title: Gwadar Port

text: In the event that China were to face hostile actions from a state or non-state actor, energy imports through the Straits of Malacca could be halted, which in turn would paralyse the Chinese economy in a scenario that is frequently referred to as the "Malacca Dilemma". In addition to vulnerabilities it faces in the Straits of Malacca region, China is heavily dependent upon sea-routes that pass through the South China Sea, near the disputed Spratly Islands and Paracel Islands, which are currently a source of tension between China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and the United States. The CPEC project will allow Chinese energy imports to circumvent these contentious areas. The Sino-Myanmar pipelines have also been constructed by China to address this so-called "Malacca Dilemma".


title: Gwadar Port

text: Planned investments in Gwadar Port as part of CPEC will improve connectivity to the restive Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, thereby increasing the region's potential to attract public and private investment. The CPEC is considered central to China–Pakistan relations; its central importance is reflected by China's inclusion of the project as part of its 13th five-year development plan. The Gwadar Port project will also complement China's Western Development plan, which includes not only Xinjiang, but also the neighbouring regions of Tibet and Qinghai.


title: Gwadar Port

text: In addition to its significance to reduce Chinese dependence on the Sea of Malacca and South China Sea routes, the port of Gwadar will provide China an alternative and shorter route for energy imports from the Middle East, thereby reducing shipping costs and transit times. The currently available sea-route to China is roughly , while the distance from Gwadar Port to Xinjiang is approximately , and another from Xinjiang to China's eastern coast. As a result of the CPEC, Chinese imports and exports to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe would require much shorter shipment times and distances.


title: Gwadar Port

text: Upon completion of CPEC-related infrastructure projects, transit times between Kashgar, China and Pakistan's Gwadar Port will be greatly reduced. This will in turn will also reduce transit times to the Kyrgyzstan and hydrocarbon-rich Kazakhstan through already existing overland routes. The Chinese government has already upgraded the road linking Kashgar to Osh, Kyrgyzstan via the Kyrgyz town of Erkeshtam while a railway between Ürümqi, China and Almaty, Kazakhstan has also been completed as part of China's One Belt One Road initiative. Numerous land crossings already exist between Kazakhstan and China as well. Additionally, the Chinese government has announced plans to lay railway track from Tashkent, Uzbekistan towards Kyrgyzstan with onwards connections to China and Pakistan's coast.


title: Gwadar Port

text: The heads of various Central Asian republics have expressed their desire to connect their infrastructure networks to the CPEC project and Gwadar Port via China. During the August 2015 visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to Kazakhstan, the Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov, conveyed Kazakhstan's desire to link its road network to the CPEC project, which will also provide Kazakhstan with access to the port.


title: Gwadar Port

text: During the November 2015 visit of Tajikistan's President Emomali Rahmon to Pakistan, the Tajik premier also expressed his government's desire to join the Quadrilateral Agreement on Traffic in Transit to use CPEC and Gwadar Port as a conduit for imports and exports to Tajikistan by circumventing Afghanistan. The request received political backing by the Pakistani Prime Minister. The Pamir Highway in Central Asia already provides Tajikistan access to Kashgar via the Kulma Pass. These crossings complement the CPEC project to provide Central Asian states access to Pakistan's seaports in Gwadar and Karachi by completely bypassing Afghanistan – a country which has been ravaged by civil war and political instability since the late 1970s.


title: Gwadar Port

text: In May 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Iranian counterpart President Hassan Rouhani signed a series of twelve agreements in Tehran in a boon to India–Iran relations. By these agreements, India Ports Global Pvt. Limited will refurbish a 640-meter long container handling facility, and reconstruct a 600-meter long berth at the Port of Chabahar, as well as modernise ancillary infrastructure at the berths. Improvements at the port are intended to allow Indian goods to be exported to Iran, with the possibility of onward connections to Afghanistan and Central Asia. A section of the Indian media described it as "a counter to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor," although the total monetary value of projects has been noted to be significantly less than that of US$46 billion CPEC project, evaluated at worth about $500 million.


title: Gwadar Port

text: As part of the twelve memoranda of understanding signed by Indian and Iranian delegations as per text released by India's Ministry of External Affairs, India Ports Global signed a contract with Iran's Arya Banader to refurbish and reconstruct two existing berths at the port, at a cost of $85 million over the course of 18 months. The berth project represents the only direct investment in port infrastructure mentioned in the May 2016 agreements. Chabahar was developed in 1972 as the oceanic port in Iran, and already features ten berths as of 2016, with a capacity to dock vessels of 80,000 deadweight tonnage.


title: Gwadar Port

text: As part of the agreements, India will also offer a $150 million line of credit extended by the Exim Bank of India for future port development, India further agreed to extend a $400 million line of credit to be used for the import of steel for the construction of a rail link between Chabahar and Zahedan, while India's IRCON and Iran's CDTIC signed a memorandum of understanding for the possible construction and financing of the Chabahar to Zahedan rail line at a cost of $1.6 billion.


title: Gwadar Port

text: As part of CPEC, China has instead has committed $1.153 billion to finance construction projects and development of the port and adjacent sites. Chinese commitments in Gwadar as part of the CPEC project include: the construction of the $140 million East Bay Expressway project to connect the port with the Makran Coastal Highway, installation of breakwaters at Gwadar port which will cost $130 million, a $360 million coal power plant adjacent to Gwadar Port, a $27 million project to dredge berths in Gwadar harbour, and a $100 million 300-bed hospital in Gwadar. A $114 million desalination plant will also be developed to provide potable water, while $35 million worth of infrastructure projects around the special economic zone will also be built. China will also grant Pakistan $230 million to construct a new international airport in Gwadar which is to be operational by December 2017. A floating liquefied natural gas facility will also be built at Gwadar Port as part of the $2.5 billion Gwadar-Nawabshah segment of the Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline.


title: Gwadar Port

text: In addition to investments directly under the aegis of CPEC, the China Overseas Port Holdings Company also initiated $2 billion worth of additional infrastructure projects at the adjacent Gwadar Special Economic Zone on 20 June 2016. COPHC will also expand Gwadar Port with construction of multipurpose berths on of seafront to the east of the existing multipurpose berths. COPHC will additionally build cargo terminals in the of land to the north and northwest of the site along the shoreline of the Demi Zirr bay.


title: Gwadar Port

text: After signing the Chabahar agreement, Iran's ambassador to Pakistan, Mehdi Honerdoost, stated that the agreement was "not finished," and that Iran would welcome the inclusion of both Pakistan and China in the project. While clarifying that Chabahar Port would not be a rival or enemy to Pakistan's Gwadar Port, he further stated that Pakistan and China had both been invited to contribute to the project before India, but neither China nor Pakistan had expressed interest in joining.


title: Gwadar Port

text: Pakistani analysts have endorsed the view that Chabahar is not a competitor, stating that Gwadar has an advantage by being a deep sea port and the expansion of Chabahar would in fact expand trade through Gwadar. Larger vessels that cannot dock at Chabahar could dock at Gwadar and the cargo transshipped to Chabahar. However, Pakistan's military commentators have characterised the alliance between India, Iran, and the then American-backed Afghan government as a "security threat to Pakistan", and it had "ominous and far-reaching implications" to the region. Pakistan's foreign policy advisor Sartaj Aziz has further signalled that Pakistan may link the Gwadar port to Chabahar via rail.


title: Gwadar Port

text: Some have expressed concerns on the future of the environment of the region in light of the Gwadar port's expansion. A report of the LEAD Fellows' Study Group on the Oil Spill (SGOS) alleges that a port expansion would lead to future damage on the maritime environment such as oil spills and other human industrial waste pouring into the sea, also alleging that Pakistan's laws on maritime pollution have weak penalties and lack of institutional responsibility.


title: Gwadar Port

text: This sentiment was shared by Syed Fazl-E-Haider. In his publication in "Pakistan and the Gulf Economist", Haider put forth the argument that the sea water on the Baloch coast was pollution free due to the lack of human presence and activity. But ever since the commence of commercial operations in the port, all this will result in environmental consequences.


title: Gwadar Port

text: In the jointly written book with Barbara E. Curry, "Humpback Dolphins (Sousa spp.): Current Status and Conservation, Part 1 of Advances in Marine Biology", PhD marine biologist, Thomas A. Jefferson outlines some of the environmental consequences suffered by the Balochistan coast. He discusses the problem of sewage waste and solid waste affecting the coast including that of Gwadar. He argues that a thorough natural habitat assessment and regulation of fisheries is a solution to this growing environmental problem.


title: Gwadar Port

text: Gwadar Port was featured on the back of the five Pakistani Rupee currency note, which is no longer in circulation.


title: Holly Black

text: Holly Black ("née" Riggenbach; born November 10, 1971) is an American writer and editor best known for her children's and young adult fiction. Her most recent work is the "New York Times" bestselling young adult "Folk of the Air" series. She is also well known for "The Spiderwick Chronicles", a series of children's fantasy books she created with writer and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, and her debut trilogy of young adult novels officially called the "Modern Faerie Tales". Black has won an Eisner Award, a Lodestar Award, a Award, a Nebula Award, and a Newbery honor.


title: Holly Black

text: Black was born in West Long Branch, New Jersey in 1971, and during her early years her family lived in a "decrepit Victorian house."


title: Holly Black

text: Black graduated with a B.A. in English from The College of New Jersey in 1994. She worked as a production editor on medical journals including "The Journal of Pain" while studying at Rutgers University. She considered becoming a librarian as a backup career, but writing drew her away. She edited and contributed to the role-playing culture magazine "d8" in 1996.


title: Holly Black

text: In 1999 she married her high school sweetheart, Theo Black, an illustrator and web designer. In 2008 she was described as residing in Amherst, Massachusetts.


title: Holly Black

text: Black's first novel, "", was published by Simon & Schuster in 2002. There have been two sequels set in the same universe featuring different casts. The first, "" (2005), won the inaugural Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. By vote of "Locus" readers for the Locus Awards, "Valiant" and "Ironside" (2007) ranked fourth and sixth among the year's young-adult books.


title: Holly Black

text: In 2003, Black published the first two books of "The Spiderwick Chronicles", a collaboration with artist Tony DiTerlizzi. The fifth and last book in the series reached the top of the "New York Times" Bestseller list in 2004. A film adaptation of the series was released in 2008, of which Black was co-executive producer.


title: Holly Black

text: "White Cat", the first in her Curse Workers Series, was published in 2010. "White Cat" was followed by "Red Glove" (2011) and the trilogy concluded with "Black Heart" in 2012. In 2011, Black stated that the Curse Workers books had been optioned by Vertigo Pictures and producer Mark Morgan.


title: Holly Black

text: In 2012, Scholastic acquired a five-book series written by Black and Cassandra Clare to be called "Magisterium". Its first volume, "The Iron Trial", was published on September 9, 2014. The final book in the series, "The Golden Tower", was published in 2018.


title: Holly Black

text: The Cruel Prince published in 2017. The first book of The Folk of the Air was critically acclaimed and nominated for the Locus Award and the Lodestar Award. The sequel, The Wicked King (2018) debuted at the #1 position of the New York Times Bestseller List. The Wicked King was also nominated for the Lodestar Award. The Queen of Nothing released in November 2019. With that release the series debuted at #3 on the New York Times Bestseller List.


title: Holly Black

text: A standalone novel, "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown", was released by Little, Brown in September 2013. Black published a short story of the same name in the vampire anthology "The Eternal Kiss: 13 Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire". "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" was a Nebula Finalist in 2013.


title: Holly Black

text: "Doll Bones" was published in May 2013, and was awarded a Newbery Honor and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.


title: Holly Black

text: Black has also written dozens of short works and co-edited at least three anthologies of speculative fiction.


title: Justin Walker (actor)

text: Justin Walker is an American actor best known for his portrayal of Christian Stovitz in the 1995 comedy film "Clueless".


title: Justin Walker (actor)

text: Walker owned Teddy Teadle's Grill in Rancho Mirage, California. He was Partner & CMO in Draftster.com, a now-defunct fantasy sport wagering website.


title: Hereditary monarchy

text: A hereditary monarchy is a form of government and succession of power in which the throne passes from one member of a ruling family to another member of the same family. A series of rulers from the same family would constitute a dynasty.


title: Hereditary monarchy

text: It is historically the most common type of monarchy and remains the dominant form in extant monarchies. It has the advantages of continuity of the concentration of power and wealth and predictability of who one can expect to control the means of governance and patronage. Provided that a monarch is competent, not oppressive, and maintains an appropriate dignity, it might also offer the stabilizing factors of popular affection for and loyalty to a ruling family. The adjudication of what constitutes oppressive, dignified and popular tends to remain in the purview of the monarch. A major disadvantage of hereditary monarchy arises when the heir apparent may be physically or temperamentally unfit to rule. Other disadvantages include the inability of a people to choose their head of state, the ossified distribution of wealth and power across a broad spectrum of society, and the continuation of outmoded religious and social-economic structures mainly for the benefit of monarchs, their families, and supporters.


title: Hereditary monarchy

text: In most extant hereditary monarchies, the typical order of succession uses some form of primogeniture, but there exist other methods such as seniority and tanistry (in which an heir-apparent is nominated from among qualified candidates).


title: Hereditary monarchy

text: Research shows that hereditary regimes, in particular primogeniture, are more stable than forms of authoritarian rule with alternative succession arrangements.


title: Hereditary monarchy

text: Theoretically, when the monarch of a hereditary monarchy dies or abdicates, the crown typically passes to the next generation of the family. If no qualified child exists, the crown may pass to a brother, sister, nephew, niece, cousin, or other relative, in accordance with a predefined order of succession, often enshrined in legislation. Such a process establishes who will be the next monarch beforehand and avoids disputes among members of the royal family. Usurpers may resort to inventing semi-mythical genealogies to bolster their respectability.


title: Hereditary monarchy

text: Historically, there have been differences in systems of succession, mainly revolving around the question of whether succession is limited to males, or whether females are also eligible (historically, the crown often devolved on the eldest male child, as ability to lead an army in battle was a requisite of kingship). Agnatic succession refers to systems where females are neither allowed to succeed nor to transmit succession rights to their male descendants (see Salic Law). An "agnate" is a kinsman with whom one has a common ancestor by descent in an unbroken male line. Cognatic succession once referred to any succession which allowed both males and females to be heirs, although in modern usage it specifically refers to succession by seniority regardless of sex (absolute primogeniture as in Sweden since 1980). Another factor which may be taken into account is the religious affiliation of the candidate or the candidate's spouse, specifically where the monarch also has a religious title or role; for example, the British monarch has the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England and may not profess Roman Catholicism.


title: Hereditary monarchy

text: Elective monarchy can function as "de facto" hereditary monarchy. A specific type of elective monarchy known as tanistry limits eligibility to members of the ruling house. But hereditary succession can also occur in practice despite any such legal limitations. For example, if the majority of electors belong to the same house, then they may elect only family members. Or a reigning monarch might have sole power to elect a relative. Many late-medieval countries of Europe were officially elective monarchies, but in fact pseudo-elective; most transitioned into officially hereditary systems in the early modern age. Exceptions include the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.


title: Deneb

text: Deneb () is a first-magnitude star in the constellation of Cygnus, the swan. Deneb is one of the vertices of the asterism known as the Summer Triangle and the "head" of the Northern Cross. It is the brightest star in Cygnus and the 19th brightest star in the night sky, with an average apparent magnitude of +1.25. A blue-white supergiant, Deneb rivals Rigel as the most luminous first-magnitude star. However, its distance, and hence luminosity, is poorly known; its luminosity is somewhere between 55,000 and 196,000 times that of the Sun. Its Bayer designation is α Cygni, which is Latinised to Alpha Cygni, abbreviated to Alpha Cyg or α Cyg.


title: Deneb

text: "α Cygni" (Latinised to "Alpha Cygni") is the star's designation given by Johann Bayer in 1603. The traditional name "Deneb" is derived from the Arabic word for "tail", from the phrase ذنب الدجاجة "Dhanab al-Dajājah", or "tail of the hen". The IAU Working Group on Star Names has recognised the name "Deneb" for this star, and it is entered in their Catalog of Star Names.


title: Deneb

text: "Denebadigege" was used in the "Alfonsine Tables", other variants include "Deneb Adige", "Denebedigege" and "Arided". This latter name was derived from "Al Ridhādh", a name for the constellation. Johann Bayer called it "Arrioph", derived from "Aridf" and "Al Ridf", 'the hindmost' or "Gallina". German poet and author Philippus Caesius termed it "Os rosae", or "Rosemund" in German, or "Uropygium" – the parson's nose. The names "Arided" and "Aridif" have fallen out of use.


title: Deneb

text: An older traditional name is Arided , from the Arabic "ar-ridf" 'the one sitting behind the rider' (or just 'the follower'), perhaps referring to the other major stars of Cygnus, which were called "al-fawāris" 'the riders'.


title: Deneb

text: The 19th brightest star in the night sky, Deneb culminates each year on October 23 at 6 PM and September 7 at 9 PM, corresponding to summer evenings in the northern hemisphere. It never dips below the horizon at or above 45° north latitude, just grazing the northern horizon at its lowest point at such locations as Minneapolis, Montréal and Turin. In the southern hemisphere, Deneb is not visible south of 45° parallel south, so it just barely rises above the horizon in South Africa, southern Australia, and northern New Zealand during the southern winter.


title: Deneb

text: Deneb is located at the tip of the Northern Cross asterism made up of the brightest stars in Cygnus, the others being Albireo (Beta Cygni), Gamma Cygni, Delta Cygni, and Epsilon Cygni. It also lies at one vertex of the prominent and widely spaced asterism called the Summer Triangle, shared with the first-magnitude stars Vega in the constellation Lyra and Altair in Aquila. This outline of stars is the approximate shape of a right triangle, with Deneb located at one of the acute angles.


title: Deneb

text: The spectra of Alpha Cygni has been observed by astronomers since at least 1888, and by 1910 the variable radial velocity had become apparent. This led to the early suggestion by E. B. Frost that this is a binary star system. In 1935, the work of G. F. Paddock and others had established that this star was variable in luminosity with a dominant period of 11.7 days and possibly with other, lower amplitude periods. By 1954, closer examination of the star's calcium H and K lines showed a stationary core, which indicated the variable velocity was instead being caused by motion of the star's atmosphere. This variation ranged from +6 to −9 km/s around the star's mean radial velocity. Other, similar supergiants were found to have variable velocities, with this star being a typical member.


title: Deneb

text: Due to the Earth's axial precession, Deneb will be an approximate pole star (7° off of the north celestial pole) at around 9800 AD. The north pole of Mars points to the midpoint of the line connecting Deneb and the star Alderamin.


title: Deneb

text: Deneb's adopted distance from the Earth is around . This is derived by a variety of different methods, including spectral luminosity classes, atmospheric modelling, stellar evolution models, assumed membership of the Cygnus OB7 association, and direct measurement of angular diameter. These methods give different distances, and all have significant margins of error. The original derivation of a parallax using measurements from the astrometric satellite Hipparcos gave an uncertain result of 1.01 ± 0.57 mas that was consistent with this distance. However, a more recent reanalysis gives the much larger parallax whose distance is barely half the current accepted value. One 2008 calculation using the Hipparcos data puts the most likely distance at , with an uncertainty of around 15%. The controversy over whether the direct Hipparcos measurements can be ignored in favour of a wide range of indirect stellar models and interstellar distance scales is similar to the better known situation with the Pleiades.


title: Deneb

text: Deneb's absolute magnitude is estimated as −8.4, placing it among the visually brightest stars known, with an estimated luminosity nearly . This is towards the upper end of values published over the past few decades, which vary between and .


title: Deneb

text: Deneb is the most luminous first magnitude star, that is, stars with a brighter apparent magnitude than 1.5. Deneb is also the most distant of the 30 brightest stars by a factor of almost 2. Based on its temperature and luminosity, and also on direct measurements of its tiny angular diameter (a mere 0.002 seconds of arc), Deneb appears to have a diameter of about 200 times that of the Sun; if placed at the center of the Solar System, Deneb would extend out to the orbit of the Earth. It is one of the largest white 'A' spectral type stars known.


title: Deneb

text: Deneb is a bluish-white star of spectral type A2Ia, with a surface temperature of 8,500 kelvin. Since 1943, its spectrum has served as one of the stable references by which other stars are classified. Its mass is estimated at 19 . Stellar winds causes matter to be lost at an average rate of per year, 100,000 times the Sun's rate of mass loss or equivalent to about one Earth mass per 500 years.


title: Deneb

text: Deneb spent much of its early life as an O-type main-sequence star of about , but it has now exhausted the hydrogen in its core and expanded to become a supergiant. Stars in the mass range of Deneb eventually expand to become the most luminous red supergiants, and within a few million years their cores will collapse producing a supernova explosion. It is now known that red supergiants up to a certain mass explode as the commonly seen type II-P supernovae, but more massive ones lose their outer layers to become hotter again. Depending on their initial masses and the rate of mass loss, they may explode as yellow hypergiants or luminous blue variables, or they may become Wolf-Rayet stars before exploding in a type Ib or Ic supernova. Identifying whether Deneb is currently evolving towards a red supergiant or is currently evolving bluewards again would place valuable constraints on the classes of stars that explode as red supergiants and those that explode as hotter stars.


title: Deneb

text: Stars evolving red-wards for the first time are most likely fusing hydrogen in a shell around a helium core that has not yet grown hot enough to start fusion to carbon and oxygen. Convection has begun dredging up fusion products but these do not reach the surface. Post-red supergiant stars are expected to show those fusion products at the surface due to stronger convection during the red supergiant phase and due to loss of the obscuring outer layers of the star. Deneb is thought to be increasing its temperature after a period as a red supergiant, although current models do not exactly reproduce the surface elements showing in its spectrum.


title: Deneb

text: Deneb is the prototype of the Alpha Cygni (α Cygni) variable stars, whose small irregular amplitudes and rapid pulsations can cause its magnitude to vary anywhere between 1.21 and 1.29. Its variable velocity discovered by Lee in 1910, but it was not formally placed as a unique class of variable stars until the 1985 4th edition of the General Catalogue of Variable Stars. The cause of the pulsations of Alpha Cygni variable stars are not fully understood, but their irregular nature seems to be due to beating of multiple pulsation periods. Analysis of radial velocities determined 16 different harmonic pulsation modes with periods ranging between 6.9 and 100.8 days. A longer period of about 800 days probably also exists.


title: Deneb

text: Deneb has been reported as a possible single line spectroscopic binary with a period of about 850 days, where the spectral lines from the star suggest cyclical radial velocity changes. Later investigations have found no evidence supporting the existence of a companion.


title: Deneb

text: Names similar to Deneb have been given to at least seven different stars, most notably Deneb Kaitos, the brightest star in the constellation of Cetus; Deneb Algedi, the brightest star in Capricornus; and Denebola, the second brightest star in Leo. All these stars are referring to the tail of the animals that their respective constellations represent.


title: Deneb

text: In Chinese, (), meaning "Celestial Ford", refers to an asterism consisting of Deneb, Gamma Cygni, Delta Cygni, 30 Cygni, Nu Cygni, Tau Cygni, Upsilon Cygni, Zeta Cygni and Epsilon Cygni. Consequently, the Chinese name for Deneb itself is (, ).


title: Deneb

text: In the Chinese love story of Qi Xi, Deneb marks the magpie bridge across the Milky Way, which allows the separated lovers Niu Lang (Altair) and Zhi Nü (Vega) to be reunited on one special night of the year in late summer. In other versions of the story, Deneb is a fairy who acts as chaperone when the lovers meet.


title: Deneb

text: USS "Arided" was a United States Navy "Crater"-class cargo ship named after the star. SS "Deneb" was an Italian merchant vessel that bore this name from 1951 until she was scrapped in 1966.


title: Deneb

text: The star Deneb, and hypothetical planets orbiting it, have been used many times in literature, film, electronic games, and music. Examples include several episodes of the "Star Trek" TV series, the "Silver Surfer" comic book, the Rush albums "A Farewell to Kings" and "Hemispheres", the "" computer game, "Stellaris", and the science fiction novel "Hyperion".


title: Ray Thomas

text: Raymond Thomas (29 December 1941 – 4 January 2018) was an English multi-instrumentalist, flautist, singer, founding member and composer in the English progressive rock band the Moody Blues. His flute solo on the band's 1967 hit single "Nights in White Satin" is regarded as one of progressive rock's defining moments. In 2018, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Moody Blues.


title: Ray Thomas

text: Thomas was born at an emergency maternity unit set up during the Second World War in Lickhill Manor, Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire, England. His father's family was from the southwest corner of Wales. His grandfather was a Welsh miner and went on to become a carpenter and a wood-carver, at one stage working on the church where Thomas later got married. His father taught him at the age of nine to play harmonica, and this sparked his interest in music. He joined the school choir a year later. He quit schooling at the age of 14, and briefly left music to work as a toolmaking trainee at Lemarks. By the age of 16 he had embarked on a search for a music band, and within two years had left his trade to pursue a career in music.


title: Ray Thomas

text: In the 1960s, Thomas joined the Birmingham Youth Choir then began singing with various Birmingham blues and soul groups including The Saints and Sinners and The Ramblers. He was inspired to learn the flute from a grandfather who played the instrument. Again taking up the harmonica, he started a band, El Riot and the Rebels, with bassist John Lodge. After a couple of years their friend Mike Pinder joined as keyboardist. On Easter Monday 1963 the band opened for the Beatles at the Bridge Hotel, Tenbury Wells. Thomas and Pinder were later in a band called Krew Cats, formed in 1963, who played in Hamburg and other places in northern Germany.


title: Ray Thomas

text: Thomas and Pinder then recruited guitarist Denny Laine, drummer Graeme Edge, and bassist Clint Warwick to form a new, blues-based band, The Moody Blues. Signed to Decca Records, their first album, "The Magnificent Moodies", yielded a No. 1 UK hit (No. 10 in the US) with "Go Now". Thomas sang lead vocals on George and Ira Gershwin's "It Ain't Necessarily So" from the musical "Porgy and Bess". He shared lead vocals with Laine on "23rd Psalm" which was recorded in 1964 but remained unreleased until 2014.


title: Ray Thomas

text: His flute featured on three songs on the album—"Something You Got", "I've Got a Dream", and "Let Me Go"—as well as the single "From the Bottom of My Heart", after he had more or less pushed himself to learn playing. Thomas said in a 1986 interview that


title: Ray Thomas

text: "I Don't Want to Go On Without You" wasn't finished when it was released; it should've had a flute on it. When we did "Thank Your Lucky Stars", I just took a flute on and pretended to play it. I got dozens of letters saying how great the flute playing was and I wasn't even on it. That's auto suggestion.


title: Ray Thomas

text: When Warwick left the band (followed by Laine a few months later) he was briefly replaced by Rod Clark. Thomas then suggested his and Pinder's old bandmate John Lodge as a permanent replacement and also recruited Justin Hayward to replace Laine. With this line-up the band released seven successful albums between 1967 and 1972, and became known for their pioneering orchestral sound.


title: Ray Thomas

text: Although they initially tried to continue singing R&B covers and novelty tunes, they were confronted over this by an audience member, and with their finances deteriorating they made a conscious decision to focus only on their own original material.


title: Ray Thomas

text: Following the lead of Pinder, Hayward, and Lodge, Thomas also started writing songs. The first he contributed to the group's repertoire were "Another Morning" and "Twilight Time" on the 1967 "Days of Future Passed". The album is regarded as a progressive rock landmark, and Thomas's flute solo on the single "Nights in White Satin" one of its defining moments. His flute became an integral part of the band's music, even as Pinder began to use the mellotron keyboard. Thomas stated that a number of his compositions on the band's earlier albums were made in a studio broom closet, with himself writing songs on a glockenspiel. Hayward has spoken of Thomas's learning transcendental meditation in 1967, along with other members of the group. In a 2015 interview Thomas said that he and Pinder had contributed backing vocals to the song "I Am the Walrus" by the Beatles, as well as providing harmonicas for "The Fool on the Hill".


title: Ray Thomas

text: Thomas and Pinder both acted as the band's onstage MCs, as heard on the live album "Caught Live + 5" and seen in the "Live at the Isle of Wight Festival" DVD. Thomas started to become a more prolific writer for the group, penning songs such as "Legend of a Mind"—an ode to LSD guru and friend of the band, Timothy Leary, and a popular live favourite—and "Dr. Livingstone, I Presume" for "In Search of the Lost Chord", and "Dear Diary" and "Lazy Day" for "On the Threshold of a Dream", as well as co-writing "Are You Sitting Comfortably?" with Hayward.


title: Ray Thomas

text: The Moody Blues formed their own record label Threshold Records, distributed by Decca in the UK and London in the US, and their first album on the Threshold imprint was "To Our Children's Children's Children", a 1969 concept album about eternal life. Thomas wrote and sang lead vocal on "Floating" and "Eternity Road".


title: Ray Thomas

text: When the band began to realize that their method of heavy overdubbing in the studio made most of the songs very difficult to reproduce in concert, they decided to use a more stripped-down sound on their next album "A Question of Balance", to be able to play as many songs live as possible. It was their second UK No. 1 album. Thomas wrote and sang "And the Tide Rushes In", reportedly written after having a row with his wife, and was credited with co-writing the album's final track "The Balance" with Edge, while Pinder recited the story.


title: Ray Thomas

text: The Moodies went back to their symphonic sound and heavy overdubbing with "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour", their third UK No. 1 album, and Thomas wrote and sang "Our Guessing Game" and "Nice to Be Here", also singing a co-lead vocal with Pinder, Hayward and Lodge on Edge's "After You Came". All five members wrote "Procession".


title: Ray Thomas

text: The final album of the 'core seven' was "Seventh Sojourn", their first album to reach No. 1 in the USA. By this time, Pinder had replaced his mellotron with the chamberlin, which produced orchestral sounds more realistically and easily than the mellotron. Thomas wrote and sang "For My Lady".


title: Ray Thomas

text: Thomas released the albums "From Mighty Oaks" (1975) and "Hopes, Wishes and Dreams" (1976) after the band temporarily broke up in 1974. During this period he earned his nickname 'The Flute'. Within the band he was also known as 'Tomo' (pronounced tOm-O). The band reformed in 1977 for "Octave", which was released in 1978. Thomas provided the songs "Under Moonshine" and "I'm Your Man", and the group continued to release albums throughout the 1980s, with Thomas's "Veteran Cosmic Rocker" and "Painted Smile" being featured on the album "Long Distance Voyager". The former song has often been regarded as a theme song for the band itself as a whole and for Thomas in particular, and it again features his use of the harmonica. After contributing "Sorry" and "I Am" (both on the 1983 album "The Present") Thomas temporarily stopped writing new songs for the band, for reasons unknown. He took featured lead vocal on Graeme Edge's song "Going Nowhere" (on "The Present").


title: Ray Thomas

text: During the group's synth-pop era, Thomas's role in the recording studio diminished, partially due to the synth-pop music being unsuitable for his flute and partially because he was unwell. Despite contributing backing vocals on "The Other Side of Life" and "Sur la Mer", he took no lead vocal role and it is unclear how much, if any, instrumentation he recorded for these two albums; but in any case, none of his instrumentation or vocals ended up on "Sur la Mer". Although he is included in the childhood photos depicted on the album's inner sleeve and is given an overall 'group credit', he is not given a performing band credit. Patrick Moraz, who had replaced Pinder as the band's keyboardist, objected to Thomas's exclusion from the album and pushed for the band to return to the deeper sound that they had achieved with Pinder. Thomas is credited with tambourine, harmonica or saxophone on "The Other Side of Life", but it is unknown how many, if any, instrumental contributions of his ended up on the released version of the album, and at this point he was largely relegated to the role of a backup singer.


title: Ray Thomas

text: On The Moody Blues' 1991 release "Keys of the Kingdom", Thomas played a substantial role in the studio for the first time since 1983, writing "Celtic Sonant" and co-writing "Never Blame the Rainbows for the Rain" with Justin Hayward. He contributed his first ambient flute piece in eight years; however, his health declined, and his last album with the group was "Strange Times", to which he contributed his final composition for the group, "My Little Lovely". He also provided a co-lead vocal with Hayward and Lodge on their song "Sooner or Later (Walking On Air)".


title: Ray Thomas

text: Thomas permanently retired at the end of 2002. In a 2014 interview with Pollstar.com, drummer Graeme Edge stated that Thomas had retired due to illness. He had been suffering from cerebellar ataxia, which affected his balance and made performing impossible. The Moody Blues – consisting only of Hayward, Lodge and Edge (Edge being the only remaining original member) plus four long-serving touring band members, including Gordon Marshall on percussion and Norda Mullen who took over Thomas's flute parts – only released one further studio album, "December", following his departure from the band.


title: Ray Thomas

text: In July 2009 it became known that Thomas had written at least two of his songs– "Adam and I" and "My Little Lovely"– for his son and his grandson Robert, respectively. It was also revealed that he had married again, to his longtime girlfriend Lee Lightle, in a ceremony at the Church of the Holy Cross in Mwnt, Ceredigion Wales, on 9 July 2009.


title: Ray Thomas

text: Thomas released his two solo albums, remastered, in a boxset on 24 September 2010. The set includes, with the two albums, a remastered quad version of "From Mighty Oaks", a new song "The Trouble With Memories", a previously unseen promo video of "High Above My Head" and an interview conducted by fellow Moody Blues founder Mike Pinder. The boxset was released through Esoteric Recordings/Cherry Red Records.


title: Ray Thomas

text: After the tragic death of Alvin Stardust and the brave response to Prostate Awareness by his widow, Julie, in following up on what Alvin had intended to say about the disease, I have decided to help in some small way. I was diagnosed in September 2013 with prostate cancer. My cancer was in-operable but I have a fantastic doctor who immediately started me on a new treatment that has had 90% success rate. The cancer is being held in remission but I'll be receiving this treatment for the rest of my life. I have four close friends who have all endured some kind of surgery or treatment for this cancer and all are doing well. While I don't like to talk publicly about my health problems, after Alvin's death, I decided it was time I spoke out. A cancer diagnosis can shake your world and your family's but if caught in time it can be cured or held in remission. I urge all males to get tested NOW. Don't put it off by thinking it won't happen to me. It needs to be caught early. It's only a blood test – a few minutes out your day to save yourself from this disease. Love and God Bless, Ray.


title: Ray Thomas

text: In later years Thomas resumed flute playing with other musicians, one instance of which was for the song "L´urlo nelle ossa", on the 2016 album "Eros & Thanatos" by Italian band Syndone. He also played flute on the track "Simply Magic" on John Lodge's 2015 album "10,000 Light Years Ago" and recorded with Moody Bluegrass.


title: Ray Thomas

text: Thomas died on 4 January 2018, six days after his 76th birthday, at his home in Surrey. The official announcement, made by his record company, did not give any cause.


title: Ray Thomas

text: Fellow band member John Lodge said, "Ray was my best pal. I met Ray when I was 14. We were two young kids from Birmingham who were reaching for the stars — and I think we got there. I'm really pleased that Ray was around to know we'd be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I spoke to Ray just before Christmas — because his birthday was after Christmas, on the 29th — and we had a long conversation. We're very close friends — or were very close friends. Very sad. Very, very sad."


title: Ray Thomas

text: Thomas was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of The Moody Blues, in April 2018.


title: Ray Thomas

text: Although he most commonly played flute, Thomas was a multi-instrumentalist, who also played piccolo, oboe, harmonica, saxophone, and, on the album "In Search of the Lost Chord", the French horn. He frequently played tambourine and also shook maracas during the group's R&B phase. The 1972 video for "I'm Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)" features Thomas playing the baritone saxophone, although Pinder says on his website that this was just for effect in the video and that Thomas did not play saxophone on the recording.


title: No. 5, 1948

text: No. 5, 1948 is a painting by Jackson Pollock, an American painter known for his contributions to the abstract expressionist movement. It was sold on 22 May 2006 for $140 million, a new mark for highest ever price for a painting, not surpassed until April 2011.


title: No. 5, 1948

text: The painting was created on fibreboard, also known as composition board, measuring 8’ x 4’. For the paint, Pollock chose to use liquid paints. More specifically, they were synthetic resin paints (gloss enamel) but are referred to as oil paints for classification of the work. On inspection it was grey, brown, white and yellow paint drizzled in a way that many people still perceive as a "dense bird’s nest". Initial reactions to the work were underwhelming:


title: No. 5, 1948

text: The painting has been modified by Pollock since it was originally created. During January 1949, it was being shown in a solo Pollock show at the Betty Parsons gallery. It was from here that Alfonso A. Ossorio decided to purchase a "paint drip" composition; he chose No. 5, 1948 and paid $1,500. It was the only canvas sold from the show. At some point, presumably during the moving process, the painting became damaged, according to Grace Hartigan. "Home Sweet Home [the shipping company] came in with a painting in one hand and a lump of paint from the center of the painting in the other hand". Hartigan gave Pollock some paint and he patched the painting before it went to Ossorio, saying "He’ll never know, never know". When the painting was subsequently delivered to Ossorio, he claimed that he noticed "a portion of the paint - actually the skin from the top of an opened paint can - had slid" leaving a "nondescript smear amidst the surrounding linear clarity," as he explained in a 1978 lecture at Yale. Pollock offered to rework the painting but, according to Hartigan, he "repainted the whole thing again" and stated that "He'll never know. No one knows how to look at my paintings, he won’t know the difference." After three weeks, Ossorio visited Pollock's studio to inspect the painting. Ossorio was confronted with an artwork which was repainted onto fiberboard, with "new qualities of richness and depth" as a result of Pollock's "thorough but subtle repainting." It was clear that Ossorio still liked the painting despite the rework, and continued to attest that the "original concept remained unmistakably present, but affirmed and fulfilled by a new complexity and depth of linear interplay. It was, and still is a masterful display of control and disciplined vision." Pollock repaired the damage to the painting by completely repainting the original, in contrast to how other artworks are repaired. The reconstruction had not only retained but reinforced the metaphysical concept of the painting, and has become what Ossorio calls "a wonderful example of an artist having a second chance".


title: No. 5, 1948

text: According to a report in "The New York Times" on November 2, 2006, the painting was sold by David Geffen, founder of Geffen Records and co-founder of DreamWorks SKG, to David Martinez, managing partner of Fintech Advisory Ltd, in a private sale for a record inflation-adjusted price of $140 million. It is speculated that Geffen sold the painting, along with two others, to raise enough funds to bid for the "Los Angeles Times".


title: No. 5, 1948

text: The sale was reportedly brokered by Sotheby's auctioneer Tobias Meyer, however, the law firm of Shearman & Sterling, LLP, issued a press release on behalf of its client, David Martinez, to announce that contrary to recent articles in the press, Martinez does not own the painting or any rights to acquire it. In addition to the refutation issued by Shearman & Sterling, the auction expert Josh Baer indicated that Martinez was not the buyer of the painting.


title: No. 5, 1948

text: The lyrics of The Stone Roses song "Going Down" include a reference to the painting: "(There) she looks like a painting - Jackson Pollock's "Number 5"..." The Stone Roses' guitarist John Squire created cover artwork for many of the band's releases on Silvertone Records in a style similar to that of Jackson Pollock.


title: No. 5, 1948

text: The painting played a central role in the film "Ex Machina" (2015), in which billionaire tech firm CEO Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) owns the painting and uses it as an object lesson for the protagonist Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), noting that "No. 5, 1948" would never have come into existence if Jackson Pollock only painted what he already knew. This is contrasted to the way an AI comes to know, thus emphasizing the problem of consciousness and epistemology.


title: SpinLaunch

text: SpinLaunch is a spaceflight technology development company working on mass accelerator technology to move payloads to space. As of September 2022, the company has raised US$150 million in funding, with investors including Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Airbus Ventures, ATW Partners, Catapult Ventures, Lauder Partners, John Doerr, and the Byers Family.


title: SpinLaunch

text: SpinLaunch was founded in 2014 by Jonathan Yaney in Sunnyvale, California. The company's headquarters are in Long Beach. In 2020 it opened a launch site. SpinLaunch continued development of its 140,000 square-foot (13,000 m) corporate headquarters in Long Beach, and of its flight test facility at Spaceport America in New Mexico.


title: SpinLaunch

text: In late 2021, SpinLaunch was named one of the "World's Best Employers in the Space Industry" by Everything Space, a recruitment platform specializing in the space industry.


title: SpinLaunch

text: In March 2022, SpinLaunch was listed as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Companies of 2022 by Time Magazine. In April, SpinLaunch received a launch contract from NASA to test a payload.


title: SpinLaunch

text: SpinLaunch is developing a kinetic energy space launch system that reduces dependency on traditional chemical rockets, with the goal of significantly lowering the cost of access to space while increasing the frequency of launch. The technology uses a vacuum-sealed centrifuge to spin a rocket and then hurl it to space at up to . The rocket then ignites its engines at an altitude of roughly to reach orbital speed of with a payload of up to 200kg. Peak acceleration would be approximately 10,000 g. If successful, the acceleration concept is projected to lower the cost of launches and to use much less power, with the price of a single space launch reduced by a factor of 20 to under US$500,000.


title: SpinLaunch

text: At Spaceport America in New Mexico on 22 October 2021, SpinLaunch conducted the first vertical test of their accelerator at 20% of its full power capacity, hurling a passive projectile to an altitude of "tens of thousands of feet." This test accelerator is in diameter, which makes it a one-third scale of the operational system that is being designed. The compay's first 10 test flights reached as much as feet in altitude.


title: SpinLaunch

text: A September 2022 test flight carried payloads for NASA, Airbus US, Cornell Engineering’s Space Systems Design Studio (SSDS) and Outpost.


title: SpinLaunch

text: A number of reasons why this technology may not work have been put forward, including problems with massive spinning objects, potential for catastrophic damage to the payload, incompatibility with traditional liquid rocket fuels, increased atmospheric drag relative to existing technologies, and other potential problems with the idea.


title: Marie Carandini

text: Marie Carandini, Marchioness of Sarzano (born Maria Burgess; 1 February 1826 – 13 April 1894) was an English-Australian opera singer.


title: Marie Carandini

text: Carandini was born in Brixton, Surrey, the daughter of coachman James Burgess (died 1834) and Martha Burgess (née Medwin). Her mother was a cousin of Thomas Medwin, Byron's companion and biographer, and her father claimed a close relationship to Shelley. She was brought by her parents to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) in 1833. At the age of 17, she married an Italian nobleman, Jerome Carandini, the Marquis of Sarzano (1803–1870), who was a political refugee. Marie's musical training and first performances were in Hobart.


title: Marie Carandini

text: The Carandinis came to Sydney around 1845 and studied under Isaac Nathan, Sara Flower and Lewis Henry Lavenu.


title: Marie Carandini

text: Marie soon established a reputation as a concert singer and operatic prima donna, both in Sydney and Melbourne, and was a popular favourite in many other centres in Australia. She was frequently billed as "The Australian Jenny Lind". She has the distinction of having been Australia's first Adalgisa in Bellini's opera "Norma" (1852, Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney) beside the Norma of Sara Flower. Her husband, having received a pardon from the Italian government, went to Italy in 1870, but died at Modena of gastric fever and inflammation of the lungs soon after his arrival. Madame Carandini continued to sing in concerts for some years in Australia and New Zealand, with visits to the United States and India. In November 1858 Carandini sang Leonora in Verdi's "Il trovatore" in a twenty-seven performance season at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne. The Carandini troupe performed what may have been New Zealand's first full opera production when they performed Henry Bishop's "Guy Mannering" at Dunedin's Princess Theatre in September 1862.


title: Marie Carandini

text: Carandini's last Australian appearance was in farewell concert on 3 February 1892 at the Melbourne Town Hall; she sang "Jessie the flower of Dumblane" with a strong voice for her age. Soon afterwards she left for England. In her late life, Carandini lived at Richmond Hill, near Bath, with her daughter; she died there on 13 April 1894, aged 68.


title: Marie Carandini

text: Carandini had eight children, of whom five daughters were musical and took part in her tours. Her eldest daughter Rosina Palmer was a notable soprano in Australia.


title: Marie Carandini

text: Her great-grandson (by her daughter, Countess Estelle Marie ("née" Carandini di Sarzano); (1889–1981)) was actor Sir Christopher Lee and her great-great-granddaughter is Dame Harriet Walter. She was also the great-grandmother of the actress Hermione Hannen through her daughter Fanny Ellen Hannah Louisa Carandini who married Sir Henry Morland.


title: Ed Stafford

text: Edward James Stafford (born 26 December 1975) is an English explorer. He holds the "Guinness World Record" for being the first human ever to walk the length of the Amazon River. Stafford now hosts shows on the Discovery Channel and Channel Four.


title: Ed Stafford

text: Ed Stafford was born in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England and raised in Leicestershire. He was adopted as a baby by Barbara and Jeremiah Stafford, who were both solicitors in Leicestershire. He was educated at Uppingham and was a Cub and a Scout in Leicestershire. Stafford graduated with a BSc in Geography from Newcastle University in 1997.


title: Ed Stafford

text: Stafford joined the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in September 1998, and after a year's training he was commissioned in the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment of the British Army as a subaltern on 7 August 1999: he was granted seniority in the rank of subaltern (second lieutenant) from 10 August 1996 and of subaltern (lieutenant) from 10 August 1998. His service number was 550823. He served a tour of duty in Northern Ireland in 2000. He was promoted to Captain on 8 February 2002, before leaving the British Army on 7 August 2002.


title: Ed Stafford

text: On 9 August 2010, he became the first person to have walked the entire length of the Amazon River, documented in the 2011 TV series "Walking the Amazon" on Channel 5. Stafford's expedition began with a friend, Luke Collyer, on 2 April 2008, on the southern coast of Peru. Collyer left after three months, and Stafford completed the journey with his guide, Gadiel “Cho” Sánchez Rivera. He undertook the attempt for several charities.


title: Ed Stafford

text: Stafford ran out of money halfway through his hike and had to rely on making YouTube videos featuring PayPal links asking viewers for money. He later described this as "crowdfunding before it had even been invented". He was also held up both at gunpoint and by bow and arrow, and arrested for both drug smuggling and murder – the latter occurring when he coincidentally arrived in an isolated settlement the same day as a community member had gone missing. He was locked in a wooden hut for eight hours before being allowed to continue his journey.


title: Ed Stafford

text: In May 2009 Stafford appeared on the cover of the Royal Geographical Society's "Geographical" magazine.


title: Ed Stafford

text: Stafford's accomplishment of walking the Amazon river has been described by Sir Ranulph Fiennes as being "truly extraordinary...in the top league of expeditions past and present".


title: Ed Stafford

text: Stafford was announced as one of "National Geographic" Adventurers of the Year 2010 and then in March 2011 he was awarded European Adventurer of the Year in a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.


title: Ed Stafford

text: In 2011 "Guinness World Records" recognised Stafford's achievement and he appears in the 2012 "Guinness Book of Records".


title: Ed Stafford

text: Also in 2011, Stafford was awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. He was not presented the award until 2014 at an event in Perth, Scotland.


title: Ed Stafford

text: Commissioned by Discovery Communications, in August 2012 Stafford filmed a three-part special for Discovery Channel where he was dropped on the uninhabited tropical island of Olorua () in the Pacific for 60 days with no food or equipment to help him survive. "Ed Stafford: Naked and Marooned" was aired on Discovery Channel in the UK in March 2013 and "Naked Castaway" (US version) aired in the USA in April of the same year. Stafford's book of the 60 days in isolation was released in the UK (Virgin Books) in June 2014 and was released in the USA (Penguin Books) in September 2014.


title: Ed Stafford

text: Stafford appears on Discovery Channel in his self-filmed series "Marooned with Ed Stafford" that is a joint Europe and US Discovery Channel commission. The series was followed up by "", which follows Stafford on his travels to remote locations to investigate strange and inexplicable markings which have baffled scientists. The programme aired on the Discovery Channel UK and its international subsidiaries in the latter part of 2015.


title: Ed Stafford

text: A survival show "" with a competition format began production in 2018, and premiered in early 2019. In the show, Stafford meets one other survival expert each week in a different part of the world where each competes to complete a difficult trek with minimal provisions. Stafford's six competitors in season one are: Aldo Kane, (Borneo, episode one), Khen Rhee (Kazakhstan, episode two), Matt Graham (Mongolia, episode three), EJ Snyder (Thailand, episode four), Cat Bigney (Palau, episode five) and John Hudson (India, episode six). Series two of "First Man Out" was filmed entirely in China and premiered in early 2020; Stafford's six competitors in season two are: Will Lord (Bashan, episode one), Josh James (Yunnan Province, episode two), Ky Furneaux (Four Girls Mountain Range, episode three), Matt 'The Juggernaut' Wright (Wanshan Archipelago, episode four), Hakim Isler (Zoige Marshes, episode five) and Xinlei Wu (Aksai Desert, episode six).


title: Ed Stafford

text: After his Amazon expedition Stafford began a search for his biological parents, whom he managed to track with the help of his sister, Janie. He explained, "There had always been this background intrigue. I looked for my birth family, not because I needed new parents in my life, but because it's just inherent to want to know." From his biological family, he has two younger brothers.


title: Ed Stafford

text: On 6 June 2017 Stafford announced via Twitter that Bingham had given birth to a boy called Ranulph. On 26 August 2020, Stafford's wife gave birth to twin girls – Mary and Camilla.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: The 2018–19 NHL season was the 102nd season of operation (101st season of play) of the National Hockey League. 31 teams competed in an 82-game regular season. The regular season began on October 3, 2018, and ended on April 6, 2019. The 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs began on April 10, 2019, and the Stanley Cup Finals concluded on June 12, 2019, with the St. Louis Blues winning their first Stanley Cup in the Finals over the Boston Bruins in seven games.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: On June 21, 2018, the National Hockey League Players' Association announced that the salary cap would be set at $79.5 million per team for the 2018–19 season.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: After a trial during the 2018 All-Star Game and China games, the NHL began to allow teams to sell on-ice advertising placements in the corners of the rink. NHL chief revenue officer Keith Wachtel estimated that these new placements could provide up to $10 million in additional revenue to teams per season. During the playoffs, these advertising areas will be controlled by the league.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: On October 29, 2018, it was announced that MGM Resorts International would become the NHL's "official sports wagering partner" in the United States. This deal includes direct access to new forms of internal statistics data, as well as brand licensing agreements in relation to its sportsbooks, and came in the wake of a court ruling earlier in the year which declared the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (a U.S. law that forbade the legalization of sports betting outside of Nevada and other exempted states) to be unconstitutional.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: On December 4, 2018, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman officially announced that the league had approved an expansion team in Seattle, later christened the Seattle Kraken, which is planned to begin play in the 2021–22 season. To accommodate the addition in 2021, the new team will be placed in the Pacific Division, while the Arizona Coyotes will be moved to the Central Division.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: This was the eighth season under the NHL's ten year U.S. rights deal with NBC Sports and fifth season of its twelve year Canadian rights deals with Sportsnet and TVA Sports.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: Through BAMTech's prior 2015 agreement to run NHL.tv and the league's other digital properties, the subscription streaming service ESPN+ began offering up to 180 regular season games.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: On December 20, 2017, CBC Television and Rogers Communications struck an agreement to renew its sublicensing agreement for "Hockey Night in Canada" through the end of Rogers's current broadcast contract. The two sides had previously reached an agreement to extend its original four-year agreement by an additional year. Rogers announced the retirement of long-time commentator Bob Cole from "Hockey Night", after calling a limited schedule of games.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: Three teams shifted their radio broadcast rights exclusively to internet radio, all of which in heavily crowded large media markets with multiple sports teams seeking a limited number of radio outlets. The Los Angeles Kings "Audio Network" will now be exclusively carried on iHeartRadio. The New Jersey Devils and New York Islanders have a broadcast agreement with Entercom for the New York City market that will see only a limited number of games broadcast on their flagship sports station, WFAN, with the rest being carried on the company's Radio.com platform (the university radio station WRHU remains the Islanders' radio flagship). WFAN had already carried only a limited number of games from those teams in recent seasons, previously pawning off the remainder on other non-sports stations such as WNYM.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: In an effort to expand the league's television audience in Europe, the NHL began to schedule more weekend afternoon games (the "European Game of the Week") so they could air live during the primetime hours. The initiative launched with an NHL Global Series game in Gothenburg, Sweden, on October 6, 2018.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: The 2018 NHL Entry Draft was held June 22 and 23, 2018. The Buffalo Sabres, by virtue of winning the draft lottery on April 28, held the first overall selection, using it to select defenceman Rasmus Dahlin.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: Two preseason games were played in China. The Calgary Flames and Boston Bruins played one game (Calgary as home team) at the Shenzhen Universiade Sports Center in Shenzhen on September 15, 2018, and played another (Boston as home team) at Cadillac Arena in Beijing on September 19, 2018.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: Two preseason games were played in Europe. The New Jersey Devils played against SC Bern at PostFinance Arena in Bern, Switzerland, on October 1, 2018. The Edmonton Oilers played against Kölner Haie at Lanxess Arena in Cologne, Germany, on October 3, 2018.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: The regular season began on October 3, 2018, and ended April 6, 2019. This season, the mandatory "bye week" that each team received was extended from five to seven days, to also include All-Star Weekend. The regular season schedule was released on June 21.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: Three regular season games, branded as the "NHL Global Series", were played in Europe. The Edmonton Oilers and New Jersey Devils played at the Scandinavium in Gothenburg, Sweden, on October 6, 2018. The Florida Panthers and Winnipeg Jets played two games at Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, Finland, on November 1 and 2, 2018.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: The 2019 National Hockey League All-Star Game was held in San Jose, California, at SAP Center, home of the San Jose Sharks, on January 26, 2019, the first time it was held on a Saturday after many years of the All-Star game being played on a Sunday.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: 3. Greatest number of points earned in head-to-head play (If teams played an uneven number of head-to-head games, the result of the first game on the home ice of the team with the extra home game is discarded.)<br>


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: The following players led the league in regular season points at the conclusion of games played on April 6, 2019.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: The following goaltenders led the league in regular season goals against average at the conclusion of games played on April 6, 2019, while playing at least 1,800 minutes.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: The league's awards were presented at the NHL Awards ceremony, that was held following the 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs on June 19 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. Finalists for voted awards were announced during the playoffs and winners were presented at the award ceremony. Voting concluded immediately after the end of the regular season. The Presidents' Trophy, the Prince of Wales Trophy and Clarence S. Campbell Bowl are not presented at the awards ceremony. The Lester Patrick Trophy is announced during the summer and presented in the fall.


title: 2018–19 NHL season

text: The following is a list of notable players who played their first NHL game during the 2018–19 season, listed with their first team. Asterisk(*) marks debut in playoffs.


title: Yu-Gi-Oh! (1998 TV series)

text: Yu-Gi-Oh! is a 1998 Japanese anime television series based on the manga of the same name written and illustrated by Kazuki Takahashi. It was the first anime adaptation of the manga series and it was produced by Toei Animation and directed by Hiroyuki Kakudō. The series tells the story of Yugi Mutou, who after solving the ancient Millennium Puzzle, awakens a gambling alter-ego within his body that solves his conflicts using various games. This series loosely adapts the first 59 chapters of the manga while adding original events and characters not present in the manga.


title: Yu-Gi-Oh! (1998 TV series)

text: The series was broadcast on TV Asahi from April 4, 1998 to October 10, 1998 and was followed by a theatrical movie released on March 6, 1999. The opening theme is by FIELD OF VIEW while the ending theme is by WANDS.


title: Color charge

text: Color charge is a property of quarks and gluons that is related to the particles' strong interactions in the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD).


title: Color charge

text: The "color charge" of quarks and gluons is completely unrelated to the everyday meanings of color and charge. The term "color" and the labels red, green, and blue became popular simply because of the loose analogy to the primary colors.


title: Color charge

text: Some particles have corresponding antiparticles. A particle with red, green, or blue charge has a corresponding antiparticle in which the color charge must be the anticolor of red, green, and blue, respectively, for the color charge to be conserved in particle–antiparticle creation and annihilation. Particle physicists call these antired, antigreen, and antiblue. All three colors mixed together, or any one of these colors and its complement (or negative), is "colorless" or "white" and has a net color charge of zero. Due to a property of the strong interaction called color confinement, free particles must have a color charge of zero: a baryon is composed of three quarks, which must be one each of red, green, and blue colors; likewise an antibaryon is composed of three antiquarks, one each of antired, antigreen and antiblue. A meson is made from one quark and one antiquark; the quark can be any color, and the antiquark has the matching anticolor.


title: Color charge

text: Shortly after the existence of quarks was first proposed in 1964, Oscar W. Greenberg introduced the notion of color charge to explain how quarks could coexist inside some hadrons in otherwise identical quantum states without violating the Pauli exclusion principle. The theory of quantum chromodynamics has been under development since the 1970s and constitutes an important component of the Standard Model of particle physics.


title: Color charge

text: In quantum chromodynamics (QCD), a quark's color can take one of three values or charges: red, green, and blue. An antiquark can take one of three anticolors: called antired, antigreen, and antiblue (represented as cyan, magenta, and yellow, respectively). Gluons are mixtures of two colors, such as red and antigreen, which constitutes their color charge. QCD considers eight gluons of the possible nine color–anticolor combinations to be unique; see "eight gluon colors" for an explanation.


title: Color charge

text: Analogous to an electric field and electric charges, the strong force acting between color charges can be depicted using field lines. However, the color field lines do not arc outwards from one charge to another as much, because they are pulled together tightly by gluons (within 1 fm). This effect confines quarks within hadrons.


title: Color charge

text: In a quantum field theory, a coupling constant and a charge are different but related notions. The coupling constant sets the magnitude of the force of interaction; for example, in quantum electrodynamics, the fine-structure constant is a coupling constant. The charge in a gauge theory has to do with the way a particle transforms under the gauge symmetry; i.e., its representation under the gauge group. For example, the electron has charge −1 and the positron has charge +1, implying that the gauge transformation has opposite effects on them in some sense. Specifically, if a local gauge transformation is applied in electrodynamics, then one finds (using tensor index notation):


title: Color charge

text: where formula_2 is the photon field, and is the electron field with (a bar over denotes its antiparticle — the positron). Since QCD is a non-abelian theory, the representations, and hence the color charges, are more complicated. They are dealt with in the next section.


title: Color charge

text: In QCD the gauge group is the non-abelian group SU(3). The "running coupling" is usually denoted by formula_3. Each flavor of quark belongs to the fundamental representation (3) and contains a triplet of fields together denoted by formula_4. The antiquark field belongs to the complex conjugate representation (3) and also contains a triplet of fields. We can write


title: Color charge

text: The gluon contains an octet of fields (see gluon field), and belongs to the adjoint representation (8), and can be written using the Gell-Mann matrices as


title: Color charge

text: (there is an implied summation over "a" = 1, 2, ... 8). All other particles belong to the trivial representation (1) of color SU(3). The color charge of each of these fields is fully specified by the representations. Quarks have a color charge of red, green or blue and antiquarks have a color charge of antired, antigreen or antiblue. Gluons have a combination of two color charges (one of red, green, or blue and one of antired, antigreen, or antiblue) in a superposition of states which are given by the Gell-Mann matrices. All other particles have zero color charge. Mathematically speaking, the color charge of a particle is the value of a certain quadratic Casimir operator in the representation of the particle.


title: Color charge

text: In the simple language introduced previously, the three indices "1", "2" and "3" in the quark triplet above are usually identified with the three colors. The colorful language misses the following point. A gauge transformation in color SU(3) can be written as formula_8, where formula_9 is a matrix which belongs to the group SU(3). Thus, after gauge transformation, the new colors are linear combinations of the old colors. In short, the simplified language introduced before is not gauge invariant.


title: Color charge

text: Color charge is conserved, but the book-keeping involved in this is more complicated than just adding up the charges, as is done in quantum electrodynamics. One simple way of doing this is to look at the interaction vertex in QCD and replace it by a color-line representation. The meaning is the following. Let formula_10 represent the -th component of a quark field (loosely called the -th color). The "color" of a gluon is similarly given by formula_11 which corresponds to the particular Gell-Mann matrix it is associated with. This matrix has indices and . These are the "color labels" on the gluon. At the interaction vertex one has . The color-line representation tracks these indices. Color charge conservation means that the ends of these color-lines must be either in the initial or final state, equivalently, that no lines break in the middle of a diagram.


title: Color charge

text: Since gluons carry color charge, two gluons can also interact. A typical interaction vertex (called the three gluon vertex) for gluons involves g + g → g. This is shown here, along with its color-line representation. The color-line diagrams can be restated in terms of conservation laws of color; however, as noted before, this is not a gauge invariant language. Note that in a typical non-abelian gauge theory the gauge boson carries the charge of the theory, and hence has interactions of this kind; for example, the W boson in the electroweak theory. In the electroweak theory, the W also carries electric charge, and hence interacts with a photon.


title: History of robots

text: The history of robots has its origins in the ancient world. During the industrial revolution, humans developed the structural engineering capability to control electricity so that machines could be powered with small motors. In the early 20th century, the notion of a humanoid machine was developed.


title: History of robots

text: The first uses of modern robots were in factories as industrial robots. These industrial robots were fixed machines capable of manufacturing tasks which allowed production with less human work. Digitally programmed industrial robots with artificial intelligence have been built since the 2000s.


title: History of robots

text: Concepts of artificial servants and companions date at least as far back as the ancient legends of Cadmus, who is said to have sown dragon teeth that turned into soldiers and Pygmalion whose statue of Galatea came to life. Many ancient mythologies included artificial people, such as the talking mechanical handmaidens (Ancient Greek: (Kourai Khryseai); "Golden Maidens") built by the Greek god Hephaestus (Vulcan to the Romans) out of gold.


title: History of robots

text: The Buddhist scholar Daoxuan (596-667 AD) described humanoid automata crafted from metals that recite sacred texts in a cloister which housed a fabulous clock. The "precious metal-people" weeped when Buddha Shakyamuni died. Humanoid automations also feature in the Epic of King Gesar, a Central Asian cultural hero.


title: History of robots

text: Early Chinese lore on the legendary carpenter Lu Ban and the philosopher Mozi described mechanical imitations of animals and demons. The implications of humanoid automatons were discussed in Liezi (4th century CE), a compilation of Daoist texts which went on to become a classic. In chapter 5 King Mu of Zhou is on tour of the West and upon asking the craftsman Master Yan Shi "What can you do?" the royal court is presented with an artificial man. The automation was indistinguishable from a human and performed various tricks for the king and his entourage. But the king flew into a rage when apparently the automation started to flirt with the ladies in attendance and threatened the automation with execution. So the craftsman cut the automation open and revealed the inner workings of the artificial man. The king is fascinated and experiments with the functional interdependence of the automation by removing different organlike components. The king marveled "is it then possible for human skill to achieve as much as the Creator?" and confiscated the automation. A similar tale can be found in the near contemporary Indian Buddhist Jataka tales, but here the intricacy of the automation does not match that of Master Yan. Prior to the introduction of Buddhism in the Common Era, Chinese philosophers did not seriously consider the distinction between appearance and reality. The Liezi rebuts Buddhist philosophies and likens human creative powers to that of the Creator.


title: History of robots

text: The Indian "Lokapannatti", a collection of cycles and lores produced in the 11th or 12th century AD, tells the story of how an army of automated soldiers (bhuta vahana yanta or "Spirit movement machines") were crafted to protect the relics of Buddha in a secret stupa. The plans for making such humanoid automatons were stolen from the kingdom of Rome, a generic term for the Greco-Roman-Byzantine culture. According to the "Lokapannatti", the Yavanas ("Greek-speakers") used the automatons to carry out trade and farming, but also captured and executed criminals. Roman automation makers who left the kingdom were pursued and killed by the automatons. According to the "Lokapannatti", the emperor Asoka hears the story of the secret stupa and sets out to find it. Following a battle between the fierce warrior automatons, Asoka finds the long-lived engineer who had constructed the automatons and is shown how to dismantle and control them. Thus emperor Asoka manages to command a large army of automated warriors. This Indian tale reflects the fear of losing control of artificial beings, which has also been expressed in Greek myths about the dragon-teeth army.


title: History of robots

text: Inspired by European Christian legend, medieval Europeans devised brazen heads that could answer questions posed to them. Albertus Magnus was supposed to have constructed an entire android which could perform some domestic tasks, but it was destroyed by Albert's student Thomas Aquinas for disturbing his thought. The most famous legend concerned a bronze head devised by Roger Bacon which was destroyed or scrapped after he missed its moment of operation. Automata resembling humans or animals were popular in the imaginary worlds of medieval literature.


title: History of robots

text: In the 4th century BC the mathematician Archytas of Tarentum postulated a mechanical bird he called "The Pigeon", which was propelled by steam. Taking up the earlier reference in Homer's Iliad, Aristotle speculated in his "Politics" (ca. 322 BC, book 1, part 4) that automata could someday bring about human equality by making possible the abolition of slavery:


title: History of robots

text: There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each instrument could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation, like the statues of Daedalus or the tripods made by Hephaestus, of which Homer relates that "Of their own motion they entered the conclave of Gods on Olympus", as if a shuttle should weave of itself, and a plectrum should do its own harp playing.


title: History of robots

text: When the Greeks controlled Egypt, a succession of engineers who could construct automata established themselves in Alexandria. Starting with the polymath Ctesibius (285-222 BC), Alexandrian engineers left behind texts detailing workable automata powered by hydraulics or steam. Ctesibius built human-like automata, often these were used in religious ceremonies and the worship of deities. One of the last great Alexandrian engineers, Hero of Alexandria (10-70 CE) constructed an automata puppet theater, where the figurines and the stage sets moved by mechanical means. He described the construction of such automata in his treatise on pneumatics. Alexandrian engineers constructed automata as reverence for humans' apparent command over nature and as tools for priests, but also started a tradition where automata were constructed for anyone who was wealthy enough and primarily for the entertainment of the rich.


title: History of robots

text: The manufacturing tradition of automata continued in the Greek world well into the Middle Ages. On his visit to Constantinople in 949 ambassador Liutprand of Cremona described automata in the emperor Theophilos' palace, including


title: History of robots

text: Similar automata in the throne room (singing birds, roaring and moving lions) were described by Luitprand's contemporary, the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in his book .


title: History of robots

text: In China the Cosmic Engine, a clock tower built by Su Song in Kaifeng, China, in 1088 CE, featured mechanical mannequins that chimed the hours, ringing gongs or bells among other devices. Feats of automation continued into the Tang dynasty. Daifeng Ma built an automated dresser servant for the queen. Ying Wenliang built an automata man that proposed toasts at banquets and a wooden woman automata that played the sheng. Among the best documented automata of ancient China are that of Han Zhile, a Japanese who moved to China in the early 9th century CE.


title: History of robots

text: Post-classical societies such as the Byzantines and Arabs continued the construction of automata. The Byzantines inherited the knowledge on automata from the Alexandrians and developed it further to build water clocks with gear mechanisms, such as for example described by Procopius about 510. It was in the medieval Arab world where more significant advances in the construction of automata would take place. Harun al-Rashid built water clocks with complicated hydraulic jacks and moving human figures. One such clock was gifted to Charlemagne, King of the Franks, in 807. Arab engineers such as Banu Musa and Al-Jazari published treatise on hydraulics and further advanced the art of water clocks. Al-Jazari built automated moving peacocks driven by hydropower. He invented a water wheels with cams on their axle used to operate automata. One of al-Jazari's humanoid automata was a waitress that could serve water, tea or drinks. The drink was stored in a tank with a reservoir from where the drink drips into a bucket and, after seven minutes, into a cup, after which the waitress appears out of an automatic door serving the drink. Al-Jazari invented a hand washing automaton incorporating a flush mechanism now used in modern flush toilets. It features a female humanoid automaton standing by a basin filled with water. When the user pulls the lever, the water drains and the female automaton refills the basin. Furthermore, he created a robotic musical band. According to Mark Rosheim, unlike Greek designs Arab automata worked with dramatic illusion and manipulated the human perception for practical application.


title: History of robots

text: The segmental gears described in "The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices", published by Al-Jazari shortly before his death in 1206, appeared 100 years later in the most advanced European clocks. Al-Jazari also published instructions on the construction of humanoid automata. The first water clocks modeled on Arabic designs were constructed in Europe about 1000 CE, possibly on the basis of the information that was transmitted during Muslim-Christian contact in Sicily and Spain. Among the first recorded European water clocks is that of Gerbert of Aurillac, built in 985 CE. Hero's works on automata were translated into Latin amid the 12th century Renaissance. The early 13th-century artist-engineer Villard de Honnecourt sketched plans for several automata. At the end of the 13th century, Robert II, Count of Artois, built a pleasure garden at his castle at Hesdin that incorporated a number of robots, humanoid and animal. Automated bellstrikers, called jacquemart, became popular in Europe in the 14th century alongside mechanical clocks.


title: History of robots

text: Among the first verifiable automation is a humanoid drawn by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) in around 1495. Leonardo's notebooks, rediscovered in the 1950s, contain detailed drawings of a mechanical knight in armor which was able to sit up, wave its arms and move its head and jaw. In the mid-1400s, Johannes Müller von Königsberg created an automaton eagle and fly made of iron; both could fly. John Dee is also known for creating a wooden beetle, capable of flying.


title: History of robots

text: The 17th-century thinker Rene Descartes believed that animals and humans were biological machines. On his last trip to Norway, he took with him a mechanical doll that looked like his dead daughter Francine. In the 18th century the master toymaker Jacques de Vaucanson built for Louis XV an automated duck with hundreds of moving parts, which could eat and drink. Vaucanson subsequently built humanoid automatons, a drummer and fife player were noted for their anatomical similarity to real human beings. Vaucanson's creation inspired European watchmakers to manufacture mechanical automata and it became fashionable among the European aristocracy to collect sophisticated mechanical devices for entertainment. In 1747 Julien Offray de La Mettrie anonymously published "L'homme machine" ("Man a Machine"), in which he called Vaucanson a "new Prometheus" and mused "the human body is a watch, a large watch constructed with such skill and ingenuity".


title: History of robots

text: In the 1770s the Swiss Pierre Jaquet-Droz created moving automata that looked like children, which delighted Mary Shelley, who went on to write the 1818 novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus". The ultimate attempt at automation was The Turk by Wolfgang von Kempelen, a sophisticated machine that could play chess against a human opponent and toured Europe. When the machine was brought to the new world, it prompted Edgar Allan Poe to pen an essay, in which he concluded that it was impossible for mechanical devices to reason or think.


title: History of robots

text: In the 19th century the Japanese craftsman Hisashige Tanaka, known as "Japan's Edison", created an array of extremely complex mechanical toys, some of which could serve tea, fire arrows drawn from a quiver, or even paint a Japanese "kanji" character. The landmark text "Karakuri Zui" ("Illustrated Machinery") was published in 1796. In 1898 Nikola Tesla demonstrated a prototype remote-controlled submarine at Madison Square Garden as "an automaton which left to itself, will act as though possessed of reason and without any wilful control from the outside." He defended his invention against critical reporters, arguing that his automata were not "wireless torpedo", but instead, "mechanical men, which will do the laborious work of the human race."


title: History of robots

text: Starting in 1900, L. Frank Baum introduced contemporary technology into children's books in the Oz series. In "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (1900) Baum told the story of the cyborg Tin Woodman, a human woodcutter who had his limbs, head and body replaced by a tinsmith after his wicked axe had severed them. In "Ozma of Oz" (1907) Baum describes the copper clockwork man Tik-Tok, who needs to be continuously wound up and runs down at inopportune moments.


title: History of robots

text: In 1903, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres y Quevedo introduced a radio based control system called the ""Telekino"" at the Paris Academy of Science. It was intended as a way of testing a dirigible of his own design without risking human lives. To avoid the expense of conceivably crashing his airship prototype he built his demonstration device into a boat. Unlike the system Tesla used, which carried out actions of the 'on/off' type, Torres device was able to memorize the signals received to execute the operations on its own and could carry out to 19 different orders. In 1906, in the presence of an audience which included the King of Spain, Torres demonstrated the invention in the Port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore with people on board. Later, he would try to apply the Telekino to projectiles and torpedoes but had to abandon the project for lack of financing.


title: History of robots

text: In 1912, Leonardo Torres y Quevedo built the first truly autonomous machine capable of playing chess. As opposed to the human-operated The Turk and Ajeeb, "El Ajedrecista" (The Chessplayer) was an automaton which play chess without human guidance. It only played an endgame with three chess pieces, automatically moving a white king and a rook to checkmate the black king moved by a human opponent. In his 1913 paper "Essays on Automatics", Torres proposed a machine that makes "judgments" using sensors that capture information from the outside, parts that manipulate the outside world like arms, power sources such as batteries and air pressure, and the most important, captured information and past information. It is defined as a part that can control the reaction like a living thing according to external information and adapt to changes in the environment to change its behavior.


title: History of robots

text: The term "robot" was first used in a play published by the Czech Karel Čapek in 1921. "R.U.R." (Rossum's Universal Robots) was a satire, robots were manufactured biological beings that performed all unpleasant manual labor. According to Čapek, the word was created by his brother Josef from the Czech word "robota" 'corvée', or in Slovak 'work' or 'labor'. (Karel Čapek was working on his play during his stay in Trenčianske Teplice in Slovakia where his father worked as a medical doctor.) The play "R.U.R," replaced the popular use of the word "automaton".


title: History of robots

text: Westinghouse Electric Corporation built Televox in 1926; it was a cardboard cutout connected to various devices which users could turn on and off. In 1927, Fritz Lang's Metropolis was released; the Maschinenmensch ("machine-human"), a gynoid humanoid robot, also called "Parody", "Futura", "Robotrix", or the "Maria impersonator" (played by German actress Brigitte Helm), was the first robot ever to be depicted on film.


title: History of robots

text: The most famous Japanese robotic automaton was presented to the public in 1927. The Gakutensoku was supposed to have a diplomatic role. Actuated by compressed air, it could write fluidly and raise its eyelids. Many robots were constructed before the dawn of computer-controlled servomechanisms, for the public relations purposes of major firms. These were essentially machines that could perform a few stunts, like the automata of the 18th century. In 1928, one of the first humanoid robots was exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Model Engineers Society in London. Invented by W. H. Richards, the robot - named Eric - consisted of an aluminium suit of armour with eleven electromagnets and one motor powered by a 12-volt power source. The robot could move its hands and head and could be controlled by remote control or voice control.


title: History of robots

text: The earliest designs of industrial robots were put into production in the United States. These "manipulators" had joints modelled on human shoulder-arm-wrist kinetics to replicate human motions like pulling, pushing, pressing and lifting. Motions could be controlled through cam and switch programming. In 1938 Willard V. Pollard filed the first patent application for such an arm, the "Position Controlling Apparatus" with electronic controllers, pneumatic cylinder and motors that powered six axes of motion. But the large drum memory made programming time-consuming and difficult.


title: History of robots

text: In 1939, the humanoid robot known as Elektro appeared at the World's Fair. Seven feet tall (2.1 m) and weighing 265 pounds (120 kg), it could walk by voice command, speak about 700 words (using a 78-rpm record player), smoke cigarettes, blow up balloons, and move its head and arms. The body consisted of a steel gear cam and motor skeleton covered by an aluminium skin.


title: History of robots

text: In 1939 Konrad Zuse constructed the first programmable electromechanical computer, laying the foundation for the construction of a humanoid machine that is now deemed a robot. The practical application of binary logic to electric switches had been demonstrated by Claude Shannon, but his calculator was not programmable.


title: History of robots

text: In 1941 and 1942, Isaac Asimov formulated the Three Laws of Robotics, and in the process coined the word "robotics". In 1945 Vannevar Bush published As We May Think, an essay that investigated the potential of electronic data processing. He predicted the rise of computers, digital word processors, voice recognition and machine translation. He was later credited by Ted Nelson, the inventor of hypertext.


title: History of robots

text: In 1943 Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow adopted the human central nervous system as control paradigm for automatic weapons systems. In doing so they pioneered cybernetics (Greek for "steersman") and modelled data processing on the assumption that an animal continually communicates its sensorial experience to its central nervous system as automatic and involuntary feedback, thus being able to regulate processes such as respiration, circulation and digestion. Following the Second World War, at a 1946 conference on cybernetics, Warren McCulloch gathered a team of mathematicians, computer engineers, physiologists and psychologists to work on machine operation using biological systems as starting point. Following the publication of his book in 1948, Wiener's idea that inanimate systems could simulate biological and social systems through the use of sensors led to the adaption of cybernetic theories into industrial machines. But servo controllers proved inadequate in achieving the desired level of automation.


title: History of robots

text: The first electronic autonomous robots with complex behavior were created by William Grey Walter of the Burden Neurological Institute at Bristol, England in 1948 and 1949. He wanted to prove that rich connections between a small number of brain cells could give rise to very complex behaviors - essentially that the secret of how the brain worked lay in how it was wired up. His first robots, named Elmer and Elsie, were constructed between 1948 and 1949 and were often described as "tortoises" due to their shape and slow rate of movement. The three-wheeled tortoise robots were capable of phototaxis, by which they could find their way to a recharging station when they ran low on battery power.


title: History of robots

text: Walter stressed the importance of using purely analogue electronics to simulate brain processes at a time when his contemporaries such as Alan Turing and John von Neumann were all turning towards a view of mental processes in terms of digital computation. Walter's work inspired subsequent generations of robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks, Hans Moravec and Mark Tilden. Modern incarnations of Walter's "turtles" may be found in the form of BEAM robotics.


title: History of robots

text: In 1951 Walter published the paper "A Machine that learns", documenting how his more advanced mechanical robots acted as intelligent agent by demonstrating conditioned reflex learning.


title: History of robots

text: Unimate, the first digitally operated and programmable robot, was invented by George Devol in 1954 and "represents the foundation of the modern robotics industry."


title: History of robots

text: In Japan, robots became popular comic book characters. Robots became cultural icons and the Japanese government was spurred into funding research into robotics. Among the most iconic characters was the Astro Boy, who is taught human feelings such as love, courage and self-doubt. Culturally, robots in Japan became regarded as helpmates to their human counterparts.


title: History of robots

text: The introduction of transistors into computers in the mid-1950s reduced their size and increased performance. Therefore, computing and programming could be incorporated into a range of applications, including automation. In 1959 researchers of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) demonstrated computer-assisted manufacturing.


title: History of robots

text: Devol sold the first Unimate to General Motors in 1960, and it was installed in 1961 in a plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey, to lift hot pieces of metal from a die casting machine and place them in cooling liquid. "Without any fanfare, the world's first working robot joined the assembly line at the General Motors plant in Ewing Township in the spring of 1961... It was an automated die-casting mold that dropped red-hot door handles and other such car parts into pools of cooling liquid on a line that moved them along to workers for trimming and buffing." Devol's patent for the first digitally operated programmable robotic arm represents the foundation of the modern robotics industry.


title: History of robots

text: The Rancho Arm was developed as a robotic arm to help handicapped patients at the Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in Downey, California; this computer-controlled arm was bought by Stanford University in 1963. In 1967 the first industrial robot was put to productive use in Japan. The Versatran robot had been developed by American Machine and Foundry. A year later a hydraulic robot design by Unimation was put into production by Kawasaki Heavy Industries. Marvin Minsky created the Tentacle Arm in 1968; the arm was computer-controlled and its 12 joints were powered by hydraulics. In 1969 Mechanical Engineering student Victor Scheinman created the Stanford Arm, recognized as the first electronic computer-controlled robotic arm because the Unimate's instructions were stored on a magnetic drum.