title: Glamis Castle

text: The late Sir David Bowes-Lyon, while taking a late stroll on the lawn after dinner, reportedly saw a girl gripping the bars of a castle window and staring distractedly into the night. He was about to speak to her when she abruptly disappeared, as if someone had torn her away from the window.


title: Glamis Castle

text: The towers in front of the castle each measure in diameter and are about high, each having a modern parapet. The walls are thick.


title: Glamis Castle

text: There is a small chapel within the castle with seating for 46 people. The story given to visitors by castle tour guides states that one seat in the chapel is always reserved for the "White Lady" (supposedly a ghost which inhabits the castle), thought to be Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis. According to the guides, the chapel is still used regularly for family functions, but no one is allowed to sit in that seat.


title: Glamis Castle

text: The clock tower houses the castle's archives which include a wide range of historical material relating to the castle and the Bowes and Lyon families. These include a papal bull and the memoirs of Mary Eleanor Bowes. The Glamis archives have a close connection with the archives at the University of Dundee, and researchers who wish to consult material held in the Glamis Castle Archive do so in the search room at the University.


title: Glamis Castle

text: In the British children’s television series Thomas & Friends, Lord Callan’s castle is based on Glamis Castle.


title: Glamis Castle

text: The 1982 Yoko Tsuno album "La Proie et l'ombre" by Roger Leloup prominently features the fictional "Loch Castle", which is drawn as being near-identical to Glamis Castle.


title: Veeru Devgan

text: Veeru Devgan (25 June 1934 — 27 May 2019) was an Indian action choreographer, actor and film director who worked in Bollywood films. He worked on more than 200 Indian films including "Roti Kapada Aur Makaan", "Kranti", "Mr. Natwarlal", "Prem Rog", "Phool Aur Kaante", "Jigar" and "Ram Teri Ganga Maili". He is the father of actor Ajay Devgn.


title: Veeru Devgan

text: Born into the Devgan family in Amritsar, he was married to Veena, and had three children with her, including actor Ajay Devgan.


title: Veeru Devgan

text: Devgan, who rarely made public appearances, was last seen at the special screening of his son's film Total Dhamaal in February 2019.


title: Veeru Devgan

text: He choreographed fight and action scenes for over 80 Hindi films including "Mr. Natwarlal", "Ek Khiladi Bawan Pattey", "Phool Aur Kaante", "Jigar", "Dil Kya Kare" etc. He also acted in the 1981 film "Kranti" in a small role.


title: Veeru Devgan

text: Devgan even ventured into direction with 1999 film "Hindustan Ki Kasam" which starred his son Ajay Devgn, Amitabh Bachchan, Manisha Koirala and Sushmita Sen.


title: Veeru Devgan

text: Veeru Devgan died in the morning of 27 May 2019 in Mumbai, aged 84. Veeru Devgan had not been well for a while and old age and poor health made his health condition worse. He was suffering from breathing problems after which he was immediately admitted to the Surya Hospital, Santa Cruz. However, his condition got critical and resulted in cardiac arrest.


title: Veeru Devgan

text: Releasing an official statement, the family said, 'With profound grief and sorrow, we regret to inform that Veeru Devgan, father of Ajay Devgan died. Funeral was held at Vile Parle West Crematorium at 6:00 pm on 27 May 2019.'


title: First lieutenant

text: First lieutenant is a commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces; in some forces, it is an appointment.


title: First lieutenant

text: The rank of lieutenant has different meanings in different military formations, but in most forces it is sub-divided into a senior (first lieutenant) and junior (second lieutenant) rank. The NATO equivalent rank for land force officers is OF-1 rank. In navies, while certain rank insignia may carry the name lieutenant, the term may also be used to relate to a particular post or duty, rather than a rank.


title: First lieutenant

text: In Indonesia, "first lieutenant" is known as "Letnan Satu" ("Lettu"), Indonesian National Armed Forces uses this rank across all three of its services. It is just above the rank of second lieutenant and just below the rank of captain.


title: First lieutenant

text: In the Israel Defense Forces, the rank above second lieutenant is simply lieutenant. The rank of (קצין מקצועי אקדמאי (קמ"א ("katsín miktsoí akademai" or "kama"), a professional academic officer (that is, a medical, dental or veterinary officer, a justice officer or a religious officer), is equivalent to a professional officer of the second class in the reserve and equivalent to first lieutenant.


title: First lieutenant

text: In the British Army and Royal Marines, the rank above second lieutenant is simply lieutenant (pronounced "lef-tenant"), with no ordinal attached.


title: First lieutenant

text: Before 1871, when the whole British Army switched to using the current rank of "lieutenant", the Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers and fusilier regiments used "first lieutenant" and "second lieutenant".


title: First lieutenant

text: The "first lieutenant" (often abbreviated "1st Lt") in a Royal Navy ship is a post or appointment, rather than a rank.


title: First lieutenant

text: Historically the lieutenants in a ship were ranked in accordance with seniority, with the most senior being termed the first lieutenant and acting as the second-in-command, unless the ship was complemented with a commander. Although lieutenants are no longer ranked by seniority, the post of "first lieutenant" remains. In minor war vessels, destroyers, frigates, and submarines, the "first lieutenant" is second in command, executive officer (XO) and head of the executive branch; in larger ships where a commander of the warfare specialization is appointed as the executive officer, a "first lieutenant" is appointed as their deputy. The post of "first lieutenant" in a shore establishment carries a similar responsibility to the "first lieutenant" of a capital ship. Colloquial terms in the Royal Navy for the "first lieutenant" include "number one", "the jimmy" (or "jimmy the one") and "James the First" (a back-formation referring to James I of England). The first lieutenant may hold the rank of sub-lieutenant, lieutenant or lieutenant-commander.


title: First lieutenant

text: In the U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Space Force, a first lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer. It is just above the rank of second lieutenant and just below the rank of captain. It is equivalent to the rank of lieutenant (junior grade) in the other uniformed services.


title: First lieutenant

text: Promotion to first lieutenant is governed by Department of Defense policies derived from the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act of 1980. DOPMA guidelines suggest all "fully qualified" officers should be promoted to first lieutenant. A second lieutenant (grade O-1) is usually promoted to first lieutenant (grade O-2) after 18 months in the Army or 24 months in the Marine Corps and Air Force. The difference between the two ranks is slight, primarily being experience and a higher pay grade. It is not uncommon to see officers moved to positions requiring more experience after promotion to first lieutenant. For example, in the Army and Marine Corps these positions can include leading a specialty platoon, or assignment as the executive officer for a company-sized unit (70–250 soldiers or marines). In the Air Force, a first lieutenant may be a flight commander or section's officer in charge with varied supervisory responsibilities, including supervision of as many as 100+ personnel, although in a flying unit, a first lieutenant is a rated officer (pilot, navigator, or air battle manager) who has just finished training for his career field and has few supervisory responsibilities.


title: First lieutenant

text: In the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, "first lieutenant" is the name of a billet and position title, rather than rank. Officers aboard early sailing ships were the captain and a number of lieutenants. The senior among those lieutenants was known as the first lieutenant, and would have assumed command if the captain were absent or incapacitated. As modern ships have become more complex, requiring specialized knowledge of engineering, communications, and weapons, the "first lieutenant" is the officer in command of the deck department responsible for line handling during mooring and underway replenishment. On smaller ships, the officer of the "first lieutenant" billet holds the rank of lieutenant, junior grade or ensign. On larger vessels, the position of "first lieutenant" is held by a lieutenant or, in the case of extremely large warships such as cruisers or aircraft carriers, the position of "first lieutenant" may be held by a lieutenant commander or even commander. However, on submarines and in aircraft squadrons, where the deck department may only have a few junior sailors, the "first lieutenant" billet may be filled by a first-class petty officer or chief petty officer. What is known in the U.S. Navy as the "first lieutenant division" is usually composed of junior sailors (E-3 and below) who are completing their ninety days of temporary assigned duty, or TAD, that all enlisted personnel are required to perform when initially assigned to a command. The primary mission of the division is servicing, cleaning, organizing and inventorying items within a command.


title: First lieutenant

text: The term "first lieutenant" had a dual meaning in the United States Revenue Cutter Service (known until 1894 as the United States Revenue-Marine). The position title of first lieutenant was held by a junior officer who was in charge of deck operations and gunnery. The rank of first lieutenant was the equivalent of lieutenant in the current rank structure of the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps. The next senior officer ranking above first lieutenant was captain and the next two lower officer ranks were second and third lieutenant, respectively. When the Revenue Cutter Service merged with the United States Life-Saving Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915, the rank of first lieutenant carried over into Coast Guard and remained in use until 1918, when the Coast Guard adopted the rank structure of the U.S. Navy.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael Scofield, portrayed by Wentworth Miller, is a fictional character and one of the two main protagonists of the American television series "Prison Break". The character first appeared in the series pilot, in which he deliberately goes to prison so as to break out his elder brother, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell), before his execution for a crime he did not commit. The storyline of the first season revolves around the two brothers and Michael's plan to help Lincoln escape his death sentence. Later seasons detail their life on the run and their quest for the truth behind Lincoln's imprisonment. As the principal character, Michael has been featured in every episode of the series. Although both Lincoln and Michael are the main protagonists of the series, Michael has been featured more extensively than Lincoln, especially in the first season and the third.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Various flashbacks from subsequent episodes provide further insight into the relationship between Michael and his brother, and the reasons behind Michael's determination in helping Lincoln to escape his death sentence. In the episode flashbacks, the younger Michael is played by Dylan Minnette.


title: Michael Scofield

text: It is revealed that Michael has low latent inhibition, a perceptually differing condition in which one sees the world as pieces, rather than mere objects.


title: Michael Scofield

text: The opening scene of the series shows Michael's final preparation of his plan to infiltrate Fox River State Penitentiary; a tattooist is applying the finishing touches to Michael's tattoo, which is prominently featured in the first season. In order to get into Fox River, Michael robs a bank at gunpoint and pleads no contest at his trial, and requests that he be sent to the prison nearest to his home. Michael begins his sentence on April 11, exactly a month before Lincoln is set to be executed. Once there, he scrutinizes every detail regarding the prison and its inhabitants. The prisoners always approached Michael as 'Fish' in the prison which it was a nickname given to new prisoners.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Given Scofield's educational background, inmates and correctional officers wonder why he would have thrown such a privileged life away to end up in a state penitentiary. Even more intriguing are his weird "habits"; he is often seen conversing discreetly with his brother during Prison Industry time and Chapel time; and the fact that he tends to execute a highly defined stare around Fox River's boundaries immediately from the point he got incarcerated as well as being called personally on command by the prison's warden himself, Henry Pope.


title: Michael Scofield

text: The season follows Michael as he puts his plan into action while overcoming various obstacles. In the first 13 episodes, Michael is seen to have a specific objective in each episode that he must accomplish in order to build an escape route out of the prison. On the way, he recruits a number of people to aid in the escape: his cellmate Fernando Sucre (Amaury Nolasco) to help him dig, mob boss John Abruzzi (Peter Stormare) to get him on PI (Prison Industries) and provide air transport once they escape, and Charles Westmoreland (Muse Watson), who he believes to be D. B. Cooper and can help finance their lives as fugitives.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael feigns type 1 diabetes, giving him daily access to the infirmary (the escapees' exit point from the prison) and allowing him to build a relationship with Dr. Sara Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies), who happens to be the daughter of Frank Tancredi (John Heard), the Governor of Illinois. After agreeing to help Warden Henry Pope (Stacy Keach) finish his Taj Mahal replica in his office, Michael also forms a friendship with Pope. He also later stages "brief insanity" to gain access to the penitentiary's premises to gain contact with one of its insane inhabitants gifted with a photographic memory, in order to re-acquire the portion of the tattooed blueprint that he lost after coming into contact with a steaming hot piece of metal.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael's relationship with Sara is featured prominently in the nineteenth episode, "The Key", where he fails to steal the key to the infirmary from her. Although she finds out about his motive for being in the infirmary in the following episode, Sara decides to help Michael by leaving the infirmary door unlocked on the night of the escape. Towards the end of the season, Michael finally succeeds in helping his brother escape from Fox River State Penitentiary through the window of the infirmary but also aids the escape of six other prisoners.


title: Michael Scofield

text: The story continues to follow Michael, his brother, and other escapees as they try to evade the authorities pursuing them. Away from the prison setting, Michael and Lincoln are frequently featured in scenes together in the first seven episodes. Michael and Lincoln travel together, after the fugitives separate to accomplish each of their individual goals. When they fail to retrieve L. J. Burrows before his trial, they decide to head to Utah to find Westmoreland's hidden money. There, they reunite with four of the other escapees: Sucre, C-Note (Rockmond Dunbar), T-Bag (Robert Knepper) and Tweener (Lane Garrison).


title: Michael Scofield

text: The seventh episode of the season, "Buried" marks the first time Lincoln and Michael separate when Lincoln decides to go after his son, L. J., who has been released from prison. Michael fails to retrieve the money after being fooled by T-Bag. Nevertheless, Michael continues to execute his plan in order to meet the coyote at the 'Bolshoi Booze' location. Prior to leaving for 'Bolshoi Booze', Michael meets Sara at the location which he encoded in his messages to her inside the origami cranes. Thinking that she had declined his invitation to Panama, Michael goes to meet the coyote, who has the location of an escape plane to Mexico. There, Michael is reunited with Lincoln, Sucre and the brothers' father, Aldo Burrows (Anthony Denison).


title: Michael Scofield

text: When Aldo is killed by Agent Alexander Mahone (William Fichtner), Michael and Lincoln decide to confront "The Company" and the conspiracy, and bid farewell to Sucre, who alights the getaway plane to Mexico. After a brief capture by Mahone, Michael and Lincoln are aided in their escape by Paul Kellerman (Paul Adelstein), who turns against The Company in an act of self-preservation. Kellerman takes them to Terrence Steadman, the man Lincoln is accused of murdering. Steadman's suicide forces Michael, Lincoln, and Kellerman to find Sara since she holds the key to unlocking information that can expose the conspiracy. After Sara joins them, Michael, Lincoln, and Kellerman head to Chicago, where Sara's father has hidden the information. On the way, Sara tells Michael that she has fallen in love with him and later in the same episode Michael reveals that he feels the same.


title: Michael Scofield

text: With the help of former Fox River warden Henry Pope, Michael and Sara succeed in getting the USB drive in Frank Tancredi's private locker. After leaving Kellerman behind, Lincoln, Michael and Sara soon find that the recorded conversation on the USB flash drive could not be used as evidence due to its modified time-stamp, and decide to blackmail Reynolds instead. When this also fails, Michael and Lincoln are forced to escape to Panama; they are also forced to leave Sara behind after she is arrested. Upon discovering that T-Bag is in Panama City, Michael decides to capture him, which he successfully does. When Michael returns his boat with Westmoreland's money to find Lincoln missing, he receives a call from Mahone, who demands the boat and the money in exchange for Lincoln's life. Michael outsmarts Mahone and escapes with Lincoln. At his new boat, Michael and Lincoln are reunited with Sara, who tells them that Lincoln has been exonerated after Kellerman's testimony.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Their happiness is short-lived when Agent Kim (Reggie Lee) arrives and threatens to kill Lincoln and take Michael to Sona, which causes Sara to shoot him. As the three flee from the scene with the police pursuing them, Michael and Sara separate from Lincoln and end up surrounded in a small isolated shack. After expressing their love for each other, they leave the shack. Unbeknownst to Sara, Michael confesses to Kim's killing and is arrested in her place. Michael is imprisoned at the Penitenciaría Federal de Sona (Sona Federal Penitentiary). Michael is the fifth member of the Fox River Eight to be arrested by the authorities, and the second not to die upon interception.


title: Michael Scofield

text: In the season premiere, Michael witnesses a brutal duel between inmates, the usual manner of settling disputes at Sona. He unintentionally makes an enemy of a convicted influential drug lord in the penitentiary, Lechero. Lincoln informs Michael that The Company needs him to break somebody out of Sona (James Whistler), and that they have taken Sara and LJ hostage to ensure his cooperation. He began to look for Whistler, only to find that he has a bounty on his head: whoever kills him can receive exoneration from the mayor of Panama City. As a result, Whistler had gone into hiding in the sewers. Eventually, he found him and successfully persuades Lechero to remove the bounty on his head.


title: Michael Scofield

text: With seven days to bust Whistler out of prison, Michael tried to take matters into his own hands and uses it to contact Sara and receive a coded message about her location. He relays this information to Linc, who unsuccessfully attempts to rescue Sara and LJ; Sara is apparently killed as a result. Michael then purposely shorts out the power, causing Lechero to call on Michael to fix it. Michael restores power to the prison and also manages to restore power to a previously broken electric fence. It is revealed that Michael fixed the fence so that the electricity will superheat a chemical that Sucre (who was hired as the new grave digger) sprays on it, as the heated chemical is able to melt steel.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael spies on the Sona tower guards but is seen by the second one, due to the lens glare. He observed that at 3:13 p.m., there would be a glare which causes one of the guards to look over to the other side. After a small raid takes place, the prisoners are rounded up in the yard. Captain Hurtado questions Michael to the point that he unholsters his pistol and puts it to Michael's head. Whistler manages to intervene on Michael's behalf. With the help of Mahone, Michael concluded that by drugging one of the guard's coffee, they could distract that guard. As the escape plan continues Michael finally learns of Sara's death, which has a devastating impact on him. In a moment of weakness he seems to challenge Whistler to a duel death but this reveals to be only a diversion for the escape. This escape ultimately fails.


title: Michael Scofield

text: When The Company decided to rescue Whistler themselves, Michael foils their plans but he was suspected of such an operation. At the end of the episode he is being escorted out of Sona and is kept in solitary, being interrogated. He evenly relented and told them about Whistler, who then revealed that Gretchen Morgan is in charge of the operation. Later Michael finds out the officers that were with Gretchen have been killed. Michael and Whistler are returned to Sona. It was then when they turned to a new escape plan, with the help of Lechero, and that is through a tunnel.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Later in the tunnels with Mahone, Whistler and Lechero, he says they need braces to hold up the escape tunnel. Then, when part of the tunnel is about to fall, Michael puts a little piece of metal in to hold it up. Their escape plan was jeopardized with Sammy taking over Sona prison and investigating their escape, but Sammy was killed after the tunnel fell upon him. It is then revealed that Michael killed Sammy by taking out that little metal piece. McGrady joined the team in the escape. Later Michael, Whistler, Mahone, and McGrady escape from Sona, with Lechero, T-Bag and Bellick caught during the escape.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael successfully tricks Gretchen into giving LJ and Sofia back safely. When a shootout begins out a museum in Panama, Michael grabs the gun from Linc's car and has Gretchen in his sights, but she escapes when police start to shoot at her. Later on outside the hospital, LJ gave him the same origami rose that Michael had given to Sara on her birthday. Fueled by revenge, he bids farewell to his family as he goes on a solo mission to hunt down Gretchen.


title: Michael Scofield

text: In the season premiere, Michael has tracked down Gretchen and Whistler to Los Angeles as he prepares to avenge Sara's death. When Michael has both Gretchen and Whistler at gunpoint, Gretchen reveals to him that she had lied about killing Sara Tancredi. Unsure whether or not to believe her, Michael contacts Lincoln and then Bruce. When both Michael and Lincoln get arrested, Don Self tells them that they can either bring down The Company and get Scylla (A key card that stores every bit of information about The Company – essentially their "little black book") or go to jail. They refuse and are bailed out by Bruce. Bruce takes them to Sara where Michael and she joyfully reunite. A hired assassin named Wyatt eventually hunts them down and tries to assassinate them at Sara's safe house. It is then that Michael and everyone decide to take Self's offer. They are joined by Mahone, Sucre, and Bellick in their mission. To blend in with the crowds, Michael gets his tattoos removed via laser surgery. Throughout further episodes, Michael is seen to be experiencing health problems, getting nosebleeds and suddenly clutching his head in pain. He hides these from Lincoln and Sara, but in the episode "Safe and Sound" Michael experiences a bloody nose that he could not hide from Lincoln. Michael tells his brother "It's not a big deal." and Lincoln replies "It was a big deal when you were thirteen..." It appears that Michael shared the condition with his mother; she during her childhood had frequent nosebleeds that stopped but resumed shortly before she died at the age of 31 of a brain aneurysm. This death was a discrepancy that was never directly explained when she turned out to be alive later in the season, however based on a statement by the General regarding prior results of a surgery, and later information revealed about Michael's mother, the explanation of the discrepancy is subtly implied. Michael is experiencing nosebleeds for the first time since 13 and is about to turn 31. In the episode "The Legend", Michael is no longer able to hide his sickness as he collapses in the warehouse. Sara takes Michael to the hospital where the doctors diagnoses him with a hypothalamic hamartoma, advising that emergency surgery is required or he might die.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Unwilling to go into surgery until they get Scylla, Michael receives temporary treatment from Sara and goes onwards with their plans to break into The Company. Although the group eventually succeeds in getting Scylla, Self betrays them and takes it for himself to try to sell it. Michael, however, had taken a small piece of Scylla and Self needs that piece to make Scylla complete. Self goes back to find Michael and shoots the warehouse and a gas tanker to try to force them out. Fortunately, Lincoln was not in the warehouse at the time, and upon discovering Self's car outside, he finds Self at the top of a building and knocks him unconscious. They bring Self in and are about to get Scylla when Gretchen holds the group at gunpoint, allowing Self and herself to escape. Everyone except Mahone head to the hotel Self and Gretchen are staying at. Michael tampers with the ladder outside so that when Self tries to escape, it comes loose and Self falls to the ground. Michael takes this opportunity to grab Scylla from an unconscious Self, but as he is running away his nose starts to bleed profusely. He begins losing his balance and blacks out, falling to the ground. Self then catches up and takes back Scylla. As he is preparing to shoot Michael, Company agents appear and start shooting at Self. Self jumps into Gretchen's van and they escape. The Company agents lift an unconscious Michael into their van and drive away, with Lincoln running after them.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael is then shown in a hospital bed, connected to many machines. A hand rests on his, and it is revealed that this is General Krantz. Lincoln visits The Company's headquarters and asks General Krantz to allow him to see his brother. The General leads Lincoln to Michael, assuring him that Michael is under the best medical care and that The Company's technology is years ahead of those currently provided to the general public. He also tells Lincoln that the only way they will operate and save Michael is if Lincoln brings Scylla back. In addition, General Krantz gives Lincoln a folder labeled "TOMBSTONE II", telling him that it is "added incentive." With Mahone arrested by Agent Lang and Agent Wheeler, it is now up to Lincoln, Sucre, and Sara to retrieve Scylla from Don Self and Gretchen and to save Michael.


title: Michael Scofield

text: With Sara by his side, Michael wakes up disoriented and weak. He asks her which hospital he is in, but Sara merely assures him he does not need to worry about it and that there are good doctors here to treat him. While Lincoln and Sucre go after Scylla, Sara stays with Michael and watches over him while he undergoes surgery. The procedure that The Company doctors use on Michael is nothing like anything Sara has seen before. General Krantz tells her that while the procedure is experimental, it has been used once before on a patient who ended up living a long and happy life. Because of the surgery, all of Michael's senses become active at the same time, causing him to have his life flash before his eyes. He suddenly sees himself back in his old cell at Fox River, with Charles Westmoreland greeting him. While conversing with Westmoreland and trying to figure out the truth behind Scylla in his subconscious, the Michael in surgery is dying and begins to flatline. The Company doctor injects an unknown serum into Michael as Sara panics and rushes to Michael's side, telling him not to give up. After finally realizing what Scylla really is and hearing Sara's voice, Michael wakes up.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Later on, Michael tells Sara that he had a dream about Scylla, and he explains that Scylla is not actually The Company's little black book, but knowledge regarding a chemical combination that can produce energy equivalent to that of the sun's. Lincoln visits Michael shortly after, who is shocked to find out that Lincoln is willing to work with The Company to retrieve Scylla. He attempts to convince Lincoln to stop what he is doing and that The Company cannot be trusted, but Lincoln gives Michael the "TOMBSTONE II" folder and reveals to him that their mother used to work for The Company before she died, and that he is just "following the family business." A preview after the season 4 finale shows Lincoln on the phone with Michael and says he will stop at nothing to get Scylla. Michael replies saying he will stop at nothing to stop Lincoln from succeeding.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael and Sara are seen exiting a pizza restaurant when a Company assassin tries to kill them. They escape. They then bribe a truck driver to let them hitchhike with him, fearing police. He calls Lincoln and tells him he will stop him from getting Scylla and reveals that their mother is alive. The truck is eventually pulled over and searched for Michael and Sara, by an unidentified man. He pretends he does not see anything and he murders the truck driver, placing a phone call stating that he has them. Michael and Sara try to call Lincoln, but they lose the signal and the back lifter is stuck so they smash a vending machine to open the side door and they escape with the guy chasing after them. Michael kills him and takes a note from him asking who sent him. The guy's last words were, "Not Krantz." He then dies.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael and Sara stay at one of Sara's old friend, Deb's vacation apartment, with whom she went to med school. Michael and Sara check the note they took from their abductor. It reads: I10R4AZMS=I-10 near route 4 in Arizona Michael Scofield. The back side reads B2348ROCKWELL1630VS, which they do not understand. Michael texts Lincoln to meet up with him, but instead Mahone comes. Mahone asks if Michael can explain his plan against The Company and Michael refuses to, since Mahone is working with The Company. Michael learns that Christina ordered their abductor to bring them to her, but not kill them. This provides greater incentive to Michael to want to take down The Company. They head to Rockwell Avenue, where they find a car, gun, money,a cellphone and directions to a location they need to go. They head to an airport and check through a flight log list for the initials VS; they discover the name Vincent Sandinsky. They abduct Sandinsky and a car chase ensues. They are captured and Christina orders Michael and Sara to be killed; before they can be executed, The Company agents are killed by Lincoln, Mahone, and Self. Lincoln advises Michael to leave, but he refuses. Lincoln takes Sandinsky with him as a hostage. Michael and Sara, however, took Sandinsky's cellphone which reveals he and Christina used to be lovers. Also in this episode (Vs.) it is revealed Sara is pregnant with Michael's child.


title: Michael Scofield

text: In the next episode, "S.O.B.", Michael calls Lincoln and informs him that Sandinsky knows everything. Lincoln advises him to leave Miami, but Michael still refuses. Michael calls Christina and wants to meet with her to make an arrangement if he gets Scylla. She agrees, and, along with her men, heads to the warehouse where Michael and Sara are. They search the warehouse and Michael puts baggies filled with chemicals inside Christina's SUV and puts the air conditioning on, setting it to full. When Christina and her men return to the car, she starts it and when the heat hits the bags, the chemicals evaporate, suffocating the occupants. Michael and Sara take this opportunity to abduct Christina and tie her up and put her in the trunk. When she regains consciousness, and she reveals to Michael that Lincoln is not his brother. His real parents, who were Company agents, were killed. Aldo adopted Lincoln when he was three (the writer of the episode, Karyn Uscher, revealed on the episode audio commentary that this is a lie - Lincoln really is Michael's biological brother). She never loved Lincoln like she loved Michael. Michael says Lincoln was a brother more than she was a mother: She left, he stayed, he fed him, kept him off the streets and kept him in school. According to the writer of the episode, Karyn Usher, on the episode audio commentary, what she told Michael was in fact a lie. Christina does not want Michael to keep saving Lincoln. Michael demands to know where Lincoln is, and she does not answer until Michael attempts to torture her. She reveals the location at an Energy Conference. Michael leaves, leaving Sara to watch Christina. Michael meets Lincoln at the Energy Conference where the Indian Prime Minister's son, Naveen Banerjee, is assassinated by Christina's men. Lincoln and Michael reunite, whereby Michael reveals to Lincoln that Christina set them up. The police then pursue them.


title: Michael Scofield

text: In the episode "Killing Your Number", Michael is forced to save Lincoln from the clutches of his mother, or save Sara from the clutches of The Company. Michael is forced to try to kill his mother, but, when the gun is out of ammunition, Sara kills Christina, saving Michael. He manages to save both and hands Scylla to Paul Kellerman. After this Michael, Lincoln, Sara, Mahone, and Sucre are exonerated. After Sara and Michael have a thoughtful walk on the beach about the new baby coming, we see four years have passed and Sara and her child are in Panama. After her son, Michael, receives a temporary tattoo, she tell him that they are going to see his father. Sara, her child, Lincoln, Sucre, and Mahone meet at a beach, and walk up to a grave labeled "Michael J. Scofield" and Sara places flowers (lilies) on Michael's gravestone.


title: Michael Scofield

text: The movie starts with Michael and Sara getting married. They have a celebration at a restaurant by the beach, which is interrupted by a squadron of FBI agents who pull up to the area. They arrest Sara for the murder of Christina Hamilton (Christina Scofield). The only footage they had of the scene was where you could only see Sara shooting Christina, but not Christina's gun. Sara ends up in prison right across from the General and T-Bag. Michael is not allowed to see Sara as the FBI suspect he is planning an escape. As Michael, Lincoln, Sucre, and Mahone plan the escape, Mahone admits that he was approached to be an under cover for the FBI to get his job back.


title: Michael Scofield

text: In prison Sara is almost assassinated with rat-poison as General Krantz put a bounty of $100,000 on Sara. A man in the male prison tells T-Bag that his girl can do it for $40,000, however when her and Sara duel Gretchen comes in and kills Sara's attacker. When Gretchen figures out Sara is escaping, Gretchen tells Sara that she wants to come, and uses her saving of Sara as proof she can be trusted. In a secret code, Michael tells Sara to meet him at the chapel for the escape.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Mahone tells the FBI that Michael decided to parachute into the prison. As a dummy drops in by parachute Michael sneaks under the FBI agent's car who is in charge of preventing the escape. Sara and Gretchen try to get to the Chapel by starting a riot. In the midst of the riot Gretchen gets shanked by another prisoner. Sara and Gretchen quietly sneak to the chapel, however Gretchen gets caught without revealing Sara's location. Sara continues and meets up with Michael. They eventually get to the exit point, but when Michael's key card doesn't work as expected, he tells Sara to carry on without him. Michael grabs the generator wires and puts two together to knock out the power. The door opens, but Sara sees an explosion as she leaves. Sara is unable to speak and Mahone informs everyone he is gone and they need to leave. Upon leaving, Mahone shows Sara and Lincoln Michael's medical records that he did not have much longer to live, and gave them a DVD on which Michael expresses his love to them both as well as his unborn child.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Seven years after his apparent death, Michael resurfaces in Yemen, held in Ogygia Prison. A photo of Michael is sent to Fox River Penitentiary, given to the recently released Theodore Bagwell. Taking the photo, Lincoln travels to Yemen, alongside old friend C-Note. Michael is shown to be under a new alias, Kaniel Outis, does not acknowledge Lincoln or C-Note, claiming not to know them. During Michael's stay in Ogygia, it is gradually revealed that Michael, along with a fellow prisoner named Whip, are undercover CIA operatives, but were betrayed by a mastermind agent known as Poseidon. They manage to escape the prison, along with cellmates Sid and Ja, and ISIL leader Abu Ramal, who Michael was supposed to break out. The ISIL capture the group after Ramal betrays them, but they are rescued by Lincoln, while Whip kills Ramal, leading the ISIL to declare war on the group.


title: Michael Scofield

text: After Lincoln demands to know how Michael is alive and in Yemen, Michael reveals that a few weeks before his wedding with Sara, he was contacted by Poseidon, who revealed that Kellerman did not have the legal authority to exonerate Michael's team, and offered legitimate exonerations if Michael agreed to cut contact with everyone and work for him. Michael's initial refusal led to Sara's arrest, after which Michael conceded. Michael decides to use the train station to escape the country, while Lincoln insists in going to the airport, where C-Note is waiting for them along a group of refugees. They are attacked by ISIL member Cyclops, resulting in Sid's death. The group then goes to the airport, but C-Note's party takes off before they arrive, forcing them to find another way to escape Yemen.


title: Michael Scofield

text: The group confronts an untrustworthy contact named Omar, and after an attempted betrayal by him, forces him to take them to Phaecia, a human settlement in the desert capable of sending the group aboard. They are attacked by ISIL, who kill Omar. They are again pursued by Cyclops, and Michael lures him into the desert while the rest of the group head to Phaecia. Michael blinds Cyclops' remaining eye, but he is able to wound Michael with a poisoned blade. Ja helps the others find Phaecia, where they use fireworks to lead Michael to them, who falls unconscious after arriving. Ja decides to stay in Phaecia while the others leave on a boat to Crete, Greece. Lincoln calls Sara and informs her of Michael's condition, and Sara goes to Crete by plane, where she reunites with Michael and heals him. Upon seeing pictures of their son Mike, and Sara's husband Jacob, Michael reveals that Jacob is Poseidon. Sara returns to the U.S. to secure Mike. Michael reunites with his old friend Sucre on board the commercial ship upon which he is working. The captain of the ship learns about Kaniel Outis and alerts the authorities. Navy SEALs are dispatched to kill Michael. Sucre formulates a plan to force the SEALs away, which causes a frustrated Jacob to have a missile fired at the ship, which explodes just after the group jumps overboard. Michael then attempts to help Lincoln with his debt with Luca Abbrutzi, John's son and are successful to return to New York to stop Poseidon once and for all. With help from Sheba, they outsmart Poseidon and get him arrested. Later, the CIA clear Michael's name and officially change his name back from Kaniel Outis to Michael Scofield.


title: Michael Scofield

text: The character was conceived after Paul Scheuring, "Prison Break"'s creator, developed an idea by another producer, about a man who deliberately imprisons himself to break somebody out. From the initial proposal, Scheuring then justified the character and story by making him a structural engineer who worked at the architecture firm that had access to the prison's blueprints. The name was originally used in Roald Dahl's collection of short stories, "Someone Like You", as Michael Scofield.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael J Scofield is portrayed by Wentworth Miller. For most of the first season of the show, Miller utilized a limited range of facial expressions which generated both positive and negative criticisms. It was for this performance in the first season that Miller was nominated for a Golden Globe. "The Washington Post" criticized Miller's performance as being "the most oppressive" and how "the actor apparently thinks it looks cool for him always to be scanning the surroundings..." "Entertainment Weekly" recognized the numerous scenes the actor was present in by saying that "it's Miller's show" and on his performance, they stated that his "Michael Scofield has the silky voice of a sociopath, the resigned stance of a long-distance runner, and the deadpan delivery of Macaulay Culkin at his Uncle Buck best." On the other hand, "The New York Times" commented that although Miller does not show a wide range of emotion, "he projects an unflappable determination that confounds his fellow prisoners..." Regarding his character, Miller says, "First season, I think part of my challenge was to create, hopefully, a compelling character. But at the same time, there were so many things I could never show, because standing next to Abruzzi or T-Bag or Bellick, I could not afford to be vulnerable. I could not afford to crack a smile."


title: Michael Scofield

text: In the show's second season, the character of Michael Scofield shows a wider range of emotions as Miller explains, "He's going to have some lighter, more colorful shades... now that he's off with his brother, around whom I think Michael is willing to show a side of himself that he's not with others, there's a lot more that I can explore."


title: Michael Scofield

text: The tattoo, which covers the entire upper body of Michael Scofield, is featured extensively in the first season of the show and to a lesser extent in the second season. It contributes a major part to the plot of the series, containing various details of the protagonist's plan to escape from prison and from the country. Incorporated within the tattoo are the blueprints of the prison in which the protagonists are incarcerated during the first season.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Wentworth Miller, who plays Michael Scofield, has commented that questions about the tattoo are amongst the most frequently asked questions when he is interviewed about the show.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Designed by Tom Berg and created by Tinsley Transfers, the tattoo took around five hours to be applied onto Miller. When the entire tattoo does not need to be shown, for example, in scenes where the actor is wearing a T-shirt, only the forearm pieces of the tattoo are applied.


title: Michael Scofield

text: In the series pilot, Michael's jail entrance form held by Bellick shows that the character was born on September 8, 1978 in Toledo, Ohio (and the date in the "Prison Break: The Conspiracy" game states July 2, 1972). The birthdate is inconsistent with the characters' dialogue in later episodes. In "By the Skin and the Teeth", Michael remarks to Lincoln that their fathers left them thirty years ago. Since the series is set in the year 2005, the birth date shown on the prop cannot be considered as canon. Thus Michael is 27 years old since last episode in Season 3, "Vamonos", took place on June 24, 2005. This is according to the expired one week ultimatum given by The Company to Michael for breaking out James Whistler. His age is stated by Lincoln for the first time in "Five the Hard Way" as 31, meaning all the facts above cannot be canon. It is also stated Michael is born in 1976 in the episode "The Mother Lode", but in "Killing Your Number" it is retconned to October 8, 1974.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Before imprisonment into Fox River State Penitentiary Michael lived at 440 West Ardmore Avenue, Apartment 11, Chicago, Illinois 60660.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Scofield is "always scanning the surroundings", and "has the silky voice of a sociopath (and) the resigned stance of a long-distance runner" and projected an unflappable determination that confounded his fellow prisoners, as, being close to Abruzzi or T-Bag or Bellick, he could not afford to be vulnerable or even appear human to ensure that he and his brother will safely escape. Later, following the escape, Michael, now off with his brother, around whom Michael was willing to show a side of himself that he was not with the others; something that is lighter and more colorful. Michael often is outwardly taciturn and stoic, rarely allowing the dangerous element he's frequently surrounded by to penetrate his thoughts.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael has been clinically diagnosed with low latent inhibition, a condition in which his brain is more open to incoming stimuli in the surrounding environment. As a result of this condition, he is unable to block out periphery information and instead processes every aspect and detail of any given stimulus. This, combined with a high IQ (as a psychiatrist explains) theoretically makes him a creative genius. His intelligence is well noticed even by his enemies e.g. with Mahone in Season 2 making various comments about Michael's intelligence, even holding a certain admiration to him after successfully breaking out of two prisons (Fox River and Sona). He is even offered a place in The Company.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Due to a feeling of abandonment and abuse during childhood, Michael developed and has very low, or absolutely no sense of, self-worth. With the low latent inhibition, this has made him become very attuned to all the suffering around him. As a result of being unable to block out other people's suffering, he is extremely empathetic and altruistic towards other people's emotions; this explains Michael's desire to make huge sacrifices to help others – he is more concerned with other people's welfare than his own. This particular attribute is apparently the product of his detrimental experience during childhood, where, as a child, his abusive foster father would often beat him and have him locked up inside a closet; and by doing so, Michael's eyes begin to adjust to the darkened environment, allowing him to scan objects around him which he can use for his own convenience. Michael never talked about or showed that he was suffering even to the closest people to him. He started opening up when he fell in love with Sara, the doctor from fox river. With Sara in the picture, Michael became more protective and more serious about his missions.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael had a very strong moral sense and was cool and reasonable. He knew that if he or his allies turn to kill rather than subdue their enemies, they will gradually lose themselves and eventually everything. Bellick, "T-Bag", Whistler and overall Gretchen, all people with much blood on their hands are only alive or survived as long as they did because Michael spared them.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael's enhanced creative ability allowed him to design a tattoo with a hidden blueprint of Fox River Penitentiary that normal people couldn't discern. Over the course of four months, Michael had specific sections of the prison tattooed onto his upper body, hidden within gothic imagery. Each part of his tattoo had to be precise, which provoked the tattooist's comment to Mahone about Michael being a "detail Nazi" and that the tattoo was "some sort of inside joke" that only he got.


title: Michael Scofield

text: Michael was also shown to be meticulous and well-prepared as he used his knowledge and intellect to achieve each step of his escape plan. With time, however, Michael developed (or was possibly born with) improvisation techniques. Tossed into Sona, he developed an escape plan, which ultimately fails. The failure leads to another escape plan which Michael realizes is a threat to his and Lincoln's safety, and stops it. After he escapes Sona and brings down The Company Michael orchestrates from the outside a plan to break Sara out of prison in a relatively short amount of time. The plan is successful but costs him his life in the process. This event is present in the movie "Prison Break: The Final Break". Despite this, the return of "Prison Break" in 2016 shows Michael alive, having been forced into faking his death to ensure the continued safety of his team.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is a visual novel and adventure video game developed by Chunsoft. It is the first installment in the "Zero Escape" series, and was released in Japan in December 2009 and in North America in November 2010 for the Nintendo DS. The story follows Junpei, a college student who is abducted along with eight other people and forced to play the "Nonary Game", which puts its participants in a life-or-death situation, to escape from a sinking cruise liner. The gameplay alternates between two types of sections: Escape sections, where the player completes puzzles in escape-the-room scenarios; and Novel sections, where the player reads the game's narrative and makes decisions that influence the story toward one of six different endings.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: Development of the game began after Kotaro Uchikoshi joined Chunsoft to write a visual novel for them that could reach a wider audience; Uchikoshi suggested adding puzzle elements that are integrated with the game's story. The inspiration for the story was the question of where inspiration comes from; while researching it, Uchikoshi came across Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance hypothesis, which became the main focus of the game's science fiction elements. The music was composed by Shinji Hosoe, while the characters were designed by Kinu Nishimura. The localization was handled by Aksys Games; they worked by the philosophy of keeping true to the spirit of the original Japanese version, aiming for natural-sounding English rather than following the original's exact wording.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" was positively received, with reviewers praising the story, writing and puzzles, but criticizing the game's tone and how the player is required to re-do the puzzles every time they play through the game (which is necessary in order to obtain the true ending). While the Japanese release was a commercial failure, the game sold better than expected for the genre in the United States. Although "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" was developed as a stand-alone title, its unexpected critical success in North America prompted the continuation of the series.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: The sequel, "", was released in 2012, which was followed by "Zero Time Dilemma", released in 2016. An updated version of "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors", with voice acting and higher resolution graphics, was released alongside a port of "Virtue's Last Reward" as part of the "Zero Escape: The Nonary Games". This bundle was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Microsoft Windows via Steam in March 2017, and for Xbox One and Xbox Game Pass in March 2022.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" is an adventure game in which the player assumes the role of a college student named Junpei. The gameplay is divided into two types of sections: Novel and Escape. In the Novel sections, the player progresses through the branching storyline and converses with non-playable characters through visual novel segments. These sections require little interaction from the player as they are spent reading the text that appears on the screen, which represents either dialogue between the various characters or Junpei's thoughts. During Novel sections, the player will sometimes be presented with decision options that affect the course of the game, resulting in one of six endings. The whole plot is not revealed in just one playthrough; the player needs to reach the "true" ending to get all the information behind the mystery, which in turn requires another specific ending to be reached beforehand. Some endings contain hints to how to reach further endings.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: In between Novel sections are Escape sections, which occur when the player finds themselves in a room from which they need to find the means of escape. These are presented from a first-person perspective, with the player being able to move between different pre-determined positions in each room. To escape, the player is tasked with finding various items and solving puzzles, reminiscent of escape-the-room games. At some points, the player may need to combine objects with each other to create the necessary tool to complete a puzzle. The puzzles include various brain teasers, such as baccarat and magic squares. An in-game calculator is provided for math-related problems, and the player can ask characters for hints if they find an Escape room too difficult. All Escape sections are self-contained, with all items required to solve the puzzles being available within that section; items are not carried over between Escape sections. After finishing an Escape section, it becomes available to replay from the game's main menu.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" features nine main characters, who are forced to participate in the Nonary Game by an unknown person named Zero. The characters adopt code names to protect their identities due to the stakes of the Nonary Game. The player-controlled Junpei is joined by June, a nervous girl and an old friend of Junpei whom he knows as Akane; Lotus, a self-serving woman with unknown skills; Seven, a large and muscular man; Santa, a punk with a negative attitude; Ace, an older and wiser man; Snake, a blind man with a princely demeanor; Clover, a girl prone to mood swings and Snake's younger sister; and the 9th Man, a fidgety individual.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: The events of the game occur within a cruise ship, though all of the external doors and windows have been sealed, and many of the internal doors are locked. The game's nine characters learn that they have been kidnapped and brought to the ship to play the Nonary Game, with the challenge to find the door marked with a "9" within nine hours before the ship sinks. To do this, they are forced to work in separate teams to make their way through the ship and solve puzzles to find this door. This is set in part by special locks on numbered doors that are based on digital roots; each player has a bracelet with a different digit on it, and only groups of three to five with the total of their bracelet's number with the same digital root as marked on the door can pass through.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: Junpei wakes up in a cabin inside a cruise liner, wearing a bracelet displaying the number "5". He escapes the room, and encounters the eight other passengers. Zero announces over a loudspeaker that all nine are participants in the Nonary Game. Zero explains the rules, and states each carry an explosive in their stomach that will go off if they try to bypass the digital root door locks. The 9th Man still goes through a door by himself, and is killed. Fearing what harm might come to them, the group adopts code names, and splits up to explore the ship. The player has the option to select which group that Junpei travels with, which affects the story; several choices lead to Junpei's death. Through various choices, Junpei learns of a previous Nonary Game, played nine years earlier, and the connections of the other characters through that, as well as studies about morphic resonance and stories of the Egyptian priestess Alice, who is frozen in Ice IX.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: In one ending, Junpei learns that the first Nonary Game was run by Cradle Pharmaceutical, of which Ace is the CEO. Zero was a participant of this game, and had set up the second Nonary Game as revenge towards Ace. The surviving players confront Ace and learn he manipulated the 9th Man to violate the rules and get himself killed in order to both cover his identity and obtain the 9th Man's bracelet. As they find the door with the 9, Akane becomes weak. Santa watches over her while the others enter the door, leading to an incinerator, where Ace grabs Lotus and holds her at gunpoint. Discovering the incinerator is about to activate, Snake tackles Ace, and Lotus and Seven pull Junpei out of the incinerator before it goes off, consuming Snake and Ace. Junpei returns to Akane, finding her nearly dead. Zero says over the loudspeakers that the game's loser has been determined; Junpei acts defiant, but Zero clarifies that he is referring to himself. Junpei investigates a nearby room, and returns to find Akane and Santa have disappeared, after which he is knocked out by a gas grenade. After the player views this ending, they can then access the "true" ending.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: In the true ending, Junpei learns that the previous Nonary Game consisted of nine pairs of kidnapped siblings separated onto the ocean-bound "Gigantic" and in a mock-up in Building Q in a Nevada desert. The game was designed to explore morphic fields; the research anticipated that the stress of the game would activate the fields between siblings, allowing solutions solved by one to be sent via these fields to their counterpart at the other location. This research was to help Ace cure his prosopagnosia. This Nonary Game went awry: Akane and her brother Santa were placed at the same location instead of being separated, and Seven discovered the kidnappings and rescued the children from the ship. Ace grabbed Akane before they could escape, and forced her into the incinerator room, and threatened her with death were she unable to solve a puzzle. Unable to solve the puzzle, Akane was apparently burnt to death while the other children escaped with Seven.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: Junpei and the others reach the incinerator; Akane disappears and Santa escapes with Ace hostage, trapping the others inside. It is then revealed that the portion of the game's narrative portrayed on the bottom screen of the Nintendo DS is presented from a 12-year-old Akane's point of view during the first Nonary Game (in the game's 2017 re-release, Akane's perspective is actually the "NVL Mode" that displays narrative text unlike the "ADV Mode"). Through morphic fields, she connected to Junpei in the future, witnessing several possible realities and directing Junpei to help him survive. Junpei then faces the same puzzle Akane did, and relays the solution back to Akane in the past, allowing her to escape with Seven and the other children. Junpei realizes that Akane was Zero and, with assistance from Santa, had recreated the game and all the events she had witnessed in order to ensure her survival and avoid a temporal paradox. As Junpei and the others escape, they discover that the game had taken place in Building Q the entire time, and that Akane and Santa have fled, leaving behind a car with Ace restrained in the trunk. In the game's epilogue, they drive away hoping to catch up to them and, shortly after, pick up a hitchhiker whom Junpei recognizes as Alice.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" was developed by the Japanese game studio Chunsoft and directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi, and produced by Jiro Ishii. Chunsoft had made successful visual novels in the past, such as "Kamaitachi no Yoru" (1994), but wanted to create a new type of visual novel that could be received by a wider audience; they contacted Uchikoshi, who at the time was working on a mobile game based on "Kamaitachi no Yoru", and asked him to serve as a writer for the then upcoming visual novel "". Uchikoshi did not join the company in time to work on "428", but came up with the idea to include puzzles that are integrated within a story, and need to be solved for the player to make progress: he enjoyed playing browser-based escape-the-room games, but thought that they would be more interesting if they had a larger focus on telling a story. This idea served as the basis for "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors", and Uchikoshi was named director of the project.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: Development of "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" began in 2008. The inspiration for the story was the question "where do mankind's inspirations come from?"; Uchikoshi researched it, and found the British author Rupert Sheldrake's theories of morphogenetic fields, which became the main theme of the game. The theory is similar to telepathy, which answers the question of how organisms are able to simultaneously communicate ideas to each other, without physical or social interaction. Uchikoshi used the theory to develop the concept of esper characters, which are able to either transmit or receive information from another individual. Because of the vital role of the number 9 in the plot, each of the characters was based on one of the nine personality types from the Enneagram of Personality. Another source of inspiration was "Kamaitachi no Yoru", which, like "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors", begins with putting the characters in a state of discomfort.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: Uchikoshi started writing the script by working on the ending first. From there, he would continue to work backwards, in order to not get confused when writing the plot. The game's setting, with characters who are trapped and try to escape, was meant to embody two of humanity's instinctive desires: the unconscious desire to return to one's mother's womb and shut oneself away, and the desire to escape and overcome one's current condition. This was a theme Uchikoshi had used before, when writing the visual novel "" (2002). The illustrations by character designer Kinu Nishimura influenced the script, as certain scenes were altered to match the character illustrations. Among scrapped story elements were the use of hands as a major part of the story; in the final stages of production, Uchikoshi's higher-ups did not accept this focus, forcing him to re-write the story. The characters were originally supposed to be handcuffed to each other as they try to escape, but the idea was scrapped as it was seen as overused, with appearances in light novels such as "Mahou Shoujo Riska" (2004).


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: The Escape sequences were created to appeal to players' innate desires: Uchikoshi wanted them to feel the instinctive pleasure that he described as "I found it!". For the puzzles, he would consider the details within the story, and the props and gimmicks found in the game; after deciding on them, they were integrated with the puzzles. He also used puzzle websites as reference. He did not design the puzzles himself, instead leaving the puzzle direction to other staff, while checking it multiple times.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: Shinji Hosoe, the president of the game music production company SuperSweep, was chosen to compose the game's soundtrack for being skilled in a wide range of music genres, ensuring that he could compose music that would fit a lot of different types of moods and scenes. He described his work on the game as the most straightforward music project he had had, due to receiving concise reference material that answered all his questions about the game; he made a few test tracks, after which everything went smoothly. The music was written using the Nintendo DS's internal synth, and Hosoe worked together with fellow SuperSweep composer Yousuke Yasui to make this less obvious.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: The North American localization of the game was handled by Aksys Games; Chunsoft was introduced to Aksys by Spike while looking for a company that could publish the game in North America. When Aksys evaluated "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors", many at the company did not believe in its commercial viability and at first turned it down; as many of the people who evaluate games at Aksys do not speak Japanese, it was difficult for them to gauge whether a game was good or not. In the end they decided to localize it, which was considered a big risk for the company.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: The localization was done by the philosophy of keeping true to the spirit of the original Japanese, making dialogue sound like what a native speaker of English would say instead of strictly adhering the original's exact wording. The localization editor, Ben Bateman, did this by looking at the writing from a wider view, line by line or scene by scene rather than word by word or sentence by sentence, and thinking about how to convey the same ideas in English. Most parts of the game that include a joke in the localization also have a joke in the Japanese version, but a different one; Bateman did however try to make similar types of jokes, with similar contents and ideas. The game's use of Japanese language puns led to problems, as many of them relied on Japanese dialects to function; for these, Bateman replaced them with new puns in English. He was given mostly free rein in what he could change or add, as long as it did not disrupt the plot.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: During the localization, Bateman had to keep track of the numerous plot points throughout the game, as the script had not been written in chronological order due to the numerous endings. Localizing the game took roughly two months. Another challenge was getting the localization done in time: Nobara Nakayama, the game's translator, worked on it for 30 days, and the editing process took two months. Because of this, Bateman had to do most of the work "on the fly". Nakayama had started playing the game prior to starting work on the localization, but did not finish playing it until she was more than halfway through translating it; after learning that the plot hinged on a Japanese pun, they had to halt the localization to discuss it with Uchikoshi and come up with a solution, after which they went through the whole game to make sure that it still made sense. Another problem Bateman ran into was related to the game's first person narration. A plot twist regarding the narration relied on the use of gender-specific first person pronouns at specific points in the story. As this would not work in English, the narration was made to instead be in the third person, and the twist's effect was replicated by shifting from third to first person at a specific story point. However, Bateman admits that the twist is "more mindblowing in Japanese".


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: During a scene related to an abstract painting of a dog, one of the localized answers for what the painting depicts is "Funyarinpa", a nonsense word directly translated from the original Japanese game. Picking it prompts a humorous exchange between Junpei and Lotus. This became a highly popular meme within "Zero Escape" circles.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" was originally released in Japan by Spike on December 10, 2009, for the Nintendo DS. An American release followed on November 16, 2010. In the United States, a replica of the in-game bracelets was included with pre-orders at GameStop; due to low pre-orders, Aksys made these available on their website's shop, both separately and bundled with the game. Upon release, "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" became the eleventh Nintendo DS game to be rated M by the ESRB. It was a commercial failure in Japan, with 27,762 copies sold in 2009 and an additional 11,891 in 2010, reaching a total of 39,653 copies sold. Meanwhile, American sales were described as being strong; according to Uchikoshi, this was a surprise, as the visual novel genre was seen as being particular to Japan and unlikely to be accepted overseas.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: In addition to the game, other "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" media was released. The game's soundtrack was published by SuperSweep on December 23, 2009. A novelization of the game, "Kyokugen Dasshutsu 9 Jikan 9 Nin 9 no Tobira Alterna", was written by Kenji Kuroda and released by Kodansha in 2010 in two volumes, titled "Ue" and "Shita". Coinciding with the release of the game's sequel, "" (2012), "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" was reprinted under the title "Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors", with new box art featuring the "Zero Escape" brand.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: An iOS version of the game, "999: The Novel", was developed by Spike Chunsoft as the second entry in their "Smart Sound Novel" series. It was released in Japan on May 29, 2013, and worldwide in English on March 17, 2014. This version lacks the Escape sections of the Nintendo DS version, and features high resolution graphics and an added flowchart that helps players keep track of which narrative paths they have experienced; additionally, dialogue is presented through speech bubbles, and an extra ending is included. This version has since been removed from the App Store.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: "Zero Escape: The Nonary Games", a bundle that contains remastered versions of "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" and "Virtue's Last Reward", was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in the West on March 24, 2017. People who purchased the Windows version through Steam in its first week of release received a complimentary soundtrack, with songs from "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" and "Virtue's Last Reward". In Japan, the Microsoft Windows version launched on March 25 and the console versions on April 13. The European PlayStation Vita version was released on December 15. "The Nonary Games" was later released for Xbox One on March 22, 2022, and was added to the Xbox Game Pass service for console, PC and cloud on the same date. The "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" remaster retained most of the features from "The Novel", but the new ending was not included.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" was well received by critics, according to the review aggregator Metacritic. "Polygon" included it on a list of the best games of all time, crediting it with popularizing the visual novel genre in America.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: Reviewers enjoyed the writing and narrative, with Andy Goergen of Nintendo World Report labeling it as "a strong argument for video games as a new medium of storytelling". Reviewers at "Famitsu" called the story enigmatic and thrilling. Carolyn Petit at GameSpot felt that the lengthy Novel sections amplified the fear and tension throughout the game, while Heidi Kemps of GamesRadar compared them to "high-quality thriller novels". Jason Schreier of "Wired" criticized the prose for being inconsistent, but said that the use of the narrator was clever and unusual. Susan Arendt at "The Escapist" called the story multi-layered and horrifying. Zach Kaplan at Nintendo Life liked the dialogue, but found the third-person narration to be dull and slow, with out-of-place or clichéd metaphors and similes. Both Chris Schilling at Eurogamer and Lucas M. Thomas at IGN felt that the urgency portrayed in the game's story sometimes was at odds with the tone or timing of the dialogue, such as lengthy conversations while trapped inside a freezer, or lighthearted dialogue and jokes. Thomas called the premise gripping, and said that the mythology, conspiracies and character backgrounds were engrossing. Tony Ponce at Destructoid said that the characters initially seemed like a "stock anime cast", but that the player discovers more complexity in them after moving past first impressions. Kaplan felt that each character was well developed, fleshed out and unique, and could pass for real people.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: A "Famitsu" writer said that they enjoyed solving puzzles, and that it gave them a sense of accomplishment; similarly, Goergen, Petit, Schilling and Arendt called the puzzles satisfying to solve. Goergen found some puzzles to be cleverly done, but said that some were esoteric. Ponce and Petit liked that the puzzles never became "pixel hunts", and how everything is visible as long as the player looks carefully; because of this and the lack of red herrings, time limits and dead ends, Ponce found it to be better than other escape-the-room games. He applauded the large amount of content, saying that even someone only buying the game for the puzzles would be satisfied. Schilling and Thomas appreciated the puzzles, but found some solutions and hints to be too obvious or explanatory. Kemps found the puzzles excellently done and challenging, but disliked how difficult it was to reach the true ending. Kemps and Schreier appreciated how the puzzles felt logical, while they, along with Thomas and Arendt, criticized how the player has to re-do puzzle sequences upon subsequent playthroughs. Goergen, Schreier, Thomas and Arendt all appreciated the fast-forward function, as it made repeated playthroughs more bearable, but Thomas felt that it didn't go far enough in speeding up the process.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: Goergen found the sound designs to be unmemorable, saying that the music does not add much and that players would be likely to mute the game after hearing the "beeping" sound effect used for dialogue for too long. Meanwhile, Ponce and Petit liked it: Ponce called the score "masterful" and said that it "gets under your skin at the right moments", while Petit said that she appreciated the sound, which she called atmospheric and "[sending] shivers up your spine". She was unimpressed with the environments, but said that they were clear and easy to look at. She liked the character portraits, calling them expressive and, paired with the dialogue, enough to make the player not care about the lack of voice acting. Ponce, too, felt that the game did not need voice acting. He felt that the way the game favored textual narration over animated cutscenes made it more immersive, allowing the player to imagine the scenes. Goergen said that the graphics were well done, but that they did not do much for the atmosphere. Kaplan called the presentation "awesome", saying that it looked great and that the artwork stood on its own despite the simplicity of the animations, and that the soundtrack was "fantastic".


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" received some awards from gaming publications, including: Best Story of 2010 from IGN, Best Graphic Adventure of 2010 on a Handheld System from RPGFan, and an Editor's Choice Award from Destructoid. Bob Mackey at "1UP.com" featured "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" on a list of "must-play" Nintendo DS visual novels, citing its story, themes and "zany narrative experimentation", and Jason Schreier at "Kotaku" included it on a list of "must-play" visual novels worth playing even for people who do not like anime tropes. RPGFan listed it as one of the thirty essential role-playing video games from the years 2010 to 2015.


title: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

text: "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" is the first game in the "Zero Escape" series, and was originally intended to be a stand-alone game. The development for the sequel began after the first game got positive reviews. "", the successor to "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors", was announced in August 2011. Developed by Chunsoft for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita, the game was first released on February 16, 2012 in Japan, and later that year in North America and Europe. "Virtue's Last Reward" also follows a group of nine people, and focuses on game theory, specifically the prisoner's dilemma. "Zero Time Dilemma" is set between the events of the previous two games, and has morality as its main theme.


title: War of the currents

text: The war of the currents was a series of events surrounding the introduction of competing electric power transmission systems in the late 1880s and early 1890s. It grew out of two lighting systems developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s; arc lamp street lighting running on high-voltage alternating current (AC), and large-scale low-voltage direct current (DC) indoor incandescent lighting being marketed by Thomas Edison's company. In 1886, the Edison system was faced with new competition: an alternating current system initially introduced by George Westinghouse's company that used transformers to step down from a high voltage so AC could be used for indoor lighting. Using high voltage allowed an AC system to transmit power over longer distances from more efficient large central generating stations. As the use of AC spread rapidly with other companies deploying their own systems, the Edison Electric Light Company claimed in early 1888 that high voltages used in an alternating current system were hazardous, and that the design was inferior to, and infringed on the patents behind, their direct current system.


title: War of the currents

text: In the spring of 1888, a media furor arose over electrical fatalities caused by pole-mounted high-voltage AC lines, attributed to the greed and callousness of the arc lighting companies that operated them. In June of that year Harold P. Brown, a New York electrical engineer, claimed the AC-based lighting companies were putting the public at risk using high-voltage systems installed in a slipshod manner. Brown also claimed that alternating current was more dangerous than direct current and tried to prove this by publicly killing animals with both currents, with technical assistance from Edison Electric. The Edison company and Brown colluded further in their parallel goals to limit the use of AC with attempts to push through legislation to severely limit AC installations and voltages. Both also colluded with Westinghouse's chief AC rival, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, to make sure the first electric chair was powered by a Westinghouse AC generator.


title: War of the currents

text: By the early 1890s the war was winding down. Further deaths caused by AC lines in New York City forced electric companies to fix safety problems. Mergers reduced competition between companies, including the merger of Edison Electric with their chief AC rival, Thomson-Houston, forming General Electric in 1892. The new company now controlled three quarters of the US electrical business. Westinghouse won the bid to supply electrical power for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 and won the major part of the contract to build Niagara Falls hydroelectric project later that year (partially splitting the contract with General Electric). DC commercial power distribution systems declined rapidly in numbers throughout the 20th century; the last DC utility in New York City was shut down in 2007.


title: War of the currents

text: The war of the currents grew out of the development of two lighting systems; arc lighting running on alternating current and incandescent lighting running on direct current. Both were supplanting gas lighting systems, with arc lighting taking over large area/street lighting, and incandescent lighting replacing gas for business and residential indoor lighting.


title: War of the currents

text: By the late 1870s, arc lamp systems were beginning to be installed in cities, powered by central generating plants. Arc lighting was capable of lighting streets, factory yards, or the interior of large buildings. Arc lamp systems used high voltages (above 3,000 volts) to supply current to multiple series-connected lamps, and some ran better on alternating current.


title: War of the currents

text: 1880 saw the installation of large-scale arc lighting systems in several US cities including a central station set up by the Brush Electric Company in December 1880 to supply a length of Broadway in New York City with a 3,500–volt demonstration arc lighting system. The disadvantages of arc lighting were: it was maintenance intensive, buzzed, flickered, constituted a fire hazard, was really only suitable for outdoor lighting, and, at the high voltages used, was dangerous to work with.


title: War of the currents

text: In 1878 inventor Thomas Edison saw a market for a system that could bring electric lighting directly into a customer's business or home, a niche not served by arc lighting systems. By 1882 the investor-owned utility Edison Illuminating Company was established in New York City. Edison designed his utility to compete with the then established gas lighting utilities, basing it on a relatively low 110-volt direct current supply to power a high resistance incandescent lamp he had invented for the system. Edison direct current systems would be sold to cities throughout the United States, making it a standard with Edison controlling all technical development and holding all the key patents. Direct current worked well with incandescent lamps, which were the principal load of the day. Direct-current systems could be directly used with storage batteries, providing valuable load-leveling and backup power during interruptions of generator operation. Direct-current generators could be easily paralleled, allowing economical operation by using smaller machines during periods of light load and improving reliability. Edison had invented a meter to allow customers to be billed for energy proportional to consumption, but this meter worked only with direct current. Direct current also worked well with electric motors, an advantage DC held throughout the 1880s. The primary drawback with the Edison direct current system was that it ran at 110 volts from generation to its final destination giving it a relatively short useful transmission range: to keep the size of the expensive copper conductors down generating plants had to be situated in the middle of population centers and could only supply customers less than a mile from the plant.


title: War of the currents

text: Alternating current had been under development with contributions by Guillaume Duchenne (1850s), the dynamo work of Zénobe Gramme, Ganz Works (1870s), Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti (1880s), Lucien Gaulard, and Galileo Ferraris. Starting in the 1880s alternating current gained its key advantage over direct current with the development of functional transformers that allowed the voltage to be "stepped up" to much higher transmission voltages and then dropped down to a lower end user voltage for business and residential use. The high voltages allowed a central generating station to supply a large area, up to long circuits.


title: War of the currents

text: Using induction coils to transfer power between electrical circuits had been around for 40 years with Pavel Yablochkov using them in his lighting system in 1876 and Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs using the principle to create a "step down" transformer in 1882, but the design was not very efficient. A prototype of the high efficiency, closed core shunt connection transformer was made by the Hungarian "Z.B.D." team (composed of Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy and Miksa Déri) at Ganz Works in 1884. The new Z.B.D. transformers were 3.4 times more efficient than the open core bipolar devices of Gaulard and Gibbs. Transformers in use today are designed based on principles discovered by the three engineers. Their patents included another major related innovation: the use of parallel connected (as opposed to series connected) power distribution. Ottó Bláthy also invented the first AC electricity meter. The reliability of this type of AC technology received impetus after the Ganz Works electrified Rome, a large metropolis, in 1886.


title: War of the currents

text: In North America the inventor and entrepreneur George Westinghouse entered the electric lighting business in 1884 when he started to develop a DC system and hired William Stanley, Jr. to work on it. Westinghouse became aware of the new European transformer based AC systems in 1885 when he read about them in the UK technical journal "Engineering". He grasped that AC combined with transformers meant greater economies of scale could be achieved with large centralized power plants transmitting stepped up voltage very long distances to be used in arc lighting as well as lower voltage home and commercial incandescent lighting supplied via a "step down" transformer at the other end. Westinghouse saw a way to build a truly competitive system instead of simply building another barely competitive DC lighting system using patents just different enough to get around the Edison patents. The Edison DC system of centralized DC plants with their short transmission range also meant there was a patchwork of un-supplied customers between Edison's plants that Westinghouse could easily supply with AC power.


title: War of the currents

text: Westinghouse purchased the US patents rights to the Gaulard-Gibbs transformer and imported several of those as well as Siemens AC generators to begin experimenting with an AC-based lighting system in Pittsburgh. William Stanley used the Gaulard-Gibbs design and designs from the ZBD Transformer to develop the first practical transformer. The Westinghouse Electric Company was formed at the beginning of 1886. In March 1886 Stanley, with Westinghouse's backing, installed the first multiple-voltage AC power system, a demonstration incandescent lighting system, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Expanded to the point where it could light 23 businesses along main street with very little power loss over 4000 feet, the system used transformers to step 500 AC volts at the street down to 100 volts to power incandescent lamps at each location. By fall of 1886 Westinghouse, Stanley, and Oliver B. Shallenberger had built the first commercial AC power system in the US in Buffalo, New York.


title: War of the currents

text: By the end of 1887 Westinghouse had 68 alternating current power stations to Edison's 121 DC-based stations. To make matters worse for Edison, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts (another competitor offering AC- and DC-based systems) had built 22 power stations. Thomson-Houston was expanding their business while trying to avoid patent conflicts with Westinghouse, arranging deals such as coming to agreements over lighting company territory, paying a royalty to use the Stanley AC transformer patent, and allowing Westinghouse to use their Sawyer-Man incandescent bulb patent. Besides Thomson-Houston and Brush there were other competitors at the time included the United States Illuminating Company and the Waterhouse Electric Light Company. All of the companies had their own electric power systems, arc lighting systems, and even incandescent lamp designs for domestic lighting, leading to constant lawsuits and patent battles between themselves and with Edison.


title: War of the currents

text: Elihu Thomson of Thomson-Houston was concerned about AC safety and put a great deal of effort into developing a lightning arrestor for high-tension power lines as well as a magnetic blowout switch that could shut the system down in a power surge, a safety feature the Westinghouse system did not have. Thomson also worried about what would happen with the equipment after they sold it, assuming customers would follow a risky practice of installing as many lights and generators as they could get away with. He also thought the idea of using AC lighting in residential homes was too dangerous and had the company hold back on that type of installation until a safer transformer could be developed.


title: War of the currents

text: Due to the hazards presented by high voltage electrical lines most European cities and the city of Chicago in the US required them to be buried underground. The City of New York did not require burying and had little in the way of regulation so by the end of 1887 the mishmash of overhead wires for telephone, telegraph, fire and burglar alarm systems in Manhattan were now mixed with haphazardly strung AC lighting system wires carrying up to 6,000 volts. Insulation on power lines was rudimentary, with one electrician referring to it as having as much value "as a molasses covered rag", and exposure to the elements was eroding it over time. A third of the wires were simply abandoned by defunct companies and slowly deteriorating, causing damage to, and shorting out the other lines. Besides being an eyesore, New Yorkers were annoyed when a large March 1888 snowstorm (the Great Blizzard of 1888) tore down a large number of the lines, cutting off utilities in the city. This spurred on the idea of having these lines moved underground but it was stopped by a court injunction obtained by Western Union. Legislation to give all the utilities 90 days to move their lines into underground conduits supplied by the city was slowly making its way through the government but that was also being fought in court by the United States Illuminating Company, who claimed their AC lines were perfectly safe.


title: War of the currents

text: As AC systems continued to spread into territories covered by DC systems, with the companies seeming to impinge on Edison patents including incandescent lighting, things got worse for the company. The price of copper was rising, adding to the expense of Edison's low voltage DC system, which required much heavier copper wires than higher voltage AC systems. Thomas Edison's own colleagues and engineers were trying to get him to consider AC. Edison's sales force was continually losing bids in municipalities that opted for cheaper AC systems and Edison Electric Illuminating Company president Edward Hibberd Johnson pointed out that if the company stuck with an all DC system it would not be able to do business in small towns and even mid-sized cities. Edison Electric had a patent option on the ZBD transformer, and a confidential in house report recommended that the company go AC, but Thomas Edison was against the idea.


title: War of the currents

text: After Westinghouse installed his first large scale system, Edison wrote in a November 1886 private letter to Edward Johnson, "Just as certain as death Westinghouse will kill a customer within six months after he puts in a system of any size, He has got a new thing and it will require a great deal of experimenting to get it working practically." Edison seemed to hold a view that the very high voltage used in AC systems was too dangerous and that it would take many years to develop a safe and workable system. Safety and avoiding the bad press of killing a customer had been one of the goals in designing his DC system and he worried that a death caused by a mis-installed AC system could hold back the use of electricity in general. Edison's understanding of how AC systems worked seemed to be extensive. He noted what he saw as inefficiencies and that, combined with the capital costs in trying to finance very large generating plants, led him to believe there would be very little cost savings in an AC venture. Edison was also of the opinion that DC was a superior system (a fact that he was sure the public would come to recognize) and inferior AC technology was being used by other companies as a way to get around his DC patents.


title: War of the currents

text: In February 1888 Edison Electric president Edward Johnson published an 84-page pamphlet titled ""A Warning from the Edison Electric Light Company"" and sent it to newspapers and to companies that had purchased or were planning to purchase electrical equipment from Edison competitors, including Westinghouse and Thomson-Houston, stating that the competitors were infringing on Edison's incandescent light and other electrical patents. It warned that purchasers could find themselves on the losing side of a court case if those patents were upheld. The pamphlet also emphasized the safety and efficiency of direct current, with the claim DC had not caused a single death, and included newspaper stories of accidental electrocutions caused by alternating current.


title: War of the currents

text: As arc lighting systems spread so did stories of how the high voltages involved were killing people, usually unwary linemen, a strange new phenomenon that seemed to instantaneously strike a victim dead. One such story in 1881 of a drunken dock worker dying after he grabbed a large electric dynamo led Buffalo, New York dentist Alfred P. Southwick to seek some application for the curious phenomenon. He worked with local physician George E. Fell and the Buffalo ASPCA, electrocuting hundreds of stray dogs, to come up with a method to euthanize animals via electricity. Southwick's 1882 and 1883 articles on how electrocution could be a replacement for hanging, using a restraint similar to a dental chair (an electric chair) caught the attention of New York State politicians who, following a series of botched hangings, were desperately seeking an alternative. An 1886 commission appointed by New York governor David B. Hill, which including Southwick, recommended in 1888 that executions be carried out by electricity using the electric chair.


title: War of the currents

text: There were early indications that this new form of execution would become mixed up with the war of currents. As part of their fact-finding, the commission sent out surveys to hundreds of experts on law and medicine, seeking their opinions, as well as contacting electrical experts, including Elihu Thomson and Thomas Edison. In late 1887, when death penalty commission member Southwick contacted Edison, the inventor stated he was against capital punishment and wanted nothing to do with the matter. After further prompting, Edison hit out at his chief electric power competitor, George Westinghouse, in what may have been the opening salvo in the war of currents, stating in a December 1887 letter to Southwick that it would be best to use current generated by "'alternating machines,' manufactured principally in this country by Geo. Westinghouse". Soon after the execution by electricity bill passed in June 1888, Edison was asked by a New York government official what means would be the best way to implement the state's new form of execution. "Hire out your criminals as linemen to the New York electric lighting companies" was Edison's tongue-in-cheek answer.


title: War of the currents

text: As the number of deaths attributed to high voltage lighting around the country continued to mount, a cluster of deaths in New York City in the spring of 1888 related to AC arc lighting set off a media frenzy against the "deadly arc-lighting current" and the seemingly callous lighting companies that used it. These deaths included a 15-year-old boy killed on April 15 by a broken telegraph line that had been energized with alternating current from a United States Illuminating Company line; a clerk killed two weeks later by an AC line; and a Brush Electric Company lineman killed in May by the AC line he was cutting. The press in New York seemed to switch overnight from stories about electric lights vs gas lighting to "death by wire" incidents, with each new report seeming to fan public resentment against high voltage AC and the dangerously tangled overhead electrical wires in the city.


title: War of the currents

text: At this point an electrical engineer named Harold P. Brown, who at that time seemed to have no connection to the Edison company, sent a June 5, 1888 letter to the editor of the "New York Post" claiming the root of the problem was the alternating current (AC) system being used. Brown argued that the AC system was inherently dangerous and "damnable" and asked why the "public must submit to constant danger from sudden death" just so utilities could use a cheaper AC system.


title: War of the currents

text: At the beginning of attacks on AC, Westinghouse, in a June 7, 1888 letter, tried to defuse the situation. He invited Edison to visit him in Pittsburgh and said "I believe there has been a systemic attempt on the part of some people to do a great deal of mischief and create as great a difference as possible between the Edison Company and The Westinghouse Electric Co., when there ought to be an entirely different condition of affairs". Edison thanked him but said "My laboratory work consumes the whole of my time".


title: War of the currents

text: On June 8, Brown was lobbying in person before the New York Board of Electrical Control, asking that his letter to the paper be read into the meeting's record and demanding severe regulations on AC including limiting voltage to 300 volts, a level that would make AC next to useless for transmission. There were many rebuttals to Brown's claims in the newspapers and letters to the board, with people pointing out he was showing no scientific evidence that AC was more dangerous than DC. Westinghouse pointed out in letters to various newspapers the number of fires caused by DC equipment and suggested that Brown was obviously being controlled by Edison, something Brown continually denied.


title: War of the currents

text: A July edition of "The Electrical Journal" covered Brown's appearance before the New York Board of Electrical Control and the debate in technical societies over the merits of DC and AC and noted that: