title: Lauren Hutton

text: In 2008, Hutton accepted an offer from Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen to appear in the lookbook for their clothing line The Row, and explained in 2010: "I saw the clothes, and they were wonderful, real simple, minimalist designs... Ash had a place on the beach, so we did it at her place... And they would dance on the deck, and I would do what they were doing. And it was good." During the same year, retailer Mango launched a fashion collection inspired by Hutton's personal style, and she also appeared in Lord & Taylor's fall/winter and spring collections. The following year, she was featured in a campaign by Badgley Mischka.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: Alongside celebrity models such as Iman and Paulina Porizkova, Hutton was one of the panel members in a roundtable discussion for the "Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion" gala, an annual event organized by the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute. Held in May 2009, the discussion occurred at New York's Minetta Tavern. Photographs of Hutton were also displayed as part of the exhibition "" that was taking place at The Met and acknowledged the significance of fashion models.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: A third-party licensing brand of the Jim Henson Company, Henson Independent Properties (HIP), entered into an agreement with Hutton in November 2010 to act as the global licensing agent for her merchandising program. Targeted at women over 40 years of age, the brand launched products such as eyewear, handbags, and luggage, and home décor, globally in 2012. HIP's senior vice president at the time referred to Hutton as a "trailblazer" in the press release. Hutton was also a guest judge on the fashion designer reality television show "Project Runway" in 2010, also appearing in advertisements for J.Crew the same year.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: In 2011, Hutton walked the runway for Tom Ford's spring 2012 collection, and was selected as the house model for the Alexis Bittar jewelry brand. Designer Alexis Bittar, a recipient of the CFDA Accessory Designer of the Year award, personally selected Hutton after choosing Joan Collins for the previous year. Hutton stated that Bittar's jewelry is "like art and still doesn't look like anything I have ever seen." Her photos for the campaign were shot by Jack Pierson. Hutton then appeared alongside people such as actress Shuya Chang and Annie Lennox's daughter Tali Lennox in the spring 2011 ad campaign for the Club Monaco retail brand. The lookbook was photographed by Ryan McGinley, the youngest photographer to be featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art at the time of the Club Monaco shoot.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: She appeared in a campaign title "Do Something" by designer Alexander Wang, alongside Rod Stewart and Kate Moss in 2015, and was featured in Tod's "Timeless Icons" retrospective in 2016. She was also featured in H&M's fall 2016 video campaign alongside Hari Nef. In 2016 for Milan Fashion Week, Hutton walked the runway for Bottega Veneta's Spring 2017 show.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: Catwalk supermodel 60-70 Lauren Hutton recently posed for the cover of Harper’s Bazaar magazine for the May issue. With a photo covering her chest with her hands, naked and with a shoulder jacket, Lauren gave an interview where she told about her first steps in this field and mentioned that when she started, she worked for 50 dollars a week.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: Before becoming an established model, Hutton made her film debut in "Paper Lion" (1968), and later notices for her performances in James Toback's "The Gambler" (1974), opposite James Caan.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: She also starred in John Carpenter's TV movie "Someone's Watching Me!" (1978) and played the female lead in "American Gigolo" (1980). She went on to appear in "Lassiter" (1984), "Once Bitten" (1985), a modest hit, and "Guilty as Charged" (1992). She also made an uncredited cameo appearance as a celebrity party guest in the 1985 film "Perfect".


title: Lauren Hutton

text: In 1984, Hutton joined the cast of the short-lived primetime soap drama, "Paper Dolls", which co-starred Lloyd Bridges and Morgan Fairchild. In 1986, she co-starred in the lavish TV miniseries "Sins", which starred Joan Collins, and also starred opposite Stacy Keach in "The Return of Mike Hammer" TV movie. In the spring of 1987, Hutton had a starring role opposite William Devane in a sci-fi themed CBS Movie of the Week titled "Timestalkers", and later that year guest-starred in the primetime soap drama "Falcon Crest" for several episodes.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: In 1995, Hutton was cast in the CBS soap opera "Central Park West," playing the wealthy socialite Linda Fairchild until the show was canceled the following year.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: The following year, Hutton's late-night talk show for Turner Original Production, "Lauren Hutton and...," debuted and ran until 1997. Hutton's partner at the time, Luca Babini, was the director, set designer and post-production supervisor of the talk show, and the couple founded Lula Productions as part of their arrangement with the Turner media company.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: Hutton appeared in her first feature film in two decades with the 2009 release of "The Joneses", in which she starred alongside David Duchovny and Demi Moore. When asked about her decision to play the head of a marketing company, Hutton explained:


title: Lauren Hutton

text: I thought it was an extraordinary script, and a great idea, this stealth marketing. My character had worked with Demi [Moore] when Demi was an 18-year-old, having her sitting on bar stools at expensive bars and ordering certain champagnes and certain cigarettes. And now she has little pods of these families all over the country, and she's got them in rented houses for a year at a whack to heist all the neighbors. And I thought that capitalism could be as vicious as anything they ever came up with in the U.S.S.R. And certainly to some degree, we do seem to be involved in that, don't we? All these people who do double jobs of acting were on red carpets wearing diamonds and $20,000 dresses, and that's a full-time job. I never did that.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: Hutton was involved in a 27-year-long relationship with her manager Bob Williamson, who died in 1997. Williamson squandered some US$13 million of her money. Hutton later explained that he had saved her life on five occasions and made sure that she "didn't get seduced by the work." She spoke of a void that Williamson filled:


title: Lauren Hutton

text: I didn't have a father, and I wanted to be a child with a protector. I'd never seen a shrink, and there was a psychological situation that clearly needed to be addressed. But, you know, I wanted to see the world and how people lived and think about who are we, how are we, why is the world? And Bob did that for me.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: Hutton met Luca Babini on a film set in 1991 and he said of the relationship's development in 1996: "I was coming out of a divorce, and she became like a sister to me. Then I fell in love with her. And I loved her feet, which say so much about a person." Babini also referred to Hutton as "accessible and down to earth," and described her as a person with "very clear opinions" that she was willing to express.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: In October 2000, Hutton joined a motorbike group, which included actors Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne and Jeremy Irons, to celebrate "The Art of the Motorcycle" exhibit at the Hermitage-Guggenheim museum in Las Vegas, Nevada. Prior to the journey, Hutton informed the "Las Vegas Review-Journal": "I love the feeling of being a naked egg atop that throbbing steel. You feel vulnerable—but so alive." En route, while going over per hour, Hutton crashed near Hoover Dam, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada, and suffered multiple leg fractures, a fractured arm, broken ribs and sternum, and a punctured lung. Hopper later recalled from before the start of the ride: "She had on a little helmet, sort of tied under her chin. It was cute. And Jeremy [Irons] came up to her and said, 'You got to be kidding.' He took it off her and gave her a proper helmet."


title: Lauren Hutton

text: Hutton is the original vice-president of the Guggenheim Museum Motorcycle Club, and, in 2003, was a board member of the National Museum of Women in Arts in Washington, D.C., US.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: In July 2013, Hutton revealed that she was in the process of writing her memoir, which may be titled "Smile", and also explained the value of traveling and exploration in her life thus far: "whenever I came back from Africa or the Antarctic, head swelling with the beauty of it all, I found I was loving life again. You look different because of everything that has gone on inside of you..." Her "Becoming Sar'h" series of books were released beginning in 2017.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: She has lived in NoHo in Manhattan in New York City. As of 2004, Hutton resided mainly in Taos, New Mexico, where she owns a prefab steel home.


title: Lauren Hutton

text: Hutton was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2007 as a conservationist and scuba advocate. She started scuba diving in the 1960s, and has dived worldwide. She used her status as a celebrity to promote marine conservation, particularly of sharks, and supports the Shark Research Institute. She has also supported the recreational activity of scuba diving in interviews, articles and personal appearances at dive shows.


title: Pendulum

text: A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position. When released, the restoring force acting on the pendulum's mass causes it to oscillate about the equilibrium position, swinging back and forth. The time for one complete cycle, a left swing and a right swing, is called the period. The period depends on the length of the pendulum and also to a slight degree on the amplitude, the width of the pendulum's swing.


title: Pendulum

text: From the first scientific investigations of the pendulum around 1602 by Galileo Galilei, the regular motion of pendulums was used for timekeeping and was the world's most accurate timekeeping technology until the 1930s. The pendulum clock invented by Christiaan Huygens in 1658 became the world's standard timekeeper, used in homes and offices for 270 years, and achieved accuracy of about one second per year before it was superseded as a time standard by the quartz clock in the 1930s. Pendulums are also used in scientific instruments such as accelerometers and seismometers. Historically they were used as gravimeters to measure the acceleration of gravity in geo-physical surveys, and even as a standard of length. The word "pendulum" is new Latin, from the Latin "pendulus", meaning "hanging".


title: Pendulum

text: The "simple gravity pendulum" is an idealized mathematical model of a pendulum. This is a weight (or bob) on the end of a massless cord suspended from a pivot, without friction. When given an initial push, it will swing back and forth at a constant amplitude. Real pendulums are subject to friction and air drag, so the amplitude of their swings declines.


title: Pendulum

text: The period of swing of a simple gravity pendulum depends on its length, the local strength of gravity, and to a small extent on the maximum angle that the pendulum swings away from vertical, "θ", called the amplitude. It is independent of the mass of the bob. If the amplitude is limited to small swings, the period of a simple pendulum, the time taken for a complete cycle, is:


title: Pendulum

text: For small swings the period of swing is approximately the same for different size swings: that is, "the period is independent of amplitude". This property, called isochronism, is the reason pendulums are so useful for timekeeping. Successive swings of the pendulum, even if changing in amplitude, take the same amount of time.


title: Pendulum

text: For larger amplitudes, the period increases gradually with amplitude so it is longer than given by equation (1). For example, at an amplitude of "θ" = 0.4 radians (23°) it is 1% larger than given by (1). The period increases asymptotically (to infinity) as "θ" approaches π radians (180°), because the value "θ" = π is an unstable equilibrium point for the pendulum. The true period of an ideal simple gravity pendulum can be written in several different forms (see pendulum (mathematics)), one example being the infinite series:


title: Pendulum

text: The difference between this true period and the period for small swings (1) above is called the "circular error". In the case of a typical grandfather clock whose pendulum has a swing of 6° and thus an amplitude of 3° (0.05 radians), the difference between the true period and the small angle approximation (1) amounts to about 15 seconds per day.


title: Pendulum

text: For small swings the pendulum approximates a harmonic oscillator, and its motion as a function of time, "t", is approximately simple harmonic motion:


title: Pendulum

text: For real pendulums, the period varies slightly with factors such as the buoyancy and viscous resistance of the air, the mass of the string or rod, the size and shape of the bob and how it is attached to the string, and flexibility and stretching of the string. In precision applications, corrections for these factors may need to be applied to eq. (1) to give the period accurately.


title: Pendulum

text: Any swinging rigid body free to rotate about a fixed horizontal axis is called a compound pendulum or physical pendulum. The appropriate equivalent length formula_7 for calculating the period of any such pendulum is the distance from the pivot to the "center of oscillation". This point is located under the center of mass at a distance from the pivot traditionally called the radius of oscillation, which depends on the mass distribution of the pendulum. If most of the mass is concentrated in a relatively small bob compared to the pendulum length, the center of oscillation is close to the center of mass.


title: Pendulum

text: where formula_10 is the moment of inertia of the pendulum about the pivot point, formula_11 is the mass of the pendulum, and formula_12 is the distance between the pivot point and the center of mass.


title: Pendulum

text: For example, a rigid uniform rod of length formula_1 pivoted about one end has moment of inertia formula_16. The center of mass is located at the center of the rod, so formula_17 Substituting these values into the above equation gives formula_18. This shows that a rigid rod pendulum has the same period as a simple pendulum of 2/3 its length.


title: Pendulum

text: Christiaan Huygens proved in 1673 that the pivot point and the center of oscillation are interchangeable. This means if any pendulum is turned upside down and swung from a pivot located at its previous center of oscillation, it will have the same period as before and the new center of oscillation will be at the old pivot point. In 1817 Henry Kater used this idea to produce a type of reversible pendulum, now known as a Kater pendulum, for improved measurements of the acceleration due to gravity.


title: Pendulum

text: One of the earliest known uses of a pendulum was a 1st-century seismometer device of Han Dynasty Chinese scientist Zhang Heng. Its function was to sway and activate one of a series of levers after being disturbed by the tremor of an earthquake far away. Released by a lever, a small ball would fall out of the urn-shaped device into one of eight metal toad's mouths below, at the eight points of the compass, signifying the direction the earthquake was located.


title: Pendulum

text: Many sources claim that the 10th-century Egyptian astronomer Ibn Yunus used a pendulum for time measurement, but this was an error that originated in 1684 with the British historian Edward Bernard.


title: Pendulum

text: During the Renaissance, large hand-pumped pendulums were used as sources of power for manual reciprocating machines such as saws, bellows, and pumps. Leonardo da Vinci made many drawings of the motion of pendulums, though without realizing its value for timekeeping.


title: Pendulum

text: Italian scientist Galileo Galilei was the first to study the properties of pendulums, beginning around 1602. The earliest extant report of his research is contained in a letter to Guido Ubaldo dal Monte, from Padua, dated November 29, 1602. His biographer and student, Vincenzo Viviani, claimed his interest had been sparked around 1582 by the swinging motion of a chandelier in Pisa Cathedral. Galileo discovered the crucial property that makes pendulums useful as timekeepers, called isochronism; the period of the pendulum is approximately independent of the amplitude or width of the swing. He also found that the period is independent of the mass of the bob, and proportional to the square root of the length of the pendulum. He first employed freeswinging pendulums in simple timing applications. His physician friend, Santorio Santorii, invented a device which measured a patient's pulse by the length of a pendulum; the "pulsilogium". In 1641 Galileo dictated to his son Vincenzo a design for a pendulum clock; Vincenzo began construction, but had not completed it when he died in 1649.


title: Pendulum

text: In 1656 the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens built the first pendulum clock. This was a great improvement over existing mechanical clocks; their best accuracy was improved from around 15 minutes deviation a day to around 15 seconds a day. Pendulums spread over Europe as existing clocks were retrofitted with them.


title: Pendulum

text: The English scientist Robert Hooke studied the conical pendulum around 1666, consisting of a pendulum that is free to swing in two dimensions, with the bob rotating in a circle or ellipse. He used the motions of this device as a model to analyze the orbital motions of the planets. Hooke suggested to Isaac Newton in 1679 that the components of orbital motion consisted of inertial motion along a tangent direction plus an attractive motion in the radial direction. This played a part in Newton's formulation of the law of universal gravitation. Robert Hooke was also responsible for suggesting as early as 1666 that the pendulum could be used to measure the force of gravity.


title: Pendulum

text: During his expedition to Cayenne, French Guiana in 1671, Jean Richer found that a pendulum clock was minutes per day slower at Cayenne than at Paris. From this he deduced that the force of gravity was lower at Cayenne. In 1687, Isaac Newton in "Principia Mathematica" showed that this was because the Earth was not a true sphere but slightly oblate (flattened at the poles) from the effect of centrifugal force due to its rotation, causing gravity to increase with latitude. Portable pendulums began to be taken on voyages to distant lands, as precision gravimeters to measure the acceleration of gravity at different points on Earth, eventually resulting in accurate models of the shape of the Earth.


title: Pendulum

text: In 1673, 17 years after he invented the pendulum clock, Christiaan Huygens published his theory of the pendulum, "Horologium Oscillatorium sive de motu pendulorum". Marin Mersenne and René Descartes had discovered around 1636 that the pendulum was not quite isochronous; its period increased somewhat with its amplitude. Huygens analyzed this problem by determining what curve an object must follow to descend by gravity to the same point in the same time interval, regardless of starting point; the so-called "tautochrone curve". By a complicated method that was an early use of calculus, he showed this curve was a cycloid, rather than the circular arc of a pendulum, confirming that the pendulum was not isochronous and Galileo's observation of isochronism was accurate only for small swings. Huygens also solved the problem of how to calculate the period of an arbitrarily shaped pendulum (called a "compound pendulum"), discovering the "center of oscillation", and its interchangeability with the pivot point.


title: Pendulum

text: The existing clock movement, the verge escapement, made pendulums swing in very wide arcs of about 100°. Huygens showed this was a source of inaccuracy, causing the period to vary with amplitude changes caused by small unavoidable variations in the clock's drive force. To make its period isochronous, Huygens mounted cycloidal-shaped metal guides next to the pivots in his clocks, that constrained the suspension cord and forced the pendulum to follow a cycloid arc (see cycloidal pendulum). This solution didn't prove as practical as simply limiting the pendulum's swing to small angles of a few degrees. The realization that only small swings were isochronous motivated the development of the anchor escapement around 1670, which reduced the pendulum swing in clocks to 4°–6°. This became the standard escapement used in pendulum clocks.


title: Pendulum

text: During the 18th and 19th century, the pendulum clock's role as the most accurate timekeeper motivated much practical research into improving pendulums. It was found that a major source of error was that the pendulum rod expanded and contracted with changes in ambient temperature, changing the period of swing. This was solved with the invention of temperature compensated pendulums, the mercury pendulum in 1721 and the gridiron pendulum in 1726, reducing errors in precision pendulum clocks to a few seconds per week.


title: Pendulum

text: The accuracy of gravity measurements made with pendulums was limited by the difficulty of finding the location of their center of oscillation. Huygens had discovered in 1673 that a pendulum has the same period when hung from its center of oscillation as when hung from its pivot, and the distance between the two points was equal to the length of a simple gravity pendulum of the same period. In 1818 British Captain Henry Kater invented the reversible Kater's pendulum which used this principle, making possible very accurate measurements of gravity. For the next century the reversible pendulum was the standard method of measuring absolute gravitational acceleration.


title: Pendulum

text: In 1851, Jean Bernard Léon Foucault showed that the plane of oscillation of a pendulum, like a gyroscope, tends to stay constant regardless of the motion of the pivot, and that this could be used to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. He suspended a pendulum free to swing in two dimensions (later named the Foucault pendulum) from the dome of the Panthéon in Paris. The length of the cord was . Once the pendulum was set in motion, the plane of swing was observed to precess or rotate 360° clockwise in about 32 hours.


title: Pendulum

text: This was the first demonstration of the Earth's rotation that didn't depend on celestial observations, and a "pendulum mania" broke out, as Foucault pendulums were displayed in many cities and attracted large crowds.


title: Pendulum

text: Around 1900 low-thermal-expansion materials began to be used for pendulum rods in the highest precision clocks and other instruments, first invar, a nickel steel alloy, and later fused quartz, which made temperature compensation trivial. Precision pendulums were housed in low pressure tanks, which kept the air pressure constant to prevent changes in the period due to changes in buoyancy of the pendulum due to changing atmospheric pressure. The best pendulum clocks achieved accuracy of around a second per year.


title: Pendulum

text: The timekeeping accuracy of the pendulum was exceeded by the quartz crystal oscillator, invented in 1921, and quartz clocks, invented in 1927, replaced pendulum clocks as the world's best timekeepers. Pendulum clocks were used as time standards until World War 2, although the French Time Service continued using them in their official time standard ensemble until 1954. Pendulum gravimeters were superseded by "free fall" gravimeters in the 1950s, but pendulum instruments continued to be used into the 1970s.


title: Pendulum

text: For 300 years, from its discovery around 1582 until development of the quartz clock in the 1930s, the pendulum was the world's standard for accurate timekeeping. In addition to clock pendulums, freeswinging seconds pendulums were widely used as precision timers in scientific experiments in the 17th and 18th centuries. Pendulums require great mechanical stability: a length change of only 0.02%, 0.2 mm in a grandfather clock pendulum, will cause an error of a minute per week.


title: Pendulum

text: Pendulums in clocks (see example at right) are usually made of a weight or bob "(b)" suspended by a rod of wood or metal "(a)". To reduce air resistance (which accounts for most of the energy loss in precision clocks) the bob is traditionally a smooth disk with a lens-shaped cross section, although in antique clocks it often had carvings or decorations specific to the type of clock. In quality clocks the bob is made as heavy as the suspension can support and the movement can drive, since this improves the regulation of the clock (see Accuracy below). A common weight for seconds pendulum bobs is . Instead of hanging from a pivot, clock pendulums are usually supported by a short straight spring "(d)" of flexible metal ribbon. This avoids the friction and 'play' caused by a pivot, and the slight bending force of the spring merely adds to the pendulum's restoring force. The highest precision clocks have pivots of 'knife' blades resting on agate plates. The impulses to keep the pendulum swinging are provided by an arm hanging behind the pendulum called the "crutch", "(e)", which ends in a "fork", "(f)" whose prongs embrace the pendulum rod. The crutch is pushed back and forth by the clock's escapement, "(g,h)".


title: Pendulum

text: Each time the pendulum swings through its centre position, it releases one tooth of the "escape wheel" "(g)". The force of the clock's mainspring or a driving weight hanging from a pulley, transmitted through the clock's gear train, causes the wheel to turn, and a tooth presses against one of the pallets "(h)", giving the pendulum a short push. The clock's wheels, geared to the escape wheel, move forward a fixed amount with each pendulum swing, advancing the clock's hands at a steady rate.


title: Pendulum

text: The pendulum always has a means of adjusting the period, usually by an adjustment nut "(c)" under the bob which moves it up or down on the rod. Moving the bob up decreases the pendulum's length, causing the pendulum to swing faster and the clock to gain time. Some precision clocks have a small auxiliary adjustment weight on a threaded shaft on the bob, to allow finer adjustment. Some tower clocks and precision clocks use a tray attached near to the midpoint of the pendulum rod, to which small weights can be added or removed. This effectively shifts the centre of oscillation and allows the rate to be adjusted without stopping the clock.


title: Pendulum

text: The pendulum must be suspended from a rigid support. During operation, any elasticity will allow tiny imperceptible swaying motions of the support, which disturbs the clock's period, resulting in error. Pendulum clocks should be attached firmly to a sturdy wall.


title: Pendulum

text: The most common pendulum length in quality clocks, which is always used in grandfather clocks, is the seconds pendulum, about long. In mantel clocks, half-second pendulums, long, or shorter, are used. Only a few large tower clocks use longer pendulums, the 1.5 second pendulum, long, or occasionally the two-second pendulum, which is used in Big Ben.


title: Pendulum

text: The largest source of error in early pendulums was slight changes in length due to thermal expansion and contraction of the pendulum rod with changes in ambient temperature. This was discovered when people noticed that pendulum clocks ran slower in summer, by as much as a minute per week (one of the first was Godefroy Wendelin, as reported by Huygens in 1658). Thermal expansion of pendulum rods was first studied by Jean Picard in 1669. A pendulum with a steel rod will expand by about 11.3 parts per million (ppm) with each degree Celsius increase, causing it to lose about 0.27 seconds per day for every degree Celsius increase in temperature, or 9 seconds per day for a change. Wood rods expand less, losing only about 6 seconds per day for a change, which is why quality clocks often had wooden pendulum rods. The wood had to be varnished to prevent water vapor from getting in, because changes in humidity also affected the length.


title: Pendulum

text: The first device to compensate for this error was the mercury pendulum, invented by George Graham in 1721. The liquid metal mercury expands in volume with temperature. In a mercury pendulum, the pendulum's weight (bob) is a container of mercury. With a temperature rise, the pendulum rod gets longer, but the mercury also expands and its surface level rises slightly in the container, moving its centre of mass closer to the pendulum pivot. By using the correct height of mercury in the container these two effects will cancel, leaving the pendulum's centre of mass, and its period, unchanged with temperature. Its main disadvantage was that when the temperature changed, the rod would come to the new temperature quickly but the mass of mercury might take a day or two to reach the new temperature, causing the rate to deviate during that time. To improve thermal accommodation several thin containers were often used, made of metal. Mercury pendulums were the standard used in precision regulator clocks into the 20th century.


title: Pendulum

text: The most widely used compensated pendulum was the gridiron pendulum, invented in 1726 by John Harrison. This consists of alternating rods of two different metals, one with lower thermal expansion (CTE), steel, and one with higher thermal expansion, zinc or brass. The rods are connected by a frame, as shown in the drawing at the right, so that an increase in length of the zinc rods pushes the bob up, shortening the pendulum. With a temperature increase, the low expansion steel rods make the pendulum longer, while the high expansion zinc rods make it shorter. By making the rods of the correct lengths, the greater expansion of the zinc cancels out the expansion of the steel rods which have a greater combined length, and the pendulum stays the same length with temperature.


title: Pendulum

text: Zinc-steel gridiron pendulums are made with 5 rods, but the thermal expansion of brass is closer to steel, so brass-steel gridirons usually require 9 rods. Gridiron pendulums adjust to temperature changes faster than mercury pendulums, but scientists found that friction of the rods sliding in their holes in the frame caused gridiron pendulums to adjust in a series of tiny jumps. In high precision clocks this caused the clock's rate to change suddenly with each jump. Later it was found that zinc is subject to creep. For these reasons mercury pendulums were used in the highest precision clocks, but gridirons were used in quality regulator clocks.


title: Pendulum

text: Gridiron pendulums became so associated with good quality that, to this day, many ordinary clock pendulums have decorative 'fake' gridirons that don't actually have any temperature compensation function.


title: Pendulum

text: Around 1900, low thermal expansion materials were developed which could be used as pendulum rods in order to make elaborate temperature compensation unnecessary. These were only used in a few of the highest precision clocks before the pendulum became obsolete as a time standard. In 1896 Charles Édouard Guillaume invented the nickel steel alloy Invar. This has a CTE of around 0.5 µin/(in·°F), resulting in pendulum temperature errors over 71 °F of only 1.3 seconds per day, and this residual error could be compensated to zero with a few centimeters of aluminium under the pendulum bob (this can be seen in the Riefler clock image above). Invar pendulums were first used in 1898 in the Riefler regulator clock which achieved accuracy of 15 milliseconds per day. Suspension springs of Elinvar were used to eliminate temperature variation of the spring's restoring force on the pendulum. Later fused quartz was used which had even lower CTE. These materials are the choice for modern high accuracy pendulums.


title: Pendulum

text: The effect of the surrounding air on a moving pendulum is complex and requires fluid mechanics to calculate precisely, but for most purposes its influence on the period can be accounted for by three effects:


title: Pendulum

text: Increases in barometric pressure increase a pendulum's period slightly due to the first two effects, by about 0.11 seconds per day per kilopascal (0.37 seconds per day per inch of mercury or 0.015 seconds per day per torr). Researchers using pendulums to measure the acceleration of gravity had to correct the period for the air pressure at the altitude of measurement, computing the equivalent period of a pendulum swinging in vacuum. A pendulum clock was first operated in a constant-pressure tank by Friedrich Tiede in 1865 at the Berlin Observatory, and by 1900 the highest precision clocks were mounted in tanks that were kept at a constant pressure to eliminate changes in atmospheric pressure. Alternatively, in some a small aneroid barometer mechanism attached to the pendulum compensated for this effect.


title: Pendulum

text: Pendulums are affected by changes in gravitational acceleration, which varies by as much as 0.5% at different locations on Earth, so precision pendulum clocks have to be recalibrated after a move. Even moving a pendulum clock to the top of a tall building can cause it to lose measurable time from the reduction in gravity.


title: Pendulum

text: The timekeeping elements in all clocks, which include pendulums, balance wheels, the quartz crystals used in quartz watches, and even the vibrating atoms in atomic clocks, are in physics called harmonic oscillators. The reason harmonic oscillators are used in clocks is that they vibrate or oscillate at a specific resonant frequency or period and resist oscillating at other rates. However, the resonant frequency is not infinitely 'sharp'. Around the resonant frequency there is a narrow natural band of frequencies (or periods), called the resonance width or bandwidth, where the harmonic oscillator will oscillate. In a clock, the actual frequency of the pendulum may vary randomly within this resonance width in response to disturbances, but at frequencies outside this band, the clock will not function at all. The resonance width is determined by the damping, the frictional energy loss per swing of the pendulum.


title: Pendulum

text: The measure of a harmonic oscillator's resistance to disturbances to its oscillation period is a dimensionless parameter called the "Q" factor equal to the resonant frequency divided by the resonance width. The higher the "Q", the smaller the resonance width, and the more constant the frequency or period of the oscillator for a given disturbance. The reciprocal of the Q is roughly proportional to the limiting accuracy achievable by a harmonic oscillator as a time standard.


title: Pendulum

text: The "Q" is related to how long it takes for the oscillations of an oscillator to die out. The "Q" of a pendulum can be measured by counting the number of oscillations it takes for the amplitude of the pendulum's swing to decay to 1/"e" = 36.8% of its initial swing, and multiplying by 2"π".


title: Pendulum

text: In a clock, the pendulum must receive pushes from the clock's movement to keep it swinging, to replace the energy the pendulum loses to friction. These pushes, applied by a mechanism called the escapement, are the main source of disturbance to the pendulum's motion. The "Q" is equal to 2"π" times the energy stored in the pendulum, divided by the energy lost to friction during each oscillation period, which is the same as the energy added by the escapement each period. It can be seen that the smaller the fraction of the pendulum's energy that is lost to friction, the less energy needs to be added, the less the disturbance from the escapement, the more 'independent' the pendulum is of the clock's mechanism, and the more constant its period is. The "Q" of a pendulum is given by:


title: Pendulum

text: where "M" is the mass of the bob, is the pendulum's radian frequency of oscillation, and Γ is the frictional damping force on the pendulum per unit velocity.


title: Pendulum

text: "ω" is fixed by the pendulum's period, and "M" is limited by the load capacity and rigidity of the suspension. So the "Q" of clock pendulums is increased by minimizing frictional losses (Γ). Precision pendulums are suspended on low friction pivots consisting of triangular shaped 'knife' edges resting on agate plates. Around 99% of the energy loss in a freeswinging pendulum is due to air friction, so mounting a pendulum in a vacuum tank can increase the "Q", and thus the accuracy, by a factor of 100.


title: Pendulum

text: The "Q" of pendulums ranges from several thousand in an ordinary clock to several hundred thousand for precision regulator pendulums swinging in vacuum. A quality home pendulum clock might have a "Q" of 10,000 and an accuracy of 10 seconds per month. The most accurate commercially produced pendulum clock was the Shortt-Synchronome free pendulum clock, invented in 1921. Its Invar master pendulum swinging in a vacuum tank had a "Q" of 110,000 and an error rate of around a second per year.


title: Pendulum

text: Their Q of 10–10 is one reason why pendulums are more accurate timekeepers than the balance wheels in watches, with "Q" around 100–300, but less accurate than the quartz crystals in quartz clocks, with "Q" of 10–10.


title: Pendulum

text: Pendulums (unlike, for example, quartz crystals) have a low enough "Q" that the disturbance caused by the impulses to keep them moving is generally the limiting factor on their timekeeping accuracy. Therefore, the design of the escapement, the mechanism that provides these impulses, has a large effect on the accuracy of a clock pendulum. If the impulses given to the pendulum by the escapement each swing could be exactly identical, the response of the pendulum would be identical, and its period would be constant. However, this is not achievable; unavoidable random fluctuations in the force due to friction of the clock's pallets, lubrication variations, and changes in the torque provided by the clock's power source as it runs down, mean that the force of the impulse applied by the escapement varies.


title: Pendulum

text: If these variations in the escapement's force cause changes in the pendulum's width of swing (amplitude), this will cause corresponding slight changes in the period, since (as discussed at top) a pendulum with a finite swing is not quite isochronous. Therefore, the goal of traditional escapement design is to apply the force with the proper profile, and at the correct point in the pendulum's cycle, so force variations have no effect on the pendulum's amplitude. This is called an "isochronous escapement".


title: Pendulum

text: Clockmakers had known for centuries that the disturbing effect of the escapement's drive force on the period of a pendulum is smallest if given as a short impulse as the pendulum passes through its bottom equilibrium position. If the impulse occurs before the pendulum reaches bottom, during the downward swing, it will have the effect of shortening the pendulum's natural period, so an increase in drive force will decrease the period. If the impulse occurs after the pendulum reaches bottom, during the upswing, it will lengthen the period, so an increase in drive force will increase the pendulum's period. In 1826 British astronomer George Airy proved this; specifically, he proved that if a pendulum is driven by an impulse that is symmetrical about its bottom equilibrium position, the pendulum's period will be unaffected by changes in the drive force. The most accurate escapements, such as the deadbeat, approximately satisfy this condition.


title: Pendulum

text: The presence of the acceleration of gravity "g" in the periodicity equation (1) for a pendulum means that the local gravitational acceleration of the Earth can be calculated from the period of a pendulum. A pendulum can therefore be used as a gravimeter to measure the local gravity, which varies by over 0.5% across the surface of the Earth. The pendulum in a clock is disturbed by the pushes it receives from the clock movement, so freeswinging pendulums were used, and were the standard instruments of gravimetry up to the 1930s.


title: Pendulum

text: The difference between clock pendulums and gravimeter pendulums is that to measure gravity, the pendulum's length as well as its period has to be measured. The period of freeswinging pendulums could be found to great precision by comparing their swing with a precision clock that had been adjusted to keep correct time by the passage of stars overhead. In the early measurements, a weight on a cord was suspended in front of the clock pendulum, and its length adjusted until the two pendulums swung in exact synchronism. Then the length of the cord was measured. From the length and the period, "g" could be calculated from equation (1).


title: Pendulum

text: The seconds pendulum, a pendulum with a period of two seconds so each swing takes one second, was widely used to measure gravity, because its period could be easily measured by comparing it to precision regulator clocks, which all had seconds pendulums. By the late 17th century, the length of the seconds pendulum became the standard measure of the strength of gravitational acceleration at a location. By 1700 its length had been measured with submillimeter accuracy at several cities in Europe. For a seconds pendulum, "g" is proportional to its length:


title: Pendulum

text: The precision of the early gravity measurements above was limited by the difficulty of measuring the length of the pendulum, "L" . "L" was the length of an idealized simple gravity pendulum (described at top), which has all its mass concentrated in a point at the end of the cord. In 1673 Huygens had shown that the period of a rigid bar pendulum (called a "compound pendulum") was equal to the period of a simple pendulum with a length equal to the distance between the pivot point and a point called the center of oscillation, located under the center of gravity, that depends on the mass distribution along the pendulum. But there was no accurate way of determining the center of oscillation in a real pendulum.


title: Pendulum

text: To get around this problem, the early researchers above approximated an ideal simple pendulum as closely as possible by using a metal sphere suspended by a light wire or cord. If the wire was light enough, the center of oscillation was close to the center of gravity of the ball, at its geometric center. This "ball and wire" type of pendulum wasn't very accurate, because it didn't swing as a rigid body, and the elasticity of the wire caused its length to change slightly as the pendulum swung.


title: Pendulum

text: However Huygens had also proved that in any pendulum, the pivot point and the center of oscillation were interchangeable. That is, if a pendulum were turned upside down and hung from its center of oscillation, it would have the same period as it did in the previous position, and the old pivot point would be the new center of oscillation.


title: Pendulum

text: British physicist and army captain Henry Kater in 1817 realized that Huygens' principle could be used to find the length of a simple pendulum with the same period as a real pendulum. If a pendulum was built with a second adjustable pivot point near the bottom so it could be hung upside down, and the second pivot was adjusted until the periods when hung from both pivots were the same, the second pivot would be at the center of oscillation, and the distance between the two pivots would be the length "L" of a simple pendulum with the same period.


title: Pendulum

text: Kater built a reversible pendulum (shown at right) consisting of a brass bar with two opposing pivots made of short triangular "knife" blades "(a)" near either end. It could be swung from either pivot, with the knife blades supported on agate plates. Rather than make one pivot adjustable, he attached the pivots a meter apart and instead adjusted the periods with a moveable weight on the pendulum rod "(b,c)". In operation, the pendulum is hung in front of a precision clock, and the period timed, then turned upside down and the period timed again. The weight is adjusted with the adjustment screw until the periods are equal. Then putting this period and the distance between the pivots into equation (1) gives the gravitational acceleration "g" very accurately.


title: Pendulum

text: Kater timed the swing of his pendulum using the ""method of coincidences"" and measured the distance between the two pivots with a micrometer. After applying corrections for the finite amplitude of swing, the buoyancy of the bob, the barometric pressure and altitude, and temperature, he obtained a value of 39.13929 inches for the seconds pendulum at London, in vacuum, at sea level, at 62 °F. The largest variation from the mean of his 12 observations was 0.00028 in. representing a precision of gravity measurement of 7×10 (7 mGal or 70 µm/s). Kater's measurement was used as Britain's official standard of length (see below) from 1824 to 1855.


title: Pendulum

text: Reversible pendulums (known technically as "convertible" pendulums) employing Kater's principle were used for absolute gravity measurements into the 1930s.


title: Pendulum

text: The increased accuracy made possible by Kater's pendulum helped make gravimetry a standard part of geodesy. Since the exact location (latitude and longitude) of the 'station' where the gravity measurement was made was necessary, gravity measurements became part of surveying, and pendulums were taken on the great geodetic surveys of the 18th century, particularly the Great Trigonometric Survey of India.


title: Pendulum

text: Relative pendulum gravimeters were superseded by the simpler LaCoste zero-length spring gravimeter, invented in 1934 by Lucien LaCoste. Absolute (reversible) pendulum gravimeters were replaced in the 1950s by free fall gravimeters, in which a weight is allowed to fall in a vacuum tank and its acceleration is measured by an optical interferometer.


title: Pendulum

text: Because the acceleration of gravity is constant at a given point on Earth, the period of a simple pendulum at a given location depends only on its length. Additionally, gravity varies only slightly at different locations. Almost from the pendulum's discovery until the early 19th century, this property led scientists to suggest using a pendulum of a given period as a standard of length.


title: Pendulum

text: Until the 19th century, countries based their systems of length measurement on prototypes, metal bar primary standards, such as the standard yard in Britain kept at the Houses of Parliament, and the standard "toise" in France, kept at Paris. These were vulnerable to damage or destruction over the years, and because of the difficulty of comparing prototypes, the same unit often had different lengths in distant towns, creating opportunities for fraud. During the Enlightenment scientists argued for a length standard that was based on some property of nature that could be determined by measurement, creating an indestructible, universal standard. The period of pendulums could be measured very precisely by timing them with clocks that were set by the stars. A pendulum standard amounted to defining the unit of length by the gravitational force of the Earth, for all intents constant, and the second, which was defined by the rotation rate of the Earth, also constant. The idea was that anyone, anywhere on Earth, could recreate the standard by constructing a pendulum that swung with the defined period and measuring its length.


title: Pendulum

text: Virtually all proposals were based on the seconds pendulum, in which each swing (a half period) takes one second, which is about a meter (39 inches) long, because by the late 17th century it had become a standard for measuring gravity (see previous section). By the 18th century its length had been measured with sub-millimeter accuracy at a number of cities in Europe and around the world.


title: Pendulum

text: The initial attraction of the pendulum length standard was that it was believed (by early scientists such as Huygens and Wren) that gravity was constant over the Earth's surface, so a given pendulum had the same period at any point on Earth. So the length of the standard pendulum could be measured at any location, and would not be tied to any given nation or region; it would be a truly democratic, worldwide standard. Although Richer found in 1672 that gravity varies at different points on the globe, the idea of a pendulum length standard remained popular, because it was found that gravity only varies with latitude. Gravitational acceleration increases smoothly from the equator to the poles, due to the oblate shape of the Earth, so at any given latitude (east–west line), gravity was constant enough that the length of a seconds pendulum was the same within the measurement capability of the 18th century. Thus the unit of length could be defined at a given latitude and measured at any point along that latitude. For example, a pendulum standard defined at 45° north latitude, a popular choice, could be measured in parts of France, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, the United States and Canada. In addition, it could be recreated at any location at which the gravitational acceleration had been accurately measured.


title: Pendulum

text: By the mid 19th century, increasingly accurate pendulum measurements by Edward Sabine and Thomas Young revealed that gravity, and thus the length of any pendulum standard, varied measurably with local geologic features such as mountains and dense subsurface rocks. So a pendulum length standard had to be defined at a single point on Earth and could only be measured there. This took much of the appeal from the concept, and efforts to adopt pendulum standards were abandoned.


title: Pendulum

text: One of the first to suggest defining length with a pendulum was Flemish scientist Isaac Beeckman who in 1631 recommended making the seconds pendulum "the invariable measure for all people at all times in all places". Marin Mersenne, who first measured the seconds pendulum in 1644, also suggested it. The first official proposal for a pendulum standard was made by the British Royal Society in 1660, advocated by Christiaan Huygens and Ole Rømer, basing it on Mersenne's work, and Huygens in "Horologium Oscillatorium" proposed a "horary foot" defined as 1/3 of the seconds pendulum. Christopher Wren was another early supporter. The idea of a pendulum standard of length must have been familiar to people as early as 1663, because Samuel Butler satirizes it in "Hudibras":


title: Pendulum

text: In 1671 Jean Picard proposed a pendulum-defined 'universal foot' in his influential "Mesure de la Terre". Gabriel Mouton around 1670 suggested defining the "toise" either by a seconds pendulum or a minute of terrestrial degree. A plan for a complete system of units based on the pendulum was advanced in 1675 by Italian polymath Tito Livio Burratini. In France in 1747, geographer Charles Marie de la Condamine proposed defining length by a seconds pendulum at the equator; since at this location a pendulum's swing wouldn't be distorted by the Earth's rotation. James Steuart (1780) and George Skene Keith were also supporters.


title: Pendulum

text: By the end of the 18th century, when many nations were reforming their weight and measure systems, the seconds pendulum was the leading choice for a new definition of length, advocated by prominent scientists in several major nations. In 1790, then US Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson proposed to Congress a comprehensive decimalized US 'metric system' based on the seconds pendulum at 38° North latitude, the mean latitude of the United States. No action was taken on this proposal. In Britain the leading advocate of the pendulum was politician John Riggs Miller. When his efforts to promote a joint British–French–American metric system fell through in 1790, he proposed a British system based on the length of the seconds pendulum at London. This standard was adopted in 1824 (below).


title: Pendulum

text: In the discussions leading up to the French adoption of the metric system in 1791, the leading candidate for the definition of the new unit of length, the metre, was the seconds pendulum at 45° North latitude. It was advocated by a group led by French politician Talleyrand and mathematician Antoine Nicolas Caritat de Condorcet. This was one of the three final options considered by the French Academy of Sciences committee. However, on March 19, 1791, the committee instead chose to base the metre on the length of the meridian through Paris. A pendulum definition was rejected because of its variability at different locations, and because it defined length by a unit of time. (However, since 1983 the metre has been officially defined in terms of the length of the second and the speed of light.) A possible additional reason is that the radical French Academy didn't want to base their new system on the second, a traditional and nondecimal unit from the "ancien regime".


title: Pendulum

text: Although not defined by the pendulum, the final length chosen for the metre, 10 of the pole-to-equator meridian arc, was very close to the length of the seconds pendulum (0.9937 m), within 0.63%. Although no reason for this particular choice was given at the time, it was probably to facilitate the use of the seconds pendulum as a secondary standard, as was proposed in the official document. So the modern world's standard unit of length is certainly closely linked historically with the seconds pendulum.


title: Pendulum

text: Britain and Denmark appear to be the only nations that (for a short time) based their units of length on the pendulum. In 1821 the Danish inch was defined as 1/38 of the length of the mean solar seconds pendulum at 45° latitude at the meridian of Skagen, at sea level, in vacuum. The British parliament passed the "Imperial Weights and Measures Act" in 1824, a reform of the British standard system which declared that if the prototype standard yard was destroyed, it would be recovered by defining the inch so that the length of the solar seconds pendulum at London, at sea level, in a vacuum, at 62 °F was 39.1393 inches. This also became the US standard, since at the time the US used British measures. However, when the prototype yard was lost in the 1834 Houses of Parliament fire, it proved impossible to recreate it accurately from the pendulum definition, and in 1855 Britain repealed the pendulum standard and returned to prototype standards.


title: Pendulum

text: A pendulum in which the rod is not vertical but almost horizontal was used in early seismometers for measuring Earth tremors. The bob of the pendulum does not move when its mounting does, and the difference in the movements is recorded on a drum chart.


title: Pendulum

text: As first explained by Maximilian Schuler in a 1923 paper, a pendulum whose period exactly equals the orbital period of a hypothetical satellite orbiting just above the surface of the Earth (about 84 minutes) will tend to remain pointing at the center of the Earth when its support is suddenly displaced. This principle, called Schuler tuning, is used in inertial guidance systems in ships and aircraft that operate on the surface of the Earth. No physical pendulum is used, but the control system that keeps the inertial platform containing the gyroscopes stable is modified so the device acts as though it is attached to such a pendulum, keeping the platform always facing down as the vehicle moves on the curved surface of the Earth.


title: Pendulum

text: In 1665 Huygens made a curious observation about pendulum clocks. Two clocks had been placed on his mantlepiece, and he noted that they had acquired an opposing motion. That is, their pendulums were beating in unison but in the opposite direction; 180° out of phase. Regardless of how the two clocks were started, he found that they would eventually return to this state, thus making the first recorded observation of a coupled oscillator.


title: Pendulum

text: The cause of this behavior was that the two pendulums were affecting each other through slight motions of the supporting mantlepiece. This process is called entrainment or mode locking in physics and is observed in other coupled oscillators. Synchronized pendulums have been used in clocks and were widely used in gravimeters in the early 20th century. Although Huygens only observed out-of-phase synchronization, recent investigations have shown the existence of in-phase synchronization, as well as "death" states wherein one or both clocks stops.


title: Pendulum

text: Pendulum motion appears in religious ceremonies as well. The swinging incense burner called a censer, also known as a thurible, is an example of a pendulum. Pendulums are also seen at many gatherings in eastern Mexico where they mark the turning of the tides on the day which the tides are at their highest point. See also pendulums for divination and dowsing.


title: Pendulum

text: Pendulums are widely used in science education as an example of a harmonic oscillator, to teach dynamics and oscillatory motion. One use is to demonstrate the law of conservation of energy. A heavy object such as a bowling ball or wrecking ball is attached to a string. The weight is then moved to within a few inches of a volunteer's face, then released and allowed to swing and come back. In most instances, the weight reverses direction and then returns to (almost) the same position as the original release location — "i.e." a small distance from the volunteer's face — thus leaving the volunteer unharmed. On occasion the volunteer is injured if either the volunteer does not stand still or the pendulum is initially released with a push (so that when it returns it surpasses the release position).


title: Pendulum

text: It is claimed that the pendulum was used as an instrument of torture and execution by the Spanish Inquisition in the 18th century. The allegation is contained in the 1826 book "The history of the Inquisition of Spain " by the Spanish priest, historian and liberal activist Juan Antonio Llorente. A swinging pendulum whose edge is a knife blade slowly descends toward a bound prisoner until it cuts into his body. This method of torture came to popular consciousness through the 1842 short story "The Pit and the Pendulum" by American author Edgar Allan Poe but there is considerable skepticism that it actually was used.


title: Pendulum

text: Most knowledgeable sources are skeptical that this torture was ever actually used. The only evidence of its use is one paragraph in the preface to Llorente's 1826 "History", relating a second-hand account by a single prisoner released from the Inquisition's Madrid dungeon in 1820, who purportedly described the pendulum torture method. Modern sources point out that due to Jesus' admonition against bloodshed, Inquisitors were only allowed to use torture methods which did not spill blood, and the pendulum method would have violated this stricture. One theory is that Llorente misunderstood the account he heard; the prisoner was actually referring to another common Inquisition torture, the "strappado" (garrucha), in which the prisoner has his hands tied behind his back and is hoisted off the floor by a rope tied to his hands. This method was also known as the "pendulum". Poe's popular horror tale, and public awareness of the Inquisition's other brutal methods, has kept the myth of this elaborate torture method alive.


title: Pendulum

text: The value of g reflected by the period of a pendulum varies from place to place. The gravitational force varies with distance from the center of the Earth, i.e. with altitude - or because the Earth's shape is oblate, g varies with latitude.


title: Pendulum

text: A more important cause of this reduction in g at the equator is because the equator is spinning at one revolution per day, so the acceleration by the gravitational force is partially canceled there by the centrifugal force.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Brian William Pillman (May 22, 1962 – October 5, 1997) was an American professional wrestler and professional football player best known for his appearances in Stampede Wrestling in the 1980s and World Championship Wrestling (WCW), Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), and World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in the 1990s.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman created a legacy as "The Loose Cannon", a wrestling gimmick that would see him do a series of worked shoots that would gain him a degree of infamy for his unpredictable character. He was also known for being extremely agile in the ring, although a car accident in April 1996 from which he received extensive ankle injuries limited his in-ring ability. By the end of his career, he worked with his long-time friend and former teammate Stone Cold Steve Austin in a storyline involving a firearm and with The Hart Foundation during the first instances of the developing Attitude Era. In 1997, he died unexpectedly due to an undetected heart disease.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman was born on May 22, 1962 to a Welsh mother named Mary; he had three sisters named Angie, Linda, and Susan, as well as a brother Phil. His father died of a heart attack when Pillman was three months old in August 1962.


title: Brian Pillman

text: As a child, Pillman developed multiple throat polyps and underwent between 31 and 36 operations to tend to them, many before the age of three. Due to his medical issues Pillman spent a large part of his early childhood in a hospital, only going home for Christmas. Because of this Pillman's mother chose to send him to a public school so that he could spend more time with his friends, which led him to become the only Presbyterian in his otherwise Catholic family. As a child Pillman played many sports, including basketball and hockey, but was rather fragile and was often made fun of by other children because of his raspy voice, which had been damaged by the many operations, this according to his mother prompted him to learn how to box.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman graduated from Norwood High School in Norwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. While attending Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Pillman played football for Redskins (now Miami RedHawks) as a defensive tackle where he set the record in the "tackles for loss" category. Pillman struggled academically and needed help with school to continue to play; he was then tutored by Miami rugby player Bill Minnich. A Division I Second-team All-American in his junior year and a Division I All-American in his senior year, he went undrafted in the 1984 NFL Draft. He joined his hometown Cincinnati Bengals as a free agent (where he won the Ed Block Courage Award for his team), and later the Canadian Football League for the Calgary Stampeders in 1986. Pillman also played for the Buffalo Bills in preseason action in 1985, but he was the last player cut before the start of that season. His attempts to make the roster of the Bengals were covered in a series of articles in "The Cincinnati Enquirer". Pillman and John Harbaugh, current head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, were roommates and defensive teammates while at Miami.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Following the end of his football career, Pillman remained in Canada and began training as a wrestler under Stu Hart and his sons. He debuted in November 1986 in Hart's Calgary-based Stampede Wrestling promotion.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman quickly formed a tag team with Hart's son Bruce known as Bad Company (not to be confused with Badd Company). In April 1987, Bad Company won the Stampede Wrestling International Tag Team Championship by defeating Ron Starr and the Cuban Assassin in the finals of a tournament. Their reign lasted until October 1987, when the titles were held up following a controversial ending to a match between Bad Company and their opponents, Jerry Morrow and Makhan Singh. Bad Company defeated Morrow and Singh in a rematch in November 1987 to regain the titles, eventually losing them to Morrow and the Cuban Assassin in July 1988.


title: Brian Pillman

text: While in Stampede Wrestling, Pillman had his girlfriend at the time, Trisa Hayes, portray his sister in order to get him over as a face by seating her at ringside and having heel wrestlers taunt her so that he could rescue her.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman finished up with Stampede on August 13, 1988, teaming up with Bruce Hart and Jason the Terrible to defeat The Great Gama, Makhan Singh, and Johnny Smith in the main event. He would head to the Continental Wrestling Association in Memphis to continue his career.


title: Brian Pillman

text: After finishing with Stampede Pillman worked briefly in 1989 for New Japan Pro-Wrestling where he wrestled in singles matches against people such as Masa Saito, Tatsumi Fujinami, Black Cat and Naoki Sano as well as in tag team matches with Big Van Vader against Riki Choshu and Tatsumi Fujinami.


title: Brian Pillman

text: In 1989, Pillman returned to the United States and began wrestling for World Championship Wrestling (WCW), where he was known as Flyin' Brian due to his athletic ability and variety of aerial maneuvers. He was one of the first American wrestlers, along with "Beautiful" Bobby Eaton, to incorporate a variety of Mexican lucha libre moves into his arsenal. He held the NWA United States Tag Team Championship with The Z-Man between February 1990 and May 1990. Pillman later feuded with Barry Windham, who he harassed while dressed as the masked Yellow Dog after losing a Loser Leaves WCW (Pillman was eventually reinstated). He also held the short-lived WCW Light Heavyweight Championship twice between October 1991 and February 1992, feuding with Brad Armstrong, Jushin "Thunder" Liger, Richard Morton, and Scotty Flamingo.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman turned heel in September 1992, frustrated by Brad Armstrong's knee injury and vacating the WCW Light Heavyweight title, when he was scheduled to wrestle Armstrong for the title at "Clash of the Champions XX". In November 1992, he formed a team with Barry Windham, gunning for the NWA and WCW World Tag Team Championships held by Ricky Steamboat and Shane Douglas. Windham and Pillman lost to Steamboat and Douglas at Starrcade on December 28. Their team lasted until January 1993, as Windham had his sights on the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman continued the tag team title hunt by forming a tag team with "Stunning" Steve Austin known as The Hollywood Blonds. On the March 27, 1993 episode of "Power Hour", the duo won the championships from Steamboat and Douglas. After the feud with Steamboat and Douglas ended, they went on to feud with The Four Horsemen, mainly Ric Flair and Arn Anderson, mocking their ages and parodying Flair's interview show, ""A Flair for the Gold"", with their own called ""A Flair for the Old"". They would lose the NWA and WCW World Tag Team Titles to Anderson and Paul Roma at "Clash of the Champions XXIV" (Lord Steven Regal substituted for Pillman, who suffered a leg injury in a tag team match on an episode of WCW Main Event prior to the Clash of Champions).


title: Brian Pillman

text: After the Hollywood Blonds separated in October 1993, Pillman became a face, feuding with his old partner Austin. He would also pursue the WCW World Television Championship, held by Lord Steven Regal, with whom he wrestled to a 15-minute time limit draw at Spring Stampede.


title: Brian Pillman

text: In late-1994, Pillman appeared with Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) as part of a talent exchange between ECW and WCW. His most notable match there was teaming with Shane Douglas to replace an injured Steve Austin, with Sherri Martel as their manager, in a losing effort to Ron Simmons and 2 Cold Scorpio.


title: Brian Pillman

text: After several months of inactivity, Pillman made his return to WCW programming in January 1995, originally to be renamed California Brian (which was scrapped after a week) as a babyface who had moved to California to pursue acting work on "Baywatch", with Pillman slowly progressing into a tweener, feuding with wrestlers such as Brad Armstrong, Eddie Guerrero, Alex Wright and Marcus Bagwell by the fall. In September 1995, Pillman formed a team with Arn Anderson and began feuding with Ric Flair. On September 4, 1995, Pillman wrestled the first match on the inaugural episode of "Monday Nitro" by defeating Jushin "Thunder" Liger in a SuperBrawl II rematch. After costing Flair a match to Arn Anderson at Fall Brawl, Flair recruited the help of Sting to team up against Pillman and Anderson at Halloween Havoc. Pillman and Anderson attacked Flair before the match, forcing Sting to come out alone. When Sting needed a tag the most, Flair came out at the last minute with a bandage on his head, tagged Sting and immediately turned and attacked him removing the fake bandage from his head to show it was all a plan between Pillman, Anderson and Flair from the start. These actions signaled the reuniting of The Four Horsemen. This incarnation was Flair, Anderson, Pillman and Chris Benoit.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman had worked briefly in Japan in 1991 while with WCW but his longest time there was working for New Japan Pro-Wrestling in the middle of 1995 when he participated in the Best of the Super Juniors. When in Japan he wrestled against Dean Malenko, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, Black Cat, Koji Kanemoto, Shinjiro Otani, Gran Hamada, Black Tiger, Wild Pegasus, Alex Wright and El Samurai in singles matches and in tag team matches together with Wright, Norio Honaga, Hamada or Malenko against Akira Nogami, Koji Kanemoto, Takayuki Iizuka, El Samurai, Malenko and Honaga. He also participated in several multi man matches before returning to WCW.


title: Brian Pillman

text: At the end of 1995, Pillman developed his "Loose Cannon" gimmick, cultivating a reputation for unpredictable behavior. During this period of time, Pillman changed his once Hollywood Blond and Flyin' Brian clean athletic look for an edgy, out of control image. Even his allies in the Horsemen, especially Anderson, were wary of his behavior and tried in vain to keep him in check. Almost all of the time Pillman could be seen wearing leather vests, sunglasses, jewelry and graphic T-shirts with skulls, monsters and sayings on them. Pillman frequently blurred fact and fiction with his worked shoots. In a match with Eddie Guerrero on the January 23, 1996 episode of "Clash of the Champions XXXII", Pillman grabbed commentator Bobby Heenan by the collar, causing Heenan (who had a history of neck problems) to blurt out "What the fuck are you doing?" live on the air.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman outed Kevin Sullivan as booker during the February 1996 SuperBrawl VI pay-per-view in an I Respect You Strap match where the loser announces that they respect the other wrestler, much like an "I Quit" match. Pillman lost to Sullivan, after Pillman grabbed the microphone and said to Sullivan "I respect you, booker man." The words "booker man" were cut from the commercial tape. The next day after SuperBrawl VI, Pillman was fired by WCW President Eric Bischoff. In Bischoff's autobiography he said that Pillman was fired so that he could go and develop the "loose cannon" gimmick in ECW then return to WCW with more legitimate heat. Bischoff claims it was a plan he and Pillman came up with together. It would later backfire on Bischoff as Pillman did not return.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Immediately following his departure from WCW, Pillman returned to ECW and appeared at the promotion's annual Internet convention, ECW CyberSlam, on February 17, 1996. During an interview conducted in the ring by Joey Styles, Pillman insulted Bischoff, calling him a commentator, a "gofer", and a "piece of shit". He turned his attention to the ECW audience, derisively calling them "smart marks". After Styles attempted to end the interview, Pillman threatened to "yank out (his) Johnson" and urinate in the ring. Pillman was confronted by ECW owner Tod Gordon, booker Paul Heyman, and wrestler Shane Douglas, who had him removed from the ring by security guards. While being dragged from the arena, Pillman attacked a plant sitting in the audience with a fork he produced from his boot. Although he did not wrestle for ECW, Pillman made several further appearances with the promotion, engaging in a war of words with Douglas, setting up a proposed feud.


title: Brian Pillman

text: He gained the backstage ire of New Jack when he referred to Jack's tag team with Mustafa Saed as "Niggas with Attitudes" at Fight the Power, a reference to the rap group N.W.A. With his "Loose Cannon" persona, Pillman became the talk of all three major promotions, as he was on his way to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) after he was scheduled to wrestle Shane Douglas in ECW. On April 15, 1996, Pillman was badly injured after falling asleep while driving his Hummer H1 in Kentucky and driving into a tree trunk, flipping the vehicle. He was in a coma for a week and suffered a shattered ankle, forcing doctors to fuse it together in a fixed walking position and thus forcing Pillman to abandon his previous high-flying wrestling style for a more grounded style.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman signed a contract with the WWF on June 10, 1996, with the signing announced in a press conference. He was the second wrestler to sign a guaranteed contract with the WWF after Marc Mero, indicative of the period in which Vince McMahon began to protect the company from abruptly losing talent to WCW, with Lex Luger, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall all previously doing so. Pillman acted as a commentator while recovering from his broken ankle, transitioning to a wrestling role after attacking an unruly fan during an episode of WWF Superstars on June 29, 1996 in Detroit.


title: Brian Pillman

text: On the November 4, 1996 episode of "Raw", Pillman took part in the infamous "Pillman's got a gun" angle with his former teammate Stone Cold Steve Austin. When Pillman initially arrived to the WWF, he aligned himself immediately with his long-time friend and former teammate Austin, serving as his lackey while he recovered. However, Pillman began noticeably favoring Austin's nemesis, Bret Hart, before Austin had enough and brutally attacked him in the ring during an interview on an episode of "Superstars" on October 27, 1996. Austin and Pillman had been feuding for several weeks, and Austin finally decided to take matters into his own hands and visit Pillman, whom he had already injured, at his home in Walton, Kentucky. WWF interviewer Kevin Kelly sat in Pillman's house with a camera crew and the Pillman family, while Pillman's friends surrounded the house to protect him. As the interview progressed, Pillman got infuriated and produced a Colt-45 pistol, angrily exclaiming, "when Austin 3:16 meets Pillman 9-millimeter glock, I'm gonna blast his sorry ass straight to hell." Austin was attacked by Pillman's friends as soon as he arrived, but he quickly subdued them. He then proceeded to break into Pillman's home and advance on his nemesis. However, Pillman responded by pulling out the pistol and pointing it at a hesitant Austin, while Kelly and Pillman's wife Melanie screamed for help. The camera feed was then disrupted, with the scene fading to black. The on-scene director contacted commentator Vince McMahon and reported that he had heard "a couple explosions". The transmission was restored shortly before the end of "Raw", and viewers witnessed Pillman's friends dragging Austin from the house while Pillman aimed the gun at Austin and announced his intention to "kill that son of a bitch!" Pillman also slipped up by saying "get out of the fucking way!" on live television, which prevented it from being edited out. The WWF and Pillman eventually apologized for the entire angle.


title: Brian Pillman

text: After WrestleMania 13, Pillman returned and aligned himself with his real life close friends Bret Hart, Owen Hart, The British Bulldog, and Jim Neidhart as part of the anti-American Hart Foundation, turning Pillman heel, all of whom he was familiar with from his Stampede Wrestling roots. He began feuding with his former partner, Steve Austin. In the course of the feud, Austin was given on-screen credit for damaging Pillman's ankle in late October 1996 after placing it in between the seat and backrest of a folded chair and then jumping on the chair (this particular style of attack has since been dubbed "The Pillmanizer", in honor of this incident). Pillman began competing again as a full-time in-ring competitor in May, frequently teaming with Hart Foundation members in 6 man tag matches against Austin and the Legion of Doom. On July 6, 1997 at in Bret's hometown Calgary, Pillman and The Hart Foundation defeated the American team of Stone Cold Steve Austin, Goldust, Ken Shamrock and The Legion of Doom in a 10-man tag team match in the main event.


title: Brian Pillman

text: After his feud with Austin, he feuded with Goldust over Marlena until his death. Pillman lost to Goldust at SummerSlam in which Pillman was forced to wear a dress during his matches for a month, Pillman then challenged Goldust again to a match with two stipulations, if Pillman won he would take Marlena away from Goldust to be his personal assistant for 30 days or if Goldust won, Pillman would leave the WWF for the rest of his life. Pillman defeated Goldust at . This turned out to be his final WWF pay-per-view appearance. During the feud they would for several weeks later appear in segments called "Brian Pillman's XXX-Files", in which Marlena was made to wear sexually provocative clothing. His final WWF televised match came on the October 4, 1997 episode of Shotgun Saturday Night, defeating The Patriot by disqualification due to interference by Goldust. After the match, Goldust chased him and Marlena out of the arena.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman was a very close friend to the Hart family. Both Pillman and the Harts have referred to themselves as being as close as siblings. Pillman stated that he loved Bret and Owen enough to be willing to do anything for them. He was the only member of The Hart Foundation to not be related to the family through either blood or marriage.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Pillman dated Terri Runnels while they were in WCW together before her marriage to Dustin Rhodes, which would later be utilized in a 1997 angle between Pillman and Goldust. He later married Melanie Morgan (born September 23, 1965) on March 17, 1993. Melanie had two children at the time, Alexis Michelle Reed and Jesse Morgan from her previous relationships. At the time, he also had daughters, Danielle and Brittany, from two previous relationships. Brian and Melanie had two children together, Brian Zachary and Skylar King, the latter born after Pillman's death. Melanie also adopted one of Brian's daughters, Brittany. Despite not being their biological parent, Pillman is often referred to as the father of Melanie's children, Jesse Morgan and Alexis Michelle Reed. Pillman adopted Alexis before his death.


title: Brian Pillman

text: As per "Brian Pillman: Loose Cannon", Brian and Melanie were involved in a heated divorce at the time of his death in October 1997. Melanie has said that she meant for the divorce to be a wake-up call for Brian, and they were still living together at the time of Brian's passing, but he was banished to the basement.


title: Brian Pillman

text: In 2017, Pillman's daughter Brittany claimed that Melanie's daughter Skylar King is not Pillman's biological daughter, but the child of another man whom Melanie married shortly after Pillman's death, and that all the money given by WWF and wrestlers to support Pillman's family was used by Melanie for drugs.


title: Brian Pillman

text: In 2021, Viceland did a two part episode about Pillman on "Dark Side of the Ring" and life. His sister, son, two daughters, Melanie and NFL Strength Coach Kim Wood talked about Pillman's life. Melanie Pillman was found dead from a drug overdose on June 1, 2022, as confirmed by Brian, Jr. She was 56 years old.


title: Brian Pillman

text: On October 5, 1997, Pillman was scheduled to wrestle Dude Love at the WWF pay-per-view . Steve Austin relayed that Jim Cornette was instructed to find the whereabouts of Pillman. Jim contacted the Budgetel Motel in Bloomington, Minnesota, where Pillman had stayed the previous night, and was told by the receptionist that Pillman was found dead in his hotel room by the maids earlier that day at 1:09 p.m. Central Time. He was 35 years old. An autopsy attributed Pillman's death to a heart attack. However, Austin explained that this was caused by previously undetected atherosclerotic heart disease, a condition which had also led to the death of Pillman's father. The next night on "Raw", the WWF paid tribute to Brian Pillman. Later that night, Vince McMahon interviewed Melanie Pillman; the interview was seen as being in poor taste and was awarded "Wrestling Observer Newsletter"'s Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic award for that year.


title: Brian Pillman

text: In early 2008, Pillman's adopted daughter Alexis Michelle Reed entered professional wrestling as a valet and ring girl under the name "Sexy" Lexi Pillman. On November 26, 2009, Reed died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident. Reed was 26 years old.


title: Brian Pillman

text: Like his father, Brian Zachary became a football player and played at the high-school level while attending Dixie Heights High School before graduating in 2011. In February 2017, he announced his decision to follow in his father's footsteps to become a professional wrestler. He added that he wants to follow his father's high-flying style and keep his legacy alive. The younger Pillman was trained by Lance Storm and uses the Twitter handle @FlyinBrianJr as a tribute to his father. He made his debut in December 2017, and is now wrestling for All Elite Wrestling beginning in the summer of 2020, where he, Griff Garrison, and Julia Hart have formed a stable, the Varsity Blondes, paying tribute to the 1980s era and to his father's tag team with Steve Austin.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: Swissair Flight 111 was a scheduled international passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, United States, to Cointrin Airport in Geneva, Switzerland. This flight was also a codeshare flight with Delta Air Lines. On 2 September 1998, the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 performing this flight, registration HB-IWF, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Halifax Stanfield International Airport at the entrance to St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia. The crash site was 8 kilometers (5 mi; 4 nmi) from shore, roughly equidistant from the small fishing and tourist communities of Peggy's Cove and Bayswater. All 229 passengers and crew on board the MD-11 were killed, making the crash the deadliest McDonnell Douglas MD-11 accident in history.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The search and rescue response, crash recovery operation, and investigation by the Government of Canada took more than four years and cost CA$57 million. The investigation carried out by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) concluded that flammable material used in the aircraft's structure allowed a fire to spread beyond the control of the crew, resulting in the crash of the aircraft. Several wide-ranging recommendations were made which have been incorporated into new US Federal Aviation Administration standards.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: Swissair Flight 111 was one of the two ill-fated flights known as the "UN shuttle" (the other being Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in 2019) because of its popularity with United Nations officials traveling between the organization's two biggest centers. The flight also carried business executives, scientists, and researchers.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The aircraft, a seven-year-old McDonnell Douglas MD-11, serial number 48448, registration HB-IWF, was manufactured in 1991, and Swissair was its only operator. It bore the title of "Vaud", in honor of the Swiss canton of the same name. The cabin was configured with 241 passenger seats. First and business class seats were equipped with in-seat in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems from Interactive Flight Technologies. The aircraft was powered by three Pratt & Whitney PW4462 turbofan engines and had logged over 36,000 hours before the crash.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The in-flight entertainment system was the first of its kind equipped on the plane. It allowed the first and business class passengers to browse the World Wide Web, select their own movies and games, and gamble. The system was installed in business class one year before the incident, between 21 August and 9 September 1997. It was installed in first class five months later, in February 1998, due to delivery delays.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The pilot-in-command was 50-year-old Urs Zimmermann. At the time of the accident, he had approximately 10,800 hours of total flying time, of which 900 hours were in an MD-11. He was also an instructor pilot for the MD-11. Before his career with Swissair, he was a fighter pilot in the Swiss Air Force from 1966 to 1970. Zimmermann was described as a friendly person with professional skills, who always worked with exactness and precision.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The first officer, 36-year-old Stefan Löw, had approximately 4,800 hours of total flying time, including 230 hours on the MD-11. He was an instructor on the MD-80 and A320. From 1982 to 1990, he had been a pilot in the Swiss Air Force.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The cabin crew comprised a maître de cabine (purser) and eleven flight attendants. All crew members on board Swissair Flight 111 were qualified, certified, and trained in accordance with Swiss regulations under the Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA).


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The flight took off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at 20:18 EDT (00:18 UTC) on 2 September. From 20:33 – 20:47 EDT (00:33 to 00:47 UTC), the aircraft experienced a radio blackout for approximately thirteen minutes, which was later found to be caused by communication radio tuning errors.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: At 22:10 AT (01:10 UTC, 52 minutes after takeoff), the flight crew detected an odour in the cockpit and determined it to be smoke from the air conditioning system. Four minutes later, the odour returned and smoke became visible, prompting the pilots to make a "pan-pan" radio call to Moncton air traffic control, the area control center (ACC) station in charge of air traffic over the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. The pan-pan call indicated that there was an urgency due to smoke in the cockpit but did not declare an emergency as denoted by a "mayday" call. The crew requested a diversion to Logan International Airport in Boston ( away) before accepting Moncton ATC's offer of radar vectors to the closer Halifax International Airport in Enfield, Nova Scotia, away.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: At 22:18 AT (01:18 UTC), Moncton Centre handed over traffic control of the plane to Halifax terminal air traffic control, the ATC station in charge of controlling traffic in and out of Halifax International Airport. Upon being advised by Halifax ATC that they were from the airport, the crew requested more flight distance to allow the aircraft to descend safely from its altitude of at the time. The crew then requested to dump fuel to reduce their weight for landing. Halifax thus vectored the plane south toward St. Margaret's Bay where it was safe for the aircraft to dump fuel while remaining within of the airport.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: In accordance with the Swissair checklist "In case of smoke of unknown origin", the crew shut off power to the cabin, which also turned off the recirculating fans in the cabin's ceiling. This allowed the fire to spread to the cockpit, eventually shutting off power to the aircraft's autopilot. At 22:24:28 AT (01:24:28 UTC), the crew informed Halifax that "we now must fly manually", followed by declaring an emergency. Ten seconds later, the crew declared an emergency again, saying "...and we are declaring emergency now, Swissair one eleven"; this was the last transmission received from Flight 111.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The aircraft flight data recorder stopped operating at 22:25:40 AT (01:25:40 UTC), followed one second later by the cockpit voice recorder. The aircraft's transponder briefly resumed transmission of secondary radar returns from 22:25:50 to 22:26:04 AT (01:25:50 to 01:26:04 UTC), at which time the aircraft's altitude was . After this, the aircraft could only be tracked through primary radar, which does not provide altitude information.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: At 22:31:18 AT (01:31:18 UTC), the aircraft struck the ocean at an estimated speed of . The collision with the water decelerated the aircraft with approximately 350 "g", causing it to disintegrate instantly. The location of the crash was identified as approximately 44°24′33″N 63°58′25″W.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: There were 132 American (including one employee each from Delta Air Lines and United Airlines), 41 Swiss (including the 13 crew members), 30 French, three British, four Canadian, three Italian, two Greek, two Lebanese, one each from Afghanistan, China, Germany, India, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, St. Kitts and Nevis, Mexico, Sweden, and Yugoslavia, and four other passengers on board.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: Jonathan Mann, former head of the World Health Organization's AIDS program, and his wife, AIDS researcher Mary Lou Clements-Mann, died in the crash.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: Joseph LaMotta, son of boxing legend Jake LaMotta, also perished in the crash. The LaMotta family later sued the airline for his death.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The search and rescue (SAR) operation was code-named "Operation Persistence" and was launched immediately by Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Halifax (JRCC Halifax), which tasked the Air Command, Maritime Command and Land Force Command of the Canadian Forces (CF), Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) and Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary (CCGA) resources.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The first rescue resources to approach the crash site were CCGA volunteer units, which were mostly privately owned fishing boats operating from Peggy's Cove and Bayswater, as well as other harbours on St. Margaret's Bay and the Aspotogan Peninsula. They were soon joined by the dedicated CCG SAR vessel, CCGS "Sambro"; CH-124 Sea King helicopters, flown from CFB Shearwater by crews from 423 Maritime Helicopter Squadron (MHS) and 406 Maritime Operational Training Squadron (MOTS); and CH-113 Labrador SAR helicopters flown from CFB Greenwood by the 413 Transport and Rescue Squadron (TRS). and CP-140 Aurora aircraft from CFB Greenwood from 405 Long Range Patrol Squadron.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The crash site's proximity to Halifax placed it within one hour's sailing time of ships docked at Canada's largest naval base, CFB Halifax, and one of the largest CCG bases in Canada, the CCG Regional Headquarters in Dartmouth. Calls went out immediately and ships sailed directly to St. Margaret's Bay.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The provincial ambulance service, Emergency Health Services (EHS), received word of the crash at 22:39 AT, and ordered 21 emergency units from Halifax, the South Shore, and the Annapolis Valley to respond. An EHS helicopter was also sent to the crash site, and the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax was put on emergency alert. The emergency health services were stood down around 3:30 AT the next morning, as expectations of finding survivors diminished.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The land search, including shoreline searching, was the responsibility of Halifax Regional Search and Rescue. The organization was responsible for all ground operations including military operations and other ground search and rescue teams.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: By the afternoon of 3 September, it was apparent that there were no survivors from the crash and JRCC Halifax de-tasked dedicated SAR assets (CCGS "Sambro" and the CH-113 Labrador helicopters). The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were given overall command of the recovery operation, with HMCS "Preserver" remaining on-scene commander.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The aircraft broke up on impact with the water and most of the debris sank to the ocean floor (a depth of ). Some debris was found floating in the crash area and over the following weeks debris washed up on the nearby shorelines.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The initial focus of the recovery was on finding and identifying human remains and on recovering the flight recorders. As the force of impact was "in the order of at least 350 "g"", the aircraft was fragmented and the environmental conditions only allowed the recovery of human remains along with the aircraft wreckage.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: Only one of the victims was visually identifiable. Eventually, 147 were identified by fingerprint, dental records, and X-ray comparisons. The remaining 81 were identified through DNA tests.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: With CF divers (navy clearance divers, port inspection divers, ship's team divers, and Army combat divers) working on the recovery, a request was made by the Government of Canada to the Government of the United States for a larger dedicated salvage recovery vessel. was tasked to the recovery effort, arriving from Philadelphia on 9 September. Among "Grapple"s crew were 32 salvage divers. Additionally, the USS "Grapple" welcomed two teams of Canadian Navy Clearance Divers that flew across Canada from Fleet Diving Unit (FDU) Pacific.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) were found by the submarine HMCS "Okanagan" using sonar to detect the underwater locator beacon signals and were quickly retrieved by Canadian Navy divers (the FDR on 6 September and the CVR on 11 September 1998). Both had stopped recording when the aircraft lost electrical power at approximately , 5 minutes and 37 seconds before impact.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The recovery operation was guided by the TSB with resources from the Canadian Forces, Canadian Coast Guard, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and other agencies. The area was surveyed using route survey sonar, laser line scanners, and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to locate items. After being located, the debris was then recovered (initially by divers and ROVs, later by dredging and trawling).


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: On 2 October 1998, the TSB initiated a heavy lift operation to retrieve the major portion of the wreckage from the deep water before the expected winter storms began. By 21 October, an estimated 27% of the wreckage was recovered. At that point in the investigation, the crash was generally believed to have been caused by faulty wiring in the cockpit after the IFE system started to overheat. The TSB released its preliminary report on 30 August 2000 and the final report in 2003.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The final phase of wreckage recovery employed the ship to dredge the remaining aircraft debris. It concluded in December 1999 with 98% of the aircraft retrieved: approximately of aircraft debris and of cargo.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: JFK Airport used the JFK Ramada Plaza Hotel to house relatives and friends of the victims of the crash, due to the hotel's central location relative to the airport. Jerome Hauer, the head of the emergency management task force of New York City, praised the swift actions of Swissair and codeshare partner Delta Air Lines in responding to the accident; he had criticized Trans World Airlines in its response to the TWA Flight 800 crash in 1996.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: The RCMP medical examiners positively identified most of the bodies within ten weeks of the accident. Due to extreme impact forces, only one body was identifiable by sight. DNA profiling was used to identify approximately one hundred bodies, in what has been referred to as "the largest DNA identification project ever undertaken in Canada". The RCMP contacted relatives of victims to request medical histories and dental records. They were also asked to provide blood samples for genetic matching in the DNA identification of the victims. About 90 bodies were identified by the medical examiners using dental records; owing to the large number of ante-mortem (before death) dental X-rays available to the examiners, these bodies were identified by late October 1998. Fingerprints and ante-mortem X-rays were used to identify around 30 bodies.


title: Swissair Flight 111

text: An estimated 2 million pieces of debris were recovered and brought ashore for inspection at a secure handling facility in a marine industrial park at Sheet Harbour, where small material was hand inspected by teams of RCMP officers looking for human remains, personal effects, and valuables from the aircraft's cargo hold. The material was then transported to CFB Shearwater, where it was sorted and inspected by over 350 investigators from multiple organizations and companies, including the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB), the US National Transportation Safety Board, the US Federal Aviation Administration, the Swiss Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, Air Line Pilots Association, and Swissair.