History.

The institute was founded in December 1974 in Wichita, Kansas, as the "Charles Koch Foundation" and initially funded by Charles Koch. The other members of the first board of directors included co-founder Murray Rothbard, libertarian scholar Earl Ravenal, and businessmen Sam H. Husbands Jr. and David H. Padden. At the suggestion of Rothbard, the institute changed its name in 1976 to Cato Institute after "Cato's Letters", a series of British essays penned in the early 18th century by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon.  Cato relocated first to San Francisco, California, in 1977, then to Washington, D.C., in 1981, settling initially in a historic house on Capitol Hill. The institute moved to its current location on Massachusetts Avenue in 1993. Cato Institute was named the fifth-ranked think tank in the world for 2009 in a study of think tanks by James G. McGann, PhD of the University of Pennsylvania, based on a criterion of excellence in "producing rigorous and relevant research, publications and programs in one or more substantive areas of research".  By 2011, the Cato Institute had a budget of $39 million and was "one of the largest think tanks in Washington. In 2012, Ed Crane—who was then the president of Cato, William Niskanen—who had served as Cato chairman, and the Koch brothers—with 50 percent of Cato shares, held shares in Cato Institute. When Niskanen died in March 2012, the Koch brothers contested Niskanen's wife's inheritance of 25 percent of Cato's shares in a lawsuit filed in a court in Kansas. The brothers sued for control of the Cato Institute. In response to the lawsuit which called for Cranes' resignation, "independent parties on the political Left, Right, and Center" provided "testimonials to Cato's effectiveness" as a respected leader of thought, educator and contributor to the "marketplace of ideas". During the 2012 United States presidential election, the Koch brothers were also "prominent donors" to the Americans For Prosperity who supported the Tea Party movement and opposed President Obama. Those who supported Cato's existing management rallied around the "Save Cato" banner, while those who supported the Koch brothers, called "For a Better Cato".

Activities.

Various Cato programs were favorably ranked in a survey published by the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.

Publications.

The Cato Institute publishes numerous policy studies, briefing papers, periodicals, and books. Peer-reviewed academic journals include the "Cato Journal" and "Regulation". Other periodicals include "Cato's Letter", "Cato Supreme Court Review", and "Cato Policy Report". Cato published "Inquiry Magazine" from 1977 to 1982 (before transferring it to the Libertarian Review Foundation) and "Literature of Liberty" from 1978 to 1979 (before transferring it to the Institute for Humane Studies).  Notable books from Cato and Cato scholars include:

Web projects.

In addition to maintaining its own website in English and Spanish, Cato maintains websites focused on particular topics:  Social media sponsored by Cato includes "Daily Podcasts" (through iTunes and RSS feeds), plus pages on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube.

Conferences.

Speakers at Cato have included Federal Reserve Chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato. In 2009 Czech Republic President Václav Klaus spoke at a conference.

Ideological relationships.

Libertarianism, classical liberalism, and conservatism.

Many Cato scholars advocate support for civil liberties, liberal immigration policies, drug liberalization, and the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell and laws restricting consensual sexual activity. The Cato Institute officially resists being labeled as part of the conservative movement because "'conservative' smacks of an unwillingness to change, of a desire to preserve the status quo".  In 2006, Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos proposed the term "Libertarian Democrat" to describe his particular liberal position, suggesting that libertarians should be allies of the Democratic Party. Replying, Cato vice president for research Brink Lindsey agreed that libertarians and liberals should view each other as natural ideological allies, and noted continuing differences between mainstream liberal views on economic policy and Cato's "Jeffersonian philosophy". Cato has stated on its "About Cato" page: "The Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato's work has increasingly come to be called 'libertarianism' or'market liberalism.' It combines an appreciation for entrepreneurship, the market process, and lower taxes with strict respect for civil liberties and skepticism about the benefits of both the welfare state and foreign military adventurism."  Some Cato scholars disagree with conservatives on neo-conservative foreign policy, albeit that this has not always been uniform.

Objectivism.

The relationship between Cato and the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) improved with the nomination of Cato's new president John A. Allison IV in 2012. He is a former ARI board member and is reported to be an "ardent devotee" of Rand who has promoted reading her books to colleges nationwide. In March 2015 Allison retired and was replaced by Peter Goettler. Allison remains on the Cato Institute's board.

Cato positions on political issues and policies.

The Cato Institute advocates policies that advance "individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace". They are libertarian in their policy positions, typically advocating diminished government intervention in domestic, social, and economic policies and decreased military and political intervention worldwide. Cato was cited by columnist Ezra Klein as nonpartisan, saying that it is "the foremost advocate for small-government principles in American life" and it "advocates those principles when Democrats are in power, and when Republicans are in power"; and Eric Lichtblau called Cato "one of the country's most widely cited research organizations." Nina Eastman reported in 1995 that "on any given day, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas might be visiting for lunch. Or Cato staffers might be plotting strategy with House Majority Leader Dick Armey, another Texan, and his staff."

On domestic issues.

Cato scholars have consistently called for the privatization of many government services and institutions, including NASA, Social Security, the United States Postal Service, the Transportation Security Administration, public schooling, public transportation systems, and public broadcasting. The institute opposes minimum wage laws, saying that they violate the freedom of contract and thus private property rights, and increase unemployment. It is opposed to expanding overtime regulations, arguing that it will benefit some employees in the short term, while costing jobs or lowering wages of others, and have no meaningful long-term impact. It opposes child labor prohibitions. It opposes public sector unions and supports right-to-work laws. It opposes universal health care, arguing that it is harmful to patients and an intrusion onto individual liberty. It is against affirmative action. It has also called for total abolition of the welfare state, and has argued that it should be replaced with reduced business regulations to create more jobs, and argues that private charities are fully capable of replacing it. Cato has also opposed antitrust laws.  Cato is an opponent of campaign finance reform, arguing that government is the ultimate form of potential corruption and that such laws undermine democracy by undermining competitive elections. Cato also supports the repeal of the Federal Election Campaign Act.  Cato has published strong criticisms of the 1998 settlement which many U.S. states signed with the tobacco industry. In 2004, Cato scholar Daniel Griswold wrote in support of President George W. Bush's failed proposal to grant temporary work visas to otherwise undocumented laborers which would have granted limited residency for the purpose of employment in the U.S.  The Cato Institute published a study proposing a Balanced Budget Veto Amendment to the United States Constitution.  In 2003, Cato filed an amicus brief in support of the Supreme Court's decision in "Lawrence v. Texas", which struck down the remaining state laws that made private, non-commercial homosexual relations between consenting adults illegal. Cato cited the 14th Amendment, among other things, as the source of their support for the ruling. The amicus brief was cited in Justice Kennedy's majority opinion for the Court.  In 2006, Cato published a Policy Analysis criticising the Federal Marriage Amendment as unnecessary, anti-federalist, and anti-democratic. The amendment would have changed the United States Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage; the amendment failed in both houses of Congress.  Cato scholars have been sharp critics of current U.S. drug policy and the perceived growing militarization of U.S. law enforcement.

Criticism of corporate welfare.

In 2004, the institute published a paper arguing in favor of "drug re-importation". Cato has published numerous studies criticizing what it calls "corporate welfare", the practice of public officials funneling taxpayer money, usually via targeted budgetary spending, to politically connected corporate interests.  Cato president Ed Crane and Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope co-wrote a 2002 op-ed piece in "The Washington Post" calling for the abandonment of the Republican energy bill, arguing that it had become little more than a gravy train for Washington, D.C., lobbyists. Again in 2005, Cato scholar Jerry Taylor teamed up with Daniel Becker of the Sierra Club to attack the Republican Energy Bill as a give-away to corporate interests.

On copyright issues.

A 2006 study criticized the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

On foreign policy.

Cato's non-interventionist foreign policy views, and strong support for civil liberties, have frequently led Cato scholars to criticize those in power, both Republican and Democratic. Cato scholars opposed President George H. W. Bush's 1991 Gulf War operations (a position which caused the organization to lose nearly $1 million in funding), President Bill Clinton's interventions in Haiti and Kosovo, President George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq, and President Barack Obama's 2011 military intervention in Libya. As a response to the September 11 attacks, Cato scholars supported the removal of al Qaeda and the Taliban regime from power, but are against an indefinite and open-ended military occupation of Afghanistan. Cato scholars criticized U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.  Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, criticized many of the arguments offered to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. One of the war's earliest critics, Carpenter wrote in January 2002: "Ousting Saddam would make Washington responsible for Iraq's political future and entangle the United States in an endless nation-building mission beset by intractable problems." Carpenter also predicted: "Most notably there is the issue posed by two persistent regional secession movements: the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south." But in 2002 Carpenter wrote, "the United States should not shrink from confronting al-Qaeda in its Pakistani lair,"<ref name="https://web.archive.org"></ref> a position echoed in the institute's policy recommendations for the 108th Congress. Cato's director of foreign policy studies, Christopher Preble, argues in "The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free", that America's position as an unrivaled superpower tempts policymakers to constantly overreach and to redefine ever more broadly the "national interest".  Christopher Preble has said that the "scare campaign" to protect military spending from cuts under the Budget Control Act of 2011 has backfired.

On environmental policy.

Cato scholars have written about the issues of the environment, including global warming, environmental regulation, and energy policy.  PolitiFact.com and "Scientific American" have called Cato's work on global warming "false" and based on "data selection". A December 2003 Cato panel included Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling and John Christy. Michaels, Balling and Christy agreed that global warming is related at least some degree to human activity but that some scientists and the media have overstated the danger. The Cato Institute has also criticized political attempts to stop global warming as expensive and ineffective:  Cato scholars have been critical of the Bush administration's views on energy policy. In 2003, Cato scholars Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren said the Republican Energy Bill was "hundreds of pages of corporate welfare, symbolic gestures, empty promises, and pork-barrel projects". They also spoke out against the former president's calls for larger ethanol subsidies.  With regard to the "Takings Clause" of the United States Constitution and environmental protection, libertarians associated with Cato contend that the Constitution is not adequate to guarantee the protection of private property rights.

Other commentaries of presidential administrations.

Cato scholars were critical of George W. Bush's Republican administration (2001–2009) on several issues, including education, and excessive government spending. On other issues, they supported Bush administration initiatives, most notably health care, Social Security, global warming, tax policy, and immigration.  During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Cato scholars criticized both major-party candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama.  Cato has criticized President Obama's stances on policy issues such as fiscal stimulus, healthcare reform, foreign policy, and drug-related matters, while supporting his stance on the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the DREAM Act.  Cato was critical of Trump's immigration ban, which was enacted in January 2017.

Funding, tax status, and corporate structure.

The Cato Institute is classified as a 501(c)(3) organization under U.S. Internal Revenue Code. For revenue, the institute is largely dependent on private contributions and does not receive government funding. The Cato Institute reported fiscal year 2015 revenue of $37.3 million and expenses of $29.4 million. According to the organization's annual report, $32.1 million came from individual donors, $2.9 million came from foundations, $1.2 million came from program revenue and other income, and $1 million came from corporations.  Sponsors of Cato have included FedEx, Google, CME Group and Whole Foods Market. "The Nation" reported support for Cato from the tobacco industry in a 2012 story.

Funding details.

Funding details as of FYE March 2019:  Net assets as of FYE March 2019: $81,422,000.

Shareholder dispute and departure of Ed Crane.

According to an agreement signed in 1977, there were to be four shareholders of the Cato Institute. They were Charles and David Koch, Ed Crane, and William A. Niskanen. Niskanen died in October 2011. In March 2012, a dispute broke out over the ownership of Niskanen's shares. Charles and David Koch filed suit in Kansas, seeking to void his shareholder seat. The Kochs argued that Niskanen's shares should first be offered to the board of the institute, and then to the remaining shareholders. Crane contended that Niskanen's share belonged to his widow, Kathryn Washburn, and that the move by the Kochs was an attempt to turn Cato into "some sort of auxiliary for the G.O.P... It's detrimental to Cato, it's detrimental to Koch Industries, it's detrimental to the libertarian movement."  In June 2012, Cato announced an agreement in principle to settle the dispute by changing the institute's governing structure. Under the agreement, a board replaced the shareholders and Crane, who at the time was also chief executive officer, retired. Former BB&T bank CEO John A. Allison IV replaced him. The Koch brothers agreed to drop two lawsuits.  In 2018, several former Cato employees alleged longtime sexual harassment by Crane, going back to the 1990s and continuing until his departure in 2012. "Politico" reported that he settled one such claim in 2012. Crane denied the allegations.

Nobel laureates at Cato.

The following Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureates have worked with Cato:

Milton Friedman Prize.

Since 2002, the Cato Institute has awarded the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty every two years to "an individual who has made a significant contribution to advancing human freedom." The prize comes with a cash award of US$250,000.

Board of directors.

As of 2019:

Notable Cato experts.

Notable scholars associated with Cato include the following:

Affiliations.

The Cato Institute is an associate member of the State Policy Network, a U.S. national network of free-market oriented think tanks.

Rankings.

According to the "2017 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report" (Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania), Cato is number 15 in the "Top Think Tanks Worldwide" and number 10 in the "Top Think Tanks in the United States". Other "Top Think Tank" rankings include # 13 (of 85) in Defense and National Security, #5 (of 80) in Domestic Economic Policy, #4 (of 55) in Education Policy, #17 (of 85) in Foreign Policy and International Affairs, #8 (of 30) in Domestic Health Policy, #14 (of 25) in Global Health Policy, #18 (of 80) in International Development, #14 (of 50) in International Economic Policy, #8 (of 50) in Social Policy, #8 (of 75) for Best Advocacy Campaign, #17 (of 60) for Best Think Tank Network, #3 (of 60) for best Use of Social Networks, #9 (of 50) for Best External Relations/Public Engagement Program, #2 (of 40) for Best Use of the Internet, #12 (of 40) for Best Use of Media, #5 (of 30) for Most Innovative Policy Ideas/Proposals, #11 (of 70) for the Most Significant Impact on Public Policy, and #9 (of 60) for Outstanding Policy-Oriented Public Programs. Cato also topped the 2014 list of the budget-adjusted ranking of international development think tanks.

The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries. In July 1976, the name was changed to the Cato Institute. Cato was established to have a focus on public advocacy, media exposure and societal influence. According to the "2017 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report" (Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania), Cato is number 15 in the "Top Think Tanks Worldwide" and number 10 in the "Top Think Tanks in the United States".

加图研究所(英语:Cato Institute,又译卡托研究所)是一个位于美国华盛顿哥伦比亚特区的自由意志主义智库。是美国五大保守派智库之一。


Biography.

Joseph H. Pilates was born 9 December 1883 in Mönchengladbach, Germany. His father, Heinrich Friedrich Pilates, who was born in Greece, was a metal worker and enthusiastic gymnast, and his German-born mother was a housewife.  Pilates was a sickly child. He suffered from asthma, rickets, and rheumatic fever, and he dedicated his entire life to improving his physical strength. He was introduced by his father to gymnastics and body-building, and to martial arts like jiu-jitsu and boxing. By the age of 14, he was fit enough to pose for anatomical charts. Pilates came to believe that the "modern" life-style, bad posture, and inefficient breathing lay at the roots of poor health. He ultimately devised a series of exercises and training techniques, and engineered all the equipment, specifications, and tuning required to teach his methods properly.  Pilates was originally a gymnast and bodybuilder, but when he moved to England in 1912, he earned a living as a professional boxer, a circus-performer, and a self-defense trainer at police schools and Scotland Yard. During World War I the British authorities interned him, along with other German citizens, in Lancaster Castle, where he taught wrestling and self-defense, boasting that his students would emerge stronger than they were before their internment. It was there that he began refining and teaching his minimal equipment system of mat exercises that later became "Contrology". He was then transferred to another internment camp at Knockaloe on the Isle of Man. During that involuntary break, he began to intensively develop his concept of an integrated, comprehensive system of physical exercise, which he himself called "Contrology". Some of the early use of Pilates's exercise methods included rehabilitation of seriously injured veterans.  He studied yoga and the movements of animals and trained his fellow inmates in fitness and exercises.  After World War I, he returned to Germany and collaborated with important experts in dance and physical exercise such as Rudolf Laban. In Hamburg, he trained police officers. He immigrated to the United States around 1925. On the ship to America, he met his future wife Clara. The couple founded a studio in New York City and directly taught and supervised their students well into the 1960s. "Contrology", related to encouraging the use of the mind to control muscles, focusing attention on core postural muscles that help keep the body balanced and provide support for the spine. In particular, Pilates exercises teach awareness of breath and of alignment of the spine, and strengthen the deep torso and abdominal muscles.  Joseph and Clara Pilates soon established a devoted following in the local dance and performing-arts community of New York. Well-known dancers such as George Balanchine, who arrived in the United States in 1933, and Martha Graham, who had come to New York in 1923, became devotees and regularly sent their students to the Pilates for training and rehabilitation. His exercise regimen built flexibility, strength and stamina. Soon after it became known that ballerinas were attending the Pilates gym on 8th Avenue, society women followed.  One of the ballerinas was Romana Kryzanowska, who become Pilates' protege. Kryzanowska started Pilates at the age of 16 following an ankle injury. Pilates said of her, "she's a natural". Kryzanowska was named a helper and started teaching Pilates alongside Pilates and his wife. Toward the end of his life, Pilates named Kryzanowska as the director of The Pilates Studio. Kryzanowska and her daughter continued to operate Pilates' original studio. Jay Grimes believes that nobody knows Joseph Pilates’ work better than Kryzanowska.  Joseph Pilates wrote several books, including "Return to Life through Contrology" and "Your Health," and he was also a prolific inventor, with over 26 patents cited. Joe and Clara had a number of disciples who continued to teach variations of his method or, in some cases, focused exclusively on preserving the method and the instructor-training techniques they had learned during their studies with Joe and Clara.  In 1967, Joseph Pilates died in New York of advanced emphysema, aged 83.

Joseph Hubertus Pilates (9 December 1883 – 9 October 1967) was a German physical trainer, and notable for having invented and promoted the Pilates method of physical fitness.

约瑟夫·胡贝图斯·皮拉提斯(英语:Joseph Hubertus Pilates,1883年-12月9日-1967年-10月9日),生于德国慕森加柏(Mönchengladbach),为彼拉提斯运动的创始者与推动者。


Characteristics.

The design of a cuckoo clock is now conventional. Most are made in the "traditional style" (also known as "carved" or "chalet"), which are made to hang on a wall. In the traditional style the wooden case is decorated with carved leaves and animals. They have an automaton of a bird that appears through a small trap door when the clock strikes. The cuckoo bird is activated by the clock movement as the clock strikes by means of an arm that is triggered on the hour and half hour.  There are two kinds of movements: one-day (30-hour) and eight-day clockworks. Some have musical devices, and play a tune on a Swiss music box after striking the hours and half-hours. Usually the melody sounds only at full hours in eight-day clocks and both at full and half hours in the one-day timepieces. Musical cuckoo clocks frequently have other automata which move when the music box plays. Today's cuckoo clocks are almost always weight driven, though a very few are spring driven. The weights are made of cast iron in a pine cone shape and the "cuckoo" sound is created by two tiny gedackt pipes in the clock, with bellows attached to their tops. The clock's movement activates the bellows to send a puff of air into each pipe alternately when the timekeeper strikes.  In recent years, quartz battery-powered cuckoo clocks have become available. As with their mechanical counterparts, the cuckoo bird emerges from its enclosure and moves up and down, but on the quartz timepieces it also flaps its wings and open its beak while it sings. During the call the double doors open and the cuckoo emerges as usual, but only on the full hour, and they do not have a gong wire chime. The movement of the cuckoo in such clocks is regulated by an electromagnet that pulses on and off, attracting a weight, that acts as a fulcrum, connected to the tail of the plastic cuckoo bird, thus moving the bird up and down in his enclosure. Instead of the call being reproduced by the traditional bellows, it is a digital recording of a cuckoo calling in the wild (with a corresponding echo). The cuckoo call is usually accompanied by the sound of a waterfall and other birds in the background.  In musical quartz clocks, the hourly chime is followed by the replay of one of twelve popular melodies (one for each hour). Some musical quartz clocks also reproduce many of the popular automata found on mechanical musical clocks, such as beer drinkers, wood-choppers, and jumping deer.  Uniquely, quartz cuckoo clocks often include a sensor, so that when the lights are turned off at night they automatically silence the hourly chime. Other quartz cuckoo clocks are pre-programmed not to strike between a set of pre-determined hours. Whether this is controlled by a light sensor or pre-programmed, the function is referred to as a "night silence" feature. On quartz clocks the weights are conventionally cast in the shape of Aleppo pine cones made of plastic rather than iron, as are as the cuckoo bird and clock hands. The pendulum bob is often another carved leaf. Here, the weights and pendulum are purely ornamental as the clock is driven by battery power. As with mechanical cuckoo clocks, the dial is usually small, and typically marked with Roman numerals.

History.

First modern cuckoo clocks.

In 1629, many decades before clockmaking was established in the Black Forest, an Augsburg nobleman by the name of Philipp Hainhofer (1578–1647) penned the first known description of a modern cuckoo clock. The clock belonged to Prince Elector August von Sachsen.  Likewise, in a widely known handbook on music, "Musurgia Universalis" (1650), the scholar Athanasius Kircher describes a mechanical organ with several automated figures, including a mechanical cuckoo. This book contains the first documented description—in words and pictures—of how a mechanical cuckoo works. Kircher did not invent the cuckoo mechanism, because this book, like his other works, is a compilation of known facts into a handbook for reference purposes. The engraving clearly shows all the elements of a mechanical cuckoo. The bird automatically opens its beak and moves both its wings and tail. Simultaneously, there is heard the whistle—call of the cuckoo, created by two organ pipes, tuned to a minor or major third. There is only one fundamental difference from the Black Forest-type cuckoo mechanism: The functions of Kircher's bird are not governed by a count wheel in a strike train, but a pinned program barrel synchronizes the movements and sounds of the bird.  On the other hand, in 1669 Domenico Martinelli, in his handbook on elementary clocks "Horologi Elementari", suggests using the call of the cuckoo to indicate the hours. Starting at that time the mechanism of the cuckoo clock was known. Any mechanic or clockmaker, who could read Latin or Italian, knew after reading the books that it was feasible to have the cuckoo announce the hours.  Subsequently, cuckoo clocks appeared in regions that had not been known for their clockmaking. For instance, the "Historische Nachrichten" (1713), an anonymous publication generally attributed to Court Preacher Bartholomäus Holzfuss, mentions a musical clock in the Oranienburg palace in Berlin. This clock, originating in West Prussia, played eight church hymns and had a cuckoo that announced the quarter hours. Unfortunately this clock, like the one mentioned by Hainhofer in 1629, can no longer be traced today.  A few decades later, people in the Black Forest started to build cuckoo clocks.

First cuckoo clocks made in the Black Forest.

It is not clear who built the first cuckoo clocks in the Black Forest, but there is unanimity that the unusual clock with the bird call very quickly conquered the region. By the middle of the 18th century, several small clockmaking shops produced cuckoo clocks with wooden gears. The first Black Forest examples were created between 1740 and 1750. The earliest Black Forest examples had shields decorated with paper.  It is hard to judge how large the proportion of cuckoo clocks was among the total production of modern movement Black Forest clocks. Based on the proportions of pieces surviving to the present, it must have been a small fraction of the total production.  Regarding its murky origins, there are two main fables from the first two chroniclers of Black Forest horology which tell contradicting stories about it: The first is from Father Franz Steyrer, written in his "Geschichte der Schwarzwälder Uhrmacherkunst" (History of the Art of Clockmaking in the Black Forest) in 1796. He describes a meeting between two clock peddlers from Furtwangen (a town in the Black Forest) who met a travelling Bohemian merchant who sold wooden cuckoo clocks. Both the Furtwangen traders were so excited that they bought one. On bringing it home they copied it and showed their imitation to other Black Forest clock traders. Its popularity grew in the region and more and more clockmakers started producing them. With regard to this chronicle, the historian Adolf Kistner claimed in his book "Die Schwarzwälder Uhr" (The Black Forest Clock), published in 1927, that there is not any Bohemian cuckoo clock in existence to verify the thesis that this clock was used as a sample to copy and produce Black Forest cuckoo clocks. Bohemia had no fundamental clockmaking industry during that period.  The second story is related by another priest, Markus Fidelis Jäck, in a passage extracted from his report "Darstellungen aus der Industrie und des Verkehrs aus dem Schwarzwald" (Descriptions of the Industry and the Traffic of the Black Forest), (1810) said as follows: "The cuckoo clock was invented (in 1730) by a clock-master [Franz Anton Ketterer] from Schönwald [literally "Beautiful Forest", i.e. the Black Forest]. This craftsman adorned a clock with a moving bird that announced the hour with the cuckoo-call. The clock-master got the idea of how to make the cuckoo-call from the bellows of a church organ". Unfortunately, neither Steyrer nor Jäck quote any sources for their claims, making them unverifiable.  As time went on, the second version became the more popular, and is the one generally related today, though evidence suggests its inaccuracy. This type of clock is much older than clockmaking in the Black Forest. As early as 1650, the mechanical cuckoo was part of the reference book knowledge recorded in handbooks. It took nearly a century for the cuckoo clock to find its way to the Black Forest, where for many decades it remained a tiny niche product. In addition, R. Dorer pointed out in 1948 that Franz Anton Ketterer (1734–1806) could not have been the inventor of the cuckoo clock in 1730, because he had not yet been born. This statement was corroborated by Gerd Bender in the most recent edition of the first volume of his work "Die Uhrenmacher des hohen Schwarzwaldes und ihre Werke" ("The Clockmakers of the High Black Forest and their Works") (1998) in which he wrote that the cuckoo clock was not native to the Black Forest and also stated that: "There are no traces of the first production line of cuckoo clocks made by Ketterer". Schaaf, in "Schwarzwalduhren" ("Black Forest Clocks") (1995), provides his own research which leads to the earliest cuckoos having been built in the "Franken-Niederbayern" area ("Franconia and Lower Bavaria", in the southeast of Germany, forming nowadays the northern two-thirds of the Free State of Bavaria), in the direction of Bohemia (nowadays the main region of the Czech Republic), which he notes, lends credence to the Steyrer version.  Although the idea of placing an automaton cuckoo bird in a clock to announce the passing of time did not originate in the Black Forest, it is necessary to emphasize that the cuckoo clock as we know it today comes from this region located in southwest Germany whose tradition of clockmaking started in the late 17th century. The Black Forest people who created the cuckoo clock industry developed it, and still come up with new designs and technical improvements which have made the cuckoo clock a valued work of art all over the world.  Even though the functionality of the cuckoo mechanism has remained basically unchanged, the appearance has changed as case designs and clock movements evolved in the region. The now traditional Black Forest clock design, the "Schilduhr" (Shield-clock), was characterized by having a painted flat square wooden face behind which all the clockwork was attached. On top of the square was usually a semicircle of highly decorated painted wood which contained the door for the cuckoo. These usually depicted floral patterns (so-called "Rosenuhren", rose clocks) and often had a painted column, on either side of the chapter ring, others were decorated with illustrations of fruit as well. Some pieces also bore the names of the bride and bridegroom on the dial, which were normally painted by women. There was no cabinet surrounding the clockwork in this model. This design was the most prevalent between the end of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. These timekeepers were typically sold from door to door by "Uhrenträger" (Clock-peddlers, literally "clock carriers") who would carry the dials and movements on their backs displayed on huge backpacks.  Towards the middle of the nineteenth century till the 1870s, cuckoo clocks were also manufactured in the Black Forest type of clock known as "Rahmenuhr" (Framed-clock). As the name suggests, these scarce wall cuckoo clocks consisted of a picture frame, usually with a typical Black Forest scene painted on a wooden background or a sheet metal, lithography and screen-printing were other techniques used. Other common themes depicted were; hunting, love, family, death, birth, mythology, military and Christian religious scenes. Works by painters such as Johann Baptist Laule (1817–1895) and Carl Heine (1842–1882) were used to decorate the fronts of this and other types of clocks. The painting was almost always protected by a glass and some models displayed a person or an animal with blinking or flirty eyes as well, being operated by a simple mechanism worked by means of the pendulum swinging. The cuckoo normally took part in the scene painted, and would pop out in 3D, as usual, to announce the hour.  From the 1860s until the early 20th, cases were manufactured in a rich variety of styles such as; Biedermeier (some models also included a painting of a person or animal with moving eyes), Neoclassical or Georgian (certain pieces also displayed a painting), Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Art Nouveau, etc., becoming a suitable complementary piece for the bourgeois living room. These timepieces, based both on architectural and home decorative styles, are rarer than the popular ones looking like gatekeeper-houses (Bahnhäusle style clocks) and they could be mantel, wall or bracket clocks.  However, the popular house-shaped Bahnhäusleuhr (Railroad house clock) virtually forced the discontinuation of other designs within a few decades.

Bahnhäusle style, a successful design from Furtwangen.

In September 1850, the first director of the Grand Duchy of Baden Clockmakers School in Furtwangen, Robert Gerwig, launched a public competition to submit designs for modern clockcases, which would allow homemade products to attain a professional appearance.  Friedrich Eisenlohr (1805–1854), who as an architect had been responsible for creating the buildings along the then new and first Badenese Rhine valley railway, submitted the most far-reaching design. Eisenlohr enhanced the facade of a standard railroad-guard's residence, as he had built many of them, with a clock dial. His ""Wallclock with shield decorated by ivy vines,"" (in reality the ornament were grapevines and not ivy) as it is referred to in a surviving, handwritten report from the Clockmakers School from 1851 or 1852, became the prototype of today's popular souvenir cuckoo clocks.  Eisenlohr was also up-to-date stylistically. He was inspired by local images; rather than copying them slavishly, he modified them. Contrary to most present-day cuckoo clocks, his case features light, unstained wood and were decorated with symmetrical, flat fretwork ornaments.  Eisenlohr's idea became an instant hit, because the modern design of the Bahnhäusle clock appealed to the decorating tastes of the growing bourgeoisie and thereby tapped into new and growing markets.  While the Clockmakers School was satisfied to have Eisenlohr's clock case sketches, they were not fully realized in their original form. Eisenlohr had proposed a wooden facade; Gerwig preferred a painted metal front combined with an enamel dial. But despite intensive campaigns by the Clockmakers School, sheet metal fronts decorated with oil paintings (or coloured lithographs) never became a major market segment because of the high cost and labour-intensive process, hence only a few were produced (from the 1850s until around 1870), whether wall or mantel versions, and are nowadays sought-after collector pieces.  Characteristically, the makers of the first Bahnhäusle clocks deviated from Eisenlohr's sketch in only one way: they left out the cuckoo mechanism. Unlike today, the design with the little house was not synonymous with a cuckoo clock in the first years after 1850. This is another indication that at that time cuckoo clocks could not have been an important market segment.  Only in December 1854, Johann Baptist Beha, the best known maker of cuckoo clocks of his time, sold two of them, with oil paintings on their fronts, to the Furtwangen clock dealer Gordian Hettich, which were described as "Bahnhöfle Uhren" ("Railroad station clocks"). More than a year later, on January 20, 1856, another respected Furtwangen-based cuckoo clockmaker, Theodor Ketterer, sold one to Joseph Ruff in Glasgow (Scotland, United Kingdom).  Concurrently with Beha and Ketterer, other Black Forest clockmakers must have started to equip Bahnhäusle clocks with cuckoo mechanisms to satisfy the rapidly growing demand for this type of clock. Starting in the mid-1850s there was a real boom in this market.  By 1860, the Bahnhäusle style had started to develop away from its original, "severe" graphic form, and evolve, among other designs, toward the well-known case with three-dimensional woodcarvings, like the "Jagdstück" ("Hunt piece", design created in Furtwangen in 1861), a cuckoo clock with carved oak foliage and hunting motives, such as trophy animals, guns and powder pouches.  By 1862 the reputed clockmaker Johann Baptist Beha, started to enhance his richly decorated Bahnhäusle clocks with hands carved from bone and weights cast in the shape of fir cones. Even today this combination of elements is characteristic for cuckoo clocks, although the hands are usually made of wood or plastic, white celluloid was employed in the past too. As for the weights, there was during this second half of the 19th century, a few models which featured weights cast in the shape of a Gnome and other curious forms.  Only ten years after its invention by Friedrich Eisenlohr, all variations of the house-theme had reached maturity. There were also Bahnhäusle timepieces and its derived manufactured as mantel clocks but not as many as the wall versions.  The basic cuckoo clock of today is the railway-house (Bahnhäusle) form, still with its rich ornamentation, and these are known under the name of "traditional" (or carved); which display carved leaves, birds, deer heads (Jagdstück design), other animals, etc. The richly decorated Bahnhäusle clocks have become a symbol of the Black Forest that is instantly understood anywhere in the world.  The cuckoo clock became successful and world-famous after Friedrich Eisenlohr contributed the Bahnhäusle design to the 1850 competition at the Furtwangen Clockmakers School.

"Chalet" style, the Swiss contribution.

The "Chalet" style is an invention from 1920 by Zurich Company "Lötscher" in Switzerland, at that time they were highly valued as souvenirs. However, "[w]hat could come as a surprise however is learning that Switzerland is not in fact the home of the cuckoo clock and that many of the cheap quartz clocks on sale are made in China, South Korea and Japan. The Black Forest region of southern Germany is where cuckoo clocks - mostly depicting a hunting scene - have their real nest."  In the English-speaking world, cuckoo clocks are sufficiently identified with Switzerland that the film The Third Man has a oft-quoted speech (and it even had antecedents) in which the villainous Harry Lime mockingly says that "in Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." A typically wrongly attributed meme by a Hollywood movie. Though, music and jewellery boxes of several sizes as well as timepieces were manufactured in the shape of a typical Swiss chalet, some of those clocks had also the added feature of a cuckoo bird and other automata.

Designer cuckoo clocks: The stylistic revolution.

The early 21st century has seen a revitalization of this ancient icon with designs, materials, technologies, shapes and colors never seen before in cuckoo clock manufacturing. These timekeepers are distinguished by its functional, schematic and minimalist aesthetic.  Although simplified designs with simple, clear lines had already been produced in the 20th century, the real boom of seeing the cuckoo clock as a designer item, where the creativity and talent of designers are freely expressed and where the only limit seems to be imagination, was initiated in the 2000s (the first examples dating back to the 1990s), particularly in Italy and Germany.  As for the models, there are a great variety, many of them avant-garde and adventurous creations made of different materials and geometric shapes, such as rhombuses, squares, cubes, circles, rectangles, ovals, etc. Without carving, these clocks are usually flat and smooth. Some are painted in a single colour while others are polychromes with abstract or figurative paintings, multicolour lines and stripes, others include text and phrases, etc. About the clockwork, there are quartz, mechanical and sometimes, digital.

In the United States.

Cuckoo clocks have long been imported into the United States and brought home by soldiers stationed in Germany and by Americans on vacation. There are two notable cuckoo clock manufacturers in the United States: The New England Cuckoo Clock Company was started by W. Kenneth Sessions Jr. in 1958 and operated in Bristol, Connecticut. The design of the models is distinctly American. The clocks were made with Hubert Herr movements, imported from Triberg, Germany. The printed and colored paper dials of the clocks are distinctive, as is the Early American design. The clocks were designed by Nils Magnus Tornquist. A kit clock was also offered. The second is the American Cuckoo Clock Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had its origins in the 1890s and imported German clocks. Eventually the company switched to importing just the clockworks and constructing cuckoo clocks in the United States.

Museums.

In Europe, museums that display collections are the Cuckooland Museum in the UK, and the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum and Dorf- und Uhrenmuseum Gütenbach in Germany. One of the biggest private collections in the United States that is open to the public is located in Minneapolis. It contains more than 300 cuckoo clocks.

A cuckoo clock is typically a pendulum-regulated clock that strikes the hours with a sound like a common cuckoo's call and has an automated cuckoo bird that moves with each note. Some move their wings and open and close their beaks while leaning forwards, whereas others have only the bird's body leaning forward. The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call has been in use since the middle of the 18th century and has remained almost without variation.

布谷鸟钟(德语:),产自德国黑森林地区,与同一地区出产的拉克施尔德钟(德语:)齐名天下。它的内部有设计精巧的齿轮装置,每到半点和整点,钟上方的小木门就会自动打开,并且出现一个会报时的的布谷鸟,发出悦耳的“咕咕”的叫声。因此,也称作咕咕钟。


History.

The metropolis was once a small village, founded by João Leite da Silva Ortiz, a bandeirante explorer from São Paulo. The explorer settled in the region in 1701, leaving a gold rush expedition. He then established a farm called "Curral d'el Rey", archaic Portuguese for the "King's Corral", which in modern Portuguese would be spelled "Curral do Rei". The farm's wealth and success encouraged people from surrounding places to move into the region, and Curral del Rey became a village surrounded by farms.  Another important factor contributing to the growth of the village was immigration from the São Francisco River region, who had to pass through Curral d'el Rey to reach southern parts of Brazil. Travelers usually visited a small wooden chapel, where they prayed for a safe trip. Due to this fact, the chapel was named Capela da Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem, which means "Chapel of Our Lady of the Good Journey." After the construction of Belo Horizonte, the old baroque chapel was replaced by a neo-gothic church that became the city's cathedral.  The previous capital of Minas Gerais, Ouro Preto (meaning "black gold", due to dark rocks with gold inside found on the region), originally called "Vila Rica" ("wealthy village"), was a symbol of both the monarchic Brazilian Empire and the period when most of Brazilian income was due to mining. That never pleased the members of the Inconfidência Mineira, republican intellectuals who conspired against the Portuguese dominion of Brazil. In 1889, Brazil became a republic, and it was agreed that a new state capital,

Geography.

Surrounding cities and metropolitan area.

The term "Grande BH" ("Greater Belo Horizonte") denotes any of various definitions for the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte. The legally defined "Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte" consists of 34 municipalities in total, and a population of around five million inhabitants (, according to IBGE).  The intense process of urbanization that is taking place in the metropolitan region has

Geology and geomorphology.

Belo Horizonte lies on a region of contact between different geological series of the Proterozoic. The geology largely comprises crystalline rocks, which give rise to the varied morphology of the landscape. It is located in a large geological unit known as the craton of San Francisco, referring to extensive crustal nucleus of central-eastern Brazil, tectonically stable at the end of the Paleoproterozoic and bordering areas that suffered the regeneration at the Neoproterozoic.  The archean rocks members of Belo Horizonte complex and supracrustal sequences of the Paleoproterozoic is predominant. The area of Belo Horizonte complex includes the

Parks.

A centre for conservation and preservation of animals and plants it has also developed environmental education projects. The Zoo, which encompasses a total area of 1.4 million square meters, is located at the Foundation's headquarters and is regarded as one of the most complete in Latin America. It has a collection of close to 900 animals representing 200 species, from

Climate.

Belo Horizonte's latitude at 19'55"South places it in the tropical zone. Yearly temperatures average between. The Köppen climate classification of the region is tropical savanna climate ("Aw"), milder due to the elevation, with humid/warm summers and dry/mild winters. Belo Horizonte is located about from the sea.  Even though inter-seasonal differences are not as pronounced as they are in temperate

Demographics.

According to the 2010 IBGE Census, there were 2,258,096 people residing in the city of Belo Horizonte. The census revealed the following numbers: 1,110,034 White people (46.7%), 995,167 Pardo (Multiracial) people (41.9%), 241,155 Black people (10.2%), 25,270 Asian people (1.1%), 3,477 Amerindian people (0.1%).  In 2010, the city had 428,893 opposite-sex couples and 1,090 same-sex couples. The population of Belo Horizonte was 53.1% female and 46.9% male.  The Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, called Greater Belo Horizonte, is the 3rd most populous of Brazil, after only Greater São Paulo (with 19,672,582 people, first in Brazil and 5th in the world) and Greater Rio de Janeiro (with 14,387,000 people). The city is the 6th most populous of the country.  During the 18th century, Minas Gerais received many Portuguese immigrants, mainly from Northern Portugal as well as many enslaved Africans.  Belo Horizonte has a notable Italian influence; around 30% of the city's population have some Italian origin. The Italian culture is present in the cuisine, dance, and language. People of German, Spanish, and Syrian-Lebanese ancestries also make up sizeable groups.

Religion.

"Source: IBGE

Human development.

The human development of Belo Horizonte varies greatly by locality, reflecting the city's spatial social inequality and vast socioeconomic inequalities. There are neighborhoods that had very high human development indexes in 2000 (equal to or greater than the indexes of some Scandinavian countries), but those in the lower range (in line with, for example, North Africa). Carmo/Sion (0.973): greater than Iceland - 0.968; Cruzeiro/Anchieta/Funcionários (0.970): greater than Iceland - 0.968; Grajau/Gutierrez (0.965): greater than Australia - 0.962; Belvedere/Mangabeiras/Comiteco (0.964): greater than Australia – 0.962; Serra/São Lucas (0.953): equal to Japan, Netherlands – 0.953.  In 1993, under mayor Patrus Ananias de Souza, the city started a series of innovations based on its citizens having the "right to food". These include, for example, creating farmers' markets in the town to enable direct sales and regularly surveying market prices and posting the results across

Economy.

Belo Horizonte receives large numbers of visitors, as it is in the Brazilian main economic axis, exerting influence even on other states. Multinational and Brazilian companies, such as Google and Oi, maintain offices in the city. The service sector plays a very important role in the economy of Belo Horizonte, being responsible for 85% of the city's gross domestic product (GDP), with the industry making up for most of the remaining 15%. Belo Horizonte has a developed industrial sector, being traditionally a hub of the Brazilian siderurgical and metallurgical industries, as the state of Minas Gerais has always been very rich in minerals, specifically iron ore.  Belo Horizonte is the distribution and processing centre of a rich agricultural and mining region and the nucleus of a burgeoning industrial complex. Production is centred on steel, steel products, automobiles, and textiles. Gold, manganese, and gemstones mined in the surrounding region are processed in the city. The main industrial district of the city was set during the 1940s in Contagem, a part of greater Belo Horizonte. Multinational companies like FIAT (which opened its plant in Betim in 1974), Arcelor, and Toshiba have subsidiaries in the region, along with other textile like Group Rachelle Textil, Ematex and Cedro Textil, cosmetic, food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, furnishing and refractory companies.

Education.

Educational institutions.

Several higher education institutions

Transport.

Airports.

Belo Horizonte is

Highways.

The city is connected to the rest of Minas Gerais state and the country by a number of roadways. Minas Gerais has the country's largest federal highway network.  The city is also served by other minor roads such as state highways MG-020, MG-050, MG-030, and MG-433. There is also an East-West Express Way, which

Bus system.

The bus system has a large number of bus lines going through all parts in the city, and is administrated by "BHTRANS". Among the upcoming projects are the expansion

Railways.

Belo Horizonte Metro or MetroBH started operating at the end of the 1970s. There is one line, with 19 stations, from Vilarinho to Eldorado Station, in Contagem, transporting over 160,000 people daily. The current projects of expansion include Line 2, linking the existing Calafate

Belo Horizonte Public Transportation statistics.

The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Belo Horizonte, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 85 min. 26% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day.

Culture.

Theatre and dance.

Every two years, FIT BH, The International Theater Festival of Belo Horizonte, takes place in the city. This attracts artists from all over Brazil and worldwide. With the merger of two projects that would happen separately in 1994, one stage based, organized by the Francisco Nunes Theater, and the other street based, idealized by Grupo Galpão, came FIT-BH Palco & Rua. Produced every two years, under responsibility from the Belo Horizonte City Hall, through the Municipal Culture Office and the Association Movimento Teatro de Grupo of Minas Gerais, in the program there are street and stage shows, and also

Music.

Clube da Esquina is one of the most important musical movements in the musical history of Brazil. It originated in the mid-1960s, and since then its members have been hugely influential in Brazilian and even international music, some like Milton Nascimento and Toninho Horta achieving worldwide acclaim. Other people involved in the movement include musicians, songwriters, composers, conductors and lyricists, such as Tavinho Moura, Wagner Tiso, Andersen Viana, Milton Nascimento, Lô Borges, Beto Guedes, Flávio Venturini, Toninho Horta, Márcio Borges and Fernando Brant, among others.  The band Uakti – known for performing with self-built musical instruments – originated in Belo Horizonte under

Museums.

Belo Horizonte features a number of museums including the Mineiro Museum, the Abílio Barreto Historic Museum, Arts and Workmanship Museum, a Natural History Museum and the UFMG Botanic Gardens, a telephone museum, the Pampulha Art Museum, the Professor Taylor Gramke Mineralogy Museum, and the UFMG Conservatory. The puppet theatre group Giramundo was established here in 1970, and continues to maintain a puppetry museum hosting a collection of their creations.  The Circuito Cultural Praça da Liberdade, located in the central region of Belo Horizonte, is the largest cultural circuit in Brazil. In all, there are eleven functioning museums and cultural spaces: Arquivo Público Mineiro (Minas Gerais Public Archive), Biblioteca Pública Estadual Luiz de Bessa (Luiz de Bessa State Public Library), Cefar Liberdade, Centro de Arte Popular Cemig (Cemig Center of Popular Art), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil

Architecture.

Belo Horizonte has several significant cultural landmarks, many of them situated in the Pampulha district, where there are notable examples of Brazilian contemporary architecture. Under the leadership of the then mayor of city, Juscelino Kubitschek, architects and artists such as Oscar Niemeyer, landscaper Burle Marx, and painter Candido Portinari, started a type of modern architecture and art here that was greatly developed later with the construction of Brazil's new capital, Brasilia, also led by the now president Juscelino (aka JK). It is at the Pampulha complex that one can see the routes of this new architecture movement. The

Food and drink.

The regional Minas Gerais' food and the now internationally known drink of cachaça are very popular and highly rated in the capital.  Belo Horizonte is internationally known as the "capital of neighborhood bars." Every year, the city hosts the Comida di Buteco festival ("Pub Foods", in an approximate translation), in which

Sport.

Football.

As in the rest of Brazil, football is the most popular sport. The city's major teams are Atlético Mineiro, Cruzeiro and América Mineiro.  The city also has one of the biggest football stadiums in the world, the Mineirão, which opened in 1965. The older Independência Stadium was the site of the FIFA World Cup 1950 game, when the United States beat England in a 1–0 win.  Mineirão, officially called Estádio Governador Magalhães Pinto, was built to provide the city of Belo Horizonte with a larger alternative for Independência Stadium, then the prime venue of the city. The stadium was meant to become the most modern stadium of Brazil and the new home of Atlético Mineiro and Cruzeiro. Construction took almost five years, and on September 5, 1965 Mineirão officially opened. Mineirão hardly changed in the following decades, and in the 1990s

Tennis.

Belo Horizonte is home to 2015 French Open men's doubles champion and former World

Twin towns – sister cities.

Belo Horizonte is twinned with:

Belo Horizonte (, ; "Beautiful Horizon") is the sixth-largest city in Brazil, with a population of approximately 2.5 million. It is the thirteenth-largest city in South America and the eighteenth-largest in the Americas. The metropolis is anchor to the Belo Horizonte metropolitan area, ranked as the third most populous metropolitan area in Brazil and the seventeenth most populous in the Americas. Belo Horizonte is the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil's second most populous state. It is the first planned modern city in Brazil.

贝洛奥里藏特(),也称作-{zh-hans:美景市、比路贺利桑特;zh-tw:贝洛奥里藏特、比路贺利桑特;zh-hk:美景市、贝洛奥里藏特;}-,位于巴西东南部,是巴西第四大城市,人口约210万,面积334平方公里,米纳斯吉拉斯州政府所在地,是该州的政治、经济、文化中心。该市的冶金、宝石加工、汽车制造、纺织、食品等工业较为发达。


Explanation.

Many ancient scripts, such as Safaitic and Sabaean, were frequently or typically written boustrophedonically, but in Greek it is found most commonly in archaic inscriptions, becoming less and less popular throughout the Hellenistic period.  By analogy, the term may be used in other areas to describe this kind of alternation of motion or writing. For example, it is occasionally used to describe the print head motion of certain dot matrix printers. In that case, while the print head moves in opposite directions on alternate lines, the printed text is usually not in boustrophedon format.  The Hungarian folklorist Gyula Sebestyén (1864–1946) writes that ancient boustrophedon writing resembles how the Hungarian rovás-sticks of Old Hungarian writing were made by shepherds. The notcher holds the wooden stick in his left hand, cutting the letters with his right hand from right to left. When the first side is complete, he flips the stick over vertically and starts to notch the opposite side in the same manner. When unfolded horizontally (as in the case of the stone-cut boustrophedon inscriptions), the final result is writing which starts from right to left, and continues from left to right in the next row, with letters turned upside down. Sebestyén states that the ancient boustrophedon writings were copied from such wooden sticks with cut letters, applied for epigraphic inscriptions (not recognizing the real meaning of the original wooden type).

Reverse boustrophedon.

The wooden boards and other incised artefacts of Rapa Nui also bear a boustrophedonic script called Rongorongo, which remains undeciphered. In Rongorongo, the text in alternate lines was rotated 180 degrees rather than mirrored; this is termed "reverse boustrophedon."  The reader begins at the bottom left-hand corner of a tablet, reads a line from left to right, then rotates the tablet 180 degrees to continue on the next line from left to right again. When reading one line, the lines above and below it appear upside down. However, the writing continues onto the second side of the tablet at the point where it finishes off the first, so if the first side has an odd number of lines, the second will start at the "upper" left-hand corner, and the direction of writing shifts to top to bottom. Larger tablets and staves may have been read without turning, if the reader were able to read upside-down.

Example of Hieroglyphic Luwian.

The Luwian language had a version, hieroglyphic Luwian, that read in boustrophedon style (most of the language was written down in cuneiform).  The Hieroglyphic Luwian is read boustrophedonically, with the direction of any individual line pointing into the front of the animals or body parts constituting certain hieroglyphs. However, unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs with their numerous ideograms and logograms, which show an easy directionality, the lineal direction of the text in hieroglyphic Luwian is harder to see.

Other examples.

A modern example of boustrophedonics is the numbering scheme of sections within survey townships in the United States and Canada. In both countries, survey townships are divided into a 6-by-6 grid of 36 sections. In the U.S. Public Land Survey System, Section 1 of a township is in the northeast corner, and the numbering proceeds boustrophedonically until Section 36 is reached in the southeast corner. Canada's Dominion Land Survey also uses boustrophedonic numbering, but starts at the southeast corner. Following a similar scheme, street numbering in the United Kingdom sometimes proceeds serially in one direction then turns back in the other (the same numbering method is used in some European cities). This is in contrast to the more common method of odd and even numbers on opposite sides of the street both increasing in the same direction.  In art history, it additionally means that you read from bottom left in a series of pictures; as in the stained glass windows at Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.  Another example is the boustrophedon transform, known in mathematics.  Sometimes computer printers with a typewriter-like moving type head print boustrophedon text if set up incorrectly.  Additionally, the Indus script, although still undeciphered, can be written boustrophedonically. The Avoiuli script used on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu is written boustrophedonically by design.

In constructed languages.

The constructed language Ithkuil uses a boustrophedon script.  The Atlantean language created by Marc Okrand for Disney's 2001 film "" is written in boustrophedon to recreate the feeling of flowing water.  The code language used in "The Montmaray Journals", Kernetin, is written boustrophedonically. It is a combination of Cornish and Latin and is used for secret communication.

Boustrophedon (,'"ox-turning" from, ', "ox",, "", "turn" and the adverbial suffix -, "like, in the manner of"; that is, turning like oxen in ploughing) is a type of bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. Alternate lines of writing are flipped, or reversed, with reversed letters. Rather than going left-to-right as in modern European languages, or right-to-left as in Arabic and Hebrew, alternate lines in boustrophedon must be read in opposite directions. Also, the individual characters are reversed, or mirrored. It was a common way of writing in stone in Ancient Greece.

牛耕式转行书写法(,又译折行书)是一种古代书写方式。它出现在古代希伯来文和阿拉伯文、希腊文等的手稿之中。


海湾阿拉伯国家合作委员会

Founding.

The original union comprised Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The unified economic agreement between the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council was signed on 11 November 1981 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. These countries are often referred to as "the GCC states" or "Gulf countries".

Objectives.

In 2001, the GCC Supreme Council set the following goals:  Oman announced in December 2006 that it would not be able to meet the 2010 target date for a common currency. Following the announcement that the central bank for the monetary union would be located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and not in the UAE, the UAE announced their withdrawal from the monetary union project in May 2009. The name Khaleeji has been proposed as a name for this currency. If realised, the GCC monetary union would be the second-largest supranational monetary union in the world, measured by the GDP of the common-currency area.  Other stated objectives include: This area has some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, mostly due to a boom in oil and natural gas revenues coupled with a building and investment boom backed by decades of saved petroleum revenues. In an effort to build a tax base and economic foundation before the reserves run out, the UAE's investment arms, including Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, retain over US$900 billion in assets. Other regional funds also have several hundreds of billions of dollars of assets under management.  The region is an emerging hotspot for events, including the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar. Doha also submitted an unsuccessful application for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Qatar was later chosen to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.  Recovery plans have been criticized for crowding out the private sector, failing to set clear priorities for growth, failing to restore weak consumer and investor confidence, and undermining long-term stability.

Logo.

The logo of the GCC consists of two concentric circles. On the upper part of the larger circle, the Bismillah phrase is written in Arabic, which means "In the name of God", and on the lower part the Council's full name, in Arabic. The inner circle contains an embossed hexagonal shape that represents the Council's six member countries. The inside of the hexagon is filled by a map encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, on which the areas of the member countries are borderless and colored in brown. On the edge of the hexagon are colors representing the flags of the six member countries.

Economy.

Internal market.

A common market was launched on 1 January 2008 with plans to realise a fully integrated single market. It eased the movement of goods and services. However, implementation lagged behind after the 2009 financial crisis. The creation of a customs union began in 2003 and was completed and fully operational on 1 January 2015. In January 2015, the common market was also further integrated, allowing full equality among GCC citizens to work in the government and private sectors, social insurance and retirement coverage, real estate ownership, capital movement, access to education, health and other social services in all member states. However, some barriers remained in the free movement of goods and services. The coordination of taxation systems, accounting standards and civil legislation is currently in progress. The interoperability of professional qualifications, insurance certificates and identity documents is also underway.

Monetary union.

In 2014, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia took major steps to ensure the creation of a single currency. Kuwait's finance minister said the four members are pushing ahead with the monetary union but said some "technical points" need to be cleared. He added, "A common market and common central bank would also position the GCC as one entity that would have great influence on the international financial system". The implementation of a single currency and the creation of a central bank is overseen by the Monetary Council.  There is currently a degree to which a nominal GCC single currency already exists. Businesses trade using a basket of GCC currencies, just as before the euro was introduced, the European Currency Unit (ECU) was long used beforehand as a nominal medium of exchange. Plans to introduce a single currency had been drawn up as far back as 2009, however due to the financial crisis and political differences, the UAE and Oman withdrew their membership.

Mergers and acquisitions.

Companies and investors from GCC countries are active in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Since 1999, more than 5,200 transactions with a known value of US$573 billion have been announced. They are active within GCC and in cross-border M&A abroad. The investor group includes in particular a number of sovereign wealth funds.

Infrastructure.

The GCC launched common economic projects to promote and facilitate integration. The member states have connected their power grids, and a water connection project was launched with plans to be in use by 2020. A project to create common air transport was also unveiled.  The GCC also launched major rail projects to connect the peninsula. The railways are expected to fuel intra-regional trade while helping reduce fuel consumption. Over US$200 billion will be invested to develop about of rail network across the GCC, according to Oman's Minister of Transport and Communications. The project, estimated to be worth $15.5 billion, is scheduled to be completed by 2021. "It will link the six member states as a regional transport corridor, further integrating with the national railway projects, deepening economic social and political integration, and it is developed from a sustainable perspective." stated, Ramiz Al Assar, Resident World Bank advisor for the GCC.  Saudi Arabian Railways, Etihad Rail, and national governments have poured billions into railway infrastructure to create rail networks for transporting freight, connecting cities, and reducing transport times.

Politics and governance.

Supreme Council.

The GCC Supreme Council is composed of the heads of the member states. It is the highest decision-making entity of the GCC, setting its vision and goals. Decisions on substantive issues require unanimous approval, while issues on procedural matters require a majority. Each member state has one vote.

Ministerial Council.

The Ministerial Council is composed of the Foreign Ministers of all the member states. It convenes every three months. It primarily formulates policies and makes recommendations to promote cooperation and achieve coordination among the member states when implementing ongoing projects. Its decisions are submitted in the form of recommendations for the approval of the Supreme Council. The Ministerial Council is also responsible for preparations of meetings of the Supreme Council and its agenda. The voting procedure in the Ministerial Council is the same as in the Supreme Council.

Secretariat General.

The Secretariat is the executive arm of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It takes decisions within its authority and implements decisions approved by the Supreme or Ministerial Council. The Secretariat also compiles studies relating to cooperation, coordination, and planning for common action. It prepares periodical reports regarding the work done by the GCC as a whole and regarding the implementation of its own decisions.

Monetary Council.

On 15 December 2009, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia announced the creation of a Monetary Council to introduce a single currency for the union. The board of the council, which set a timetable and action plan for establishing a central bank and choosing a currency regime, met for the first time on 30 March 2010. Kuwaiti foreign minister Mohammad Sabah Al-Sabah said on 8 December 2009 that a single currency may take up to ten years to establish. The original target was in 2010. Oman and the UAE later announced their withdrawal from the proposed currency.  In 2014, major moves were taken to ensure the launch of a single currency. Kuwait's finance minister stated that a currency should be implemented without delay. Negotiations with the UAE and Oman to expand the monetary union were renewed.

Patent Office.

The GCC Patent Office was approved in 1992 and established soon after in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Applications are filed and prosecuted in the Arabic language before the GCC Patent Office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which is a separate office from the Saudi Arabian Patent Office.

Peninsula Shield Force.

Amidst the Bahraini uprising, Saudi Arabia and the UAE sent ground troops to Bahrain in order to protect vital infrastructure such as the airport and highway system. Kuwait and Oman refrained from sending troops. Instead, Kuwait sent a navy unit.  The secretary-general of the GCC strongly endorsed the use of international force in Libya. GCC member states joined coalition efforts to enforce the no-fly zone.  In September 2014, GCC members Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE and Qatar, plus pending member Jordan, commenced air operations against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, however, are among the nations that oppose the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, whereas Qatar has historically supported it. They also pledged other support including operating training facilities for Syrian rebels (in Saudi Arabia) and allowing the use of their airbases by other countries fighting ISIL.

GCC Standardization Organization (GSO).

This is the standardization organization of the GCC, and Yemen also belongs to this organization.

Gulf Organization for Industrial Consulting (GOIC).

The Gulf Organization for Industrial Consulting (GOIC) was founded in 1976 by the six GCC member states; Yemen joined the organization in 2009. It is headquartered at Doha, Qatar. The organization chart of GOIC includes the Board members and the General Secretariat. The Board is formed by member state representatives appointed by their governments.

Member states.

There are six member states of the union:

Sports.

The union has served as a grouping for sports co-operation and competition. The GCC states have an annual Meeting of the Youth and Sports ministers to boost youth and sports initiatives in the region; in 2015, this gathering was held for the 29th time. The promotion of the hosting of international sports events has also served an economic purpose for the union's countries, leading to investment and development in the region.  The GCC Games, a quadrennial multi-sport event, was established by the union and first held in 2011. There are numerous long-running GCC Championships for individual sports, including: the Gulf Cooperation Council Athletics Championships (first held in 1986; youth section from 2000) sailing, basketball, swimming, tennis, gymnastics (senior and youth levels), weightlifting, futsal, snooker, and table tennis.

2014 Saudi–Qatari rift.

Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region, Hamas and radical Islamists in Libya has led to increasing tensions with other Arab states of the Persian Gulf. These tensions came to a head during a March 2014 meeting of the GCC, after which the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain announced the recall of their ambassadors to Qatar.  Some financial economists have interpreted the 2014 Saudi–Qatari rift as a tangible political sign of a growing economic rivalry between oil and natural gas producers, which could "have deep and long-lasting consequences" beyond MENA.

2017 Rift with Qatar.

On 5 June 2017, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt had officially cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. Saudi Arabia said it took the decision to cut diplomatic ties due to Qatar's "embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilising the region", including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, ISIL and Iran-supported groups in Saudi Arabia's eastern province of Qatif. Political researcher Islam Hassan viewed this as a continuation of Qatar's foreign policy rivalry with Saudi Arabia and UAE.  In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain put a ban on Qataris and their businesses. Qataris are not allowed to enter or live in these countries unless they have a spouse living there, or they must carry a visa in order to enter these countries. Direct flights between the countries and Qatar are also prohibited.

Related states.

Since the creation of the council in 1981 its membership has not expanded, with all members being Arab monarchies.  Some GCC countries have land borders with Iraq, Jordan or Yemen, and sea borders with Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea or Somalia.

Egypt.

Only the Sinai peninsula of Egypt lies in the Arabian peninsula. In 2011, Bahrain's Foreign Minister called for Egypt to be admitted as a member of the GCC.

Iraq.

Iraq is the only Arab country bordering the Persian Gulf that is not a member of the GCC. In 2012, Iraqi Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi stated that Iraq wanted to join the GCC. Kuwait supports Iraq joining the GCC. The lack of membership of Iraq is widely believed to be due to the low-income economy, its substantial Shia population, its republican political system, and its invasion of member state Kuwait during the Gulf War.

Iran.

At the December 2012 Manama summit, the GCC states called for an end to Iranian interference in their internal affairs.

Jordan and Morocco.

In May 2011, Jordan's request to join the GCC, which had been first submitted 15 years earlier, was accepted and Morocco was invited to join the union. In September 2011, a five-year economic plan for both countries was put forward after a meeting between the foreign ministers of both countries and those of the GCC states. Although a plan for accession was being looked into, it was noted that there was no timetable for either's accession, and that discussions would continue.  As Jordan and Morocco are the only two Arab monarchies not currently in the council, the current members see them as strong potential allies. Jordan borders Saudi Arabia and is economically connected to the Persian Gulf States. Although Morocco is not near the Persian Gulf, the Moroccan foreign minister Taieb Fassi Fihri notes that "geographical distance is no obstacle to a strong relationship".

Yemen.

Yemen was in negotiations for GCC membership, and hoped to join by 2015. Although it has no coastline on the Persian Gulf, Yemen lies in the Arabian Peninsula and shares a common culture and history with other GCC members. The GCC has already approved Yemen's accession to the GCC Standardization Authority, Gulf Organization for Industrial Consulting (GOIC), GCC Auditing and Accounting Authority, Gulf Radio and TV Authority, GCC Council of Health Ministers, GCC Education and Training Bureau, GCC Council of Labour and Social Affairs Ministers, and Gulf Cup Football Tournament. The Council issued directives that all the necessary legal measures be taken so that Yemen would have the same rights and obligations of GCC member states in those institutions.  In May 2017, the Gulf Cooperation Council rejected the formation of a transitional political council in southern Yemen, which called for the separation of Southern Yemen, siding with Yemen President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in doing so.

Related organizations.

The GCC members and Yemen are also members of the Greater Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA). However, this is unlikely to affect the agenda of the GCC significantly as it has a more aggressive timetable than GAFTA and is seeking greater integration.

The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (), originally (and still colloquially) known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC, ), is a regional intergovernmental political and economic union consisting of all Arab states of the Persian Gulf except Iraq, namely: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The Charter of the GCC was signed on 25 May 1981, formally establishing the institution.

海湾阿拉伯国家合作委员会(阿拉伯语:'),原名海湾合作委员会(阿拉伯语:'),中文简称海合会,是包括阿拉伯波斯湾地区的6个国家(即波斯湾六国)在内的政府国际组织和贸易集团,其目标主要针对经济和社会方面。