In 1962, he filmed "Panic Button" (not released until 1964), playing opposite blonde bombshell/sex symbol Jayne Mansfield. In 1965, at 77, he made another world tour. In 1967 he toured in Latin America, again, the US, Europe and Canada, where he appeared as a special guest at Expo 67. The following year, on October 1, 1968, he announced his farewell tour.  Historical newsreel footage of Chevalier appeared in the Marcel Ophüls documentary "The Sorrow and the Pity". In a wartime short film near the end of the film's second part, he explained his disappearance during World War II (see the "World War II" section in this entry), as rumors of his death lingered at that time, and emphatically denied any collaboration with the Nazis. His theme song, "Sweepin' the Clouds Away," from the film "Paramount on Parade" (1930), was one of its theme songs and was played in the end credits of the film's second part.  In 1970, two years after his retirement, songwriters Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman got him to sing the title song of the Disney film "The Aristocats", which ended up being his final contribution to the film industry.  He died in Paris of kidney failure, on New Year's Day 1972, aged 83, and was interred in the cemetery of Marnes-la-Coquette in Hauts-de-Seine, outside Paris, France.  Chevalier was a member of the Grand Order of Water Rats and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1651 Vine Street.

Maurice Auguste Chevalier (; September 12, 1888 – January 1, 1972) was a French actor, cabaret singer and entertainer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including "Livin' In The Sunlight", "Valentine", "Louise", "Mimi", and "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" and for his films, including "The Love Parade", "The Big Pond", "The Smiling Lieutenant", "One Hour with You" and "Love Me Tonight". His trademark attire was a boater hat and tuxedo.

Maurice Chevalier (12. září 1888 Paříž – 1. ledna 1972) byl legendární francouzský a americký herec, tanečník, šansoniér a zpěvák, držitel cen Oscar a Zlatý glóbus za celoživotní dílo, držitel ceny Tony.


History.

The first moving-pointer current-detecting device was the galvanometer in 1820. These were used to measure resistance and voltage by using a Wheatstone bridge, and comparing the unknown quantity to a reference voltage or resistance. While useful in the lab, the devices were very slow and impractical in the field. These galvanometers were bulky and delicate.  The D'Arsonval–Weston meter movement uses a moving coil which carries a pointer and rotates on pivots or a taut band ligament. The coil rotates in a permanent magnetic field and is restrained by fine spiral springs which also serve to carry current into the moving coil. It gives proportional measurement rather than just detection, and deflection is independent of the orientation of the meter. Instead of balancing a bridge, values could be directly read off the instrument's scale, which made measurement quick and easy.  The basic moving coil meter is suitable only for direct current measurements, usually in the range of 10 μA to 100 mA. It

General properties of multimeters.

Any meter will load the circuit under test to some extent. For example, a multimeter using a moving coil movement with full-scale deflection current of 50 microamps (μA), the highest sensitivity commonly available, must draw at least 50 μA from the circuit under test for the meter to reach the top end of its scale. This may load a high-impedance circuit so much as to affect the circuit, thereby giving a low reading. The full-scale deflection current may also be expressed in terms of "ohms per volt" (Ω/V). The ohms per volt figure is often called the "sensitivity" of the instrument. Thus a meter with a 50 μA movement will have a "sensitivity" of 20,000 Ω/V. "Per volt" refers to the fact that the impedance the meter presents to the circuit under test will be 20,000 Ω multiplied by the full-scale voltage to which the meter is set. For example, if the meter is set to a range of 300 V full scale, the meter's impedance will be 6 MΩ. 20,000 Ω/V is the best (highest) sensitivity available for typical analog multimeters that lack internal amplifiers. For meters that do have internal amplifiers (VTVMs, FETVMs, etc.), the input impedance is fixed by the amplifier circuit.  The first Avometer had a sensitivity of 60 Ω/V, three direct current ranges (12 mA, 1.2 A, and 12 A), three direct voltage ranges (12, 120, and 600 V or optionally 1,200 V), and a 10,000 Ω resistance range. An improved version of 1927 increased this to 13 ranges and 166.6 Ω/V (6 mA) movement. A "Universal" version having additional alternating

Operation.

A multimeter is the combination of a DC voltmeter, AC voltmeter, ammeter, and ohmmeter. An un-amplified analog multimeter combines a meter movement, range resistors and switches; VTVMs are amplified analog meters and contain active circuitry.  For an analog meter movement, DC voltage is measured with a series resistor connected between the meter movement and the circuit under test. A switch (usually rotary) allows greater resistance to be inserted in series with the meter movement to read higher voltages. The product of the basic full-scale deflection current of the movement, and the sum of the series resistance and the movement's own resistance, gives the full-scale voltage of the range. As an example, a meter movement that required 1 mA for full-scale deflection, with an internal resistance of 500 Ω, would, on a 10 V range of the multimeter, have 9,500 Ω of series resistance.  For analog current ranges, matched low-resistance shunts are connected in parallel with the meter movement to divert most of the current around the coil. Again for the case of a hypothetical 1 mA, 500 Ω movement on a 1 A range, the shunt resistance would be just over 0.5 Ω.  Moving coil instruments can respond only to the average value of the current through them. To measure alternating current, which changes up and down repeatedly, a rectifier is inserted in the circuit so that each negative half cycle is inverted; the result is a varying and nonzero DC voltage whose maximum value will be half the AC peak to peak voltage, assuming a symmetrical waveform.

Measured values.

Contemporary multimeters can measure many values. The most common are: Additionally, some multimeters also measure:

Resolution.

Resolution and accuracy.

The resolution of a multimeter is the smallest part of the scale which can be shown, which is scale dependent. On some digital multimeters it can be configured, with higher resolution measurements taking longer to complete. For example, a multimeter that has a 1 mV resolution on a 10 V scale

Digital.

The resolution of a multimeter is often specified in the number of decimal digits resolved and displayed. If the most significant digit cannot take all values from 0 to 9 it is generally, and confusingly, termed a fractional digit. For example, a multimeter which can read up to 19999 (plus an embedded decimal point) is said to read digits.  By convention, if the most significant digit can be either 0 or 1, it is termed a half-digit; if it can take higher values without reaching 9 (often 3 or 5), it may be called three-quarters of a digit. A -digit multimeter would display one "half digit" that could only display 0 or 1, followed by five digits taking all values from 0 to 9. Such a meter could show positive or negative values from 0 to 199999. A -digit meter can display a quantity from 0 to

Analog.

Analog meters are older designs, but despite being technically surpassed by digital meters with bargraphs, may still be preferred by engineers and troubleshooters. One reason given is that analog meters are more sensitive (or responsive) to changes in the circuit that is being measured. A digital multimeter samples the quantity being measured over time, and then displays it. Analog multimeters continuously read the test value. If there are slight changes in readings, the needle of an analog multimeter will attempt to track it, as opposed to the digital meter having to wait until the next sample, giving delays between each discontinuous reading (plus the digital meter may additionally require settling time to

Accuracy.

Digital multimeters generally take measurements with accuracy superior to their analog counterparts. Standard analog multimeters measure with typically ±3% accuracy, though instruments of higher accuracy are made. Standard portable digital multimeters are specified to have an accuracy of typically ±0.5% on the DC voltage ranges. Mainstream bench-top multimeters are available with specified accuracy of better than ±0.01%. Laboratory grade instruments can have accuracies of a few parts per million.  Accuracy figures need to be interpreted with care. The accuracy of an analog instrument usually refers to full-scale deflection; a measurement of 30 V on the 100 V scale of a 3% meter is subject to an error of 3 V, 10% of the reading. Digital meters usually specify accuracy as a percentage of reading plus a percentage of full-scale value, sometimes expressed in counts rather than percentage terms.  Quoted accuracy is specified as being that of the lower millivolt (mV) DC range, and is known as the "basic DC volts accuracy" figure. Higher DC voltage ranges, current, resistance, AC

Sensitivity and input impedance.

When used for measuring voltage, the input impedance of the multimeter must be very high compared to the impedance of the circuit being measured; otherwise circuit operation may be changed, and the reading will also be inaccurate.  Meters with electronic amplifiers (all digital multimeters and some analog meters) have a fixed input impedance that is high enough not to disturb most circuits. This is often either one or ten megohms; the standardization of the input resistance allows the use of external high-resistance probes which form a voltage divider with the input resistance to extend voltage range up to tens of thousands of volts. High-end multimeters generally provide an input impedance greater than 10 GΩ for ranges less than or equal to 10 V. Some high-end multimeters provide >10 Gigaohms of impedance to ranges greater than 10 V.  Most analog multimeters of the moving-pointer type are unbuffered, and draw current from the circuit under test to deflect the meter pointer. The impedance of the meter varies depending on the basic sensitivity of the meter movement and the range which is selected. For example, a meter with a typical 20,000 Ω/V sensitivity will have an input resistance of 2 MΩ on

Burden voltage.

Every inline series-connected ammeter, including a multimeter in a current range, has a certain resistance. Most multimeters inherently measure voltage, and pass a current to be measured through a shunt resistance, measuring the voltage developed across it. The voltage drop is known as the burden voltage, specified in volts per ampere. The value can change depending on the range

Alternating current sensing.

Since the basic indicator system in either an analog or digital meter responds to DC only, a multimeter includes an AC to DC conversion circuit for making alternating current measurements. Basic meters utilize a rectifier circuit to measure the average or peak absolute value of the voltage, but are calibrated to show the calculated root mean square (RMS) value for a sinusoidal waveform; this will give

Digital multimeters (DMM or DVOM).

A digital multimeter (DMM) is a device that provides multiple types of measurements within one device. DMMs uses a more accurate and readable digital output than an analog solution. Without using a DMM to immediately measure live voltage and currents, there is a risk of painful shocks that can even be lethal. Therefore, it poses as a serious safety hazard.  Modern multimeters are often digital due to their accuracy, durability and extra features. In a digital multimeter the signal under test is converted to a voltage and an amplifier

Analog multimeters.

A multimeter may be implemented with a galvanometer meter movement, or less often with a bargraph or simulated pointer such as an liquid-crystal display (LCD) or vacuum fluorescent display. Analog multimeters were common; a quality analog instrument would cost about the same as a DMM. Analog multimeters had the precision and reading accuracy limitations described above, and so were not built to provide the same accuracy as digital instruments.  Analog meters were intuitive where the trend of a measurement was more important than an exact value obtained at a particular moment. A change in angle or in a proportion was easier to interpret than a change in the value of a digital readout. For this reason, some digital multimeters additionally have a bargraph as a second display, typically with a more rapid sampling rate than used for the primary readout. These fast sampling rate bargraphs have a superior response than the physical pointer of analog meters, obsoleting the older technology. With rapidly fluctuating DC, AC or a combination of both, advanced digital meters were able to track and display fluctuations better than analog meters whilst also having the ability to separate and simultaneously display DC and AC components.  Analog meter movements are inherently more fragile physically and electrically than digital meters. Many analog multimeters feature a range switch position marked "off" to protect the meter movement during transportation which

Probes.

A multimeter can use many different test probes to connect to the circuit or device under test. Crocodile clips, retractable hook clips, and pointed probes are the three most common types. Tweezer probes are used for closely spaced test points, as for instance surface-mount devices. The connectors are attached to flexible, well insulated leads terminated with connectors appropriate for the meter. Probes are connected to portable meters typically by shrouded or recessed banana jacks, while benchtop meters may use banana jacks or BNC connectors.

Safety.

Most multimeters include a fuse, or two fuses, which will sometimes prevent damage to the multimeter from a current overload on the highest current range. (For added safety, test leads with fuses built in are available.) A common error when operating a multimeter is to set the meter to measure resistance or current, and then connect it directly to a low-impedance voltage source. Unfused meters are often quickly destroyed by such errors; fused meters often survive. Fuses used in meters must carry the maximum measuring current of the instrument, but are intended to disconnect if operator error exposes the meter to a low-impedance fault. Meters with inadequate or unsafe fusing

DMM alternatives.

A quality general-purpose electronics DMM is generally considered adequate for measurements at signal levels greater than 1 mV or 1 μA, or below about 100 MΩ; these values are far from the theoretical limits of sensitivity, and are of considerable interest in some circuit

Power supply.

Analog meters can measure voltage and current by using power from the test circuit, but require a supplementary internal voltage source for resistance testing, while electronic meters always require an internal power supply to run their internal circuitry. Hand-held meters use batteries, while bench meters usually

Safety.

It is safest (for both multimeter, circuit under test, and the operator) to disconnect a component from its circuit, and almost always, to remove power from the device being investigated. Removing all power connections from a piece of mains powered equipment before testing (and ensuring that all large capacitance devices are discharged safely) is the safest choice. Leaving equipment attached to the mains supply while making measurements should be only a very carefully considered alternative choice. Amongst other issues, there are interactions between the ground arrangements for wall powered test equipment, and the device under test, which are unsafe, and can damage test equipment and the device under test. This is especially so when there is a fault, suspected or not, in any of the interconnected devices. Battery powered test equipment may be the safest choice in such situations.  Meters intended for testing in hazardous locations or for use on blasting circuits may require use of a manufacturer-specified battery to maintain their safety rating.

A multimeter or a multitester, also known as a VOM (volt-ohm-milliammeter), is an electronic measuring instrument that combines several measurement functions in one unit. A typical multimeter can measure voltage, current, and resistance. Analog multimeters use a microammeter with a moving pointer to display readings. Digital multimeters (DMM, DVOM) have a numeric display, and may also show a graphical bar representing the measured value. Digital multimeters are now far more common due to their lower cost and greater precision having obsoleted analog multimeters.

Multimetr (nebo "také multitester") je elektronický měřicí přístroj, který v sobě kombinuje několik funkcí. Nejzákladnější varianty přístroje obsahují ampérmetr, voltmetr a ohmmetr.