title: History of computing hardware

text: During World War II, British codebreakers at Bletchley Park, north of London, achieved a number of successes at breaking encrypted enemy military communications. The German encryption machine, Enigma, was first attacked with the help of the electro-mechanical bombes. Women often operated these bombe machines. They ruled out possible Enigma settings by performing chains of logical deductions implemented electrically. Most possibilities led to a contradiction, and the few remaining could be tested by hand.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The Germans also developed a series of teleprinter encryption systems, quite different from Enigma. The Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine was used for high-level Army communications, code-named "Tunny" by the British. The first intercepts of Lorenz messages began in 1941. As part of an attack on Tunny, Max Newman and his colleagues developed the Heath Robinson, a fixed-function machine to aid in code breaking. Tommy Flowers, a senior engineer at the Post Office Research Station was recommended to Max Newman by Alan Turing and spent eleven months from early February 1943 designing and building the more flexible Colossus computer (which superseded the Heath Robinson). After a functional test in December 1943, Colossus was shipped to Bletchley Park, where it was delivered on 18 January 1944 and attacked its first message on 5 February.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Colossus was the world's first electronic digital programmable computer. It used a large number of valves (vacuum tubes). It had paper-tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on its data, but it was not Turing-complete. Data input to Colossus was by photoelectric reading of a paper tape transcription of the enciphered intercepted message. This was arranged in a continuous loop so that it could be read and re-read multiple times – there being no internal store for the data. The reading mechanism ran at 5,000 characters per second with the paper tape moving at . Colossus Mark 1 contained 1500 thermionic valves (tubes), but Mark 2 with 2400 valves and five processors in parallel, was both 5 times faster and simpler to operate than Mark 1, greatly speeding the decoding process. Mark 2 was designed while Mark 1 was being constructed. Allen Coombs took over leadership of the Colossus Mark 2 project when Tommy Flowers moved on to other projects. The first Mark 2 Colossus became operational on 1 June 1944, just in time for the Allied Invasion of Normandy on D-Day.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Most of the use of Colossus was in determining the start positions of the Tunny rotors for a message, which was called "wheel setting". Colossus included the first-ever use of shift registers and systolic arrays, enabling five simultaneous tests, each involving up to 100 Boolean calculations. This enabled five different possible start positions to be examined for one transit of the paper tape. As well as wheel setting some later Colossi included mechanisms intended to help determine pin patterns known as "wheel breaking". Both models were programmable using switches and plug panels in a way their predecessors had not been. Ten Mk 2 Colossi were operational by the end of the war.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Without the use of these machines, the Allies would have been deprived of the very valuable intelligence that was obtained from reading the vast quantity of enciphered high-level telegraphic messages between the German High Command (OKW) and their army commands throughout occupied Europe. Details of their existence, design, and use were kept secret well into the 1970s. Winston Churchill personally issued an order for their destruction into pieces no larger than a man's hand, to keep secret that the British were capable of cracking Lorenz SZ cyphers (from German rotor stream cipher machines) during the oncoming Cold War. Two of the machines were transferred to the newly formed GCHQ and the others were destroyed. As a result, the machines were not included in many histories of computing. A reconstructed working copy of one of the Colossus machines is now on display at Bletchley Park.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The US-built ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic programmable computer built in the US. Although the ENIAC was similar to the Colossus it was much faster and more flexible. It was unambiguously a Turing-complete device and could compute any problem that would fit into its memory. Like the Colossus, a "program" on the ENIAC was defined by the states of its patch cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that came later. Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches. The programmers of the ENIAC were women who had been trained as mathematicians.


title: History of computing hardware

text: It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and square root. High-speed memory was limited to 20 words (equivalent to about 80 bytes). Built under the direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC's development and construction lasted from 1943 to full operation at the end of 1945. The machine was huge, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors. One of its major engineering feats was to minimize the effects of tube burnout, which was a common problem in machine reliability at that time. The machine was in almost constant use for the next ten years.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Early computing machines were programmable in the sense that they could follow the sequence of steps they had been set up to execute, but the "program", or steps that the machine was to execute, were set up usually by changing how the wires were plugged into a patch panel or plugboard. "Reprogramming", when it was possible at all, was a laborious process, starting with engineers working out flowcharts, designing the new set up, and then the often-exacting process of physically re-wiring patch panels. Stored-program computers, by contrast, were designed to store a set of instructions (a program), in memory – typically the same memory as stored data.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The theoretical basis for the stored-program computer had been proposed by Alan Turing in his 1936 paper. In 1945 Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory and began his work on developing an electronic stored-program digital computer. His 1945 report 'Proposed Electronic Calculator' was the first specification for such a device.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Meanwhile, John von Neumann at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, circulated his "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" in 1945. Although substantially similar to Turing's design and containing comparatively little engineering detail, the computer architecture it outlined became known as the "von Neumann architecture". Turing presented a more detailed paper to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) Executive Committee in 1946, giving the first reasonably complete design of a stored-program computer, a device he called the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE). However, the better-known EDVAC design of John von Neumann, who knew of Turing's theoretical work, received more publicity, despite its incomplete nature and questionable lack of attribution of the sources of some of the ideas.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Turing thought that the speed and the size of computer memory were crucial elements, so he proposed a high-speed memory of what would today be called 25 KB, accessed at a speed of 1 MHz. The ACE implemented subroutine calls, whereas the EDVAC did not, and the ACE also used "Abbreviated Computer Instructions," an early form of programming language.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The Manchester Baby (Small Scale Experimental Machine, SSEM) was the world's first electronic stored-program computer. It was built at the Victoria University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The machine was not intended to be a practical computer but was instead designed as a testbed for the Williams tube, the first random-access digital storage device. Invented by Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn at the University of Manchester in 1946 and 1947, it was a cathode-ray tube that used an effect called secondary emission to temporarily store electronic binary data, and was used successfully in several early computers.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Described as small and primitive in a 1998 retrospective, the Baby was the first working machine to contain all of the elements essential to a modern electronic computer. As soon as it had demonstrated the feasibility of its design, a project was initiated at the university to develop the design into a more usable computer, the Manchester Mark 1. The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The Baby had a 32-bit word length and a memory of 32 words. As it was designed to be the simplest possible stored-program computer, the only arithmetic operations implemented in hardware were subtraction and negation; other arithmetic operations were implemented in software. The first of three programs written for the machine found the highest proper divisor of 2 (262,144), a calculation that was known would take a long time to run—and so prove the computer's reliability—by testing every integer from 2 − 1 downwards, as division was implemented by repeated subtraction of the divisor. The program consisted of 17 instructions and ran for 52 minutes before reaching the correct answer of 131,072, after the Baby had performed 3.5 million operations (for an effective CPU speed of 1.1 kIPS). The successive approximations to the answer were displayed as a pattern of dots on the output CRT which mirrored the pattern held on the Williams tube used for storage.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The SSEM led to the development of the Manchester Mark 1 at the University of Manchester. Work began in August 1948, and the first version was operational by April 1949; a program written to search for Mersenne primes ran error-free for nine hours on the night of 16/17 June 1949.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The machine's successful operation was widely reported in the British press, which used the phrase "electronic brain" in describing it to their readers.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The computer is especially historically significant because of its pioneering inclusion of index registers, an innovation which made it easier for a program to read sequentially through an array of words in memory. Thirty-four patents resulted from the machine's development, and many of the ideas behind its design were incorporated in subsequent commercial products such as the and 702 as well as the Ferranti Mark 1. The chief designers, Frederic C. Williams and Tom Kilburn, concluded from their experiences with the Mark 1 that computers would be used more in scientific roles than in pure mathematics. In 1951 they started development work on Meg, the Mark 1's successor, which would include a floating-point unit.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The other contender for being the first recognizably modern digital stored-program computer was the EDSAC, designed and constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England at the University of Cambridge in 1949. The machine was inspired by John von Neumann's seminal "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" and was one of the first usefully operational electronic digital stored-program computer.


title: History of computing hardware

text: EDSAC ran its first programs on 6 May 1949, when it calculated a table of squares and a list of prime numbers.The EDSAC also served as the basis for the first commercially applied computer, the LEO I, used by food manufacturing company J. Lyons & Co. Ltd. EDSAC 1 was finally shut down on 11 July 1958, having been superseded by EDSAC 2 which stayed in use until 1965.


title: History of computing hardware

text: ENIAC inventors John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert proposed the EDVAC's construction in August 1944, and design work for the EDVAC commenced at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, before the ENIAC was fully operational. The design implemented a number of important architectural and logical improvements conceived during the ENIAC's construction, and a high-speed serial-access memory. However, Eckert and Mauchly left the project and its construction floundered.


title: History of computing hardware

text: It was finally delivered to the U.S. Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in August 1949, but due to a number of problems, the computer only began operation in 1951, and then only on a limited basis.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The first commercial computer was the Ferranti Mark 1, built by Ferranti and delivered to the University of Manchester in February 1951. It was based on the Manchester Mark 1. The main improvements over the Manchester Mark 1 were in the size of the primary storage (using random access Williams tubes), secondary storage (using a magnetic drum), a faster multiplier, and additional instructions. The basic cycle time was 1.2 milliseconds, and a multiplication could be completed in about 2.16 milliseconds. The multiplier used almost a quarter of the machine's 4,050 vacuum tubes (valves). A second machine was purchased by the University of Toronto, before the design was revised into the Mark 1 Star. At least seven of these later machines were delivered between 1953 and 1957, one of them to Shell labs in Amsterdam.


title: History of computing hardware

text: In October 1947, the directors of J. Lyons & Company, a British catering company famous for its teashops but with strong interests in new office management techniques, decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers. The LEO I computer (Lyons Electronic Office) became operational in April 1951 and ran the world's first regular routine office computer job. On 17 November 1951, the J. Lyons company began weekly operation of a bakery valuations job on the LEO – the first business to go live on a stored program computer.


title: History of computing hardware

text: In June 1951, the UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer) was delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau. Remington Rand eventually sold 46 machines at more than each ($ as of 2022). UNIVAC was the first "mass produced" computer. It used 5,200 vacuum tubes and consumed of power. Its primary storage was serial-access mercury delay lines capable of storing 1,000 words of 11 decimal digits plus sign (72-bit words).


title: History of computing hardware

text: IBM introduced a smaller, more affordable computer in 1954 that proved very popular. The IBM 650 weighed over , the attached power supply weighed around and both were held in separate cabinets of roughly 1.50.9. The system cost ($ as of 2022) or could be leased for a month ($ as of 2022). Its drum memory was originally 2,000 ten-digit words, later expanded to 4,000 words. Memory limitations such as this were to dominate programming for decades afterward. The program instructions were fetched from the spinning drum as the code ran. Efficient execution using drum memory was provided by a combination of hardware architecture – the instruction format included the address of the next instruction – and software: the Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program, SOAP, assigned instructions to the optimal addresses (to the extent possible by static analysis of the source program). Thus many instructions were, when needed, located in the next row of the drum to be read and additional wait time for drum rotation was reduced.


title: History of computing hardware

text: In 1951, British scientist Maurice Wilkes developed the concept of microprogramming from the realisation that the central processing unit of a computer could be controlled by a miniature, highly specialized computer program in high-speed ROM. Microprogramming allows the base instruction set to be defined or extended by built-in programs (now called firmware or microcode). This concept greatly simplified CPU development. He first described this at the University of Manchester Computer Inaugural Conference in 1951, then published in expanded form in "IEEE Spectrum" in 1955.


title: History of computing hardware

text: It was widely used in the CPUs and floating-point units of mainframe and other computers; it was implemented for the first time in EDSAC 2, which also used multiple identical "bit slices" to simplify design. Interchangeable, replaceable tube assemblies were used for each bit of the processor.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Magnetic drum memories were developed for the US Navy during WW II with the work continuing at Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in 1946 and 1947. ERA, then a part of Univac included a drum memory in its 1103, announced in February 1953. The first mass-produced computer, the IBM 650, also announced in 1953 had about 8.5 kilobytes of drum memory.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Magnetic core memory patented in 1949 with its first usage demonstrated for the Whirlwind computer in August 1953. Commercialization followed quickly. Magnetic core was used in peripherals of the IBM 702 delivered in July 1955, and later in the 702 itself. The IBM 704 (1955) and the Ferranti Mercury (1957) used magnetic-core memory. It went on to dominate the field into the 1970s, when it was replaced with semiconductor memory. Magnetic core peaked in volume about 1975 and declined in usage and market share thereafter.


title: History of computing hardware

text: As late as 1980, PDP-11/45 machines using magnetic-core main memory and drums for swapping were still in use at many of the original UNIX sites.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The bipolar transistor was invented in 1947. From 1955 onward transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computer designs, giving rise to the "second generation" of computers. Compared to vacuum tubes, transistors have many advantages: they are smaller, and require less power than vacuum tubes, so give off less heat. Silicon junction transistors were much more reliable than vacuum tubes and had longer service life. Transistorized computers could contain tens of thousands of binary logic circuits in a relatively compact space. Transistors greatly reduced computers' size, initial cost, and operating cost. Typically, second-generation computers were composed of large numbers of printed circuit boards such as the IBM Standard Modular System, each carrying one to four logic gates or flip-flops.


title: History of computing hardware

text: At the University of Manchester, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of valves. Initially the only devices available were germanium point-contact transistors, less reliable than the valves they replaced but which consumed far less power. Their first transistorized computer, and the first in the world, was operational by 1953, and a second version was completed there in April 1955. The 1955 version used 200 transistors, 1,300 solid-state diodes, and had a power consumption of 150 watts. However, the machine did make use of valves to generate its 125 kHz clock waveforms and in the circuitry to read and write on its magnetic drum memory, so it was not the first completely transistorized computer.


title: History of computing hardware

text: That distinction goes to the Harwell CADET of 1955, built by the electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. The design featured a 64-kilobyte magnetic drum memory store with multiple moving heads that had been designed at the National Physical Laboratory, UK. By 1953 this team had transistor circuits operating to read and write on a smaller magnetic drum from the Royal Radar Establishment. The machine used a low clock speed of only 58 kHz to avoid having to use any valves to generate the clock waveforms.


title: History of computing hardware

text: CADET used 324-point-contact transistors provided by the UK company Standard Telephones and Cables; 76 junction transistors were used for the first stage amplifiers for data read from the drum, since point-contact transistors were too noisy. From August 1956 CADET was offering a regular computing service, during which it often executed continuous computing runs of 80 hours or more. Problems with the reliability of early batches of point contact and alloyed junction transistors meant that the machine's mean time between failures was about 90 minutes, but this improved once the more reliable bipolar junction transistors became available.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The Manchester University Transistor Computer's design was adopted by the local engineering firm of Metropolitan-Vickers in their Metrovick 950, the first commercial transistor computer anywhere. Six Metrovick 950s were built, the first completed in 1956. They were successfully deployed within various departments of the company and were in use for about five years. A second generation computer, the IBM 1401, captured about one third of the world market. IBM installed more than ten thousand 1401s between 1960 and 1964.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Transistorized electronics improved not only the CPU (Central Processing Unit), but also the peripheral devices. The second generation disk data storage units were able to store tens of millions of letters and digits. Next to the fixed disk storage units, connected to the CPU via high-speed data transmission, were removable disk data storage units. A removable disk pack can be easily exchanged with another pack in a few seconds. Even if the removable disks' capacity is smaller than fixed disks, their interchangeability guarantees a nearly unlimited quantity of data close at hand. Magnetic tape provided archival capability for this data, at a lower cost than disk.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Many second-generation CPUs delegated peripheral device communications to a secondary processor. For example, while the communication processor controlled card reading and punching, the main CPU executed calculations and binary branch instructions. One databus would bear data between the main CPU and core memory at the CPU's fetch-execute cycle rate, and other databusses would typically serve the peripheral devices. On the PDP-1, the core memory's cycle time was 5 microseconds; consequently most arithmetic instructions took 10 microseconds (100,000 operations per second) because most operations took at least two memory cycles; one for the instruction, one for the operand data fetch.


title: History of computing hardware

text: During the second generation remote terminal units (often in the form of Teleprinters like a Friden Flexowriter) saw greatly increased use. Telephone connections provided sufficient speed for early remote terminals and allowed hundreds of kilometers separation between remote-terminals and the computing center. Eventually these stand-alone computer networks would be generalized into an interconnected "network of networks"—the Internet.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The early 1960s saw the advent of supercomputing. The Atlas was a joint development between the University of Manchester, Ferranti, and Plessey, and was first installed at Manchester University and officially commissioned in 1962 as one of the world's first supercomputers – considered to be the most powerful computer in the world at that time. It was said that whenever Atlas went offline half of the United Kingdom's computer capacity was lost. It was a second-generation machine, using discrete germanium transistors. Atlas also pioneered the Atlas Supervisor, "considered by many to be the first recognisable modern operating system".


title: History of computing hardware

text: In the US, a series of computers at Control Data Corporation (CDC) were designed by Seymour Cray to use innovative designs and parallelism to achieve superior computational peak performance. The CDC 6600, released in 1964, is generally considered the first supercomputer. The CDC 6600 outperformed its predecessor, the IBM 7030 Stretch, by about a factor of 3. With performance of about 1 megaFLOPS, the CDC 6600 was the world's fastest computer from 1964 to 1969, when it relinquished that status to its successor, the CDC 7600.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The "third-generation" of digital electronic computers used integrated circuit (IC) chips as the basis of their logic.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The idea of an integrated circuit was conceived by a radar scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment of the Ministry of Defence, Geoffrey W.A. Dummer.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The first working integrated circuits were invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor. Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit in July 1958, successfully demonstrating the first working integrated example on 12 September 1958. Kilby's invention was a hybrid integrated circuit (hybrid IC). It had external wire connections, which made it difficult to mass-produce.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Noyce came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year after Kilby. Noyce's invention was a monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip. His chip solved many practical problems that Kilby's had not. Produced at Fairchild Semiconductor, it was made of silicon, whereas Kilby's chip was made of germanium. The basis for Noyce's monolithic IC was Fairchild's planar process, which allowed integrated circuits to be laid out using the same principles as those of printed circuits. The planar process was developed by Noyce's colleague Jean Hoerni in early 1959, based on Mohamed M. Atalla's work on semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide at Bell Labs in the late 1950s.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Third generation (integrated circuit) computers first appeared in the early 1960s in computers developed for government purposes, and then in commercial computers beginning in the mid-1960s. The first silicon IC computer was the Apollo Guidance Computer or AGC. Although not the most powerful computer of its time, the extreme constraints on size, mass, and power of the Apollo spacecraft required the AGC to be much smaller and denser than any prior computer, weighing in at only . Each lunar landing mission carried two AGCs, one each in the command and lunar ascent modules.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor) was invented by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. In addition to data processing, the MOSFET enabled the practical use of MOS transistors as memory cell storage elements, a function previously served by magnetic cores. Semiconductor memory, also known as MOS memory, was cheaper and consumed less power than magnetic-core memory. MOS random-access memory (RAM), in the form of static RAM (SRAM), was developed by John Schmidt at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1964. In 1966, Robert Dennard at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center developed MOS dynamic RAM (DRAM). In 1967, Dawon Kahng and Simon Sze at Bell Labs developed the floating-gate MOSFET, the basis for MOS non-volatile memory such as EPROM, EEPROM and flash memory.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The "fourth-generation" of digital electronic computers used microprocessors as the basis of their logic. The microprocessor has origins in the MOS integrated circuit (MOS IC) chip. Due to rapid MOSFET scaling, MOS IC chips rapidly increased in complexity at a rate predicted by Moore's law, leading to large-scale integration (LSI) with hundreds of transistors on a single MOS chip by the late 1960s. The application of MOS LSI chips to computing was the basis for the first microprocessors, as engineers began recognizing that a complete computer processor could be contained on a single MOS LSI chip.


title: History of computing hardware

text: The subject of exactly which device was the first microprocessor is contentious, partly due to lack of agreement on the exact definition of the term "microprocessor". The earliest multi-chip microprocessors were the Four-Phase Systems AL-1 in 1969 and Garrett AiResearch MP944 in 1970, developed with multiple MOS LSI chips. The first single-chip microprocessor was the Intel 4004, developed on a single PMOS LSI chip. It was designed and realized by Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin, Masatoshi Shima and Stanley Mazor at Intel, and released in 1971. Tadashi Sasaki and Masatoshi Shima at Busicom, a calculator manufacturer, had the initial insight that the CPU could be a single MOS LSI chip, supplied by Intel.


title: History of computing hardware

text: While the earliest microprocessor ICs literally contained only the processor, i.e. the central processing unit, of a computer, their progressive development naturally led to chips containing most or all of the internal electronic parts of a computer. The integrated circuit in the image on the right, for example, an Intel 8742, is an 8-bit microcontroller that includes a CPU running at 12 MHz, 128 bytes of RAM, 2048 bytes of EPROM, and I/O in the same chip.


title: History of computing hardware

text: During the 1960s there was considerable overlap between second and third generation technologies. IBM implemented its IBM Solid Logic Technology modules in hybrid circuits for the IBM System/360 in 1964. As late as 1975, Sperry Univac continued the manufacture of second-generation machines such as the UNIVAC 494. The Burroughs large systems such as the B5000 were stack machines, which allowed for simpler programming. These pushdown automatons were also implemented in minicomputers and microprocessors later, which influenced programming language design. Minicomputers served as low-cost computer centers for industry, business and universities. It became possible to simulate analog circuits with the "simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis", or SPICE (1971) on minicomputers, one of the programs for electronic design automation (). The microprocessor led to the development of microcomputers, small, low-cost computers that could be owned by individuals and small businesses. Microcomputers, the first of which appeared in the 1970s, became ubiquitous in the 1980s and beyond.


title: History of computing hardware

text: While which specific product is considered the first microcomputer system is a matter of debate, one of the earliest is R2E's Micral N (François Gernelle, André Truong) launched "early 1973" using the Intel 8008. The first commercially available microcomputer kit was the Intel 8080-based Altair 8800, which was announced in the January 1975 cover article of "Popular Electronics". However, the Altair 8800 was an extremely limited system in its initial stages, having only 256 bytes of DRAM in its initial package and no input-output except its toggle switches and LED register display. Despite this, it was initially surprisingly popular, with several hundred sales in the first year, and demand rapidly outstripped supply. Several early third-party vendors such as Cromemco and Processor Technology soon began supplying additional S-100 bus hardware for the Altair 8800.


title: History of computing hardware

text: In April 1975 at the Hannover Fair, Olivetti presented the P6060, the world's first complete, pre-assembled personal computer system. The central processing unit consisted of two cards, code named PUCE1 and PUCE2, and unlike most other personal computers was built with TTL components rather than a microprocessor. It had one or two 8" floppy disk drives, a 32-character plasma display, 80-column graphical thermal printer, 48 Kbytes of RAM, and BASIC language. It weighed . As a complete system, this was a significant step from the Altair, though it never achieved the same success. It was in competition with a similar product by IBM that had an external floppy disk drive.


title: History of computing hardware

text: From 1975 to 1977, most microcomputers, such as the MOS Technology KIM-1, the Altair 8800, and some versions of the Apple I, were sold as kits for do-it-yourselfers. Pre-assembled systems did not gain much ground until 1977, with the introduction of the Apple II, the Tandy TRS-80, the first SWTPC computers, and the Commodore PET. Computing has evolved with microcomputer architectures, with features added from their larger brethren, now dominant in most market segments.


title: History of computing hardware

text: A NeXT Computer and its object-oriented development tools and libraries were used by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN to develop the world's first web server software, CERN httpd, and also used to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Systems as complicated as computers require very high reliability. ENIAC remained on, in continuous operation from 1947 to 1955, for eight years before being shut down. Although a vacuum tube might fail, it would be replaced without bringing down the system. By the simple strategy of never shutting down ENIAC, the failures were dramatically reduced. The vacuum-tube SAGE air-defense computers became remarkably reliable – installed in pairs, one off-line, tubes likely to fail did so when the computer was intentionally run at reduced power to find them. Hot-pluggable hard disks, like the hot-pluggable vacuum tubes of yesteryear, continue the tradition of repair during continuous operation. Semiconductor memories routinely have no errors when they operate, although operating systems like Unix have employed memory tests on start-up to detect failing hardware. Today, the requirement of reliable performance is made even more stringent when server farms are the delivery platform. Google has managed this by using fault-tolerant software to recover from hardware failures, and is even working on the concept of replacing entire server farms on-the-fly, during a service event.


title: History of computing hardware

text: In the 21st century, multi-core CPUs became commercially available. Content-addressable memory (CAM) has become inexpensive enough to be used in networking, and is frequently used for on-chip cache memory in modern microprocessors, although no computer system has yet implemented hardware CAMs for use in programming languages. Currently, CAMs (or associative arrays) in software are programming-language-specific. Semiconductor memory cell arrays are very regular structures, and manufacturers prove their processes on them; this allows price reductions on memory products. During the 1980s, CMOS logic gates developed into devices that could be made as fast as other circuit types; computer power consumption could therefore be decreased dramatically. Unlike the continuous current draw of a gate based on other logic types, a CMOS gate only draws significant current during the 'transition' between logic states, except for leakage.


title: History of computing hardware

text: CMOS circuits have allowed computing to become a commodity which is now ubiquitous, embedded in many forms, from greeting cards and telephones to satellites. The thermal design power which is dissipated during operation has become as essential as computing speed of operation. In 2006 servers consumed 1.5% of the total energy budget of the U.S. The energy consumption of computer data centers was expected to double to 3% of world consumption by 2011. The SoC (system on a chip) has compressed even more of the integrated circuitry into a single chip; SoCs are enabling phones and PCs to converge into single hand-held wireless mobile devices.


title: History of computing hardware

text: Quantum computing is an emerging technology in the field of computing. "MIT Technology Review" reported 10 November 2017 that IBM has created a 50-qubit computer; currently its quantum state lasts 50 microseconds. Google researchers have been able to extend the 50 microsecond time limit, as reported 14 July 2021 in "Nature"; stability has been extended 100-fold by spreading a single logical qubit over chains of data qubits for quantum error correction. "Physical Review X" reported a technique for 'single-gate sensing as a viable readout method for spin qubits' (a singlet-triplet spin state in silicon) on 26 November 2018. A Google team has succeeded in operating their RF pulse modulator chip at 3 Kelvin, simplifying the cryogenics of their 72-qubit computer, which is set up to operate at 0.3 Kelvin; but the readout circuitry and another driver remain to be brought into the cryogenics. "See: Quantum supremacy" Silicon qubit systems have demonstrated entanglement at non-local distances.


title: History of computing hardware

text: An indication of the rapidity of development of this field can be inferred from the history of the seminal 1947 article by Burks, Goldstine and von Neumann. By the time that anyone had time to write anything down, it was obsolete. After 1945, others read John von Neumann's "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC", and immediately started implementing their own systems. To this day, the rapid pace of development has continued, worldwide.


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: Warren Anderson Mathis (born March 6, 1977), better known by his stage name Bubba Sparxxx, is an American rapper from Georgia. His singles include "Deliverance", "Ugly" (both featuring Timbaland), and "Ms. New Booty" (featuring Ying Yang Twins and Mr. Collipark), the latter of which peaked at number 7 on the U.S. "Billboard" Hot 100.


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: Mathis grew up in a rural area near LaGrange, Georgia. He is of French descent. His father was a school bus driver, and his mother was a grocery store cashier. His closest neighbor, who lived half a mile away, introduced him to rap music through mixtapes mailed from New York City. The music of 2 Live Crew was his introduction to hip hop; he began listening to West Coast gangsta rap such as N.W.A and Too Short and the Atlanta duo Outkast. With rapping as a hobby, he was a tight end and linebacker for his high school's football team and earned All-Region honors in his senior year. Steve Herndon, a former offensive lineman for the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and Denver Broncos, played football with him during high school, according to an interview with "Down-South.com". In 2007, he moved to Tampa, Florida.


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: In 1996, he moved to Athens, Georgia, where he met industry veteran Bobby Stamps. Stamps noticed him rapping after a University of Georgia football game and later introduced him to Atlanta producer Shannon Houchins.


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: For two years, Houchins and Stamps worked together to produce Sparxxx's first commercial CD release, "Dark Days, Bright Nights", which released in 2001. The debut album saw some success in Georgia and caught the attention of Jimmy Iovine of Interscope Records. Sparxxx signed to Interscope and began working with record producers Timbaland, Organized Noize as well as continuing to work with Shannon Houchins. The major-label reissue of "Dark Days, Bright Nights", released via Timbaland's Beat Club Records imprint and which now included five collaborations with Timbaland and two with Organized Noise, debuted at #3 on the "Billboard" 200.


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: In 2002, he had a minor hit being featured on Archie Eversole's "We Ready", which became popular for being played at sporting events, such as football and basketball games. In late 2003, he returned with his second album, "Deliverance", which was critically acclaimed but sold poorly.


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: Sparxxx signed a recording contract with Virgin Records in 2004; under Virgin, Sparxxx released "The Charm" with singles "Ms. New Booty" and "Heat It Up".


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: He left Virgin to establish his own label, New South Entertainment, which is distributed by E1 Records. In 2007, he released a mixtape with DJ Burn One titled "Survive Till Ya Thrive".


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: In 2012, he signed to Backroad Records, a subsidiary of the independent label Average Joes Entertainment owned by Shannon Houchins and Colt Ford, and recorded the song "Country Boy Coolin'" which was featured on Mud Digger Vol. 3, a compilation album released by Average Joe's on June 12, 2012. He stated in an interview that he planned on releasing an album to be called "Miracle on Gamble Road", in 2012.


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: In January 2013, Sparxxx released the video "Splinter" which featured Crucifix. In July 2013, a video for his single "Country Folks", which features Danny Boone of the band Rehab and Colt Ford and produced by Houchins, was released. The album "Pain Management" was released on October 15, 2013.


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: In March 2016, Sparxxx signed to Yelawolf's Slumerican records imprint. On October 7, 2016, Sparxxx released his first release under Slumerican "The Bubba Mathis EP". Sparxxx released "Rapper From The Country" on September 16, 2018, through New South Entertainment (E1).


title: Bubba Sparxxx

text: On November 11, 2020, Sparxxx released an EP, "Crickets" with Hosier. On December 4, 2020, Sparxxx released his seventh album "King of Crap" through New South Entertainment. which had the single "Bird Dawg". In May 2021, WORLDSTARHIPHOP released a video for "Bird Dawg".


title: VVER

text: The water-water energetic reactor (WWER), or VVER (from ; transliterates as ; "water-water power reactor") is a series of pressurized water reactor designs originally developed in the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. The idea of such a reactor was proposed at the Kurchatov Institute by Savely Moiseevich Feinberg. VVER were originally developed before the 1970s, and have been continually updated. As a result, the name VVER is associated with a wide variety of reactor designs spanning from generation I reactors to modern generation III+ reactor designs. Power output ranges from 70 to 1300 MWe, with designs of up to 1700 MWe in development. The first prototype VVER-210 was built at the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant.


title: VVER

text: VVER power stations have mostly been installed in Russia and the former Soviet Union, but also in China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, India, Iran and Ukraine. Countries that are planning to introduce VVER reactors include Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey.


title: VVER

text: The earliest VVERs were built before 1970. The VVER-440 Model V230 was the most common design, delivering 440 MW of electrical power. The V230 employs six primary coolant loops each with a horizontal steam generator. A modified version of VVER-440, Model V213, was a product of the first nuclear safety standards adopted by Soviet designers. This model includes added emergency core cooling and auxiliary feedwater systems as well as upgraded accident localization systems.


title: VVER

text: The larger VVER-1000 was developed after 1975 and is a four-loop system housed in a containment-type structure with a spray steam suppression system (Emergency Core Cooling System). VVER reactor designs have been elaborated to incorporate automatic control, passive safety and containment systems associated with Western generation III reactors.


title: VVER

text: The VVER-1200 is the version currently offered for construction, being an evolution of the VVER-1000 with increased power output to about 1200 MWe (gross) and providing additional passive safety features.


title: VVER

text: In 2012, Rosatom stated that in the future it intended to certify the VVER with the British and U.S. regulatory authorities, though was unlikely to apply for a British licence before 2015.


title: VVER

text: The Russian abbreviation VVER stands for 'water-water energy reactor' (i.e. water-cooled water-moderated energy reactor). The design is a type of pressurised water reactor (PWR). The main distinguishing features of the VVER compared to other PWRs are:


title: VVER

text: Reactor fuel rods are fully immersed in water kept at (12,5 / 15,7 / 16,2 ) MPa pressure respectively so that it does not boil at the normal (220 to over 320 °C) operating temperatures. Water in the reactor serves both as a coolant and a moderator which is an important safety feature. Should coolant circulation fail, the neutron moderation effect of the water diminishes due to increased heat which creates steam bubbles which do not moderate neutrons, thus reducing reaction intensity and compensating for loss of cooling, a condition known as negative void coefficient. Later versions of the reactors are encased in massive steel reactor pressure vessels. Fuel is low enriched (ca. 2.4–4.4% U) uranium dioxide (UO) or equivalent pressed into pellets and assembled into fuel rods.


title: VVER

text: Reactivity is controlled by control rods that can be inserted into the reactor from above. These rods are made from a neutron absorbing material and, depending on depth of insertion, hinder the chain reaction. If there is an emergency, a reactor shutdown can be performed by full insertion of the control rods into the core.


title: VVER

text: As stated above, the water in the primary circuits is kept under a constant elevated pressure to avoid its boiling. Since the water transfers all the heat from the core and is irradiated, the integrity of this circuit is crucial. Four main components can be distinguished:


title: VVER

text: To provide for the continued cooling of the reactor core in emergency situations the primary cooling is designed with redundancy.


title: VVER

text: To increase efficiency of the process, steam from the turbine is taken to reheat coolant before the deaerator and the steam generator. Water in this circuit is not supposed to be radioactive.


title: VVER

text: The tertiary cooling circuit is an open circuit diverting water from an outside reservoir such as a lake or river. Evaporative cooling towers, cooling basins or ponds transfer the waste heat from the generation circuit into the environment.


title: VVER

text: In most VVERs this heat can also be further used for residential and industrial heating. Operational examples of such systems are Bohunice NPP (Slovakia) supplying heat to the towns of Trnava (12 km away), Leopoldov (9.5 km away), and Hlohovec (13 km away), and Temelín NPP (Czech Republic) supplying heat to Týn nad Vltavou 5 km away. Plans are made to supply heat from the Dukovany NPP to Brno (the second-largest city in the Czech Republic), covering two-thirds of its heat needs.


title: VVER

text: A typical design feature of nuclear reactors is layered safety barriers preventing escape of radioactive material. VVER reactors have three layers:


title: VVER

text: Compared to the RBMK reactors – the type involved in the Chernobyl disaster – the VVER uses an inherently safer design because the coolant is also the moderator, and by nature of its design has a negative void coefficient like all PWRs. It does not have the graphite-moderated RBMK's risk of increased reactivity and large power transients in the event of a loss of coolant accident. The RBMK reactors were also constructed without containment structures on grounds of cost due to their size; the VVER core is considerably smaller.


title: VVER

text: One of the earliest versions of the VVER-type, that manifested certain problems with its containment building design. As it was at the beginning with the models V-230 and older not constructed to resist the design basis large pipe break, the manufacturer added with the newer model V-213 a so called "Bubble condenser tower", that – with its additional volume and a number of water layers – has the aim to suppress the forces of the rapidly escaping steam without the onset of a containment-leak. As a consequence, all member-countries with plants of design VVER-440 V-230 and older were forced by the politicians of the European Union to shut them down permanently. Bohunice Nuclear Power Plant and Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant had to close with this two respectively four of their units. Whereas in the case of the Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant, the German regulatory body had already taken the same decision in the wake of the fall of the Berlin wall.


title: VVER

text: When first built the VVER design was intended to be operational for 35 years. A mid-life major overhaul including a complete replacement of critical parts such as fuel and control rod channels was thought necessary after that.


title: VVER

text: Since RBMK reactors specified a major replacement programme at 35 years designers originally decided this needed to happen in the VVER type as well, although they are of more robust design than the RBMK type. Most of Russia's VVER plants are now reaching and passing the 35 year mark. More recent design studies have allowed for an extension of lifetime up to 50 years with replacement of equipment. New VVERs will be nameplated with the extended lifetime.


title: VVER

text: In 2010 the oldest VVER-1000, at Novovoronezh, was shut down for modernization to extend its operating life for an additional 20 years; the first to undergo such an operating life extension. The work includes the modernization of management, protection and emergency systems, and improvement of security and radiation safety systems.


title: VVER

text: In 2018 Rosatom announced it had developed a thermal annealing technique for reactor pressure vessels which ameliorates radiation damage and extends service life by between 15 and 30 years. This had been demonstrated on unit 1 of the Balakovo Nuclear Power Plant.


title: VVER

text: The VVER-1200 (or NPP-2006 or AES-2006) is an evolution of the VVER-1000 being offered for domestic and export use.


title: VVER

text: Specifications include a $1,200 per kW overnight construction cost, 54 month planned construction time, a 60 year design lifetime at 90% capacity factor, and requiring about 35% fewer operational personnel than the VVER-1000. The VVER-1200 has a gross and net thermal efficiency of 37.5% and 34.8%. The VVER 1200 will produce 1,198 MWe of power.


title: VVER

text: The first two units have been built at Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant II and Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant II. More reactors with a VVER-1200/491 like the Leningrad-II-design are planned (Kaliningrad and Nizhny Novgorod NPP) and under construction. The type VVER-1200/392M


title: VVER

text: as installed at the Novovoronezh NPP-II has also been selected for the Seversk, Zentral and South-Urals NPP. A standard version was developed as VVER-1200/513 and based on the VVER-TOI (VVER-1300/510) design.


title: VVER

text: In July 2012 a contract was agreed to build two AES-2006 in Belarus at Ostrovets and for Russia to provide a $10 billion loan to cover the project costs.


title: VVER

text: An AES-2006 is being bid for the Hanhikivi Nuclear Power Plant in Finland. The plant supply contract was signed in 2013, but terminated in 2022 mainly due to Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: VVER

text: From 2015 to 2017 Egypt and Russia came to an agreement for the construction of four VVER-1200 units at El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant.


title: VVER

text: On 30 November 2017, concrete was poured for the nuclear island basemat for first of two VVER-1200/523 units at the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant in Bangladesh. The power plant will be a 2.4 GWe nuclear power plant in Bangladesh. The two units generating 2.4 GWe are planned to be operational in 2023 and 2024.


title: VVER

text: On 7 March 2019 China National Nuclear Corporation and Atomstroyexport signed the detailed contract for the construction of four VVER-1200s, two each at the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant and the Xudabao Nuclear Power Plant. Construction will start in May 2021 and commercial operation of all the units is expected between 2026 and 2028.


title: VVER

text: From 2020 an 18-month refuelling cycle will be piloted, resulting in an improved capacity utilisation factor compared to the previous 12-month cycle.


title: VVER

text: The nuclear part of the plant is housed in a single building acting as containment and missile shield. Besides the reactor and steam generators this includes an improved refueling machine, and the computerized reactor control systems. Likewise protected in the same building are the emergency systems, including an emergency core cooling system, emergency backup diesel power supply, and backup feed water supply,


title: VVER

text: A passive heat removal system had been added to the existing active systems in the AES-92 version of the VVER-1000 used for the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in India. This has been retained for the newer VVER-1200 and future designs. The system is based on a cooling system and water tanks built on top of the containment dome.


title: VVER

text: Other new safety systems include aircraft crash protection, hydrogen recombiners, and a core catcher to contain the molten reactor core in the event of a severe accident. The core catcher will be deployed in the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant and El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant.


title: VVER

text: The VVER-TOI is developed from the VVER-1200. It is aimed at development of typical optimized informative-advanced project of a new generation III+ Power Unit based on VVER technology, which meets a number of target-oriented parameters using modern information and management technologies.


title: VVER

text: The construction of the first two VVER-TOI units was started in 2018 and 2019 at the Kursk II Nuclear Power Plant.


title: VVER

text: In June 2019 the VVER-TOI was certified as compliant with European Utility Requirements (with certain reservations) for nuclear power plants.


title: VVER

text: An upgraded version of AES-2006 with TOI standards, the VVER-1200/513, is being built in Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in Turkey.


title: VVER

text: Russia recently installed two nuclear reactors in China at the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant, and an extension consisting of a further two reactors was just approved. This is the first time the two countries have co-operated on a nuclear power project. The reactors are the VVER 1000 type, which Russia has improved incrementally while retaining the basic design. These VVER 1000 reactors are housed in a confinement shell capable of being hit by an aircraft weighing 20 tonnes and suffering no expected damage. Other important safety features include an emergency core cooling system and core confinement system. Russia delivered initial fuel loads for the Tianwan reactors. China planned to begin indigenous fuel fabrication for the Tianwan plant in 2010, using technology transferred from Russian nuclear fuel producer TVEL.


title: VVER

text: The Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant uses many third party parts. While the reactor and turbo-generators are of Russian design, the control room was designed and built by an international consortium. In this way the plant was brought to meet widely recognised safety standards; safety systems were already mostly in place but the previous monitoring of these systems did not meet international safety standards. The new VVER 1000 plant built in China has 94% of its systems automated, meaning the plant can control itself under most situations. Refueling procedures require little human intervention. Five operators are still needed in the control room.


title: VVER

text: In May 2010 Russia secured an agreement with the Turkish government to build a power plant with four VVER-1200 reactors at Akkuyu, Turkey. However, due to the accident experienced in Fukushima, anti-nuclear environmentalist groups heavily protested the proposed reactor at Akkuyu.


title: VVER

text: On 11 October 2011 an agreement was signed to build Belarus’ first nuclear power plant at Astravyets, using two VVER-1200/491 (AES-2006) reactors with active and passive safety systems. In July 2016, the reactor vessel for unit 1 has hit the ground during transportation, and though no damage was sustained it was decided to be replaced to allay public fears, delaying the project by a year. Unit 1 is, as of April 2020, planned to commence operation in 2020.


title: VVER

text: In October 2013 the VVER-1000 (AES-92) design was selected by the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission in a competitive tender for Jordan's first twin reactor nuclear power station.


title: VVER

text: In November 2015 and March 2017 Egypt signed preliminary agreements with Russian nuclear company Rosatom for a first VVER-1200 unit at El Dabaa to start operations in 2024. Discussions continue for final approval.


title: VVER

text: 2.4 GWe Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant of Bangladesh is under construction. The two units of VVER- 1200/523 generating 2.4 GWe are planned to be operational in 2023 and 2024.


The 2020–21 United States Senate election in Georgia was held on November 3, 2020, and on January 5, 2021 (as a runoff), to elect the Class II member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Georgia. Democrat Jon Ossoff defeated incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue in the runoff election. The general election was held concurrently with the 2020 presidential election, as well as with other elections to the Senate, elections to the U.S. House of Representatives and various state and local elections.


title: 2020–21 United States Senate election in Georgia

text: No candidate received a majority of the vote during the general election on November 3, so the top two finishers—Perdue (49.7%) and Ossoff (47.9%)—advanced to a runoff election, held on January 5, 2021. The runoff was held concurrently with the special election for Georgia's other U.S. Senate seat (which had also advanced to a runoff), in which Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler lost to Democratic nominee Raphael Warnock. After the general round of elections, Republicans held 50 Senate seats and the Democratic caucus 48 (including two independents who caucus with them). As a result, the two runoffs decided control of the Senate under the incoming Biden administration. By winning both seats, Democrats took control of the chamber, with Vice President Kamala Harris's tie-breaking vote giving them an effective majority. The extraordinarily high political stakes caused the races to attract significant attention nationwide and globally. On January 6, 2021, most major news outlets projected Ossoff the winner, in the midst of the US Capitol riot. Perdue conceded the race on January 8. According to OpenSecrets, this campaign was the most expensive in U.S. Senate history, with over $468 million spent. Ossoff's victory, along with Warnock's, gave the Democrats control of the Senate for the first time since 2015. Ossoff and Warnock became the first Democrats to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Georgia since Zell Miller in the 2000 special election.


text: Ossoff became the first Democrat elected to a full term in the Senate from Georgia since Max Cleland, who held this seat from 1997 to 2003, and the first Jewish member of the Senate from the state. Ossoff became the youngest senator since Don Nickles won in 1980, and the youngest Democrat since Joe Biden won in 1972. Georgia election officials certified Ossoff's victory on January 19, 2021; he was sworn in on January 20. Ossoff is the first Jewish senator from the Deep South since Benjamin F. Jonas of Louisiana, who was elected in 1878, and the first millennial United States senator. This election and the special election both mark the first time since 1994 that both Senate seats in a state have flipped from one party to the other in a single election cycle. This was the first time the Democrats achieved this since West Virginia's 1958 Senate elections. With a margin of 1.2%, this election was also the closest race of the 2020 Senate election cycle.


text: Almost four times as many Georgia voters participated in the 2020 Democratic Senate primary as in the 2016 Democratic Senate primary, when only 310,053 votes were cast.


text: A second debate between Ossoff and Perdue, held on October 28 in Savannah and aired on television station WTOC-TV, was more heated and made national headlines, with Ossoff saying that Perdue had claimed "COVID-19 was no deadlier than the flu", was "looking after [his] own assets, and... portfolio", and that Perdue voted "four times to end protections for preexisting conditions". Ossoff also called Perdue a "crook" and criticized him for "attacking the health of the people that [he] represent[s]". Perdue said Ossoff will "say and do anything to my friends in Georgia to mislead them about how radical and socialist" his agenda is. Video of the exchange went viral.


text: The next day, October 29, Perdue said he would not attend the third and final debate, previously scheduled to be broadcast on WSB-TV on November 1; instead Perdue decided to attend a rally with President Trump in Rome on the same day—"as lovely as another debate listening to Jon Ossoff lie to the people of Georgia sounds", according to a Perdue spokesman.


text: On December 6, Ossoff debated an empty podium as Perdue declined to participate in a Georgia Public Broadcasting-held debate. Ossoff criticized Perdue's absence, accusing him of skipping the event because of the negative response to his performance in the October debates.


text: No candidate received a majority of the vote on November 3, so the top two finishers—incumbent Republican senator David Perdue (49.7%) and Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff (47.9%)—advanced to a runoff election held on January 5, 2021.


text: Voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected were allowed to submit corrections until 5pm on November 6.


text: The runoff election between Perdue and Ossoff was on January 5, 2021, alongside the special election for the Georgia U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Kelly Loeffler.


text: Following the 2020 Senate elections, Republicans held 50 Senate seats and the Democratic caucus 48. Since Democrats won both Georgia runoffs, their caucus gained control of the Senate, as the resultant 50–50 tie is broken by Democratic vice president Kamala Harris. If the Democrats had lost either race, Republicans would have retained control of the Senate. The high political stakes caused the races to attract significant nationwide attention. These elections are the third and fourth Senate runoff elections to be held in Georgia since runoffs were first mandated in 1964, following runoffs in 1992 and 2008. It is also the third time that both of Georgia's Senate seats have been up for election at the same time, following double-barrel elections in 1914 and 1932.


text: The deadline for registration for the runoff election was December 7, 2020. Absentee ballots for the runoff election were sent out beginning on November 18, and in-person voting began on December 14. Ossoff's runoff campaign largely focused around accusing Perdue of corruption as well as aggressively courting Black voters in an attempt to drive up turnout, while Perdue characterised Ossoff as a socialist and accused him of having ties to the People's Republic of China. Perdue's campaign was hampered by his refusal to state that Joe Biden had won that year's presidential election, which made it exceedingly difficult for him to argue that an Ossoff victory would create a Democratic trifecta.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Düsseldorfer Turn- und Sportverein Fortuna 1895 e.V., commonly known as Fortuna Düsseldorf (), is a German football club in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, which competes in the 2. Bundesliga.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Founded in 1895, Fortuna entered the league in 1913 and was a fixture in the top flight from the early 1920s up to the creation of the Bundesliga in 1963. 2022–23 will be their third season in a row in the 2. Bundesliga since getting relegated from the Bundesliga in the 2019–20 season. Fortuna captured one German championship in 1933 and two German cup DFB-Pokal wins in 1979 and 1980. Their greatest feat in European competition was a Cup Winners Cup final in 1979 where they lost to Barcelona.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: The earliest roots of the association go back to the establishment of the gymnastics club Turnverein Flingern on 5 May 1895 in the village of Flingern, today one of the eastern quarters of Düsseldorf. Two other sides figure in the club's early history: Düsseldorfer Fußballklub Spielverein, founded in 1908, and FK Alemania 1911, which was founded in 1911 and became Fortuna 1911 the following year. In mid-1913, these two clubs merged to form Düsseldorfer Fußball-Club Fortuna 1911 which played its debut season in the Westdeutschen Spielverband in 1913–14. TV Flingern joined Fortuna to create Düsseldorfer Turn- und Sportverein Fortuna on 15 November 1919.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: In the late 1920s, Fortuna won its first honours as a first tier side; it captured a district level Bezirksliga title in 1927, sent its first representative to the Germany national team in 1928 (Ernst Albrecht), and took a second Bezirksliga title in 1929. The team continued to perform well into the 1930s, winning its third and fourth district titles en route to a Western German football championship in 1931 and its greatest success, a German football championship in 1933 against Schalke 04, which was on the verge of becoming the era's dominant side in Germany. Fortuna was the first team to win the title without conceding a goal in the final rounds of the tournament. It beat Vorwärts-Rasensport Gleiwitz (9–0), Arminia Hannover (3–0), Eintracht Frankfurt (4–0) and finally Schalke 04 (3–0) en route to becoming the first national champion from the industrial Rhine-Ruhr area.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: In the following season, the club began playing in Gauliga Niederrhein, 1 of 16 top-flight divisions formed in the re-organization of German football under the Third Reich. Düsseldorf dominated the division through the 1930s as five-time champions between 1936 and 1940, and made losing appearances in the national championship final in 1936 (1–2 to 1. FC Nürnberg) and the final of the Tschammerpokal, the predecessor of today's DFB-Pokal, in 1937 (1–2 against Schalke 04). The club was relegated in 1942 but made a prompt return to the top flight the following season. In 1944–45, it began play as the combined wartime side Kriegsspielgemeinschaft TSV Fortuna/SC 99 Düsseldorf with partner Düsseldorfer Sport Club 1899, but took part in only two matches as Nazi Germany fell before the advance of Allied armies.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: The most notable players of that era were Paul Janes, Germany's most capped player from 1942 to 1970 (71 caps), German team captain (1939–1942) and member of the Breslau Eleven that beat Denmark 8–0 in Breslau in 1937 and went on to win 10 of 11 games played during that year; Stanislaus Kobierski, who earned 26 caps and scored Germany's first ever FIFA World Cup goal; Ernst Albrecht; and Jakob Bender.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: After World War II, Allied occupation authorities ordered the dissolution of all sports organizations in Germany. Fortuna was re-formed in 1945 and then played most of their football in the Oberliga West (I) in the years between 1947 and the creation of the Bundesliga, West Germany's professional football league, in 1963. It played as a lower-to-mid-table side but did earn three appearances in the DFB-Pokal final in – 1957, 1958 and 1962 – but was not able to take the prize, losing each of those matches to Bayern Munich, VfB Stuttgart and 1. FC Nürnberg. It was also during this era that Toni Turek, goalkeeper for West Germany's "Miracle of Bern" side at the 1954 World Cup; Erich Juskowiak (30 caps and World Cup player in 1958); and later national team coach Jupp Derwall all represented Fortuna.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Fortuna's performance was not good enough to earn them a place among the original 16 teams chosen for the newly founded Bundesliga in 1963, but the club did manage to play its way into the premier division three years later for a cameo appearance in 1966–67. Despite a sensational 2–1 away win at recently crowned European Cup Winners' Cup winners Borussia Dortmund in its Bundesliga debut, Fortuna was immediately relegated, though only to return in 1971 for a stay that lasted 16 seasons and included two third-place league finishes (in 1972–73 and 1973–74). On 9 December 1978, Fortuna recorded a 7–1 victory against Bayern Munich, to date the highest away defeat for Bayern in its entire Bundesliga history. In addition, Fortuna continued its prosperous play in the DFB-Pokal, making another three appearances. After losing in its fifth appearance in the final in 1978 against local rivals 1. FC Köln (0–2), the club finally broke through and came away as champions in 1979, prevailing 1–0 against Hertha BSC, then repeating as champions 1980 with 2–1 victory against 1. FC Köln. During this period, the club established a record for consecutive DFB-Pokal match victories, with 18-straight between 1978 and 1981.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Fortuna is among a group of four teams which have made frequent appearances in the DFB-Pokal final only to come away empty-handed. Like 1. FC Kaiserslautern, Fortuna has just two wins against five losses. 1. FC Köln has four wins and six losses in the Cup final, while Schalke 04 has been frustrated most often, with five wins and seven losses. Four of the Düsseldorfer's losses were by a single goal and two of those were in extra time.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: The club's best turn in European competition was in the 1979 European Cup Winners' Cup Final, where it finished as runners-up to Barcelona, losing 4–3 in extra time in an exciting finale at Basel. It was the first of four occasions that the Catalan club won the tournament.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Fortuna achieved its success mostly with hometown players like the famous Allofs brothers (Klaus Allofs and Thomas Allofs) or players like Gerd Zewe (440 games in the Bundesliga), Dieter Herzog, Reiner Geye, Wolfgang Seel and Rudi Bommer who joined the team as nearly unknown players and ended as internationals. Between 1960 and 1967, Peter Meyer scored 119 goals in 174 games.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Since its relegation in 1987, Fortuna has bounced back and forth between leagues, spending five more seasons in the Bundesliga in 1989–92 and 1995–97 and slipping as low as Oberliga Nordrhein (IV) in 2002–04. In 2001, the club escaped relegation to tier IV only because two other clubs were denied licenses to play in tier III for financial reasons. Fortuna had its own money problems at the time but have since managed to arrange its finances more or less back into order. Between 2001 and 2003, the club was sponsored by German punk rock band Die Toten Hosen.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: In 2008–09, Fortuna competed in the newly established 3. Liga, finishing second and gaining automatic promotion to the 2. Bundesliga, where it finished fourth in its comeback season, 2009–10. In this season, Fortuna was the only side unbeaten in home-matches in the three top German (nationwide) leagues.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: After a promising 2009–10 season, the 2010–11 season began poorly for Fortuna. After the first six games of the season, the club was in last place, having lost every match. During these first six matches, the club managed to score only two goals – one of which was an own-goal by the other side. Despite this discouraging start, Fortuna bounced back and finished the season in seventh place. 2011–12 began very differently: after the first half of the season, Fortuna was in first place in the table with a remarkable record of 12 wins, 5 draws and 0 losses. The "Herbstmeister" title gave the team and the fans hope that this could be the year Fortuna returned to the Bundesliga. The second half of the season was more challenging, as Fortuna was unable to maintain its pace: it suffered four losses and a number of draws, slipping to third place in the final standings. Nonetheless, this was sufficient for them to qualify for the two-game relegation playoff against the third-last place team in the Bundesliga – Hertha BSC. The first game of the relegation was played on 10 May 2012 in Berlin, with Fortuna winning 2–1. Fortuna drew the deciding game which was played on 15 May in Düsseldorf. Hertha fans, however, threw firecrackers at the field and the players, and one minute before the match ended, overexcited Fortuna fans stormed the field.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: The promotion to the Bundesliga represented an extraordinary personal achievement for team captain Andreas Lambertz, as he became the first player in German football history to be promoted three times with the same club, from the then fourth-tier Oberliga to the Bundesliga. For striker Sascha Rösler, it marked the fourth time in his career that he was promoted from the Second Division into the Bundesliga.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Coming with the recent promotion, the club achieved a new record in German football history, becoming the only German club that has been relegated from the Bundesliga down to a fourth-tier league (time period of downfall: 1997–2002) and promoted back to the Bundesliga afterwards (time period of uprising: 2004–2012).


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Fortuna started the 2012–13 Bundesliga season strongly: after five games, it was in fifth place in the table and concerns about relegation seemed to have been put to rest. However, Fortuna's 1–0 home win over SpVgg Greuther Fürth on 16 February would prove to be the club's final victory of the season. The season concluded with Fortuna playing in Hannover 96, a match Fortuna lost 0–3. This defeat, combined with an FC Augsburg win over Greuther Fürth and a bizarre and unlikely victory by 1899 Hoffenheim over second-place Borussia Dortmund, resulted in Fortuna dropping two places. "Fortuna" finished 17th and were again relegated back to the 2. Bundesliga.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Fortuna's relegation was the result not only of this unlikely series of occurrences on the final day of the season, but also a poor conclusion to the year. Of its final eight matches, it did not win a single one; just one win would have secured its position for the following season's Bundesliga. This poor performance contributed to the dismissal of head coach Norbert Meier.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Relegation to the 2. Bundesliga led to a period of generally disappointing performance. Fortuna spent the years between 2013 and 2017 in the middle of the table, often battling against relegation and rarely challenging for promotion back to the Bundesliga. During these years, the club went through a series of coaching changes, with Oliver Reck, Frank Kramer, and former player Mike Buskens among others leading the club at various points. Success however remained elusive.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: In March 2016, Friedhelm Funkel – a native of Neuss – took over as coach of Fortuna Düsseldorf. In his first game as coach, Funkel led the club to a 4–3 win against 1. FC Kaiserslautern, ending a month-long winless streak. Funkel's start as coach marked the beginning of a period of increased stability and success for Fortuna.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: At the start of the 2017–18 season, two of Fortuna's strongest performers from the previous year, goalkeeper Michael Rensing and forward Ihlas Bebou, were both lost from the club with Rensing suffering two broken ribs and Bebou transferring to Bundesliga side Hannover 96. A further setback was that Funkel's assistant Peter Hermann asked to be released from his contract with Fortuna in order to rejoin his mentor Jupp Heynckes upon his return to FC Bayern. With these three losses, it appeared that the 2017–18 season could be difficult for Fortuna. However, the club started extremely strongly: on the fourth day of the season, Fortuna had climbed to first place in the table, with a draw and three wins. For the remainder of the year, they would not drop below third place, benefiting from particularly strong play by Rensing's replacement in goal, Raphael Wolf, newly-acquired Belgian forward Benito Raman, striker Rouwen Hennings, and midfielder Florian Neuhaus. A late-season slump saw Fortuna lose three games in succession in early April, but Fortuna won their next two matches, securing promotion to the Bundesliga. In the final game of the season, with promotion already secured, Fortuna defeated 1. FC Nürnberg 3:2 on a last-minute goal thereby securing first place and the 2. Division Championship. For coach Friedhelm Funkel, this marks the sixth time he had led a club to promotion—a German record.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Fortuna Düsseldorf's return to first-division football in 2018–19 was greeted with great enthusiasm by their supporters. The first half of the season was marked by strong but inconsistent play. Fortuna played remarkably well against top Bundesliga sides, taking a point from Leipzig and defeating Hoffenheim and first-place Borussia Dortmund. Most encouraging was an away draw against the defending champions Bayern Munich, when Fortuna came back after trailing 2–0 and 3–1, to secure a 3–3 draw in the 93rd minute, with Dodi Lukebakio scored all three of Fortuna's goals. However, Fortuna failed to play with the same consistency and decisiveness against clubs lower in the table, against whom they will battle to avoid relegation, losing to Augsburg, Nürnberg and Mainz, and only managing a draw against Stuttgart.<ref name="Termine18/19"></ref> Fortuna Düsseldorf entered the mid-winter break in 14th place in the table, concluding the first half of the season with three successive wins against Freiburg, Dortmund and Hannover. Fortuna Düsseldorf enjoyed a more consistent second half of the season, with away wins over Augsburg, Hertha Berlin and one of their best performances in recent times, a storming display in a 0–4 win at Schalke 04. A 4–1 win at home to Werder Bremen and a 3–1 victory over Borussia Mönchengladbach were highlights at home, whilst other home wins over VfB Stuttgart, Nürnberg and a final day defeat of Hannover 96 ensured a 10th place finish in the Bundesliga. This achieved Fortuna Düsseldorf's highest league finish since the 1989–90 Bundesliga season, where they finished 9th.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: For the 2017–18 season, online sports betting website Tipbet renewed its agreement as Premium Partners of Fortuna. The deal involves marketing campaigns to raise brand awareness, while regular promotions are organised.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Twenty-five "Fortuna" players have made appearances with the national side earning 240 caps between them. With the exception of Erich Juskowiak, all players debuted as Fortuna players:


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Fortuna's fiercest rivalry is with 1. FC Köln, which stems from the geographic proximity of Düsseldorf and Cologne as well as the historic rivalry between the two cities. However, in recent seasons the clubs have rarely played in the same division making head-to-head encounters increasingly rare. The 2013–14 season marked the last time the two clubs met in competitive matches when both played in the Second Division. For the 2018–19 season, Fortuna was promoted to the 1. Bundesliga precisely as 1. FC Köln was demoted from the Bundesliga to the Second Division, again avoiding the "Rheinland Derby".


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Fortuna's other historic rivals are Rot-Weiss Essen, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, and Wuppertaler SV. During the 1970s, all four clubs played in the Bundesliga. Both Essen and Wuppertal have since dropped to lower leagues. Bayer Leverkusen, on the other hand, has emerged as a powerful force in the Bundesliga. Leverkusen's financial support from the Bayer chemical conglomerate has led to many Düsseldorf fans criticizing the club as "plastic" and inauthentic, without any real tradition. During the seasons when they both played in the Second Division, Fortuna's matches against MSV Duisburg and Borussia Mönchengladbach were hotly contested and were often referred to as "Lower Rhein Derbys". Fortuna Düsseldorf and Rot-Weiss Essen have played one another 59 times and many fans still regard this as a heated rivalry, but direct matches have been rare in recent years. Fortuna also has inter-city rivalries with Düsseldorf SC99 and TuRU Düsseldorf, yet these have also lost their intensity. During the post-war years, no other club within the Düsseldorf city limits has ever played in a higher division than Fortuna.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Because of the dominance of FC Bayern München in recent decades, Fortuna also has a competitive rivalry with the Bavarians. Although Düsseldorf has not mounted a serious challenge for the Bundesliga championship since the early 1970s, matches between Fortuna and FC Bayern have been fiercely contested. In a 1975 match, Bayern led at halftime 4:2, but Fortuna came back to win 6:5. On 9 December 1978, Fortuna defeated FC Bayern 7:1, an outcome which to this day remains FC Bayern's worst-ever away loss. During the 1985–86 season, Fortuna was the only team to win both of its games against the eventual champions from Munich, winning 4:0 and 3:2.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: The band Die Toten Hosen, many of whose members are enthusiastic fans of Fortuna Düsseldorf, have celebrated the team's success against FC Bayern in their song "Bayern" which appears on their album "Immortal".


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: The last Bundesliga game was a draw after Munich had led 3–1. Fortuna scored two goals, 3: 3 in 10 minutes.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: The club has a particular strong affiliation with English League One side Ipswich Town, with their supporters making annual visits to see them at their home ground, Portman Road, since 2003. Ipswich fans have also done the same, with some coming to cheer Dusseldorf on at the Merkur Spiel-Arena.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Fortuna Düsseldorf enjoys a strong a spirited fan base, and supporters in the "ultra" curve of the stadium are well known for their elaborate choreographed displays and enthusiastic support for their club, which occasionally includes the lighting of "Bengalos" or fireworks in the stands.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Members of the band Die Toten Hosen, including lead singer Campino, are often present at Fortuna matches at home and on the road, and when Fortuna celebrated its recent 2. Division championship in front of thousands of fans at Düsseldorf's city hall on 14 May 2018, the band appeared with them. The band is also highly regarded by the club for serving as sponsors during the 2001–02 and 2002–03 seasons, when the club had been relegated to the Regional League and faced financial difficulty.


title: Fortuna Düsseldorf

text: Since June 1, 2015, Fortuna Düsseldorf has its futsal department. Since then, the Futsal department has developed into one of the strongest in Germany. They took part in the Deutsche Futsal Meisterschaft 2021 of the DFB as the winner of the Futsalliga West in the 2020–21 season and is one of the founding members of the Futsal Bundesliga. The team is wearing on the 3rd September 2021 in their home venue, the Castello in Düsseldorf, the opening match of the Bundesliga against the HSV Panthers.


title: Nebula Award for Best Novel

text: The Nebula Award for Best Novel is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for science fiction or fantasy novels. A work of fiction is considered a novel by the organization if it is 40,000 words or longer; awards are also given out for pieces of shorter lengths, in the categories of short story, novelette, and novella. To be eligible for Nebula Award consideration, a novel must have been published in English in the United States. Works published in English elsewhere in the world are also eligible, provided they are released on either a website or in an electronic edition. The Award has been given annually since 1966. Novels which were expanded forms of previously published stories are eligible, and novellas published individually can be considered as novels if the author requests it. The award has been described as one of "the most important of the American science fiction awards" and "the science-fiction and fantasy equivalent" of the Emmy Awards.


title: Nebula Award for Best Novel

text: Nebula Award nominees and winners are chosen by members of SFWA, though the authors of the nominees do not need to be members. Works are nominated each year by members in a period around December 15 through January 31, and the six works that receive the most nominations then form the final ballot, with additional nominees possible in the case of ties. Soon after, members are given a month to vote on the ballot, and the final results are presented at the Nebula Awards ceremony in May. Authors are not permitted to nominate their own works, and ties in the final vote are broken, if possible, by the number of nominations the works received.


title: Nebula Award for Best Novel

text: Beginning with the 2009 awards, the rules were changed to the current format, and nominated works must have been published during that calendar year. Prior to then, the eligibility period for nominations was defined as being one year after the publication date of the work, which allowed the possibility for works to be "nominated" in the calendar year after their publication, and then be "awarded" in the calendar year after that. Under the previous process, works were added to a preliminary list for the year if they had ten or more nominations, which were then voted on to create a final ballot, to which the SFWA organizing panel was also allowed to add an additional work if they felt it was overlooked.


title: Nebula Award for Best Novel

text: During the 57 nomination years, 196 authors have had works nominated, and 44 of these have won (including co-authors and ties). Ursula K. Le Guin has received the most Nebula Awards for Best Novel, with four wins out of six nominations. Joe Haldeman has received the next most: three awards out of four nominations, while nine other authors have each won twice. Jack McDevitt has the most nominations at twelve (with one win), while Poul Anderson and Philip K. Dick tie for having the most nominations without winning an award, at five apiece.


title: Nebula Award for Best Novel

text: In the following table, the years correspond to the date of the ceremony, rather than when the novel was first published. Each year links to the corresponding "year in literature". Entries with a blue background and an asterisk (*) next to the writer's name have won the award; those with a white background are the other nominees on the shortlist.


title: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six

text: Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is a group of American superhero films produced by Marvel Studios based on characters that appear in publications by Marvel Comics. Phase Six features all of the Marvel Studios productions set to be released starting from late 2024 to mid-2026, with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributing the films. The first film in the phase will be "Deadpool 3", scheduled for release in November 2024. Kevin Feige produces every film in this phase, alongside producer Ryan Reynolds for "Deadpool 3".


title: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six

text: The films of the phase include "Deadpool 3" starring Ryan Reynolds, "Fantastic Four", and the ensembles "" and "". Two unannounced films are set for release in 2025. Phase Six, along with and , constitutes The Multiverse Saga.


title: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six

text: By April 2014, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said that additional storylines for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) were planned through 2028. At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019, Feige announced Marvel Studios was developing a Fantastic Four film for the MCU. Ryan Reynolds confirmed in December 2019 that a third Deadpool film after 20th Century Fox's "Deadpool" (2016) and "Deadpool 2" (2018) was in development at Marvel Studios, with his production company Maximum Effort co-producing the film. "Fantastic Four" was formally confirmed in December 2020; the film was believed to be a part of at that time. In April 2022, Feige said he and Marvel Studios were on a creative retreat to plan and discuss the MCU films for the following 10 years, and in June 2022, said information on the next saga of the MCU would be provided in the following months, with Marvel Studios being a "little more direct" on their future plans to provide audiences with "the bigger picture [so they] can see a tiny, tiny bit more of the roadmap" following the clues included during Phase Four.


title: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six

text: At Marvel Studios' San Diego Comic-Con panel in July 2022, Feige announced that "Fantastic Four" would be the first film of Phase Six. He also announced that the phase would conclude with two ensemble films, "" and "", both to be released in 2025, and that Phase Six, along with Phase Four and , would be part of The Multiverse Saga. In September, Reynolds announced that "Deadpool 3" would be released on September 6, 2024, as the first film in Phase Six. In October, Marvel Studios delayed the Phase Five film "Blade" to the September 2024 slot, and pushed back the releases of "Deadpool 3", "Fantastic Four", and "Avengers: Secret Wars" as a result.


title: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six

text: Marvel Studios has three unannounced films set for release on July 25 and November 7, 2025, and February 13, 2026.


title: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six

text: After the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney was announced in December 2017, Disney CEO Bob Iger said Ryan Reynolds would reprise his role as Wade Wilson / Deadpool from 20th Century Fox's R-rated "X-Men" films "Deadpool" (2016) and "Deadpool 2" (2018) in the PG-13 rated Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). By December 2019, Reynolds confirmed a third "Deadpool" film was in development at Marvel Studios, with Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin writing the film by November 2020, when Reynolds' involvement and the film's R-rating were confirmed. In January 2021, Kevin Feige confirmed the film's MCU setting. In March 2022, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were hired to return from the first two films to rewrite the screenplay, while Shawn Levy was revealed to be directing. Reynolds' production company Maximum Effort co-produces the film. Filming is expected to begin in May 2023, in Vancouver, Canada. "Deadpool 3" is scheduled to be released on November 8, 2024.


title: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six

text: Hugh Jackman will appear as James "Logan" Howlett / Wolverine, reprising the role from the "X-Men" film series.


title: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six

text: At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019, Feige announced Marvel Studios was developing a Fantastic Four film for the MCU, with Jon Watts announced as the director in December 2020. Watts stepped down in April 2022 to take a break from superhero projects. By late August, Matt Shakman, who directed the Marvel Studios Disney+ series "WandaVision" (2021), was in early talks to direct the film, with Feige confirming him as the director the following month at the D23 Expo. Later in September, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer were revealed to be writing the screenplay. Filming is expected to begin in 2023. "Fantastic Four" is scheduled to be released on February 14, 2025.


title: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six

text: At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2022, Marvel Studios announced "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty", followed shortly after with the confirmation of Destin Daniel Cretton as director. In September, "" (2023) writer Jeff Loveness was revealed to be writing the screenplay. Jonathan Majors reprises his role as Kang the Conqueror. "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" is scheduled to be released on May 2, 2025.


title: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six

text: At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2022, Marvel Studios announced "Avengers: Secret Wars". In October, Michael Waldron was revealed to be writing the screenplay, after previously serving as head writer for the first season of "Loki" (2021) and the writer of "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" (2022). "Avengers: Secret Wars" is scheduled to be released on May 1, 2026.


title: Tao Okamoto

text: , known professionally as Tao, is a Japanese actress and model who is, alongside Ai Tominaga and Hiroko Matsumoto, one of the biggest models from Japan. In 2009, she was one of the faces of Ralph Lauren. She made her film debut as the female lead Mariko Yashida in the 2013 film "The Wolverine"; and played Mercy Graves in the 2016 film "". She has had recurring roles in the television series "Hannibal", "The Man in the High Castle" and "Westworld".


title: Tao Okamoto

text: Tao was born in Chiba, Japan. She started modeling as a teenager in Japan, when she was 14 years old.


title: Tao Okamoto

text: In 2006, she made a decision to move to Paris and develop her career on an international level. Soon after that, Tao made her debut on the European runways, one of the few prominent East Asian models of that era. She has modelled for brands including Alexander Wang, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, Miu Miu, Ralph Lauren, and Yves Saint Laurent.


title: Tao Okamoto

text: Tao has worked in advertising and editorial projects. She has fronted campaigns such as Dolce & Gabbana with Mario Testino, Emporio Armani by Alasdair McLellan, Kenzo with Mario Sorrenti, and Tommy Hilfiger with Craig McDean. Editorially, she has shot for "i-D Magazine", "V Magazine", "W Magazine", and various international editions of "Harper's Bazaar" and "Vogue".


title: Tao Okamoto

text: The November 2009 issue of "Vogue Nippon" (Japanese "Vogue") is dedicated to Tao. She was the Japan Fashion Editor's Club "Model of the Year" and was one of "Vogue Nippon"'s "Women of the Year" in 2010.


title: Tao Okamoto

text: In 2013, Tao made her film debut as Mariko Yashida, opposite Hugh Jackman, in "The Wolverine". In October 2014, it was announced that she had joined the cast of "Hannibal" as Chiyoh, Hannibal Lecter's family servant.


title: Tao Okamoto

text: In January 2015, it was announced that Tao would star in the film "Crossroads" with Alodia Gosiengfiao. In 2015, Tao appeared in "The Man in the High Castle" as Betty Kasoura, wife of lawyer Paul Kasoura and a customer at Robert Childan's American Artistic Handcrafts. In 2016, Tao played Mercy Graves in the film "".


title: Tao Okamoto

text: Okamoto has modeled for Alexander McQueen, Alexander Wang, Burberry Prorsum, Bottega Veneta, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Donna Karan, Emanuel Ungaro, Fendi, Giorgio Armani, Givenchy, Hermès, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Kenzo, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Maison Martin Margiela, Max Mara, Miu Miu, Moschino, Paul Smith, Phillip Lim, Ralph Lauren, Salvatore Ferragamo, Tommy Hilfiger, Vivienne Westwood, Yves Saint Laurent and more.


title: Zugzwang

text: Zugzwang (German for "compulsion to move", ) is a situation found in chess and other turn-based games wherein one player is put at a disadvantage because of their obligation to make a move; a player is said to be "in zugzwang" when any legal move will worsen their position.


title: Zugzwang

text: Although the term is used less precisely in games such as chess, it is used specifically in combinatorial game theory to denote a move that directly changes the outcome of the game from a win to a loss. Putting the opponent in zugzwang is a common way to help the superior side win a game, and in some cases it is necessary in order to make the win possible.


title: Zugzwang

text: The term "zugzwang" was used in German chess literature in 1858 or earlier, and the first known use of the term in English was by World Champion Emanuel Lasker in 1905. The concept of zugzwang was known to chess players many centuries before the term was coined, appearing in an endgame study published in 1604 by Alessandro Salvio, one of the first writers on the game, and in shatranj studies dating back to the early 9th century, over 1000 years before the first known use of the term. International chess notation uses the symbol "⊙" to indicate a zugzwang position.


title: Zugzwang

text: Positions with zugzwang occur fairly often in chess endgames, especially in king and pawn endgames. According to John Nunn, positions of reciprocal zugzwang are surprisingly important in the analysis of endgames.


title: Zugzwang

text: The word comes from German 'move' + 'compulsion', so that means 'being forced to make a move'. Originally the term was used interchangeably with the term 'obligation to make a move' as a general game rule. Games like chess and checkers have "zugzwang" (or "zugpflicht"): a player must always make a move on their turn even if this is to their disadvantage. Over time, the term became especially associated with chess.


title: Zugzwang

text: According to chess historian Edward Winter, the term had been in use in German chess circles in the 19th century.


title: Zugzwang

text: The earliest known use of the term zugzwang in English was on page 166 of the February 1905 issue of "Lasker's Chess Magazine". The term did not become common in English-language chess sources until the 1930s, after the publication of the English translation of Nimzowitsch's "My System" in 1929.


title: Zugzwang

text: The concept of zugzwang, if not the term, must have been known to players for many centuries. Zugzwang is required to win the elementary (and common) king and rook versus king endgame, and the king and rook (or differently-named pieces with the same powers) have been chess pieces since the earliest versions of the game.


title: Zugzwang

text: Other than basic checkmates, the earliest published use of zugzwang may be in this study by Zairab Katai, which was published sometime between 813 and 833, discussing shatranj. After