title: Andrew Wakefield

text: A writer from "The New York Times", who was covering a 2011 event in Tomball, Texas where Wakefield spoke, was threatened by its organizer, Michelle Guppy: "Be nice to him, or we will hurt you." Guppy is the coordinator of the Houston Autism Disability Network.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In June 2012, a local court in Rimini, Italy, ruled that the MMR vaccination had caused autism in a 15-month-old boy. The court relied heavily on Wakefield's discredited "Lancet" paper and largely ignored the scientific evidence presented to it. The decision was appealed. On 13 February 2015, the decision was overturned by a Court of Appeals in Bologna.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In February 2015, Wakefield denied that he bore any responsibility for the measles epidemic that started at Disneyland. He also reaffirmed his discredited belief that "MMR contributes to the current autism epidemic". By that time at least 166 measles cases had been reported. Paul Offit did not agree, saying that the outbreak was "directly related to Dr. Wakefield's theory".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Filmmaker Miranda Bailey followed Wakefield and his wife Carmel and their children for five years filming a documentary about Wakefield as a person, "The Pathological Optimist". According to Robert Ladendorf writing for "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine, Bailey attempted to remain neutral and add a "human touch", which Ladendorf says was successful. Wakefield is shown "as a soft-spoken but beleaguered family man trying to resurrect his reputation and raising money for his legal fund."


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In 2018, "The Skeptic" awarded Wakefield the Rusty Razor award "for pseudoscience and bad critical thinking." The award is decided annually by readers' votes. Editor Deborah Hyde said, "Our contributors clearly felt that anti-vaccination damage is still a current issue, despite Mr. Wakefield first having come to public attention so long ago. These childhood diseases can do real damage, so we're proud to be an organisation that gets the good news out there – the evidence is overwhelming that vaccination is safe. Protect your children and your community by using it."


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield was scheduled to testify before the Oregon Senate Health Care Committee on 9 March 2015, in opposition to Senate Bill 442, "a bill that would eliminate nonmedical exemptions from Oregon's school immunization law". The Oregon Chiropractic Association had invited him. The chairman of the committee then canceled the meeting "after it became clear that" Wakefield planned to testify. She denied that her decision had anything to do with Wakefield's plans.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: On 24 April 2015, Wakefield received two standing ovations from the students at Life Chiropractic College West when he told them to oppose Senate Bill 277 (SB 277), a bill that proposes elimination of non-medical vaccine exemptions. Wakefield had previously been a featured speaker at a 2014 "California Jam" gathering of chiropractors, as well as a 2015 "California Jam" seminar, with continuing education credits, sponsored by Life Chiropractic College West. On 3 July 2015, Wakefield participated in a protest held in Santa Monica, California, against SB 277, a recently enacted bill which removed the personal belief exemption to school vaccine requirements in California state law.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Regarding his anti-vaccine advocacy, Wakefield has been described as a conspiracy theorist in "ThinkProgress", "The Washington Post", "The Guardian", the "Los Angeles Times", "Forbes", "Wired", the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and by Paul Offit.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In 2016, Wakefield directed the anti-vaccination propaganda film "Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe." The film purports to show "an appalling cover-up committed by the government agency charged with protecting the health of American citizens [the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)] ... an alarming deception that has contributed to the skyrocketing increase of autism and potentially the most catastrophic epidemic of our lifetime." The film was withdrawn from New York's 2016 Tribeca Film Festival after the festival's founder Robert De Niro (who has a child with autism) reversed his decision to include it. The film was also scheduled to be projected at the Mairie de Paris but was then moved to a small private cinema. Wakefield called this action censorship. Ian Lipkin, professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, writing in "The Wall Street Journal", said: "If "Vaxxed" had been submitted as science fiction, it would merit attention for its story line, character development and dialogue. But as a documentary it misrepresents what science knows about autism, undermines public confidence in the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and attacks the integrity of legitimate scientists and public-health officials".


title: Club Penguin

text: Club Penguin was a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), involving a virtual world that contained a range of online games and activities. It was created by New Horizon Interactive (now known as Disney Canada Inc.). Players used cartoon penguin-avatars and played in an antarctic-themed open-world. After beta-testing, "Club Penguin" was made available to the general public on October 24, 2005, and expanded into a large online community, such that by late 2007, it was claimed "Club Penguin" had over 30 million user accounts. In July 2013, "Club Penguin" had over 200 million registered user accounts.


title: Club Penguin

text: While free memberships were available, revenue was predominantly raised through paid memberships, which allowed players to access a range of additional features, such as the ability to purchase virtual clothing, furniture, and in-game pets called "puffles" for their penguins through the usage of in-game currency. The success of "Club Penguin" led to New Horizon being purchased by the Walt Disney Company in August 2007 for the sum of 350 million dollars, with an additional 350 million dollars in bonuses should specific targets be met by 2009.


title: Club Penguin

text: The game was specifically designed for children aged 6 to 14 (however, users of any age were allowed to play "Club Penguin"). Thus, a major focus of the developers was on child safety, with a number of features having been introduced to the game to facilitate this. These features included offering an "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode, whereby users selected their comments from a menu; filtering that prevented swearing and the revelation of personal information; and moderators who patrolled the game.


title: Club Penguin

text: On January 30, 2017, it was announced that the game would be discontinued on March 29, 2017. "Club Penguin" later shut down its servers on March 30, 2017, at 12:01 AM PDT. The game was replaced by a successor, titled "Club Penguin Island" (which itself was discontinued the following year). Since being shut down, the original game has been hosted and recreated on a number of private servers using SWF files from the game's old website. Many of the private servers were shut down around May 15, 2020, after Digital Millennium Copyright Act filings by the Walt Disney Company were sent on May 13, 2020, initiated by concerns about "Club Penguin Online," such as children being groomed by paedophiles, and child pornography.


title: Club Penguin

text: "Club Penguin" was divided into various rooms and distinct areas. Illustrator Chris Hendricks designed many of the first environments. Each player was provided with an igloo for a home. Members had the option of opening their igloo so other penguins could access it via the map, under "Member Igloos." Members could also purchase larger igloos and decorate their igloos with items bought with virtual coins earned by playing mini-games. At least one party per month was held on "Club Penguin". In most cases, a free clothing item was available, both for paid members and free users. Some parties also provided member-only rooms which only paid members could access. Some major "Club Penguin" parties were its annual Halloween and Holiday parties. Other large parties included the Music Jam, the Adventure Party, the Puffle Party, and the Medieval Party.


title: Club Penguin

text: The first seeds of what would become "Club Penguin" began as a Flash 4 web-based game called "Snow Blasters" that developer Lance Priebe had been developing in his spare time in July 2000. Priebe's attention was brought to penguins after he "happened to glance at a "Far Side" cartoon featuring penguins that was sitting on his desk." The project was never finished, and instead morphed into "Experimental Penguins. Experimental Penguins" was released through Priebe's company of employment, the Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada-based online game and comic developer Rocketsnail Games, in July 2000, though it ultimately went offline the following year. It was used as the inspiration for "Penguin Chat" (also known as "Penguin Chat 1"), a similar game which was released shortly after "Experimental Penguins"<nowiki>'</nowiki> removal. Released January 2003, "Penguin Football Chat" (also known as "Penguin Chat 2)" was the second attempt at a penguin-themed MMORPG, and was created on FLASH 5 and used the same interface as "Experimental Penguins." The game contained various minigames; the premiere title of RocketSnail Games was "Ballistic Biscuit", a game that would be placed into "Experimental Penguins" and eventually be adapted into "Club Penguin"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s "Hydro Hopper". RocketSnails Games' "Mancala Classic" would also be placed into the game as "Mancala".


title: Club Penguin

text: Lance Priebe, as well as co-workers Lane Merrifield and Dave Krysko, started to formulate the "Club Penguin" concept when the trio were unsuccessful in finding "something that had some social components but was safe, and not just marketed as safe" for their own children. Dave Krysko in particular wanted to build a safe social-networking site their kids could enjoy free of advertising. In 2003, Merrifield and Priebe approached their boss, with the idea of creating a spinoff company to develop the new product. The spin-off company would be known as New Horizon Interactive.


title: Club Penguin

text: Work commenced on the project in 2004, and the team settled on a name in the summer of 2005. The developers used the previous project "Penguin Chat 2" – which was still online – as a jumping-off point in the design process, while incorporating concepts and ideas from Experimental Penguins. Penguin Chat's third version was released in April 2005, and was used to test the client and servers of "Penguin Chat 4" (renamed "Club Penguin"). Variants of "Penguin Chat 3" included "Crab Chat, Chibi Friends Chat, Goat Chat, Ultra-Chat, and TV Chat." Users from Penguin Chat were invited to beta test "Club Penguin". The original plan was to release "Club Penguin" in 2010, but since the team had decided to fast-track the project, the first version of "Club Penguin" went live on October 24, 2005, just after Penguin Chat servers were shut down in August 2005. While Penguin Chat used ElectroServer, "Club Penguin" would use SmartFoxServer. The developers financed their start-up entirely with their own credit cards and personal lines of credit, and maintained 100 percent ownership. "Club Penguin" started with 15,000 users, and by March that number had reached 1.4 million—a figure which almost doubled by September, when it hit 2.6 million. By the time "Club Penguin" was two years old, it had reached 3.9 million users, despite lacking a marketing budget. The first mention of the game in The New York Times was in October 2006. The following year, "Club Penguin" spokesperson Karen Mason explained: "We offer children the training wheels for the kinds of activities they might pursue as they get older."


title: Club Penguin

text: Although the three "Club Penguin" co-creators had turned down lucrative advertising offers and venture capital investments in the past, in August 2007, they agreed to sell both "Club Penguin" and its parent company to Disney for the sum of $350.93 million. In addition, the owners were promised bonuses of up to $350 million if they were able to meet growth targets by 2009. Disney ultimately didn't pay the extra $350 million, as "Club Penguin" missed both profit goals. At the point when it was purchased by Disney, "Club Penguin" had 11–12 million accounts, of which 700,000 were paid subscribers, and was generating $40 million in annual revenue. In making the sale, Merrifield has stated that their main focus during negotiations was philosophical, and that the intent was to provide themselves with the needed infrastructure in order to continue to grow. By late 2007, it was claimed that "Club Penguin" had over 30 million user accounts. In December of that year, "The New York Times" asserted that the game "attracts seven times more traffic than "Second Life"." "Club Penguin" was the 8th top social networking site in April 2008, according to Nielsen.


title: Club Penguin

text: After Disney's acquisition, Disney Interactive had four MMOs to simultaneously juggle: "ToonTown", "Pirates of the Caribbean Online", "Pixie Hollow", and "Club Penguin", with "World of Cars" set to follow soon. Lane Merrifield assured GlobalToyNews at the time that "it's a lot of worlds to manage, but we have really strong teams." Merrifield's role changed from taking a backseat in daily game design to focusing on overall branding and quality control of the virtual gaming properties. One of his roles was to merge the "Club Penguin" studio New Horizon Interactive in Kelowna (renamed to Disneyland Studios Canada) with Disneyland Studios LA. Disneyland Studios Canada focused its efforts on one product (with such features as multilingual versions), while Disneyland Studios LA focused on customer products and franchises of a wide selection of games. Merrifield was responsible for cross-pollinating both cultures.


title: Club Penguin

text: Since the Disney purchase, "Club Penguin" continued to grow, becoming part of a larger franchise including video games, books, a television special, an anniversary song, and an app MMO. Disney has often used the game as a cross-promotion opportunity when releasing new films such as "Frozen," "Zootopia," and "Star Wars," having special themed events and parties to celebrate their releases. The game forged an ever-growing mythology of characters and plot elements, including: a pirate, a journalist, and a secret agent.


title: Club Penguin

text: In 2008, the first international office opened in Brighton, England, to personalise the level of moderation and player support. Later international office locations included São Paulo and Buenos Aires. On March 11, 2008, "Club Penguin" released the "Club Penguin" Improvement Project. This project allowed players to be part of the testing of new servers, which were put into use in "Club Penguin" on April 14, 2008. Players had a "clone" of their penguin made, to test these new servers for bugs and glitches. The testing was ended on April 4, 2008.


title: Club Penguin

text: On June 20, 2011, the game's website temporarily crashed after the company let the "Club Penguin" domain name expire. In September 2011, one of "Club Penguin"'s minigames, Puffle Launch, was released on iOS as an app. Merrifield commented: "Kids are going mobile and have been asking for "Club Penguin" to go there with them."


title: Club Penguin

text: In late 2012, Merrifield left Disney Interactive to focus on his family and a new educational product, Freshgrade. Chris Heatherly took Merrifield's former position. The company dropped the words "Online Studios" from its name in 2013. As of July 2013, "Club Penguin" had over 200 million registered user accounts. In 2013, "Club Penguin" hired singer and former "Club Penguin" player Jordan Fisher to record a song entitled "It's Your Birthday", to commemorate "Club Penguin"'s 8th anniversary.


title: Club Penguin

text: In April 2015, it was revealed that Disney Interactive had laid off 28 members of "Club Penguin"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Kelowna headquarters due to the game's declining popularity. The company's UK office in Brighton was shut down around April 17, 2015. Some employees in the Los Angeles office were also let go. Disney Interactive replied to Castanet on the layoffs: "Disney Interactive continually looks to find ways to create efficiencies and streamline our operations. As part of this ongoing process, we are consolidating a small number of teams and are undergoing a targeted reduction in workforce."


title: Club Penguin

text: On September 2, 2015, "Club Penguin" closed down the German and Russian versions of the site. A spin-off mobile app, Puffle Wild, was removed from the App Store and Google Play the same day in order to allow Disney Interactive to focus on "Club Penguin". On January 11, 2016, the Sled Racer and SoundStudio apps (the former being an original game and the latter being a port of a game on the website) followed suit. With the closure of Disney Interactive in 2015, "Club Penguin" side-projects wound down to allow a streamlined effort to focus on the core "Club Penguin" experience; this involved the layoffs of 30 Disney Studios Canada staff.


title: Club Penguin

text: On January 30, 2017, "Club Penguin" announced that the current game would be discontinued on March 29, 2017, to make way for its successor, "Club Penguin Island." Membership payments for the original game were no longer accepted as of January 31, 2017, with paid members slated to receive emails about membership and refunds.


title: Club Penguin

text: It became popular in the final weeks of "Club Penguin" to attempt speedruns to see how fast users could get banned from the site; the fastest world record was a tool-assisted speedrun (TAS).


title: Club Penguin

text: Days before the shut down, "Club Penguin" announced that on the final day of the game's operation, all users would be given a free membership until the servers were disconnected.


title: Club Penguin

text: Multiplayer transmissions stopped and twenty seconds later on March 30, 2017 @ 00:01:39 (07:01:39 ), "Club Penguin"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s servers were officially shut down. A message would appear on screen for all players, saying "The connection has been lost. Thank you for playing Club Penguin. Waddle on!"


title: Club Penguin

text: Prior to being purchased by Disney, "Club Penguin" was almost entirely dependent on membership fees to produce a revenue stream. The vast majority of users (90% according to The Washington Post) chose not to pay, instead taking advantage of the free play on offer. Those who chose to pay did so because full (paid) membership was required to access all of the services, such as the ability to purchase virtual clothes for the penguins and buy decorations for igloos, and because peer pressure created a "caste system," separating paid from unpaid members. Advertising, both in-game and on-site, was not incorporated into the system, although some competitors chose to employ it, including: Whyville, which used corporate sponsorship, and Neopets, which incorporated product placements.


title: Club Penguin

text: An alternative revenue stream came through the development of an online merchandise shop, which opened on the "Club Penguin" website in August 2006, selling stuffed Puffles and T-shirts. Key chains, gift cards, and more shirts were added on November 7, 2006. In October 2008, a series of plush toys based on characters from "Club Penguin," were made available online (both through the "Club Penguin" store and Disney's online store), and in retail outlets.


title: Club Penguin

text: As with one of its major rivals, "Webkinz", "Club Penguin" traditionally relied almost entirely on word-of-mouth advertising to increase its membership base.


title: Club Penguin

text: "Club Penguin" was designed for the ages of 6–14. Thus, one of the major concerns when designing "Club Penguin" was how to improve both the safety of participants and the suitability of the game to children. As Lane Merrifield stated, "the decision to build "Club Penguin" grew out of a desire to create a fun, virtual world that I and the site's other two founders would feel safe letting our own children visit." As a result, "Club Penguin" maintained a strong focus on child safety, to the point where the security features were described as almost "fastidious" and "reminiscent of an Orwellian dystopia", although it was also argued that this focus might "reassure more parents than it alienate[d]."


title: Club Penguin

text: The system employed a number of different approaches in an attempt to improve child safety. The key approaches included preventing the use of inappropriate usernames; providing an "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode, which limited players to selecting phrases from a list; using an automatic filter during "Standard Safe Chat" (which allowed users to generate their own messages) and blocked profanity even when users employed "creative" methods to insert it into sentences; filtering seemingly innocuous terms, such as "mom"; and blocking both telephone numbers and email addresses. It also included employing paid moderators; out of 100 staff employed in the company in May 2007, Merrifield estimated that approximately 70 staff were dedicated to policing the game. It also included promoting users to "EPF (Elite Penguin Force) Agent" status, and encouraging them to report inappropriate behavior.


title: Club Penguin

text: Each game server offered a particular type of chat—the majority allowing either chat mode, but some servers allowed only the "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode. When using "Standard Safe Chat", all comments made by users were filtered. When a comment was blocked, the user who made the comment saw it, but other users were unaware that it was made—suggesting to the "speaker" that they were being ignored, rather than encouraging them to try to find a way around the restriction.


title: Club Penguin

text: Beyond these primary measures, systems were in place to limit the amount of time spent online, and the site did not feature any advertisements, because, as described by Merrifield, "within two or three clicks, a kid could be on a gambling site or an adult dating site." Nevertheless, after "Club Penguin" was purchased by Disney, concerns were raised that this state of affairs might change, especially in regard to potential spin-off products, although Disney continued to insist that it believed advertising to be "inappropriate" for a young audience.


title: Club Penguin

text: Players who used profanity were often punished by an automatic 24-hour ban, although not all vulgar language resulted in an immediate ban. Players found by moderators to have broken "Club Penguin" rules were punished by a ban lasting "from 24 hours to forever depending on the offense."


title: Club Penguin

text: Research shows that the design of virtual worlds, like "Club Penguin", provide children with opportunities to develop literacy and communication skills while having a powerful impact on their social relationships and identity formation. One literary practice involved players frequently engaged in semiotic analysis of other player profiles, which was a display of that player's identity within the game. Other literacy and communication practices included the use of the in game postal service and the of emoticons, which served to build social cohesion and structure.


title: Club Penguin

text: Coins for Change was an in-game charity fund-raising event which first appeared in 2007. The fund-raising lasted for approximately two weeks each December during the game's annual "Holiday Party". Players could "donate" their virtual coins to vote for three charitable issues: Kids who were sick, the environment, and kids in developing countries. Players were able to donate in increments of 100, 250, 500, 1,000, 5,000, or 10,000 virtual coins. At the end of the campaign, a set amount of real-world money was divided among each of the causes based on the amount of in-game currency each cause received. At the end of the first campaign, the New Horizon Foundation donated a total of $1 million to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and Free The Children. In both the 2007 and 2008 campaigns, two-and-a-half million players participated. In 2009, "Club Penguin" donated $1,000,000 Canadian dollars to charitable projects around the world. In 2010, "Club Penguin" donated $300,000 towards building safe places, $360,000 towards protecting the Earth, and $340,000 towards providing medical help. Lane Merrifield said: "Our players are always looking for ways to make a difference and help others, and over the past five years they've embraced the opportunity to give through Coins For Change, it was exciting to see kids from 191 countries participate together. In 2011, the amount of money donated was doubled to $2 million, ostensibly in response to an unexpected increase in participation.


title: Club Penguin

text: Disney's franchising of the brand began with its acquisition of "Club Penguin" in 2007. In addition to the "Club Penguin Island" web-based video game, the franchise has also included console video games for Nintendo DS and Wii, television specials in the UK, and a series of books.


title: Club Penguin

text: "Club Penguin" received mixed reviews. The site was awarded a "kids' privacy seal of approval" from the Better Business Bureau. Similarly, Brian Ward, a Detective Inspector at the Child Abuse Investigation Command in the United Kingdom, stated that it was good for children to experience a restricted system such as "Club Penguin" before moving into social networking sites, which provide less protection. In terms of simple popularity, the rapid growth of "Club Penguin" suggested considerable success, although there were signs that this was leveling out. Nielsen figures released in April 2008 indicated that in the previous 12 months, "Club Penguin" traffic had shrunk by 7%.


title: Club Penguin

text: One of the criticisms expressed by commentators was that the game encouraged consumerism and allowed players to cheat. While "Club Penguin" did not require members to purchase in-game products with real money (instead relying on a set monthly fee), players were encouraged to earn coins within the game with which to buy virtual products. Furthermore, "Club Penguin" was full of advertisements for their paid membership that repeatedly encouraged children to subscribe in order to gain access to the full range of activities. These advertisements included notices that certain levels of games and items were reserved for paid members and even included paid members that unwittingly acted as recruiters. Additionally, "Club Penguin" merchandise was sold through the website and in Disney retail stores that would unlock items and coins in the game. In this way, critics believe that Disney positioned children as economic subjects that became acculturated to shopping as a key cultural practice. Others argue that the use of in-game money as possibly helping teach children how to save money, select what to spend it on, improve their abilities at math, and encourage them to "practice safe money-management skills".


title: Club Penguin

text: In addition, the "competitive culture" that this could create led to concerns about cheating, as children looked for "shortcuts" to improve their standing. It was suggested that this might influence their real-world behavior. To counter this, "Club Penguin" added guidelines to prevent cheating, and banned players who were caught cheating or who encouraged cheating.


title: Club Penguin

text: In spite of the attempts to create a safe space for children in "Club Penguin", concerns about safety and behavior still arose within the media. While the language in-game was filtered, discussions outside of "Club Penguin" were beyond the owner's control, and thus it was stated that third-party "Club Penguin" forums could become "as bawdy as any other chat". Even within the game, "Club Penguin" had a unique form of anti-social behavior and cyberbullying that presented as angry emoticons, relentless throwing of snowballs at other players and some messages were able to get through the filtered chat. Also, the "Caste system" between those who had membership and exclusive items and those who lacked full membership (and therefore were unable to own the "coolest" items) could lead to players having a difficult time attracting friends. Furthermore, some researchers were concerned that due to the differing experiences and privileges between paid and non-paid members, children would be exposed to a class system where some would be competing for higher and higher status. Others worried that the display of class and promotion of consumerism within "Club Penguin" fosters the notion that the accumulation of wealth and possessions are the direct result of one's success and status. Additionally, some critics have noted the presence of strong sexual connotations due to the modeling of romantic relationships and behaviors.


title: Club Penguin

text: One criticism came from Caitlin Flanagan in "The Atlantic Monthly": in relation to the safety procedures, she noted that "Club Penguin" was "certainly the safest way for unsupervised children to talk to potentially malevolent strangers—but why would you want them to do that in the first place?" While views of the strength of this criticism might vary, the concern was mirrored by Lynsey Kiely in the "Sunday Independent", who quoted Karen Mason, Communications Director for "Club Penguin", as saying "we cannot guarantee that every person who visits the site is a child."


title: Club Penguin

text: On August 20, 2013, Disney announced that "Toontown Online", "Pixie Hollow", and "Pirates of the Caribbean Online" were closing directly because of "Club Penguin" and Disney's mobile games. This caused major controversy between "Club Penguin" and fans of the three games, especially "Toontown", where some users had played for more than 12 years ("Toontown"'s alpha test started in August 2001).


title: Club Penguin

text: A Club Penguin Private Server (commonly abbreviated and known as a CPPS) is an online multiplayer game that is not part of "Club Penguin", but uses unlicensed SWF files from "Club Penguin", a database, and a server emulator in order to create a similar environment for the game. Many now use these environments in order to play the original game after its discontinuation. CPPSes often contain features that did not exist in the original game such as custom items and rooms, free membership, etc.


title: Club Penguin

text: Throughout the official game's existence, various players created private servers of "Club Penguin", and in response to its closure, more private servers were created. "Club Penguin Rewritten", a popular remake, launched February 12, 2017, had reached a million players as of October 12, 2017, though discontinued "permanently" on March 4, 2018. Citing community support and funding, however, it returned with all accounts intact on April 27, 2018. "Club Penguin Rewritten" had reached eight million registered accounts on December 2, 2020; nearly twice as many as "Club Penguin" had 14 years earlier in December 2006.


title: Club Penguin

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, private servers experienced a surge in popularity, with between 6,000 and 8,000 new players signing up each day. On April 16, 2020, American musician Soccer Mommy collaborated with "Club Penguin Rewritten" to host a virtual concert for her new album "Color Theory". The event had been rescheduled from April 2, 2020, due to higher than expected player counts that overloaded the server.


title: Club Penguin

text: As of May 21, 2020, the collective number of player accounts registered on all private servers numbered over 15 million.


title: Club Penguin

text: Since private servers essentially copy materials copyrighted by Disney, there has been much controversy as to whether or not creating and hosting them is legal. Disney and "Club Penguin" have pursued numerous CPPSes and attempted to have them taken down with DMCA notices.


title: Club Penguin

text: Many private servers have become vulnerable to DDOS attacks and database leaks due to insufficient security measures. On January 21, 2018, the login data of over 1.7 million "Club Penguin Rewritten" users were stolen after a data breach and on July 27, 2019, the private server again suffered a data breach with over 4 million accounts stolen in addition to the previous breach.


title: Club Penguin

text: On May 14, 2020, it was announced that all private servers using the "Club Penguin" brand were given DMCA take-down notices after allegations emerged concerning child predation by an administrator of another popular private server, "Club Penguin Online". According to an investigation by the BBC, one man involved with the site had been arrested on suspicion of possessing child pornography. Detectives say the man from London has been released on bail pending further inquiries. On May 15, 2020, the site was shut down after complying with the DMCA takedown notice by The Walt Disney Company. In a statement, Disney said, "Child safety is a top priority for the Walt Disney Company and we are appalled by the allegations of criminal activity and abhorrent behaviour on this unauthorised website that is illegally using the "Club Penguin" brand and characters for its own purposes. [...] We continue to enforce our rights against this, and other, unauthorised uses of the "Club Penguin" game."


title: Club Penguin

text: "Club Penguin Rewritten" was shut down on April 13, 2022, by the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, who took control of the website and arrested three people "on suspicion of distributing materials infringing copyright". According to one of the game's administrators, the team had shut down the game and "voluntarily given control over the website to the police" after a request from Disney.


title: Mirror

text: A mirror or looking glass is an object that reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror will show an image of whatever is in front of it, when focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the direction of the image in an equal yet opposite angle from which the light shines upon it. This allows the viewer to see themselves or objects behind them, or even objects that are at an angle from them but out of their field of view, such as around a corner. Natural mirrors have existed since prehistoric times, such as the surface of water, but people have been manufacturing mirrors out of a variety of materials for thousands of years, like stone, metals, and glass. In modern mirrors, metals like silver or aluminium are often used due to their high reflectivity, applied as a thin coating on glass because of its naturally smooth and very hard surface.


title: Mirror

text: A mirror is a wave reflector. Light consists of waves, and when light waves reflect from the flat surface of a mirror, those waves retain the same degree of curvature and vergence, in an equal yet opposite direction, as the original waves. This allows the waves to form an image when they are focused through a lens, just as if the waves had originated from the direction of the mirror. The light can also be pictured as rays (imaginary lines radiating from the light source, that are always perpendicular to the waves). These rays are reflected at an equal yet opposite angle from which they strike the mirror (incident light). This property, called specular reflection, distinguishes a mirror from objects that diffuse light, breaking up the wave and scattering it in many directions (such as flat-white paint). Thus, a mirror can be any surface in which the texture or roughness of the surface is smaller (smoother) than the wavelength of the waves.


title: Mirror

text: When looking at a mirror, one will see a mirror image or reflected image of objects in the environment, formed by light emitted or scattered by them and reflected by the mirror towards one's eyes. This effect gives the illusion that those objects are behind the mirror, or (sometimes) in front of it. When the surface is not flat, a mirror may behave like a reflecting lens. A plane mirror yields a real-looking undistorted image, while a curved mirror may distort, magnify, or reduce the image in various ways, while keeping the lines, contrast, sharpness, colors, and other image properties intact.


title: Mirror

text: A mirror is commonly used for inspecting oneself, such as during personal grooming; hence the old-fashioned name "looking glass". This use, which dates from prehistory, overlaps with uses in decoration and architecture. Mirrors are also used to view other items that are not directly visible because of obstructions; examples include rear-view mirrors in vehicles, security mirrors in or around buildings, and dentist's mirrors. Mirrors are also used in optical and scientific apparatus such as telescopes, lasers, cameras, periscopes, and industrial machinery.


title: Mirror

text: The terms "mirror" and "reflector" can be used for objects that reflect any other types of waves. An acoustic mirror reflects sound waves. Objects such as walls, ceilings, or natural rock-formations may produce echos, and this tendency often becomes a problem in acoustical engineering when designing houses, auditoriums, or recording studios. Acoustic mirrors may be used for applications such as parabolic microphones, atmospheric studies, sonar, and seafloor mapping. An atomic mirror reflects matter waves and can be used for atomic interferometry and atomic holography.


title: Mirror

text: The first mirrors used by humans were most likely pools of dark, still water, or water collected in a primitive vessel of some sort. The requirements for making a good mirror are a surface with a very high degree of flatness (preferably but not necessarily with high reflectivity), and a surface roughness smaller than the wavelength of the light.


title: Mirror

text: The earliest manufactured mirrors were pieces of polished stone such as obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Examples of obsidian mirrors found in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) have been dated to around 6000 BCE. Mirrors of polished copper were crafted in Mesopotamia from 4000 BCE, and in ancient Egypt from around 3000 BCE. Polished stone mirrors from Central and South America date from around 2000 BCE onwards.


title: Mirror

text: By the Bronze Age most cultures were using mirrors made from polished discs of bronze, copper, silver, or other metals. The people of Kerma in Nubia were skilled in the manufacturing of mirrors. Remains of their bronze kilns have been found within the temple of Kerma. In China, bronze mirrors were manufactured from around 2000 BC, some of the earliest bronze and copper examples being produced by the Qijia culture. Such metal mirrors remained the norm through to Greco-Roman Antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages in Europe. During the Roman Empire silver mirrors were in wide use by servants.


title: Mirror

text: Speculum metal is a highly reflective alloy of copper and tin that was used for mirrors until a couple of centuries ago. Such mirrors may have originated in China and India. Mirrors of speculum metal or any precious metal were hard to produce and were only owned by the wealthy.


title: Mirror

text: Common metal mirrors tarnished and required frequent polishing. Bronze mirrors had low reflectivity and poor color rendering, and stone mirrors were much worse in this regard. These defects explain the New Testament reference in 1 Corinthians 13 to seeing "as in a mirror, darkly."


title: Mirror

text: The Greek philosopher Socrates urged young people to look at themselves in mirrors so that, if they were beautiful, they would become worthy of their beauty, and if they were ugly, they would know how to hide their disgrace through learning.


title: Mirror

text: Glass began to be used for mirrors in the 1st century CE, with the development of soda-lime glass and glass blowing. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder claims that artisans in Sidon (modern-day Lebanon) were producing glass mirrors coated with lead or gold leaf in the back. The metal provided good reflectivity, and the glass provided a smooth surface and protected the metal from scratches and tarnishing. However, there is no archeological evidence of glass mirrors before the third century.


title: Mirror

text: These early glass mirrors were made by blowing a glass bubble, and then cutting off a small circular section from 10 to 20 cm in diameter. Their surface was either concave or convex, and imperfections tended to distort the image. Lead-coated mirrors were very thin to prevent cracking by the heat of the molten metal. Due to the poor quality, high cost, and small size of glass mirrors, solid-metal mirrors (primarily of steel) remained in common use until the late nineteenth century.


title: Mirror

text: Silver-coated metal mirrors were developed in China as early as 500 CE. The bare metal was coated with an amalgam, then heated until the mercury boiled away.


title: Mirror

text: The evolution of glass mirrors in the Middle Ages followed improvements in glassmaking technology. Glassmakers in France made flat glass plates by blowing glass bubbles, spinning them rapidly to flatten them, and cutting rectangles out of them. A better method, developed in Germany and perfected in Venice by the 16th century, was to blow a cylinder of glass, cut off the ends, slice it along its length, and unroll it onto a flat hot plate. Venetian glassmakers also adopted lead glass for mirrors, because of its crystal-clarity and its easier workability. By the 11th century, glass mirrors were being produced in Moorish Spain.


title: Mirror

text: During the early Europe Renaissance, a fire-gilding technique developed to produce an even and highly reflective tin coating for glass mirrors. The back of the glass was coated with a tin-mercury amalgam, and the mercury was then evaporated by heating the piece. This process caused less thermal shock to the glass than the older molten-lead method. The date and location of the discovery is unknown, but by the 16th century Venice was a center of mirror production using this technique. These Venetian mirrors were up to square.


title: Mirror

text: For a century, Venice retained the monopoly of the tin amalgam technique. Venetian mirrors in richly decorated frames served as luxury decorations for palaces throughout Europe, and were very expensive. For example, in the late seventeenth century, the Countess de Fiesque was reported to have traded an entire wheat farm for a mirror, considering it a bargain. However, by the end of that century the secret was leaked through industrial espionage. French workshops succeeded in large-scale industrialization of the process, eventually making mirrors affordable to the masses, in spite of the toxicity of mercury's vapor.


title: Mirror

text: The invention of the ribbon machine in the late Industrial Revolution allowed modern glass panes to be produced in bulk. The Saint-Gobain factory, founded by royal initiative in France, was an important manufacturer, and Bohemian and German glass, often rather cheaper, was also important.


title: Mirror

text: The invention of the silvered-glass mirror is credited to German chemist Justus von Liebig in 1835. His wet deposition process involved the deposition of a thin layer of metallic silver onto glass through the chemical reduction of silver nitrate. This silvering process was adapted for mass manufacturing and led to the greater availability of affordable mirrors.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors are often produced by the wet deposition of silver, or sometimes nickel or chromium (the latter used most often in automotive mirrors) via electroplating directly onto the glass substrate.


title: Mirror

text: Glass mirrors for optical instruments are usually produced by vacuum deposition methods. These techniques can be traced to observations in the 1920s and 1930s that metal was being ejected from electrodes in gas discharge lamps and condensed on the glass walls forming a mirror-like coating. The phenomenon, called sputtering, was developed into an industrial metal-coating method with the development of semiconductor technology in the 1970s.


title: Mirror

text: A similar phenomenon had been observed with incandescent light bulbs: the metal in the hot filament would slowly sublimate and condense on the bulb's walls. This phenomenon was developed into the method of evaporation coating by Pohl and Pringsheim in 1912. John D. Strong used evaporation coating to make the first aluminum-coated telescope mirrors in the 1930s. The first dielectric mirror was created in 1937 by Auwarter using evaporated rhodium.


title: Mirror

text: The metal coating of glass mirrors is usually protected from abrasion and corrosion by a layer of paint applied over it. Mirrors for optical instruments often have the metal layer on the front face, so that the light does not have to cross the glass twice. In these mirrors, the metal may be protected by a thin transparent coating of a non-metallic (dielectric) material. The first metallic mirror to be enhanced with a dielectric coating of silicon dioxide was created by Hass in 1937. In 1939 at the Schott Glass company, Walter Geffcken invented the first dielectric mirrors to use multilayer coatings.


title: Mirror

text: The Greek in Classical Antiquity were familiar with the use of mirrors to concentrate light. Parabolic mirrors were described and studied by the mathematician Diocles in his work "On Burning Mirrors". Ptolemy conducted a number of experiments with curved polished iron mirrors, and discussed plane, convex spherical, and concave spherical mirrors in his "Optics".


title: Mirror

text: Parabolic mirrors were also described by the Caliphate mathematician Ibn Sahl in the tenth century. The scholar Ibn al-Haytham discussed concave and convex mirrors in both cylindrical and spherical geometries, carried out a number of experiments with mirrors, and solved the problem of finding the point on a convex mirror at which a ray coming from one point is reflected to another point.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors can be classified in many ways; including by shape, support, reflective materials, manufacturing methods, and intended application.


title: Mirror

text: The surface of curved mirrors is often a part of a sphere. Mirrors that are meant to precisely concentrate parallel rays of light into a point are usually made in the shape of a paraboloid of revolution instead; they are used in telescopes (from radio waves to X-rays), in antennas to communicate with broadcast satellites, and in solar furnaces. A segmented mirror, consisting of multiple flat or curved mirrors, properly placed and oriented, may be used instead.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors that are intended to concentrate sunlight onto a long pipe may be a circular cylinder or of a parabolic cylinder.


title: Mirror

text: The most common structural material for mirrors is glass, due to its transparency, ease of fabrication, rigidity, hardness, and ability to take a smooth finish.


title: Mirror

text: The most common mirrors consist of a plate of transparent glass, with a thin reflective layer on the back (the side opposite to the incident and reflected light) backed by a coating that protects that layer against abrasion, tarnishing, and corrosion. The glass is usually soda-lime glass, but lead glass may be used for decorative effects, and other transparent materials may be used for specific applications.


title: Mirror

text: A plate of transparent plastic may be used instead of glass, for lighter weight or impact resistance. Alternatively, a flexible transparent plastic film may be bonded to the front and/or back surface of the mirror, to prevent injuries in case the mirror is broken. Lettering or decorative designs may be printed on the front face of the glass, or formed on the reflective layer. The front surface may have an anti-reflection coating.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors which are reflective on the front surface (the same side of the incident and reflected light) may be made of any rigid material. The supporting material does not necessarily need to be transparent, but telescope mirrors often use glass anyway. Often a protective transparent coating is added on top of the reflecting layer, to protect it against abrasion, tarnishing, and corrosion, or to absorb certain wavelengths.


title: Mirror

text: Thin flexible plastic mirrors are sometimes used for safety, since they cannot shatter or produce sharp flakes. Their flatness is achieved by stretching them on a rigid frame. These usually consist of a layer of evaporated aluminum between two thin layers of transparent plastic.


title: Mirror

text: In common mirrors, the reflective layer is usually some metal like silver, tin, nickel, or chromium, deposited by a wet process; or aluminium, deposited by sputtering or evaporation in vacuum. The reflective layer may also be made of one or more layers of transparent materials with suitable indices of refraction.


title: Mirror

text: The structural material may be a metal, in which case the reflecting layer may be just the surface of the same. Metal concave dishes are often used to reflect infrared light (such as in space heaters) or microwaves (as in satellite TV antennas). Liquid metal telescopes use a surface of liquid metal such as mercury.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors that reflect only part of the light, while transmitting some of the rest, can be made with very thin metal layers or suitable combinations of dielectric layers. They are typically used as beamsplitters. A dichroic mirror, in particular, has surface that reflects certain wavelengths of light, while letting other wavelengths pass through. A cold mirror is a dichroic mirror that efficiently reflects the entire visible light spectrum while transmitting infrared wavelengths. A hot mirror is the opposite: it reflects infrared light while transmitting visible light. Dichroic mirrors are often used as filters to remove undesired components of the light in cameras and measuring instruments.


title: Mirror

text: In X-ray telescopes, the X-rays reflect off a highly precise metal surface at almost grazing angles, and only a small fraction of the rays are reflected. In flying relativistic mirrors conceived for X-ray lasers, the reflecting surface is a spherical shockwave (wake wave) created in a low-density plasma by a very intense laser-pulse, and moving at an extremely high velocity.


title: Mirror

text: A phase-conjugating mirror uses nonlinear optics to reverse the phase difference between incident beams. Such mirrors may be used, for example, for coherent beam combination. The useful applications are self-guiding of laser beams and correction of atmospheric distortions in imaging systems.


title: Mirror

text: When a sufficiently narrow beam of light is reflected at a point of a surface, the surface's normal direction formula_1 will be the bisector of the angle formed by the two beams at that point. That is, the direction vector formula_2 towards the incident beams's source, the normal vector formula_1, and direction vector formula_4 of the reflected beam will be coplanar, and the angle between formula_1 and formula_4 will be equal to the angle of incidence between formula_1 and formula_2, but of opposite sign.


title: Mirror

text: This property can be explained by the physics of an electromagnetic plane wave that is incident to a flat surface that is electrically conductive or where the speed of light changes abruptly, as between two materials with different indices of refraction.


title: Mirror

text: More specifically, a concave parabolic mirror (whose surface is a part of a paraboloid of revolution) will reflect rays that are parallel to its axis into rays that pass through its focus. Conversely, a parabolic concave mirror will reflect any ray that comes from its focus towards a direction parallel to its axis. If a concave mirror surface is a part of a prolate ellipsoid, it will reflect any ray coming from one focus toward the other focus.


title: Mirror

text: A convex parabolic mirror, on the other hand, will reflect rays that are parallel to its axis into rays that seem to emanate from the focus of the surface, behind the mirror. Conversely, it will reflect incoming rays that converge toward that point into rays that are parallel to the axis. A convex mirror that is part of a prolate ellipsoid will reflect rays that converge towards one focus into divergent rays that seem to emanate from the other focus.


title: Mirror

text: Spherical mirrors do not reflect parallel rays to rays that converge to or diverge from a single point, or vice versa, due to spherical aberration. However, a spherical mirror whose diameter is sufficiently small compared to the sphere's radius will behave very similarly to a parabolic mirror whose axis goes through the mirror's center and the center of that sphere; so that spherical mirrors can substitute for parabolic ones in many applications.


title: Mirror

text: A similar aberration occurs with parabolic mirrors when the incident rays are parallel among themselves but not parallel to the mirror's axis, or are divergent from a point that is not the focus – as when trying to form an image of an objet that is near the mirror or spans a wide angle as seen from it. However, this aberration can be sufficiently small if the object image is sufficiently far from the mirror and spans a sufficiently small angle around its axis.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors reflect an image to the observer. However, unlike a projected image on a screen, an image does not actually exist on the surface of the mirror. For example, when two people look at each other in a mirror, both see different images on the same surface. When the light waves converge through the lens of the eye they interfere with each other to form the image on the surface of the retina, and since both viewers see waves coming from different directions, each sees a different image in the same mirror. Thus, the images observed in a mirror depend upon the angle of the mirror with respect to the eye. The angle between the object and the observer is always twice the angle between the eye and the normal, or the direction perpendicular to the surface. This allows animals with binocular vision to see the reflected image with depth perception and in three dimensions.


title: Mirror

text: The mirror forms a "virtual image" of whatever is in the opposite angle from the viewer, meaning that objects in the image appear to exist in a direct line of sight—behind the surface of the mirror—at an equal distance from their position in front of the mirror. Objects behind the observer, or between the observer and the mirror, are reflected back to the observer without any actual change in orientation; the light waves are simply reversed in a direction perpendicular to the mirror. However, when viewer is facing the object and the mirror is at an angle between them, the image appears inverted 180° along the direction of the angle.


title: Mirror

text: Objects viewed in a (plane) mirror will appear laterally inverted (e.g., if one raises one's right hand, the image's left hand will appear to go up in the mirror), but not vertically inverted (in the image a person's head still appears above their body). However, a mirror does not actually "swap" left and right any more than it swaps top and bottom. A mirror swaps front and back. To be precise, it reverses the object in the direction perpendicular to the mirror surface (the normal), turning the three dimensional image inside out (the way a glove stripped off the hand can be turned inside out, turning a left-hand glove into a right-hand glove or vice versa). When a person raises their left hand, the actual left hand raises in the mirror, but gives the illusion of a right hand raising because the imaginary person in the mirror is literally inside-out, hand and all. If the person stands side-on to a mirror, the mirror really does reverse left and right hands, that is, objects that are physically closer to the mirror always appear closer in the virtual image, and objects farther from the surface always appear symmetrically farther away regardless of angle.


title: Mirror

text: Looking at an image of oneself with the front-back axis flipped results in the perception of an image with its left-right axis flipped. When reflected in the mirror, a person's right hand remains directly opposite their real right hand, but it is perceived by the mind as the left hand in the image. When a person looks into a mirror, the image is actually front-back reversed (inside-out), which is an effect similar to the hollow-mask illusion. Notice that a mirror image is fundamentally different from the object (inside-out) and cannot be reproduced by simply rotating the object. An object and its mirror image are said to be chiral.


title: Mirror

text: For things that may be considered as two-dimensional objects (like text), front-back reversal cannot usually explain the observed reversal. An image is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional space, and because it exists in a two-dimensional plane, an image can be viewed from front or back. In the same way that text on a piece of paper appears reversed if held up to a light and viewed from behind, text held facing a mirror will appear reversed, because the image of the text is still facing away from the observer. Another way to understand the reversals observed in images of objects that are effectively two-dimensional is that the inversion of left and right in a mirror is due to the way human beings perceive their surroundings. A person's reflection in a mirror appears to be a real person facing them, but for that person to really face themselves (i.e.: twins) one would have to physically turn and face the other, causing an actual swapping of right and left. A mirror causes an illusion of left-right reversal because left and right were "not" swapped when the image appears to have turned around to face the viewer. The viewer's egocentric navigation (left and right with respect to the observer's point of view; i.e.: "my left...") is unconsciously replaced with their allocentric navigation (left and right as it relates another's point of view; "...your right") when processing the virtual image of the apparent person behind the mirror. Likewise, text viewed in a mirror would have to be physically turned around, facing the observer and away from the surface, actually swapping left and right, to be read in the mirror.


title: Mirror

text: The reflectivity of a mirror is determined by the percentage of reflected light per the total of the incident light. The reflectivity may vary with wavelength. All or a portion of the light not reflected is absorbed by the mirror, while in some cases a portion may also transmit through. Although some small portion of the light will be absorbed by the coating, the reflectivity is usually higher for first-surface mirrors, eliminating both reflection and absorption losses from the substrate.


title: Mirror

text: The reflectivity is often determined by the type and thickness of the coating. When the thickness of the coating is sufficient to prevent transmission, all of the losses occur due to absorption. Aluminium is harder, less expensive, and more resistant to tarnishing than silver, and will reflect 85 to 90% of the light in the visible to near-ultraviolet range, but experiences a drop in its reflectance between 800 and 900 nm. Gold is very soft and easily scratched, costly, yet does not tarnish. Gold is greater than 96% reflective to near and far-infrared light between 800 and 12000 nm, but poorly reflects visible light with wavelengths shorter than 600 nm (yellow). Silver is expensive, soft, and quickly tarnishes, but has the highest reflectivity in the visual to near-infrared of any metal. Silver can reflect up to 98 or 99% of light to wavelengths as long as 2000 nm, but loses nearly all reflectivity at wavelengths shorter than 350 nm.


title: Mirror

text: Dielectric mirrors can reflect greater than 99.99% of light, but only for a narrow range of wavelengths, ranging from a bandwidth of only 10 nm to as wide as 100 nm for tunable lasers. However, dielectric coatings can also enhance the reflectivity of metallic coatings and protect them from scratching or tarnishing. Dielectric materials are typically very hard and relatively cheap, however the number of coats needed generally makes it an expensive process. In mirrors with low tolerances, the coating thickness may be reduced to save cost, and simply covered with paint to absorb transmission.


title: Mirror

text: Surface quality, or surface accuracy, measures the deviations from a perfect, ideal surface shape. Increasing the surface quality reduces distortion, artifacts, and aberration in images, and helps increase coherence, collimation, and reduce unwanted divergence in beams. For plane mirrors, this is often described in terms of flatness, while other surface shapes are compared to an ideal shape. The surface quality is typically measured with items like interferometers or optical flats, and are usually measured in wavelengths of light (λ). These deviations can be much larger or much smaller than the surface roughness. A normal household-mirror made with float glass may have flatness tolerances as low as 9–14λ per inch (25.4 mm), equating to a deviation of 5600 through 8800 nanometers from perfect flatness. Precision ground and polished mirrors intended for lasers or telescopes may have tolerances as high as λ/50 (1/50 of the wavelength of the light, or around 12 nm) across the entire surface. The surface quality can be affected by factors such as temperature changes, internal stress in the substrate, or even bending effects that occur when combining materials with different coefficients of thermal expansion, similar to a bimetallic strip.


title: Mirror

text: Surface roughness describes the texture of the surface, often in terms of the depth of the microscopic scratches left by the polishing operations. Surface roughness determines how much of the reflection is specular and how much diffuses, controlling how sharp or blurry the image will be.


title: Mirror

text: For perfectly specular reflection, the surface roughness must be kept smaller than the wavelength of the light. Microwaves, which sometimes have a wavelength greater than an inch (~25 mm) can reflect specularly off a metal screen-door, continental ice-sheets, or desert sand, while visible light, having wavelengths of only a few hundred nanometers (a few hundred-thousandths of an inch), must meet a very smooth surface to produce specular reflection. For wavelengths that are approaching or are even shorter than the diameter of the atoms, such as X-rays, specular reflection can only be produced by surfaces that are at a grazing incidence from the rays.


title: Mirror

text: Surface roughness is typically measured in microns, wavelength, or grit size, with ~80,000–100,000 grit or ~½λ–¼λ being "optical quality".


title: Mirror

text: Transmissivity is determined by the percentage of light transmitted per the incident light. Transmissivity is usually the same from both first and second surfaces. The combined transmitted and reflected light, subtracted from the incident light, measures the amount absorbed by both the coating and substrate. For transmissive mirrors, such as one-way mirrors, beam splitters, or laser output couplers, the transmissivity of the mirror is an important consideration. The transmissivity of metallic coatings are often determined by their thickness. For precision beam-splitters or output couplers, the thickness of the coating must be kept at very high tolerances to transmit the proper amount of light. For dielectric mirrors, the thickness of the coat must always be kept to high tolerances, but it is often more the number of individual coats that determine the transmissivity. For the substrate, the material used must also have good transmissivity to the chosen wavelengths. Glass is a suitable substrate for most visible-light applications, but other substrates such as zinc selenide or synthetic sapphire may be used for infrared or ultraviolet wavelengths.


title: Mirror

text: Wedge errors are caused by the deviation of the surfaces from perfect parallelism. An optical wedge is the angle formed between two plane-surfaces (or between the principle planes of curved surfaces) due to manufacturing errors or limitations, causing one edge of the mirror to be slightly thicker than the other. Nearly all mirrors and optics with parallel faces have some slight degree of wedge, which is usually measured in seconds or minutes of arc. For first-surface mirrors, wedges can introduce alignment deviations in mounting hardware. For second-surface or transmissive mirrors, wedges can have a prismatic effect on the light, deviating its trajectory or, to a very slight degree, its color, causing chromatic and other forms of aberration. In some instances, a slight wedge is desirable, such as in certain laser systems where stray reflections from the uncoated surface are better dispersed than reflected back through the medium.


title: Mirror

text: Surface defects are small-scale, discontinuous imperfections in the surface smoothness. Surface defects are larger (in some cases much larger) than the surface roughness, but only affect small, localized portions of the entire surface. These are typically found as scratches, digs, pits (often from bubbles in the glass), sleeks (scratches from prior, larger grit polishing operations that were not fully removed by subsequent polishing grits), edge chips, or blemishes in the coating. These defects are often an unavoidable side-effect of manufacturing limitations, both in cost and machine precision. If kept low enough, in most applications these defects will rarely have any adverse effect, unless the surface is located at an image plane where they will show up directly. For applications that require extremely low scattering of light, extremely high reflectance, or low absorption due to high energy levels that could destroy the mirror, such as lasers or Fabry-Perot interferometers, the surface defects must be kept to a minimum.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors are usually manufactured by either polishing a naturally reflective material, such as speculum metal, or by applying a reflective coating to a suitable polished substrate.


title: Mirror

text: In some applications, generally those that are cost-sensitive or that require great durability, such as for mounting in a prison cell, mirrors may be made from a single, bulk material such as polished metal. However, metals consist of small crystals (grains) separated by grain boundaries that may prevent the surface from attaining optical smoothness and uniform reflectivity.


title: Mirror

text: The coating of glass with a reflective layer of a metal is generally called "silvering", even though the metal may not be silver. Currently the main processes are electroplating, "wet" chemical deposition, and vacuum deposition Front-coated metal mirrors achieve reflectivities of 90–95% when new.


title: Mirror

text: Applications requiring higher reflectivity or greater durability, where wide bandwidth is not essential, use dielectric coatings, which can achieve reflectivities as high as 99.997% over a limited range of wavelengths. Because they are often chemically stable and do not conduct electricity, dielectric coatings are almost always applied by methods of vacuum deposition, and most commonly by evaporation deposition. Because the coatings are usually transparent, absorption losses are negligible. Unlike with metals, the reflectivity of the individual dielectric-coatings is a function of Snell's law known as the Fresnel equations, determined by the difference in refractive index between layers. Therefore, the thickness and index of the coatings can be adjusted to be centered on any wavelength. Vacuum deposition can be achieved in a number of ways, including sputtering, evaporation deposition, arc deposition, reactive-gas deposition, and ion plating, among many others.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors can be manufactured to a wide range of engineering tolerances, including reflectivity, surface quality, surface roughness, or transmissivity, depending on the desired application. These tolerances can range from wide, such as found in a normal household-mirror, to extremely narrow, like those used in lasers or telescopes. Tightening the tolerances allows better and more precise imaging or beam transmission over longer distances. In imaging systems this can help reduce anomalies (artifacts), distortion or blur, but at a much higher cost. Where viewing distances are relatively close or high precision is not a concern, wider tolerances can be used to make effective mirrors at affordable costs.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors are commonly used as aids to personal grooming. They may range from small sizes (portable), to full body sized; they may be handheld, mobile, fixed or adjustable. A classic example of an adjustable mirror is the cheval glass, which the user can tilt.


title: Mirror

text: With the sun as light source, a mirror can be used to signal by variations in the orientation of the mirror. The signal can be used over long distances, possibly up to on a clear day. Native American tribes and numerous militaries used this technique to transmit information between distant outposts.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors can also be used to attract the attention of search-and-rescue parties. Specialized types of mirrors are available and are often included in military survival kits.


title: Mirror

text: Microscopic mirrors are a core element of many of the largest high-definition televisions and video projectors. A common technology of this type is Texas Instruments' DLP. A DLP chip is a postage stamp-sized microchip whose surface is an array of millions of microscopic mirrors. The picture is created as the individual mirrors move to either reflect light toward the projection surface (pixel on), or toward a light-absorbing surface (pixel off).


title: Mirror

text: Other projection technologies involving mirrors include LCoS. Like a DLP chip, LCoS is a microchip of similar size, but rather than millions of individual mirrors, there is a single mirror that is actively shielded by a liquid crystal matrix with up to millions of pixels. The picture, formed as light, is either reflected toward the projection surface (pixel on), or absorbed by the activated LCD pixels (pixel off). LCoS-based televisions and projectors often use 3 chips, one for each primary color.


title: Mirror

text: Large mirrors are used in rear-projection televisions. Light (for example from a DLP as discussed above) is "folded" by one or more mirrors so that the television set is compact.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors are integral parts of a solar power plant. The one shown in the adjacent picture uses concentrated solar power from an array of parabolic troughs.


title: Mirror

text: Telescopes and other precision instruments use "front silvered" or first surface mirrors, where the reflecting surface is placed on the front (or first) surface of the glass (this eliminates reflection from glass surface ordinary back mirrors have). Some of them use silver, but most are aluminium, which is more reflective at short wavelengths than silver.


title: Mirror

text: A protective overcoat is usually applied before the mirror is removed from the vacuum, because the coating otherwise begins to corrode as soon as it is exposed to oxygen and humidity in air. "Front silvered" mirrors have to be resurfaced occasionally to maintain their quality. There are optical mirrors such as mangin mirrors that are "second surface mirrors" (reflective coating on the rear surface) as part of their optical designs, usually to correct optical aberrations.


title: Mirror

text: The reflectivity of the mirror coating can be measured using a reflectometer and for a particular metal it will be different for different wavelengths of light. This is exploited in some optical work to make cold mirrors and hot mirrors. A cold mirror is made by using a transparent substrate and choosing a coating material that is more reflective to visible light and more transmissive to infrared light.


title: Mirror

text: A hot mirror is the opposite, the coating preferentially reflects infrared. Mirror surfaces are sometimes given thin film overcoatings both to retard degradation of the surface and to increase their reflectivity in parts of the spectrum where they will be used. For instance, aluminium mirrors are commonly coated with silicon dioxide or magnesium fluoride. The reflectivity as a function of wavelength depends on both the thickness of the coating and on how it is applied.


title: Mirror

text: For scientific optical work, dielectric mirrors are often used. These are glass (or sometimes other material) substrates on which one or more layers of dielectric material are deposited, to form an optical coating. By careful choice of the type and thickness of the dielectric layers, the range of wavelengths and amount of light reflected from the mirror can be specified. The best mirrors of this type can reflect >99.999% of the light (in a narrow range of wavelengths) which is incident on the mirror. Such mirrors are often used in lasers.


title: Mirror

text: In astronomy, adaptive optics is a technique to measure variable image distortions and adapt a deformable mirror accordingly on a timescale of milliseconds, to compensate for the distortions.


title: Mirror

text: Although most mirrors are designed to reflect visible light, surfaces reflecting other forms of electromagnetic radiation are also called "mirrors". The mirrors for other ranges of electromagnetic waves are used in


title: Mirror

text: optics and astronomy. Mirrors for radio waves (sometimes known as reflectors) are important elements of radio telescopes.


title: Mirror

text: Two or more mirrors aligned exactly parallel and facing each other can give an infinite regress of reflections, called an infinity mirror effect. Some devices use this to generate multiple reflections:


title: Mirror

text: Tradition states that Archimedes used a large array of mirrors to burn Roman ships during an attack on Syracuse. This has never been proven or disproved. On the TV show "MythBusters", a team from MIT tried to recreate the famous "Archimedes Death Ray". They were unsuccessful at starting a fire on a ship. Previous attempts to set a boat on fire using only the bronze mirrors available in Archimedes' time were unsuccessful, and the time taken to ignite the craft would have made its use impractical, resulting in the "MythBusters" team deeming the myth "busted". It was however found that the mirrors made it very difficult for the passengers of the targeted boat to see; such a scenario could have impeded attackers and have provided the origin of the legend. (See solar power tower for a practical use of this technique.)


title: Mirror

text: Due to its location in a steep-sided valley, the Italian town of Viganella gets no direct sunlight for seven weeks each winter. In 2006 a €100,000 computer-controlled mirror, 8×5 m, was installed to reflect sunlight into the town's piazza. In early 2007 the similarly situated village of Bondo, Switzerland, was considering applying this solution as well. In 2013, mirrors were installed to reflect sunlight into the town square in the Norwegian town of Rjukan. Mirrors can be used to produce enhanced lighting effects in greenhouses or conservatories.


title: Mirror

text: Mirrors are a popular design-theme in architecture, particularly with late modern and post-modernist high-rise buildings in major cities. Early examples include the Campbell Center in Dallas, which opened in 1972, and the John Hancock Tower (completed in 1976) in Boston.


title: Mirror

text: More recently, two skyscrapers designed by architect Rafael Viñoly, the Vdara in Las Vegas and 20 Fenchurch Street in London, have experienced unusual problems due to their concave curved-glass exteriors acting as respectively cylindrical and spherical reflectors for sunlight. In 2010, the "Las Vegas Review Journal" reported that sunlight reflected off the Vdara's south-facing tower could singe swimmers in the hotel pool, as well as melting plastic cups and shopping bags; employees of the hotel referred to the phenomenon as the "Vdara death ray", aka the "fryscraper." In 2013, sunlight reflecting off 20 Fenchurch Street melted parts of a Jaguar car parked nearby and scorching or igniting the carpet of a nearby barber-shop. This building had been nicknamed the "walkie-talkie" because its shape was supposedly similar to a certain model of two-way radio; but after its tendency to overheat surrounding objects became known, the nickname changed to the "walkie-scorchie".


title: Mirror

text: Painters depicting someone gazing into a mirror often also show the person's reflection. This is a kind of abstraction—in most cases the angle of view is such that the person's reflection should not be visible. Similarly, in movies and still photography an actor or actress is often shown ostensibly looking at him- or herself in a mirror, and yet the reflection faces the camera. In reality, the actor or actress sees only the camera and its operator in this case, not their own reflection. In the psychology of perception, this is known as the Venus effect.


title: Mirror

text: Contemporary anamorphic artist Jonty Hurwitz uses cylindrical mirrors to project distorted sculptures.


title: Mirror

text: In the Middle Ages mirrors existed in various shapes for multiple uses. Mostly they were used as an accessory for personal hygiene but also as tokens of courtly love, made from ivory in the ivory-carving centers in Paris, Cologne and the Southern Netherlands. They also had their uses in religious contexts as they were integrated in a special form of pilgrims badges or pewter/lead mirror boxes From the late 14th century. Burgundian ducal inventories show us that the dukes owned a mass of mirrors or objects with mirrors, not only with religious iconography or inscriptions, but combined with reliquaries, religious paintings or other objects that were distinctively used for personal piety. Considering mirrors in paintings and book illumination as depicted artifacts and trying to draw conclusions about their functions from their depicted setting, one of these functions is to be an aid in personal prayer to achieve self-knowledge and knowledge of God, in accord with contemporary theological sources. For example, the famous Arnolfini-Wedding by Jan van Eyck shows a constellation of objects that can be recognized as one which would allow a praying man to use them for his personal piety: the mirror surrounded by scenes of the Passion to reflect on it and on oneself, a rosary as a device in this process, the veiled and cushioned bench to use as a prie-dieu, and the abandoned shoes that point in the direction in which the praying man kneeled. The metaphorical meaning of depicted mirrors is complex and many-layered, e.g. as an attribute of Mary, the "speculum sine macula" (mirror without blemish), or as attributes of scholarly and theological wisdom and knowledge as they appear in book illuminations of different evangelists and authors of theological treatises. Depicted mirrors – orientated on the physical properties of a real mirror – can be seen as metaphors of knowledge and reflection and are thus able to remind beholders to reflect and get to know themselves. The mirror may function simultaneously as a symbol and as a device of a moral appeal. That is also the case if it is shown in combination with virtues and vices, a combination which also occurs more frequently in the 15th century: the moralizing layers of mirror metaphors remind the beholder to examine himself thoroughly according to his own virtuous or vicious life. This is all the more true if the mirror is combined with iconography of death. Not only is Death as a corpse or skeleton holding the mirror for the still-living personnel of paintings, illuminations and prints, but the skull appears on the convex surfaces of depicted mirrors, showing the painted and real beholder his future face.


title: Mirror

text: Only a few animal species have been shown to have the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror, most of them mammals. Experiments have found that the following animals can pass the mirror test:


title: Pepin the Short

text: Pepin the Short (; – 24 September 768), also called the Younger (), was King of the Franks from 751 until his death in 768. He was the first Carolingian to become king.


title: Pepin the Short

text: The younger was the son of the Frankish prince Charles Martel and his wife Rotrude, Pepin's upbringing was distinguished by the ecclesiastical education he had received from the monks of St. Denis. Succeeding his father as the Mayor of the Palace in 741, Pepin reigned over Francia jointly with his elder brother Carloman. Pepin ruled in Neustria, Burgundy, and Provence, while his older brother Carloman established himself in Austrasia, Alemannia, and Thuringia. The brothers were active in suppressing revolts led by the Bavarians, Aquitanians, Saxons, and the Alemanni in the early years of their reign. In 743, they ended the Frankish interregnum by choosing Childeric III, who was to be the last Merovingian monarch, as figurehead king of the Franks.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Being well disposed towards the church and papacy on account of their ecclesiastical upbringing, Pepin and Carloman continued their father's work in supporting Saint Boniface in reforming the Frankish church, and evangelizing the Saxons. After Carloman, who was an intensely pious man, retired to religious life in 747, Pepin became the sole ruler of the Franks. He suppressed a revolt led by his half-brother Grifo, and succeeded in becoming the undisputed master of all Francia. Giving up pretense, Pepin then forced Childeric into a monastery and had himself proclaimed king of the Franks with support of Pope Zachary in 751. The decision was not supported by all members of the Carolingian family and Pepin had to put down a revolt led by Carloman's son, Drogo, and again by Grifo.


title: Pepin the Short

text: As king, Pepin embarked on an ambitious program to expand his power. He reformed the legislation of the Franks and continued the ecclesiastical reforms of Boniface. Pepin also intervened in favour of the papacy of Stephen II against the Lombards in Italy. In the midsummer of 754, Stephen II anointed Pepin afresh, together with his two sons, Charles and Carloman. The ceremony took place in the Abbey Church of St. Denis, near Paris, and the Pope formally forbade the Franks ever to elect as king anyone who was not of the sacred race of Pepin. He also bestowed upon Pepin and his sons the title of 'Patrician of Rome'. Pepin was able to secure several cities, which he then gave to the Pope as part of the Donation of Pepin. This formed the legal basis for the Papal States in the Middle Ages. The Byzantines, keen to make good relations with the growing power of the Frankish empire, gave Pepin the title of Patricius. In wars of expansion, Pepin conquered Septimania from the Islamic Umayyads, and subjugated the southern realms by repeatedly defeating Waiofar and his Gascon troops, after which the Gascon and Aquitanian lords saw no option but to pledge loyalty to the Franks. Pepin was, however, troubled by the relentless revolts of the Saxons and the Bavarians. He campaigned tirelessly in Germany, but the final subjugation of these tribes was left to his successors.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Pepin died in 768 and was succeeded by his sons Charlemagne and Carloman. Although unquestionably one of the most powerful and successful rulers of his time, Pepin's reign is largely overshadowed by that of his more famous son, Charlemagne.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Pepin's father Charles Martel died in 741. He divided the rule of the Frankish kingdom between Pepin and his elder brother, Carloman, his surviving sons by his first wife: Carloman became Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia, Pepin became Mayor of the Palace of Neustria. Grifo, Charles's son by his second wife, Swanahild (also known as Swanhilde), demanded a share in the inheritance, but he was besieged in Laon, forced to surrender and imprisoned in a monastery by his two half-brothers.


title: Pepin the Short

text: In the Frankish realm the unity of the kingdom was essentially connected with the person of the king. So Carloman, to secure this unity, raised the Merovingian Childeric to the throne (743). Then in 747 Carloman resolved to entering a monastery after years of consideration. This left Francia in the hands of Pepin as sole mayor of the palace and "dux et princeps Francorum".


title: Pepin the Short

text: At the time of Carloman's retirement, Grifo escaped his imprisonment and fled to Duke Odilo of Bavaria, who was married to Hiltrude, Pepin's sister. Pepin put down the renewed revolt led by his half-brother and succeeded in completely restoring the boundaries of the kingdom.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Under the reorganization of Francia by Charles Martel, the "dux et princeps Francorum" was the commander of the armies of the kingdom, in addition to his administrative duties as mayor of the palace.


title: Pepin the Short

text: As mayor of the palace, Pepin was formally subject to the decisions of Childeric III, who had only the title of king, with no power. Since Pepin had control over the magnates and actually had the power of a king, he now addressed to Pope Zachary a suggestive question:


title: Pepin the Short

text: Hard pressed by the Lombards, Pope Zachary welcomed this move by the Franks to end an intolerable condition and lay the constitutional foundations for the exercise of the royal power. The Pope replied that such a state of things is not proper. Under these circumstances, the wielder of actual power should be called King. After this decision, Childeric III was deposed and confined to a monastery. He was the last of the Merovingians.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Pepin was then elected King of the Franks by an assembly of Frankish nobles, with a large portion of his army on hand. The earliest account of his election and anointing is the "Clausula de Pippino", written around 767. Meanwhile, Grifo continued his rebellion, but was eventually killed in the battle of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in 753.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Pepin was assisted by his friend Vergilius of Salzburg, an Irish monk who probably used a copy of the "Collectio canonum Hibernensis" (an Irish collection of canon law) to advise him to receive royal unction to assist his recognition as king. Anointed a first time in 751 in Soissons, Pepin added to his power after Pope Stephen II traveled all the way to Paris to anoint him a second time in a lavish ceremony at the Basilica of St Denis in 754, bestowing upon him the additional title of Patricius Romanorum (Patrician of the Romans). This was the first recorded crowning of a civil ruler by a Pope. As life expectancies were short in those days, and Pepin wanted family continuity, the Pope also anointed Pepin's sons, Charles (eventually known as Charlemagne), who was 12, and Carloman, who was 3.


title: Pepin the Short

text: The significance of the ceremony of anointment is visible in that it was newly adopted by the Pope and was unheard of in Rome. This, together with granting the title of Patrician of the Romans, which was connected to the role of Defensor Civitatis (protector of oppressed citizens), meant that Pippin was now designated as the defender of the Church.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Pepin's first major act as king was to go to war against the Lombard king Aistulf, who had expanded into the "ducatus Romanus". After a meeting with Pope Stephen II at Ponthion, Pepin forced the Lombard king to return property seized from the Church. He confirmed the papacy in possession of Ravenna and the Pentapolis, the so-called Donation of Pepin, whereby the Papal States were established and the temporal reign of the papacy officially began. At about 752, he turned his attention to Septimania. The new king headed south in a military expedition down the Rhone valley and received the submission of eastern Septimania (i.e. Nîmes, Maguelone, Beziers and Agde) after securing count Ansemund's allegiance. The Frankish king went on to invest Narbonne, the main Umayyad stronghold in Septimania, but could not capture it from the Iberian Muslims until seven years later in 759, when they were driven out to Hispania.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Aquitaine still remained under Waiofar's Gascon-Aquitanian rule, however, and beyond Frankish reach. Duke Waiofar appears to have confiscated Church lands, maybe distributing them among his troops. In 760, after conquering the Roussillon from the Muslims and denouncing Waiofar's actions, Pepin moved his troops over to and Albi, ravaged with fire and sword most of Aquitaine, and, in retaliation, counts loyal to Waiofar ravaged Burgundy. Pepin, in turn, besieged the Aquitanian-held towns and strongholds of Bourbon, Clermont, Chantelle, Bourges and Thouars, defended by Waiofar's Gascon troops, who were overcome, captured and deported into northern France with their children and wives.


title: Pepin the Short

text: In 763, Pepin advanced further into the heart of Waiofar's domains and captured major strongholds (Poitiers, Limoges, Angoulême, etc.), after which Waiofar counterattacked and war became bitter. Pepin opted to spread terror, burning villas, destroying vineyards and depopulating monasteries. By 765, the brutal tactics seemed to pay off for the Franks, who destroyed resistance in central Aquitaine and devastated the whole region. The city of Toulouse was conquered by Pepin in 767 as was Waiofar's capital of Bordeaux.


title: Pepin the Short

text: As a result, Aquitanian nobles and Gascons from beyond the Garonne too saw no option but to accept a pro-Frankish peace treaty (Fronsac, c. 768). Waiofar escaped but was assassinated by his own frustrated followers in 768.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Pepin died during a campaign, in 768 at the age of 54. He was interred in the Basilica of Saint Denis in modern-day Metropolitan Paris. His wife Bertrada was also interred there in 783. Charlemagne rebuilt the Basilica in honor of his parents and placed markers at the entrance.


title: Pepin the Short

text: The Frankish realm was divided according to the Salic law between his two sons: Charlemagne and Carloman I.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Historical opinion often seems to regard him as the lesser son and lesser father of two greater men, though a great man in his own right. He continued to build up the heavy cavalry which his father had begun. He maintained the standing army that his father had found necessary to protect the realm and form the core of its full army in wartime. He not only contained the Spanish Muslims as his father had, but drove them out of what is now France and, as important, he managed to subdue the Aquitanians and the Gascons after three generations of on-off clashes, so opening the gate to central and southern Gaul and Muslim Spain. He continued his father's expansion of the Frankish church (missionary work in Germany and Scandinavia) and the institutional infrastructure (feudalism) that would prove the backbone of medieval Europe.


title: Pepin the Short

text: His rule was historically important and of great benefit to the Franks as a people. Pepin's assumption of the crown, and the title of Patrician of Rome, were harbingers of his son's imperial coronation. He made the Carolingians the ruling dynasty of the Franks and the foremost power of Europe. Known as a great conqueror, he was undefeated during his lifetime.


title: Pepin the Short

text: Pepin married Leutberga from the Danube region. They had five children. She was repudiated some time after the birth of Charlemagne and her children were sent to convents.


title: Pepin the Short

text: In 741, Pepin married Bertrada, daughter of Caribert of Laon. They are known to have had eight children, at least three of whom survived to adulthood:


title: Øresund Bridge

text: The Öresund or Øresund Bridge ( ; ; hybrid name: ) is a combined railway and motorway bridge across the Øresund strait between Denmark and Sweden. It is the longest in Europe with both roadway and railway combined in a single structure, running nearly from the Swedish coast to the artificial island Peberholm in the middle of the strait. The crossing is completed by the Drogden Tunnel from Peberholm to the Danish island of Amager.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: The bridge connects the road and rail networks of the Scandinavian Peninsula with those of Central and Western Europe. A data cable also makes the bridge the backbone of Internet data transmission between central Europe and Sweden. The international European route E20 crosses via road, the Øresund Line via railway. The construction of the Great Belt Fixed Link (1988–1998), connecting Zealand to Funen and thence to the Jutland Peninsula, and the Øresund Bridge have connected Central and Western Europe to Sweden by road and rail.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: The bridge was designed by Jorgen Nissen and Klaus Falbe Hansen from Ove Arup and Partners, and Niels Gimsing and Georg Rotne.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: The justification for the additional expenditure and complexity related to digging a tunnel for part of the way, rather than raising that section of the bridge, was to avoid interfering with air traffic from the nearby Copenhagen Airport, to provide a clear channel for ships in good weather or bad, and to prevent ice floes from blocking the strait. Construction began in 1995, with the bridge opening to traffic on 1 July 2000. The bridge received the 2002 IABSE Outstanding Structure Award.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: Ideas for a fixed link across the Øresund were advanced as early as the first decade of the 20th century. In 1910, proposals were put to the Swedish Parliament for a railway tunnel across the strait, which would have comprised two tunnelled sections linked by a surface road across the island of Saltholm. The concept of a bridge over the Øresund was first formally proposed in 1936 by a consortium of engineering firms who proposed a national motorway network for Denmark.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: The idea was dropped during World War II, but picked up again thereafter and studied in significant detail in various Danish-Swedish government commissions through the 1950s and 1960s. However, disagreement existed regarding the placement and exact form of the link, with some arguing for a link at the narrowest point of the sound at Helsingør–Helsingborg, further north of Copenhagen, and some arguing for a more direct link from Copenhagen to Malmö. Additionally, some regional and local interests argued that other bridge and road projects, notably the then-unbuilt Great Belt Fixed Link, should take priority. The governments of Denmark and Sweden eventually signed an agreement to build a fixed link in 1973. It would have comprised a bridge between Malmö and Saltholm, with a tunnel linking Saltholm to Copenhagen, and would have been accompanied by a second rail tunnel across the Øresund between Helsingør and Helsingborg.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: However, that project was cancelled in 1978 due to the economic situation, and growing environmental concerns. As the economic situation improved in the 1980s, interest continued and the governments signed a new agreement in 1991.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: An OMEGA centre report identified the following as primary motivations for construction of the bridge:


title: Øresund Bridge

text: A joint venture of Hochtief, Skanska, Højgaard & Schultz and Monberg & Thorsen (the same of the previous Great Belt Fixed Link), began construction of the bridge in 1995 and completed it 14 August 1999. Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden met midway across the bridge-tunnel on 14 August 1999 to celebrate its completion. The official dedication took place on 1 July 2000, with Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden as the hostess and host of the ceremony. Because of the death of nine people, including three Danes and three Swedes, at the Roskilde Festival the evening before, the ceremony opened with a minute of silence. The bridge-tunnel opened for public traffic later that day. On 12 June 2000, two weeks before the dedication, 79,871 runners competed in Broloppet, a half marathon from Amager, Denmark, to Skåne, Sweden.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: Despite two schedule setbacks – the discovery of 16 unexploded World War II bombs on the seafloor and an inadvertently skewed tunnel segment – the bridge-tunnel was finished three months ahead of schedule.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: Although traffic between Denmark and Sweden increased by 61 percent in the first year after the bridge opened, traffic levels were not as high as expected, perhaps due to high tolls. However, since 2005, traffic levels have increased rapidly. This may be due to Danes buying homes in Sweden to take advantage of lower housing prices in Malmö and commuting to work in Denmark. In 2012, to cross by car cost DKK 310, SEK 375 or €43, with discounts of up to 75% available to regular users. In 2007, almost 25 million people travelled over the Øresund Bridge: 15.2 million by car and bus and 9.6 million by train. By 2009, the figure had risen to 35.6 million by car, coach or train.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: At , the bridge covers half the distance between Sweden and the Danish island of Amager, the border between the two countries being from the Swedish end. The structure has a mass of 82,000 tonnes and supports two railway tracks beneath four road lanes in a horizontal girder extending along the entire length of the bridge. On both approaches to the three cable-stayed bridge sections, the girder is supported every by concrete piers. The two pairs of free-standing cable-supporting towers are high allowing shipping of head room under the main span, but most ships' captains prefer to pass through the unobstructed Drogden Strait above the Drogden Tunnel. The cable-stayed main span is long. A girder and cable-stayed design was chosen to provide the specific rigidity necessary to carry heavy rail traffic, and also to resist large accumulations of ice.


title: Øresund Bridge

text: The bridge experiences occasional brief closures during very severe weather, such as the St. Jude storm of October 2013.