title: Monopoly

text: In "third degree price discrimination" or multi-market price discrimination the seller divides the consumers into different groups according to their willingness to pay as measured by their price elasticity of demand. Each group of consumers effectively becomes a separate market with its own demand curve and marginal revenue curve. The firm then attempts to maximize profits in each segment by equating MR and MC, Generally the company charges a higher price to the group with a more price inelastic demand and a relatively lesser price to the group with a more elastic demand. Examples of third degree price discrimination abound. Airlines charge higher prices to business travelers than to vacation travelers. The reasoning is that the demand curve for a vacation traveler is relatively elastic while the demand curve for a business traveler is relatively inelastic. Any determinant of price elasticity of demand can be used to segment markets. For example, seniors have a more elastic demand for movies than do young adults because they generally have more free time. Thus theaters will offer discount tickets to seniors.


title: Monopoly

text: Assume that by a uniform pricing system the monopolist would sell five units at a price of $10 per unit. Assume that his marginal cost is $5 per unit. Total revenue would be $50, total costs would be $25 and profits would be $25. If the monopolist practiced price discrimination he would sell the first unit for $17 the second unit for $14 and so on which is listed in the table below. Total revenue would be $55, his total cost would be $25 and his profit would be $30. Several things are worth noting. The monopolist acquires all the consumer surplus and eliminates practically all the deadweight loss because he is willing to sell to anyone who is willing to pay at least the marginal cost. Thus the price discrimination promotes efficiency. Secondly, by the pricing scheme price = average revenue and equals marginal revenue. That is the monopolist behaving like a perfectly competitive company. Thirdly, the discriminating monopolist produces a larger quantity than the monopolist operating by a uniform pricing scheme.


title: Monopoly

text: Successful price discrimination requires that companies separate consumers according to their willingness to buy. Determining a customer's willingness to buy a good is difficult. Asking consumers directly is fruitless: consumers don't know, and to the extent they do they are reluctant to share that information with marketers. The two main methods for determining willingness to buy are observation of personal characteristics and consumer actions. As noted information about where a person lives (postal codes), how the person dresses, what kind of car he or she drives, occupation, and income and spending patterns can be helpful in classifying.


title: Monopoly

text: According to the standard model, in which a monopolist sets a single price for all consumers, the monopolist will sell a lesser quantity of goods at a higher price than would companies by perfect competition. Because the monopolist ultimately forgoes transactions with consumers who value the product or service less than its price, monopoly pricing creates a deadweight loss referring to potential gains that went neither to the monopolist nor to consumers. Deadweight loss is the cost to society because the market isn't in equilibrium, it is inefficient. Given the presence of this deadweight loss, the combined surplus (or wealth) for the monopolist and consumers is necessarily less than the total surplus obtained by consumers by perfect competition. Where efficiency is defined by the total gains from trade, the monopoly setting is less efficient than perfect competition.


title: Monopoly

text: It is often argued that monopolies tend to become less efficient and less innovative over time, becoming "complacent", because they do not have to be efficient or innovative to compete in the marketplace. Sometimes this very loss of psychological efficiency can increase a potential competitor's value enough to overcome market entry barriers, or provide incentive for research and investment into new alternatives. The theory of contestable markets argues that in some circumstances (private) monopolies are forced to behave "as if" there were competition because of the risk of losing their monopoly to new entrants. This is likely to happen when a market's barriers to entry are low. It might also be because of the availability in the longer term of substitutes in other markets. For example, a canal monopoly, while worth a great deal during the late 18th century United Kingdom, was worth much less during the late 19th century because of the introduction of railways as a substitute.


title: Monopoly

text: Contrary to common misconception, monopolists do not try to sell items for the highest possible price, nor do they try to maximize profit per unit, but rather they try to maximize total profit.


title: Monopoly

text: A natural monopoly is an organization that experiences increasing returns to scale over the relevant range of output and relatively high fixed costs. A natural monopoly occurs where the average cost of production "declines throughout the relevant range of product demand". The relevant range of product demand is where the average cost curve is below the demand curve. When this situation occurs, it is always more efficient for one large company to supply the market than multiple smaller companies; in fact, absent government intervention in such markets, will naturally evolve into a monopoly. Often, a natural monopoly is the outcome of an initial rivalry between several competitors. An early market entrant that takes advantage of the cost structure and can expand rapidly can exclude smaller companies from entering and can drive or buy out other companies. A natural monopoly suffers from the same inefficiencies as any other monopoly. Left to its own devices, a profit-seeking natural monopoly will produce where marginal revenue equals marginal costs. Regulation of natural monopolies is problematic. Fragmenting such monopolies is by definition inefficient. The most frequently used methods dealing with natural monopolies are government regulations and public ownership. Government regulation generally consists of regulatory commissions charged with the principal duty of setting prices. Natural monopolies are synonymous with what is called "single-unit enterprise," a term which was used in the 1914 book "Social Economics" written by Friedrich von Wieser. As mentioned, government regulations are frequently used with natural monopolies to help control prices. An example that can illustrate this can be found when looking at the United States Postal Service, which has a monopoly over types of mail. According to Wieser, the idea of a competitive market within the postal industry would lead to extreme prices and unnecessary spending, and this highlighted why government regulation in the form of price control is necessary as it helped efficient market.


title: Monopoly

text: To reduce prices and increase output, regulators often use average cost pricing. By average cost pricing, the price and quantity are determined by the intersection of the average cost curve and the demand curve. This pricing scheme eliminates any positive economic profits since price equals average cost. Average-cost pricing is not perfect. Regulators must estimate average costs. Companies have a reduced incentive to lower costs. Regulation of this type has not been limited to natural monopolies. Average-cost pricing does also have some disadvantages. By setting price equal to the intersection of the demand curve and the average total cost curve, the firm's output is allocatively inefficient as the price is less than the marginal cost (which is the output quantity for a perfectly competitive and allocatively efficient market).


title: Monopoly

text: In 1848, J.S. Mill was the first individual to describe monopolies with the adjective "natural". He used it interchangeably with "practical". At the time, Mill gave the following examples of natural or practical monopolies: gas supply, water supply, roads, canals, and railways. In his "Social Economics", Friedrich von Wieser demonstrated his view of the postal service as a natural monopoly: "In the face of [such] single-unit administration, the principle of competition becomes utterly abortive. The parallel network of another postal organization, beside the one already functioning, would be economically absurd; enormous amounts of money for plant and management would have to be expended for no purpose whatever."


title: Monopoly

text: A government-granted monopoly (also called a ""de jure" monopoly") is a form of "coercive monopoly", in which a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or company to be the sole provider of a commodity. Monopoly may be granted explicitly, as when potential competitors are excluded from the market by a specific law, or implicitly, such as when the requirements of an administrative regulation can only be fulfilled by a single market player, or through some other legal or procedural mechanism, such as patents, trademarks, and copyright. These monopolies can also be the result of "rent-seeking" behavior, where firms will try to get the prize of having a monopoly, and the increase of profits in acquiring one from a competitive market in their sector.


title: Monopoly

text: A monopolist should shut down when price is less than average variable cost for every output level – in other words where the demand curve is entirely below the average variable cost curve. Under these circumstances at the profit maximum level of output (MR = MC) average revenue would be less than average variable costs and the monopolists would be better off shutting down in the short term.


title: Monopoly

text: In an unregulated market, monopolies can potentially be ended by new competition, breakaway businesses, or consumers seeking alternatives. In a regulated market, a government will often either regulate the monopoly, convert it into a publicly owned monopoly environment, or forcibly fragment it (see Antitrust law and trust busting). Public utilities, often being naturally efficient with only one operator and therefore less susceptible to efficient breakup, are often strongly regulated or publicly owned. American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) and Standard Oil are often cited as examples of the breakup of a private monopoly by government. The Bell System, later AT&T, was protected from competition first by the Kingsbury Commitment, and later by a series of agreements between AT&T and the Federal Government. In 1984, decades after having been granted monopoly power by force of law, AT&T was broken up into various components, MCI, Sprint, who were able to compete effectively in the long-distance phone market. These breakups are due to the presence of deadweight loss and inefficiency in a monopolistic market, causing the Government to intervene on behalf of consumers and society in order to incite competition. While the sentiment among regulators and judges has generally recommended that breakups are not as remedies for antitrust enforcement, recent scholarship has found that this hostility to breakups by administrators is largely unwarranted.' In fact, some scholars have argued breakups, even if incorrectly targeted, could arguably still encourage collaboration, innovation, and efficiency.'


title: Monopoly

text: The law regulating dominance in the European Union is governed by Article 102 of the "Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union" which aims at enhancing the consumer's welfare and also the efficiency of allocation of resources by protecting competition on the downstream market. The existence of a very high market share does not always mean consumers are paying excessive prices since the threat of new entrants to the market can restrain a high-market-share company's price increases. Competition law does not make merely having a monopoly illegal, but rather abusing the power a monopoly may confer, for instance through exclusionary practices (i.e. pricing high just because it is the only one around.) It may also be noted that it is illegal to try to obtain a monopoly, by practices of buying out the competition, or equal practices. If one occurs naturally, such as a competitor going out of business, or lack of competition, it is not illegal until such time as the monopoly holder abuses the power.


title: Monopoly

text: First it is necessary to determine whether a company is dominant, or whether it behaves "to an appreciable extent independently of its competitors, customers and ultimately of its consumer". Establishing dominance is a two-stage test. The first thing to consider is market definition which is one of the crucial factors of the test. It includes relevant product market and relevant geographic market.


title: Monopoly

text: As the definition of the market is of a matter of interchangeability, if the goods or services are regarded as interchangeable then they are within the same product market. For example, in the case of "United Brands v Commission", it was argued in this case that bananas and other fresh fruit were in the same product market and later on dominance was found because the special features of the banana made it could only be interchangeable with other fresh fruits in a limited extent and other and is only exposed to their competition in a way that is hardly perceptible. The demand substitutability of the goods and services will help in defining the product market and it can be access by the ‘hypothetical monopolist’ test or the ‘SSNIP’ test .


title: Monopoly

text: It is necessary to define it because some goods can only be supplied within a narrow area due to technical, practical or legal reasons and this may help to indicate which undertakings impose a competitive constraint on the other undertakings in question. Since some goods are too expensive to transport where it might not be economic to sell them to distant markets in relation to their value, therefore the cost of transporting is a crucial factor here. Other factors might be legal controls which restricts an undertaking in a Member States from exporting goods or services to another.


title: Monopoly

text: Market definition may be difficult to measure but is important because if it is defined too narrowly, the undertaking may be more likely to be found dominant and if it is defined too broadly, the less likely that it will be found dominant.


title: Monopoly

text: As with collusive conduct, market shares are determined with reference to the particular market in which the company and product in question is sold. It does not in itself determine whether an undertaking is dominant but work as an indicator of the states of the existing competition within the market. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) is sometimes used to assess how competitive an industry is. It sums up the squares of the individual market shares of all of the competitors within the market. The lower the total, the less concentrated the market and the higher the total, the more concentrated the market. In the US, the merger guidelines state that a post-merger HHI below 1000 is viewed as not concentrated while HHIs above that will provoke further review.


title: Monopoly

text: By European Union law, very large market shares raise a presumption that a company is dominant, which may be rebuttable. A market share of 100% may be very rare but it is still possible to be found and in fact it has been identified in some cases, for instance the "AAMS v Commission" case. Undertakings possessing market share that is lower than 100% but over 90% had also been found dominant, for example, Microsoft v Commission case. In the AKZO v Commission case, the undertaking is presumed to be dominant if it has a market share of 50%. There are also findings of dominance that are below a market share of 50%, for instance, United Brands v Commission, it only possessed a market share of 40% to 45% and still to be found dominant with other factors. The lowest yet market share of a company considered "dominant" in the EU was 39.7%. If a company has a dominant position, then there is a special responsibility not to allow its conduct to impair competition on the common market however these will all falls away if it is not dominant.


title: Monopoly

text: When considering whether an undertaking is dominant, it involves a combination of factors. Each of them cannot be taken separately as if they are, they will not be as determinative as they are when they are combined. Also, in cases where an undertaking has previously been found dominant, it is still necessary to redefine the market and make a whole new analysis of the conditions of competition based on the available evidence at the appropriate time.


title: Monopoly

text: According to the Guidance, there are three more issues that must be examined. They are actual competitors that relates to the market position of the dominant undertaking and its competitors, potential competitors that concerns the expansion and entry and lastly the countervailing buyer power.


title: Monopoly

text: Market share may be a valuable source of information regarding the market structure and the market position when it comes to accessing it. The dynamics of the market and the extent to which the goods and services differentiated are relevant in this area.


title: Monopoly

text: It concerns with the competition that would come from other undertakings which are not yet operating in the market but will enter it in the future. So, market shares may not be useful in accessing the competitive pressure that is exerted on an undertaking in this area. The potential entry by new firms and expansions by an undertaking must be taken into account, therefore the barriers to entry and barriers to expansion is an important factor here.


title: Monopoly

text: Competitive constraints may not always come from actual or potential competitors. Sometimes, it may also come from powerful customers who have sufficient bargaining strength which come from its size or its commercial significance for a dominant firm.


title: Monopoly

text: There are three main types of abuses which are exploitative abuse, exclusionary abuse and single market abuse.


title: Monopoly

text: It arises when a monopolist has such significant market power that it can restrict its output while increasing the price above the competitive level without losing customers. This type is less concerned by the Commission than other types.


title: Monopoly

text: This is most concerned about by the Commissions because it is capable of causing long- term consumer damage and is more likely to prevent the development of competition. An example of it is exclusive dealing agreements.


title: Monopoly

text: It arises when a dominant undertaking carrying out excess pricing which would not only have an exploitative effect but also prevent parallel imports and limits intra- brand competition.


title: Monopoly

text: Despite wide agreement that the above constitute abusive practices, there is some debate about whether there needs to be a causal connection between the dominant position of a company and its actual abusive conduct. Furthermore, there has been some consideration of what happens when a company merely attempts to abuse its dominant position.


title: Monopoly

text: To provide a more specific example, economic and philosophical scholar Adam Smith cites that trade to the East India Company has, for the most part, been subjected to an exclusive company such as that of the English or Dutch. Monopolies such as these are generally established against the nation in which they arose out of. The profound economist goes on to state how there are two types of monopolies. The first type of monopoly is one which tends to always attract to the particular trade where the monopoly was conceived, a greater proportion of the stock of the society than what would go to that trade originally. The second type of monopoly tends to occasionally attract stock towards the particular trade where it was conceived, and sometimes repel it from that trade depending on varying circumstances. Rich countries tended to repel while poorer countries were attracted to this. For example, The Dutch company would dispose of any excess goods not taken to the market in order to preserve their monopoly while the English sold more goods for better prices. Both of these tendencies were extremely destructive as can be seen in Adam Smith's writings.


title: Monopoly

text: The term "monopoly" first appears in Aristotle's "Politics". Aristotle describes Thales of Miletus's cornering of the market in olive presses as a monopoly ("μονοπώλιον"). Another early reference to the concept of "monopoly" in a commercial sense appears in tractate Demai of the Mishna (2nd century C.E.), regarding the purchasing of agricultural goods from a dealer who has a monopoly on the produce (chapter 5; 4). The meaning and understanding of the English word 'monopoly' has changed over the years.


title: Monopoly

text: Vending of common salt (sodium chloride) was historically a natural monopoly. Until recently, a combination of strong sunshine and low humidity or an extension of peat marshes was necessary for producing salt from the sea, the most plentiful source. Changing sea levels periodically caused salt "famines" and communities were forced to depend upon those who controlled the scarce inland mines and salt springs, which were often in hostile areas (e.g. the Sahara desert) requiring well-organised security for transport, storage, and distribution.


title: Monopoly

text: The Salt Commission was a legal monopoly in China. Formed in 758, the Commission controlled salt production and sales in order to raise tax revenue for the Tang Dynasty.


title: Monopoly

text: The "Gabelle" was a notoriously high tax levied upon salt in the Kingdom of France. The much-hated levy had a role in the beginning of the French Revolution, when strict legal controls specified who was allowed to sell and distribute salt. First instituted in 1286, the Gabelle was not permanently abolished until 1945.


title: Monopoly

text: Robin Gollan argues in "The Coalminers of New South Wales" that anti-competitive practices developed in the coal industry of Australia's Newcastle as a result of the business cycle. The monopoly was generated by formal meetings of the local management of coal companies agreeing to fix a minimum price for sale at dock. This collusion was known as "The Vend". The Vend ended and was reformed repeatedly during the late 19th century, ending by recession in the business cycle. "The Vend" was able to maintain its monopoly due to trade union assistance, and material advantages (primarily coal geography). During the early 20th century, as a result of comparable monopolistic practices in the Australian coastal shipping business, the Vend developed as an informal and illegal collusion between the steamship owners and the coal industry, eventually resulting in the High Court case Adelaide Steamship Co. Ltd v. R. & AG.


title: Monopoly

text: In the 17th century, Shah Abbas established New Julfa (a suburb in the capital of Isfahan) to concentrate Armenian financial capital in Iran. Accordingly, he gave Armenians various privileges, including the monopoly to trade Persian filoselle (raw silk). Armenians exported it all over the world, including Asia, Europe, and America. By the 1750s, Armenia already controlled 75% of the total silk trade in the area. This resulted in a boom in Armenian commerce, which lasted for the next 150 years. At present, as it happens, Armenia's own economy is itself highly monopolized; in fact, with 19% of its economy monopolized, Armenia was the most monopolized country in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2009.


title: Monopoly

text: Standard Oil was an American oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870, it became the largest oil refiner in the world. John D. Rockefeller was a founder, chairman and major shareholder. The company was an innovator in the development of the business trust. The Standard Oil trust streamlined production and logistics, lowered costs, and undercut competitors. "Trust-busting" critics accused Standard Oil of using aggressive pricing to destroy competitors and form a monopoly that threatened consumers. Its controversial history as one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that Standard was an illegal monopoly. The Standard Oil trust was dissolved into 33 smaller companies; two of its surviving "child" companies are ExxonMobil and the Chevron Corporation.


title: Monopoly

text: U.S. Steel has been accused of being a monopoly. J. P. Morgan and Elbert H. Gary founded U.S. Steel in 1901 by combining Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry "Judge" Moore's National Steel Company. At one time, U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer and largest corporation in the world. In its first full year of operation, U.S. Steel made 67 percent of all the steel produced in the United States. However, U.S. Steel's share of the expanding market slipped to 50 percent by 1911, and antitrust prosecution that year failed.


title: Monopoly

text: De Beers settled charges of price-fixing in the diamond trade in the 2000s. De Beers is well known for its monopoloid practices throughout the 20th century, whereby it used its dominant position to manipulate the international diamond market. The company used several methods to exercise this control over the market. Firstly, it convinced independent producers to join its single channel monopoly, it flooded the market with diamonds similar to those of producers who refused to join the cartel, and lastly, it purchased and stockpiled diamonds produced by other manufacturers in order to control prices through limiting supply.


title: Monopoly

text: In 2000, the De Beers business model changed due to factors such as the decision by producers in Russia, Canada and Australia to distribute diamonds outside the De Beers channel, as well as rising awareness of blood diamonds that forced De Beers to "avoid the risk of bad publicity" by limiting sales to its own mined products. De Beers' market share by value fell from as high as 90% in the 1980s to less than 40% in 2012, having resulted in a more fragmented diamond market with more transparency and greater liquidity.


title: Monopoly

text: In November 2011 the Oppenheimer family announced its intention to sell the entirety of its 40% stake in De Beers to Anglo American plc thereby increasing Anglo American's ownership of the company to 85%.[30] The transaction was worth £3.2 billion ($5.1 billion) in cash and ended the Oppenheimer dynasty's 80-year ownership of De Beers.


title: Monopoly

text: A public utility (or simply "utility") is an organization or company that maintains the infrastructure for a public service or provides a set of services for public consumption. Common examples of utilities are electricity, natural gas, water, sewage, cable television, and telephone. In the United States, public utilities are often natural monopolies because the infrastructure required to produce and deliver a product such as electricity or water is very expensive to build and maintain.


title: Monopoly

text: Western Union was criticized as a "price gouging" monopoly in the late 19th century. American Telephone & Telegraph was a telecommunications giant. AT&T was broken up in 1984. In the case of Telecom New Zealand, local loop unbundling was enforced by central government.


title: Monopoly

text: Telkom is a semi-privatised, part state-owned South African telecommunications company. Deutsche Telekom is a former state monopoly, still partially state owned. Deutsche Telekom currently monopolizes high-speed VDSL broadband network. The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) provided electric service to over 1.1 million customers in Nassau and Suffolk counties of New York, and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens.


title: Monopoly

text: The Comcast Corporation is the largest mass media and communications company in the world by revenue. It is the largest cable company and home Internet service provider in the United States, and the nation's third largest home telephone service provider. Comcast has a monopoly in Boston, Philadelphia, and many other small towns across the US.


title: Monopoly

text: The United Aircraft and Transport Corporation was an aircraft manufacturer holding company that was forced to divest itself of airlines in 1934.


title: Monopoly

text: Iarnród Éireann, the Irish Railway authority, is a current monopoly as Ireland does not have the size for more companies.


title: Monopoly

text: The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) was founded in 1834, and since the mid-1800s has provided train service between Long Island and New York City. In the 1870s, LIRR became the sole railroad in that area through a series of acquisitions and consolidations. In 2013, the LIRR's commuter rail system is the busiest commuter railroad in North America, serving nearly 335,000 passengers daily.


title: Monopoly

text: Dutch East India Company was created as a legal trading monopoly in 1602. The "Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie" enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 17th century.


title: Monopoly

text: The British East India Company was created as a legal trading monopoly in 1600. The East India Company was formed for pursuing trade with the East Indies but ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent, North-West Frontier Province, and Balochistan. The Company traded in basic commodities, which included cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium.


title: Monopoly

text: Major League Baseball survived U.S. antitrust litigation in 1922, though its special status is still in dispute as of 2009.


title: Monopoly

text: The National Football League survived antitrust lawsuit in the 1960s but was convicted of being an illegal monopoly in the 1980s.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Born into an upper-class household with strong political connections, Manet rejected the naval career originally envisioned for him; he became engrossed in the world of painting. His early masterworks, "The Luncheon on the Grass" ("Le déjeuner sur l'herbe") and "Olympia", both 1863, caused great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the start of modern art. The last 20 years of Manet's life saw him form bonds with other great artists of the time; he developed his own simple and direct style that would be heralded as innovative and serve as a major influence for future painters.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Édouard Manet was born in Paris on 23 January 1832, in the ancestral hôtel particulier (mansion) on the Rue des Petits Augustins (now Rue Bonaparte) to an affluent and well-connected family. His mother, Eugénie-Desirée Fournier, was the daughter of a diplomat and goddaughter of the Swedish crown prince Charles Bernadotte, from whom the Swedish monarchs are descended. His father, Auguste Manet, was a French judge who expected Édouard to pursue a career in law. His uncle, Edmond Fournier, encouraged him to pursue painting and took young Manet to the Louvre. In 1841 he enrolled at secondary school, the Collège Rollin. In 1845, at the advice of his uncle, Manet enrolled in a special course of drawing where he met Antonin Proust, future Minister of Fine Arts and subsequent lifelong friend.


title: Édouard Manet

text: At his father's suggestion, in 1848 he sailed on a training vessel to Rio de Janeiro. After he twice failed the examination to join the Navy, his father relented to his wishes to pursue an art education. From 1850 to 1856, Manet studied under the academic painter Thomas Couture. In his spare time, Manet copied the Old Masters in the Louvre.


title: Édouard Manet

text: From 1853 to 1856, Manet visited Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, during which time he was influenced by the Dutch painter Frans Hals and the Spanish artists Diego Velázquez and Francisco José de Goya.


title: Édouard Manet

text: In 1856, Manet opened a studio. His style in this period was characterized by loose brush strokes, simplification of details, and the suppression of transitional tones. Adopting the current style of realism initiated by Gustave Courbet, he painted "The Absinthe Drinker" (1858–59) and other contemporary subjects such as beggars, singers, Gypsies, people in cafés, and bullfights. After his early career, he rarely painted religious, mythological, or historical subjects; religious paintings from 1864 include his "", in the Art Institute of Chicago, and "The Dead Christ with Angels", in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Manet had two canvases accepted at the Salon in 1861. A portrait of his mother and father, who at the time was paralysed and robbed of speech by a stroke, was ill-received by critics. The other, "The Spanish Singer", was admired by Théophile Gautier, and placed in a more conspicuous location as a result of its popularity with Salon-goers. Manet's work, which appeared "slightly slapdash" when compared with the meticulous style of so many other Salon paintings, intrigued some young artists. "The Spanish Singer", painted in a "strange new fashion[,] caused many painters' eyes to open and their jaws to drop."


title: Édouard Manet

text: "Music in the Tuileries" is an early example of Manet's painterly style. Inspired by Hals and Velázquez, it is a harbinger of his lifelong interest in the subject of leisure.


title: Édouard Manet

text: While the picture was regarded as unfinished by some, the suggested atmosphere imparts a sense of what the Tuileries gardens were like at the time; one may imagine the music and conversation.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Here, Manet has depicted his friends, artists, authors, and musicians who take part, and he has included a self-portrait among the subjects.


title: Édouard Manet

text: A major early work is "The Luncheon on the Grass (Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe)", originally "Le Bain". The Paris Salon rejected it for exhibition in 1863, but Manet agreed to exhibit it at the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the Rejected) which was a parallel exhibition to the official Salon, as an alternative exhibition in the Palais des Champs-Elysée. The Salon des Refusés was initiated by Emperor Napoleon III as a solution to a problematic situation which came about as the Selection Committee of the Salon that year rejected 2,783 paintings of the c. 5000. Each painter could decide whether to take the opportunity to exhibit at the Salon des Refusés, although fewer than 500 of the rejected painters chose to do so.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet employed model Victorine Meurent, his wife Suzanne, future brother-in-law Ferdinand Leenhoff, and one of his brothers to pose. Meurent also posed for several more of Manet's important paintings including "Olympia"; and by the mid-1870s she became an accomplished painter in her own right.


title: Édouard Manet

text: The painting's juxtaposition of fully dressed men and a nude woman was controversial, as was its abbreviated, sketch-like handling, an innovation that distinguished Manet from Courbet. At the same time, Manet's composition reveals his study of the old masters, as the disposition of the main figures is derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving of the "Judgement of Paris" (c. 1515) based on a drawing by Raphael.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Two additional works cited by scholars as important precedents for "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe" are "Pastoral Concert" (c. 1510, The Louvre) and "The Tempest" (Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice), both of which are attributed variously to Italian Renaissance masters Giorgione or Titian. "The Tempest" is an enigmatic painting featuring a fully dressed man and a nude woman in a rural setting. The man is standing to the left and gazing to the side, apparently at the woman, who is seated and breastfeeding a baby; the relationship between the two figures is unclear. In "Pastoral Concert", two clothed men and a nude woman are seated on the grass, engaged in music making, while a second nude woman stands beside them.


title: Édouard Manet

text: As he had in "Luncheon on the Grass", Manet again paraphrased a respected work by a Renaissance artist in the painting "Olympia" (1863), a nude portrayed in a style reminiscent of early studio photographs, but whose pose was based on Titian's "Venus of Urbino" (1538). The painting is also reminiscent of Francisco Goya's painting "The Nude Maja" (1800).


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet embarked on the canvas after being challenged to give the Salon a nude painting to display. His uniquely frank depiction of a self-assured prostitute was accepted by the Paris Salon in 1865, where it created a scandal. According to Antonin Proust, "only the precautions taken by the administration prevented the painting being punctured and torn" by offended viewers. The painting was controversial partly because the nude is wearing some small items of clothing such as an orchid in her hair, a bracelet, a ribbon around her neck, and mule slippers, all of which accentuated her nakedness, sexuality, and comfortable courtesan lifestyle. The orchid, upswept hair, black cat, and bouquet of flowers were all recognized symbols of sexuality at the time. This modern Venus' body is thin, counter to prevailing standards; the painting's lack of idealism rankled viewers. The painting's flatness, inspired by Japanese wood block art, serves to make the nude more human and less voluptuous. A fully dressed black servant is featured, exploiting the then-current theory that black people were hyper-sexed. That she is wearing the clothing of a servant to a courtesan here furthers the sexual tension of the piece.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Olympia's body as well as her gaze is unabashedly confrontational. She defiantly looks out as her servant offers flowers from one of her male suitors. Although her hand rests on her leg, hiding her pubic area, the reference to traditional female virtue is ironic; a notion of modesty is notoriously absent in this work. A contemporary critic denounced Olympia's "shamelessly flexed" left hand, which seemed to him a mockery of the relaxed, shielding hand of Titian's Venus. Likewise, the alert black cat at the foot of the bed strikes a sexually rebellious note in contrast to that of the sleeping dog in Titian's portrayal of the goddess in his "Venus of Urbino".


title: Édouard Manet

text: "Olympia" was the subject of caricatures in the popular press, but was championed by the French avant-garde community, and the painting's significance was appreciated by artists such as Gustave Courbet, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, and later Paul Gauguin.


title: Édouard Manet

text: As with "Luncheon on the Grass", the painting raised the issue of prostitution within contemporary France and the roles of women within society.


title: Édouard Manet

text: After the death of his father in 1862, Manet married Suzanne Leenhoff in 1863 at a Protestant church. Leenhoff was a Dutch-born piano teacher two years Manet's senior with whom he had been romantically involved for approximately ten years. Leenhoff initially had been employed by Manet's father, Auguste, to teach Manet and his younger brother piano. She also may have been Auguste's mistress. In 1852, Leenhoff gave birth, out of wedlock, to a son, Leon Koella Leenhoff.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet painted his wife in "The Reading", among other paintings. Her son, Leon Leenhoff, whose father may have been either of the Manets, posed often for Manet. Most famously, he is the subject of the "Boy Carrying a Sword" of 1861 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). He also appears as the boy carrying a tray in the background of "The Balcony" (1868–69).


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet became friends with the Impressionists Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, and Camille Pissarro through another painter, Berthe Morisot, who was a member of the group and drew him into their activities. They later became widely known as the Batignolles group (Le groupe des Batignolles).


title: Édouard Manet

text: The supposed grand-niece of the painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Morisot had her first painting accepted in the Salon de Paris in 1864, and she continued to show in the salon for the next ten years.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet became the friend and colleague of Morisot in 1868. She is credited with convincing Manet to attempt plein air painting, which she had been practicing since she was introduced to it by another friend of hers, Camille Corot. They had a reciprocating relationship and Manet incorporated some of her techniques into his paintings. In 1874, she became his sister-in-law when she married his brother, Eugène.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Unlike the core Impressionist group, Manet maintained that modern artists should seek to exhibit at the Paris Salon rather than abandon it in favor of independent exhibitions. Nevertheless, when Manet was excluded from the International Exhibition of 1867, he set up his own exhibition. His mother worried that he would waste all his inheritance on this project, which was enormously expensive. While the exhibition earned poor reviews from the major critics, it also provided his first contacts with several future Impressionist painters, including Degas.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Although his own work influenced and anticipated the Impressionist style, Manet resisted involvement in Impressionist exhibitions, partly because he did not wish to be seen as the representative of a group identity, and partly because he preferred to exhibit at the Salon. Eva Gonzalès, a daughter of the novelist Emmanuel Gonzalès, was his only formal student.


title: Édouard Manet

text: He was influenced by the Impressionists, especially Monet and Morisot. Their influence is seen in Manet's use of lighter colors: after the early 1870s he made less use of dark backgrounds but retained his distinctive use of black, uncharacteristic of Impressionist painting. He painted many outdoor (plein air) pieces, but always returned to what he considered the serious work of the studio.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet enjoyed a close friendship with composer Emmanuel Chabrier, painting two portraits of him; the musician owned 14 of Manet's paintings and dedicated his "Impromptu" to Manet's wife.


title: Édouard Manet

text: One of Manet's frequent models at the beginning of the 1880s was the "semimondaine" Méry Laurent, who posed for seven portraits in pastel. Laurent's salons hosted many French (and even American) writers and painters of her time; Manet had connections and influence through such events.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Throughout his life, although resisted by art critics, Manet could number as his champions Émile Zola, who supported him publicly in the press, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Charles Baudelaire, who challenged him to depict life as it was. Manet, in turn, drew or painted each of them.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet's paintings of café scenes are observations of social life in 19th-century Paris. People are depicted drinking beer, listening to music, flirting, reading, or waiting. Many of these paintings were based on sketches executed on the spot. Manet often visited the Brasserie Reichshoffen on boulevard de Rochechourt, upon which he based "At the Cafe" in 1878. Several people are at the bar, and one woman confronts the viewer while others wait to be served. Such depictions represent the painted journal of a flâneur. These are painted in a style which is loose, referencing Hals and Velázquez, yet they capture the mood and feeling of Parisian night life. They are painted snapshots of bohemianism, urban working people, as well as some of the bourgeoisie.


title: Édouard Manet

text: In "Corner of a Café-Concert", a man smokes while behind him a waitress serves drinks. In "The Beer Drinkers" a woman enjoys her beer in the company of a friend. In "The Café-Concert", shown at right, a sophisticated gentleman sits at a bar while a waitress stands resolutely in the background, sipping her drink. In "The Waitress", a serving woman pauses for a moment behind a seated customer smoking a pipe, while a ballet dancer, with arms extended as she is about to turn, is on stage in the background.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet also sat at the restaurant on the Avenue de Clichy called Pere Lathuille's, which had a garden in addition to the dining area. One of the paintings he produced here was "Chez le père Lathuille" (At Pere Lathuille's), in which a man displays an unrequited interest in a woman dining near him.


title: Édouard Manet

text: In "Le Bon Bock" (1873), a large, cheerful, bearded man sits with a pipe in one hand and a glass of beer in the other, looking straight at the viewer.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet painted the upper class enjoying more formal social activities. In "Masked Ball at the Opera", Manet shows a lively crowd of people enjoying a party. Men stand with top hats and long black suits while talking to women with masks and costumes. He included portraits of his friends in this picture.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet depicted other popular activities in his work. In "The Races at Longchamp", an unusual perspective is employed to underscore the furious energy of racehorses as they rush toward the viewer. In "Skating", Manet shows a well dressed woman in the foreground, while others skate behind her. Always there is the sense of active urban life continuing behind the subject, extending outside the frame of the canvas.


title: Édouard Manet

text: In "View of the International Exhibition", soldiers relax, seated and standing, prosperous couples are talking. There is a gardener, a boy with a dog, a woman on horseback—in short, a sample of the classes and ages of the people of Paris.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet's response to modern life included works devoted to war, in subjects that may be seen as updated interpretations of the genre of "history painting". The first such work was "The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama" (1864), a sea skirmish known as the "Battle of Cherbourg" from the American Civil War which took place off the French coast, and may have been witnessed by the artist.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Of interest next was the French intervention in Mexico; from 1867 to 1869 Manet painted three versions of the "Execution of Emperor Maximilian", an event which raised concerns regarding French foreign and domestic policy. The several versions of the "Execution" are among Manet's largest paintings, which suggests that the theme was one which the painter regarded as most important. Its subject is the execution by Mexican firing squad of a Habsburg emperor who had been installed by Napoleon III. Neither the paintings nor a lithograph of the subject were permitted to be shown in France. As an indictment of formalized slaughter, the paintings look back to Goya, and anticipate Picasso's "Guernica".


title: Édouard Manet

text: In January 1871, Manet traveled to Oloron-Sainte-Marie in the Pyrenees. In his absence his friends added his name to the "Fédération des artistes" (see: Courbet) of the Paris Commune. Manet stayed away from Paris, perhaps, until after the "semaine sanglante": in a letter to Berthe Morisot at Cherbourg (10 June 1871) he writes, ""We came back to Paris a few days ago..."" (the semaine sanglante ended on 28 May).


title: Édouard Manet

text: The prints and drawings collection of the Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest) has a watercolour/gouache by Manet, "The Barricade", depicting a summary execution of Communards by Versailles troops based on a lithograph of the execution of Maximilian. A similar piece, "The Barricade" (oil on plywood), is held by a private collector.


title: Édouard Manet

text: On 18 March 1871, he wrote to his (confederate) friend Félix Bracquemond in Paris about his visit to Bordeaux, the provisional seat of the French National Assembly of the Third French Republic where Émile Zola introduced him to the sites: "I never imagined that France could be represented by such doddering old fools, not excepting that little twit Thiers..." If this could be interpreted as support of the Commune, a following letter to Bracquemond (21 March 1871) expressed his idea more clearly: "Only party hacks and the ambitious, the Henrys of this world following on the heels of the Milliéres, the grotesque imitators of the Commune of 1793". He knew the communard Lucien Henry to have been a former painter's model and Millière, an insurance agent. "What an encouragement all these bloodthirsty caperings are for the arts! But there is at least one consolation in our misfortunes: that we're not politicians and have no desire to be elected as deputies".


title: Édouard Manet

text: The public figure Manet admired most was the republican Léon Gambetta. In the heat of the "seize mai" coup in 1877, Manet opened up his atelier to a republican electoral meeting chaired by Gambetta's friend Eugène Spuller.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet depicted many scenes of the streets of Paris in his works. "The Rue Mosnier Decked with Flags" depicts red, white, and blue pennants covering buildings on either side of the street; another painting of the same title features a one-legged man walking with crutches. Again depicting the same street, but this time in a different context, is "Rue Mosnier with Pavers", in which men repair the roadway while people and horses move past.


title: Édouard Manet

text: "The Railway", widely known as "The Gare Saint-Lazare", was painted in 1873. The setting is the urban landscape of Paris in the late 19th century. Using his favorite model in his last painting of her, a fellow painter, Victorine Meurent, also the model for "Olympia" and the "Luncheon on the Grass", sits before an iron fence holding a sleeping puppy and an open book in her lap. Next to her is a little girl with her back to the painter, watching a train pass beneath them.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Instead of choosing the traditional natural view as background for an outdoor scene, Manet opts for the iron grating which "boldly stretches across the canvas" The only evidence of the train is its white cloud of steam. In the distance, modern apartment buildings are seen. This arrangement compresses the foreground into a narrow focus. The traditional convention of deep space is ignored.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Historian Isabelle Dervaux has described the reception this painting received when it was first exhibited at the official Paris Salon of 1874: "Visitors and critics found its subject baffling, its composition incoherent, and its execution sketchy. Caricaturists ridiculed Manet's picture, in which only a few recognized the symbol of modernity that it has become today". The painting is currently in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet painted several boating subjects in 1874. "Boating", now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exemplifies in its conciseness the lessons Manet learned from Japanese prints, and the abrupt cropping by the frame of the boat and sail adds to the immediacy of the image.


title: Édouard Manet

text: In 1875, a book-length French edition of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" included lithographs by Manet and translation by Mallarmé.


title: Édouard Manet

text: In 1881, with pressure from his friend Antonin Proust, the French government awarded Manet the Légion d'honneur.


title: Édouard Manet

text: In his mid-forties Manet's health deteriorated, and he developed severe pain and partial paralysis in his legs. In 1879 he began receiving hydrotherapy treatments at a spa near Meudon intended to improve what he believed was a circulatory problem, but in reality he was suffering from locomotor ataxia, a known side-effect of syphilis. In 1880, he painted a portrait there of the opera singer Émilie Ambre as Carmen. Ambre and her lover Gaston de Beauplan had an estate in Meudon and had organized the first exhibition of Manet's "The Execution of Emperor Maximilian" in New York in December 1879.


title: Édouard Manet

text: In his last years Manet painted many small-scale still lifes of fruits and vegetables, such as "A" "Bunch of Asparagus" and "The Lemon" (both 1880). He completed his last major work, "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère)", in 1882, and it hung in the Salon that year. Afterwards, he limited himself to small formats. His last paintings were of flowers in glass vases.


title: Édouard Manet

text: In April 1883, his left foot was amputated because of gangrene caused by complications from syphilis and rheumatism. He died eleven days later on 30 April in Paris. He is buried in the Passy Cemetery in the city.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Manet's public career lasted from 1861, the year of his first participation in the Salon, until his death in 1883. His known extant works, as catalogued in 1975 by Denis Rouart and Daniel Wildenstein, comprise 430 oil paintings, 89 pastels, and more than 400 works on paper.


title: Édouard Manet

text: Although harshly condemned by critics who decried its lack of conventional finish, Manet's work had admirers from the beginning. One was Émile Zola, who wrote in 1867: "We are not accustomed to seeing such simple and direct translations of reality. Then, as I said, there is such a surprisingly elegant awkwardness ... it is a truly charming experience to contemplate this luminous and serious painting which interprets nature with a gentle brutality."


title: Édouard Manet

text: The roughly painted style and photographic lighting in Manet's paintings was seen as specifically modern, and as a challenge to the Renaissance works he copied or used as source material. He rejected the technique he had learned in the studio of Thomas Couture – in which a painting was constructed using successive layers of paint on a dark-toned ground – in favor of a direct, "alla prima" method using opaque paint on a light ground. Novel at the time, this method made possible the completion of a painting in a single sitting. It was adopted by the Impressionists, and became the prevalent method of painting in oils for generations that followed. Manet's work is considered "early modern", partially because of the opaque flatness of his surfaces, the frequent sketch-like passages, and the black outlining of figures, all of which draw attention to the surface of the picture plane and the material quality of paint.


title: Édouard Manet

text: The art historian Beatrice Farwell says Manet "has been universally regarded as the Father of Modernism. With Courbet he was among the first to take serious risks with the public whose favour he sought, the first to make "alla prima" painting the standard technique for oil painting and one of the first to take liberties with Renaissance perspective and to offer "pure painting" as a source of aesthetic pleasure. He was a pioneer, again with Courbet, in the rejection of humanistic and historical subject-matter, and shared with Degas the establishment of modern urban life as acceptable material for high art."


title: Édouard Manet

text: The late Manet painting, "Le Printemps" (1881), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum for $65.1 million, setting a new auction record for Manet, exceeding its pre-sale estimate of $25–35 million at Christie's on 5 November 2014. The previous auction record was held by "Self-Portrait With Palette" which sold for $33.2 million at Sotheby's on 22 June 2010.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but otherwise-unrelated Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which was operational from 1912 to 1920.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Allan Loughead and his brother Malcolm Loughead had operated an earlier aircraft company, Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which was operational from 1912 to 1920. The company built and operated aircraft for paying passengers on sightseeing tours in California and had developed a prototype for the civil market, but folded in 1920 due to the flood of surplus aircraft deflating the market after World War I. Allan went into the real estate market while Malcolm had meanwhile formed a successful company marketing brake systems for automobiles.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: On December 13, 1926, Allan Lockheed, John Northrop, Kenneth Kay and Fred Keeler secured funding to form the Lockheed Aircraft Company in Hollywood (spelled phonetically to prevent mispronunciation). This new company utilized some of the same technology originally developed for the Model S-1 to design the Vega Model. In March 1928, the company relocated to Burbank, California, and by year's end reported sales exceeding one million dollars. From 1926 to 1928 the company produced over 80 aircraft and employed more than 300 workers who by April 1929 were building five aircraft per week. In July 1929, majority shareholder Fred Keeler sold 87% of the Lockheed Aircraft Company to Detroit Aircraft Corporation. In August 1929, Allan Loughead resigned.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: The Great Depression ruined the aircraft market, and Detroit Aircraft went bankrupt. A group of investors headed by brothers Robert and Courtland Gross, and Walter Varney, bought the company out of receivership in 1932. The syndicate bought the company for a mere $40,000 ($ in 2011). Ironically, Allan Loughead himself had planned to bid for his own company, but had raised only $50,000 ($), which he felt was too small a sum for a serious bid.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: In 1934, Robert E. Gross was named chairman of the new company, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, which was headquartered at what is now the airport in Burbank, California. His brother Courtlandt S. Gross was a co-founder and executive, succeeding Robert as chairman following his death in 1961. The company was named the Lockheed Corporation in 1977.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: The first successful construction that was built in any number (141 aircraft) was the Vega first built in 1927, best known for its several first- and record-setting flights by, among others, Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, and George Hubert Wilkins. In the 1930s, Lockheed spent $139,400 ($) to develop the Model 10 Electra, a small twin-engined transport. The company sold 40 in the first year of production. Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, flew it in their failed attempt to circumnavigate the world in 1937. Subsequent designs, the Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior and the Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra expanded their market.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: The Lockheed Model 14 formed the basis for the Hudson bomber, which was supplied to both the British Royal Air Force and the United States military before and during World War II. Its primary role was submarine hunting. The Model 14 Super Electra were sold abroad, and more than 100 were license-built in Japan for use by the Imperial Japanese Army.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: At the beginning of World War II, Lockheed – under the guidance of Clarence (Kelly) Johnson, who is considered one of the best-known American aircraft designers – answered a specification for an interceptor by submitting the P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft, a twin-engined, twin-boom design. The P-38 was the only American fighter aircraft in production throughout American involvement in the war, from Pearl Harbor to Victory over Japan Day. It filled ground-attack, air-to-air, and even strategic bombing roles in all theaters of the war in which the United States operated. The P-38 was responsible for shooting down more Japanese aircraft than any other U.S. Army Air Forces type during the war; it is particularly famous for being the aircraft type that shot down Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's airplane.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: The Lockheed Vega factory was located next to Burbank's Union Airport which it had purchased in 1940. During the war, the entire area was camouflaged in case of enemy reconnaissance. The factory was hidden beneath a huge burlap tarpaulin painted to depict a peaceful semi-rural neighborhood, replete with rubber automobiles. Hundreds of fake trees, shrubs, buildings, and even fire hydrants were positioned to give a three-dimensional appearance. The trees and shrubs were created from chicken wire treated with an adhesive and covered with feathers to provide a leafy texture.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Lockheed ranked tenth among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. All told, Lockheed and its subsidiary Vega produced 19,278 aircraft during World War II, representing six percent of war production, including 2,600 Venturas, 2,750 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers (built under license from Boeing), 2,900 Hudson bombers, and 9,000 Lightnings.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: During World War II, Lockheed, in cooperation with Trans-World Airlines (TWA), had developed the L-049 Constellation, a radical new airliner capable of flying 43 passengers between New York and London at a speed of in 13 hours.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Once the Constellation (nicknamed "Connie") went into production, the military received the first production models; after the war, the airlines received their original orders, giving Lockheed more than a year's head-start over other aircraft manufacturers in what was easily foreseen as the post-war modernization of civilian air travel. The Constellations' performance set new standards which transformed the civilian transportation market. Its signature tri-tail was the result of many initial customers not having hangars tall enough for a conventional tail. Lockheed produced a larger transport, the double-decked R6V Constitution, which was intended to make the Constellation obsolete. However, the design proved underpowered.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: In 1943, Lockheed began, in secrecy, development of a new jet fighter at its Burbank facility. This fighter, the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, became the first American jet fighter to score a kill. It also recorded the first jet-to-jet aerial kill, downing a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 in Korea, although by this time the F-80 (as it was redesignated in June 1948) was already considered obsolete.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Starting with the P-80, Lockheed's secret development work was conducted by its Advanced Development Division, more commonly known as the Skunk works. The name was taken from Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner. This organization has become famous and spawned many successful Lockheed designs, including the U-2 (late 1950s), SR-71 Blackbird (1962) and F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter (1978). The Skunk Works often created high-quality designs in a short time and sometimes with limited resources.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: In 1954, the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, a durable four-engined transport, flew for the first time. This type remains in production today. In 1956, Lockheed received a contract for the development of the Polaris Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM); it would be followed by the Poseidon and Trident nuclear missiles. Lockheed developed the F-104 Starfighter in the late 1950s, the world's first Mach 2 fighter jet. In the early 1960s, the company introduced the C-141 Starlifter four-engine jet transport.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: During the 1960s, Lockheed began development for two large aircraft: the C-5 Galaxy military transport and the L-1011 TriStar wide-body civil airliner. Both projects encountered delays and cost overruns. The C-5 was built to vague initial requirements and suffered from structural weaknesses, which Lockheed was forced to correct at its own expense. The TriStar competed for the same market as the McDonnell Douglas DC-10; delays in Rolls-Royce engine development caused the TriStar to fall behind the DC-10. The C-5 and L-1011 projects, the canceled U.S. Army AH-56 Cheyenne helicopter program, and embroiled shipbuilding contracts caused Lockheed to lose large sums of money during the 1970s.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Drowning in debt, in 1971 Lockheed (then the largest US defense contractor) asked the US government for a loan guarantee, to avoid insolvency. Lockheed argued that a government bailout was necessary due to the company's value for U.S. national security. On May 13, 1971 the Richard Nixon administration sent a bill titled "The Emergency Loan Guarantee Act" to Congress requesting a $250 million loan guarantee for Lockheed and its L-1011 Tristar airbus program. The measure was hotly debated in the US Senate. The chief antagonist was Senator William Proxmire (D-Wis), the nemesis of Lockheed and its chairman, Daniel J. Haughton. Some of the debate in Congress developed over what conditions should be attached to the bailout. Senator Alan Cranston demanded that the management be forced to step down, lest it set a precedent rewarding wasteful spending. Others argued that the company should be allowed to go into bankruptcy citing the recent decision to leave Penn Central railroad to that fate, and the fact that the airbus program at issue was commercial rather than military.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Naval scholar Thomas Paul Stanton notes that the opposition to the bill held it was "the beginning of the socialization of the American aircraft and aerospace industry." Proponents responded by claiming "this socializing process had taken place many years before," and some witnesses before Congress discounted "the very notion of 'free enterprise'." Treasury Secretary Connally pointed to the faltering economy and worries about unemployment while testifying "the time has come within the United States when we have to look at things differently. Free enterprise is just not all that free." Questions arose whether letting Lockheed fail would be bad for the market due to decreased competition or good by screening out inefficient competitors and mismanagement. Lockheed's competitors, McDonnell Douglas and General Electric (collaborators on the DC-10) strongly opposed the bill and they feared the government would steer contracts to Lockheed to insure loan payments. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover condemned the bill saying it represented "a new philosophy where we privatize profits and socialize losses." The New York Times editorial board held that the Nixon administration was violating its own free enterprise principles by advocating for the loan. (Later, historian Stephen J. Whitfield viewed the passage of the loan guarantee as a support for the argument that America was shifting away from Lockean liberalism.)


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Following a fierce debate, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of the measure on August 2, 1971. President Nixon signed the bill into law on August 9, 1971 - which became colloquially known as the "Lockheed Loan". Even after its adoption, a further controversy developed when the Emergency Loan Guarantee Board set up by the Executive branch to oversee the loan refused to allow Congress' General Accounting Office to examine its records. They argued that the office was attempting "interference in the decision-making process" amounting to an effort to "bully" and "harass" the board. This claim was denied by Comptroller General Elmer B. Staats, and efforts were made by Senator William Proxmire to get Treasury Secretary John Connally to testify due to the suspicion that the loan guarantee was in jeopardy. The editorial board of "The New York Times" blasted the situation, citing it as another argument against the propriety of the loan guarantee and the precedent it set for other failing companies. The debate around the ramifications of the Lockheed loan guarantee soon resurfaced in late 1975 with discussions on possible aid to New York City during its fiscal crisis.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Lockheed finished paying off the $1.4 billion loan in 1977, along with about $112.22 million in loan guarantee fees.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: The Lockheed bribery scandals were a series of illegal bribes and contributions made by Lockheed officials from the late 1950s to the 1970s. In late 1975 and early 1976, a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate led by Senator Frank Church concluded that members of the Lockheed board had paid members of friendly governments to guarantee contracts for military aircraft. In 1976, it was publicly revealed that Lockheed had paid $22 million in bribes to foreign officials in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft including the F-104 Starfighter, the so-called Deal of the Century.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: The scandal caused considerable political controversy in West Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Japan. In the US, the scandal led to passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and nearly led to the ailing corporation's downfall (it was already struggling due to the poor sales of the L-1011 airliner). Haughton resigned his post as chairman.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: In the late 1980s, leveraged buyout specialist Harold Simmons conducted a widely publicized but unsuccessful takeover attempt on the Lockheed Corporation, having gradually acquired almost 20 percent of its stock. Lockheed was attractive to Simmons because one of its primary investors was the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the pension fund of the state of California. At the time, the "New York Times" said, "Much of Mr. Simmons's interest in Lockheed is believed to stem from its pension plan, which is over funded by more than $1.4 billion. Analysts said he might want to liquidate the plan and pay out the excess funds to shareholders, including himself." Citing the mismanagement by its chairman, Daniel M. Tellep, Simmons stated a wish to replace its board with a slate of his own choosing, since he was the largest investor. His board nominations included former Texas Senator John Tower, the onetime chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr., a former Chief of Naval Operations. Simmons had first begun accumulating Lockheed stock in early 1989 when deep Pentagon cuts to the defense budget had driven down prices of military contractor stocks, and analysts had not believed he would attempt the takeover since he was also at the time pursuing control of Georgia Gulf.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Merger talks between Lockheed and Martin Marietta began in March 1994, with the companies announcing their $10 billion planned merger on August 30, 1994. The headquarters for the combined companies would be at Martin Marietta headquarters in North Bethesda, Maryland. The deal was finalized on March 15, 1995, when the two companies' shareholders approved the merger. The segments of the two companies not retained by the new company formed the basis for the L-3 Communications, a mid-size defense contractor in its own right. Lockheed Martin also later spun off the materials company Martin Marietta Materials.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: The company's executives received large bonuses directly from the government as a result of the merger. Norman R. Augustine who was at the time CEO of Martin Marietta received an $8.2 million bonus.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Both companies contributed important products to the new portfolio. Lockheed products included the Trident missile, P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft, U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance airplanes, F-117 Nighthawk, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22 Raptor, C-130 Hercules, A-4AR Fightinghawk and the DSCS-3 satellite. Martin Marietta products included Titan rockets, Sandia National Laboratories (management contract acquired in 1993), Space Shuttle External Tank, Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers, the Transfer Orbit Stage (under subcontract to Orbital Sciences Corporation) and various satellite models.


title: Lockheed Corporation

text: Lockheed's operations were divided between several groups and divisions, many of which continue to operate within Lockheed


title: Bear McCreary

text: Bear McCreary (born February 17, 1979) is an American musician and composer of film, television, and video game scores based in Los Angeles, California. His work includes the scores of the television series "Battlestar Galactica" (2004), "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.", "Outlander", "The Walking Dead" and "", The Serpent Queen, the video games "", "God of War" and "Ragnarök", and the film "".


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary has been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series for his work on season one of "Outlander" and won one Emmy for the main title of "Da Vinci's Demons". He has also won a BAFTA for his work on "God of War".


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary spent most of his formative years in Bellingham, Washington. He is the son of author Laura Kalpakian and professor Jay McCreary of University of Hawaii at Manoa. His brother, Brendan McCreary, is also a musician. Bear has directed and produced several music videos for Brendan's band, "Young Beautiful in a Hurry". He graduated from Bellingham High School in 1997.


title: Bear McCreary

text: He is a classically trained pianist and self-taught accordionist. He studied under the renowned film score composer Elmer Bernstein during which time he reconstructed and reorchestrated Bernstein's 1963 score for "Kings of the Sun". Their collaboration allowed for the complete score to be available as a soundtrack album for the first time in 40 years.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary went to USC Thornton School of Music at the encouragement of Elmer Bernstein becoming his protégé and graduating in 2002 from Screen Scoring.


title: Bear McCreary

text: In 2003, McCreary worked under primary composer Richard Gibbs on the three-hour miniseries which served as a pilot for the reimagined series of "Battlestar Galactica". When the show was picked up, Gibbs opted not to devote full-time to the regular series' production, and McCreary became the sole composer. He worked on the series until it reached its conclusion in 2009, scoring over 70 episodes. To date, six "Battlestar Galactica" soundtrack albums have been released, and have garnered a great deal of critical acclaim and commercial success. The soundtracks for seasons two and three ranked amongst Amazon.com's Top 30 Music Sales on their first days of release.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary provided the score for the series "Human Target" (based on the comic book of the same name). The pilot episode and main theme score had been recorded with a full orchestra. The series has the distinction of having one of the largest orchestras on television.


title: Bear McCreary

text: The score to the finale of season one, "Christopher Chance", used the largest orchestra ever assembled for episodic television, and he took the opportunity to rerecord the main title theme with a new orchestration with this larger ensemble.


title: Bear McCreary

text: In a post on his blog on July 25, 2010, McCreary announced the new creative leadership brought in for season two had not asked him to return for it, and he would be leaving the series.


title: Bear McCreary

text: The opening title sequence for "Black Sails" was composed by McCreary with a backing sea shanty inspired theme. It accurately features an instrument of the period in the form of the hurdy-gurdy.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary has composed the soundtrack for each of the first five seasons of "Outlander", with the main title being sung by his long time collaborator and partner, Raya Yarbrough.


title: Bear McCreary

text: In 2015, McCreary was nominated for an Emmy for the pilot "Outlander" episode "Sassenach" (S01E01; 2014-08-09).


title: Bear McCreary

text: During Comic-Con 2010, Bear McCreary attended panels for AMC's "The Walking Dead" and NBC's "The Cape" to announce he would be composing the score for both television series.


title: Bear McCreary

text: On July 15, 2013, McCreary announced that he would compose the score for ABC's series "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." On September 4, 2015, McCreary released the official "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." soundtrack publicly.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary served as orchestral producer for the rock opera "" airing on Adult Swim on October 27, 2013. This is a continuation of the Metalocalypse universe following the band Dethklok. The music features a 50-piece orchestra. The soundtrack was released on October 29, 2013.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary also composed the score for the television series "Snowpiercer" which premiered on TNT May 17, 2020. "Snowpiercer" was also distributed online via Netflix.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary composed the theme and music for the television series "Foundation", an Apple TV+ series adapted from Isaac Asimov’s novels. The Season 1 soundtrack was released on September 24, 2021. The next year, he composed the score for the "Amazon Prime Video" fantasy television series "", releasing an album along each episode.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary worked on several films providing additional music and conducting for "My Baby's Daddy" and "Johnson Family Vacation" before striking it off on his own and scoring "Rest Stop" and "", both direct to video.


title: Bear McCreary

text: After working with Shawn Papazian on "", the sequel to "Rest Stop". McCreary made his theatrical film debut with "Step Up 3D"


title: Bear McCreary

text: Following "Step Up 3D," he scored three films directed by Joe Lynch, "Chillerama", "Knights of Badassdom" and "Everly". "Everly"'s soundtrack included a duet McCreary sang with his wife, Raya Yarbrough.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary has only worked with a few directors multiple times. Christopher Landon on three films, "Happy Death Day", "Happy Death Day 2U" and "Freaky", and director McG twice on "Rim of the World" and "".


title: Bear McCreary

text: Other notable film scores include , "10 Cloverfield Lane", "The Cloverfield Paradox", "Child's Play (2019 film)", and "".


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary made an eight-bit rendition of the "Dark Void" theme, which was, originally, an April fools joke. However, the theme was used for the prequel, "Dark Void Zero". He composed all the songs in an eight-bit fashion by connecting the wires on an actual NES console and cartridge to create authenticity.


title: Bear McCreary

text: He arranged James Rolfe's "The Angry Video Game Nerd" "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" parody "You're a Mean One, Mr. Nerd" for the 2010 Christmas special, with orchestra and eight-bit audio elements.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary also performed with his orchestra live at Sony's E3 2016 press conference throughout the show and composed the score of the 2018 "God of War" game. He also composed the music for its 2022 sequel, "God of War Ragnarök", for which he also plays a minor character in the game, a Dwarf named Ræb.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary married singer and songwriter Raya Yarbrough in 2010. They have collaborated on the music of "Battlestar Galactica", "Outlander", "Defiance", "Da Vinci's Demons", among other projects. Their daughter Sonatine, named after the musical term "sonatina", was born on June 2, 2014.


title: Bear McCreary

text: McCreary credits composers Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Danny Elfman, Ennio Morricone, John Williams, and Shirley Walker as being key to his growing up adoring film music. They were his heroes while he was growing up. Contemporary composers including Hans Zimmer continue to inspire McCreary's growth.


title: Nantes

text: Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabitants (2018). With Saint-Nazaire, a seaport on the Loire estuary, Nantes forms one of the main north-western French metropolitan agglomerations.


title: Nantes

text: It is the administrative seat of the Loire-Atlantique department and the Pays de la Loire region, one of 18 regions of France. Nantes belongs historically and culturally to Brittany, a former duchy and province, and its omission from the modern administrative region of Brittany is controversial.


title: Nantes

text: Nantes was identified during classical antiquity as a port on the Loire. It was the seat of a bishopric at the end of the Roman era before it was conquered by the Bretons in 851. Although Nantes was the primary residence of the 15th-century dukes of Brittany, Rennes became the provincial capital after the 1532 union of Brittany and France. During the 17th century, after the establishment of the French colonial empire, Nantes gradually became the largest port in France and was responsible for nearly half of the 18th-century French Atlantic slave trade. The French Revolution resulted in an economic decline, but Nantes developed robust industries after 1850 (chiefly in shipbuilding and food processing). Deindustrialisation in the second half of the 20th century spurred the city to adopt a service economy.


title: Nantes

text: In 2020, the Globalization and World Cities Research Network ranked Nantes as a Gamma world city. It is the third-highest-ranking city in France, after Paris and Lyon. The Gamma category includes cities such as Algiers, Orlando, Porto, Turin and Leipzig. Nantes has been praised for its quality of life, and it received the European Green Capital Award in 2013. The European Commission noted the city's efforts to reduce air pollution and CO emissions, its high-quality and well-managed public transport system and its biodiversity, with of green space and several protected Natura 2000 areas.


title: Nantes

text: Nantes is named after a tribe of Gaul, the Namnetes, who established a settlement between the end of the second century and the beginning of the first century BC on the north bank of the Loire near its confluence with the Erdre. The origin of the name "Namnetes" is uncertain, but is thought to come from the Gaulish root *"nant-" 'river, stream' (from the pre-Celtic root "*nanto" 'valley') or from "Amnites", another tribal name possibly meaning 'men of the river'.


title: Nantes

text: Its first recorded name was by the Greek writer Ptolemy, who referred to the settlement as () and ()—which might be read as ()—in his treatise, "Geography". The name was Latinised during the Gallo-Roman period as (the most common form), , and . Although its origins are unclear, seems to be related to the Gaulish word 'confluence'.


title: Nantes

text: The Namnete root of the city's name was introduced at the end of the Roman period, when it became known as "port of the Namnetes" and 'city of the Namnetes'. Like other cities in the region (including Paris), its name was replaced during the fourth century with a Gaulish one: Lutetia became Paris (city of the Parisii), and Darioritum became Vannes (city of the Veneti). Nantes' name continued to evolve, becoming and during the fifth century and Nantes after the sixth, via syncope (suppression of the middle syllable).


title: Nantes

text: "Nantes" is pronounced , and the city's inhabitants are known as "Nantais" . In Gallo, the oïl language traditionally spoken in the region around Nantes, the city is spelled "Naunnt" or "Nantt" and pronounced identically to French, although northern speakers use a long . In Breton, Nantes is known as or , the latter of which is less common and reflects the more-frequent use of articles in Breton toponyms than in French ones.


title: Nantes

text: Nantes' historical nickname was "Venice of the West" (), a reference to the many quays and river channels in the old town before they were filled in during the 1920s and 1930s. The city is commonly known as "the City of the Dukes [of Brittany]" for its castle and former role as a ducal residence.


title: Nantes

text: The first inhabitants of what is now Nantes settled during the Bronze Age, later than in the surrounding regions (which have Neolithic monuments absent from Nantes). Its first inhabitants were apparently attracted by small iron and tin deposits in the region's subsoil. The area exported tin, mined in Abbaretz and Piriac, as far as Ireland. After about 1,000 years of trading, local industry appeared around 900 BC; remnants of smithies dated to the eighth and seventh centuries BC have been found in the city. Nantes may have been the major Gaulish settlement of Corbilo, on the Loire estuary, which was mentioned by the Greek historians Strabo and Polybius.


title: Nantes

text: Its history from the seventh century to the Roman conquest in the first century BC is poorly documented, and there is no evidence of a city in the area before the reign of Tiberius in the first century AD. During the Gaulish period it was the capital of the Namnetes people, who were allied with the Veneti in a territory extending to the northern bank of the Loire. Rivals in the area included the Pictones, who controlled the area south of the Loire in the city of Ratiatum (present-day Rezé) until the end of the second century AD. Ratiatum, founded under Augustus, developed more quickly than Nantes and was a major port in the region. Nantes began to grow when Ratiatum collapsed after the Germanic invasions.


title: Nantes

text: Because tradesmen favoured inland roads rather than Atlantic routes, Nantes never became a large city under Roman occupation. Although it lacked amenities such as a theatre or an amphitheatre, the city had sewers, public baths and a temple dedicated to Mars Mullo. After an attack by German tribes in 275, Nantes' inhabitants built a wall; this defense also became common in surrounding Gaulish towns. The wall in Nantes, enclosing , was one of the largest in Gaul.


title: Nantes

text: Christianity was introduced during the third century. The first local martyrs (Donatian and Rogatian) were executed in 288–290, and a cathedral was built during the fourth century.


title: Nantes

text: Like much of the region, Nantes was part of the Roman Empire during the early Middle Ages. Although many parts of Brittany experienced significant Breton immigration (loosening ties to Rome), Nantes remained allied with the empire until its collapse in the fifth century. Around 490, the Franks under Clovis I captured the city (alongside eastern Brittany) from the Visigoths after a sixty-day siege; it was used as a stronghold against the Bretons. Under Charlemagne in the eighth century the town was the capital of the Breton March, a buffer zone protecting the Carolingian Empire from Breton invasion. The first governor of the Breton March was Roland, whose feats were mythologized in the body of literature known as the Matter of France. After Charlemagne's death in 814, Breton armies invaded the March and fought the Franks. Nominoe (a Breton) became the first duke of Brittany, seizing Nantes in 850. Discord marked the first decades of Breton rule in Nantes as Breton lords fought among themselves, making the city vulnerable to Viking incursions. The most spectacular Viking attack in Nantes occurred in 843, when Viking warriors killed the bishop but did not settle in the city at that time. Nantes became part of the Viking realm in 919, but the Norse were expelled from the town in 937 by Alan II, Duke of Brittany.


title: Nantes

text: Feudalism took hold in France during the 10th and 11th centuries, and Nantes was the seat of a county founded in the ninth century. Until the beginning of the 13th century, it was the subject of succession crises which saw the town pass several times from the Dukes of Brittany to the counts of Anjou (of the House of Plantagenet). During the 14th century, Brittany experienced a war of succession which ended with the accession of the House of Montfort to the ducal throne. The Montforts, seeking emancipation from the suzerainty of the French kings, reinforced Breton institutions. They chose Nantes, the largest town in Brittany (with a population of over 10,000), as their main residence and made it the home of their council, their treasury and their chancery. Port traffic, insignificant during the Middle Ages, became the city's main activity. Nantes began to trade with foreign countries, exporting salt from Bourgneuf, wine, fabrics and hemp (usually to the British Isles). The 15th century is considered Nantes' first golden age. The reign of Francis II saw many improvements to a city in dire need of repair after the wars of succession and a series of storms and fires between 1387 and 1415. Many buildings were built or rebuilt (including the cathedral and the castle), and the University of Nantes, the first in Brittany, was founded in 1460.


title: Nantes

text: The marriage of Anne of Brittany to Charles VIII of France in 1491 began the unification of France and Brittany which was ratified by Francis I of France in 1532. The union ended a long feudal conflict between France and Brittany, reasserting the king's suzerainty over the Bretons. In return for surrendering its independence, Brittany retained its privileges. Although most Breton institutions were maintained, the unification favoured Rennes (the site of ducal coronations). Rennes received most legal and administrative institutions, and Nantes kept a financial role with its Chamber of Accounts. During the French Wars of Religion from 1562 to 1598, the city was a Catholic League stronghold. The Duke of Mercœur, governor of Brittany, strongly opposed the succession of the Protestant Henry IV of France to the throne of France in 1589. The Duke created an independent government in Nantes, allying with Spain and pressing for independence from France. Despite initial successes with Spanish aid, in 1598 he submitted to Henry IV (who had by then converted to Catholicism); the Edict of Nantes (legalising Protestantism in France) was signed in the town, concluding the French wars of religion. Nonetheless, the town remained fervently Catholic (by contrast to nearby La Rochelle), and the local Protestant community did not number more than 1,000.


title: Nantes

text: Coastal navigation and the export of locally produced goods (salt, wine and fabrics) dominated the local economy around 1600. During the mid-17th century, the siltation of local salterns and a fall in wine exports compelled Nantes to find other activities. Local shipowners began importing sugar from the French West Indies (Martinique, Guadeloupe and Saint-Domingue) in the 1640s, which became very profitable after protectionist reforms implemented by Jean-Baptiste Colbert prevented the import of sugar from Spanish colonies (which had dominated the market). In 1664 Nantes was France's eighth-largest port, and it was the largest by 1700. Plantations in the colonies needed labour to produce sugar, rum, tobacco, indigo dye, coffee and cocoa, and Nantes shipowners began trading African slaves in 1706. The port was part of the triangular trade: ships went to West Africa to buy slaves, slaves were sold in the French West Indies, and the ships returned to Nantes with sugar and other exotic goods. From 1707 to 1793, Nantes was responsible for 42 percent of the French slave trade; its merchants sold about 450,000 African slaves in the West Indies.


title: Nantes

text: Manufactured goods were more lucrative than raw materials during the 18th century. There were about fifteen sugar refineries in the city around 1750 and nine cotton mills in 1786. Nantes and its surrounding area were the main producers of French printed cotton fabric during the 18th century, and the Netherlands was the city's largest client for exotic goods. Although trade brought wealth to Nantes, the city was confined by its walls; their removal during the 18th century allowed it to expand. Neoclassical squares and public buildings were constructed, and wealthy merchants built sumptuous "hôtels particuliers".


title: Nantes

text: The French Revolution initially received some support in Nantes, a bourgeois city rooted in private enterprise. On 18 July 1789, locals seized the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany in an imitation of the storming of the Bastille. Rural western France, Catholic and conservative, strongly opposed the abolition of the monarchy and the submission of the clergy. A rebellion in the neighbouring Vendée began in 1793, quickly spreading to surrounding regions. Nantes was an important Republican garrison on the Loire en route to England. On 29 June 1793, 30,000 Royalist troops from Vendée attacked the city on their way to Normandy (where they hoped to receive British support). Twelve thousand Republican soldiers resisted and the Battle of Nantes resulted in the death of Royalist leader Jacques Cathelineau. Three years later another Royalist leader, François de Charette, was executed in Nantes.


title: Nantes

text: After the Battle of Nantes, the National Convention (which had founded the First French Republic) decided to purge the city of its anti-revolutionary elements. Nantes was seen by the convention as a corrupt merchant city; the local elite was less supportive of the French Revolution, since its growing centralisation reduced their influence. From October 1793 to February 1794, deputy Jean-Baptiste Carrier presided over a revolutionary tribunal notorious for cruelty and ruthlessness. Between 12,000 and 13,000 people (including women and children) were arrested, and 8,000 to 11,000 died of typhus or were executed by the guillotine, shooting or drowning. The Drownings at Nantes were intended to kill large numbers of people simultaneously, and Carrier called the Loire "the national bathtub".


title: Nantes

text: The French Revolution was disastrous for the local economy. The slave trade nearly disappeared because of the abolition of slavery and the independence of Saint-Domingue, and Napoleon's Continental Blockade decimated trade with other European countries. Nantes never fully recovered its 18th-century wealth; the port handled 43,242 tons of goods in 1807, down from 237,716 tons in 1790.


title: Nantes

text: Outlawed by the French Revolution, the slave trade re-established itself as Nantes' major source of income in the first decades of the 19th century. It was the last French port to conduct the illegal Atlantic trade, continuing it until about 1827. The 19th-century slave trade may have been as extensive as that of the previous century, with about 400,000 slaves deported to the colonies. Businessmen took advantage of local vegetable production and Breton fishing to develop a canning industry during the 1820s, but canning was eclipsed by sugar imported from Réunion in the 1840s and 1850s. Nantes tradesmen received a tax rebate on Réunion sugar, which was lucrative until disease devastated the cane plantations in 1863. By the mid-19th century, Le Havre and Marseille were the two main French ports; the former traded with America and the latter with Asia. They had embraced the Industrial Revolution, thanks to Parisian investments; Nantes lagged behind, struggling to find profitable activities. Nostalgic for the pre-revolutionary golden age, the local elite had been suspicious of political and technological progress during the first half of the 19th century. In 1851, after much debate and opposition, Nantes was connected to Paris by the Tours–Saint-Nazaire railway.


title: Nantes

text: Nantes became a major industrial city during the second half of the 19th century with the aid of several families who invested in successful businesses. In 1900, the city's two main industries were food processing and shipbuilding. The former, primarily the canning industry, included the biscuit manufacturer LU and the latter was represented by three shipyards which were among the largest in France. These industries helped maintain port activity and facilitated agriculture, sugar imports, fertilizer production, machinery and metallurgy, which employed 12,000 people in Nantes and its surrounding area in 1914. Because large, modern ships had increased difficulty traversing the Loire to reach Nantes, a new port in Saint-Nazaire had been established at the mouth of the estuary in 1835. Saint-Nazaire, primarily developed for goods to be transhipped before being sent to Nantes, also built rival shipyards. Saint-Nazaire surpassed Nantes in port traffic for the first time in 1868. Reacting to the growth of the rival port, Nantes built a canal parallel to the Loire to remain accessible to large ships. The canal, completed in 1892, was abandoned in 1910 because of the efficient dredging of the Loire between 1903 and 1914.


title: Nantes

text: At the beginning of the 20th century, the river channels flowing through Nantes were increasingly perceived as hampering the city's comfort and economic development. Sand siltation required dredging, which weakened the quays; one quay collapsed in 1924. Embankments were overcrowded with railways, roads and tramways. Between 1926 and 1946, most of the channels were filled in and their water diverted. Large thoroughfares replaced the channels, altering the urban landscape. Feydeau and Gloriette Islands in the old town were attached to the north bank, and the other islands in the Loire were formed into the Isle of Nantes.


title: Nantes

text: When the land reclamation was almost complete, Nantes was shaken by the air raids of the Second World War. The city was captured by Nazi Germany on 18 June 1940, during the Battle of France. Forty-eight civilians were executed in Nantes in 1941 in retaliation for the assassination of German officer Karl Hotz. They are remembered as "the 50 hostages" because the Germans initially planned to kill 50 people. British bombs first hit the city in August 1941 and May 1942. The main attacks occurred on 16 and 23 September 1943, when most of Nantes' industrial facilities and portions of the city centre and its surrounding area were destroyed by American bombs. About 20,000 people were left homeless by the 1943 raids, and 70,000 subsequently left the city. Allied raids killed 1,732 people and destroyed 2,000 buildings in Nantes, leaving a further 6,000 buildings unusable. The Germans abandoned the city on 12 August 1944, and it was recaptured without a fight by the French Forces of the Interior and the U.S. Army.