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Contents contributed and discussions participated by magnanma

magnanma

History of LEGO -- Everyone's Favorite Building Blocks - 0 views

  • This is the epitome of the educational toy wrapped up in fun.
  • This is the epitome of the educational toy wrapped up in fun.
    • magnanma
       
      in what way are legos educational?
  • 1932 by master carpenter
    • magnanma
       
      that's fairly recent
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  • name of LEGO, which came from the Danish words "LEg GOdt," meaning "play well."
  • By the early 1960s, LEGO had gone international
  • LEGO had grown to 50 employees by 1948
  • 200 different kinds of toys
  • LEGO bought a plastic injection-molding machine, which could mass produce plastic toys
  • the United States in 1973
  • have sparked the imagination of children around the world, and LEGO sets have a strong hold on their place at the top of the list of the world's most popular toys. 
magnanma

History of FIFA - The first FIFA World Cup™ - FIFA.com - 0 views

  • The success of the Olympic Football Tournament intensified FlFA's wish for its own world championship. Questionnaires were sent to the affiliated associations, asking whether they agreed to the organisation of a tournament and under what conditions.
  • Following a remarkable proposal by the Executive Committee, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam on 28 May 1928 decided to stage a world championship organised by FIFA. Now, the organising country had to be chosen.
  • These arguments were decisive. The FIFA Congress in Barcelona in 1929 assigned Uruguay as first host country of the FIFA World Cup ™. The other candidates had withdrawn.
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  • Participation did not only involve a long sea journey for the Europeans; the clubs would have to renounce their best players for two months. Consequently, more and more associations broke their promise to participate and it took much manoeuvring by Rimet to ensure at least four European teams
  • The first FIFA World Cup opened at the brand-new Estadio Centenario in Montevideo on 18 July 1930. It was the beginning of a new era in world football and the inaugural event proved a remarkable success, both in a sporting and a financial sense.
  • FIFA chose Italy ahead of rival candidates Sweden to host the second FIFA World Cup and this time it took qualifying matches to arrive at the 16 finalists. Unlike in 1930 there were no groups and only knockout rounds
  • The FIFA World Cup should have taken place for the fourth time in 1942 but the outbreak of World War Two meant otherwise. Although FIFA maintained its Zurich offices throughout the conflict, it was not until 1 July 1946 in Luxembourg that the Congress met again.
  • As the only candidate, Brazil was chosen unanimously to host the next FIFA World Cup, to be staged in 1949 (and postponed to 1950 for time reasons). At the same time, Switzerland was given the option for 1954.
magnanma

Drawing - History of drawing | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • As an artistic endeavour, drawing is almost as old as mankind. In an instrumental, subordinate role, it developed along with the other arts in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Whether preliminary sketches for mosaics and murals or architectural drawings and designs for statues and reliefs within the variegated artistic production of the Gothic medieval building and artistic workshop, drawing as a nonautonomous auxiliary skill was subordinate to the other arts.
  • In the West, the history of drawing as an independent artistic document began toward the end of the 14th century. If its development was independent, however, it was not insular.
  • Drawing became an independent art form in northern Italy, at first quite within the framework of ordinary studio activity. But with nature studies, copies of antiques, and drafts in the various sketchbooks (those of Giovannino de’Grassi, Antonio Pisanello, and Jacopo Bellini, for example), the tradition of the Bauhütten studio workshop changed to individual work: the place of “exempla,” models, reproduced in formalized fashion was now being taken by subjectively probing and partially creative drawings.
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  • In central Italy, on the other hand, and especially in Florence, it was the clear contour that predominated, the closed and firmly circumscribed form, the static and plastic character.
  • The draftsmen of Venice and northern Italy preferred an open form with loose and interrupted delineation in order to achieve even in drawing the pictorial effect that corresponded to their painters’ imagination.
  • In drawing produced north of the Alps, the characteristic features lie in the tendency to pictorial compactness and precise execution of detail.
  • North of the Alps the autonomy of drawing was championed in the first instance by Albrecht Dürer, an indefatigable draftsman who mastered all techniques and exercised an enduring and widespread influence. The delineatory constituent clearly predominates even in his paintings. This corresponds to the general stylistic character of 16th-century German art, within which Matthias Grünewald, with his freer, broader, and therefore more pictorial style of drawing, and the painters of the Danube school, with their ornamentalizing and agitated stroke, represent significant exceptions.
magnanma

Eyebrow Shapes Throughout History and the Women Who Started Each Trend - 0 views

  • Ancient Egyptians used carbon and black oxide to form thick and black eyebrows to honor their god Horus. Some eyebrow styles dominated ancient China such as the Daimei, black brows, Emei, fine brows, and Guangmei, short and thick brows. The Olmecs painted humans with flamboyant eyebrows. This emulated a jaguar in which they believed is where their society descended from.
  • As proved by history, eyebrow shapes have been one of the most important beauty aspects for women. Their styles have evolved as much as hair removal products, especially during the past 100 years. The twentieth century has been particularly incredible thanks to the advent of film, mass advertising, computers, and social media.
  • After World War I, the success of silent films gave rise a new trend: pencil-thin eyebrows. While Charlie Chaplin's eyebrows were not particularly thin, the eyebrows of the actresses who appeared in his films were
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  • As the decades went by, brows remained thin, but their arches got higher.
  • 1950s–1960s – Audrey Hepburn: Hollywood under New Eyebrows The thick, flat-shaped, low-arch, short eyebrows of Audrey Hepburn marked the start of a new trend.
  • thin eyebrows mainly because that was how they naturally were. In Diana Ross' case, however, it was just to make room for more disco makeup. The hippie movement during these years also encouraged girls to pluck their eyebrows very little or not at all and embrace their natural beauty.
  • They promoted the idea of an unkempt and natural style unlike the thick but perfect brows of the 1950s.
  • Grunge music, supermodels, and minimalistic fashion ideas brought an old friend back: pencil-thin lines. In the 1990s, every girl wanted to look like Drew Barrymore, the actress whose short haircut, slick dresses, neck chokers, and incredibly thin eyebrows made her an icon of the decade.
  • Social media has changed so many aspects of our lives—even our perception of beauty. Eyebrows have become a powerful part of selfies, according to a researcher at Cardiff University, who told the Guardian that Kim Kardashian and young model Cara Delevigne are great examples of this phenomenon. Both celebrities are known for their Instagram selfies and for having and defending dense eyebrows.
  • Appointments for brow makeovers have increased to the point where specialized spas offer 45-minute services that include tinting, threading, waxing, and countering.
magnanma

History of the Light Bulb | Lighting Basics | Bulbs.com - 0 views

  • The electric light, one of the everyday conveniences that most affects our lives, was not “invented” in the traditional sense in 1879 by Thomas Alva Edison, although he could be said to have created the first commercially practical incandescent light.
  • Edison is often credited with the invention because his version was able to outstrip the earlier versions because of a combination of three factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than others were able to achieve and a high resistance that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable.
  • In 1802, Humphry Davy invented the first electric light. He experimented with electricity and invented an electric battery. When he connected wires to his battery and a piece of carbon, the carbon glowed, producing light. His invention was known as the Electric Arc lamp.
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  • In 1850 an English physicist named Joseph Wilson Swan created a “light bulb” by enclosing carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. And by 1860 he had a working prototype, but the lack of a good vacuum and an adequate supply of electricity resulted in a bulb whose lifetime was much too short to be considered an effective prodcer of light.
  • They built their lamps with different sizes and shapes of carbon rods held between electrodes in glass cylinders filled with nitrogen. Woodward and Evans attempted to commercialize their lamp, but were unsuccessful.
  • However, he continued to test several types of material for metal filaments to improve upon his original design and by Nov 4, 1879, he filed another U.S. patent for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected ... to platina contact wires."
  • Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including using "cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways," it was not until several months after the patent was granted that Edison and his team discovered that a carbonized bamboo filament could last over 1200 hours.
  • 1906 - The General Electric Company were the first to patent a method of making tungsten filaments for use in incandescent lightbulbs. Edison himself had known tungsten would eventually prove to be the best choice for filaments in incandescent light bulbs, but in his day, the machinery needed to produce the wire in such a fine form was not available.
  • 1920s - The first frosted lightbulb is produced and adjustable power beam bulbs for car headlamps, and neon lighting.
  • Modern incandescent bulbs are not energy efficient – less than 10% of electrical power supplied to the bulb is converted into visible light. The remaining energy is lost as heat. However these inefficient light bulbs are still widely used today due to many advantages such as: wide, low-cost availability easy incorporation into electrical systems adaptable for small systems low voltage operation, such as in battery powered devices wide shape and size availability
  • with LED prices falling significantly, the future does seem to belong to the LED.
magnanma

Pol Pot - HISTORY - 0 views

shared by magnanma on 27 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Pol Pot was a political leader whose communist Khmer Rouge government led Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. During that time, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork.
  • The Khmer Rouge, in their attempt to socially engineer a classless communist society, took particular aim at intellectuals, city residents, ethnic Vietnamese, civil servants and religious leaders. Some historians regard the Pol Pot regime as one of the most barbaric and murderous in recent history.
  • In 1934, Pol Pot moved to Phnom Penh, where he spent a year at a Buddhist monastery before attending a French Catholic primary school. His Cambodian education continued until 1949, when he went to Paris on a scholarship. While there, he studied radio technology and became active in communist circles.
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  • Pol Pot, who had begun to emerge as Cambodian party chief, and the newly formed Khmer Rouge guerilla army, launched a national uprising in 1968.
  • Both the Khmer Rouge and Lon Nol’s troops purportedly committed mass atrocities. At the same time, about 70,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers stormed across the Vietnam-Cambodian border to fight North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops who had taken sanctuary in Cambodia.
  • By the time the U.S. bombing campaign ended in August 1973, the number of Khmer Rouge troops had increased exponentially, and they now controlled approximately three-quarters of Cambodia’s territory. Soon after, they began shelling Phnom Penh with rockets and artillery.
  • Almost immediately after taking power, the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh’s 2.5 million residents. Former civil servants, doctors, teachers and other professionals were stripped of their possessions and forced to toil in the fields as part of a re-education process.
  • Under Pol Pot, the state controlled all aspects of a person’s life. Money, private property, jewelry, gambling, most reading material and religion were outlawed; agriculture was collectivized; children were taken from their homes and forced into the military; and strict rules governing sexual relations, vocabulary and clothing were laid down.
  • In 1997 a Khmer Rouge splinter group captured Pol Pot and placed him under house arrest. He died in his sleep on April 15, 1998, at age 72 due to heart failure. A United Nations-backed tribunal has convicted only a handful of Khmer Rouge leaders of crimes against humanity.
magnanma

Palace of Versailles: Facts & History | Live Science - 0 views

  • Located about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southwest of Paris, the palace is beside the settlement of Versailles. The town was little more than a hamlet before becoming the seat of royal power. By the time of the French Revolution, it had a population of more than 60,000 people, making it one of the largest urban centers in France.
  • France's kings were first attracted to Versailles because of the area's prolific game. Louis XIII, who lived 1601-1643, bought up land, built a chateau and went on hunting trips.
  • The chateau Louis XIII built was little more than a hunting lodge having enough space to house the king and a small entourage. It was his successor, Louis XIV (1638-1715), the "Sun King," a ruler who chose the sun as his emblem and believed in centralized government with the king at its center, who would radically transform Versailles making it the seat of France's government by the time of his death.
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  • Spawforth notes that the palace contained about 350 living units varying in size, from multi-room apartments to spaces about the size of an alcove. The size and location of the room a person got depended on their rank and standing with the king. While the crown prince (known as the dauphin) got a sprawling apartment on the ground floor, a servant may have nothing more than a space in an attic or a makeshift room behind a staircase.
  • Scholars have suggested a number of factors that led him to build a great palace complex at Versailles and move the French government there. It's been noted that by keeping the king's residence some distance from Paris, it offered him protection from any civil unrest going on in the city. It also forced the nobles to travel to Versailles and seek lodging in the palace, something that impeded their ability to build up regional power bases that could potentially challenge the king.
  • A series of gardens, created in a formal style, stood to the west of the palace (one of them today is in the shape of a star) and contained sculptures as well as the pressurized fountains capable of launching water high into the air. The formality and grandeur of the gardens symbolized Louis XIV's absolute power, even over nature
  • Despite the richness of the palace, the kings had to make do with makeshift theaters up until 1768 when Louis XV allowed the building of the royal opera. It contained a mechanism that allowed the orchestra level to be raised to the stage allowing it to be used for dancing and banqueting. Spawforth notes that the opera required 3,000 candles to be burned for opening night and was rarely used due to its cost and the poor shape of France's finances.
  • After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette would be stripped of power, brought to Paris and ultimately beheaded. The palace fell under the control of the new republican government.Many of its furnishings were sold to help pay for the subsequent Revolutionary Wars. When Napoleon came to power, he had an apartment created for himself in the Grand Trianon, complete with a map room.
  • In 1871, after France had lost a war against Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm I was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors, adding an extra layer of humiliation to the French defeat. For several years after this defeat, the situation in France was so bad that its Chamber of Deputies and Senate opted to meet at Versailles, rather than Paris, for reasons of safety.
  • Today, Versailles is one of the most-visited sites in France. Visitors are drawn to its architectural grandeur, the stunning water features (concerts are often played in the gardens during the summer) and its sense of history. 
magnanma

The History of Mirror: Through A Glass, Darkly - Bienenstock Furniture Library - 0 views

  • Still waters and mythology aside, the mirror as object is called “one of mankind’s most consistent civilizers,” bringing a sense of personal reflection and comparative identity. (Passing In Review, 1925, Hart Mirror Plate Company). Mirror is central to every aspect of human history—art, archaeology, medicine, psychology, philosophy, technology­, optics—and of course, style.
  • The word mirror derives from the French “mirour,” from the Latin “mirari”—to admire. (The Romans themselves, however, used the word “speculum,” from “specere”—to look, or behold.)
  • Around 500 AD, man began to create somewhat clearer and more reflective glass mirrors using silver-mercury amalgams. Examples of such have been found in China dated as early as c.500AD. But another thousand years would pass before silvery-mercury amalgam processes became more efficient—and less deadly, mercury being one of the most toxic elements on planet Earth.
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  • Throughtout medieval Japan, mirrors were considered sacred objects—used not only in rarefied imperial ritual and display but also to ward off evil spirts and, when placed in Shinto shrines, to speak with the gods.
  • Early glass mirrors were made of glass tiles cut from blown glass forms—thus always slightly curved, and always slightly colored, as the chemistry of clear glass manufacture remained unknown. These glass tiles were then affixed over still-hot, carefully sized, cast lead forms, with a thin layer of polished metal sheeting between the two.
  • Mirrors were used by the ancient Egyptians as early as c.2900BC. These were made of polished bronze shaped into flat round discs—in representation of the sun-god Re—with handles of wood, metal or ivory. Likewise, in China, an unearthed cast bronze mirror has been dated as early as 2000BCE.
  • As guildsmen investigated tin, silver, and mercury amalgams, they also experimented with a different material: rock crystal. Extremely rare and as costly as gemstones, these wall-hung crystal mirrors were highly prized by admirers far and wide, including Francis I, ruler of Mantua 1382-1407, who had them installed in the Castle of San Giorgio
  • Jean-Baptiste Colbert—appealing to Louis XIV for economic reform and endeavoring to keep in France the 100,000 crowns going out yearly to Italy for mirrors—managed to import 20 (living) Venetian glass workers into France. Established by royal initiative, this Manufacture des Glaces (at the Saint-Gobain factory) would greatly expand the production of mirrors.
  • Glass mirror not only revolutionized how we see ourselves and how we magnify light, but also how artists see and depict the world. Mirror is cited as critical to the discovery of linear perspective—making what is flat (a painting) appear to be in relief (real life)— by Renaissance artists.
  • Through the 18th century, technical and economic difficulties persisted in the manufacture of clear glass. Metal mirrors remained the standard in everyday households, oiled paper the common window covering.
magnanma

BBC - History - World Wars: Breaking Germany's Enigma Code - 0 views

  • Fewer people still knew that this piece of spook hardware was invented by a German (based on an idea by a Dutchman), that information about it was leaked to the French, and that it was first reconstructed by a Pole, before it was offered to Britain's codebreakers as a way of deciphering German signals traffic during World War Two
  • the Zimmermann telegram - a message from the German foreign minister to his ambassador in Mexico City informing him of plans to invade the United States. On being notified of these plans, officials in Washington were understandably perturbed, and hastened to effect the entry of the US into the war.
  • Dr Arthur Scherbius had developed his 'Enigma' machine, capable of transcribing coded information, in the hope of interesting commercial companies in secure communications. In 1923 he set up his Chiffriermaschinen Aktiengesellschaft (Cipher Machines Corporation) in Berlin to manufacture this product, and within three years the German navy was producing its own version, followed in 1928 by the army and in 1933 by the air force.
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  • Despite providing some otherwise inaccessible information, it was some time before Ultra made any significant contribution to the war effort. Although, thanks to the information from the Poles, the British had learned to read parts of the Wehrmacht's signals traffic, regular decrypts only became possible in the Norwegian campaign
  • The Germans were convinced that Enigma output could not be broken, so they used the machine for all sorts of communications - on the battlefield, at sea, in the sky and, significantly, within its secret services. The British described any intelligence gained from Enigma as 'Ultra', and considered it top secret. Only a select few commanders were made aware of the full significance of Ultra, and it was mostly used only sparingly, to prevent the Germans thinking their ciphers had been broken.
  • Enigma allowed an operator to type in a message, then scramble it by means of three to five notched wheels, or rotors, which displayed different letters of the alphabet. The receiver needed to know the exact settings of these rotors in order to reconstitute the coded text.
  • A break-through came in March 1941, however, when the German trawler Krebs was captured off Norway, complete with two Enigma machines and the Naval Enigma settings list for the previous month. This allowed German Naval Enigma to be read, albeit with some delay, in April, by codebreakers at Bletchley.
  • Although he was dissuaded by his experts, the Germans redoubled their efforts to tighten Enigma's security, and the Bletchley Park codebreakers, realising what they were up against, wrote to British Prime Minster Winston Churchill complaining that they were not being given enough resources. Churchill replied with a famous 'Action This Day' memorandum: 'Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this had been done'.
  • In February 1942 the Germans hit back by introducing a new fourth wheel (multiplying the number of settings another 26 times) into their Naval Enigma machines. The resulting 'net' was known to the Germans as 'Triton' and to the British as 'Shark'. For almost a year Bletchley could make no inroads into Shark, and Allied losses in the Atlantic again increased alarmingly.
  • By D-Day in June 1944 Ultra was no longer so important. But still no one wanted the Germans to sense that Enigma was being read. When, a few days before the Normandy landings, an American task force captured a German U-boat with its Enigma keys
  • By how much did Ultra intelligence, gained from reading Enigma ciphers, shorten the war? Harry Hinsley, based at Bletchley during the war, suggests it was a significant asset.
magnanma

Ancient Egypt - HISTORY - 0 views

  • For almost 30 centuries—from its unification around 3100 B.C. to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.—ancient Egypt was the preeminent civilization in the Mediterranean world
  • Neolithic (late Stone Age) communities in northeastern Africa exchanged hunting for agriculture and made early advances that paved the way for the later development of Egyptian arts and crafts, technology, politics and religion (including a great reverence for the dead and possibly a belief in life after death).
  • agriculture (largely wheat and barley) formed the economic base of the Egyptian state. The annual flooding of the great Nile River provided the necessary irrigation and fertilization each year; farmers sowed the wheat after the flooding receded and harvested it before the season of high temperatures and drought returned.
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  • King Djoser asked Imhotep, an architect, priest and healer, to design a funerary monument for him; the result was the world’s first major stone building, the Step-Pyramid at Saqqara, near Memphis. Egyptian pyramid-building reached its zenith with the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo.
  • During the third and fourth dynasties, Egypt enjoyed a golden age of peace and prosperity. The pharaohs held absolute power and provided a stable central government; the kingdom faced no serious threats from abroad; and successful military campaigns in foreign countries like Nubia and Libya added to its considerable economic prosperity
  • until about 2160 B.C., when the central authority completely dissolved, leading to civil war between provincial governors. This chaotic situation was intensified by Bedouin invasions and accompanied by famine and disease.
  • The kingdom also built diplomatic and trade relations with Syria, Palestine and other countries; undertook building projects including military fortresses and mining quarries; and returned to pyramid-building in the tradition of the Old Kingdom. The Middle Kingdom reached its peak under Amenemhet III (1842-1797 B.C.); its decline began under Amenenhet IV (1798-1790 B.C.
  • The controversial Amenhotep IV (c. 1379-1362), of the late 18th dynasty, undertook a religious revolution, disbanding the priesthoods dedicated to Amon-Re (a combination of the local Theban god Amon and the sun god Re) and forcing the exclusive worship of another sun-god, Aton. Renaming himself Akhenaton (“servant of the Aton”), he built a new capital in Middle Egypt called Akhetaton, known later as Amarna. Upon Akhenaton’s death, the capital returned to Thebes and Egyptians returned to worshiping a multitude of gods.
  • In 525 B.C., Cambyses, king of Persia, defeated Psammetichus III, the last Saite king, at the Battle of Pelusium, and Egypt became part of the Persian Empire.
  • The last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt–the legendary Cleopatra VII–surrendered Egypt to the armies of Octavian (later Augustus) in 31 B.C. Six centuries of Roman rule followed, during which Christianity became the official religion of Rome and the Roman Empire’s provinces (including Egypt). The conquest of Egypt by the Arabs in the seventh century A.D. and the introduction of Islam would do away with the last outward aspects of ancient Egyptian culture and propel the country towards its modern incarnation.
magnanma

Charles de Gaulle - Quotes, Facts & Presidency - Biography - 0 views

  • Charles de Gaulle rose from French soldier in World War I to exiled leader and, eventually, president of the Fifth Republic. He served as president from 1959 to 1969.
  • Establishing France's Fifth Republic, de Gaulle dedicated himself to improving the country's economic situation and maintaining its independence. He sought to keep France separate from the two superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union. To show France's military relevance, de Gaulle successfully campaigned for the country to press on with its nuclear weapons program.
  • Charles de Gaulle was born on November 22, 1890, into a patriotic and devoutly Catholic family. De Gaulle was a well-educated and well-read child. Early on, he dreamed of being a military leader. He enrolled at the country's top military academy, Saint-Cyr, in 1909
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  • Promoted to captain, de Gaulle fought in one of the war's most deadly confrontations — the Battle of Verdun — in 1916. During the fight, he was injured and, subsequently, taken prisoner. After several failed escape attempts, de Gaulle was freed at the end of the war.
  • A dedicated patriot, de Gaulle did not accept France's surrender to Germany in 1940. He instead fled to England, where he became a leader of the Free French movement, with the support of British prime minister Winston Churchill. From London, de Gaulle broadcast a message across the English Channel to his countrymen, calling for them to continue to resist the German occupation.
  • He did, however, secure his nation an occupation zone in Germany and a seat on the United Nation's Security Council. De Gaulle enjoyed wide support at home and, in 1945, became president of France's provisional government.
  • "General de Gaulle is dead. France is a widow." France mourned the loss of its famous statesman and military leader; the country had lost one of its greatest heroes — a hero who had seen his people through war, and proved to be instrumental in his country's recovery.
magnanma

The History of the Computer Keyboard - 1 views

  • The history of the modern computer keyboard begins with a direct inheritance from the invention of the typewriter. It was Christopher Latham Sholes who, in 1868, patented the first practical modern typewriter. Soon after, in 1877, the Remington Company began mass marketing the first typewriters.
  • In 1948, another computer called the Binac computer used an electro-mechanically controlled typewriter to input data directly onto magnetic tape in order to feed in computer data and print results
  • the original QWERTY layout, which remains the most popular keyboard layout on devices of many types throughout the English-speaking world. QWERTY's current acceptance has been attributed to the layout being "efficient enough" and "familiar enough" to hinder the commercial viability of competitors.
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  • One of the first breakthroughs in keyboard technology was the invention of the teletype machine. Also referred to as the teleprinter, the technology has been around since the mid-1800s and was improved by inventors such as Royal Earl House, David Edward Hughes, Emile Baudot, Donald Murray, Charles L. Krum, Edward Kleinschmidt, and Frederick G. Creed.
  • In the 1930s, new keyboard models were introduced that combined the input and printing technology of typewriters with the communications technology of the telegraph. Punch-card systems were also combined with typewriters to create what were known as keypunches. These systems became the basis of early adding machines (early calculators), which were hugely commercially successful. By 1931, IBM had registered more than $1 million in adding machine sales.
  • The most compelling explanation is that Sholes developed the layout to overcome the physical limitations of mechanical technology at the time. Early typists pressed a key which would, in turn, push a metal hammer that rose up in an arc, striking an inked ribbon to make a mark on a paper before returning to its original position. Separating common pairs of letters minimized the jamming of the mechanism.
  • The system encouraged the development of a new user interface called the video display terminal (VDT), which incorporated the technology of the cathode ray tube used in televisions into the design of the electric typewriter. This allowed computer users to see what text characters they were typing on their display screens for the first time, which made text assets easier to create, edit, and delete.
  • The first of handheld devices was the HP95LX, released in 1991 by Hewlett-Packard. It had a hinged clamshell format that was small enough to fit in the hand. Although not yet classified as such, the HP95LX was the first of the Personal Data Assistants (PDA). It had a small QWERTY keyboard for text entry, although touch typing was practically impossible due to its small size.
  • As PDAs began to add web and email access, word processing, spreadsheets, personal schedules, and other desktop applications, pen input was introduced. The first pen input devices were made in the early 1990s, but the technology to recognize handwriting was not robust enough to be effective.
  • One fairly popular method was the "soft keyboard." A soft keyboard is one that has a visual display with built-in touchscreen technology. Text entry is performed by tapping on keys with a stylus or finger. The soft keyboard disappears when not in use.
magnanma

A Brief History of Courtship and Dating in America, Part 1 - Boundless - 0 views

  • prior to the early 20th century, courtship involved one man and one woman spending intentional time together to get to know each other with the expressed purpose of evaluating the other as a potential husband or wife. The man and the woman usually were members of the same community, and the courting usually was done in the woman’s home in the presence (and under the watchful eye) of her family
  • between the late 1800s and the first few decades of the 1900s the new system of “dating” added new stages to courtship. One of the most obvious changes was that it multiplied the number of partners (from serious to casual) an individual was likely to have before marriage
  • we have not moved from a courtship system to a dating system, but instead, we have added a dating system into our courtship system
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  • Bailey observes that by the 1930s and ’40s, with the advent of the “date” (which we will look at more fully in the next installment) courtship increasingly took place in public spaces such as movie theaters and dance halls, removed by distance and by anonymity from the sheltering and controlling contexts of the home and local community
  • A second cultural force that influenced the older courtship system was the rise of “public advice” literature as well as the rise of an “expert” class of advisers — psychologists, sociologists, statisticians, etc. At the same time that the public entertainment culture was on the rise in the early 20th century, a proliferation of magazine articles and books began offering advice about courtship, marriage and the relationship between the sexes.
  • the invention of birth control. There is too much that could be said here, so I’ll be brief. Simply put, with the onset of the widespread use of chemical and other means of birth control, the language of procreation — of having children — was separated from the language of marriage.
  • The new courtship system gave importance to competition (and worried about how to control it); it valued consumption; it presented an economic model of scarcity and abundance of men and women as a guide to personal affairs
magnanma

human evolution | Stages & Timeline | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • Viewed zoologically, we humans are Homo sapiens, a culture-bearing upright-walking species that lives on the ground and very likely first evolved in Africa about 315,000 years ago.
  • the exact nature of our evolutionary relationships has been the subject of debate and investigation since the great British naturalist Charles Darwin published his monumental books On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871).
  • In fact, the human “family tree” may be better described as a “family bush,” within which it is impossible to connect a full chronological series of species, leading to Homo sapiens, that experts can agree upon.
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  • The primary resource for detailing the path of human evolution will always be fossil specimens.
  • In devising such scenarios and filling in the human family bush, researchers must consult a large and diverse array of fossils, and they must also employ refined excavation methods and records, geochemical dating techniques, and data from other specialized fields such as genetics, ecology and paleoecology, and ethology (animal behaviour)—in short, all the tools of the multidisciplinary science of paleoanthropology.
  • It is generally agreed that the taproot of the human family shrub is to be found among apelike species of the Middle Miocene Epoch (roughly 16–11.6 mya) or Late Miocene Epoch (11.6–5.3 mya). Genetic data based on molecular clock estimates support a Late Miocene ancestry. Various Eurasian and African Miocene primates have been advocated as possible ancestors to the early hominins, which came on the scene during the Pliocene Epoch (5.3–2.6 mya)
magnanma

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY - 0 views

  • The history of human technology begins with the discovery of how to give stone a cutting edge. The type of stone found most suitable for the purpose is flint.
  • The human discovery that round nodules of flint can be split and chipped to form a sharp edge is extremely ancient. Tools made in this way have been found in Africa from about 2.5 million years ago
  • An event of crucial importance in the development of technology is man's taming of fire. This probably happens some 500,000 years ago in China, where the caves occupied by Peking man contain what appear to be hearths. Some experts believe there is evidence of the use of fire much earlier in south Africa.
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  • Textiles feature almost as early as Pottery. Weights designed for spinning are common in neolithic sites, and fragments of fine woven cloth survive in graves at Catal Huyuk from as early as 5800 BC.
  • The other method, going back to at least 5800 BC, uses the thread in a rectangular criss-cross pattern to produce flat cloth. The vertical threads are stretched taut to form a grille; the horizontal threads are then interwoven between them. This is the process for all textiles of cotton, linen, silk or wool. It also produces tapestry
  • By 4000 BC deep shafts are cut into the hillside at Rudna Glava, in the Balkans, to excavate copper ore. This robbing of the earth's treasures is carried out with due solemnity.
  • The harnessing of draught animals is a major technological advance in agriculture as well as transport. The first to be harnessed is the ox, conveniently provided by nature with a fleshy hump above the shoulders
  • The first ploughs consist of a sharp point of timber, sometimes hardened in a flame or tipped with flint, projecting downwards at the end of a long handle.
  • The wheel is often quoted as the single most important advance in early technology. It is sometimes said to have evolved from the potter's wheel. Both are first known at approximately the same period, around 3000 BC. But they share no geographical origin and it is intrinsically unlikely that either form would suggest the other. Each is a natural solution to a very different problem.
magnanma

European Art History Timeline - 0 views

  • European art history began with early mobile anthropomorphic carvings in the Paleolithic era, as well as cave paintings reflecting the natural world. Europe took a distinct turn from other regions with the rise of the Greek empire, and Greek classical art and architecture influenced later European art for centuries. The Christian church influenced much of medieval art until the Renaissance, when a revival in classical ideas turned artistic attention to humanistic themes.
  • From 1100 onward, Gothic architecture experiments with innovations to construct wider, taller buildings in stone. This results in innovations such as the pointed arch and flying buttresses, as architects compete across Europe to build ever-taller cathedrals. Gothic painting develops later, as artists focus on religious scenes painted on panels or frescoes.
  • Around 1563, the Council of Trent adopts a propagandistic stance in which art is to stimulate the public's interest and faith in the Roman Catholic church. This is partially in response to the Renaissance and its subsequent developments, such as the Reformation.
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  • In response to the highly decorative visual art and architecture of the Baroque and Rococo styles, Neoclassicism develops around 1760. This style emphasizes simplicity and symmetry, recalling Greek and Roman influences as well as Renaissance influences.
  • Around 1840, the Realism movement begins in French art, and it lasts until the late nineteenth century. This movement, which develops in response to calls for democratic reform, aims to democratize art by depicting modern subjects from everyday working-class life. Painters reject the wild themes of Romanticism and the idealized subjects of Neoclassicism.
  • In 1874, a Paris exhibition by painters including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro launches Impressionism. While initially panned by critics, the exhibition introduces a new style of unfinished, sketch-like painting. Impressionism focuses on depicting contemporary subjects in this innovative style while rejecting traditional motifs. It serves as the springboard for later avant-garde styles, including Post-Impressionism and Fauvism.
  • Around 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, the movement later known as postmodern art emerges in Europe. Postmodern art both arises from and is a rejection of modernism, or avant-garde movements, and almost universally includes paradox. As suggested by Edouard Manet, paradox in art examines the difference between reality and representation
magnanma

Guild | trade association | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • Guild, also spelled gild, an association of craftsmen or merchants formed for mutual aid and protection and for the furtherance of their professional interests.
  • generally one of two types: merchant guilds or craft guilds. Merchant guilds were associations of all or most of the merchants in a particular town or city; these men might be local or long-distance traders, wholesale or retail sellers, and might deal in various categories of goods. Craft guilds, on the other hand, were occupational associations that usually comprised all the artisans and craftsmen in a particular branch of industry or commerce.
  • They established a monopoly of trade in their locality or within a particular branch of industry or commerce; they set and maintained standards for the quality of goods and the integrity of trading practices in that industry; they worked to maintain stable prices for their goods and commodities; and they sought to control town or city governments in order to further the interests of the guild members and achieve their economic objectives.
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  • the imperial government deliberately exploited these guilds in the interests of public authority and social order. The government tried to restrict the membership of the guilds to a hereditary caste of skilled artisans, but the increasing financial demands made upon the guilds by the government in the waning days of the Roman Empire had reduced most guilds to a precarious position by the 4th century ce
  • Some historians have contended that the guilds of medieval Europe derived from the collegia of the Byzantine Empire, but no direct connections have been established between these different institutions
  • Guilds came to control the distribution and sale of food, cloth, and other staple goods and thereby achieved a monopoly over the local commerce. Such guilds compelled foreign merchants or traders to pay a fee if they wanted to participate in the local trade, and some outside merchants were prohibited altogether from participating in that trade.
  • The guild tended to be an extremely hierarchical body structured on the basis of the apprenticeship system. (See apprenticeship.) In this structure, the members of a guild were divided into a hierarchy of masters, journeymen, and apprentices.
  • Yet the guilds’ exclusivity, conservatism, monopolistic practices, and selective entrance policies eventually began to erode their economic utility. Apprenticeships became almost entirely hereditable, and masters set ridiculously high standards for apprentices to become journeymen and for journeymen to become masters. The guilds worked exclusively for their own interests and sought to monopolize trade in their own locality.
magnanma

The History of Water Bottles - 0 views

  • The Romans built the aqueducts at the turn of the first millennium to deliver water to the cities, and vases or animal skins were used to transport water in smaller quantites. Other containers were made from clay or woven materials.
  • At first, these companies sold their water in glass bottles. Although a certain form of plastic was invented by Leonardo DaVinci during the Renaissance, plastic did not become widely used commercially for water until the mid-20th century. This was due to the high cost of manufacturing the material. Once high-density polyethylene was introduced, plastic become the preferred choice starting in the late 1960s.
  • Nearly 25 percent of bottled water sold in the United States originated from a ground water source, according to a study conducted from 2004 to 2008 by the National Resources Defense Council. The study concluded, "there is no assurance that just because water comes out of a bottle, it is any cleaner or safer than water from the tap."
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  • Close to 50 billion bottles of water are consumed in the United States each year, with close to 200 billion in the world, according to a May 2008 article in The New York Times.
  • Bottle shapes and sizes evolved along with this trend, and different types of materials were used. Water is now sold and carried in jugs, cans, multi-gallon-sized plastic and even aluminum bottles.
magnanma

Understanding the China-North Korea Relationship - 1 views

  • strains in the relationship surfaced when Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon in October 2006 and Beijing backed UN Security Council Resolution 1718, which imposed sanctions on Pyongyang. With this resolution and subsequent ones, Beijing signaled a shift in tone from diplomatic support to punishment. After North Korea’s missile launch test in November 2017, China called on North Korea to cease actions that increased tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
  • China’s support for North Korea dates back to the Korean War (1950–1953)
  • In 2018, Chinese imports from North Korea plummeted by 88 percent, while exports dropped by 33 percent. Even in the face of mounting trade restrictions, established informal trade along the China-North Korea border in items such as fuel, seafood, silkworms, and cell phones appears to be ongoing, signaling that China may be softening its restrictions.
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  • Bilateral trade increased tenfold between 2000 and 2015, peaking in 2014 at $6.86 billion, according to figures from the Seoul-based Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency
  • China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States have provided more than 75 percent of food aid to North Korea since 1995. North Korea, whose famine in the 1990s killed between eight hundred thousand and 2.4 million people, has repeatedly faced extensive droughts and severe flooding, which seriously damage harvests, threatening the food supply.
  • China has regarded stability on the Korean Peninsula as its primary interest. Its support for North Korea ensures a buffer between China and the democratic South, which is home to around twenty-nine thousand U.S. troops and marines.
  • The 1961 Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, up for renewal in 2021, says China is obliged to intervene against unprovoked aggression.
  • During their most recent meeting, Xi was welcomed to Pyongyang, marking the first time a Chinese leader visited North Korea since 2005.
magnanma

Overview of United States Government - 1 views

  • shortest national constitution in the world
  • March 4, 1789
  • Preamble, seven Articles, and 27 Amendments
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  • no one branch would reign supreme
  • making the federal laws
  • executing, enforcing, and administering the laws
  • interpret and apply US laws through cases
  • declare acts of Congress unconstitutional
  • If the government is not protecting the people, it should be dissolved.
  • power lies with the people
  • no one branch has all the power. Each branch has its own purpose: to make the laws, execute the laws, and interpret the laws.
  • each branch of government has a certain number of checks it can use to ensure the other branches do not become too powerful
  • veto
  • the government itself is limited to the power given to it by them.
  • Senate must approve
  • central government does not control all the power in the nation
  • The two major parties in America are the Democratic and Republican parties
  • not only historical precedent and tradition but also the electoral system itself
  • local, state, and federal.
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