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Bank of Italy

The Bank of Italy (Italian: Banca d'Italia,, informally referred to as Bankitalia) is the Italian member of the Eurosystem and has been the monetary authority for Italy from 1893 to 1998, issuing the Italian lira. Since 2014, it has also been Italy's national competent authority within European Banking Supervision. It is located in Palazzo Koch, via Nazionale, Rome.

History
The institution was established in 1893 from the combination of three major banks in Italy (after the Banca Romana scandal). The new central bank first issued banknotes during 1926. Until 1928, it was directed by a general manager, after this time instead by a governor elected by an internal commission of managers, with a decree from the President of the Italian Republic, for a term of seven years.

In 1863 the crisis of the world money market created panic and the rush to the counters to collect the metallic currency in exchange for the banknotes. The Italian government responded in 1866 by introducing the fiat and legal tender of paper money. The government was accused in this way of favouring the issuing banks, and a long debate called the "banking question" arose about the advisability of having one or more issuers.

The Minghetti-Finali law of 1873 established the mandatory consortium of issuing institutions among the six existing issuing institutions, the National Bank of the Kingdom of Italy, Banca Nazionale Toscana, Banca Toscana di Credito, Banca Romana, Banco di Napoli, and Banco di Sicilia; but the measure proved insufficient.

Following the Banca Romana scandal, the reorganization of the issuing institutions became necessary.

Establishment

Law no. 449 of 10 August 1893 of the Giolitti I government established the Bank of Italy through the merger of four banks: the National Bank in the Kingdom of Italy (formerly Banca Nazionale in the Sardinian States), the Banca Nazionale Toscana, the Banca Toscana di Credito for the Industries and Commerce of Italy and with the liquidation management of Banca Romana. With a complex series of mergers between these banks, the current Bank of Italy was formed. Some families of bankers, historical partners: Bombrini, Bastogi, Balduino, were the supporters of the operation. The institute enjoyed (together with the Banks of Naples and Sicily) the issuing privilege, it also acted as a "bank of banks" through the rediscount of bills, but did not have supervisory powers over other banks. The bank remains a private limited company and was headed by a director.

From 1900 to 1928 Bonaldo Stringher was the director, who gave the Bank the role of manager of Italian monetary policy and lender of last resort, bringing it closer to a modern central bank. In particular, he understood that a central bank cannot aim at maximizing profit (which is achieved by printing as much paper money) but must instead aim at price stability.

In 1907, the Bank of Italy coordinated the rescue of the Italian Banking Company, a major lender of FIAT, an operation that ended with the absorption of the bank in crisis into the Italian Discount Bank. In 1911 the central bank organized a consortium to rescue the steel companies (Acciaierie di Terni, Ilva and others) of which the Bank of Italy was directly creditor, financing the operation also through the issue of banknotes.

In 1912 the credit institute for cooperation, with social purposes, was established, led by the Bank of Italy and also participated by public bodies, savings banks, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the Cassa di Previdenza, and the Credit Institution for the Cooperatives of Milan. The institute in 1929 was transformed by its director Arturo Osio into the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro.

In 1913 the Subsidy Consortium was established, led by the Bank of Italy and also participated by the Banks of Naples and Sicily, some savings banks, Monte dei Paschi di Siena and by the San Paolo Bank of Turin. In 1922 the Consortium saved Ansaldo and took control of it, and in 1923 it did the same with Banco di Roma.

In the same 1913 Francesco Saverio Nitti drew up a bill that entrusted the Bank of Italy with the supervision of other banks, but the private banks managed to avoid its approval.

In 1914 the Bank of Italy assisted the Banco di Roma, which had to devalue its capital due to losses reported in the activities in the eastern Mediterranean.

After the First World War, in 1921, it was always the Bank of Italy that led the consortium that managed the liquidation of the Italian Discount Bank and saved the Banco di Roma once again from crisis.

The Banking Law of 1926

Even with these strong regulatory and intervention powers, the fascist state allowed the crisis of the banks that were headed by the National Credit, the Popular Party bank, to worsen.

In this way, fascism, which equally aimed at the political control of monetary issuance, intended to strike one of the electoral strengths and of the business system that orbited around the industrial policy of the Catholic world, supported by credit institutions.

With R.D.L. 812 of 6 May 1926, the Bank of Italy obtained the exclusive right to issue the currency (the royal decree of 28 April 1910, no. 204 was thus repealed, which had confirmed the prerogative also to the Bank of Naples and the Bank of Sicily).

The subsequent R.D.L. November 6, 1926 n. 1830 entrusted the Bank of Italy with the task of supervising savings banks. In 1928 the Bank was reorganized. The general manager was joined by a governor with greater powers.

Meanwhile, in 1926 the Subsidy Consortium had been transformed into a Liquidation Institute, still under the control of the central bank. In 1933 it was absorbed by the new Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, autonomous from the Bank of Italy.

While all the banks were in very bad conditions, the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro of the self-styled socialist Arturo Osio, in 1929 confiscated eleven Catholic banks, and in 1932 the Banca Agricola Italiana which had financed SNIA Viscosa di Gualino.

Banks and the economy of the 1930s

Italy in the 1930s had an agricultural economy, a small number of industrial families who relied on the subcontracting of local suppliers, formed by a myriad of small family-run businesses, not international and whose survival depended on large groups of industrialists, in turn, linked to commercial banks.

The savings from agriculture flowed into the rural coffers, the popular banks and the cooperative credit which financed the life of the provincial crafts, small businesses and construction. The job of the banks was to match the customers' short-term investment horizon with the long-term investments of large groups (Rediscount). National banks turned to local banks that had large deposits of deposits for smaller, low-risk loans.

The Cassa Depositi e Prestiti channelled postal savings in favour of local authorities, public institutions and infrastructures, which were a way of absorbing mass unemployment, through a vast program of public works.

The ideological basis of the law was that savings are a matter of national interest and must be protected by the State, a principle also enshrined in the Republican Constitution and concretized in the first place in the law establishing the interbank guarantee fund and in the policy of public bailouts. The banking legislation of 1936-1938 established a banking supervisory agency, the Ispettorato per la Difesa del Risparmio e l'Esercizio del Credito (IDREC), chaired by the Bank of Italy's governor. The bank no longer had the right to give credit to individuals but only to other banks as a lender of last resort. public bailout policy. Finally, it had the power to require other banks to deposit a portion of the available funds with the same central bank; by varying the share, the Bank of Italy could operate credit tightening or enlargements.

The law established certain minimum capital and management requirements necessary to guarantee risk management, stability and operational continuity: minimum capital, minimum ratio between loans and deposits, credit limits, provisions for compulsory reserve.

IRI and the war

After the "defenestration" of Bonaldo Stringher, Alberto Beneduce took over and was forced to retire in 1936 after a "heart attack" during a meeting at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. They conceived the duty of the banks towards the public interest of the country, as the subject who had to collect savings to lend them to entrepreneurs, as a tool for development and growth. The process was to be led by a "circulation bank", which would increase the speed of circulation of money in the real economy.

The Central Bank supported the fascist monetary policy of defending the stability of the Italian lira (known as the "Quota 90"), through the reduction of discounts and advances, and financing the enormous expenses of wars in the 1930s and 1940s through the unlimited issuing of money (and the "inflation tax", not progressive with income), as Hjalmar Schacht did in Germany under Hitler.

Operationally, the government issued and sold debt securities to finance military spending, and the military industry reinvested its government profits in the purchase of such bonds as a de facto advance on future orders, fueling a closed financial circuit. In simple terms, this was something like the ECB issuing money and lending it to private banks who keep it in their current accounts with the ECB.

This mechanism was called "capital circuit". The printing of tickets and the scarcity of consumer goods created an overabundance of money that poured into bank deposits, allowing a new expansion of credit, which was directed in favour of the economic sectors themselves. given that the state paid the banks a higher interest on the BOTs than the savers. The absorption of savings into investments in fixed capital had already taken place in the First World War and industries were working with existing production capacities. Without consumption and investments, public spending by the state remained.

The war could start with a modest tax levy and inflation within the normal limits in the first months, before the black market and ration cards.

The situation followed the conflict of interest between the state entrepreneur and the state bank, albeit in the name of a higher ideological purpose.

In 1938, the government decreed the power to directly appoint presidents and vice-presidents of the board of directors of banks.

Beneduce planned to have a public bank take over the long-term credit of large companies, financed with bonds of equal duration for public works, energy, and industry. After them, the Central Bank maintained a low-profile monetary policy, consistent with the directives of fascism.

IRI operated differently, in agreement with the Italian banks and industries that supported fascism. The banks renounced exercising an option by "converting" the debts into shares (or a law in this regard), preferring not to enter directly into the ownership of the industrial groups.

The groups transferred the bank debts to IRI, which became the new owner in exchange for shares (at the book value, not always the same as the market value), until they held control of the property and therefore of management.

The debt of the IRI rose to nine and a half billion lire at the time, two-thirds of which were paid within the war, because they were drastically diluted by inflation which has the effect of lowering the real weight of debts until the accounting entries are cancelled. of issuance, but also to halve the purchasing power of small savers. The remaining debt was paid by 1953. The IRI in turn had debts towards the Bank of Italy for five billion lire: the State issued bonds for IRI for one and a half billion, "sterilizing" the debt that should have been repaid with "annuity" interest. accrued until 1971. The change of constitutional order and currency (exchange rate for conversion), and inflation meant that IRI (and industries) paid the Bank of Italy less than a third of the sum.

After the armistice of 8 September, the German authorities demanded the delivery of the gold reserve. 173 tons of gold were first transferred to the Milan office, and then to Fortezza. Traces of it were subsequently lost.

In the 1960s, the public debt increased and so did inflation. Governor Guido Carli made a policy of credit crunch to stop inflation, particularly in 1964. In general, the Bank of Italy played an important political role under this governorship. Other credit crunches were implemented between 1969 and 1970 due to the flight of capital abroad and in 1974 as a result of the oil crisis.

In March 1979 the governor of the Bank of Italy, Paolo Baffi, and the deputy director in charge of supervision, Mario Sarcinelli, were accused by the Rome public prosecutor of private interest in official acts and personal aiding and abetting. Sarcinelli was arrested, and released from prison only after being suspended from duties relating to surveillance, while Baffi avoided prison due to his age. In 1981 the two will be completely acquitted. Subsequently, the suspicion will emerge that the indictment was wanted by P2 to prevent the Bank of Italy from supervising Roberto Cavali Banco Ambrosiano.

The postwar period

The post-war inflation, also due to the Am-lire, was fought with the credit crunch desired by the governor Luigi Einaudi, which was obtained through the compulsory reserve on deposits. In particular, the instrument of compulsory reserves of banks at the central bank was used, introduced in 1926 but never really applied. In 1948 the governor was given the task of regulating the money supply and deciding the discount rate.

The universal banks were the ones that had gained the most from war and inflation (under the Authorization Regime of the Interministerial Credit Committee), with the greatest growth in deposits.

Along with the recovery, speculative stocks and capital flight abroad appeared. Credit limits were no longer tied to equity, as equity figures were completely distorted by inflation.

The squeeze on lending, the liquidity crisis and the Eenaudian deflation pushed operators to finance themselves by placing stocks on the market and returning capital, thus blocking the rise in prices; and by resorting to self-financing (even without distributing profits), aided by the fact that inflation had made it possible to quickly amortize fixed assets whose book value was now nominal.

During the years of the Reconstruction, governor Donato Menichella governed the issue in a gradual and balanced way: he did not implement expansionary manoeuvres to encourage growth but was careful to avoid the creation of credit crunches. In this, he was helped by the low public debt. Its monetary policy program was stability for development.

A part of the available bank savings was channelled annually to the Treasury to cover the budget deficit (in the current year), while during his tenure the public debt of the state never rose above 1% of GDP, until 1964.

In July 1981, a "divorce" between the State (Ministry of the Treasury) and its central bank was initiated by the decision of the then Treasury Minister Beniamino Andreatta. From that moment on, the institute was no longer required to purchase the bonds that the government was unable to place on the market, thus ceasing the monetization of the Italian public debt that it had carried out since the Second World War up to that moment. This decision was opposed by the Minister of Finance Rino Formica, who would have liked the Bank of Italy to be required to repay at least a portion of these securities, and from the summer of 1982 a series of intra-government verbal clashes between the two ministers known as the wives' quarrel, which was followed by the fall of the second Spadolini government a few months later.

The divorce between the Ministry of the Treasury and the Bank of Italy is still considered by economic doctrine as a factor of great stabilization of inflation (which went from over 20% in 1980 to less than 5% in the following years) and a central prerequisite for guarantee the full independence of the technical monetary policy body (central bank) from the choices related to fiscal policy (under the responsibility of the government), but also a factor of considerable incidence of growth of the Italian public debt.

The law of 7 February 1992 n. 82, proposed by the then Minister of the Treasury Guido Carli, clarifies that the decision on the discount rate is the exclusive competence of the governor and must no longer be agreed in concert with the Minister of the Treasury (the previous decree of the President of the Republic is modified in relation to the new law with the Presidential Decree of 18 July).

The euro and the 2006 reform

The Legislative Decree 10 March 1998 n. 43 removes the Bank of Italy from management by the Italian government, sanctioning its belonging to the European system of central banks. From this date, therefore, the quantity of currency in circulation is decided autonomously by the Central Bank. With the introduction of the Euro on 1 January 1999, the Bank thus loses the function of presiding over national monetary policy. This function has since been exercised collectively by the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, which also includes the Governor of the Bank of Italy.

On 13 June 1999 the Senate of the Republic, during the XIII Legislature, discussed bill no. 4083 "Rules on the ownership of the Bank of Italy and on the criteria for appointing the Board of Governors of the Bank of Italy". This bill would like the state to acquire all the shares of the institute, but it is never approved.

On January 4, 2004, the weekly "Famiglia Cristiana" reports, for the first time in history, the list of participants in the capital of the Bank of Italy with the relative shares. The source is a Mediobanca Research & Studies dossier, directed by the researcher Fulvio Coltorti, who, by investigating backwards on the balance sheets of banks, insurance companies and institutions, and gradually noting the shares that indicated a shareholding in the capital of the Bank of Italia managed to reconstruct a large part of the list of participants of the highest Italian financial institution.

On September 20, 2005, the list of shareholders was officially made available by the Bank of Italy; until now it was considered confidential. On December 19, 2005, after intense press campaigns and criticism of his actions in the context of the Bancopoli scandal, Governor Antonio Fazio resigned. A few days later, Mario Draghi, who took office on January 16, 2006, was appointed in his place.

The law of 28 December 2005, n. 262, as part of various measures to protect savings, introduces for the first time a term to the mandate of the governor and the members of the directorate. It also dealt with (article 19, paragraph 10) the issue of ownership of the capital of the Bank of Italy, providing for the redefinition of the Bank's shareholding structure by means of a government regulation to be issued within three years of the law's entry into force. This regulation should have governed the methods of transferring shares held by "subjects other than the State or other public bodies". The delegation made by law 262/2005, therefore, expired without the regulation being issued, but the right to ownership of the shares of the current participants is in any case safeguarded by a provision of the Bank's Statute. On the basis of law 262/2005, Mario Draghi becomes the first governor to have a term of six years, renewable once for a further six years.

Missions

After the charge of monetary and exchange rate policies was shifted in 1998 to the European Central Bank, within the European institutional framework, the bank implements the decisions, issues euro banknotes and withdraws and destroys worn pieces.

The main function has thus become banking and financial supervision. The objective is to ensure the stability and efficiency of the system and compliance with rules and regulations; the bank pursues it through secondary legislation, controls and cooperation with governmental authorities.

Following a reform in 2005, which was prompted by takeover scandals, the bank has lost exclusive antitrust authority in the credit sector, which is now shared with the Italian Competition Authority (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato).

Other functions include market supervision, oversight of the payment system and provision of settlement services, State treasury service, Central Credit Register, economic analysis and institutional consultancy.

As of 2021, the Bank of Italy owned 2,451.8 tonnes of gold, the third-largest gold reserve in the world.

Governing bodies
The bank's governing bodies are the General Meeting of Shareholders, the board of directors, the governor, the director general and three deputy directors-general; the last five constitute the directorate.

The general meeting takes place yearly and with the purpose of approving accounts and appointing the auditors. The board of directors has administrative powers and is chaired by the governor (or by the director-general in his absence). Following a reform in 2005, the governor lost exclusive responsibility regarding decisions of external relevance (i.e. banking and financial supervision), which has been transferred to the directorate (by majority vote). The director-general is responsible for the day-to-day administration of the bank and acts as governor when absent.

The board of auditors assesses the bank's administration and compliance with the law, regulations and statute.

Appointment
The directorate's term of office lasts six years and is renewable once. The appointment of the governor is the responsibility of the government, head of the board of directors, with the approval of the president (formally a decree of the president). The board of directors is elected by the shareholders according to the bank statute.

On 25 October 2011, Silvio Berlusconi nominated Ignazio Visco to be the bank's new governor to replace Mario Draghi when he left to become president of the European Central Bank in November.

Currency and coinage

Italy has a long history of different coinage types, which spans thousands of years. Since Italy has been for centuries divided into many historic states, they all had different coinage systems, but when the country became unified in 1861, the Italian lira came into place, and was used until 2002. The term originates from libra, the largest unit of the Carolingian monetary system used in Western Europe and elsewhere from the 8th to the 20th century.

Italian lira was introduced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different states that would eventually form the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. It was subdivided into 100 centesimi (singular: centesimo), which means "hundredths" or "cents". The lira was also the currency of the Albanian Kingdom from 1941 to 1943.

There was no standard sign or abbreviation for the Italian lira. The abbreviations Lit. (standing for Lira italiana) and L. (standing for Lira) and the signs ₤ or £ were all accepted representations of the currency. Banks and financial institutions, including the Bank of Italy, often used Lit. and this was regarded internationally as the abbreviation for the Italian lira. Handwritten documents and signs at market stalls would often use "£" or "₤", while coins used "L." Italian postage stamps mostly used the word lire in full but some (such as the 1975 monuments series) used "L." The name of the currency could also be written in full as a prefix or a suffix (e.g. Lire 100,000 or 100,000 lire). The ISO 4217 currency code for the lira was ITL.

The Italian lira was the official unit of currency in Italy until 1 January 1999, when it was replaced by the euro (euro coins and notes were not introduced until 2002). Old lira denominated currency ceased to be legal tender on 28 February 2002. The conversion rate is 1,936.27 lire to the euro. All lira banknotes in use immediately before the introduction of the euro, as all post WW2 coins, were still exchangeable for euros in all branches of the Bank of Italy until 29 February 2012.

Shareholders
Banca d'Italia had 300,000 shares with a nominal value of €25,000. Originally scattered around the banks of Italy, the shares now accumulated due to the merger of the banks since the 1990s and also a number of pension and social security institutions. The status of the bank states that a minimum of 54% of profits would go to the Italian government, and only a maximum of 6% of profits would be distributed as dividends according to share ratios. Even so, the Bank of Italy stands out among central banks in the Eurosystem as having no state ownership (the National Bank of Belgium and Bank of Greece have mixed ownership).

As of early 2024, the 15 largest shareholders represented slightly over half of the bank's equity, namely UniCredit (5.0 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza ed assistenza per gli ingegneri ed architetti liberi professionisti (4.9 percent), Fondazione ENPAM (4.9 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza e assistenza forense (4.9 percent), Intesa Sanpaolo (4.9 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza e assistenza dei dottori commercialisti (3.7 percent), BPER Banca (3.3 percent), ICCREA Banca (3.1 percent), Generali Italia (3.0 percent), the National Institute for Social Security (3.0 percent), Istituto nazionale per l'assicurazione contro gli infortuni sul lavoro (3.0 percent), Cassa di Sovvenzioni e Risparmio fra il Personale della Banca d'Italia (3.0 percent), Cassa di Risparmio di Asti (3.0 percent), Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (2.8 percent), and Crédit Agricole Italia (2.8 percent). The remaining 49 percent were dispersed among 157 shareholders, mainly banks and banking foundations.

title: Bank of Italy


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Talk:Boolean algebra (structure)

About isomorphisms
In § 4, Homomorphisms and isomorphisms, why's isomorphisms being mentioned in the title, but not in the section itself? Are all homomorphisms also isomorphisms? That should be written then.

--Unknowledgeable (talk) 13:50, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

 * I've added the definition of isomorphism; not every homomorphism is an isomorphism. Andrewbt (talk) 05:45, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Anti-absorption
Another useful identity (theorem, not axiom) is:
 * a ∨ (¬a ∧ b) = a ∨ b
 * a ∧ (¬a ∨ b) = a ∧ b

Does this have a standard name? It follows immediately from distributivity, of course. Should it be mentioned in the article? --Macrakis (talk) 20:09, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Boolean algebra (structure)


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British

British may refer to:

Peoples, culture, and language

 * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.
 * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture
 * British English, the English language as spoken and written in the United Kingdom or, more broadly, throughout the British Isles
 * Celtic Britons, an ancient ethno-linguistic group
 * Brittonic languages, a branch of the Insular Celtic language family (formerly called British)
 * Common Brittonic, an ancient language

Other uses

 * Brit(ish), a 2018 memoir by Afua Hirsch
 * People or things associated with:
 * Great Britain, an island
 * United Kingdom, a sovereign state
 * Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1800)
 * United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922)

title: British


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Beachcomber (pen name)

Beachcomber is a nom de plume that has been used by several journalists writing a long-running humorous column in the Daily Express. It was originated in 1917 by Major John Bernard Arbuthnot MVO as his signature on the column, titled 'By the Way'. The name Beachcomber was then passed to D. B. Wyndham Lewis in 1919 and, in turn, to J. B. Morton, who wrote the column till 1975. It was later revived by William Hartston, current author of the column.

"By the Way" column
"By the Way" was originally a column in The Globe, consisting of unsigned humorous pieces; P. G. Wodehouse was assistant editor of the column from August 1903 and editor from August 1904 to May 1909, during which time he was assisted by Herbert Westbrook. After the Globe's closure, it was re-established as a society news column in the Daily Express from 1917, initially written by social correspondent Major John Arbuthnot, who invented the name "Beachcomber".

After Arbuthnot was promoted to deputy editor, it was taken over sometime in 1919 by Wyndham-Lewis, who reinvented it as an outlet for his wit and humour. It was then passed to Morton during 1924, though it is likely there was a period when they overlapped. Morton wrote the column until 1975; it was revived in January 1996 and continues today, written by William Hartston. The column is unsigned except by "Beachcomber" and it was not publicly known that Morton or Wyndham-Lewis wrote it until the 1930s. The name is mainly associated with Morton, who has been credited as an influence by Spike Milligan amongst others. Morton introduced the recurring characters and serial stories that were a major feature of the column during his 51-year run.

The format of the column was a random assortment of small paragraphs which were otherwise unconnected. These could be anything, such as:

 * court reports, often involving Twelve Red-Bearded Dwarfs before Mr Justice Cocklecarrot.
 * angry exchanges of letters between characters such as Florence McGurgle and her dissatisfied boarders.
 * interruptions from "Prodnose", representing the public, who would then be roundly cursed by the author and kicked out.
 * instalments of serials that could stop, restart from earlier, be abandoned altogether or change direction abruptly without warning.
 * parodies of poetry or drama, particularly of the extremely "literary" type such as Ibsen.
 * unlikely headlines, such as "SIXTY HORSES WEDGED IN A CHIMNEY", for which the copy in its entirety was "The story to fit this sensational headline has not turned up yet."
 * news reports from around the country.
 * or just anything that the author thought funny at the time.

Morton's other interest, France, was occasionally represented by epic tales of his rambling walks through the French countryside. These were not intended as humour.

"By the Way" was popular with the readership, and of course, this is one of the reasons it lasted so long. Its style and randomness could be off-putting and it is safe to say the humour could be something of an acquired taste. Oddly, one of the column's greatest opponents was the Express newspaper's owner, Lord Beaverbrook, who had to keep being assured the column was indeed funny. A prominent critic was George Orwell, who frequently referred to him in his essays and diaries as "A Catholic Apologist" and accused him of being "silly-clever", in line with his criticisms of G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Ronald Knox and Wyndham-Lewis.

By the Way was one of the few features kept continuously running in the often seriously reduced Daily Express throughout World War II, when Morton's lampooning of Hitler, including the British invention of bracerot to make the Nazi's trousers fall down at inopportune moments, was regarded as valuable for morale. The column appeared daily until 1965 when it was changed to weekly. It was cancelled in 1975 and revived as a daily piece in the early 1990s. It continues to the present day in much the same format but is now entitled "Beachcomber", not "By the Way".

Recurrent characters

 * Mr. Justice Cocklecarrot: well-meaning but ineffectual High Court judge, plagued by litigation involving the twelve red-bearded dwarfs. Often appears in Private Eye.
 * Mrs. Justice Cocklecarrot: Mr. Cocklecarrot's wife. Very silent, until she observes that "Wivens has fallen down a manhole". An enquiry from the judge as to which Wivens that would be elicits the response "E. D. Wivens". After a worrying interval she reveals that E. D. Wivens is a cat. His Lordship observes that cats do not have initials, to which she replies, "This one does".
 * Tinklebury Snapdriver and Honeygander Gooseboote: two counsel. The elbow of one has a mysterious tendency to become jammed in the jaws of the other.
 * Twelve red-bearded dwarfs, with a penchant for farcical litigation. Their names "appear to be" Scorpion de Rooftrouser, Cleveland Zackhouse, Frums Gillygottle, Edeledel Edel, Churm Rincewind, Sophus Barkayo-Tong, Amaninter Axling, Guttergorm Guttergormpton, Badly Oronparser, Listenis Youghaupt, Molonay Tubilderborst and Farjole Merrybody. They admit that these are not genuine names, one of them stating that his real name is "Bogus". (Further red-bearded dwarfs, to the number of forty-one, appear in other litigation.)
 * Captain Foulenough: archetypal cad and gatecrasher who impersonates the upper class in order to wreck their social events. Educated at Narkover, a school specializing in card-playing, horse-racing and bribery. His title of "Captain" is probably spurious; but even if it had been a genuine military title, his use of it in civilian life, when at that time only officers who had achieved the rank of Major and above were allowed to do so, gives a subtle hint as to his nature.
 * Mountfalcon Foulenough: the Captain's priggish nephew, who brings havoc to Narkover and "makes virtue seem even more horrifying than usual".
 * Vita Brevis: debutante frequently plagued by, but with a certain reluctant admiration for, Captain Foulenough.
 * Dr. Smart-Allick: genteel, but ludicrous and criminal, headmaster of Narkover.
 * Miss Topsy Turvey: neighbouring headmistress, courted by Smart-Allick.
 * Dr. Strabismus (whom God preserve) of Utrecht: eccentric scientist and inventor.
 * The announcement of the annual list of Huntingdonshire Cabmen, with an enthusiastic endorsement of an arbitrary page.
 * Lord Shortcake: absent-minded peer obsessed by his enormous collection of goldfish.
 * Mrs. McGurgle: seaside landlady. Fearsomely British, until she decides to reinvent her house as "Hôtel McGurgle et de l'Univers" to attract the tourists.
 * Ministry of Bubbleblowing: possible ancestor of Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks.
 * Charlie Suet: disastrous civil servant.
 * Mimsie Slopcorner: Charlie's on-off girlfriend, an ill-informed and irritating social activist.
 * The Filthistan Trio: Ashura, Kazbulah and Rizamughan, three Persians from "Thurralibad", two of whom play seesaw on a plank laid across the third. They have a series of contretemps with British bureaucracy and the artistic establishment, in which the trio generally represents the voice of reason.
 * Dingi-Poos: the Tibetan Venus. She obtains desirable commercial contracts by using her charms to hoodwink visiting British envoys, principally Colonel Egham and Duncan Mince.
 * Big White Carstairs: Buchanesque empire builder, with a tendency to mislay his dress trousers.
 * O. Thake: naive, accident-prone Old Etonian and man-about-town.
 * Lady Cabstanleigh: Society hostess.
 * Stultitia: Cabstanleigh's niece, a playwright.
 * Boubou Flaring: glamorous but vacuous actress.
 * Emilia Rustiguzzi: voluminous (both in bulk and in decibels) opera singer.
 * Tumbelova, Serge Trouserin, Chuckusafiva: ballet dancers.
 * Colin Velvette: ballet impresario.
 * "Thunderbolt" Footle: handsome, socially celebrated boxer, who can do everything except actually fight.
 * The M'Babwa of M'Gonkawiwi: African chief, who occasions great administrative problems in connection with his invitation to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
 * The Clam of Chowdah: oriental potentate
 * Mrs. Wretch: formerly the glamorous circus performer Miss Whackaway, now wife to Colonel Wretch and "horrible welfare worker".
 * Roland Milk: insipid poet (possible ancestor of Private Eye's "E. J. Thribb").
 * Prodnose: humourless, reasonable oaf who interrupts Beachcomber's flights of fancy. (The name is journalistic slang for a sub-editor; the broadcaster Danny Baker has appropriated it as his Twitter name.)

Other media
The Will Hay film Boys Will Be Boys (1935) was set at Morton's Narkover school.

According to Spike Milligan, the columns were an influence on the comedic style of his radio series, The Goon Show.

In 1969, Milligan based a BBC television series named The World of Beachcomber on the columns. A small selection was issued on a 1971 LP and a 2-cassette set of the series' soundtrack was made available in the late 1990s.

In 1989, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the first of three series based on Morton's work. This featured Richard Ingrams as Beachcomber, John Wells as Prodnose, Patricia Routledge and John Sessions. The compilations prepared by Mike Barfield. Series 1 was also made available as a 2-cassette set.

Books featuring Wyndham-Lewis' work

 * A London Farrago (1922)

Original collections

 * Mr Thake: his life and letters (1929)
 * Mr Thake Again (1931)
 * By the Way (1931)
 * Morton's Folly (1933)
 * The Adventures of Mr Thake (1934, republished 2008): identical to Mr Thake: his life and letters
 * Mr Thake and the Ladies (1935)
 * Stuff and Nonsense (1935)
 * Gallimaufry (1936)
 * Sideways Through Borneo (1937)
 * The Dancing Cabman and other verses (1938)
 * A Diet of Thistles (1938)
 * A Bonfire of Weeds (1939)
 * I Do Not Think So (1940)
 * Fool's Paradise (1941)
 * Captain Foulenough and Company (1944)
 * Here and Now (1947)
 * The Misadventures of Dr Strabismus (1949)
 * The Tibetan Venus (1951)
 * Merry-Go-Round (1958)

Later omnibus editions

 * The Best of Beachcomber (ed. Michael Frayn, 1963)
 * Beachcomber: the works of J. B. Morton (ed. Richard Ingrams, 1974, Muller, London)
 * Cram Me With Eels: The Best of Beachcomber's Unpublished Humour (ed. Mike Barfield, 1995, Mandarin, London (ISBN 0-7493-1947-X))

title: Beachcomber (pen name)


text:
Bill Joy

William Nelson Joy (born November 8, 1954) is an American computer engineer and venture capitalist. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as Chief Scientist and CTO at the company until 2003.

He played an integral role in the early development of BSD UNIX while being a graduate student at Berkeley, and he is the original author of the vi text editor. He also wrote the 2000 essay "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us", in which he expressed deep concerns over the development of modern technologies.

Joy was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1999) for contributions to operating systems and networking software.

Early career
Joy was born in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, Michigan, to William Joy, a school vice-principal and counselor, and Ruth Joy. He earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1979.

While a graduate student at Berkeley, he worked for Fabry's Computer Systems Research Group CSRG on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) version of the Unix operating system. He initially worked on a Pascal compiler left at Berkeley by Ken Thompson, who had been visiting the university when Joy had just started his graduate work.

He later moved on to improving the Unix kernel, and also handled BSD distributions. Some of his most notable contributions were the ex and vi editors and the C shell. Joy's prowess as a computer programmer is legendary, with an oft-told anecdote that he wrote the vi editor in a weekend. Joy denies this assertion. A few of his other accomplishments have also been sometimes exaggerated; Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell at the time, inaccurately reported during an interview in PBS's documentary Nerds 2.0.1 that Joy had personally rewritten the BSD kernel in a weekend. In 1980, he also wrote  which Rob Pike and Brian W. Kernighan wrote went against Unix philosophy.

According to a Salon article, during the early 1980s, DARPA had contracted the company Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) to add TCP/IP to Berkeley UNIX. Joy had been instructed to plug BBN's stack into Berkeley Unix, but he refused to do so, as he had a low opinion of BBN's TCP/IP. So, Joy wrote his own high-performance TCP/IP stack. According to John Gage:

"BBN had a big contract to implement TCP/IP, but their stuff didn't work, and grad student Joy's stuff worked. So they had this big meeting and this grad student in a T-shirt shows up, and they said, 'How did you do this?' And Bill said, 'It's very simple — you read the protocol and write the code."

Rob Gurwitz, who was working at BBN at the time, disputes this version of events.

Sun Microsystems
In 1982, after the firm had been going for six months, Joy, Sun's sixteenth employee, was brought in with full co-founder status at Sun Microsystems. At Sun, Joy was an inspiration for the development of NFS, the SPARC microprocessors, the Java programming language, Jini/JavaSpaces, and JXTA.

In 1986, Joy was awarded a Grace Murray Hopper Award by the ACM for his work on the Berkeley UNIX Operating System.

On September 9, 2003, Sun announced Joy was leaving the company and that he "is taking time to consider his next move and has no definite plans".

Post-Sun activities
In 1999, Joy co-founded a venture capital firm, HighBAR Ventures, with two Sun colleagues, Andy Bechtolsheim and Roy Thiele-Sardiña. In January 2005 he was named a partner in venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. There, Joy has made several investments in green energy industries, even though he does not have any credentials in the field. He once said, "My method is to look at something that seems like a good idea and assume it's true".

In 2011, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum for his work on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Unix system and the co-founding of Sun Microsystems.

Technology concerns
In 2000, Joy gained notoriety with the publication of his article in Wired magazine, "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us", in which he declared, in what some have described as a "neo-Luddite" position, that he was convinced that growing advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology would bring risks to humanity. He argued that intelligent robots would replace humanity, at the very least in intellectual and social dominance, in the relatively near future. He supports and promotes the idea of abandonment of GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics) technologies, instead of going into an arms race between negative uses of the technology and defense against those negative uses (good nano-machines patrolling and defending against Grey goo "bad" nano-machines). This stance of broad relinquishment was criticized by technologists such as technological-singularity thinker Ray Kurzweil, who instead advocates fine-grained relinquishment and ethical guidelines. Joy was also criticized by The American Spectator, which characterized Joy's essay as a (possibly unwitting) rationale for statism.

A bar-room discussion of these technologies with Ray Kurzweil started to set Joy's thinking along this path. He states in his essay that during the conversation, he became surprised that other serious scientists were considering such possibilities likely, and even more astounded at what he felt was a lack of consideration of the contingencies. After bringing the subject up with a few more acquaintances, he states that he was further alarmed by what he felt was that although many people considered these futures possible or probable, that very few of them shared as serious a concern for the dangers as he seemed to. This concern led to his in-depth examination of the issue and the positions of others in the scientific community on it, and eventually, to his current activities regarding it.

Despite this, he is a venture capitalist, investing in GNR technology companies. He has also raised a specialty venture fund to address the dangers of pandemic diseases, such as the H5N1 avian influenza and biological weapons.

Of management
In his 2013 book Makers, author Chris Anderson credited Joy with establishing "Joy's law" based on a quip: "No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else [other than you]." His argument was that companies use an inefficient process by not hiring the best employees, only those they are able to hire. His "law" was a continuation of Friedrich Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" and warned that the competition outside of a company would always have the potential to be greater than the company itself.

Of computing
Joy devised a formula in 1983, also called Joy's law, stating that the peak computer speed doubles each year and thus is given by a simple function of time. Specifically,
 * $$S = 2^{Y-1984},$$

in which $S$ is the peak computer speed attained during year $Y$, expressed in MIPS.

title: Bill Joy


text:
Bandwidth (signal processing)

Bandwidth is the difference between the upper and lower frequencies in a continuous band of frequencies. It is typically measured in unit of hertz (symbol Hz).

It may refer more specifically to two subcategories: Passband bandwidth is the difference between the upper and lower cutoff frequencies of, for example, a band-pass filter, a communication channel, or a signal spectrum. Baseband bandwidth is equal to the upper cutoff frequency of a low-pass filter or baseband signal, which includes a zero frequency.

Bandwidth in hertz is a central concept in many fields, including electronics, information theory, digital communications, radio communications, signal processing, and spectroscopy and is one of the determinants of the capacity of a given communication channel.

A key characteristic of bandwidth is that any band of a given width can carry the same amount of information, regardless of where that band is located in the frequency spectrum. For example, a 3 kHz band can carry a telephone conversation whether that band is at baseband (as in a POTS telephone line) or modulated to some higher frequency. However, wide bandwidths are easier to obtain and process at higher frequencies because the is smaller.

Overview
Bandwidth is a key concept in many telecommunications applications. In radio communications, for example, bandwidth is the frequency range occupied by a modulated carrier signal. An FM radio receiver's tuner spans a limited range of frequencies. A government agency (such as the Federal Communications Commission in the United States) may apportion the regionally available bandwidth to broadcast license holders so that their signals do not mutually interfere. In this context, bandwidth is also known as channel spacing.

For other applications, there are other definitions. One definition of bandwidth, for a system, could be the range of frequencies over which the system produces a specified level of performance. A less strict and more practically useful definition will refer to the frequencies beyond which performance is degraded. In the case of frequency response, degradation could, for example, mean more than 3 dB below the maximum value or it could mean below a certain absolute value. As with any definition of the width of a function, many definitions are suitable for different purposes.

In the context of, for example, the sampling theorem and Nyquist sampling rate, bandwidth typically refers to baseband bandwidth. In the context of Nyquist symbol rate or Shannon-Hartley channel capacity for communication systems it refers to passband bandwidth.

The Rayleigh bandwidth of a simple radar pulse is defined as the inverse of its duration. For example, a one-microsecond pulse has a Rayleigh bandwidth of one megahertz.

The essential bandwidth is defined as the portion of a signal spectrum in the frequency domain which contains most of the energy of the signal.

x dB bandwidth

In some contexts, the signal bandwidth in hertz refers to the frequency range in which the signal's spectral density (in W/Hz or V2/Hz) is nonzero or above a small threshold value. The threshold value is often defined relative to the maximum value, and is most commonly the, that is the point where the spectral density is half its maximum value (or the spectral amplitude, in $$\mathrm{V}$$ or $$\mathrm{V/\sqrt{Hz}}$$, is 70.7% of its maximum). This figure, with a lower threshold value, can be used in calculations of the lowest sampling rate that will satisfy the sampling theorem.

The bandwidth is also used to denote system bandwidth, for example in filter or communication channel systems. To say that a system has a certain bandwidth means that the system can process signals with that range of frequencies, or that the system reduces the bandwidth of a white noise input to that bandwidth.

The 3 dB bandwidth of an electronic filter or communication channel is the part of the system's frequency response that lies within 3 dB of the response at its peak, which, in the passband filter case, is typically at or near its center frequency, and in the low-pass filter is at or near its cutoff frequency. If the maximum gain is 0 dB, the 3 dB bandwidth is the frequency range where attenuation is less than 3 dB. 3 dB attenuation is also where power is half its maximum. This same half-power gain convention is also used in spectral width, and more generally for the extent of functions as full width at half maximum (FWHM).

In electronic filter design, a filter specification may require that within the filter passband, the gain is nominally 0 dB with a small variation, for example within the ±1 dB interval. In the stopband(s), the required attenuation in decibels is above a certain level, for example >100 dB. In a transition band the gain is not specified. In this case, the filter bandwidth corresponds to the passband width, which in this example is the 1 dB-bandwidth. If the filter shows amplitude ripple within the passband, the x dB point refers to the point where the gain is x dB below the nominal passband gain rather than x dB below the maximum gain.

In signal processing and control theory the bandwidth is the frequency at which the closed-loop system gain drops 3 dB below peak.

In communication systems, in calculations of the Shannon–Hartley channel capacity, bandwidth refers to the 3 dB-bandwidth. In calculations of the maximum symbol rate, the Nyquist sampling rate, and maximum bit rate according to the Hartley's law, the bandwidth refers to the frequency range within which the gain is non-zero.

The fact that in equivalent baseband models of communication systems, the signal spectrum consists of both negative and positive frequencies, can lead to confusion about bandwidth since they are sometimes referred to only by the positive half, and one will occasionally see expressions such as $$B = 2W$$, where $$B$$ is the total bandwidth (i.e. the maximum passband bandwidth of the carrier-modulated RF signal and the minimum passband bandwidth of the physical passband channel), and $$W$$ is the positive bandwidth (the baseband bandwidth of the equivalent channel model). For instance, the baseband model of the signal would require a low-pass filter with cutoff frequency of at least $$W$$ to stay intact, and the physical passband channel would require a passband filter of at least $$B$$ to stay intact.

Relative bandwidth
The absolute bandwidth is not always the most appropriate or useful measure of bandwidth. For instance, in the field of antennas the difficulty of constructing an antenna to meet a specified absolute bandwidth is easier at a higher frequency than at a lower frequency. For this reason, bandwidth is often quoted relative to the frequency of operation which gives a better indication of the structure and sophistication needed for the circuit or device under consideration.

There are two different measures of relative bandwidth in common use: fractional bandwidth ($$B_\mathrm F$$) and ratio bandwidth ($$B_\mathrm R$$). In the following, the absolute bandwidth is defined as follows, $$ B = \Delta f = f_\mathrm H - f_\mathrm L$$ where $$f_\mathrm H$$ and $$f_\mathrm L$$ are the upper and lower frequency limits respectively of the band in question.

Fractional bandwidth
Fractional bandwidth is defined as the absolute bandwidth divided by the center frequency ($$f_\mathrm C$$), $$ B_\mathrm F = \frac {\Delta f}{f_\mathrm C} \, .$$

The center frequency is usually defined as the arithmetic mean of the upper and lower frequencies so that, $$ f_\mathrm C = \frac {f_\mathrm H + f_\mathrm L}{2} \ $$ and $$ B_\mathrm F = \frac {2 (f_\mathrm H - f_\mathrm L)}{f_\mathrm H + f_\mathrm L} \, .$$

However, the center frequency is sometimes defined as the geometric mean of the upper and lower frequencies, $$ f_\mathrm C = \sqrt {f_\mathrm H f_\mathrm L} $$ and $$ B_\mathrm F = \frac {f_\mathrm H - f_\mathrm L}{\sqrt {f_\mathrm H f_\mathrm L}} \, .$$

While the geometric mean is more rarely used than the arithmetic mean (and the latter can be assumed if not stated explicitly) the former is considered more mathematically rigorous. It more properly reflects the logarithmic relationship of fractional bandwidth with increasing frequency. For narrowband applications, there is only marginal difference between the two definitions. The geometric mean version is inconsequentially larger. For wideband applications they diverge substantially with the arithmetic mean version approaching 2 in the limit and the geometric mean version approaching infinity.

Fractional bandwidth is sometimes expressed as a percentage of the center frequency (percent bandwidth, $$\%B$$), $$ \%B_\mathrm F = 100 \frac {\Delta f}{f_\mathrm C} \, .$$

Ratio bandwidth
Ratio bandwidth is defined as the ratio of the upper and lower limits of the band, $$B_\mathrm R= \frac {f_\mathrm H}{f_\mathrm L} \, .$$

Ratio bandwidth may be notated as $$B_\mathrm R:1$$. The relationship between ratio bandwidth and fractional bandwidth is given by, $$B_\mathrm F = 2 \frac {B_\mathrm R - 1}{B_\mathrm R + 1} $$ and $$B_\mathrm R = \frac {2 + B_\mathrm F}{2 - B_\mathrm F} \, .$$

Percent bandwidth is a less meaningful measure in wideband applications. A percent bandwidth of 100% corresponds to a ratio bandwidth of 3:1. All higher ratios up to infinity are compressed into the range 100–200%.

Ratio bandwidth is often expressed in octaves (i.e., as a frequency level) for wideband applications. An octave is a frequency ratio of 2:1 leading to this expression for the number of octaves, $$\log_2 \left(B_\mathrm R\right) .$$

Noise equivalent bandwidth

The noise equivalent bandwidth (or equivalent noise bandwidth (enbw)) of a system of frequency response $$H(f)$$ is the bandwidth of an ideal filter with rectangular frequency response centered on the system's central frequency that produces the same average power outgoing $$H(f)$$ when both systems are excited with a white noise source. The value of the noise equivalent bandwidth depends on the ideal filter reference gain used. Typically, this gain equals $$|H(f)|$$ at its center frequency, but it can also equal the peak value of $$|H(f)|$$.

The noise equivalent bandwidth $$B_n$$ can be calculated in the frequency domain using $$H(f)$$ or in the time domain by exploiting the Parseval's theorem with the system impulse response $$h(t)$$. If $$H(f)$$ is a lowpass system with zero central frequency and the filter reference gain is referred to this frequency, then:

$$ B_n = \frac{\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} |H(f)|^2 df}{2|H(0)|^2} = \frac{\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} |h(t)|^2 dt}{2\left|\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} h(t)dt\right|^2} \,. $$

The same expression can be applied to bandpass systems by substituting the equivalent baseband frequency response for $$H(f)$$.

The noise equivalent bandwidth is widely used to simplify the analysis of telecommunication systems in the presence of noise.

Photonics
In photonics, the term bandwidth carries a variety of meanings:
 * the bandwidth of the output of some light source, e.g., an ASE source or a laser; the bandwidth of ultrashort optical pulses can be particularly large
 * the width of the frequency range that can be transmitted by some element, e.g. an optical fiber
 * the gain bandwidth of an optical amplifier
 * the width of the range of some other phenomenon, e.g., a reflection, the phase matching of a nonlinear process, or some resonance
 * the maximum modulation frequency (or range of modulation frequencies) of an optical modulator
 * the range of frequencies in which some measurement apparatus (e.g., a power meter) can operate
 * the data rate (e.g., in Gbit/s) achieved in an optical communication system; see bandwidth (computing).

A related concept is the spectral linewidth of the radiation emitted by excited atoms.

title: Bandwidth (signal processing)