title: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

text: The PS2 version of "Vice City Stories" was announced as a digital release for the PlayStation 3 in 2012, as a PlayStation 2 Classics title, and was released in April 2013 via the PlayStation Network. It has since been removed from PSN.


title: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

text: "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories" has received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic.


title: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

text: The PlayStation 2 port of the game was criticised for having the same coding as the PSP version and for fixing very few issues and removing some things, but was praised for better lighting. As of 26 March 2008, "Vice City Stories" has sold 4.5 million copies according to Take-Two Interactive. "Hyper"'s Eliot Fish commended the game for using "the slick veneer of the 1980s [and the] story is well integrated into missions".


title: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

text: The game's PlayStation Portable version received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom.


title: Photograph

text: A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now created using a smartphone/camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see. The process and practice of creating such images is called photography.


title: Photograph

text: The word "photograph" was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek φῶς (""), meaning "light," and γραφή ("graphê"), meaning "drawing, writing," together meaning "drawing with light."


title: Photograph

text: The first permanent photograph, a contact-exposed copy of an engraving, was made in 1822 using the bitumen-based "heliography" process developed by Nicéphore Niépce. The first photographs of a real-world scene, made using a camera obscura, followed a few years later at Le Gras, France, in 1826, but Niépce's process was not sensitive enough to be practical for that application: a camera exposure lasting for hours or days was required. In 1829 Niépce entered into a partnership with Louis Daguerre and the two collaborated to work out a similar but more sensitive and otherwise improved process.


title: Photograph

text: After Niépce's death in 1833 Daguerre concentrated on silver halide-based alternatives. He exposed a silver-plated copper sheet to iodine vapor, creating a layer of light-sensitive silver iodide; exposed it in the camera for a few minutes; developed the resulting invisible latent image to visibility with mercury fumes; then bathed the plate in a hot salt solution to remove the remaining silver iodide, making the results light-fast. He named this first practical process for making photographs with a camera the daguerreotype, after himself. Its existence was announced to the world on 7 January 1839 but working details were not made public until 19 August. Other inventors soon made improvements which reduced the required exposure time from a few minutes to a few seconds, making portrait photography truly practical and widely popular.


title: Photograph

text: The daguerreotype had shortcomings, notably the fragility of the mirror-like image surface and the particular viewing conditions required to see the image properly. Each was a unique opaque positive that could only be duplicated by copying it with a camera. Inventors set about working out improved processes that would be more practical. By the end of the 1850s the daguerreotype had been replaced by the less expensive and more easily viewed ambrotype and tintype, which made use of the recently introduced collodion process. Glass plate collodion negatives used to make prints on albumen paper soon became the preferred photographic method and held that position for many years, even after the introduction of the more convenient gelatin process in 1871. Refinements of the gelatin process have remained the primary black-and-white photographic process to this day, differing primarily in the sensitivity of the emulsion and the support material used, which was originally glass, then a variety of flexible plastic films, along with various types of paper for the final prints.


title: Photograph

text: Color photography is almost as old as black-and-white, with early experiments including John Herschel's Anthotype prints in 1842, the pioneering work of Louis Ducos du Hauron in the 1860s, and the Lippmann process unveiled in 1891, but for many years color photography remained little more than a laboratory curiosity. It first became a widespread commercial reality with the introduction of Autochrome plates in 1907, but the plates were very expensive and not suitable for casual snapshot-taking with hand-held cameras. The mid-1930s saw the introduction of Kodachrome and Agfacolor Neu, the first easy-to-use color films of the modern multi-layer chromogenic type. These early processes produced transparencies for use in slide projectors and viewing devices, but color prints became increasingly popular after the introduction of chromogenic color print paper in the 1940s. The needs of the motion picture industry generated a number of special processes and systems, perhaps the best-known being the now-obsolete three-strip Technicolor process.


title: Photograph

text: Non-digital photographs are produced with a two-step chemical process. In the two-step process the light-sensitive film captures a "negative" image (colors and lights/darks are inverted). To produce a "positive" image, the negative is most commonly transferred ('printed') onto photographic paper. Printing the negative onto transparent film stock is used to manufacture motion picture films.


title: Photograph

text: Alternatively, the film is processed to invert the "negative" image, yielding positive transparencies. Such positive images are usually mounted in frames, called slides. Before recent advances in digital photography, transparencies were widely used by professionals because of their sharpness and accuracy of color rendition. Most photographs published in magazines were taken on color transparency film.


title: Photograph

text: Originally, all photographs were monochromatic or hand-painted in color. Although methods for developing color photos were available as early as 1861, they did not become widely available until the 1940s or 1950s, and even so, until the 1960s most photographs were taken in black and white. Since then, color photography has dominated popular photography, although black and white is still used, being easier to develop than color.


title: Photograph

text: Panoramic format images can be taken with cameras like the Hasselblad Xpan on standard film. Since the 1990s, panoramic photos have been available on the Advanced Photo System (APS) film. APS was developed by several of the major film manufacturers to provide a film with different formats and computerized options available, though APS panoramas were created using a mask in panorama-capable cameras, far less desirable than a true panoramic camera, which achieves its effect through a wider film format. APS has become less popular and has been discontinued.


title: Photograph

text: The advent of the microcomputer and digital photography has led to the rise of digital prints. These prints are created from stored graphic formats such as JPEG, TIFF, and RAW. The types of printers used include inkjet printers, dye-sublimation printer, laser printers, and thermal printers. Inkjet prints are sometimes given the coined name "Giclée".


title: Photograph

text: The Web has been a popular medium for storing and sharing photos ever since the first photograph was published on the web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992 (an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes). Today popular sites such as Flickr, PhotoBucket and 500px are used by millions of people to share their pictures.


title: Photograph

text: Ideal photograph storage involves placing each photo in an individual folder constructed from buffered, or acid-free paper. Buffered paper folders are especially recommended in cases when a photograph was previously mounted onto poor quality material or using an adhesive that will lead to even more acid creation. Store photographs measuring 8x10 inches or smaller vertically along the longer edge of the photo in the buffered paper folder, within a larger archival box, and label each folder with relevant information to identify it. The rigid nature of the folder protects the photo from slumping or creasing, as long as the box is not packed too tightly or under filled. Folder larger photos or brittle photos stacked flat within archival boxes with other materials of comparable size.


title: Photograph

text: The most stable of plastics used in photo preservation, polyester, does not generate any harmful chemical elements, nor does it have any capability to absorb acids generated by the photograph itself. Polyester sleeves and encapsulation have been praised for their ability to protect the photograph from humidity and environmental pollution, slowing the reaction between the item and the atmosphere. This is true, however the polyester just as frequently traps these elements next to the material it is intended to protect. This is especially risky in a storage environment that experiences drastic fluctuations in humidity or temperature, leading to ferrotyping, or sticking of the photograph to the plastic. Photographs sleeved or encapsulated in polyester cannot be stored vertically in boxes because they will slide down next to each other within the box, bending and folding, nor can the archivist write directly onto the polyester to identify the photograph. Therefore, it is necessary to either stack polyester protected photographs horizontally within a box, or bind them in a three ring binder. Stacking the photos horizontally within a flat box will greatly reduce ease of access, and binders leave three sides of the photo exposed to the effects of light and do not support the photograph evenly on both sides, leading to slumping and bending within the binder. The plastic used for enclosures has been manufactured to be as frictionless as possible to prevent scratching photos during insertion to the sleeves. Unfortunately, the slippery nature of the enclosure generates a build-up of static electricity, which attracts dust and lint particles. The static can attract the dust to the inside of the sleeve, as well, where it can scratch the photograph. Likewise, these components that aid in insertion of the photo, referred to as slip agents, can break down and transfer from the plastic to the photograph, where they deposit as an oily film, attracting further lint and dust. At this time, there is no test to evaluate the long-term effects of these components on photographs. In addition, the plastic sleeves can develop kinks or creases in the surface, which will scratch away at the emulsion during handling.


title: Photograph

text: It is best to leave photographs lying flat on the table when viewing them. Do not pick it up from a corner, or even from two sides and hold it at eye level. Every time the photograph bends, even a little, this can break down the emulsion. The very nature of enclosing a photograph in plastic encourages users to pick it up; users tend to handle plastic enclosed photographs less gently than non-enclosed photographs, simply because they feel the plastic enclosure makes the photo impervious to all mishandling. As long as a photo is in its folder, there is no need to touch it; simply remove the folder from the box, lay it flat on the table, and open the folder. If for some reason the researchers or archivists do need to handle the actual photo, perhaps to examine the verso for writing, they can use gloves if there appears to be a risk from oils or dirt on the hands.


title: Photograph

text: Because daguerreotypes were rendered on a mirrored surface, many spiritualists also became practitioners of the new art form. Spiritualists would claim that the human image on the mirrored surface was akin to looking into one's soul. The spiritualists also believed that it would open their souls and let demons in. Among Muslims, it is makruh (disliked) to perform salah (worship) in a place decorated with photographs. Photography and darkroom anomalies and artifacts sometimes lead viewers to believe that spirits or demons have been captured in photos.


title: Photograph

text: The production or distribution of certain types of photograph has been forbidden under modern laws, such as those of government buildings, highly classified regions, private property, copyrighted works, children's genitalia, child pornography and less commonly pornography overall. These laws vary greatly between jurisdictions.


title: Kevin McDonald

text: Kevin Hamilton McDonald (born May 16, 1961) is a Canadian actor, voice actor and comedian. He is a member of the comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall, who have appeared together in a number of stage, television and film productions, most notably the 1988–1995 TV series "The Kids in the Hall". He played Pastor Dave in "That '70s Show", and also starred as a co-pilot in the 2011 web comedy series "Papillon". He also does voice work in animation, most notably for providing the voices of Agent Wendy Pleakley in the "Lilo & Stitch" franchise, Waffle in "Catscratch", and the Almighty Tallest Purple in "Invader Zim".


title: Kevin McDonald

text: He starred alongside Rodney Dangerfield and Dom DeLuise as the titular character in the gangster parody film "The Godson".


title: Kevin McDonald

text: McDonald was born in Montréal, Québec, the son of Sheila and Hamilton "Hammy" McDonald, who was a dental equipment salesman. He moved to Los Angeles, California, at the age of seven, after his father was transferred there. His family subsequently lived in Toronto, Ontario, as well. McDonald has a younger sister, Sandra.


title: Kevin McDonald

text: During an interview on "WTF with Marc Maron", McDonald discussed his father's severe alcoholism, which inspired the "Kids in the Hall" sketches "Daddy Drank" and "Girl Drink Drunk." Although he calls his mother "a wonderful woman," she was nevertheless reluctant to leave his father until Kevin turned 19, when his father's drinking had escalated to two bottles of vodka daily. McDonald, his mother and sister rented an apartment, where they quietly moved their belongings "every night [after his father would] collapse on the stairs." Once they had completely moved, his parents divorced, his father lost his job, went bankrupt and lived in a homeless shelter for a year, during which he abstained from drinking (although he alleged "his roommates were drinking Drano"); coincidentally, McDonald would use the same building to rehearse with "The Kids in the Hall" as they were starting out on stage. His father was able to find employment at a flower shop, then an apartment and, over time, resume his career in dental equipment sales. Eventually, he did drink again, but not to the extent he had earlier in his life. He died of an aneurysm in 2004. McDonald would use his relationship with his father as the basis for a one-man show, "Hammy and the Kids", in which he said he had no happy ending to the story of his father. However, during an interview with Marc Maron, he said after one performance of his one-man show, he was approached by a stranger who said that he had served his father as a bartender, and that his father mentioned how proud he was of his son, the famous comedian, which moved McDonald to tears "like the ending to a bad movie."


title: Kevin McDonald

text: McDonald briefly studied acting at a community college, where he was kicked out for being "a one-legged actor" (i.e. he could perform comedy, but not drama) by a dean who had a leg amputated, and was therefore a literal one-legged actor. However, one of his professors, William B. Davis (who would later find fame in his portrayal of Cigarette Smoking Man on "The X-Files"), saw McDonald's potential and encouraged him to pursue improv comedy by giving him the number to The Second City in Toronto.


title: Kevin McDonald

text: McDonald founded The Kids in the Hall comedy troupe with his friend Dave Foley. They met in Toronto at the Second City Training Center, and the two wrote and performed in sketches together more than any other pair in the group. In the troupe's TV show and stage shows, he portrays several popular recurring characters, such as the King of Empty Promises, Sir Simon Milligan, and Jerry Sizzler. A frequent running gag was that McDonald is the least popular member and always struggling not to get kicked out.


title: Kevin McDonald

text: When the troupe ended the five-season run of its eponymous television series in 1994, the five members moved to a number of solo projects. McDonald has played roles in movies like "Boy Meets Girl", Pleakley in the "Lilo & Stitch" franchise, and Harry Potter in "Epic Movie". On television, he has appeared on "The Martin Short Show", "Ellen" (as a radio personality), "That '70s Show" (as a confused young cleric, Pastor Dave), "Seinfeld", "Friends", "NewsRadio" (on which Foley starred), "MADtv", "Arrested Development", and "Corner Gas". McDonald has also done voice work for various animated series, including "Invader Zim" (in which he did the voice for Almighty Tallest Purple), "The Angry Beavers", "Catscratch" (in which he voiced Waffle), and "". He also played an imaginary friend named Ivan in the "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" episode "Sight For Sore Eyes", and appeared in the music video for "Roses" by OutKast.


title: Kevin McDonald

text: In 2006, McDonald hosted a CBC Television special, "Sketch with Kevin McDonald", featuring several of Canada's best-known sketch comedy troupes. The special received two nominations, for the performances by The Minnesota Wrecking Crew and by The Imponderables, for Canadian Comedy Award in the category Best Taped Live Performance, with The Minnesota Wrecking Crew winning the award.


title: Kevin McDonald

text: Since 2000, McDonald and the other members of The Kids in the Hall have reunited for a number of tours and televised performances. The troupe played the 2007 Just for Laughs festival, where McDonald also performed his one-and-a half-man show "Hammy and the Kids" with Craig Northey, based on his two dysfunctional families, his father ("Hammy") and The Kids in the Hall.


title: White hat (computer security)

text: A white hat (or a white-hat hacker, a whitehat) is an ethical security hacker. Ethical hacking is a term meant to imply a broader category than just penetration testing. Under the owner's consent, white-hat hackers aim to identify any vulnerabilities the current system has. The white hat is contrasted with the black hat, a malicious hacker; this definitional dichotomy comes from Western films, where heroic and antagonistic cowboys might traditionally wear a white and a black hat, respectively. There is a third kind of hacker known as a grey hat who hacks with good intentions but at times without permission.


title: White hat (computer security)

text: White-hat hackers may also work in teams called "sneakers and/or hacker clubs", red teams, or tiger teams.


title: White hat (computer security)

text: One of the first instances of an ethical hack being used was a "security evaluation" conducted by the United States Air Force, in which the Multics operating systems were tested for "potential use as a two-level (secret/top secret) system." The evaluation determined that while Multics was "significantly better than other conventional systems," it also had "... vulnerabilities in hardware security, software security and procedural security" that could be uncovered with "a relatively low level of effort." The authors performed their tests under a guideline of realism, so their results would accurately represent the kinds of access an intruder could potentially achieve. They performed tests involving simple information-gathering exercises, as well as outright attacks upon the system that might damage its integrity; both results were of interest to the target audience. There are several other now unclassified reports describing ethical hacking activities within the US military.


title: White hat (computer security)

text: By 1981 "The New York Times" described white-hat activities as part of a "mischievous but perversely positive 'hacker' tradition". When a National CSS employee revealed the existence of his password cracker, which he had used on customer accounts, the company chastised him not for writing the software but for not disclosing it sooner. The letter of reprimand stated "The Company realizes the benefit to NCSS and encourages the efforts of employees to identify security weaknesses to the VP, the directory, and other sensitive software in files".


title: White hat (computer security)

text: The idea to bring this tactic of ethical hacking to assess the security of systems was formulated by Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema. To raise the overall level of security on the Internet and intranets, they proceeded to describe how they were able to gather enough information about their targets to have been able to compromise security if they had chosen to do so. They provided several specific examples of how this information could be gathered and exploited to gain control of the target, and how such an attack could be prevented. They gathered up all the tools they had used during their work, packaged them in a single, easy-to-use application, and gave it away to anyone who chose to download it. Their program called Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks, or SATAN, was met with a great amount of media attention around the world in 1992.


title: White hat (computer security)

text: While penetration testing concentrates on attacking software and computer systems from the start – scanning ports, examining known defects in protocols and applications running on the system, and patch installations, for example – ethical hacking may include other things. A full-blown ethical hack might include emailing staff to ask for password details, rummaging through executive dustbins and usually breaking, without the knowledge and consent of the targets. Only the owners, CEOs, and Board Members (stakeholders) who asked for such a security review of this magnitude are aware. To try and replicate some of the destructive techniques a real attack might employ, ethical hackers may arrange for cloned test systems, or organize a hack late at night while systems are less critical. In most recent cases these hacks perpetuate for the long-term con (days, if not weeks, of long-term human infiltration into an organization). Some examples include leaving USB/flash key drives with hidden auto-start software in a public area as if someone lost the small drive and an unsuspecting employee found it and took it.


title: White hat (computer security)

text: These methods identify exploit known security vulnerabilities and attempt to evade security to gain entry into secured areas. They can do this by hiding software and system 'back-doors' that can be used as a link to information or access that a non-ethical hacker, also known as 'black hat' or 'grey hat', may want to reach.


title: White hat (computer security)

text: Struan Robertson, legal director at Pinsent Masons LLP, and editor of OUT-LAW.com says "Broadly speaking, if the access to a system is authorized, the hacking is ethical and legal. If it isn't, there's an offense under the Computer Misuse Act. The unauthorized access offense covers everything from guessing the password to accessing someone's webmail account, to cracking the security of a bank. The maximum penalty for unauthorized access to a computer is two years in prison and a fine. There are higher penalties – up to 10 years in prison – when the hacker also modifies data". Unauthorized access even to expose vulnerabilities for the benefit of many is not legal, says Robertson. "There's no defense in our hacking laws that your behavior is for the greater good. Even if it's what you believe."


title: White hat (computer security)

text: The United States National Security Agency offers certifications such as the CNSS 4011. Such a certification covers orderly, ethical hacking techniques and team management. Aggressor teams are called "red" teams. Defender teams are called "blue" teams. When the agency recruited at DEF CON in 2012, it promised applicants that "If you have a few, shall we say, "indiscretions" in your past, don't be alarmed. You shouldn't automatically assume you won't be hired".


title: White hat (computer security)

text: A good "white hat" is a competitive skillful employee for an enterprise since they can be a countermeasure to find the bugs to protect the enterprise network environment. Therefore, a good "white hat" could bring unexpected benefits in reducing the risk across systems, applications, and endpoints for an enterprise.


title: Fulda Gap

text: The Fulda Gap (), an area between the Hesse-Thuringian border (the former Inner German border) and Frankfurt am Main, contains two corridors of lowlands through which tanks might have driven in a surprise attack by the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies to gain crossing(s) of the Rhine River. Named for the town of Fulda, the Fulda Gap became seen as strategically important during the Cold War of 1947–1991. The Fulda Gap roughly corresponds to the route along which Napoleon chose to withdraw his armies after defeat (16–19 October 1813) at the Battle of Leipzig. Napoleon succeeded in defeating a Bavarian-Austrian army under Wrede in the Battle of Hanau (30–31 October 1813) not far from Frankfurt; from there he escaped back to France.


title: Fulda Gap

text: From 1815, the area appeared of minimal strategic importance, as it lay deep within the borders of the German Confederation and (from 1871) of the German Empire, and German military planning presumed any war would be effectively lost long before an enemy reached that far into the homeland. The route became important again at the end of World War II when the U.S. XII Corps used it in their advance eastward in late March and early April 1945. The U.S. advance had little consequence for Germany's strategic position (which was indeed hopeless by that point), but it allowed the Americans to occupy vast swaths of territory which the Yalta Conference of February 1945 had assigned to the Soviet occupation zone. This in turn did much to compel the Soviets to honor their commitment to allow the Western Allies access to Berlin in exchange for U.S. withdrawal (July 1945) from this territory.


title: Fulda Gap

text: During the Cold War, the Fulda Gap offered one of the two obvious routes for a hypothetical Soviet tank attack on West Germany from Eastern Europe (especially from East Germany); the other route crossed the North German Plain. A third, less likely, route involved travelling up through the Danube River valley through neutral Austria. The concept of a major tank battle along the Fulda Gap became a predominant element of NATO war planning during the Cold War. With such an eventuality in mind, weapons were evolved such as nuclear tube and missile artillery, the nuclear recoilless gun/tactical launcher Davy Crockett, Special Atomic Demolition Munitions, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, and A-10 ground attack aircraft.


title: Fulda Gap

text: The northern route through the Gap passes south of the Knüllgebirge and then continues around the northern flank of the Vogelsberg Mountains; the narrower southern route passes through the Fliede and Kinzig Valleys, with the Vogelsberg to the north and the Rhön mountains and Spessart mountains to the south. Perhaps even more importantly, on emerging from the western exit of the Gap, one encounters gentle terrain from there to the river Rhine, which would have counted in favour of Soviet attempts to reach and cross the Rhine before NATO could prevent this (the intervening Main River would have been less of an obstacle).


title: Fulda Gap

text: The Fulda Gap route was less suitable for mechanized troop movement than was the North German Plain, but offered an avenue of advance direct to the heart of the U.S. military in West Germany, Frankfurt am Main, which as indicated in its name, is on the Main River, a tributary of the Rhine River. Frankfurt am Main was not only West Germany's financial heart, but also home to a large airfield (known as Rhein-Main Air Base and Frankfurt Airport) that was designated to receive U.S. reinforcements in the event of war. In addition Frankfurt is also historically significant as the site of Frankfurt Parliament (the first elected assembly representing all of Germany), it is Germany's fifth largest city by population (after Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne) and it contains Frankfurt Stock Exchange, perhaps the most important on the European mainland. Furthermore the West-German seat of government, Bonn, could easily be taken as a secondary objective during or after an attack on Frankfurt through the Fulda Gap, the distance between the two only being some . A rapidly advancing Soviet or Warsaw Pact attack through the Fulda Gap along the lines of Seven Days to the River Rhine could have also potentially cut the territory of West Germany in two parts, making the long-term existence of a West German state untenable.


title: Fulda Gap

text: Strategists on both sides of the Iron Curtain understood the Fulda Gap's importance, and accordingly allocated forces to defend and attack it. The defense of the Fulda Gap was a mission of the U.S. V Corps. The actual Inner German border in the Fulda Gap was guarded by reconnaissance forces, the identification and structure of which evolved over the years of the Cold War.


title: Fulda Gap

text: From June 1945 until July 1946, reconnaissance and security along the border between the U.S. and Soviet zones of occupation in Germany in the area north and south of Fulda was the mission of elements of the U.S. 3rd and 1st Infantry Divisions. By July 1946, the 1st, 3rd, and 14th Constabulary Regiments (arranged from north to south) had assumed responsibility for inter-zonal border security in an area to include that which later become famous as the Cold War Fulda Gap. The U.S. Constabulary as a headquarters was subsequently drawn down, but individual constabulary regiments were retitled "armored cavalry regiments". This coincided with the 1951 upgrade of the U.S. Army's mostly administrative and occupation responsibilities in Germany to a combat army via the arrival of four combat divisions from the United States. Thus, from 1951. until 1972, the 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) patrolled the Fulda Gap. After the return of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment from Vietnam in 1972, the 11th ACR relieved the 14th ACR and took over the reconnaissance mission in the Fulda Gap until the end of the Cold War.


title: Fulda Gap

text: The mission of the armored cavalry (heavy, mechanized reconnaissance units equipped with tanks and other armored vehicles) in peacetime was to watch the East-West border for signs of pre-attack Soviet army movement. The armored cavalry's mission in war was to delay a Soviet attack until other units of the U.S. V Corps could be mobilized and deployed to defend the Fulda Gap.


title: Fulda Gap

text: The armored cavalry would have also served as a screening force in continuous visual contact with the Warsaw Pact forces, reporting on their composition and activities, and forcing advancing Warsaw Pact forces to deploy while the cavalry fought delaying actions. In order to defend the Fulda Gap and stop a Warsaw Pact advance (as opposed to conducting screening and delaying actions), U.S. V Corps planned to move two divisions (one armored and one mechanized) forward from bases in the Frankfurt and Bad Kreuznach areas.


title: Fulda Gap

text: From 1947 until 1951, the 1st Infantry Division was the sole U.S. division in Germany, although the various Constabulary units taken together were equivalent in size to another division. U.S. Army forces in Germany were increased in 1951 as a result of President Truman's 10 December 1950 declaration of a national emergency as a result of the Korean War, with four divisions arriving from CONUS. This included the 4th Infantry Division, which was stationed in the Frankfurt area, and the 2nd Armored Division, which was located with its headquarters at Bad Kreuznach to the west of the Rhine River; both of those were the divisions assigned to the newly activated V Corps. Within six years, unit changes resulted in the arrival (May/June 1956) and stationing of the 3rd Armored Division (3rd AD) around Frankfurt, and the December 1957 arrival of the 8th Infantry Division (Mechanized) (8th ID) in the Bad Kreuznach area. The two replaced divisions returned to the United States.


title: Fulda Gap

text: The following is a summary of US Cold War history in Germany from the 1950s. US Forces were headquartered at Frankfurt and therefore had an orientation that included the Fulda Gap: 19th Armored Cav Group activated at Frankfurt on 2 January 1953; on 1 October 1953, the 19th Armd Cav Gp was redesignated as 19th Armor Group. On 1 July 1955, 19th Armor Group was replaced by 4th Armor Group. The Seventh Army troop list of 30 June 1956 shows 4th Armor Group attached to V Corps, along with the U.S. divisions, 2d Armored Div, 3d Armored Div, and 10th Infantry Div. USAREUR Troop Lists dated 30 June 1958 show V Corps as containing 3rd Armored Div.(HQ Frankfurt), 8th Infantry Div. (HQ Bad Kreuznach), 4th Armor Group (HQ Frankfurt), and 3rd Infantry Div. (which was headquartered at Würzburg). After the 1963 ROAD reorganization, the 4th Armor Group was inactivated, and the 3rd Infantry Division headquartered at Würzburg was reassigned to VII Corps. The deployment of the 3rd Armored Division and the 8th Infantry Division to V Corps remained stable until the end of the Cold War. In practice, it was unknown how effective V Corps would have been in the event of war due to the vast numbers of tanks and infantry that the Soviets were able to field. In response to the quantitative superiority of the Soviet forces, the U.S. deployed Atomic Demolition Mines for many years in the Fulda Gap. In the early '60s, the Fulda Gap was also protected by V Corps Artillery units equipped with the medium-range MGM-5 Corporal guided missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads. In 1962, the more reliable solid fuel MGM-29 Sergeant missile was deployed and remained in use until 1973 when it was replaced by the MGM-52 Lance missile.


title: Fulda Gap

text: For many years, V Corps' principal adversary was the Soviet 8th Guards Army, which was to be followed by additional armies (including the four armored divisions and one mechanized infantry division of the Soviet 1st Guards Tank Army), making the Fulda Gap a key entry route for the Soviet Bloc to western Europe in any hypothetical battle in Cold War Europe; both armies were well equipped and held high-priority for receiving new equipment.


title: Fulda Gap

text: Beginning in 1975, the Soviet Union's strategy for attacking Western Europe involved the use of operational manoeuvre groups to outflank NATO defensive positions such as the Fulda Gap.


title: Fulda Gap

text: From 1976 to 1984, the 4th Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division was garrisoned in Wiesbaden and also subordinated to U.S. V Corps.


title: Fulda Gap

text: From 1979 onwards, the first V Corps unit detailed to reinforce the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in the Fulda Gap in the event of hostilities was the 8th Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment (1-68 Armor), stationed at Wildflecken to the south of the Gap. The mission of 1-68 Armor was to establish a defensive line across part of the Gap, providing a shield behind which other V Corps units could advance and defend. Also located in Wildflecken was the 108th Military Intelligence (MI) Btn, to which Delta Company Rangers was assigned – the Rangers' mission was to strike at the supply lines and command structures of any invading Soviet forces. 144th Ordnance Company was in charge of much of the ammunition slated for 8th Infantry Division and 3rd Armor Division, as well as operating ASP #3 in Wildflecken. 144th Ord. was also responsible for chemical and nuclear ammunition for the Fulda Gap sector, operating not only ASP #3 but multiple Forward Storage and Transportation Sites. 547th Combat Engineer Battalion was tasked with destroying critical bridges to channel any Soviet advance, as well as provide critical engineering services to enable 1-68th Armor to engage Soviet forces.


title: Fulda Gap

text: In September 1980, the 533rd Military Intelligence (MI) Battalion was reactivated in Frankfurt and assigned to the 3rd Armored Division. The 533rd MI Battalion deployed assets in the Fulda Gap to provide electronic warfare capability for the 3rd AD Commander. The missions of the MI battalion were to identify and target invading forces for artillery and air strikes as well as to intrude on enemy radio networks using radio jamming and deceptive communications by Defense Language Institute trained Russian and German linguists. The 3rd Armored Division was also reinforced with an organic attack helicopter wing, and was the first military unit to deploy the attack helicopter Boeing AH-64 Apache in 1987.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: One Vanderbilt is a 93-story supertall skyscraper at the corner of 42nd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, the building was proposed by developer SL Green Realty as part of a planned Midtown East rezoning in the early 2010s. The skyscraper's roof is high and its spire is above ground, making it the city's fourth-tallest building after One World Trade Center, Central Park Tower, and 111 West 57th Street.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: One Vanderbilt's facade and design is intended to harmonize with Grand Central Terminal immediately to the east. The building's base contains a wedge-shaped void, and the tower tapers as it rises, with several "pavilions" and a pinnacle at the top. The facade is made mostly of glass panels, while the spandrels between stories are made of terracotta. The superstructure is made of steel and concrete, and the interior spaces are designed to be as high as 105 feet (32 m). The lobby has a bank branch and an entrance to the nearby railroad terminal and the associated subway station, while the second floor contains the Le Pavillon restaurant. Most of the building is devoted to office space, and the top stories contain an observation deck, Summit One Vanderbilt.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: SL Green acquired the structures on the site between 2001 and 2011, announcing plans to construct a skyscraper there in 2012. After a planned zoning amendment for the neighborhood failed in 2013, One Vanderbilt was delayed for several months. TD Bank signed as the anchor tenant in May 2014 and after the skyscraper was approved one year later, the existing structures on the site were demolished. A groundbreaking ceremony for One Vanderbilt was held in October 2016, and the tower topped out on September 17, 2019, two months ahead of schedule. Despite delays related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the building opened in September 2020, and Summit One Vanderbilt opened in October 2021.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: One Vanderbilt is in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, just west of Grand Central Terminal. The building takes up the city block bounded by Madison Avenue to the west, the former alignment of Vanderbilt Avenue to the east, 42nd Street to the south, and 43rd Street to the north. The building's rectangular land lot covers , with dimensions of . Nearby structures include the Lefcourt Colonial Building and One Grand Central Place to the south; Grand Central Terminal to the east; the MetLife Building to the northeast; and 335 Madison Avenue to the north. In addition, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel and the Chrysler Building are one block east, while the Pershing Square Building, the Bowery Savings Bank Building, and the Chanin Building are to the southeast.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The skyscraper replaced several structures built as part of the Terminal City development around Grand Central in the 20th century. The 18-story Vanderbilt Avenue Building, a Warren and Wetmore-designed structure at 51 East 42nd Street, opened as a six-story office complex in 1902 and expanded in the 1920s. It had a two-story Modell's store that sold sport-related items. Some of 51 East 42nd Street's ornate facade details, including terracotta porpoises and cherubs, were saved by the developer and stored until the New York Landmarks Conservancy found a place for them. The 23-story building at 317 Madison Avenue, on the corner with 42nd Street, was designed by Carrère and Hastings and opened in 1922 as the Liggett Building. The Prudence Bond & Mortgage Building at Madison and 43rd, where Governor Al Smith once had gubernatorial campaign headquarters, dates to 1923. Two small structures along 43rd Street respectively housed "an Irish pub and a T.G.I. Friday's."


title: One Vanderbilt

text: As part of the construction of One Vanderbilt, the section of Vanderbilt Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets was decommissioned in September 2016 and redesigned as a pedestrian zone. Designed by PWP Landscape Architecture, the plaza covers . It measures long and wide, taking the entire width of the former roadbed of Vanderbilt Avenue. The Vanderbilt Avenue plaza contains five raised planters as well as LED lighting accents. Unlike other plazas in New York City, it lacks dedicated seating because the plaza was intended to facilitate pedestrian traffic rather than act as a meeting area.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: One Vanderbilt was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. Severud Associates was the structural engineer, Langan Engineering was the civil engineering consultant, and Jaros, Baum & Bolles was the mechanical and electrical engineer. Structural consultant Thornton Tomasetti worked with Severud to create models for the building's superstructure. Hines Interests Limited Partnership was the project manager, and Tishman Construction was the general contractor. The skyscraper's top floor is numbered 73. According to The Skyscraper Center and building permits, One Vanderbilt has 58 usable stories above ground, while according to Emporis and Hines, the building has 59 stories. Early plans called for a 67-story skyscraper.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: One Vanderbilt's roof is high; including its spire, it is tall. A building on the site would normally have been restricted to , but One Vanderbilt's developer SL Green was able to more than double this height with additional air rights. SL Green had transferred some air rights from the Bowery Savings Building, and it received additional air rights from the New York City government by improving public transit and adding public space to the area. One Vanderbilt is the city's fourth-tallest building after One World Trade Center, 111 West 57th Street, and Central Park Tower. At completion, it was the second-tallest office building in the city after One World Trade Center, rising above the Chrysler Building. , the building is the 27th-tallest in the world. The building cost $3.31 billion in total.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: One Vanderbilt is set back from the street to allow better views of Grand Central. On the bottom few floors, the top section of the facade slopes upward, while the bottom section slopes downward, creating a diagonal wedge. As a result, the lobby area on Vanderbilt Avenue (facing Grand Central) has a ceiling sloping from from west to east. Above the wedged base, the building tapers at higher levels. The building's shape allows more sunlight to reach street level compared to alternative designs. Several alternatives were considered before the shape was finalized.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The facade consists mostly of a glass curtain wall with panels that extend from the floor to ceiling of each story. The curtain wall was fabricated by the Permasteelisa Group. According to Permasteelisa, the facade is made of 8,743 pieces in 1,060 distinct shapes, covering . Of these, about 660 panels are placed at the corners; they had to be manufactured in different shapes because the building slopes upward. There are two typical shapes of panels used in the facade: vision glass windows, which extend up to high, as well as ventilated spandrels between each story, which are made of terracotta.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Boston Valley Terra Cotta manufactured the terracotta cladding. According to Permasteelisa, there are 34,845 terracotta tiles used in One Vanderbilt's facade. Studio Christine Jetten designed glazing for the terracotta tiles. The panels contain gradual concave curves and are pearl-colored. The tiles reference the color and material used in Grand Central Terminal. and alluded to the color of other office buildings on Madison Avenue. There are mechanical stories on the fourth, fifth, and twelfth floors. At these mechanical stories, there are vertical openings for intake and exhaust, which appear as though they are part of the glass curtain wall.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The top of One Vanderbilt consists of a group of pavilions at different heights, which taper to the antenna. Between the main roof on the 60th floor and a point just above the 66th floor, there are "C"-shaped screens on the east and west sides, collectively known as "the crown". Diagonally sloped steel beams are visible on the exterior of the crown. The western section of the crown has aluminum accent strips on both the diagonal and horizontal beams. The eastern section of the crown has aluminum strips covering the diagonal beams and terracotta tiles covering the horizontal beams.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The building rests on a foundation measuring deep, with of concrete. The foundation contains of rebar and is anchored to the underlying bedrock using 83 tiebacks. The underlying bedrock could support loads of . The columns at the perimeter of the foundations are supported on spread footings measuring as much as across and thick. The perimeter walls themselves are up to tall and are composed of concrete with a strength of . About of rock had to be excavated for the foundation. Because the base of One Vanderbilt is directly above the train tracks serving Grand Central, several large box columns had to be custom-designed for the building. One such column at the southeast corner does not contain bracing between the ground and sixth stories, allowing the southeast corner to be cantilevered.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The superstructure consists of a steel-and-concrete mechanical core surrounded by a steel frame. The building uses more than of steel, manufactured by Bankers Steel, as well as of concrete. The steel was installed in the core first, with the concrete poured around it, which allowed the skyscraper to be constructed similarly to buildings without any concrete core. By the time Severud had published its "100% construction documents" that finalized the construction details, several stories of the steel frame had been erected. The method of construction allowed the steel inside the core to be erected six to twelve floors ahead of the concrete. At the base, the core walls are thick and can resist forces of . On higher stories, the core walls gradually decrease in strength to with a minimum thickness of . The rebar is made of 90 percent recycled material.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Most floors do not contain interior columns, and the steel frame contains beams that span up to from the core. On the three mechanical levels, the concrete shear walls around the core are reinforced by steel outrigger trusses. The office space requirements prevented lateral bracing or floor diaphragms from being used throughout much of the building, so many of the structural elements are unbraced for distances of up to . At the building's crown, the diagonal beams have a cross-section of , and the horizontal and vertical beams have a cross-section of . The top of the building is stabilized by a tuned mass damper system weighing around or .


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The interior spaces in One Vanderbilt are designed to be as high as . Underneath the building is a basement loading dock with a turntable, which is accessed by two truck elevators. The base includes a lobby covering . The interior of the lobby contains a bronze "art wall" and a starburst-shaped bronze installation suspended on metal cables. TD Bank was signed as the anchor tenant for the building, operating within a ground-floor space of .


title: One Vanderbilt

text: There are also of tenant amenities in the building's base, including tenant valet parking at ground level. On the second floor is Daniel Boulud's restaurant Le Pavillon, accessed by its own entrance from ground level. The restaurant space covers and contains a ceiling height of , with a main room and an auxiliary room. On the third floor is an auditorium, a boardroom, and a flexible meeting space known as the Vandy Club. The flexible space has showers for executives as well as pantries. The third-floor amenities were designed by Gensler.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The subsequent 58 floors contain of office space. There are fewer stories than in other skyscrapers of similar height because each story's ceiling is high. Because of the building's tapering shape, the office space on lower stories is larger than on upper stories. The lower office floors, spanning up to each, were designed for tenants who needed large amounts of open space, such as newsrooms and trading floors. The middle office floors, spanning , were designed for corporate tenants. The upper stories, covering , were designed for smaller firms such as hedge funds. In marketing documents, floors 10 to 15 are labeled as "podium floors", floors 20 to 38 as "executive floors", floors 44 to 55 as "tower floors", floors 60 to 68 as "penthouse floors", and floors 72 and 73 as "sky floors".


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The mechanical space on the 12th physical story contains a chiller plant and electrical transformers. One Vanderbilt was planned to be environmentally efficient from its inception. The building has its own cogeneration plant capable of daily as well as a rainwater collection system with a capacity of . To reduce energy consumption, One Vanderbilt uses both waterside and airside economizers, which use the natural temperature of the building's surroundings.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Above floor 73, the top of One Vanderbilt contains an observation deck called Summit One Vanderbilt (branded in all-uppercase letters as SUMMIT One Vanderbilt). Summit One Vanderbilt spans and contains some restaurants. In 2018, Summit One Vanderbilt was projected to cost approximately $35–39 million. , the adult ticket fee is $39, but New York City residents receive a discount.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Summit One Vanderbilt consists of four components, the interiors of which are being designed by Snøhetta. The first part, "Rise", has three high-speed Schindler 7000 series elevators, which take visitors from the Grand Central Terminal level to the observation area above ground in less than 50 seconds. The second part, "Levitation", is composed of enclosed glass balconies that protrude from the facade. The third part, "Ascent", has two all-glass Cimolai Custom Rack-and-pinion outside elevators which bring visitors to the 100th floor of the skyscraper, the 93rd floor interior features a glass parapet and a bar. One space at Summit is an "infinity room" containing a ceiling tall. The bars are operated by Danny Meyer’s Union Square Events. Summit One Vanderbilt also contains an interactive art exhibit created by Kenzo Digital. According to a press release published in mid-2021, Summit One Vanderbilt also has a green space, advertised as the world's highest urban "alpine meadow".


title: One Vanderbilt

text: One Vanderbilt's construction included improvements that would provide extra capacity for over 65,000 passengers going into the New York City Subway at Grand Central–42nd Street. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) mandated the station improvements in exchange for allowing the tower's construction. The improvements included an underground connection between Grand Central Terminal and One Vanderbilt; new mezzanines and exits for the subway station, including an entrance directly to the 42nd Street Shuttle platforms; three new stairways to each of the Lexington Avenue Line platforms (along the ); and reconfiguration of columns supporting the nearby Grand Hyatt New York hotel. The project also includes a waiting room for a new terminal under Grand Central, being built for the Long Island Rail Road as part of the MTA's East Side Access project.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: A transit hall was created within One Vanderbilt itself to connect to the subway and railroad stations. In 2015, SL Green Realty gave $220 million toward the building's construction, of which two-thirds would be used for station redesign, marking the largest private investment in the subway system to date. The building's subway entrance opened on December 9, 2020. The improvements, which cost over $200 million, allow the subway station to accommodate 4,000 to 6,000 more passengers per hour.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Developer SL Green Realty began looking at sites for a new office tower in Midtown in the early 2000s. The company began buying buildings on the block bounded by Vanderbilt Avenue, 42nd Street, Madison Avenue, and 43rd Street. The first acquisition was in 2001,


title: One Vanderbilt

text: SL Green initially intended to renovate the building and increase the rents. When two adjacent buildings on the same block were placed for sale in 2007, these were also acquired. According to SL Green managing director Robert Schiffer, this prompted the company to decide on razing these three buildings and replacing them with a larger structure at the address One Vanderbilt Avenue. In 2011, SL Green was able to buy 51 East 42nd Street, the final property on the block.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The four buildings themselves had cost $300 million in total, but SL Green still had to acquire over 150 leases in them.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: SL Green also owned the Bowery Savings Bank Building at 110 East 42nd Street, and it had transferred some air rights from the Bowery Savings Bank Building to the One Vanderbilt Avenue site in 2010. Under the zoning rules at the time, a structure on the latter block could not be taller than about . The site allowed an "as-of-right" floor area ratio (FAR) of up to 15, but with the Bowery Savings Bank's air rights and several development bonuses, SL Green could obtain a FAR of up to 20.7. This was not enough for SL Green, which required a FAR of 30 for the skyscraper to be profitable. SL Green and Hines met with the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) in late 2012 to determine which features the planned One Vanderbilt Avenue skyscraper could have. The discussions influenced SL Green to include public indoor and outdoor spaces, as well as a distinctive design, as the DCP mandated. SL Green hired Kohn Pedersen Fox as the planned skyscraper's architect that November.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Sketches published early the following month indicated that the skyscraper would be called "One Vanderbilt".


title: One Vanderbilt

text: In late 2013, the administration of outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg sought to change zoning regulations for 73 blocks adjacent to Grand Central Terminal. The plan would allow unused air rights above Grand Central Terminal to be transferred to developments on these blocks, including the proposed One Vanderbilt.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Under the proposal, developers of structures on these blocks could deposit money into an improvement fund for East Midtown and, in exchange, receive a FAR of up to 24. Some sites would be eligible for a FAR of up to 30.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Bloomberg withdrew his plans that November because residents, preservationists, and local politicians complained about the prospective influx of office workers to the area.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: After the rezoning proposal failed, SL Green's CEO Marc Holliday said he was unsure if he would proceed with the development of One Vanderbilt.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: When Bill de Blasio succeeded Bloomberg as mayor in 2014, he wished to implement Bloomberg's Midtown East rezoning proposal. That May, TD Bank announced its interest in expanding offices within New York City, focusing in particular on the delayed One Vanderbilt development, where it could be an anchor tenant. The following week, SL Green officially revived its plans for One Vanderbilt. Mayor de Blasio's administration proposed rezoning the area around Vanderbilt Avenue to allow One Vanderbilt to be constructed. Unlike Bloomberg's proposal, which would have converted all of Vanderbilt Avenue to a pedestrian plaza, de Blasio's proposal only called for the conversion of a short section outside One Vanderbilt.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Since Grand Central Terminal was a New York City designated landmark, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) had to endorse development around the terminal. SL Green thus applied to the LPC for a "certificate of appropriateness" regarding the transfer of air rights from the Bowery Savings Bank Building. At a hearing in July 2014, the LPC endorsed One Vanderbilt's construction, though the Historic Districts Council and the Society for the Architecture of the City both expressed strong opposition. In exchange for further increases to the FAR, and thus the building's height, SL Green proposed transit improvements around Grand Central in September 2014. At public hearings for the proposed transit improvements, neighborhood residents questioned the high price of the improvements, which was quoted at $210 million. Conversely, transit experts stated that the cost of the improvements was justified due to the amount of work that was necessary.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Shortly after One Vanderbilt's plans were revived, Andrew Penson—the founder of Midtown TDR Ventures, which owned the land under Grand Central Terminal—threatened to sue for $1 billion in a dispute concerning the air rights above the terminal's underground tracks. In its September 2014 proposal to the city, SL Green proposed to pay $400 per square foot for the air rights, then build a , 67-story building, twice as big as the zoning rules permitted. Penson proposed paying SL Green $400 million for of air rights, and he also proposed assuming the $210 million cost of the transit improvements SL Green planned to make. Penson valued the air rights at up to , nearly 10 times the he paid when he bought the station in 2006. SL Green rejected Penson's offer as a "publicity stunt".


title: One Vanderbilt

text: By October 2014, One Vanderbilt was projected to be high. The following month, TD Bank signed a lease at the building, officially becoming an anchor tenant. Disputes over the proposed transit improvements at One Vanderbilt continued. That December, an advisory task force composed of two local community boards indicated that it would oppose the improvements unless the building's energy efficiency was increased and one of the Grand Central entrances was relocated. In January 2015, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer endorsed the project with several stipulations, including benches and restrooms in the proposed transit hall, as well as a requirement that SL Green maintain the plaza on Vanderbilt Avenue. Public hearings on the proposed rezoning of One Vanderbilt proceeded the next month. Constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe testified against the proposal on behalf of Penson, under the argument that SL Green had taken Grand Central's air rights from the city rather than purchasing them from Penson. In March 2015, the DCP approved the Vanderbilt Avenue rezoning as well as SL Green's proposal for One Vanderbilt.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The Vanderbilt Avenue rezoning received unanimous approval from the New York City Council in May 2015, following an endorsement by the council's zoning subcommittee. Immediately afterward, SL Green announced it would start demolishing structures on the site. During demolition of one of the buildings that July, a chandelier and a banister fell on four construction workers who were taking down the chandelier, injuring them. By the following month, some excavations had begun. With excavation ongoing, in September 2015, SL Green filed construction plans for a tower, slightly shorter than what had been announced the previous year. The same month, Penson sued the city and SL Green for $1.1 billion, claiming that the city government had given SL Green the air rights over Grand Central for free. Midtown TDR dropped the lawsuit in August 2016 in exchange for an undisclosed sum.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: At a forum in June 2016, SL Green had indicated that the building could cost about $3.14 billion. That month, a consortium of banks including Wells Fargo, The Bank of New York Mellon, JPMorgan Chase, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of China, and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg offered a $1.5 billion, five-year loan for the tower's construction. The loan was finalized that September. The following month, general contractor AECOM Tishman subcontracted the construction of One Vanderbilt to Navillus Tile for $135.9 million. Liberty Mutual was the guarantor for the contract. An official groundbreaking occurred on October 18, 2016. At the ceremony, de Blasio described One Vanderbilt as the "right kind" of development in East Midtown, while Brewer said the planned skyscraper had "set the bar very high" for other new developments nearby. No other tenants besides TD Bank had yet signed leases for space in One Vanderbilt. That December, plans for the building's observation deck were announced.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: In January 2017, South Korea's National Pension Service and development firm Hines Interests Limited Partnership paid a combined $525 million for a 27.6% and 1.4% stake in the development, respectively. At the time, SL Green projected that One Vanderbilt would earn $198 million annually, including $42 million from the observation deck alone. Foundation laying started the next month. The work included one of the largest continuous concrete pours to ever take place in New York City. By that June, the skyscraper's first vertical beams had been constructed. One Vanderbilt's superstructure reached above ground level in October 2017. The following month, Navillus filed for bankruptcy, and Tishman moved to end its subcontract with Navillus, though work on the skyscraper continued. In January 2018, Tishman, SL Green, and Liberty Mutual agreed to let Navillus complete the subcontract for One Vanderbilt's construction.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: One Vanderbilt's construction proceeded faster than originally scheduled and, by February 2018, the tower had been completed to the ninth floor. By June of the same year, the tower had reached the sixteenth floor. Facade installation began in August 2018, at which point the structure had passed the 30th floor, or more than half its eventual height. By November, the structure had reached the 56th floor, high enough to provide views above neighboring buildings. Around that time, SL Green refinanced the construction loan, increasing it to $1.75 billion and reducing the interest rate. The building topped out on September 17, 2019.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: At the end of 2019, SL Green announced that the building was expected to open the following August. Shortly afterward, the top part of the spire was temporarily removed so construction cranes could add cladding to the crown. The building's completion was delayed slightly in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. By that June, the building was 67 percent leased in spite of the pandemic. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, One Vanderbilt's leasing agents had sought for the building to be 82 percent leased by the end of 2020; however, the agents revised their forecast to 72 percent.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: The New York City Department of Buildings issued a temporary certificate of occupancy for One Vanderbilt on September 11, 2020. One Vanderbilt was formally opened with a ceremony three days later, on September 14. At the time, tenant spaces were incomplete and the first tenants could not move into the building until that November. The Le Pavillon restaurant at the building's base opened in May 2021. The following month, a banking consortium led by Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs refinanced One Vanderbilt for about $3 billion. The refinancing included a 10-year, fixed-rate loan using commercial mortgage-backed securities and was intended to pay off part of the $1.75 billion debt incurred during construction.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: By July 2021, SL Green was advertising the top two floors at rates of up to , the highest office rents in the city. Ticket sales for Summit One Vanderbilt launched in September 2021, a month before the planned October 21 opening, and a press preview was held on September 24. The building was 90 percent leased by October 2021; the "Financial Times" quoted Holliday as saying he wished the building "had 20 more floors because if [he] did we could lease them". Summit One Vanderbilt opened on October 21 of that year.


title: One Vanderbilt

text: To attract tenants to One Vanderbilt, SL Green offered to pay off their old leases, such as that of The Carlyle Group, whose lease SL Green paid off for around $100 million. , the building is 90 percent leased. Tenants include:


title: One Vanderbilt

text: Writing for "The Real Deal" magazine in December 2015, James Gardiner said the proposal "does not feel as striking or impressive as one could want", in that it failed to stand out in any way other than its height. Justin Davidson of "New York" magazine described One Vanderbilt as a rare "civic-minded Goliath" in that, while other skyscrapers are usually built in a design that maximizes profit, One Vanderbilt's base is designed for easier pedestrian and transit access in the nearby area.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: The Parable of the Talents (also the Parable of the Minas) is one of the parables of Jesus. It appears in two of the synoptic, canonical gospels of the New Testament:


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: Although the basic theme of each of these parables is essentially the same, the differences between the parables in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Gospel of Luke are sufficient to indicate that the parables are not derived from the same source. In Matthew, the opening words link the parable to the preceding Parable of the Ten Virgins, which refers to the Kingdom of Heaven. The version in Luke is also called the Parable of the Pounds.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: In both Matthew and Luke, a master puts his servants in charge of his goods while he is away on a trip. Upon his return, the master assesses the stewardship of his servants. He evaluates them according to how faithful each was in making wise investments of his goods to obtain a profit. It is clear that the master sought some profit from the servants' oversight. A gain indicated faithfulness on the part of the servants. The master rewards his servants according to how each has handled his stewardship. He judges two servants as having been "faithful" and gives them a positive reward. To the single "unfaithful" servant, who played it safe, a negative compensation is given.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: A thematically variant parable appears in the non-canonical Gospel of the Hebrews, wherein the servant who hid his money from his cruel master is rebuked, but presented as more righteous than the wealthiest servant, who squandered his money and was cast into darkness.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: While the basic story in each of these parables is essentially the same, the settings are quite different.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: A talent (Ancient Greek , "talanton" 'scale' and 'balance') was a unit of weight of approximately , and when used as a unit of money, was valued for that weight of silver. As a unit of currency, a talent was worth about 6,000 denarii. A denarius was the usual payment for a day's labour. At one denarius per day, a single talent was therefore worth 20 years of labor (assuming a 6-day work week, because nobody would work on the weekly Sabbath).


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: The "Parable of the Talents", in tells of a master who was leaving his house to travel, and, before leaving, entrusted his property to his servants. According to the abilities of each man, one servant received five talents, the second had received two, and the third received only one. The property entrusted to the three servants was worth eight talents, where a talent was a significant amount of money. Upon returning home, after a long absence, the master asks his three servants for an account of the talents he entrusted to them. The first and the second servants explain that they each put their talents to work, and have doubled the value of the property with which they were entrusted; each servant was rewarded:


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: The third servant, however, had merely hidden his talent, burying it in the ground, and was punished by his master:


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: In Luke's Gospel (), Jesus told this parable because he was near Jerusalem and because his disciples thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately. The parable follows on from Zacchaeus' meeting with Jesus and the disciples "hearing" his declaration of restitution to those whom Zacchaeus had defrauded. The objective of investing or trading during the absence of the master was intended to counter expectations of the immediate appearance of God's kingdom. The parable of the minas is generally similar to the parable of the talents, but differences include the inclusion of the motif of a king obtaining a kingdom and the entrusting of ten servants with one mina each, rather than a number of talents ( 60 minas). Only the business outcomes and consequential rewards of three of the servants' trading were related. Additionally, Luke included at the beginning an account of citizens sending a message after the nobleman to say that they did not want him as their ruler; and, at the end, Luke added that the nobleman instructed that his opponents should be brought to him and slain, as well as the unprofitable servant deprived of his mina.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: The parallels between the Lukan material (the Gospel of Luke and Book of Acts) and Josephus' writings have long been noted. The core idea, of a man traveling to a far country being related to a kingdom, has vague similarities to Herod Archelaus traveling to Rome in order to be given his kingdom; although this similarity is not in itself significant, Josephus' account also contains details which are echoed by features of the Lukan parable. Josephus describes Jews sending an embassy to Augustus, while Archelaus is travelling to Rome, to complain that they do not want Archelaus as their ruler; when Archelaus returns, he arranges for 3000 of his enemies to be brought to him at the Temple in Jerusalem, where he has them slaughtered.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: Eusebius of Caesarea includes a paraphrased summary of a parable of talents taken from a "Gospel written in Hebrew script" (generally considered in modern times to be the Gospel of the Nazarenes); this gospel is presumed to have been destroyed in the destruction of the Theological Library of Caesarea Maritima in the 7th century (in historically controversial circumstances) and has yet to be found. In that gospel, Eusebius writes that while the man who had hidden the talent was rebuked for its burial, only the man who had received two talents had invested and gained a return on his investment. The recipient of the five talents instead "wasted his master's possessions with harlots and flute-girls"; it was he, in the Hebrew gospel, that was sent into the darkness (Eusebius expressly identifies the darkness as being imprisonment).


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: The third servant in Matthew's version was condemned as wicked and lazy, because he could have deposited his talent with the bankers (, "trapezitais", literally, table or counter-keepers, just as bankers were originally those who sat at their "bancum", or bench). The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges notes that this was "the very least the slave could have done, [as] to make money in this way required no personal exertion or intelligence", and Johann Bengel commented that the labour of digging a hole and burying the talent was greater than the labour involved in going to the bankers.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: In Matthew, the opening words appear to link the parable to the parable of the Ten Virgins, which immediately precedes it. That parable deals with wisdom in an eschatological context. This parable, however, has been interpreted in several ways.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: Traditionally, the parable of the talents has been seen as an exhortation to Jesus' disciples to use their God-given gifts in the service of God, and to take risks for the sake of the Kingdom of God. These gifts have been seen to include personal abilities ("talents" in the everyday sense), as well as personal wealth. Failure to use one's gifts, the parable suggests, will result in negative judgment. From a psychological point of view, the failure is the immediate result of the failure of feeling God's love. The first two servants are able to see God in a positive perception, as understanding, generous, and kind, while the third servant sees God as harsh, demanding, and critical.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: The poet John Milton was fascinated by the parable (interpreted in this traditional sense), referring to it repeatedly, notably in the sonnet "When I Consider How My Light is Spent":


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: Some critics interpret the poem's exhortation to be ready to receive God's will as a critique of a misunderstanding of the parable as literal or economic, and that waiting, rather than amassing wealth to prove one's worth, is the proper way to serve God. While the narrator worries over his limited accomplishments, Patience reminds him that God does not need "man's work". Milton may even be contrasting God (as King) with the lord of the parable.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: Catholic bishop Robert Barron says that the talents in this parable are "a share in the mercy of God, a participation in the weightiness of the divine love," rather than personal abilities or wealth. He utilizes the interpretation of Old Testament professor Robert Schoenstene, who argues that a talent in ancient Jewish times was very weighty thus five talents was extremely heavy. Such heaviness would remind to the heaviest weight of all, the "kabod" (lit. "heaviness") of God in the Temple of Jerusalem, accordingly the most heavy of all is the mercy of God. Similarly, a reflection in the Carmelites' website defines the talents as "love, service, sharing", the "money of the master". In other words, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis says, "Our greatest talent and treasure is our ability to love, and in this enterprise the champion is the greatest risk taker, which means the one most willing to invest "himself" where the odds appear most against him."


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: Cornelius a Lapide in his "great commentary", writes, "By talents understand all the gifts of God, without which we can do nothing. These gifts are, I say—1st Of grace, both making grateful, such as faith, hope, charity, virginity, and all the other virtues, as well as those of grace given gratis—such as the power of working miracles, the Apostolate, the Priesthood, the gift of tongues, prophecy, etc. 2d Natural gifts, such as a keen intellect, a sound judgment, a sound constitution, prudence, industry, learning, eloquence. 3d External goods and gifts, as honours, riches, rank, etc. So St. Chrysostom. For all these things God distributes unequally, according to His good pleasure. And with this end in view, that each should use them for God’s glory, and the good of himself and others."


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: Joachim Jeremias believed that the original meaning of the parable was not an ethical one about every man. Instead, he saw it as aimed at the scribes who had withheld "from their fellow men a due share in God's gift." In his view, Jesus is saying that these scribes will soon be brought to account for what they have done with the Word of God which was entrusted to them.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: Jeremias also believed that in the life of the early church the parable took on new meaning, with the merchant having become an allegory of Christ, so that "his journey has become the ascension, his subsequent return ... has become the Parousia, which ushers his own into the Messianic banquet."


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: In "Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed" (1994), William R. Herzog II presents a liberation theology interpretation of the "Parable of the Talents", wherein the absentee landlord reaps where he didn't sow, and the third servant is a whistle-blower who has "unmasked the 'joy of the master' for what it is — the profits of exploitation squandered in wasteful excess." Hence, the third servant is punished for speaking the truth, and not for failing to make a profit. From the critical perspective of liberation theology, the message of the "Parable of the Talents" is that man must act in solidarity with other men when confronting social, political, and economic injustices.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: To describe how scientists are awarded authorial credit for their work, the sociologist Robert K. Merton applied the term The Matthew effect of accumulated advantage, in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. With the "Parable of the Talents", Merton metaphorically described the system of authorial rewards used, among the community of scientists, whereby famous scientists usually are awarded credit that is disproportionately greater than their contributions, while less-famous scientists are awarded lesser credit than is merited by their contributions; see also Stigler's law of eponymy: "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer."


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: The "Parable of the Talents" has been depicted by artists such as Rembrandt, Jan Luyken, and Matthäus Merian. In literature, the "Threepenny Novel" (1934), by Bertolt Brecht (1895–1956), presents a social critique of the parable as an ideological tool of capitalist exploitation of the worker and of society.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: In religious music, the hymn "Slave of God, Well Done!", by John Wesley, notably alludes to the "Parable of the Talents" (), which was written on the occasion of the death of George Whitefield (1714–1770), the English Anglican cleric who was instrumental to the First Great Awakening (ca. 1731–55) in Britain and in the American colonies.


title: Parable of the talents or minas

text: "Parable of the Talents" is a science fiction novel, published in 1998, written by Octavia E. Butler.


title: Oculus Quest

text: The Oculus Quest is a virtual reality (VR) headset developed by Oculus, a division of Meta, Inc., released on May 21, 2019.


title: Oculus Quest

text: Similar to its predecessor, Oculus Go, it is a standalone device that can run games and software wirelessly under an Android-based operating system. It supports positional tracking with six degrees of freedom, using internal sensors and an array of cameras in the front of the headset rather than external sensors. The cameras are also used as part of the safety feature "Passthrough", which shows a view from the cameras when the user exits their designated boundary area. A later software update added "Oculus Link", a feature that allows the Quest to be connected to a computer via USB, enabling use with Oculus Rift-compatible software and games.


title: Oculus Quest

text: The Oculus Quest received praise for its price and convenience, and for having improved graphical fidelity and tracking over Oculus Go, but was panned for its front-heavy build and downgraded graphics quality over PC-based VR games. At launch, it also faced criticism for being limited to software available on the Oculus Store, and not having backwards compatibility with Oculus Go software. The later introduction of Oculus Link led to reappraisals of the Quest, with critics praising the device's increased flexibility, and indicating that devices like the Quest would likely supplant the PC-only Rift headsets moving forward. A successor, the Oculus Quest 2, was released in 2020.


title: Oculus Quest

text: At Oculus Connect 3 in 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Oculus was working on a standalone virtual reality headset codenamed "Santa Cruz". At Oculus Connect 4 the following year, it was announced that Oculus planned to issue software development kits for the new model in 2018. They also revealed the accompanying controllers, which would be similar to the Oculus Rift's touch controllers.


title: Oculus Quest

text: In 2018 at Connect 5, it was announced that the new headset would be known as the Oculus Quest and would be priced at US$399. At F8 2019 it was announced that the Quest would ship on May 21, 2019. At launch, the device was priced at US$399 for the 64 GB version, and US$499 for the 128 GB version.


title: Oculus Quest

text: A successor model, the Oculus Quest 2, was announced on September 16, 2020. It was released on October 13 starting at $299 for the 64GB version and $399 for the 128 GB version.


title: Oculus Quest

text: The Oculus Quest uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 system-on-chip (SoC) with 4 GB of RAM. Three of the four 2.3 GHz CPU cores of the chip are reserved for software, while the remaining core and its four lower-power cores are reserved for motion tracking and other background functions. It runs an Android-based operating system, with modifications to enhance performance in VR applications. A smartphone running the Oculus app is required in order to conduct first-time setup.


title: Oculus Quest

text: A diamond Pentile OLED display is used for each eye, with an individual resolution of 1440 × 1600 and a refresh rate of 72 Hz. The headset uses the "next generation" lens technology originally introduced in Oculus Go, which helps to enlarge the sweet spot of the lens. Visual artifacts such as God rays are less prominent but still visible in scenes with high contrast. It also features physical interpupillary distance (IPD) adjustment.


title: Oculus Quest

text: Unlike the Oculus Go, which used a limited handheld remote that only supported limited motion tracking, the Quest supports positional tracking with six degrees of freedom (compared to the Go's three).


title: Oculus Quest

text: Rather than use external sensor cameras in the play area to spatially track the headset and controllers (as was the case with the original Oculus Rift CV1), Oculus Quest utilizes an "inside-out" tracking system known as "Oculus Insight". Based on the concept of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), infrared diodes on the Oculus Touch controllers are tracked via four wide-angle cameras built into the front of the headset. This is combined with accelerometer input from the controllers and headset, as well as AI algorithms to predict the path of motion when the controllers are outside of the cameras' field of view.


title: Oculus Quest

text: The cameras are also used as part of a safety feature known as "Passthrough", which displays a grayscale view from the cameras when the player exits their defined playing area. At Oculus Connect 6, it was announced that the feature would be upgraded to "Passthrough+" as on the Oculus Rift S (which also uses Insight), making it stereoscopic and stereo-correct. A "Passthrough on Demand" feature was added in Quest system software version 15, allowing the user to quickly access the Passthrough view by double-tapping the left or right side of the headset.


title: Oculus Quest

text: During Oculus Connect 6, it was announced that hand tracking would be added to the Quest in early-2020, utilizing machine learning, Oculus Insight, and "model-based tracking" to recognize the position and gesture of the user's hands without additional hardware.


title: Oculus Quest

text: Hand tracking was initially introduced as an experimental feature in December 2019, as part of Quest system software version 12. It was limited to the main user interface and selected built-in apps, such as the web browser. It was also announced that the Oculus Quest SDK would be updated to add support for the feature. In May 2020, hand tracking exited beta, and became available for use in third-party software beginning May 28.


title: Oculus Quest

text: The Oculus Quest uses second generation Oculus Touch controllers. Their designs were modified to accommodate Oculus Insight, with their tracking rings moved from the back of the controllers to their tops so that they can be tracked by the headset's cameras.


title: Oculus Quest

text: The Quest has embedded speakers, as well as a pair of 3.5 mm audio jacks on each side for use with external headphones.


title: Oculus Quest

text: Though the Oculus Quest has built-in audio, it is possible to purchase official in-ear headphones from Facebook. There is also an official travel case.


title: Oculus Quest

text: Following the release of the Oculus Link feature, Facebook released an official -long USB-C cable designed for use with the feature. As the reliability of non-powered USB cables with copper-based wires diminishes at , the cable is fiber optic instead.


title: Oculus Quest

text: Facebook enforces stricter content and quality standards for software distributed on Oculus Quest in comparison to Oculus Go and Gear VR, including requiring developers to undergo a pre-screening of their concepts to demonstrate "quality and probable market success". In 2021, Facebook introduced "App Lab", a new section within the storefront allowing developers to upload and distribute Quest apps without going through the formal review process. App Lab is designed primarily to support early access models, and can support public and invite-based distribution.


title: Oculus Quest

text: Facebook launched the headset with over 50 titles consisting of a mix of new and ported games, including titles such as "Beat Saber", "Moss," "Robo Recall, Superhot VR," and "VRChat". Some games support cross-play with their PC versions.


title: Oculus Quest

text: At Oculus Connect 6 in September 2019, it was announced that backward compatibility with over 50 Oculus Go applications and games would be added to the Quest. In addition, users who had purchased Oculus Go apps would be eligible to download Oculus Quest-specific versions of them for free through the end of 2019.


title: Oculus Quest

text: At Oculus Connect 6, Facebook announced Oculus Link, a function which allows the Quest to be used with Oculus Rift-compatible software on a PC over USB. It became available in beta on November 12, 2019, as part of system software version 11. Initially, Link only supported USB 3.0 connections. In May 2020, support for USB 2.0 was added, although Facebook still recommends use of USB 3.0 cables.


title: Oculus Quest

text: On June 13, 2021, Zuckerberg stated that Oculus Air Link, a feature from the Quest 2 that allows Link to be used over a local Wi-Fi connection, was coming soon to the original Quest.


title: Oculus Quest

text: Scott Stein of "CNET" considered the Quest to be "improbably amazing for its size and $399 price tag", and compared it to Nintendo Switch in terms of convenience. Stein praised its camera system and motion controls, and its graphics quality for being nearer to PC-quality than Oculus Go (albeit still limited in detail due to its use of mobile computing hardware). The Quest was panned for being a closed platform at launch — with software limited to the Oculus Store, and not being backwards compatible with software released for Oculus Go. Adi Robertson of "The Verge" shared similar opinions, noting that the Quest was heavier and not as comfortable as Rift S, and that its launch titles were not at the same caliber as the PC Oculus Rift in terms of size or graphical fidelity, but that the Quest still included a physical IPD slider unlike the Rift S.


title: Oculus Quest

text: In May 2020, "The Verge" acknowledged that the Quest had improved since its launch to become "the closest thing that exists to a sleek, almost mainstream VR headset", citing an expanding software library, and the ability to use the headset with a PC over USB via the Oculus Link feature (and over Wi-Fi using the sideloaded third-party software Virtual Desktop, which was not "noticeably worse" than doing so over USB in their experience). It was argued that the Quest "works so well by itself that it's a great system in its own right", while Oculus Link allowed it to double as a "credible" PC VR headset as well. Again, it was noted that the Rift S was less front-heavy and that its display "trades contrast for slightly higher resolution and refresh rate" — but that neither it or the Valve Index "works as a perfectly good standalone wireless VR headset" like Oculus Quest. "VentureBeat" felt that Oculus was likely "setting the stage" for discontinuing the Rift line in favor of Quest, arguing "if Link performs as expected, most users will have little to no idea of what they're missing — Rift S' extra camera, FPS, and resolution differences won't matter much."


title: Oculus Quest

text: Two weeks after launch, Oculus announced that it had sold $5 million worth of content for the Oculus Quest. At Oculus Connect 6, it was announced that the Quest had created over 20% of the generated revenue from all platforms at Oculus, totaling at $20 million. It was also reported during the same event that the Quest has by far the highest retention rate of all their headsets. 317,000 units were sold over the 4th quarter of 2019, and was sold out at times.


title: Pen

text: A pen is a common writing instrument that applies ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing. Early pens such as reed pens, quill pens, dip pens and ruling pens held a small amount of ink on a nib or in a small void or cavity which had to be periodically recharged by dipping the tip of the pen into an inkwell. Today, such pens find only a small number of specialized uses, such as in illustration and calligraphy. Reed pens, quill pens and dip pens, which were used for writing, have been replaced by ballpoint pens, rollerball pens, fountain pens and felt or ceramic tip pens. Ruling pens, which were used for technical drawing and cartography, have been replaced by technical pens such as the Rapidograph. All of these modern pens contain internal ink reservoirs, such that they do not need to be dipped in ink while writing.


title: Pen

text: Pens commonly used today can be categorized based on the mechanism of the writing tip and the type of ink:


title: Pen

text: These historic types of pens are no longer in common use as writing instruments, but may be used by calligraphers and other artists:


title: Pen

text: Ancient Egyptians had developed writing on papyrus scrolls when scribes used thin reed brushes or reed pens from the "Juncus maritimus" or sea rush. In his book "A History of Writing", Steven Roger Fischer suggests, on the basis of finds at Saqqara, that the reed pen might well have been used for writing on parchment as long ago as the First Dynasty, or around 3000 BC. Reed pens continued to be used until the Middle Ages, but were slowly replaced by quills from about the 7th century. The reed pen, made from reed or bamboo, is still used in some parts of Pakistan by young students and is used to write on small wooden boards.


title: Pen

text: The reed pen survived until papyrus was replaced as a writing surface by animal skins, vellum and parchment. The smoother surface of skin allowed finer, smaller writing with a quill pen, derived from the flight feather. The quill pen was used in Qumran, Judea to write some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date back to around 100 BC. The scrolls were written in Hebrew dialects with bird feathers or quills. There is a specific reference to quills in the writings of St. Isidore of Seville in the 7th century. Quill pens were still widely used in the eighteenth century, and were used to write and sign the Constitution of the United States in 1787.


title: Pen

text: A copper nib was found in the ruins of Pompeii, showing that metal nibs were used in the year 79. There is also a reference to 'a silver pen to carry ink in', in Samuel Pepys' diary for August 1663. 'New invented' metal pens are advertised in "The Times" in 1792. A metal pen point was patented in 1803, but the patent was not commercially exploited. A patent for the manufacture of metal pens was advertised for sale by Bryan Donkin in 1811. John Mitchell of Birmingham started to mass-produce pens with metal nibs in 1822, and after that, the quality of steel nibs improved enough so that dip pens with metal nibs came into general use.


title: Pen

text: The earliest historical record of a pen with a reservoir dates back to the 10th century AD. In 953, Ma'ād al-Mu'izz, the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen which held ink in a reservoir and delivered it to the nib. This pen may have been a fountain pen, but its mechanism remains unknown, and only one record mentioning it has been found. A later reservoir pen was developed in 1636. In his "Deliciae Physico-Mathematicae" (1636), German inventor Daniel Schwenter described a pen made from two quills. One quill served as a reservoir for ink inside the other quill. The ink was sealed inside the quill with cork. Ink was squeezed through a small hole to the writing point. In 1809, Bartholomew Folsch received a patent in England for a pen with an ink reservoir.


title: Pen

text: A student in Paris, Romanian Petrache Poenaru invented a fountain pen that used a quill as an ink reservoir. The French Government patented this in May 1827. Fountain pen patents and production then increased in the 1850s.


title: Pen

text: The first patent on a ballpoint pen was issued on October 30, 1888, to John J Loud. In 1938, László Bíró, a Hungarian newspaper editor, with the help of his brother George, a chemist, began to design new types of pens, including one with a tiny ball in its tip that was free to turn in a socket. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated, picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper. Bíró filed a British patent on June 15, 1938. In 1940, the Bíró brothers and a friend, Juan Jorge Meyne, moved to Argentina, fleeing Nazi Germany. On June 17, 1943 they filed for another patent. They formed "Bíró Pens of Argentina", and by the summer of 1943, the first commercial models were available. Erasable ballpoint pens were introduced by Paper Mate in 1979, when the Erasermate was put on the market.


title: Pen

text: Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, a naturalized Croatian engineer and inventor of Polish-Dutch origin from the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia in Austria-Hungary, became renowned for further development of the mechanical pencil (1906) – then called an "automatic pencil" – and the first solid-ink fountain pen (1907). Collaborating with an entrepreneur by the name of Edmund Moster, he started the Penkala-Moster Company and built a pen-and-pencil factory that was one of the biggest in the world at the time. This company, now called "TOZ-Penkala", still exists today. "TOZ" stands for ""Tvornica olovaka Zagreb"", meaning "Zagreb Pencil Factory".


title: Pen

text: In the 1960s, the fiber- or felt-tipped pen was invented by Yukio Horie of the Tokyo Stationery Company, Japan. Paper Mate's Flair was among the first felt-tip pens to hit the U.S. market in the 1960s, and it has been the leader ever since. Marker pens and highlighters, both similar to felt pens, have become popular in recent times.


title: Pen

text: Rollerball pens were introduced in the early 1970s. They use a mobile ball and liquid ink to produce a smoother line. Technological advances during the late 1980s and early 1990s have improved the roller ball's overall performance. A porous point pen contains a point made of some porous material such as felt or ceramic. A high quality drafting pen will usually have a ceramic tip, since this wears well and does not broaden when pressure is applied while writing.


title: Pen

text: Although the invention of the typewriter and personal computer with the keyboard input method has offered another way to write, the pen is still the main means of writing. Many people like to use expensive types and brands of pens, including fountain pens, and these are sometimes regarded as a status symbol.


title: Lady and the Tramp (2019 film)

text: Lady and the Tramp is a 2019 American musical romance film directed by Charlie Bean and written by Andrew Bujalski and Kari Granlund, and produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Taylor Made, and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The film is a live-action/CGI hybrid remake of Walt Disney’s 1955 animated film of the same name, which was based on the 1945 "Cosmopolitan" magazine story of "Happy Dan, the Cynical Dog" by Ward Greene. The film stars the voices of Tessa Thompson, Justin Theroux, Janelle Monáe, and Sam Elliott with the human characters portrayed by Thomas Mann, Kiersey Clemons, Yvette Nicole Brown, F. Murray Abraham, Adrian Martinez, and Ken Jeong. It is dedicated to storyboard artist Chris Reccardi, who died on May 2, 2019.


title: Lady and the Tramp (2019 film)

text: "Lady and the Tramp" was released on November 12, 2019 on Disney+, making it the first Disney remake not to be released theatrically, but instead only on a streaming service. The film received mixed reviews from critics with praise for its performances and voice acting, but criticism for its visual effects, screenplay, and pacing.