Wolfgang Zuckermann

Wolfgang Joachim Zuckermann (11 October 1922 – 31 October 2018) was a German-born American harpsichord maker and writer. He was known for inventing a highly popular kit for constructing new instruments and wrote an influential book, "The Modern Harpsichord". As a social activist, he authored books including "The Mews of London" and "The End of the Road".
Early life.
He was born in Berlin to Jewish parents in an academic family, and was named Wolfgang after Goethe and Mozart. He had an elder brother, Alexander, who later became a city planner and bicycle advocate in Oakland, California, and a younger brother named Michael. At age eight he began studying the cello, an instrument he continued to play in adulthood. The male family members formed a string quartet, with Alexander playing first violin, the father second, Michael viola, and Wolfgang cello.
With the advent of the Nazis in Germany, Zuckermann's family had to flee the country; they settled in New York in 1938, where Zuckermann's father ran a leather factory. In the same year Zuckermann became an American citizen and henceforth went by the name "Wallace" (or, in suitable contexts, "Wally"). He saw front line action as a private with the U.S. Army and followed this by obtaining a B.A. in English and psychology (1949) from Queens College, New York, winning the title of Queens College Scholar, the highest honor conferred upon graduates at that institution. He continued for a time studying psychology at the graduate level.
As harpsichord builder.
Zuckermann was employed for a time as "a sort of child psychologist", an occupation he soon gave up. He later noted wryly:
I have always thought mechanical things were easier to manage than living things (like children) because your own skill or ability was the principal element you had to contend with. If "things went wrong" it wasn't in spite of the fact that you always gave your harpsichord your best (which you yourself never had), that you sent it to Sunday School and gave it riding and French lessons, and put it to bed before 11 nightly.
Following this preference, Zuckermann "went to a trade school to learn piano mechanics and tuning and soon set myself up buying, repairing and selling old pianos." His amateur musical activities included Baroque chamber music, and the combination of his vocation and avocation soon led to an interest in harpsichords. He built his first instrument in 1955.
As a builder, Zuckermann was self-taught. He describes how he sought information: "Dropping in on Frank Hubbard in Boston (one of three American harpsichord makers) as a complete stranger, I was given a guided tour of his workshop on a Sunday morning after getting him out of bed. (I must say, he is as close to a saint as I've ever met.) The Metropolitan Museum opened its basement for me, and other collections were kind and cooperative." With this informal background Zuckermann succeeded in building his first harpsichord, which was rather similar in form to the kit instrument he started selling a number of years later.
The time was propitious for a new maker. Musical tastes were evolving, with a revived interest in Baroque music and historically informed performance. The newly-perfected long playing record made possible the widespread distribution of high-quality recordings of Baroque works. Moreover, there were very few makers producing harpsichords in America. Thus Zuckermann found that there was high demand for his instruments and he soon had established a new business as a harpsichord builder. By 1960, he had sold "seventy or eighty instruments".
By this point, Zuckermann had become frustrated by the amount of time he spent on service calls, and became concerned that maintenance would soon consume all of his available time. He conceived the idea that if his customers were to build their instruments themselves from a kit, they would then be self-sufficient with regard to maintenance. He first tested the idea on friends:
I gave a few of my friends all the raw parts necessary to make a harpsichord and some rudimentary directions. These were people who wanted an instrument but couldn't afford one, and they seized on this chance. Even the less mechanical ones were thrilled with the prospect and their sheer will to possess such an instrument made them better craftsmen than experienced cabinet makers.
Implemented commercially in 1960, the kit idea proved an extraordinary success; the "do-it-yourself" harpsichord kit, sometimes called the 'Model T' harpsichord, was sold in large quantities (over 10,000 by 1969) to institutions, professionals, and individuals around the world. Harpsichord scholar Edward Kottick writes, "Wolfgang Zuckermann never intended to become a phenomenon; he only hoped to satisfy a demand for harpsichords he himself could not accommodate. Nevertheless, his harpsichord kit spawned a unique movement whose heyday lasted for twenty years and helped fuel the instrument's revival. Some of today's finest builders got their start with a Zuckermann slantside kit."
Initially the wooden pieces for the case, along with some other commonly available parts, were not included, so the price was set at a most economical $150. Little by little, the Zuckermann kit became more elaborate and complete. By the mid 1960s unassembled cases consisting of carefully cut unfinished wood of various kinds could be purchased optionally. Other instrument kits were also made available, including a spinet harpsichord (1966) and a clavichord.
Production.
The headquarters for kit production was Zuckermann's New York workshop on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village; for a time this continued to produce completed instruments, though eventually the burden of making enough kits to fill demand led Zuckermann to abandon this part of the business. The evolved production system included some work in the shop itself, but with substantial outsourcing to larger enterprises.
Operations at the shop are described in a memoir by the poet Eleanor Lerman, who was hired in 1970 at age 18 to work on the production line. The description slightly postdates Zuckermann's departure from the company; "Michael" is Michael Zuckermann, Wolfgang's younger brother.
At the time, Zuckermann Harpsichords ... was housed in the first floor of a small, quirky 19th century building on Charles Street. Michael not only gave me a job, he gave me a tiny apartment upstairs. The whole operation employed about five girls, who drilled pin blocks, used a table saw and a lathe, but also worked on eccentric machines that Michael had made himself out of sewing machine parts: we used those to wind wire, cut felt and velvet, and make the jacks that pluck harpsichord strings. Sometimes we ran out of parts and I was supposed to write what we needed on a blackboard. Instead ... I used the blackboard to write poems.
Zuckermann himself observed (in his book "The Modern Harpsichord") that the workforce in harpsichord shops of the time tended to consist of nontraditional workers.
Among the outsourced items, the most important was the parts for the case, which had to be precision-cut, mitered, and (for the outer case), veneered. Zuckermann enlisted capable help from nearby:
Through a friend I was introduced to a giant woodworking plant [in Philadelphia], covering several city blocks, with automatic-feed circular saws, gang drills (14 drill presses coming down automatically at the same time) and gang combinations of automatic saws and drills which can cut a piece to size, miter it and drill it on several sides, all in one operation. ... The key to the quality of production work is the presence of one or two really experienced and careful shop foremen, whose task it is to set up the machines. ... In Philadelphia the shop foremen are old, European craftsmen. When they are gone, the question of succession will loom large.
The factory also handled the tasks of wrapping, packaging, and shipping. It turned out sets of case parts in lots of 500.
Keyboards, which are hard for amateurs to make, were bought from other companies. Zuckermann made it possible for kit builders to provide dark naturals and white sharps by selling (as an option) blank keyboards, to which the builder would glue appropriate coverings.
The plywood for the soundboard, a key element of the instrument, was special-ordered; the boards were made of "3-ply basswood, 1/8 in. thick, which is not commercially available but had to be made up specially in a New England plant. A minimum of 300 sheets (each making two boards) had to be ordered at one time."
The customer base.
Zuckermann's kit harpsichord became one of the most popular harpsichord models ever; it was assembled by people of all ages and given affectionate nicknames such the "Slantside" or the "Z-box".
America in the 1960s was perhaps ripe for the success of a harpsichord kit. Americans of the day had essentially no computers or other digital equipment with which to spend their free time, and recreational activity involving the assembly of things was widespread. Thus in 1966 a newspaper reporter introduced the idea of a harpsichord kit to his readers thus: "A nation raised on homemade kites and model airplane kits is discovering that it hasn't conquered the last frontier with do-it-yourself hi-fi components. Today, thanks to a slight, graying tinkerer in New York's Greenwich Village, you can be the first on your block to build your own harpsichord."
Zuckermann kept track of his more unusual customers, writing later in "The Modern Harpsichord":
Once a 300-pound truck driver walked into the shop, sat down, rattled off a Bach invention, and pulled out the cash to buy a kit, all in dollar bills. A 13-year-old boy appeared with the contents of a piggy bank ... A prison warden once wrote us that a convict had made a harpsichord while serving time for murder.
More systematically, he found that his buyers were typically rather educated; advertising was more effective in magazines that targeted this audience, such as "Saturday Review" or "The New Yorker". Inhabitants of small college towns, and academics in particular, were overrepresented among purchasers.
Kottick reports that some builders were unable to stop at one; they "built kit after kit, often selling them cheaply or even giving them away."
The Zuckermann kits were poignantly present during the wars then taking place in Southeast Asia. The reporter quoted above went on to say, "Zuckermann reports a large clientele in foreign countries, the armed forces, and the Peace Corps, where instruments may be scarce or a complicated project is effective antidote to loneliness, boredom, or combat fatigue. One Navy officer has his clavichord with him on an aircraft carrier. Zuckermann reports he recently sent kits to three soldiers in Viet Nam and three complete harpsichords now grace the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where one customer wrote of tuning [an instrument] to the accompaniment of gunfire."
The Z-box as instrument.
The Zuckermann kit harpsichord was designed to maximize affordability, and therefore involved considerable outsourcing of parts to manufacturers who could create them with the cost advantage derived from mass production. The harpsichord was also designed to be assembled by amateurs, which was one factor in using (initially) a straight piece where most harpsichords employ a curved bentside. Kottick describes and assesses the Z-box thus:
The outer case of 1/2" cabinet wood was glued to an inner case of 3/4" plywood, making a heavily framed case capable of taking a great deal of punishment, to say the least. ... [The instrument was a ] single-strung slant-side (rather than bentside) with an AA-f3 compass, a buff stop, a half hitch, and plastic jacks quilled with leather. The 5'-long case was too short for the bass strings, and the bottom three or four notes lacked authority. Nevertheless, the soundboard barring was based on classical principles and helped to contribute to a useful sound at a surprising volume. The instrument had the additional virtue of simplicity: rather than a complex machine designed to produce an instantaneous variety of colors, it was a basic keyboard that plucked the strings. Hence, despite its considerable flaws, a well-built kit harpsichord could give more musical result than many of the thousands of revival instruments then in service.
By "revival instrument", Kottick refers to the elaborate, multichoired, ahistorical instruments that at the time were being turned out by the thousands by factories primarily in Germany.
There were a number of ways in which the original Zuckermann instrument was very much historically "inauthentic". Kottick mentions the "straightside", the extremely thick case walls, the use of plywood in the inner case, and the use of plastic for jacks. In addition, the soundboard was plywood as well; the keyboard was of heavy piano-type construction; the jacks rested on adjustable endpins rather than directly on the keys; the plectra could be moved toward or away from the string by an adjustment screw; and the strings were made of modern instrument wire rather than the softer wire of historical times. It was also unusual for a historical harpsichord the size of a Z-box to have just one choir of strings. All of these constructional factors came to be increasingly avoided by builders (including the firm Zuckermann founded) as the field of harpsichord making moved toward a historicist approach; see Kottick (2003:ch. 19) and History of the harpsichord.
"The Modern Harpsichord".
Around 1967, Zuckermann began a period of travel, visiting harpsichord workshops in both the United States and Europe. He described his research findings in his 1969 book "The Modern Harpsichord", a wide-ranging survey of the harpsichord makers of the time, covering their philosophies and instrument designs. Zuckermann also relied on his experience as a harpsichord technician who had worked on a wide variety of instruments.
The main theme of the book was a forceful advocacy of historical principles in harpsichord construction; that is, in favor of work that attempted to recreate instruments of the kind built by the great makers of the past using lightweight construction and preindustrial materials. Zuckermann judged that the long experience of the builders of the 16th through 18th centuries had already discovered the most reliable ways to create robust and beautiful tone; and that the innovations of most 20th century builders, based mainly on the technology of the piano, had yielded feeble-toned instruments that were difficult to maintain in good playing condition.
Zuckermann's preference for historical principles was especially evident in the book's warmly appreciative account of the work of three builders, Frank Hubbard, William Dowd, and Martin Skowroneck, who are acknowledged today as the key figures in the move toward historically-based harpsichord construction. It is also seen in Zuckermann's outright mockery of the major firms of the time who were building the heavily designed ahistorical instruments. For instance, of the Sabathil firm, he wrote (pp. 172–4):
Sabathil [has] brought [the] tradition of the German production harpsichord to its highest pinnacle of non-achievement. [Of their instruments ], the greatest of them all is the Bach III, a full 10' long, which I had the privilege of seeing not long ago. This enormous creature, crouching against an entire living room wall, has perhaps something endearing about it. ... It has been compared to a stegosaurus, the giant extinct animal with plated back. However, whatever charm it may have had was not sufficient to prevent its owner from ordering a new harpsichord from a Boston maker with the intention of selling his present one. ... The tone issuing from the giant Bach III comes out predictably not with a bang but a whimper.
He characterized an instrument from the Neupert firm thus: it "suffers from laryngitis, possessing a coarse, whispering tone."
Zuckermann also attacked the German production harpsichord on grounds of its visual esthetics, characterizing it as tubby and ugly; he further asserted that the historical builders virtually always created instruments of grace and beauty.
Kottick (1987) described the effect of "The Modern Harpsichord": "[it] landed on the harpsichord world like bombshell, clearly showing, on page after page, the superiority of those instruments constructed on classical principles over the revival [i.e., then-mainstream] harpsichords, with all their "improvements". According to harpsichord builder Carey Beebe, the book actually "altered the course of modern harpsichord development." The conflict between the two approaches of building was indeed a live one at the time Zuckermann wrote his book, but is no longer; authentically-oriented harpsichords completely dominate the field today.
The book undoubtedly upset the attacked parties very much; Zuckermann's friend David Jacques Way reported that several German makers threatened lawsuits, and the book was eventually banned in Germany.
The book suggests that its author valued rationality in harpsichord building and was seldom swayed by the more romantic aspects of the craft. For instance, Zuckermann suggested that machine tools properly used will always cut and drill more accurately than can be done by hand, and argued that any sort of beneficial "sensitivity" to the material claimed by the craftsman using hand tools will carry over to the craftsman using machine tools if she gets sufficient practice. He offers a diffident defense of plywood in harpsichords, suggesting it should not be dismissed out of hand and that careful comparisons of cases where plywood and solid parts have been interchanged in the same instrument are worth doing and (as of 1969) inconclusive.
Through accident of alphabetical order, the last harpsichord builder discussed in Zuckermann's book is his own company. He mentions the essential ways in which his kit harpsichords were historically "authentic" (i.e. in having thin soundboards with light barring that avoids overlap with the bridge) and he confronts with candor the ways the ways in which his instruments were most certainly not "authentic" (for these, see discussion above). Zuckermann also defends some aspects of inauthenticity as the necessary consequence of their being designed to be affordable and constructible by amateurs.
Exit from the harpsichord business.
The experience of researching authenticist instruments for "The Modern Harpsichord" evidently had a drastic effect on Zuckermann's own career as a builder. Kottick writes, "As a result of his experience in writing the book and the introspection it engendered, Zuckermann decided to stop producing his less-than-ideal instrument and sold his kit business [1970] to David Way." Way had been the publisher of "The Modern Harpsichord" and become an enthusiast for harpsichord building in the process. Way shifted the firm's productions in the direction of more historically authentic instruments, making use of Zuckermann's research. The company continued to flourish and is still in business today.
Although his subsequent career moved in different directions, Zuckermann remained part of the harpsichord world for some time. Living in England (see below) he designed instrument kits on historical lines in collaboration with builder Michael Thomas: a harpsichord in Italian style and a clavichord. He also wrote for several years a quarterly column for the periodical "Harpsichord", and served a consultant to other makers. According to Schott (1986) Zuckermann's involvement ended completely by the late 1970s.
Sponsorship of performing arts during the harpsichord years.
During his time as a manufacturer of harpsichord kits, Zuckermann became involved in the performing arts. In July 1963, in collaboration with Eric Britton, he founded the Sundance Festival of the Chamber Arts in rural Pennsylvania; it featured classical concerts, marionette operas, theater, dance, and poetry. During the later years, the festival was co-run by Zuckermann and his friend Michael Smith, who was theater critic for the "Village Voice"; they had met when Townsend interviewed him for his newspaper. Smith described the venue thus:
Deep in the woods in northern Bucks County, Pennsylvania, two hours west of New York, they had built a small covered stage and a wide amphitheatre for the audience that was open to the stars. It was extremely charming, and we presented a wondrous range of artists over the next three summers. Farther up the drive beyond the theatre, there were two houses, a barn, a tennis court, a big concrete swimming [pool] down in the woods, and a screened-in summer house. ... The performers often came for the weekend and enjoyed the facilities.
The amphitheater was designed by Zuckermann himself, seated 425, and included "a canvas roof for rainy weather." Not surprisingly, the performers included eminent harpsichordists: Paul Jacobs, Ralph Kirkpatrick, and Fernando Valenti.
Later, Zuckermann and Smith launched a further arts collaboration as sponsors of Caffe Cino, a coffee house cum off-off-Broadway theater located near his harpsichord workshop on Christopher Street. The theater's repertoire included edgy productions presenting aspects of gay life (both theater and workshop were very near the Stonewall Inn, site of the Stonewall riots of 1969, a historical landmark in history of the gay rights movement).
The theater had fallen on hard times following the 1967 suicide of its founder, Joseph Cino. Smith and Zuckermann bought the theater, but quickly found it was not easy to rescue it. Cino had, it appears, been paying off the police in order to run an establishment not permitted by the zoning laws, and Smith and Zuckermann were unwilling to try to follow in his footsteps. According to Schanke and Marra, "authorities swooped down on the still-illegal operation. 1,250 violations quickly accumulated on the place."
The nadir of the experience for Zuckermann was a night spent in jail, as Stone relates:
[The play] "Empire State" features [among other characters] ... an obnoxious boy of ten. It also features an obscenity that caused problems for the coffeehouse. Zuckermann ... wrote ... about the event, "two inspectors dressed as hippies came and watched one of our plays ["Empire State"] containing what was then considered a dirty word, starting with 'mother'". Because the obscenity was said in front of a child performing in the play, Zuckermann and one of the actors who was also the boy's uncle were arrested on January 26, 1968, only three days after the Caffe's opening. According to the arrest record, the criminal act was to "permit child to act in theratical ["sic"] production, acts and diolgue ["sic"] impair morals charge." When officials returned the child to his home, his mother's first words were, "how come you're back so early?"
As Smith relates, the charge was dismissed in the morning. But Stone goes on to say:
In addition to ending the run of the production, the incident was deeply upsetting to Zuckermann, who as a child had fled the Nazis with his parents. Feeling oppressed in the United States, which seemed headed toward fascism, Zuckermann lost his enthusiasm for operating the Cino. ... Within a year [he] had sold his business and moved from the United States.
Caffe Cino itself did not last much longer than "Empire State": it closed permanently on 10 March 1968.
As activist.
The 1960s, when Zuckermann's harpsichord project flourished, was also the time of when the American government sent its troops to fight in a controversial war in Vietnam, leading to a sharp rise in domestic political activism. Zuckermann was an impassioned opponent of the war, who in a 1967 letter to the "Village Voice" described American policy as "mass murder". Elsewhere he described the process of his political radicalization: "Like many others I was "radicalized" by three events: sitting on the steps of the Pentagon, watching the Democratic Convention on tv, and being jailed." He was a sponsor of Angry Arts week (25 January - 5 February 1967), an effort by the artistic community to rally opposition to the war.
By 1969, Zuckermann's despair over the war had reached the point where he decided to leave the country. He left New York for England, where he bought and moved into Stafford Barton, a 15th century house in rural Devonshire with 28 acres of fields and gardens. There, he "r[a]n a crafts business, ... work[ing] with kids who would otherwise be dropouts"; he also "play[ed] chamber music and tennis with the local gentry." He reported his experience, and his thoughts about England, in a 1971 contribution to "The Village Voice".
With time, Zuckermann shifted his emphasis from harpsichords to his second career as a political activist. He played an active part in creating small local collaborative projects that cut away from the values and patterns of the dominant consumer society. While living in London, he noted the five hundred mews (former stable blocks) in that city as, contrary to professional planning views at the time, a viable city environment, and proceeded to write with co-author Barbara Rosen "The Mews of London: A Guide to the Hidden Byways of London's Past" (1982).
In 1987 Zuckermann began his collaboration with The Commons, an independent non-profit policy research group based in Paris. Through 1994 he was a Senior Associate, writer and editor of a program called the New Mobility Agenda which looks at ways in which we could arrange our transportation (and our lives) so that people could obtain better access to the places they live and work. The project eventually led to a search for ideas, suggestions, and possible solutions from people and places around the world. Zuckermann's significant experience as a 'kit builder' on a large international scale was one of the important driving forces behind the program and its various spin-offs and demonstration projects.
"End of the Road" (1991) was written as an attempt to pull together all the rich body of information and ideas being generated by the New Mobility project, in an easily readable form, addressed to the general public, and put into jargon-free and vivid language not generally found in the transportation literature. Zuckermann followed this up with a number of other EcoPlan projects such as co-author of a children's book, "Family Mouse Behind the Wheel" (1992), as well as taking a leading role in The Commons Car Free Days program. His book "Alice in Underland" (2000) looks at today's technology and society matters (and manners) from a perspective somewhat different from that usually encountered in the literature.
In 1994 Zuckermann collaborated with Eric Britton, with whom he had worked much earlier on the Sundance Festival, to create an interactive program under The Commons for something they called "Consumer Holiday – The one day a year we turn off the economy and think about it". Shortly however they became aware of a well financed Canadian program with many of the same objectives, Buy Nothing Day, and decided to convert their collaborative project into an international support site that looked at a broader range of problems, ideas, paths and solutions, which would help to amplify and compete the Canadian project. Thus the International Buy Nothing Day program was born and continues to this day.
Zuckermann moved to France around 1995. Following the move he continued his research, writing, and editing activities with The Commons.
As bookstore owner.
In June 1994 he became founder and owner-manager of "Shakespeare", an English-language bookstore and arts center in Avignon, named after a famous earlier "Shakespeare" bookstore run in Paris in the early 20th century by Sylvia Beach (Beach was the first publisher of James Joyce's oft-censored novel "Ulysses".)
Zuckermann and Britton described the store as "a bookstore and arts center ... which resolutely refuses the separation of 'culture' from the issues of technology, society and personal responsibility." A 2008 visitor described the store thus, "A small but well stocked hideaway just inside the medieval city walls near Porte St Lazare, the shop is infused with the character of its owner. Customers whisper and books are taken from the shelves with reverence, as the dignified, silver-haired Wolfgang Zuckermann presides in benign tranquillity. Even in the café (where Mr Zuckermann will rustle you up a surprising - and surprisingly good - English cream tea with home-made scones) the only sounds are quiet chewing, tinkling china, pages turning and murmurs of literary conversation."
Zuckermann retired from running the bookstore in 2012; it still exists under other ownership. He died in late 2018 in Avignon, France.
References.
Books and articles by Wolfgang [Wallace] Zuckermann:
Discussion of Zuckermann's career by other scholars:


Van Doorne transmission


Luciano Barbera

Luciano Barbera is a high-end men’s clothing company that originated in Biella, Italy, a town and comune in the northern Italian region of Piedmont, the capital of the province of the same name. Luciano Barbera has offices and design in Biella, Italy. Prior to producing a clothing company, the Barbera family owned and operated the Carlo Barbera Mill, also in Biella, Italy.
Showrooms.
There is a Luciano Barbera store and showroom in Milan on Via Gesù, the popular men’s clothing street. A second showroom is located on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
The Fabric.
The initial fabric factory in Biella, Italy was founded by Carlo Barbera (1911–2013). The clothing manufactured by the firm is considered by at least one source to be of the finest quality. When the fabric production was in progress, it too was of luxurious standards. After dying, the yarn was rested six months while it regained humidity before weaving in order to obtain the best results. In 2010 the reported average price of fabric from the Carlo Barbera factory was 41 euros a meter ($48.75 a yard), about twice that of their Italian competitors.


Sven Gustaf Wingqvist

Sven Gustaf Wingqvist (10 December 1876 – 17 April 1953) was a Swedish engineer, inventor and industrialist, and one of the founders of Svenska Kullagerfabriken (SKF), one of the world's leading ball bearing and roller bearing makers. Sven Wingqvist invented the multi-row self-aligning ball bearing in 1907.


Enlighten (radiosity engine)


Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering

The Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal established in 1974 and published by the NRC Research Press. It covers environmental, hydrotechnical, structure, and construction engineering, as well as engineering mechanics, engineering materials, and a history of civil engineering. Papers are available on the Internet in advance of print issues and are available in full-text HTML and PDF formats.
The "Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering" is the official journal of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering. The editors in chief are Tarek Sayed (University of British Columbia) and Mike Bartlett (University of Western Ontario).


Squale Watches

Squale is a small Swiss watch brand founded in 1946 by von Büren S.A./Montres, specializing in professional diving watches. Today, Squale is owned by the Maggi Family, who had previously been distributors of von Büren/Squale watches in Italy.
History.
Squale was founded by Charles von Büren in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1946 as a manufacturer of watchcases and other components for other watch brands. Originally, the "Squale" mark appeared on watches as a symbol of the case's origins and pride in its quality.
In 1950, von Büren S.A./Montres began to produce their own range of professional diving watches under the Squale brand name. These watches were not marketed for jewelry shops but rather specialty dive stores.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Squale provided cases for Altanus Genève, Arlon, Potens Prima, Prima Flic, Jean Perret Geneva, Ocean Diver / Blandford, Deman Watch, Margi, Berio, Eagle Star Genève, La Spirotechnique, Wertex, Carlson Tavernier Geneva, and Sinn. Cases designed for 500m water resistance with the crown located at the "4 o'clock" position were sold to Airin, Dodane, Blancpain, Tag Heuer, Doxa, Zeno, and Auricoste. Squale also supplied the parachutists corps "Folgore Brigade" part of the Italian Airforces ("Aeronautica Militare Italiana") and the Italian Navy's Diving Corps ("Marina Militare Italiana") with timepieces during this period.
In 1974, Squale entered the watch market as an independent entity.
Following the watch industry's "quartz crisis", Squale halted their production of mechanical watches in order to focus on quartz timepieces in 1989. This led to the creation of the "Squale Rambo." Like many watch companies at the time, Squale began to fade from the international watch market.
After the retirement of Charles von Büren, the Maggi Family, friends to the von Büren family and former distributors of von Büren/Squale watches in Italy purchased the company.
The brand relaunched in 2010 and is now headquartered in Milan, with the watches being made in Grenchen in the Jura valley, Switzerland.
Name and logo.
"Squale" is the French word for "shark". Its founder, Charles von Büren created von Büren S.A./Montres in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1946. Squale is now based in Italy and owned by Massimo Maggi. The "von" part of the Squale logo references to the von Büren family and von Büren S.A./Montres.
Watch models.
Current models:
Former models:


Bayshore station (Ottawa)

Bayshore is a station on Ottawa, Ontario, Canada's transitway served by OC Transpo buses. It is located in the western transitway section at the Bayshore Shopping Centre in the neighbourhood of Bayshore.
Prior to its construction, buses used Woodridge Crescent and entered the shopping centre parking lot, which is prone to congestion and extensive delays. Due to no access to westbound Woodridge Crescent from Bayshore Drive northbound (except emergency vehicles), routes 11, 82, 57, and 173 have to travel around the shopping centre, on Richmond Road and Holly Acres Road, to enter the small bus-route access to the station. Eastbound trips of routes 11, 82, 57, and 173 travel on Woodridge Crescent eastbound, then on Bayshore Drive southbound, and then their regular route from Richmond Road onward.
A second platform allows rapid routes 61, 62 and 63 to pass through the station via a transitway segment between Pinecrest station and Moodie station, which was originally built in 2009 and later extended towards Moodie in 2017. All Kanata and Stittsville Connexion routes serve this stop at the station.
Service.
The following routes serve Bayshore station as of October 6 2019:


Svea Engineer Corps

The Svea Engineer Corps (), designation Ing 1, was a Swedish Army engineer unit that traced its origins back to the 19th century. It was disbanded in 1997. The unit was garrisoned in Uppland and Södermanland.
History.
The unit has its origins in Sapper Company raised in 1855. The company was reorganised to a battalion-sized unit in 1864 and was renamed Sapper Corps. This unit was transformed to a pontoon bridge battalion, Pontoon Battalion, in 1867. The battalion then changed its name once again in 1893 to Svea Engineer Battalion, and in 1902 to Svea Engineer Corps, when it gained the designation Ing 1 (1st Engineer Regiment). That same year, the field telegraphy company that had been attached to the unit became independent and later formed Uppland Regiment.
Svea Engineer Corps was upgraded to a regiment in 1957 and was renamed Svea Engineer Regiment. It was then downgraded to a battalion unit again in 1994, just three years before the unit was disbanded, in 1997. The regiment was garrisoned in Stockholm, Solna and Södertälje during its lifetime.
Heraldry and traditions.
Coat of arms.
The coat of the arms of the Svea Engineer Regiment (Ing 1) 1977–1994 and the Svea Engineer Corps (Ing 1) 1994–1997. Blazon: "Azure, the Swedish minor coat-of-arms three open crowns placed two and one The shield surmounted a cluster of rays coming down from a mullet, or".
Colours, standards and guidons.
The colour of Ing 2 was presented on 26 September 1935 by His Majestyg the King Gustaf V at the 300th Anniversary of the "" ("Royal Engineers") in Stockholm. It was carried from 1 January 1998 by the Norrland Engineer Corps. When the colour was taken out of use, it was not handed over to the Swedish Army Museum but was exhibited at Ing 1's museum on Laxön. The colour couldn't therefore be admitted to the Swedish Army Museum collection until 2012.
Medals.
In 1997, "" ("Svea Engineer Corps (Ing 1) Commemorative Medal") i silver (SveaingSMM) of the 8th size was established. The medal is oval and the medal ribbon is divided in black, yellow and black moiré.
Commanding officers.
Regimental commanders and battalion and corps commanders between 1900 and 1997.


Jean de Hautefeuille

Jean de Hautefeuille (20 March 1647 – 18 October 1724) was a French abbé, physicist and inventor.
Biography.
Hautefeuille was born in Orléans, France. While still young, his experimental activities came to the attention of Marie Anne Mancini, Duchesse de Bouillon, who became his patroness and brought him into her entourage. In this way, he was able to travel through Italy and England. Through the Duchess' patronage, he came to be ordained as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. His passion, however, was for the sciences rather than religious matters, and he focused on the field of engineering design.
One of Hautefeuille's most important achievements was his proposal to use a spiral spring with a balance wheel in place of a pendulum to control a clock. In the 1670s, he was involved in a dispute with Christiaan Huygens, who along with Robert Hooke claimed priority. Huygens is today generally credited with the invention as he managed to perfect it and the first watch using one was made under his direction.
Hautefeuille also conducted investigations in acoustics, investigating the action of speaking trumpets, and wrote an essay on the cause of echoes which was awarded a prize by the Academy of Bordeaux in 1718. He also made improvements in lenses, and suggested a method of raising water using the explosive action of gunpowder. He was also interested in the phenomenon of the tides, and invented an instrument called a thalassameter to register them.
In 1678 Hautefeuille proposed an early form of internal combustion engine, which was to use gunpowder as a fuel, but it seems unlikely that any such machine was ever constructed by him. He was, however, the first person to propose the use of a piston in a heat engine. Huygens proposed a similar device two years later in 1680 based on de Hautefeuille's suggestion and appears to have constructed some form of prototype.
Though considered intelligent, Hautefeuille rarely perfected his inventions, and was inclined to prematurely publish ideas and then abandon them in favour of new pursuits. The Paris Academy of Sciences attested the value and usefulness of many of his discoveries, but it never conferred on him the honour of electing him as a member. He was however elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1687.
He was the author of a number of essays on a variety of subjects.


Owens Lake

Owens Lake is a mostly dry lake in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California. It is about south of Lone Pine, California. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for thousands of years, Owens held significant water until 1913, when much of the Owens River was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, causing Owens Lake to desiccate by 1926. Today, some of the flow of the river has been restored, and the lake now contains some water. Nevertheless, as of 2013, it is the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States. The lake was the epicenter of a magnitude 5.8 earthquake that occurred on June 24, 2020.
History.
Owens Lake was given its present name by the explorer John C. Frémont, in honor of one of his guides, Richard Owens. Richard Owens however never stepped foot in the valley. The lake's original name, given by the "Nüümü" (Owens Valley Paiute), is "Patsiata".
Before the diversion of the Owens River, Owens Lake was up to long and wide, covering an area of up to . In the last few hundred years the lake had an average depth of , and sometimes overflowed to the south, after which the water would flow into the Mojave Desert.
In 1905, the lake's water was thought to be "excessively saline."
It is thought that in the late Pleistocene about 11–12,000 years ago Owens Lake was even larger, covering nearly and reaching a depth of . The increased inflow from the Owens River, from melting glaciers of the post-Ice Age Sierra Nevada, caused Owens Lake to overflow south through Rose Valley into another now-dry lakebed China Lake, in the Indian Wells Valley near Ridgecrest, California. After the glaciers melted, the lake waters receded. This accelerated with human exploitation of the lake, even before the Los Angeles Aqueduct was built, because Owens Valley farmers had already diverted most of the Owens River's tributaries' flow, causing the lake level to drop slightly each year.
Starting in 1913, the river and streams that fed Owens Lake were diverted by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and the lake level started to drop quickly. As the lake dried, soda processing at nearby Keeler, California, switched from relatively cheap chemical methods to more expensive physical ones. The Natural Soda Products Company sued the city of Los Angeles and built a new plant with a $15,000 settlement. A fire destroyed this plant shortly after it was built, but the company rebuilt it on the dry lakebed in the 1920s.
During the unusually wet winter of 1937, LADWP diverted water from the aqueduct into the lakebed, flooding the soda plant. Because of this, the courts ordered the city to pay $154,000. After an unsuccessful appeal to the state supreme court in 1941, LADWP built the Long Valley Dam, which impounded Lake Crowley for flood control.
Conditions.
The lake is currently a large salt flat whose surface is made of a mixture of clay, sand, and a variety of minerals including halite, burkeite, mirabilite, thenardite, and trona. In wet years, these minerals form a chemical soup in the form of a small brine pond within the dry lake. When conditions are right, bright pink halophilic (salt-loving) archaea spread across the salty lakebed. Also, on especially hot summer days when ground temperatures exceed 150° F (66 °C), water is driven out of the hydrates on the lakebed creating a muddy brine. More commonly, periodic winds stir up noxious alkali dust storms that carry away as much as four million tons (3.6 million metric tons) of dust from the lakebed each year, causing respiratory problems in nearby residents. The dust includes carcinogens, such as cadmium, nickel and arsenic.
Management.
The LADWP and the California State Lands Commission own most of the Owens Lake bed, though a few small parcels along the historic western shoreline are privately owned. In 2004, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) acquired a parcel at the foot of Owens Lake. Designated the Cartago Wildlife Area in 2007, it is one of the few remaining spring and wetland areas on the shore of Owens Lake. CDFW is using mitigation funds from CalTrans to enhance habitat.
As part of an air quality mitigation settlement, LADWP is currently shallow flooding of the salt pan to try to help minimize alkali dust storms and further adverse health effects. There is also about of managed vegetation being used as a dust control measure. The vegetation consists of saltgrass, which is a native perennial grass highly tolerant of the salt and boron levels in the lake sediments. Gravel covers are also used.
Ecology.
This once-blue saline lake was an important feeding and resting stop for millions of waterfowl each year. During a visit to Owens Lake in 1917 Joseph Grinnell from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Berkeley reported "Great numbers of water birds are in sight along the lake shore--avocets, phalaropes, ducks. Large flocks of shorebirds in flight over the water in the distance, wheeling about show in mass, now silvery now dark, against the gray-blue of the water. There must be literally thousands of birds within sight of this one spot."
Owens Lake is still recognized as an Important Bird Area in California by the National Audubon Society. At the shore, a chain of wetlands, fed by springs and artesian wells, keep part of the former Owens Lake ecosystem alive. Snowy plovers nest at Owens along with several thousand snow geese and ducks. As a result of current dust mitigation efforts, shallow flooding of the lakebed has created both shallow and deeper (about deep) habitats on the lakebed. This water, although seasonally applied, is helping to buoy the lake's ecosystem causing hope in conservationists that an expanded shallow flooding program could do even more. There are no serious plans, however, to restore Owens to anything resembling a conventional lake.
On April 19, 2008, the Eastern Sierra Audubon Society, Audubon California, and the Owens Valley Committee held the first lake-wide survey of the bird populations of Owens Lake. Volunteers recorded a total of 112 avian species and 45,650 individual birds — the highest total number of birds ever officially recorded at Owens Lake. Volunteers identified 15 species of waterfowl (ducks and geese) and 22 species of shorebirds. The highest totals for individuals of a species included 13,873 California gulls (an inland nester at Mono Lake and elsewhere); 9,218 American avocets; 1,767 eared grebes; 13,826 "peeps" or small sandpipers such as dunlin, western and least sandpipers; and 2,882 individual ducks.
Local industry.
Cerro Gordo Mines.
The town of Cartago, below the Sierra Nevada near present-day Olancha, California, was the western shipping port for the Cerro Gordo Mines production and transported goods across Owens Lake with the northern ports of Swansea and Keeler directly below the mines. From Cartago a barge-like vessel, the "Bessie Brady," was launched in 1872, which cut the three-day freight journey around the lake down to three hours.
Much of the freight it carried was silver and lead bullion from the Cerro Gordo mines, which at their height were so productive that the bars of the refined metals waited in large stacks before twenty-mule team teamsters could haul it to Los Angeles. The trying three-week (one way) journey improved after the formation of the Cerro Gordo Freighting Company, run by ancestors of regional historian Remi Nadeau who has written of this period.
The town of Keeler, below the Inyo Mountains on the former north shore, replaced Swansea as the shipping port for the mines after the 1872 Lone Pine earthquake. In the 1870s it had a population of 5,000 people as the center of trade for the Cerro Gordo mines.
The Cottonwood Charcoal Kilns, traditional stone masonry 'beehive' charcoal kilns, were built to transform wood from trees in Cottonwood Canyon above the lake into charcoal, to feed the Cerro Gordo mines' silver and lead smelters across the lake at Swansea. The ruins are located on the southern side of the lakebed near Cartago. They were similar to the nearby Panamint Charcoal Kilns near Death Valley. The kilns are identified as California Historical Landmark #537.
Other enterprises.
In 1879 silver mining ended, but Keeler was saved when the Carson and Colorado Railroad built narrow-gauge rail tracks to the town. It then became a soda, salt, and marble shipping center until 1960. The rail line had been sold to Southern Pacific Railroad in 1900. Keeler's current population is around 50 people and continues in decline.
In the 20th century the Clark Chemical Company operated on the northwestern shore at Bartlett, with evaporation ponds for lake brine and a plant to extract its chemicals.
Filmography.
Numerous Western films have been shot by Owens Lake, including "Westward Ho" (1935), "Maverick" (1994), "Riders of the Dawn" (1937), "Across the Plains" (1939), "Stage to Tucson" (1951), "From Hell to Texas" (1958) and "Nevada Smith" (1966).
Other films that had scenes shot at Owens Lake or the nearby Alabama Hills where Owens Lake is visible includes "Top Gun" (1986), and "Tremors" (1990).
Public access.
The Cartago Wildlife Area continues to develop as a wildlife-viewing area for the public. The site is open year-round for viewing numerous bird species attracted to the ponds and wetlands as well as the ruins of a historic soda ash plant from the World War I era and the 1920s.
References.
Notes
Bibliography


Julien Le Roy

Julien Le Roy (1686-1759) was a major 18th-century Parisian clockmaker and watchmaker.
He was born in Tours in 1686, the scion of four previous generations of clockmakers. By the age of 13, had already made his first clock. In 1699, he moved to Paris for further training. He became "maître horloger" in 1713 and later "juré" of his guild. Further appointments followed, including the Directorship of the "Société des Arts", but the pinnacle of his achievement was being appointed clockmaker ("Horloger Ordinaire du Roi") to King Louis XV in 1739. He carried on his business from premises in the Rue du Harlay until his death in 1759.
His son Pierre Le Roy (1717–1785), a brilliant clock-maker in his own right, carried on the business until the early 1780s. Another son, Julien-David Le Roy (1724–1803), was a neo-classical architect and archaeologist, author of the "Ruins of the Most Beautiful Monuments of Greece". His third son, Charles was a physician and Encyclopédiste, and his fourth, Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, a physicist and Encyclopédiste as well.
Examples of his work can be found in many major museums around the world, including the Louvre in Paris, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
In 1740 the recently founded Toulouse Observatory acquired a Julien le Roi clock for the observatory.


Tournament of Champions (squash)

The Tournament of Champions is an annual international squash championship held in New York City. In recent years, the event has been held at Grand Central Terminal, in a specially-constructed four-walled glass court in the Vanderbilt Hall.
The tournament was first held in 1930. It was previously known as the US Professional Championships. The women's competition began in 2001. In recent years, the men's tournament has involved a main draw of 32 players, and the women's tournament has had a main draw of 16. The men's event is now part of the PSA World Series.
Past results.
Women's finals.
"Note: The women's tournament was inaugurated in 2001"


Joseph Knibb

Joseph Knibb (1640–1711) was an English clockmaker of the Restoration era. According to author Herbert Cescinsky, a leading authority on English clocks, Knibb, "next to Tompion, must be regarded as the greatest horologist of his time."
Life and work.
He was born in 1640, the fifth son of Thomas Knibb, yeoman of Claydon. He was cousin to Samuel Knibb, clockmaker, to whom he may have been apprenticed in about 1655. After serving his seven years he moved to Oxford in 1663, the year Samuel moved to London.
Knibb set up premises in St Clement's, Oxford, where he was outside the city liberties. In 1665 or 1666 he moved to premises in Holywell Street, which was within the city liberties. The freemen of the city objected to his presence, demanding that he "suddenly shut his windows" because he was not a freeman of the city.
Knibb applied for the Freedom of Oxford twice in 1667 but on both occasions the smiths and watchmakers of the city objected and he was refused. In February 1668 he was finally admitted to the freedom in a compromise arrangement in which he was officially recorded as being employed by Trinity College, Oxford as a gardener and paid a fine of 20 nobles (£6.13s.4d.) and a leather bucket.
In 1669 Wadham College, Oxford had a new turret clock built and from 1671 to 1721 Knibb's younger brother John was paid £1 per year to maintain it. It is the earliest surviving clock with an anchor escapement, and may even be the first such clock ever built. In 1954 the antiquarian horologist Dr. C.F.C. Beeson proposed the theory that Joseph Knibb had built the clock. Beeson's theory has since become widely accepted.
By 1670 Knibb had moved to London where he was made free of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers. Initially he set up business at the Dyal, near Serjeant's Inn in Fleet Street, subsequently moving to the House at the Dyal, in Suffolk Street. He was elected as a steward of the Clockmakers Company in August 1684 and assistant in July 1689. He retired from London in 1697 and went to live in Hanslope in Buckinghamshire, where he continued to make clocks until his death in 1711.
Reputation and legacy.
Joseph Knibb is renowned for both the quality of his work and his invention. The aesthetic beauty and simplicity of his work is unparalleled. Among his many inventions was the system of Roman striking, the tic-tac escapement, and probably the anchor escapement. His merits were recognised by his being appointed clockmaker to Charles II and then to James II.
Clock cases of Knibb's era were wooden, and therefore were made by specialist clockcase makers who were members of the Worshipful Company of Joiners and Ceilers. The politician Richard Legh (1635–87) wrote to his wife describing Knibb's advice on choosing a case for a longcase clock:
"I went to the famous Pendulum maker Knibb, and have agreed for one, he having none ready but a dull stager which was at £19; for £5 more I have agreed for one finer than my Father's, and it is to be better furnished with carved capitalls gold, and gold pedestalls with figures of boys and cherubimes all brass gilt. I wold have had itt Olive Wood, (the Case I mean), but gold does not agree with that colour, soe took their advice to have it black Ebony which suits your Cabinett better than Walnut tree wood, of which they are mostly made. Lett me have thy advice by the next."
Legh's young wife, Elizabeth, replied in agreement: "My dearest Soule; as for the Pandolome Case I think Blacke suits anything".
Joseph Knibb is the most accomplished of an extended family of clockmakers that included his cousin Samuel and Joseph's younger brother John. A younger cousin Peter Knibb (1651–79) from Farnborough, Warwickshire was apprenticed to Joseph in 1668 and became a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers in 1677. John Knibb's youngest son, also called Joseph (1695–1722) was apprenticed in London in 1710 and received a substantial bequest from the elder Joseph Knibb's will in 1712. Another cousin, Elizabeth Knibb from Collingtree, Northamptonshire, married another clockmaker, Samuel Aldworth, in 1703. Aldworth had been in Oxford as John Knibb's apprentice and then assistant. In 1697 Aldworth moved from Oxford to London to succeed Joseph Knibb on the latter's retirement to Hanslope.
On 26 September 2010 the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board unveiled a blue plaque at Claydon to Samuel, Joseph and John Knibb.
On 6 November 2012 Sotheby's sold a small Roman striking table clock by Knibb from the George Daniels collection for £1,273,250.


Green Silk Road Fund

The Green Silk Road Fund (abbreviated GSRF) is an investment fund led by Chinese private entrepreneurs to support projects in China and along the countries of the Belt and Road Initiative. It is unique among Belt and Road Initiative investment funds as private sector support is the predominant driver rather than Chinese policy banks and foreign exchange reserves.
Fundraising.
A driving force behind the investment fund is Wang Wenbiao, Chairman of the Elion Group, a firm implementing anti-desertification through methods including developing drought-resistant seeds for agricultural plants like licorice. Wang Wenbiao refers to himself as the "Son of the Desert" and his company found commercial success in combating desertification in the Kubuqi Desert of Inner Mongolia. He has sought to export his anti-desertification business to other countries, and has a track record of acquisitions of buying small and medium-sized enterprises internationally to expand his business.
In addition to Elion Group, other firms contributing capital to the fund are China Oceanwide, Chint Group, Huiyuan Juice, Macrolink, JuneYao, Ping’an Bank and Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city.
The first phase of the fund is expected to reach RMB 30 billion.
Investments.
The fund intends to invest in solar power projects, tree planting, and livestock breeding. At the launch of the fund in March 2015, the first project announced was a RMB 5 billion investment in an "ecological solar panel industrial chain" between Beijing and Zhangjiakou, Hebei.


Loja Saarinen

Loja Saarinen (1879-1968) was a Finnish-American textile artist and sculptor who founded the weaving department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. She also led her own studio, the Studio Loja Saarinen, which designed many of the textiles used in buildings designed by her husband, the architect Eliel Saarinen.
Background.
Minna Carolina Mathilde Louise "Loja" Gesellius was born March 16, 1879, in Helsinki, Finland, and studied art in Helsinki at Taideteollinen Keskuskoulu (1898–99) and Suomen Taideyhdistyksen Piirustuskoulu (1899-1902), and sculpture under Jean Antoine Injalbert at the Académie Colarossi in Paris.
Career.
Loja Saarinen started her career in 1928 when she founded one of the most productive weaving departments in the United States at the Cranbrook Educational Community. Saarinen was heavily influenced by Swedish craft tradition. She was one of the first artists to bring Scandinavian design to America. Her most substantial work was for Kingswood School where her studio designed tapestries, rugs, curtains, and upholstery.
Saarinen's work is characterized by simple geometric designs in subtle light and dark contrasts, with a frequent use of complementary colors.
One-Person Exhibitions:


ACCC conductor

ACCC (Aluminum Conductor Composite Core) is a registered trade mark for a type of "high-temperature low-sag" (HTLS) overhead power line conductor manufactured by 34 international (and authorized) conductor manufacturers.
Invention.
CTC Global (formerly Composite Technology Corporation) developed the patented technology. The ACCC conductor's composite core is manufactured according to ASTM B987 / B987M - 20 “Standard Specification for Carbon Fiber Thermoset Polymer Matrix Composite Core (CFC) for use in Overhead Electrical Conductors.” CTC Global manufactures ACCC core in the US and with partners in China and Indonesia. Finished ACCC conductor is produced by 34 conductor manufacturers worldwide under license. As of May 2021, the ACCC Condutcor has been selected by over 250 utilities in 60 countries for more than 1,000 projects ranging from 11kV (AC) to 1,100kV (DC).
Advantages.
It is able to carry approximately twice as much current as a traditional aluminium-conductor steel-reinforced cable (ACSR) cable of the same size and weight, making it popular for retrofitting an existing electric power transmission line without needing to change the existing towers and insulators.
In addition to the labor and materials savings, such an upgrade can be performed as a "maintenance and repair" operation, without the lengthy permitting process required for new construction.
It does this by replacing the steel core in ACSR cable with a carbon and glass fiber strength member formed by pulltrusion. This composite strength member provides several advantages:
The first two factors result in roughly 30% greater conductivity than an equivalent ACSR conductor, allowing 14% more current to be carried at equal temperature. For example, diameter ACCC "Drake" conductor at 75 °C has an AC resistance of 106 mΩ/mile, while equivalent ACSR conductor has an AC resistance of 139 mΩ/mile, 31% higher.
The remaining capacity increase is provided by an increased operating temperature of continuous and emergency, compared to continuous and emergency for ACSR.
The manufacturers rate the cable for continuous operation at 180 °C surface temperature,
Operation at these temperatures implies high line losses, which may be uneconomical, but the "ability" to carry such current contributes to the redundancy of the electric grid (the high overload capacity can stop a potential cascading failure) and thus can be valuable even when rarely used directly. Even at higher operating temperatures, the ACCC conductor's added aluminum content and lower electrical resistance offers reduced line losses compared to other conductors of the same diameter and weight.


Lantern House

Lantern House is a residential development under construction in New York City. Thomas Heatherwick designed the building, and Related Companies developed it.
History and development.
Related paid $205 million for the site in 2014. The earliest permits for work on the site were filed in 2016. Massings for the project were revealed in 2017. Designs for the structures were first published by the press in early 2018. Early reports connected Lantern House to another Related development at 555 West 22nd Street, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, referring to them jointly as "Hudson Residences".
As of early 2021, the building was nearing completion.
Design.
The building's windows inspired the name of the development, as they evoke the shape of a lantern. Heatherwick was inspired in part by bay windows he has seen in Victorian homes. Heatherwick also drew inspiration from industrial warehouses located in Manhattan and elsewhere in New York, from which he derived the building's brick façade.
The High Line park bisects the two structures that form the building, though a lobby joins them at street level. March & White designed the building's interiors.
Usage.
The building is residential, with 181 condominium units.


Chris Knutsen

Chris Knutsen (June 24, 1862 - November 6, 1930) was an American luthier of the early 20th century, primarily known for his Hawaiian guitars and harp guitars.
Biography.
Johan Christian Kammen was born in Norway, the third child and second son of Ole Ferdinand Kammen and his wife, Birgette Skancke. He moved to Minnesota at age 3 with his parents in 1865. His first marriage to Ida Yahr, was recorded at Milnor Lutheran Church in Dakota Territory during November 1887. Subsequently, in 1888 he was married to his first cousin, Anna Cammen. They moved to Washington state in 1895, where he began patenting unusual guitar designs.
Knutsen started building Hawaiian steel guitars as early as 1908. Most of the guitars produced by Knutsen have spruce tops, all have lateral or diagonal bracing on the back, also due to his eccentric building skills many of his guitars used some crude solutions such as: wide number of screws, brackets, wing nuts, sheared-off tuning machine plates, odd-shaped nuts and dressmaker's seam tape rather than wood strips to reinforce ribs and butt fitted back plates.
Around 1914 he moved to Los Angeles, just as the Panama-California International Exposition ignited the Hawaiian music craze in the mainland United States. Accordingly, Knutsen began to produce harp ukuleles and Hawaiian guitars to meet the new demand.


John Garrard

Sir John Garrard, sometimes spelt Gerrard ("c." 1546 – 7 May 1625), was a City of London merchant, a member of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, a Buckinghamshire landowner, and a Lord Mayor of London for the year 1601 to 1602.
Life.
Garrard was a younger son of Sir William Gerrard, Garrard, or Garret, Haberdasher, of Dorney Court, Buckinghamshire, who had bought the manor of Dorney in 1542, going on to serve as Lord Mayor of London in 1555. His mother was Isabel, daughter of Julian Nethermill, of Coventry, and his paternal grandfather was John Gerrard, "alias" Garret, of Sittingbourne.
He was born about 1546, if his tomb correctly recorded his age at death. His father, Sir William, died in 1571, to be succeeded by the elder son, another William Garrard.
John Garrard became a member of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers and
married Jane, the daughter of Richard Partridge, a citizen of the City of London, and with her had thirteen children, including John (born about 1585), Benedict, Anne, Elizabeth, Ursula, Jane (baptized 1602), and at least two other daughters, these eight surviving infancy. At least four other children died young: a son named John, who was born and died in 1597; Margaret (the twin of Jane), who was baptized in May 1602 and died in June 1603; another John, who was baptized in December 1604; and a son, Thomas.
In 1593, Garrard was one of the two Sheriffs of the City of London, and at Michaelmas 1601 he was elected Lord Mayor of London, the term of office being for one year.
Garrard sold the manor of Southfleet in Kent to Sir William Sedley of Aylesford.
On 24 January 1616, Garrard's wife died; Garrard himself died on 7 May 1625, to be buried with his wife, and like his father, in the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr, London. A monument to him, erected by his son Benedict Gerrard, survives there, and reads as follows.
His son and heir, another Sir John Garrard, or Gerrard, was created a baronet in 1623 (see Garrard baronets).
Arms.
Garrard's arms were blazoned "argent, on a fess gules, a lion passant, argent; a crescent for difference".


Ring oiler

A ring oiler or oil ring is a form of oil-lubrication system for bearings.
Ring oilers were used for medium-speed applications with moderate loads, during the first half of the 20th century. These represented the later years of the stationary steam engine, and the beginnings of the high-speed steam engine, the internal combustion oil engine and electrical generating equipment. Before this time plain bearings were lubricated by drip-feed oil cups or manually by an engine tender with an oil can. As speeds or bearing loads later increased, forced pressure lubrication became more prevalent and the ring oiler fell from use.
A ring oiler is a simple device, consisting of a large metal ring placed around a horizontal shaft, adjacent to a bearing. An oil sump is underneath this shaft and the ring is large enough to dip into the oil. As the shaft rotates, the ring is carried round with it. The rotating ring in turn picks up some oil and deposits it onto the shaft, from where it flows sideways and lubricates the bearings. The oil ring is effectively a simple lubrication pump, with only one moving part and no complex or high-precision components. The device is crude, but automatic, effective and reliable. Unlike a drip oiler, there is also no need to close off the oiler or remove oil wicks when the machine is stopped.
Ring oilers were used for speeds up to around 1,000 rpm. Above this, the oil tended to be thrown centrifugally from the ring, rather than carried by it (although it is still currently applied on steam turbines with speeds around 3200 rpm). The bearing must also remain horizontal and stable, so although suitable for crankshaft main bearings, they could not be used on connecting rod big end bearings. They were not used on vehicles for similar reasons, although the engines concerned at this time were anyway too large and heavy for practical mobile use. Automatic ring oilers were particularly useful for large engines with multiple horizontally opposed cylinders, where it was otherwise difficult to access the central main bearings. Ring oilers were most suited where bearing side-loads were relatively light, but the bearing capacity required more lubrication than could be supplied by a drip feed oiler. For this reason they were widely used on larger electric motors and generators.


Johansson Mikrokator

A Johansson Mikrokator (also called Abramson's movement) is a mechanical comparator used to obtain mechanical magnification of the difference in length as compared to a standard. It works on the principle of a button spinning on a loop of string. A twisted thin metal strip holds a pointer, which shows the reading on a suitable scale. Since there is no friction involved in the transfer of movement from the strip to the pointer, it is free from backlash. It was reportedly designed by Hugo Abramson in 1938.
Construction.
A metallic strip is twisted and fixed between two ends as shown. Any longitudinal movement (in either direction) will cause the central portion of the strip to rotate. One end of the strip is fixed to an adjustable cantilever and the other end is fixed to the spring elbow. The spring elbow, in turn, is connected to a plunger, which moves upwards or downwards. The spring elbow, which consists of flexible strips and a stiff diagonal acts as a bell crank lever and causes the twisted strip to change length whenever there is a movement in the plunger. This change in length will result in a proportional amount of twist of the metallic strip. The magnification can be varied by changing the length of the spring elbow.
Operation.
The instrument is initially calibrated to the standard, and the "zero" is set to this value. Then, the test specimen are placed on the measuring table and are slid below the plunger of the instrument. Any difference in the measured dimension of the specimen will result in either the lowering or rising of the plunger. The lowering or rising of the plunger will cause the bell crank lever to move in forward or backward direction, and in turn, will twist or untwist the metallic strip. The centre line of the strip is perforated in order to prevent excessive stress.


Charles Claude Husson

Charles Claud Husson (1847 in Mirecourt, Vosges – 1915) was an influential French Archetier / bow maker.
Charles Claude HUSSON was the son of Charles Claude Nicolas HUSSON, a bowmaker/ Archetier.
He served his apprenticeship under his father, almost at the same time as Joseph Arthur Vigneron.
In 1873, he entered Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume's workshop and stayed with him until Vuillaume's death in 1875.
According to experts, in 1875 he joined François Nicolas Voirin for some time and, around 1878, started working for GAND & BERNARDEL Frères.
Around 1880 Husson established his own workshop in Paris at 14, rue du Faubourg Saint Denis.


Geneseo station


John R. Pitt

John Robertson Pitt (July 1, 1885 in Carluke, Ontario – 1971) was a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba as a Liberal-Progressive from 1935 to 1958.
The son of James Pitt and Mary D. King, both natives of Edinburgh, Scotland, Pitt was educated in Oneida. He first came to Manitoba as a seasonal farm worker in 1901 and returned to the Pierson district two years later. He was a general hardware merchant and funeral director. In 1913, he married Isabelle Hardy. Pitt chaired the Pierson School Board from 1918 to 1930.
He was first elected to the Manitoba legislature in a by-election held on June 24, 1935. The previous member had died in the Arthur constituency, in the province's southwestern corner, and Pitt was elected by acclamation to take his place. In the 1936, he defeated Conservative candidate J. Arthur Ross by 309 votes to retain the constituency.
Pitt was returned by acclamation in the 1941 election, and defeated a candidate of the CCF in the 1945 election. He was returned a final time in 1949, over two opponents. He served as a government backbencher throughout his time in the legislature, in the ministries of John Bracken, Stuart Garson and Douglas Campbell.
Pitt lost his seat to J. Arthur Ross in the 1953 provincial election, by 480 votes. Ross had served as a member of the House of Commons of Canada since 1936, and had an expanded profile in the constituency.


Merrimac Hat Company

The Merrimac Hat Company was a prominent manufacturer of hats from the 1860s until the 1950s, employing up to 500 people in its manufacturing facilities in Amesbury, Massachusetts and another 1,500 in facilities from Alabama to Nova Scotia. Vintage hats of the Merrimac Hat Company are displayed at the Salisbury Point Railroad & Hat Museum in Amesbury.
History.
In 1838 Issac Martin began the manufacture of hats in a small facility on his farm in Amesbury, Massachusetts. In 1860 he entered into a partnership with Abner L. Bailey and a small mill was constructed near Bailey's Pond in Amesbury, which was dammed to allow water for its boilers and wet finishing process. From 1860 to 1866 the company was known as Amesbury Hat and Horton Hat, but from 1866 the name Merrimac Hat Company became permanent. At the height of its success in the 1940s, the company was the largest manufacturer of trimmed hats and hat bodies in the country.
Decline.
Although "this company was easily the most prosperous of all of Amesbury's industries", the change in men's fashion after World War Two dramatically reduced the demand for formal hats. The company struggled for a few decades before closing for good in 1970. Its facilities near the intersection of Beacon and Merrimack Street remained shuttered until The late 1980s when they began to be converted into luxury condominiums, a process that is still ongoing in 2018.


John Geldersma

John Geldersma (born October 16, 1942 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is known for his wooden sculptures of, what he calls, "contemporary tribalism".
Life.
Geldersma earned a BFA from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (then known as University of Southwestern Louisiana) and a MFA from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. The artist has cited his early immersion in the intersection of such divergent cultures as French, Spanish, African-American, Caribbean, Anglo-Saxon and Native American as a major influence on his art. Geldersma divides his time between his native Louisiana and Colorado.
Works.
Geldersma has assembled a body of work over his forty-year career, much of it based out of Lafayette, that can perhaps best be described as spiritually symbolic totems. He began carving totems in 1970, inspired by African art. The masks and totems he sculpted were a collection of symbols joined not only as a design element, but also as an organization of a kind of psyche. The "Spirit Poles" are central to the artist's private mythology and invite meditation and solitary contemplation. Gelderma says, “A lot of these begin to look back you as much as you look at them, especially the pieces with the eyes. They confront you as well as you confront them. A lot of times I make them so that they are eye level so that you have this kind of confrontation and connection with them. I think they are charged, not only because of me but because there’s something in the wood, and there’s something there.”
His "Spirit Poles" are carved, smooth, minimalist, vertical, wooden poles with tapered ends, usually three or more feet long, some on bases. Geldersma works with aspen, pecan, weathered driftwood, and salvaged wood to create totemic poles, cairns, and tablets.
The artist's creative process involves studying the wood and seeing the character of it with its twists and turns. “I don’t like the straight ones. It’s more like a dance, like a ballet when there’s some movement,” says Geldersma. The original shape of the wood often dictates how the totem will ultimately look. Beginning with the raw material, the artist first removes the bark with a knife and then works the piece of wood with a chainsaw to get the rough shape he wants. Using increasingly smaller tools, from grinders down to sandpaper and steel wool, Geldersma works the wood into his desired form. He then applies color either by painting the totems in bands of bold colors or by burning them to achieve deep rich blacks.
Solo Exhibitions.
2013 Variations, Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, Santa Fe
2011 Black Wings, Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, Santa Fe
2009 Presence of Spirit, Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette, LA
2007 Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TN
2006 Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2005 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
2005 S.O.F.A, courtesy of Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago, IL
2004 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Marguerite Oestriecher Fine Art, New Orleans, LA
2003 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
2002 Marguerite Oestriecher Fine Art, New Orleans, LA
2001 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
2000 Marguerite Oestricher Fine Arts, New Orleans, LA
1999 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
1998 Marguerite Oesteicher Fine Art, New Orleans, LA
1998 Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago, IL
1997 Retrospective Exhibition, Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, LA
1996 Hotel díVille, Surrenne, France
1996 R. Treger Gallerie, Paris, France
1996 Cline LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
1995 Butters Gallery Ltd., Portland, OR
1994 Captured Spirits: John Geldersma Sculpture 1964-1994,
1994 University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, LA
1993 Gasperi Gallery, New Orleans, LA
1992 Mill Street Gallery, Aspen, CO
1991 Willougby Sharp Gallery, New York, NY
1991 Artworks Gallery, Seattle, WA
1990 LewAllen/Butler Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
1989 Duplantier Gallery, New Orleans, LA
1989 LewAllen/Butler Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
1988 Primitivist Sculpture: John Geldersma, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX
1987 Via Serpents, University Art Museum, Lafayette, LA
1977 Memphis Art Academy, Memphis, TN
1967 Rutgers, The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
1965 Fine Arts Gallery, The University of Southwestern, Louisiana, Lafayette, LA
Selected Group Exhibitions.
2012 Totems & Talismans, ENO Gallery, †Hillsboro, N.C
2011 NEWMEXORADO, Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM
2010 Introducing . . . Three New Gallery Artists, Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM
 Materials Matter, Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM
2001 Artists of S.O.F.A., Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago, IL
2000 Under the Influence: Artists Respond to the Twentieth Century, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA
 Palates and Pate: A Joining of Creative and Culinary Arts, Acadiana Outreach Center, Lafayette, LA
 Levy Gallery, Monroe, LA
 Petite Physique: A Body of Small Work, Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA
 Art Heart, Sophia Georg Gallery, Denver, CO
 Five From Louisiana, Center for Fine and Performing Arts, Pensacola, FL
 School House Show, Fort Collins, CO
1999 Winter Group Exhibition, J. Cotter Gallery, Beaver Creek, CO
 S.O.F.A., courtesy Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago, IL
 Levy Gallery, Monroe, LA
LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
1998 S.O.F.A., courtesy of Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago, IL
McLaren Markowitz Gallery, Boulder, CO
J. Cotter Gallery, Beaver Creek, CO
1997 Southern Stars, Art Center Galleries, Contemporary Masterworks from
 Florida Museums, Jacksonville, FL
1996 Gallerie R. Teger, Paris, France
1995 Anne Reed Gallery, Ketchum, ID
1994 Born on the Bayou: Celebrating Arts of Louisiana, CBís 313 Gallery, New York, NY
 Horwitch-LewAllen Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
1993 The Bayou Biennial, BCís 313 Gallery, New York, NY
1992 Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukie, WI
American House Gallery, Piermont, NY
Anne Reed Gallery, Ketchum, ID
1991 Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukie, WI
 Born on the Bayou: Celebrating Arts of Louisiana, CBís 313 Gallery, New York, NY
Anne Reed Gallery, Ketchum, ID
Southwest Louisiana Artists, Baton Rouge Gallery, Baton Rouge, LA
Gallery Selection 1991, LewAllen Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
1990 Art in the Garden VIII, American Crafts Gallery, Cleveland, OH
Interstate 49, Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA
Galerie R. Teger, Paris, France
1989 Bogus Beasts II, International Gallery, San Diego, CA
Fresh From Down the Road, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA
1988 Multiple Sights, University Art Museum, Lafayette, LA
Academy Gallery, New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, New Orleans, LA
Unrealism, Fayerweather Gallery, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
1987 Return to Eden: John Geldersma and David Butler, Todd Capp Gallery, New York, NY
 Animals, Todd Capp Gallery, New York, NY
 Gris-Gris, Artistís Alliance, Lafayette, NY
 Museum Show, Peidmont Museum, Winston-Salem, NC
1986 Visual Arts: The Southeast 1986, One Securities Center, Georgia State University, GA
1985 Louisiana Now, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA
1984 The Third Coast Exhibition, Art League of Houston Gallery, Houston, TX
1983 A Collection-A Collector: The Norman Fischer Collection, Jacksonville Art Museum, Jacksonville, FL
1982 Sculpture Biennial, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA
1981 Shreveport Art Guild, Meadows Museum of Art, Shreveport, LA
1980 First Louisiana Biennial Sculpture Invitational, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA
1979 U.S.L. 1960-1979, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA
1977 Fetishes, 112 Greene Street, New York, NY
Artists Biennial, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
 Louisiana Environments, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA
 Vision, Process, Environment, Lafayette Natural History Museum, Lafayette, LA
 Ninth Annual Invitational, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, OK
1976 Louisiana Bien Amis, Louisiana Bicentennial Exhibition, Paris, France
Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, LA
 Ninth National/International Sculpture Conference, Lakefront, LA
1975 Artistís Biennial, New Orleans Art Museum, Louisiana, LA
1974 Curved Air, Union Gallery, The University of Southwestern Louisiana, LA
1973 Louisiana Craft Council Exhibition, New Orleans, LA
Baton Rouge Gallery, Baton Rouge, LA
Louisiana American Revolution, Bicentennial Art Exhibitions, Baton Rouge, LA
1966 Avant Garde Annual Exhibition, Central Park, New York, NY
1965 Twenty-Third Annual Southeastern Competition, Atlanta, GA
1964 Louisiana State Annual Competition, Baton Rouge, LA
1963 Annual Competition Sponsored by the American Association of University Women, Dallas, TX


Highland Avenue Bridge

The Highland Avenue bridge is a bridge that carries Highland Drive over Cedar Creek and the Columbia Mill dam and millrace in Cedarburg Wisconsin. Originally the bridge was a steel truss bridge that was replaced in 1939 as a PWA project for the City of Cedarburg. The concrete archbridge is clad in a limestone veneer (dolomite locally known as Lannon stone). It was designed by local engineer Charles Whitney who also designed the dam at the Hilgen and Wittenburg Woolen Mill upstream of the bridge and the Lakeside Park Bridge in Fond du Lac.


Shank (footwear)

In a boot or shoe, the shank is a long, thin piece of material between the insole and outsole intended to support the foot and provide structure.
Background.
Materials and design for shanks vary widely with the purpose of the footwear. The shank of a pointe shoe used for ballet is made of flexible materials like leather, plastic, or cardstock, and may have customized length, thickness, and stiffness. Heavy boots such as those used for construction or hiking have far more rigid and durable shanks, often using steel, though contemporary shanks are more commonly made of less heat-conductive materials such as fiberglass and Kevlar. These materials' rigid nature adds a protective element, helping shield feet from puncture wounds and stone bruises. The shank is crucial to the functionality of mountaineering boots, as they diminish the load incurred by the feet and calves over the course of an ascent.


Bearing modulus

Bearing modulus is a modulus used in journal bearing design. It is a dimensionless number.
Formula.
Bearing Modulus (C) is C = (Zn/p) where
For any given bearing, there is a value for indicated by C, for which the coefficient of friction is at a minimum. The bearing should not be operated at this value of bearing modulus, since a slight decrease in speed or a slight increase in pressure will make the part of a shaft or axle that rests on bearings operate in partial lubrication state resulting in high friction, heating and wear.
To prevent this, the average value of Bearing modulus should be
or for large fluctuations and heavy impact loads


Almaron Dickinson

Almaron Dickinson (1800 – March 6, 1836) was a Texian soldier and defender during the Battle of the Alamo, fought during the Texas Revolution. Dickinson is best known as the artillery officer of the small garrison, and the husband of one of the only three non-Mexican survivors to live through the battle, Susanna Dickinson, as well as the father to their infant daughter Angelina, whose life was also spared. He is a member of the Immortal 32 and Old Eighteen.
Early life and becoming a soldier.
Dickinson was born in Tennessee, learning the trade of blacksmithing. He later enlisted in the US Army as a field artilleryman. He and Susannah married when she was just 15, on May 24, 1829, and two years later they moved to the Mexican province of Texas, where they became settlers in the Dewitt Colony. He received a league of land along the San Marcos River, where he started a blacksmith shop, and partnered with George C. Kimble in a hat factory. On December 14, 1834, their only child, Angelina, was born. Following a number of Indian raids on settlements, he joined a band led by fellow settler Bart McClure and took part in hunting down hostile Indians.
In the fall of 1835, Dickinson served as one of the defenders during the Battle of Gonzales, which marked the beginning of Texas' war for independence. He was elected as First Lieutenant of Artillery in December 1835. He then joined a band of volunteers going to defend San Antonio and became an aide to General Edward Burleson during the Siege of Bexar, with a rank of Lieutenant in the Texian Army. A few weeks later, his home where Susannah and Angelina had remained was looted by members of a Texian Militia, prompting her to join him in San Antonio. They set up residence in the Musquiz house, on the southwest corner of Portero Street and the Main Plaza. When Antonio López de Santa Anna and his troops arrived on February 23, 1836, Dickinson moved his family inside the Alamo.
Battle of the Alamo.
By this time, Dickinson held the rank of Captain, and was in command of the Alamo's artillery of twenty-one cannon. Some accounts list him with a rank of Lieutenant at the Alamo, but it is believed he was promoted. The commander, Lieutenant Colonel William Barrett Travis, led a force of between 180 and 250 men. This included Dickinson and others considered to be regular troops, as well as several bands of volunteers, led by frontiersmen James Bowie and Davey Crockett. Historians have established that the Alamo was not lower or higher than those two figures, with most believing the number to have been 182. One of the dispatches sent out by Travis gave the figure of 150 and at least 32 others are known to have arrived after that. Antonio Ruiz, the Mayor of San Antonio at the time, said that after the battle Mexican soldiers had burned 182 bodies of Alamo defenders and that tends to be the accepted strength of it. Santa Anna had under his command between 5,000 and 6,000 Mexican troops. From the time of his arrival, a siege began.
A Mexican bombardment continued through the morning of February 25, 1836. At approximately 10am, about 200–300 Mexican soldiers, mainly cazadores from the Matamoros Battalion, crossed the San Antonio River and took cover in abandoned shacks approximately 90 yards (82 m) to 100 yards (91 m) from the Alamo walls. They were intending to use the huts as cover to erect another artillery battery, although many Texians assumed that they were actually launching an assault on the Alamo. Travis called for volunteers to burn the huts, despite the fact that it was broad daylight and they would be within range of enemy muskets. Charles Despallier, Robert Brown, James Rose and a few others volunteered for the mission.
To provide cover, Dickinson and his men fired 8-lb cannon, filled with grapeshot and canister, at the Mexican soldiers in the huts. Crockett and his men fired rifles, while other Texians reloaded extra weapons for them. Within two hours, the battle was over. As soon as the Texians saw flames erupting from the huts they threw open the Alamo gate and the Texians re-entered unscathed, although Rose was almost captured by a Mexican officer. The Mexicans retreated with two killed and four wounded, while several Texians had been mildly scratched by flying rock.
After learning that a relief force under James Fannin had failed to reach the Alamo and that there was unlikely to be any further reinforcement, a group of 25 men set out from Gonzales at 2pm on Saturday, February 27. The party would number 32 upon its arrival at the Alamo, and was led by Albert Martin and George Kimbell, the latter of whom had been Dickinson's business partner. As they approached the Alamo in the early morning hours of March 1, a rider appeared in front of them and asked, in English, if they wished to go into the fort. When they assented, he turned and told them to follow him. One became suspicious and the rider bolted away. The volunteers were afraid they had been discovered and galloped towards the Alamo. In the darkness, the Texians thought this was a party of Mexican soldiers and fired, wounding one of the volunteers. They finally managed to convince the defenders to open the gates.
At some point, either on March 3 or March 4, 1836, Travis, seeing that their position was hopeless and their fate sealed, called the troops of his garrison together. He informed them of the situation and gave them the opportunity to either stay or to go at that point. Only one man, Moses Rose, chose to flee, with the rest deciding to remain and fight to the death. He would be remembered, even to the present day, as the "Coward of the Alamo", while Dickinson and the rest of the defenders would achieve immortality as heroes.
Climax of the battle and death.
Dickinson survived until the last day of the battle. In the early morning hours of March 6, 1836, Santa Anna sent an assault force which breached the walls of the Alamo with its third charge. Dickinson had hidden Suzanna and Angelina inside the chapel. By her own account afterward, near the end of the battle Dickinson rushed inside where she was hiding, frantically exclaiming "Great God, Sue! The Mexicans are inside our walls! All is lost! If they spare you, love our child." He then returned to his post. By that time there was intense fighting inside the Alamo, which eventually became hand to hand. By reliable Mexican accounts, Dickinson was one of the last defenders killed in action.
According to the Mexican Army accounts, the last of the Texians to die were the eleven men manning the two 12-lb cannon in the chapel. The entrance had been barricaded with sandbags, over which the Texians were able to fire. A shot from the 18-lb cannon destroyed the barricades and Mexican soldiers entered the building after firing an initial musket volley. Dickinson's crew fired their cannon from the apse into the soldiers at the door. With no time to reload, the Texians, including Dickinson, Gregorio Esparza, and James Bonham, grabbed rifles and fired before being bayoneted to death. Texian Robert Evans was master of ordnance and had been tasked with keeping the gunpowder from falling into Mexican hands. Wounded, he crawled towards the powder magazine but was killed by a musket ball with his torch only inches from the powder. If he had succeeded, the blast would have destroyed the chapel, killing the women and children hiding in the sacristy.
Dickinson's body was burned along with those of the other defenders killed during the battle. Susannah, Angelina, and a freed former slave to Travis named Joe were spared. It is generally accepted that over the course of the battle, the Mexican forces lost an estimated 400 to 500 soldiers killed, while the Texian defenders suffered a total loss of between 182 and 189. Dickinson has since, along with many of the other defenders, become a legend in Texas history for the heroic stand.


Claremont station (California)

Claremont is a passenger rail and bus station in Claremont, California, United States. It is served by Metrolink's San Bernardino Line which runs from Los Angeles Union Station to , with some trains formerly continuing to Riverside on weekends. The Mission Revival-Spanish Colonial Revival style station is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Station.
Until November 2016, this station was one of the few Metrolink stations that utilized an existing older depot. The depot was built in 1927 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The station was listed in the National Register because of its architecture. The station was renovated at a cost of $2.8 million and reopened for Metrolink use on December 7, 1992. The station was staffed by Foothill Transit and sold bus passes and rail tickets. On November 20, 2016, the interior of the depot was converted into the new home of the Claremont Museum of Art.
Connecting services.
The station is designated the Claremont TransCenter in Foothill Transit literature, and it serves lines 188, 189, 197, 292, 480, 492, and the 690 Express to Downtown Pasadena. The station is also served by Amtrak California Thruway Motorcoach route 19, with connections to the San Joaquins in Bakersfield. The Gold Line Foothill Extension, expected to be completed in 2028, may share this station.


Robert Bithway

Robert Bithway (by 1517 – 1557) was a tanner and the member of the Parliament of England for Marlborough for the parliament of October 1553.
He was mayor of Marlborough in 1555–56.


Mount Pisgah (mountain in North Carolina)

Mount Pisgah is a mountain in the Appalachian Mountain Range and part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, United States. The mountain's height is 5,721 feet (1,744 m) above sea level, and it sits approximately 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Asheville, near the crossing of the boundaries of Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Transylvania counties. It is located on the border of Buncombe and Haywood counties, close to the point where Henderson and Transylvania meet them, but not actually within the latter two counties. The mountain is easily accessible via a hiking trail from the Blue Ridge Parkway, near the Pisgah Inn.
Broadcasting controversy.
The prominent tower in the picture at the crest of Mount Pisgah, on what is known as Pisgah Ledge, is a television broadcast tower owned by Chesapeake Television, Incorporated, doing business as the Sinclair Broadcast Group, licensee of WLOS TV 13.x, transmitting on VHF channel 13, from nearby Asheville, North Carolina. It is the highest television antenna east of the Mississippi River, at above the surrounding valley floor, and above mean sea level, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Co-located on the tower is WUNF-TV 33.x on UHF channel 25, WKSF FM 99.9, WXL56 on 162.400 MHz from the Greenville/Spartanburg office of the National Weather Service, and ham radio vhf (146.760 N2GE). From this location, the stations cover the western Carolinas media market. Due to the terrain shielding of the surrounding mountains, and the much lower and flatter Piedmont (and therefore much greater height above average terrain) toward the southeast, the stations actually cover much more of South Carolina than they do North Carolina.
On May 22, 2001, the United States Forest Service decided to allow WLOS TV to build a replacement television transmission tower on top of Mount Pisgah. The new tower would have been a lighter-weight tower to support the station's digital TV antenna that would have replaced the heavier channel 13 analog antenna, fulfilling the government-ordered transfer to digital transmission. The old tower would not have supported both the heavy analog antenna, plus the added weight of a full power digital antenna. The Blue Ridge Parkway and several conservation organizations had opposed building a new tower on the peak located adjacent to the Parkway and repeatedly requested the Forest Service explore alternative locations. In 2009, the controversy was resolved, with the FCC and the U.S. Department of the Interior allowing WLOS to maintain its old tower on the summit after the analog antenna was removed, and the station to make needed adjustments to its digital antennas now mounted on the tower.
Recreation.
The trail leading to the summit of Mt. Pisgah starts at milepost 407 of the Blue Ridge Parkway on the west side of the road at an overlook labeled "Mt. Pisgah Parking". The trail is 1.6 miles long and is of moderate difficulty (sections near the summit can be rather steep). There is a small observation deck near the TV tower at the summit.
Leading up the mountain from the valley floor, is a still-operating cable car that is used to ferry broadcasting equipment to the building. The cable car also ferries engineers during bad weather, for mandatory transmitter work.
Also at the Mt. Pisgah Parking area is the Buck Spring trailhead. A short walk down the Buck Spring Trail brings visitors to a historic exhibit located at the foundation stone remains of the George Vanderbilt hunting lodge.
On the east side of the Parkway at milepost 407 is the Mt. Pisgah Picnic Area. The picnic area includes grills, tables and restroom facilities. All are ADA/handicapped accessible.
The Pisgah Inn Lodge Restaurant and Country Store, as well as the Mt. Pisgah Campground is located at milepost 408 of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Several other trails can be accessed from the campground or the Inn.