text:
February 18

Pre-1600

 * 1229 – The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, signs a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy.
 * 1268 – The Battle of Wesenberg is fought between the Livonian Order and Dovmont of Pskov.
 * 1332 – Amda Seyon I, Emperor of Ethiopia begins his campaigns in the southern Muslim provinces.
 * 1478 – George, Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, is executed in private at the Tower of London.

1601–1900

 * 1637 – Eighty Years' War: Off the coast of Cornwall, England, a Spanish fleet intercepts an important Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by six warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.
 * 1735 – The ballad opera called Flora, or Hob in the Well went down in history as the first opera of any kind to be produced in North America (Charleston, S.C.)
 * 1781 – Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: Captain Thomas Shirley opens his expedition against Dutch colonial outposts on the Gold Coast of Africa (present-day Ghana).
 * 1791 – Congress passes a law admitting the state of Vermont to the Union, effective 4 March, after that state had existed for 14 years as a de facto independent largely unrecognized state.
 * 1797 – French Revolutionary Wars: Sir Ralph Abercromby and a fleet of 18 British warships invade Trinidad.
 * 1814 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Montereau.
 * 1861 – In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
 * 1861  – With Italian unification almost complete, Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumes the title of King of Italy.
 * 1873 – Bulgarian revolutionary leader Vasil Levski is executed by hanging in Sofia by the Ottoman authorities.
 * 1878 – John Tunstall is murdered by outlaw Jesse Evans, sparking the Lincoln County War in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
 * 1885 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is published in the United States.
 * 1900 – Second Boer War: Imperial forces suffer their worst single-day loss of life on Bloody Sunday, the first day of the Battle of Paardeberg.

1901–present

 * 1906 – Édouard de Laveleye forms the Belgian Olympic Committee in Brussels.
 * 1911 – The first official flight with airmail takes place from Allahabad, United Provinces, British India (now India), when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 km away.
 * 1915 – U-boat Campaign: The Imperial German Navy institutes unrestricted submarine warfare in the waters around Great Britain and Ireland.
 * 1930 – While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
 * 1930  – Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.
 * 1932 – The Empire of Japan creates the independent state of Manzhouguo (the obsolete Chinese name for Manchuria) free from the Republic of China and installed former Chinese Emperor Aisin Gioro Puyi as Chief Executive of the State.
 * 1938 – Second Sino-Japanese War: During the Nanking Massacre, the Nanking Safety Zone International Committee is renamed "Nanking International Rescue Committee", and the safety zone in place for refugees falls apart.
 * 1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Army begins the systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore.
 * 1943 – World War II: The Nazis arrest the members of the White Rose movement.
 * 1943  – World War II: Joseph Goebbels delivers his Sportpalast speech.
 * 1946 – Sailors of the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in Bombay harbour, from where the action spreads throughout the Provinces of British India, involving 78 ships, twenty shore establishments and 20,000 sailors
 * 1947 – First Indochina War: The French gain complete control of Hanoi after forcing the Viet Minh to withdraw to mountains.
 * 1954 – The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles.
 * 1955 – Operation Teapot: Teapot test shot "Wasp" is successfully detonated at the Nevada Test Site with a yield of 1.2 kilotons. Wasp is the first of fourteen shots in the Teapot series.
 * 1957 – Kenyan rebel leader Dedan Kimathi is executed by the British colonial government.
 * 1957  – Walter James Bolton becomes the last person legally executed in New Zealand.
 * 1965 – The Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
 * 1970 – The Chicago Seven are found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
 * 1972 – The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson, (6 Cal.3d 628) invalidates the state's death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.
 * 1977 – The Xinjiang 61st Regiment Farm fire started during Chinese New Year when a firecracker ignited memorial wreaths of the late Mao Zedong, killing 694 personnel. It remains the deadliest fireworks accident in the world.
 * 1977 – A thousand armed soldiers raid Kalakuta Republic, the commune of Nigerian singer Fela Kuti, leading to the death of Funmilayo Anikulapo Kuti.
 * 1977 – The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle is carried on its maiden "flight" on top of a Boeing 747.
 * 1979 – Richard Petty wins a then-record sixth Daytona 500 after leaders Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough crash on the final lap of the first NASCAR race televised live flag-to-flag.
 * 1983 – Thirteen people die and one is seriously injured in the Wah Mee massacre in Seattle. It is said to be the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in U.S. history.
 * 1991 – The IRA explodes bombs in the early morning at Paddington station and Victoria station in London.
 * 2001 – FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He is ultimately convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
 * 2001  – Sampit conflict: Inter-ethnic violence between Dayaks and Madurese breaks out in Sampit, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, ultimately resulting in more than 500 deaths and 100,000 Madurese displaced from their homes.
 * 2003 – 192 people die when an arsonist sets fire to a subway train in Daegu, South Korea.
 * 2004 – Up to 295 people, including nearly 200 rescue workers, die near Nishapur, Iran, when a runaway freight train carrying sulfur, petrol and fertilizer catches fire and explodes.
 * 2010 – WikiLeaks publishes the first of hundreds of thousands of classified documents disclosed by the soldier now known as Chelsea Manning.
 * 2013 – Armed robbers steal a haul of diamonds worth $50 million during a raid at Brussels Airport in Belgium.
 * 2014 – At least 76 people are killed and hundreds are injured in clashes between riot police and demonstrators in Kyiv, Ukraine.
 * 2018 – 66 people die when Iran Aseman Airlines Flight 3704 crashes in the Dena sub-range in the Zagros Mountains of Iran.
 * 2021 – Perseverance, a Mars rover designed to explore Jezero crater on Mars, as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, lands successfully.

Pre-1600

 * 1201 – Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Persian scientist and writer (d. 1274)
 * 1372 – Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Egyptian jurist and scholar (d. 1448)
 * 1486 – Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Indian monk and saint (d. 1534)
 * 1516 – Mary I of England (d. 1558)
 * 1530 – Uesugi Kenshin, Japanese daimyō (d. 1578)
 * 1543 – Charles III, Duke of Lorraine (d. 1608)
 * 1547 – Bahāʾ al-dīn al-ʿĀmilī, founder of Isfahan School of Islamic Philosophy (d. 1621)
 * 1559 – Isaac Casaubon, Swiss philologist and scholar (d. 1614)
 * 1589 – Henry Vane the Elder, English politician (d. 1655)
 * 1589  – Maarten Gerritsz Vries, Dutch explorer (d. 1646)

1601–1900

 * 1602 – Per Brahe the Younger, Swedish soldier and politician, Governor-General of Finland (d. 1680)
 * 1602  – Michelangelo Cerquozzi, Italian painter (d. 1660)
 * 1609 – Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, English historian and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (d. 1674)
 * 1626 – Francesco Redi, Italian physician (d. 1697)
 * 1632 – Giovanni Battista Vitali, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1692)
 * 1642 – Marie Champmeslé, French actress (d. 1698)
 * 1658 – Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre, French philosopher and author (d. 1743)
 * 1732 – Johann Christian Kittel, German organist and composer (d. 1809)
 * 1745 – Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist, invented the battery (d. 1827)
 * 1754 – Emanuel Granberg, Finnish church painter (d. 1797)
 * 1814 – Samuel Fenton Cary, American lawyer and politician (d. 1900)
 * 1817 – Lewis Armistead, American general (d. 1863)
 * 1818 – John O'Shanassy, Irish-Australian politician, 2nd Premier of Victoria (d. 1883)
 * 1818 – Konstanty Schmidt-Ciążyński, Polish collector and art connoisseur who donated a large collection to the National Museum in Kraków (d. 1889)
 * 1836 – Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Indian mystic and yogi (d. 1886)
 * 1838 – Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher (d. 1916)
 * 1846 – Wilson Barrett, English actor, playwright, and manager (d. 1904)
 * 1848 – Louis Comfort Tiffany, American stained glass artist (d. 1933)
 * 1849 – Alexander Kielland, Norwegian author, playwright, and politician (d. 1906)
 * 1850 – George Henschel, German-English singer-songwriter, pianist, and conductor (d. 1934)
 * 1855 – Jean Jules Jusserand, French historian, author, and diplomat, French Ambassador to the United States (d. 1932)
 * 1860 – Anders Zorn, Swedish artist (d. 1920)
 * 1862 – Charles M. Schwab, American businessman, co-founded Bethlehem Steel (d. 1939)
 * 1867 – Hedwig Courths-Mahler, German writer (d. 1950)
 * 1870 – William Laurel Harris, American painter and author (d. 1924)
 * 1871 – Harry Brearley, English inventor (d. 1948)
 * 1883 – Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek philosopher, author, and playwright (d. 1957)
 * 1885 – Henri Laurens, French sculptor and illustrator (d. 1954)
 * 1893 – Maksim Haretski, Belarusian prose writer, journalist and activist (d. 1938)
 * 1890 – Edward Arnold, American actor (d. 1956)
 * 1890  – Adolphe Menjou, American actor (d. 1963)
 * 1892 – Wendell Willkie, American captain, lawyer, and politician (d. 1944)
 * 1896 – Li Linsi, Chinese educator and diplomat (d. 1970)
 * 1898 – Luis Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rican poet and politician, 1st Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (d. 1980)
 * 1899 – Arthur Bryant, English historian and journalist (d. 1985)

1901–present

 * 1903 – Nikolai Podgorny, Ukrainian engineer and politician (d. 1983)
 * 1906 – Hans Asperger, Austrian pediatrician and academic (d. 1980)
 * 1909 – Wallace Stegner, American novelist, short story writer, and essayist (d. 1993)
 * 1914 – Pee Wee King, American singer-songwriter and fiddler (d. 2000)
 * 1915 – Phyllis Calvert, English actress (d. 2002)
 * 1915  – Joe Gordon, American baseball player and manager (d. 1978)
 * 1918 – Freddie Blassie, American wrestler and manager (d. 2003)
 * 1919 – Jack Palance, American boxer and actor (d. 2006)
 * 1920 – Rolande Falcinelli, French organist, pianist, composer, and pedagogue (d. 2006)
 * 1921 – Mary Amdur, American toxicologist and public health researcher (d. 1998)
 * 1921  – Oscar Feltsman, Ukrainian-Russian pianist and composer (d. 2013)
 * 1922 – Eric Gairy, Grenadan politician, 1st Prime Minister of Grenada (d. 1997)
 * 1922  – Helen Gurley Brown, American journalist and author (d. 2012)
 * 1922  – Connie Wisniewski, American baseball player (d. 1995)
 * 1925 – George Kennedy, American actor (d. 2016)
 * 1926 – Wallace Berman, American painter and illustrator (d. 1976)
 * 1927 – Fazal Mahmood, Pakistani cricketer (d. 2005)
 * 1929 – Len Deighton, English historian and author
 * 1929  – André Mathieu, Canadian pianist and composer (d. 1968)
 * 1931 – Johnny Hart, American cartoonist, co-created The Wizard of Id (d. 2007)
 * 1931  – Toni Morrison, American novelist and editor, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2019).
 * 1932 – Miloš Forman, Czech-American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 2018)
 * 1933 – Yoko Ono, Japanese-American multimedia artist and musician
 * 1933  – Bobby Robson, English footballer and manager (d. 2009)
 * 1933  – Mary Ure, Scottish-English actress (d. 1975)
 * 1934 – Audre Lorde, American writer and activist (d. 1992)
 * 1936 – Jean M. Auel, American author
 * 1939 – Claude Ake, Nigerian political scientist and academic (d. 1996)
 * 1940 – Fabrizio De André, Italian singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1999)
 * 1941 – Irma Thomas, American singer-songwriter
 * 1946 – Michael Buerk, English journalist
 * 1946  – Jess Walton, American actress
 * 1947 – Dennis DeYoung, American musician, singer, and songwriter
 * 1950 – Nana Amba Eyiaba I, Ghanaian queen mother and advocate
 * 1950  – John Hughes, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2009)
 * 1950  – Cybill Shepherd, American actress
 * 1951 – Queen Komal of Nepal
 * 1951  – Isabel Preysler, Filipino-Spanish journalist
 * 1952 – Randy Crawford, American jazz and R&B singer
 * 1952  – Maurice Lucas, American basketball player (d. 2010)
 * 1952  – Juice Newton, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1954 – John Travolta, American actor, singer and producer
 * 1955 – Lisa See, American writer and novelist
 * 1957 – Marita Koch, German sprinter
 * 1957  – Vanna White, American television personality
 * 1959 – Jayne Atkinson, English-American actress
 * 1960 – Andy Moog, Canadian ice hockey player
 * 1960  – Greta Scacchi, Italian-Australian actress
 * 1964 – Matt Dillon, American actor
 * 1965 – Dr. Dre, American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur
 * 1966 – Phillip DeFreitas, Dominican-English cricketer
 * 1967 – Roberto Baggio, Italian footballer
 * 1967  – Colin Jackson, Welsh sprinter and hurdler
 * 1968 – Molly Ringwald, American actress
 * 1969 – Alexander Mogilny, Russian ice hockey player
 * 1971 – Thomas Bjørn, Danish golfer
 * 1974 – Carrie Ann Baade, American painter and academic
 * 1974  – Radek Černý, Czech footballer
 * 1974  – Julia Butterfly Hill, American environmentalist and author
 * 1974  – Jillian Michaels, American personal trainer and television personality
 * 1975 – Gary Neville, English footballer
 * 1977 – Ike Barinholtz, American actor and comedian
 * 1977  – Kristoffer Polaha, American actor
 * 1980 – Nik Antropov, Kazakhstani-Canadian ice hockey player
 * 1980  – Regina Spektor, Russian-American musician and songwriter
 * 1981 – Andrei Kirilenko, Russian-American basketball player
 * 1981  – Alex Ríos, American baseball player
 * 1982 – Christian Tiffert, German footballer
 * 1983 – Kara Braxton, American basketball player
 * 1983  – Jermaine Jenas, English footballer
 * 1983  – Jason Maxiell, American basketball player
 * 1984 – Carlos Kameni, Cameroonian footballer
 * 1986 – Kyle Weaver, American basketball player
 * 1988 – Roman Neustädter, German-Russian footballer
 * 1988  – Sarah Sutherland, American actress
 * 1988  – Maiara Walsh, American-Brazilian actress
 * 1989 – Sonja Vasić, Serbian basketball player
 * 1990 – Monica Aksamit, American saber fencer
 * 1990  – Didi Gregorius, Dutch baseball player
 * 1990  – Cody Hodgson, Canadian ice hockey player
 * 1990  – Bryan Oviedo, Costa Rican footballer
 * 1991 – Sebastian Neumann, German footballer
 * 1992 – Le'Veon Bell, American football player
 * 1992  – Martin Marinčin, Slovak ice hockey player
 * 1992  – Logan Miller, American actor
 * 1993 – Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, American basketball player
 * 1994 – J-Hope, South Korean rapper, singer-songwriter, dancer, and record producer
 * 1994  – Paul Zipser, German basketball player
 * 1995 – Nathan Aké, Dutch footballer
 * 1996 – Tyler Dorsey, American-Greek basketball player
 * 2000 – Zakaria Aboukhlal, Moroccan footballer
 * 2000 – Giacomo Raspadori, Italian footballer
 * 2001 – Tanguy Coulibaly, French footballer
 * 2001 – Jaime Jaquez Jr., American basketball player

Pre-1600

 * 675 – Colmán, bishop of Lindisfarne
 * 814 – Angilbert, Frankish monk and diplomat (b. 760)
 * 901 – Thābit ibn Qurra, Arab astronomer and physician (b. 826)
 * 999 – Gregory V, pope of the Catholic Church (b. 972)
 * 1139 – Yaropolk II, Grand Prince of Kiev (b. 1082)
 * 1218 – Berthold V, duke of Zähringen (b. 1160)
 * 1225 – Hugh Bigod, 3rd Earl of Norfolk, Norman nobleman
 * 1294 – Kublai Khan, Mongol emperor (b. 1215)
 * 1379 – Albert II, duke of Mecklenburg (b. 1318)
 * 1397 – Enguerrand VII, French nobleman (b. 1340)
 * 1455 – Fra Angelico, Italian priest and painter (b. 1395)
 * 1478 – George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, English nobleman (b. 1449)
 * 1502 – Hedwig Jagiellon, duchess of Bavaria (b. 1457)
 * 1535 – Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, German magician, astrologer, and theologian (b. 1486)
 * 1546 – Martin Luther, German priest and theologian, leader of the Protestant Reformation (b. 1483)
 * 1564 – Michelangelo, Italian sculptor and painter (b. 1475)

1601–1900

 * 1654 – Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, French author (b. 1594)
 * 1658 – John Villiers, 1st Viscount Purbeck, English courtier (b. c. 1591)
 * 1683 – Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem, Dutch painter (b. 1620)
 * 1695 – William Phips, governor of Massachusetts (b. 1650)
 * 1712 – Louis, Dauphin of France, (b. 1682)
 * 1743 – Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, Italian noble (b. 1667)
 * 1748 – Otto Ferdinand von Abensberg und Traun, Austrian field marshal (b. 1677)
 * 1772 – Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff, Danish politician (b. 1712)
 * 1778 – Joseph Marie Terray, French economist and politician, Controller-General of Finances (b. 1715)
 * 1780 – Kristijonas Donelaitis, Lithuanian pastor and poet (b. 1714)
 * 1788 – John Whitehurst, English geologist and clockmaker (b. 1713)
 * 1803 – Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, German poet and educator (b. 1719)
 * 1851 – Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, German mathematician and academic (b. 1804)
 * 1873 – Vasil Levski, Bulgarian activist, founded the Internal Revolutionary Organization (b. 1837)
 * 1880 – Nikolay Zinin, Russian organic chemist (b. 1812)
 * 1893 – Serranus Clinton Hastings, American lawyer and politician, 1st Chief Justice of California (b. 1814)

1901–present

 * 1902 – Charles Lewis Tiffany, American businessman, founded Tiffany & Co. (b. 1812)
 * 1910 – Lucy Stanton, American activist (b. 1831)
 * 1915 – Frank James, American soldier and criminal (b. 1843)
 * 1933 – James J. Corbett, American boxer and actor (b. 1866)
 * 1938 – David King Udall, American missionary and politician (b. 1851)
 * 1956 – Gustave Charpentier, French composer (b. 1860)
 * 1960 – Gertrude Vanderbilt, American stage actress (b. c. 1885)
 * 1966 – Grigory Nelyubov, Soviet pilot and military officer (b. 1934)
 * 1967 – J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist and academic (b. 1904)
 * 1969 – Dragiša Cvetković, Serbian lawyer and politician, 17th Prime Minister of Yugoslavia (b. 1893)
 * 1977 – Andy Devine, American actor (b. 1905)
 * 1981 – Jack Northrop, American engineer and businessman, founded the Northrop Corporation (b. 1895)
 * 1982 – Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand author (b. 1895)
 * 2001 – Balthus, Polish-Swiss painter and illustrator (b. 1908)
 * 2001  – Dale Earnhardt, American racer and seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion (b. 1951)
 * 2014 – Mavis Gallant, Canadian-French author and playwright (b. 1922)
 * 2014  – Maria Franziska von Trapp, Austrian-American singer (b. 1914)
 * 2015 – Elchanan Heilprin, Czechoslovakian-born English rabbi (b. 1920 or 1922)
 * 2019 – Alessandro Mendini, Italian designer and architect (b. 1931)
 * 2020 – Flavio Bucci, Italian actor and voice actor (b. 1947)

Holidays and observances

 * Christian feast day:
 * Bernadette Soubirous (France)
 * Colmán of Lindisfarne
 * Flavian of Constantinople
 * Geltrude Comensoli
 * Simeon of Jerusalem (Western Christianity)
 * February 18 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
 * Dialect Day (Amami Islands, Japan)
 * Independence Day, celebrates the independence of the Gambia from the United Kingdom in 1965
 * Kurdish Students Union Day (Iraqi Kurdistan)
 * National Democracy Day, celebrates the 1951 overthrow of the Rana dynasty (Nepal)

title: February 18


text:
Fabio Taglioni

Fabio Taglioni (10 September 1920 – 18 July 2001) was an Italian engineer.

Born in Lugo di Romagna, he was chief designer and technical director of Ducati from 1954 until 1989. His desmodromic 90° V-twin engine design is still used in all current Ducati motorcycle engines. Among the many race victories of his early desmo twin, the 1978 legendary return of Mike Hailwood at the Isle of Man is perhaps the most memorable.

After World War II, Taglioni designed engines for Ceccato motorcycles and Mondial before joining Ducati in 1954. He began by designing Ducati's OHC four-stroke singles, and in 1963 designed the prototype V4 Ducati Apollo. This led to the 1972 Ducati 750 Imola Desmo, and the 1970s and 1980s production Ducati L-twin motorcycles.

He died in Bologna in 2001.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Fabio Taglioni


text:
Fourth-generation programming language

A fourth-generation programming language (4GL) is a high-level computer programming language that belongs to a class of languages envisioned as an advancement upon third-generation programming languages (3GL). Each of the programming language generations aims to provide a higher level of abstraction of the internal computer hardware details, making the language more programmer-friendly, powerful, and versatile. While the definition of 4GL has changed over time, it can be typified by operating more with large collections of information at once rather than focusing on just bits and bytes. Languages claimed to be 4GL may include support for database management, report generation, mathematical optimization, GUI development, or web development. Some researchers state that 4GLs are a subset of domain-specific languages.

The concept of 4GL was developed from the 1970s through the 1990s, overlapping most of the development of 3GL, with 4GLs identified as "non-procedural" or "program-generating" languages, contrasted with 3GLs being algorithmic or procedural languages. While 3GLs like C, C++, C#, Java, and JavaScript remain popular for a wide variety of uses, 4GLs as originally defined found uses focused on databases, reports, and websites. Some advanced 3GLs like Python, Ruby, and Perl combine some 4GL abilities within a general-purpose 3GL environment, and libraries with 4GL-like features have been developed as add-ons for most popular 3GLs, producing languages that are a mix of 3GL and 4GL, blurring the distinction.

In the 1980s and 1990s, there were efforts to develop fifth-generation programming languages (5GL).

History
Though used earlier in papers and discussions, the term 4GL was first used formally by James Martin in his 1981 book Application Development Without Programmers to refer to non-procedural, high-level specification languages. In some primitive way, early 4GLs were included in the Informatics MARK-IV (1967) product and Sperry's MAPPER (1969 internal use, 1979 release).

The motivations for the '4GL' inception and continued interest are several. The term can apply to a large set of software products. It can also apply to an approach that looks for greater semantic properties and implementation power. Just as the 3GL offered greater power to the programmer, so too did the 4GL open up the development environment to a wider population.

The early input scheme for the 4GL supported entry of data within the 72-character limit of the punched card (8 bytes used for sequencing) where a card's tag would identify the type or function. With judicious use of a few cards, the 4GL deck could offer a wide variety of processing and reporting capability whereas the equivalent functionality coded in a 3GL could subsume, perhaps, a whole box or more of cards.

The 72-character format continued for a while as hardware progressed to larger memory and terminal interfaces. Even with its limitations, this approach supported highly sophisticated applications.

As interfaces improved and allowed longer statement lengths and grammar-driven input handling, greater power ensued. An example of this is described on the Nomad page.

 * Another example of Nomad's power is illustrated by Nicholas Rawlings in his comments for the Computer History Museum about NCSS (see citation below). He reports that James Martin asked Rawlings for a Nomad solution to a standard problem Martin called the Engineer's Problem: "give 6% raises to engineers whose job ratings had an average of 7 or better." Martin provided a "dozen pages of COBOL, and then just a page or two of Mark IV, from Informatics." Rawlings offered the following single statement, performing a set-at-a-time operation...

The development of the 4GL was influenced by several factors, with the hardware and operating system constraints having a large weight. When the 4GL was first introduced, a disparate mix of hardware and operating systems mandated custom application development support that was specific to the system in order to ensure sales. One example is the MAPPER system developed by Sperry. Though it has roots back to the beginning, the system has proven successful in many applications and has been ported to modern platforms. The latest variant is embedded in the BIS offering of Unisys. MARK-IV is now known as VISION:BUILDER and is offered by Computer Associates.

Santa Fe railroad used MAPPER to develop a system, in a project that was an early example of 4GL, rapid prototyping, and programming by users. The idea was that it was easier to teach railroad experts to use MAPPER than to teach programmers the "intricacies of railroad operations".

One of the early (and portable) languages that had 4GL properties was Ramis developed by Gerald C. Cohen at Mathematica, a mathematical software company. Cohen left Mathematica and founded Information Builders to create a similar reporting-oriented 4GL, called FOCUS.

Later 4GL types are tied to a database system and are far different from the earlier types in their use of techniques and resources that have resulted from the general improvement of computing with time.

An interesting twist to the 4GL scene is realization that graphical interfaces and the related reasoning done by the user form a 'language' that is poorly understood.

Types
A number of different types of 4GLs exist:
 * Table-driven (codeless) programming, usually running with a runtime framework and libraries. Instead of using code, the developer defines their logic by selecting an operation in a pre-defined list of memory or data table manipulation commands. In other words, instead of coding, the developer uses table-driven algorithm programming (see also control tables that can be used for this purpose). These types of tools can be used for business application development usually consisting in a package allowing for both business data manipulation and reporting, therefore they come with GUI screens and report editors. They usually offer integration with lower level DLLs generated from a typical 3GL for when the need arise for more hardware/OS specific operations.
 * Report-generator programming languages take a description of the data format and the report to generate and from that they either generate the required report directly or they generate a program to generate the report. See also RPG
 * Similarly, forms generators manage online interactions with the application system users or generate programs to do so.
 * More ambitious 4GLs (sometimes termed fourth generation environments) attempt to automatically generate whole systems from the outputs of CASE tools, specifications of screens and reports, and possibly also the specification of some additional processing logic.
 * Data management 4GLs such as SAS, SPSS, and Stata provide sophisticated coding commands for data manipulation, file reshaping, case selection, and data documentation in the preparation of data for statistical analysis and reporting.
 * So-called "XTalk" languages, developed initially with Apple's Hypercard in 1987. Hypercard was the progenitor of more modern and powerful programs such as SuperCard, Toolbook and LiveCode.

Some 4GLs have integrated tools that allow for the easy specification of all the required information:

 * James Martin's version of data engineering systems development methodology was automated to allow the input of the results of system analysis and design in the form of data flow diagrams, entity relationship diagrams, entity life history diagrams etc., from which hundreds of thousands of lines of COBOL would be generated overnight.
 * More recently Oracle Corporation's Oracle Designer and Oracle Developer Suite 4GL products could be integrated to produce database definitions and the forms and reports programs.

Low code environments
In the twenty-first century, 4GL systems have emerged as "low code" environments or platforms for the problem of rapid application development in short periods of time. Vendors often provide sample systems such as CRM, contract management, bug tracking from which development can occur with little programming.

General use / versatile

 * 4th Dimension
 * Accell/SQL (4GL) from Unify Corporation.
 * Broadcom 2e Formerly Synon 4GL RPG/COBOL Generator
 * CA-Telon 4GL Cobol/PLI generator
 * Clarion
 * Clipper
 * Cognos PowerHouse 4GL
 * DataFlex (Microsoft Windows, web, mobile)
 * DATATRIEVE
 * dBase
 * FileMaker
 * FOCUS
 * Forté TOOL (transactional object-oriented language)
 * GeneXus
 * Harbour
 * HyperCard (development and support were ended)
 * IBM Rational EGL (Enterprise Generation Language)
 * LabVIEW
 * LANSA
 * LINC
 * LiveCode
 * M-Power
 * NATURAL
 * Omnis Studio SDK
 * Oracle Application Development Framework
 * OutSystems (Productivity/PaaS)
 * Jmix/CUBA Platform (Productivity/Framework)
 * PowerBuilder
 * R:Base
 * SheerPower4GL (Microsoft Windows only)
 * SQLWindows/Team Developer
 * Uniface
 * Unix Shell
 * Visual FoxPro (development and support were ended)
 * XBase++
 * Xojo

Database query languages

 * FOCUS
 * 4D QL
 * Informix-4GL
 * NATURAL
 * OpenEdge ABL
 * OpenROAD (Ingres 4GL)
 * Ramis
 * SQL

Report generators
Extract data from files or database to create reports in a wide range of formats is done by the report generator tools.
 * Speedware EasyReporter
 * LINC
 * Oracle Reports
 * Progress 4GL Query/Results
 * RPG-II

Data manipulation, analysis, and reporting languages

 * Ab Initio
 * ABAP
 * Audit Command Language
 * Clarion Programming Language
 * CorVision
 * Culprit
 * ADS/Online (plus transaction processing)
 * Easytrieve
 * FOCUS
 * GraphTalk
 * IDL
 * IGOR Pro
 * Informix-4GL
 * JSL
 * LANSA
 * M-Power
 * LabVIEW
 * LiveCode
 * MANTIS
 * MAPPER (Unisys/Sperry) now part of BIS
 * MARK-IV (Sterling/Informatics) now VISION:BUILDER of CA
 * Simulink a component of MATLAB
 * NATURAL
 * Nomad
 * Octave
 * PL/SQL
 * Progress 4GL
 * R
 * Ramis
 * S
 * Scilab
 * SAS
 * SPSS
 * SQL PL
 * SQR
 * Stata
 * Synon
 * Wolfram Language
 * XBase++
 * XQuery
 * XSLT

Software creators

 * 4th Dimension (Software)
 * LiveCode
 * MATLAB's GUIDE
 * Omnis Studio
 * OpenROAD
 * Progress 4GL AppBuilder
 * SuperTalk
 * Visual DataFlex
 * Xojo
 * XUL Can be used with XQuery

Mathematical optimization

 * AIMMS
 * AMPL
 * GAMS
 * Mathematica
 * MathProg
 * MATLAB

Database-driven GUI application development

 * C/AL
 * Genexus
 * SB+/SystemBuilder
 * Unify VISION

Low code / No code development platforms
Source:

 * 1C:Enterprise programming language
 * Appcelerator
 * Appian
 * Bizagi
 * DronaHQ
 * LANSA
 * M-Power
 * Microsoft Power Automate
 * Node-RED
 * OutSystems
 * Pegasystems
 * PNMsoft
 * Progress
 * ServiceNow
 * ViziApps

Screen painters and generators

 * Oracle Forms
 * Progress 4GL ProVision
 * SB+/SystemBuilder

Web development languages

 * ActiveVFP
 * CFML
 * LANSA
 * OutSystems
 * Wavemaker

Music Programming language

 * MaxMSP

title: Fourth-generation programming language


text:
Frank Capra

Frank Russell Capra (born Francesco Rosario Capra; May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was an Italian-American film director, producer, and screenwriter who was the creative force behind several major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the "American Dream personified".

Capra became one of America's most influential directors during the 1930s, winning three Academy Awards for Best Director from six nominations, along with three other Oscar wins from nine nominations in other categories. Among his leading films were It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It with You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). During World War II, Capra served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and produced propaganda films, such as the Why We Fight series.

After World War II, Capra's career declined as his later films, such as It's a Wonderful Life (1946), performed poorly when they were first released. Beginning in 1950, his cinematic output slowed, and he retired from filmmaking in the mid-1960s. In the ensuing decades, however, It's a Wonderful Life and other Capra films were revisited favorably by critics. Outside of directing, Capra was active in the film industry, engaging in various political and social activities. He served as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, worked alongside the Writers Guild of America, and was head of the Directors Guild of America.

Early life
Capra was born Francesco Rosario Capra in Bisacquino, a village near Palermo, Sicily, Italy. He was the youngest of seven children of Salvatore Capra, a fruit grower, and the former Rosaria "Sara" Nicolosi. Capra's family was Roman Catholic. Frank's siblings were Luigia, Ignazia, Benedetto, Antonino Giuseppe, Antonia, and Anne. The name "Capra", notes Capra's biographer, Joseph McBride, represents his family's closeness to the land, and means "goat". He notes that the English word "capricious" derives from it, "evoking the animal's skittish temperament", adding that "the name neatly expresses two aspects of Frank Capra's personality: emotionalism and obstinacy."

In 1903, when he was five, Capra's family immigrated to the United States, traveling in a steerage compartment of the steamship Germania — the cheapest way to make the passage. For Capra, the 13-day journey remained one of the worst experiences of his life: "You're all together—you have no privacy. You have a cot. Very few people have trunks or anything that takes up space. They have just what they can carry in their hands or in a bag. Nobody takes their clothes off. There's no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. They're all miserable. It's the most degrading place you could ever be."

Capra remembers the ship's arrival in New York Harbor, where he saw "a statue of a great lady, taller than a church steeple, holding a torch above the land we were about to enter". He recalls his father's exclamation at the sight:

"Cicco, look! Look at that! That's the greatest light since the star of Bethlehem! That's the light of freedom! Remember that. Freedom."

The family settled in Los Angeles's East Side (today Lincoln Heights) on Avenue 18, which Capra described in his autobiography as an Italian "ghetto". Capra's father worked as a fruit picker and young Capra sold newspapers after school for ten years until he graduated from high school. He attended the Manual Arts High School, with Jimmy Doolittle and Lawrence Tibbett as classmates. Instead of working after graduating, as his parents wanted, he enrolled in college. He worked through college at the California Institute of Technology, playing banjo at nightclubs and taking odd jobs like working at the campus laundry, waiting tables, and cleaning engines at a local power plant. He studied chemical engineering and graduated in the spring of 1918. Capra later wrote that his college education had "changed his whole viewpoint on life from the viewpoint of an alley rat to the viewpoint of a cultured person".

World War I and later
Soon after graduating from college, Capra was commissioned in the United States Army as a second lieutenant, having completed campus ROTC. In the Army, he taught mathematics to artillerymen at Fort Point, San Francisco. His father died during the war in an accident (1916). In the Army, Capra contracted Spanish flu and was medically discharged to return home to live with his mother. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1920, taking the name Frank Russell Capra. Living at home with his siblings and mother, Capra was the only family member with a college education, yet he was the only one who remained chronically unemployed. After a year without work, seeing how his siblings had steady jobs, he felt he was a failure, which led to bouts of depression.

Chronic abdominal pains were later discovered to have been an undiagnosed burst appendix. After recovering at home, Capra moved out and spent the next few years living in flophouses in San Francisco and hopping freight trains, wandering the Western United States. To support himself, he took odd jobs on farms, as a movie extra, playing poker, and selling local oil well stocks.

During this time the 24-year-old Capra directed a 32-minute documentary film titled La Visita Dell'Incrociatore Italiano Libya a San Francisco. Not only did it document the visit of the Italian naval vessel Libya to San Francisco, but also the reception given to the crew of the ship by San Francisco's L'Italia Virtus Club, now known as the San Francisco Italian Athletic Club.

At 25, Capra took a job selling books written and published by American philosopher Elbert Hubbard. Capra recalled that he "hated being a peasant, being a scrounging new kid trapped in the Sicilian ghetto of Los Angeles. ... All I had was cockiness—and let me tell you that gets you a long way."

Silent film comedies
During his book sales efforts—and nearly broke—Capra read a newspaper article about a new movie studio opening in San Francisco. Capra phoned them saying he had moved from Hollywood and falsely implied that he had experience in the budding film industry. Capra's only prior exposure in films was in 1915 while attending Manual Arts High School. The studio's founder, Walter Montague, was nonetheless impressed by Capra and offered him $75 to direct a one-reel silent film. Capra, with the help of a cameraman, made the film in two days and cast it with amateurs.

After that first serious job in films, Capra began efforts to finding similar openings in the film industry. He took a position with another minor San Francisco studio and subsequently received an offer to work with producer Harry Cohn at his new studio in Los Angeles. During this time, he worked as a property man, film cutter, title writer, and assistant director.

Capra later became a gag writer for Hal Roach's Our Gang series. He was twice hired as a writer for a slapstick comedy director, Mack Sennett, in 1918 and 1924. Under him, Capra wrote scripts for comedian Harry Langdon and produced by Mack Sennett, the first being Plain Clothes in 1925. According to Capra, it was he who invented Langdon's character, the innocent fool living in a "naughty world"; however, Langdon was well into this character by 1925.

When Langdon eventually left Sennett to make longer, feature-length movies with First National Studios, he took Capra along as his personal writer and director. They made three feature films together during 1926 and 1927, all of them successful with critics and the public. The films made Langdon a recognized comedian in the caliber of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Following the production of Long Pants (1927), Capra argued with Langdon over the direction his next project would take. Langdon's other confidant was writer-director Arthur Ripley, a fellow Sennett alumnus, and Langdon followed Ripley's suggestions. Capra quit, and the split was disastrous for Langdon, who took matters into his own hands and directed his films himself, to poor reception.

After Capra split with Langdon, he directed a picture for First National, For the Love of Mike (1927). This was a silent comedy about three bickering godfathers—a German, a Jew, and an Irishman—starring a budding actress, Claudette Colbert. The movie was considered a failure and is a lost film.

Columbia Pictures
Capra returned to Harry Cohn's studio, now named Columbia Pictures, which was then producing short films and two-reel comedies for "fillers" to play between main features. Columbia was one of many start-up studios on "Poverty Row" in Los Angeles. Like the others, Columbia was unable to compete with larger studios, which often had their own production facilities, distribution, and theaters. Cohn rehired Capra in 1928 to help his studio produce new, full-length feature films, to compete with the major studios. Capra would eventually direct 20 films for Cohn's studio, including many of his classics.

Because of Capra's engineering education, he adapted more easily to the new sound technology than most directors. He welcomed the transition to sound, recalling, "I wasn't at home in silent films." Most studios were unwilling to invest in the new sound technology, assuming it was a passing fad. Many in Hollywood considered sound a threat to the industry and hoped it would pass quickly; McBride notes that "Capra was not one of them." When he saw Al Jolson singing in The Jazz Singer in 1927, considered the first talkie, Capra recalled his reaction:

"It was an absolute shock to hear this man open his mouth and a song come out of it. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences."

Few of the studio heads or crew were aware of Capra's engineering background until he began directing The Younger Generation in 1929. The chief cinematographer who worked with Capra on a number of films was likewise unaware. He describes this early period in sound for film:

"It wasn't something that came up. You had to bluff to survive. When sound first came in, nobody knew much about it. We were all walking around in the dark. Even the sound man didn't know much about it. Frank lived through it. But he was quite intelligent. He was one of the few directors who knew what the hell they were doing. Most of your directors walked around in a fog – —they didn't know where the door was."

During his first year with Columbia, Capra directed nine films, some of which were successful. After the first few, Harry Cohn said: "it was the beginning of Columbia making a better quality of pictures." According to Barson, "Capra became ensconced as Harry Cohn's most trusted director." His films soon established Capra as a "bankable" director known throughout the industry, and Cohn raised Capra's initial salary of $1,000 per film to $25,000 per year. Capra directed a film for MGM during this period, but soon realized he "had much more freedom under Harry Cohn's benevolent dictatorship", where Cohn also put Capra's "name above the title" of his films, a first for the movie industry. Capra wrote of this period and recalled the confidence that Cohn placed in Capra's vision and directing:

"I owed Cohn a lot—I owed him my whole career. So I had respect for him, and a certain amount of love. Despite his crudeness and everything else, he gave me my chance. He took a gamble on me."

Capra directed his first "real" sound picture, The Younger Generation, in 1929. It was a rags-to-riches romantic comedy about a Jewish family's upward mobility in New York City, with their son later trying to deny his Jewish roots to keep his rich, gentile girlfriend. According to Capra biographer Joseph McBride, Capra "obviously felt a strong identification with the story of a Jewish immigrant who grows up in the ghetto of New York ... and feels he has to deny his ethnic origins to rise to success in America." Capra, however, denied any connection of the story with his own life.

Nonetheless, McBride insists that The Younger Generation abounds with parallels to Capra's own life. McBride notes the "devastatingly painful climactic scene", where the young social-climbing son, embarrassed when his wealthy new friends first meet his parents, passes his mother and father off as house servants. That scene, notes McBride, "echoes the shame Capra admitted feeling toward his own family as he rose in social status".

During his years at Columbia, Capra worked often with screenwriter Robert Riskin (husband of Fay Wray), and cameraman Joseph Walker. In many of Capra's films, the wise-cracking and sharp dialogue was often written by Riskin, and he and Capra went on to become Hollywood's "most admired writer-director team".

It Happened One Night (1934)
Capra's films in the 1930s enjoyed immense success at the Academy Awards. It Happened One Night (1934) became the first film to win all five top Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay). Written by Robert Riskin, it is one of the first screwball comedies, and with its release in the Great Depression, critics considered it an escapist story and a celebration of the American Dream. The film established the names of Capra, Columbia Pictures, and stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in the movie industry. The film has been called "picaresque". It was one of the earliest road movies and inspired variations on that theme by other filmmakers.

He followed the film with Broadway Bill (1934), a screwball comedy about horse racing. The film was a turning point for Capra, however, as he began to conceive an additional dimension to his movies. He started using his films to convey messages to the public. Capra explains his new thinking: "My films must let every man, woman, and child know that God loves them, that I love them, and that peace and salvation will become a reality only when they all learn to love each other."

This added goal was inspired after meeting with a Christian Scientist friend who told him to view his talents in a different way: "The talents you have, Mr. Capra, are not your own, not self-acquired. God gave you those talents; they are his gifts to you, to use for his purpose."

Capra began to embody messages in subsequent films, many of which conveyed "fantasies of goodwill". The first of those was Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), for which Capra won his second Best Director Oscar. Critic Alistair Cooke observed that Capra was "starting to make movies about themes instead of people".

In 1938, Capra won his third Director Oscar in five years for You Can't Take It with You, which also won Best Picture. In addition to his three directing wins, Capra received directing nominations for three other films (Lady for a Day, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life). On May 5, 1936, Capra hosted the 8th Academy Awards ceremony.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Although It's a Wonderful Life is his best-known film, Friedman notes that it was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), which most represented the "Capra myth". That film expressed Capra's patriotism more than any others, and "presented the individual working within the democratic system to overcome rampant political corruption".

The film, however, became Capra's most controversial. In his research before filming, he was able to stand close to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during a press conference after the recent acts of war by Germany in Europe. Capra recalls his fears:

"And panic hit me. Japan was slicing up the colossus of China piece by piece. Nazi Panzers had rolled into Austria and Czechoslovakia; their thunder echoed over Europe. England and France shuddered. The Russian bear growled ominously in the Kremlin. The black cloud of war hung over the chancelleries of the world. Official Washington from the President down, was in the process of making hard, torturing decisions. 'And here was I, in the process of making a satire about government officials; ... Wasn't this the most untimely time for me to make a film about Washington?"

When the filming was completed, the studio sent preview copies to Washington. Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., U.S. ambassador to the UK, wrote to Columbia head Harry Cohn, "Please do not play this picture in Europe." Politicians were concerned about the potential negative effect the film might have on the morale of the United States' allies, as World War II had begun. Kennedy wrote to President Roosevelt that, "In foreign countries this film must inevitably strengthen the mistaken impression that the United States is full of graft, corruption and lawlessness." Many studio heads agreed, nor did they want negative feelings about Hollywood instilled in political leaders.

Nonetheless, Capra's vision of the film's significance was clear:

"The more uncertain are the people of the world, the more their hard-won freedoms are scattered and lost in the winds of chance, the more they need a ringing statement of America's democratic ideals. The soul of our film would be anchored in Lincoln. Our Jefferson Smith would be a young Abe Lincoln, tailored to the rail-splitter's simplicity, compassion, ideals, humor, and unswerving moral courage under pressure."

Capra pleaded with Cohn to allow the film to go into distribution and remembers the intensity of their decision making:

"Harry Cohn paced the floor, as stunned as Abraham must have been when the Lord asked him to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac."

Cohn and Capra chose to ignore the negative publicity and demands and released the film as planned. It was later nominated for 11 Academy Awards, only winning one (for Best Original Story) partly because the number of major pictures that were nominated that year was 10, including The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind. Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons called it a "smash patriotic hit" and most critics agreed, seeing that audiences left the theaters with "an enthusiasm for democracy" and "in a glow of patriotism."

The significance of the film's message was established further in France, shortly after World War II began. When the French public was asked to select which film they wanted to see most, having been told by the Vichy government that soon no more American films would be allowed in France, the overwhelming majority chose it over all others. To a France soon to be invaded and occupied by Nazi forces, the film most expressed the "perseverance of democracy and the American way."

Impasse
Capra became enchanted with a German-made film biography of composer Frédéric Chopin. He purchased the film himself as a basis for his new production, and recruited one of Columbia's leading writers, Sidney Buchman, to fashion a screenplay. Capra spent a full year working on the Chopin project, and the film was ready to go into production. Capra wanted to make the film in the costly Technicolor process—a first for Columbia—but Columbia's New York office balked at the expense. As Cohn's biographer Bob Thomas recounted, "They were aghast at the prospect of trying to sell an expensive costume film about a piano player and a woman novelist who wore pants and smoked cigars. The opposition was strong enough to veto the project." The enraged Capra quit Columbia. Harry Cohn tried to lure him back with an unprecedented profit-sharing split of 50/50, but Capra accepted a million-dollar cash offer from Warner Bros. Columbia ultimately went ahead with the Chopin biography, in Technicolor, under the direction of Charles Vidor: A Song to Remember (1945).

Meet John Doe (1941)
Capra's first Warner project was Meet John Doe (1941). So important was the Capra name that Warner Bros. took its own name off the main title. Instead of the usual "Warner Bros. Pictures presents", Meet John Doe begins with "Presenting".

Some consider Meet John Doe to be Capra's most controversial movie. The film's hero, played by Gary Cooper, is a former baseball player now bumming around, lacking goals. He is selected by a news reporter to represent the "common man," to capture the imagination of ordinary Americans. The film was released shortly before America became involved in World War II, and citizens were still in an isolationist mood. According to some historians, the film was made to convey a "deliberate reaffirmation of American values," though ones that seemed uncertain with respect to the future.

Film author Richard Glazer speculates that the film may have been autobiographical, "reflecting Capra's own uncertainties". Glazer describes how, "John's accidental transformation from drifter to national figure parallels Capra's own early drifting experience and subsequent involvement in movie making ... Meet John Doe, then, was an attempt to work out his own fears and questions."

Joining the Army after Pearl Harbor
Within four days of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Capra quit his successful directing career in Hollywood and received a commission as a major in the United States Army. He also gave up his presidency of the Screen Directors Guild. Being 44 years of age, he was not asked to enlist, but, notes Friedman, "Capra had an intense desire to prove his patriotism to his adopted land."

Capra recalls some personal reasons for enlisting:

"I had a guilty conscience. In my films I championed the cause of the gentle, the poor, the downtrodden. Yet I had begun to live like the Aga Khan. The curse of Hollywood is big money. It comes so fast it breeds and imposes its own mores, not of wealth, but of ostentation and phony status."

Why We Fight series
During the next four years of World War II, Capra's job was to head a special section on morale to explain to soldiers "why the hell they're in uniform", writes Capra, and were not "propaganda" films like those created by the Nazis and Japan. Capra directed or co-directed seven documentary war information films.

Capra was assigned to work directly under Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, the most senior officer in command of the Army, who later created the Marshall Plan and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Marshall chose to bypass the usual documentary film-making department, Signal Corps, because he felt they were not capable of producing "sensitive and objective troop information films". One colonel explained the importance of these future films to Capra:

"You were the answer to the General's prayer ... You see, Frank, this idea about films to explain 'why' the boys are in uniform is General Marshall's own baby, and he wants the nursery right next to his Chief of Staff's office."

During his first meeting with General Marshall, Capra was told his mission:

"Now, Capra, I want to nail down with you a plan to make a series of documented, factual-information films—the first in our history—that will explain to our boys in the Army why we are fighting, and the principles for which we are fighting ... You have an opportunity to contribute enormously to your country and the cause of freedom. Are you aware of that, sir?"

Capra ended up directing a seven-episode Why We Fight series: Prelude to War (1942), The Nazis Strike (1942), Divide and Conquer (1943), The Battle of Britain (1943), The Battle of Russia (1943), The Battle of China (1944), and War Comes to America (1945). Additionally, Capra directed or co-directed the propaganda films Tunisian Victory (1945) Know Your Enemy: Japan (1945), Here Is Germany (1945), and Two Down and One to Go (1945), which do not bear the Why We Fight banner. Capra also produced the critically-acclaimed The Negro Soldier (1944), which was directed by Stuart Heisler. Capra also directed, uncredited, the 13-minute film Your Job in Germany (1945), which was meant for US troops headed to Allied-occupied Germany.

After he completed the first few documentaries, government officials and U.S. Army staff felt they were powerful messages and excellent presentations of why it was necessary for the United States to fight in the war. All footage came from military and government sources, whereas during earlier years, many newsreels secretly used footage from enemy sources. Animated charts were created by Walt Disney and his animators. A number of Hollywood composers wrote the background music, including Alfred Newman and Russian-born composer Dimitri Tiomkin. After the first complete film was viewed by General Marshall along with U.S. Army staff—and Franklin Roosevelt—Marshall approached Capra: "Colonel Capra, how did you do it? That is a most wonderful thing."

FDR was effusive: "I want every American to see this motion picture. General--please make all necessary arrangements". Prelude To War was distributed by 20th Century-Fox, and was nationally acclaimed. Fox also released Capra's Why We Fight opus, The Battle Of Russia. Released to service audiences in two-parts to accommodate hour-long periods during induction training, the nine-reel (nearly 90 minutes) epic detailed Russian history using excerpts of the films of Sergei Eisenstein, then proceeded to recent history through captured Nazi newsreels and those supplied reluctantly by Stalin. When he was shown the film in Moscow, Stalin was effusive and ordered one thousand 35mm prints. He was so anxious that his people should see the film that he did not bother creating a Russian soundtrack. Capra laughed in amazement years later when re-counting the tale: "Stalin had interpreters at the side of the stage in all the theatres. They simply translated the film on the fly, yelling like hell to be heard over the music and sound effects". The series was seen in theaters throughout the U.S. They were also translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese for screening in other countries, under the aegis of Robert Riskin. Winston Churchill ordered that all of them be shown to the British public in theaters.

Following a shifting of alliances at the end of World War II, some of the Why We Fight films were effectively banned. The Battle Of Russia, due to its positivity toward the Soviet Union, was essentially banned until the 1980s. Conversely, some of the other films, which spoke negatively of the Germans and Japanese, were taken out of print, as these countries were now allies. Know Your Enemy: Japan, which barely saw a release because its release date came just days before the Japanese surrender, was kept under wraps afterwards as well: Capra noted that the U.S. "suddenly needed friendly relations with the Japs and the film, along with several others, was locked up".

The Why We Fight series is widely considered a masterpiece of war information documentaries. Prelude to War, the first in the series, won the 1942 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. When his career ended, Capra regarded these films as his most important works. He was discharged from the service in 1945 as a colonel, having been awarded the Legion of Merit in 1943, the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945, the World War I Victory Medal (for his service in World War I), the American Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
After the war ended, along with directors William Wyler and George Stevens, Capra founded Liberty Films. Their studio became the first independent company of directors since United Artists in 1919 whose goal was to make films without interference by studio bosses. However, the only pictures completed by the studio were It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and State of the Union (1948). The first of these was a box office disappointment but was nominated for five Academy Awards.

The copyright status of It's a Wonderful Life remains in flux (see the wikiarticle for detailed explanation). In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) named it one of the best films ever made, putting it at 11th on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list of the top American films of all time. In 2006, the AFI put the film at the top of its AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers list, ranking what AFI considers the most inspirational American movies of all time. It would become Capra's last film to win major acclaim—his successful years were now behind him, although he directed five more films over the next 14 years.

For State of the Union (1948), Capra changed studios. It would be the only time he ever worked for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Although the project had an excellent pedigree with stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, the film was not a success, and Capra's statement, "I think State of the Union was my most perfect film in handling people and ideas" has few adherents today.

Representing U.S. at International Film Festival
In January 1952, the U.S. Ambassador to India asked Capra to represent the U.S. film industry at an International Film Festival to be held in India. A State Department friend of Capra asked him and explained why his trip would be important:

"[Ambassador] Bowles thinks the Festival is a Communist shenanigan of some kind, but he doesn't know what ... Bowles has asked for you. 'I want a free-wheeling guy to take care of our interest on his own. I want Capra. His name is big here, and I've heard he's quick on his feet in an alley fight."

After two weeks in India, Capra discovered that Bowles' fears were warranted, as many film sessions were used by Russian and Chinese representatives to give long political speeches. At a lunch with 15 Indian directors and producers, he stressed that "they must preserve freedom as artists, and that any government control would hinder that freedom. A totalitarian system—and they would become nothing but publicity men for the party in power." Capra had a difficult time communicating this, however, as he noted in his diary:

"They all think some super-government or super-collection of individuals dictates all American pictures. Free enterprise is mystery to them. Somebody must control, either visible or invisible ... Even intellectuals have no great understanding of liberty and freedom ... Democracy is only a theory to them. They have no idea of service to others, of service to the poor. The poor are despised, in a sense."

When he returned to Washington to give his report, Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave Capra his commendation for "virtually single-handedly forestalling a possible Communist take-over of Indian films". Ambassador Bowles also conveyed gratitude to Capra for "one helluva job".

Disillusionment period and later years
Following It's a Wonderful Life and State of the Union, which were done soon after the war ended, Capra's themes were becoming out of step with changes in the film industry and the public mood. Friedman finds that while Capra's ideas were popular with depression-era and prewar audiences, they became less relevant to a prospering postwar America. Capra didn't help his own cause when he consulted old 1930s scripts for his latest productions. Capra had become "disconnected from an American culture that had changed" during the previous decade. Biographer Joseph McBride argues that Capra's disillusionment was more related to the negative effect that the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had on the film industry in general. The HUAC interrogations in the early 1950s ended many Hollywood careers. Capra himself was not called to testify, although he was a prime target of the committee due to his past associations with many Hollywood blacklisted screenwriters.

Capra blamed his early retirement from films on the rising power of stars, which forced him to continually compromise his artistic vision. He also claimed that increasing budgetary and scheduling demands had constrained his creative abilities. Film historian Michael Medved agreed with Capra, noting that he walked away from the movie business because "he refused to adjust to the cynicism of the new order." In his autobiography, written in 1971, Capra expressed his feelings about the shifting film industry:

"The winds of change blew through the dream factories of make-believe, tore at its crinoline tatters ... The hedonists, the homosexuals, the hemophiliac bleeding hearts, the God-haters, the quick-buck artists who substituted shock for talent, all cried: 'Shake 'em! Rattle 'em! God is dead. Long live pleasure! Nudity? Yea! Wife-swapping? Yea! Liberate the world from prudery. Emancipate our films from morality!' ... Kill for thrill—shock! Shock! To hell with the good in man, Dredge up his evil—shock! Shock!"

Capra added that in his opinion, "practically all the Hollywood film-making of today is stooping to cheap salacious pornography in a crazy bastardization of a great art to compete for the 'patronage' of deviates and masturbators."

Capra remained employable in Hollywood during and after the HUAC hearings but chose nonetheless to demonstrate his loyalty by attempting to re-enlist in the Army at the outbreak of the Korean War, in 1950. He was rejected due to his age. He was later invited to join the Defense Department's newly formed Think Tank project, VISTA, but was denied the necessary clearance. According to Friedman, "these two rejections were devastating to the man who had made a career of demonstrating American ideals in film", along with his directing award-winning documentary films for the Army.

Later films (1950–1961)
Capra directed two films at Paramount Pictures starring Bing Crosby, Riding High (1950, a remake of 1934's Broadway Bill) and Here Comes the Groom (1951). By 1952, at the age of 55, Capra effectively retired from Hollywood filmmaking; he shifted to working with the California Institute of Technology, his alma mater, to produce educational films on science topics.

From 1952 to 1956, Capra produced four science-related television specials in color for The Bell System Science Series: Our Mr. Sun (1956), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957), and Meteora: The Unchained Goddess (1958). These educational science documentaries were popular favorites for school science classrooms for around 30 years. It was eight years before he directed another theatrical film, A Hole in the Head (1959) with Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson, his first feature film in color. His final theatrical film was with Glenn Ford and Bette Davis, named Pocketful of Miracles (1961), a remake of his 1933 film Lady for a Day. In the mid-1960s he worked on pre-production for an adaptation of Martin Caidin's novel Marooned, but he felt he could not make the movie on the $3 million budget he was given, and abandoned the project. (A film adaptation was finally made in 1969, directed by John Sturges with an $8 million budget.)

Capra's final film, Rendezvous in Space (1964), was an industrial film made for the Martin Marietta Company and shown at the 1964 New York World's Fair. It was exhibited at the New York Hall of Science after the Fair ended.

Directing style
Capra's directing style relied on improvisation to a great extent. He was noted for going on the set with no more than the master scenes written. He explained his reasoning:

"What you need is what the scene is about, who does what to whom, and who cares about whom ... All I want is a master scene and I'll take care of the rest—how to shoot it, how to keep the machinery out of the way, and how to focus attention on the actors at all times."

According to some experts, Capra used great, unobtrusive craftsmanship when directing, and felt it was bad directing to distract the audience with fancy technical gimmicks. Film historian and author William S. Pechter described Capra's style as one "of almost classical purity". He adds that his style relied on editing to help his films sustain a "sequence of rhythmic motion". Pechter describes its effect:

"Capra's [editing] has the effect of imposing order on images constantly in motion, imposing order on chaos. The end of all this is indeed a kind of beauty, a beauty of controlled motion, more like dancing than painting ... His films move at a breathtaking clip: dynamic, driving, taut, at their extreme even hysterical; the unrelenting, frantic acceleration of pace seems to spring from the release of some tremendous accumulation of pressure."

Film critic John Raeburn discusses an early Capra film, American Madness (1932), as an example of how he had mastered the movie medium and expressed a unique style:

"The tempo of the film, for example, is perfectly synchronized with the action ... as the intensity of the panic increases, Capra reduces the duration of each shot and uses more and more crosscutting and jump shots to emphasize the 'madness' of what is happening ... Capra added to the naturalistic quality of the dialogue by having speakers overlap one another, as they often do in ordinary life; this was an innovation that helped to move the talkies away from the example of the legitimate stage."

As for Capra's subject matter, film author Richard Griffith tries to summarize Capra's common theme:

"[A] messianic innocent ... pits himself against the forces of entrenched greed. His inexperience defeats him strategically, but his gallant integrity in the face of temptation calls for the goodwill of the 'little people', and through their combined protest, he triumphs."

Capra's personality when directing gave him a reputation for "fierce independence" when dealing with studio bosses. On the set he was said to be gentle and considerate, "a director who displays absolutely no exhibitionism." As Capra's films often carry a message about basic goodness in human nature, and show the value of unselfishness and hard work, his wholesome, feel-good themes have led some cynics to term his style "Capra-corn". However, those who hold his vision in higher regard prefer the term "Capraesque".

Capra's basic themes of championing the common man, as well as his use of spontaneous, fast-paced dialogue and goofy, memorable lead and supporting characters, made him one of the most popular and respected filmmakers of the 20th century. His influence can be traced in the works of many directors, including Robert Altman, Ron Howard, Masaki Kobayashi, Akira Kurosawa, John Lasseter, David Lynch, John Milius, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and François Truffaut.

Personal life
Capra married actress Helen Howell in 1923. They divorced in 1928. He married Lucille Warner in 1932, with whom he had a daughter and three sons, one of whom, Johnny, died at age 3 following a tonsillectomy.

Capra was four times president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and three times president of the Directors Guild of America, which he helped found. Under his presidency, he worked to give directors more artistic control of their films. During his career as a director, he retained an early ambition to teach science, and after his career declined in the 1950s, he made educational television films related to science subjects.

Physically, Capra was short, stocky, and vigorous, and enjoyed outdoor activities, such as hunting, fishing, and mountain climbing. In his later years, he spent time writing short stories and songs, along with playing guitar. He collected fine and rare books during the 1930s and 1940s. Six hundred forty items from his "distinguished library" were sold by Parke-Bernet Galleries at auction in New York in April 1949, realizing $68,000 ($ today).

His son, Frank Capra Jr., was the president of EUE Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, until his death on December 19, 2007. His grandsons, brothers Frank Capra III and Jonathan Capra, have both worked as assistant directors; Frank III worked on the 1995 film The American President, which referred to Frank Capra in the film's dialogue.

Political views
Capra's political views coalesced in his movies, which promoted and celebrated the spirit of American individualism. A conservative Republican, Capra railed against Franklin D. Roosevelt during his tenure as governor of New York and opposed his presidency during the years of the Depression. Capra stood against government intervention during the national economic crisis.

In his later years, Capra became a self-described pacifist and was very critical of the Vietnam War.

Religious views
Capra wrote in his early adulthood that he was a "Christmas Catholic". In his later years, Capra returned to the Catholic Church and described himself as "a Catholic in spirit; one who firmly believes that the anti-moral, the intellectual bigots, and the Mafias of ill will may destroy religion, but they will never conquer the cross".

Death
In 1985, aged 88, Capra suffered the first of a series of strokes. On September 3, 1991, he died of a heart attack in his sleep at his home in La Quinta, California, at the age of 94. He was interred at Coachella Valley Public Cemetery in Coachella, California.

He left part of his 1100 acre ranch in Fallbrook, California, to the California Institute of Technology, to be used as a retreat center. Capra's personal papers and some film-related materials are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives, which allows scholars and media experts full access.

Legacy
During the golden age of Hollywood, Capra's "fantasies of goodwill" made him one of the two or three most famous and successful directors in the world. Film historian Ian Freer notes that at the time of his death in 1991, his legacy remained intact:

"He had created feelgood entertainments before the phrase was invented, and his influence on culture—from Steven Spielberg to David Lynch, and from television soap operas to greeting-card sentiments—is simply too huge to calculate."

Director/actor John Cassavetes contemplating Capra's contribution to film quipped: "Maybe there really wasn't an America, it was only Frank Capra." Capra's films were his love letters to an idealized America—a cinematic landscape of his own invention. The performances his actors gave were invariable portrayals of personalities developed into recognizable images of popular culture, "their acting has the bold simplicity of an icon ..."

Like his contemporary, director John Ford, Capra defined and aggrandized the tropes of mythic America where individual courage invariably triumphs over collective evil. Film historian Richard Griffith speaks of Capra's "... reliance on sentimental conversation and the ultimate benevolence of ordinary America to resolve all deep conflicts." "Average America" is visualized as "... a tree-lined street, undistinguished frame houses surrounded by modest areas of grass, a few automobiles. For certain purposes, it assumed that all real Americans live in towns like this, and so great is the power of myth, even the born city-dweller is likely to believe vaguely that he too lives on this shady street, or comes from it, or is going to."

NYU professor Leonard Quart writes:

"There would be no enduring conflicts—harmony, no matter how contrived and specious, would ultimately triumph in the last frame ... In true Hollywood fashion, no Capra film would ever suggest that social change was a complex, painful act. For Capra, there would be pain and loss, but no enduring sense of tragedy would be allowed to intrude on his fabulist world."

Although Capra's stature as a director had declined in the 1950s, his films underwent a revival in the 1960s:

"Ten years later, it was clear that this trend had reversed itself. Post-auteurist critics once more acclaimed Capra as a cinematic master, and perhaps more surprisingly, young people packed Capra festivals and revivals all over the United States."

French film historian John Raeburn, editor of Cahiers du cinéma, noted that Capra's films were unknown in France, but there too his films underwent a fresh discovery by the public. He believes the reason for his renewed popularity had to do with his themes, which he made credible "an ideal conception of an American national character":

"There is a strong libertarian streak in Capra's films, a distrust of power wherever it occurs and in whomever it is invested. Young people are won over by the fact that his heroes are uninterested in wealth and are characterized by vigorous ... individualism, a zest for experience, and a keen sense of political and social justice. ... Capra's heroes, in short, are ideal types, created in the image of a powerful national myth."

In 1982, the American Film Institute honored Capra by giving him their AFI Life Achievement Award. The event was used to create the television film, The American Film Institute Salute to Frank Capra, hosted by James Stewart. In 1986, Capra received the National Medal of Arts. During his acceptance speech for the AFI award, Capra stressed his most important values:

"The art of Frank Capra is very, very simple: It's the love of people. Add two simple ideals to this love of people: the freedom of each individual, and the equal importance of each individual, and you have the principle upon which I based all my films."

Capra expanded on his visions in his 1971 autobiography, The Name Above the Title:

"Forgotten among the hue-and criers were the hard-working stiffs that came home too tired to shout or demonstrate in streets ... and prayed they'd have enough left over to keep their kids in college, despite their knowing that some were pot-smoking, parasitic parent-haters.

Who would make films about, and for, these uncomplaining, unsqueaky wheels that greased the squeaky? Not me. My 'one man, one film' Hollywood had ceased to exist. Actors had sliced it up into capital gains. And yet—mankind needed dramatizations of the truth that man is essentially good, a living atom of divinity; that compassion for others, friend or foe, is the noblest of all virtues. Films must be made to say these things, to counteract the violence and the meanness, to buy time to demobilize the hatreds."

Awards and honors
The Why We Fight series earned Capra the Legion of Merit in 1943 and the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945.

In 1957, Capra was awarded the George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.

Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, by a vote of the city council, declared May 12, 1962 as "Frank Capra Day". George Sidney, President of the Directors Guild stated that "This is the first time in the history of Hollywood, that the city of Los Angeles has officially recognized a creative talent." At the event ceremony, director John Ford announced that Capra had also received an honorary Order of the British Empire (OBE) on the recommendation of Winston Churchill. Ford suggested publicly to Capra:

"Make those human comedy-dramas, the kind only you can make—the kind of films America is proud to show here, behind the Iron Curtain, the Bamboo Curtain—and behind the lace curtain."

In 1966, Capra was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater Caltech. (see section "Early Life", supra)

In 1972, Capra received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

In 1974, Capra was awarded the Inkpot Award.

In 1975, Capra was awarded the Golden Anchor Award by the U.S Naval Reserve's Combat Camera Group for his contribution to World War II Naval photography and production of the "Why We Fight" series. The award ceremony included a video salute by President Ford. Attending were many of Capra's favorite actors including Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Pat O'Brien, Jean Arthur, and others.

An annual It's a Wonderful Life celebration that Capra attended in 1981, during which he said, "This is one of the proudest moments of my life," was recounted in The New Yorker.

He was nominated six times for Best Director and seven times for Outstanding Production/Best Picture. Out of six nominations for Best Director, Capra received the award three times. He briefly held the record for winning the most Best Director Oscars when he won for the third time in 1938, until this record was matched by John Ford in 1941, and then later surpassed by Ford in 1952. William Wyler also matched this record upon winning his third Oscar in 1959.

The Academy Film Archive has preserved two of Capra's films, The Matinee Idol (1928) and Two Down and One to Go (1945).

Other awards

 * American Film Institute
 * Life Achievement Award (1982)

 * Directors Guild of America
 * Best Director Nomination for A Hole in the Head (1959)
 * Life Achievement Award (1959)
 * Best Director Nomination for Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

 * Golden Globe Award
 * Best Director Award for It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

 * Venice Film Festival
 * Mussolini Cups for best foreign film Nomination for It Happened One Night (1934)
 * Mussolini Cups for best foreign film Nomination for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
 * Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (1982)

 * American Film Institute recognition
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)
 * It's a Wonderful Life ... #20
 * Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ... #26
 * It Happened One Night ... #46
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers
 * It's a Wonderful Life ... #1
 * Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ... #5
 * Meet John Doe ... #49
 * Mr. Deeds Goes to Town ... #83
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs
 * It Happened One Night ... #8
 * Arsenic and Old Lace ... #30
 * Mr. Deeds Goes to Town ... #70
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions
 * It's a Wonderful Life ... #8
 * It Happened One Night ... #38
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains
 * 50 greatest movie heroes
 * It's a Wonderful Life ... George Bailey ... #9
 * Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ... Jefferson Smith ... #11
 * 50 greatest movie villains
 * It's a Wonderful Life ... Mr. Potter ... #6
 * AFI's 10 Top 10
 * Fantasy
 * It's a Wonderful Life ... #3
 * Romantic Comedies
 * It Happened One Night ... #3

 * United States National Film Registry
 * The Strong Man (1926)
 * It Happened One Night (1934)
 * Lost Horizon (1937)
 * Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
 * Why We Fight series of seven films (1942)
 * It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

title: Frank Capra