text:
Eric Cheney

Eric Cheney (5 January 1924 – 30 December 2001) was an English motorcycle racer, designer and independent constructor. He was known as one of the best motorcycle frame designers of his era, concentrating mainly in the off-road competition aftermarket.

Early life
Cheney attended a school in Winchester based on Lancasterian principles before joining the Royal Navy at the age of 18, where he served on wartime Arctic convoys and in motor torpedo boats and gained experience of engineering and working on high performance engines. Cheney also worked on the development of remote controlled submarines for the Royal Navy.

Career
After World War II, Cheney joined the motorcycle dealers Archers of Aldershot as a mechanic. Cheney began racing motocross and became one Britain's best riders, along with his travelling companion Les Archer, who went on to become European champion. He had ten successful years on the Continental circuit but a prolonged illness due to an infection contracted while racing in Algeria ended his riding career. He moved into bike preparation and designs for motorcycle chassis and suspension systems.

Cheney had no formal training as a motorcycle designer yet was able to create original and high-performance motorcycle chassis designs working in a simple workshop that was essentially a domestic garage. His approach has been described as "like a medieval engineer" as in an age of computer-aided design and significant resources for research and development teams, he worked entirely by intuition. Eric relied on his long personal experience of international off-road competition riding and would prepare his initial designs for a new motorcycle frame in chalk on the wall of his workshop. Experimenting with different lines until he was satisfied, Cheney would then form the steel tubing using his chalk drawings as a guide. Only when he had built a working prototype motorcycle would he start work on a final jig for mass production. He was once quoted as saying "I know when it's right and it screams at me when it's wrong."

In the late 1960s, the British motorcycle industry was unable to support a national team to compete in the International Six Days Trial so, Cheney hand built a limited number of ISDT Cheney-Triumphs using his own design of twin down-tube frame with a specially tuned Triumph 5TA engine. Fitted with tapered conical hubs, special motocross forks and large alloy fuel tanks, a Cheney Triumph was first used in the 1968 British Trophy Team. In 1970 and 1971 three 504cc Cheney Triumphs were used by the British team in the ISDT, in which Cheney won a manufacturer's prize. Replicas were built, but production was short-lived due to a shortage of engines.

Cheney's most noted successes were in the Grand Prix road racing championships, with Phil Read using his chassis in tandem with a Yamaha engine to win the 1971 250cc world championship. His designs were the last British ones to win a Grand Prix. He never worked for any of the major manufacturers but maintained a productive relationship with BSA in its heyday. After the demise of BSA in 1972, Cheney joined with former BSA factory rider John Banks to develop and campaign a highly successful BSA powered motocross bike.

Some of Cheney's motorcycle designs are now famous in their own right, such as the competition BSA Gold Stars of Jerry Scott and Keith Hickman and the John Banks replica which used a BSA B50 engine specially tuned by Cheney. He also built some racing frames for Suzuki Grand Prix motorcycles in 1968 and, it has been suggested that Suzuki engineers incorporated features of Cheney's designs, such as magnesium hubs and lower fork legs into production road going motorcycles. Cheney's company was originally known as Eric Cheney Designs, then changed to Inter-Moto, now known as Cheney Racing.

Steve McQueen
American actor Steve McQueen, an experienced off-road rider who represented the United States in the ISDT bought a number of Cheney's motorcycles at full price because he considered them better than other makes.

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

title: Eric Cheney


text:
Econometrics

Econometrics is an application of statistical methods to economic data in order to give empirical content to economic relationships. More precisely, it is "the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference." An introductory economics textbook describes econometrics as allowing economists "to sift through mountains of data to extract simple relationships." Jan Tinbergen is one of the two founding fathers of econometrics. The other, Ragnar Frisch, also coined the term in the sense in which it is used today.

A basic tool for econometrics is the multiple linear regression model. Econometric theory uses statistical theory and mathematical statistics to evaluate and develop econometric methods. Econometricians try to find estimators that have desirable statistical properties including unbiasedness, efficiency, and consistency. Applied econometrics uses theoretical econometrics and real-world data for assessing economic theories, developing econometric models, analysing economic history, and forecasting.

Basic models: linear regression
A basic tool for econometrics is the multiple linear regression model. In modern econometrics, other statistical tools are frequently used, but linear regression is still the most frequently used starting point for an analysis. Estimating a linear regression on two variables can be visualised as fitting a line through data points representing paired values of the independent and dependent variables.

For example, consider Okun's law, which relates GDP growth to the unemployment rate. This relationship is represented in a linear regression where the change in unemployment rate ($$\Delta\ \text{Unemployment}$$) is a function of an intercept ($$ \beta_0 $$), a given value of GDP growth multiplied by a slope coefficient $$ \beta_1 $$ and an error term, $$\varepsilon$$:

 * $$ \Delta\ \text {Unemployment} = \beta_0 + \beta_1\text{Growth} + \varepsilon. $$

The unknown parameters $$ \beta_0 $$ and $$ \beta_1 $$ can be estimated. Here $$ \beta_0 $$ is estimated to be 0.83 and $$ \beta_1 $$ is estimated to be -1.77. This means that if GDP growth increased by one percentage point, the unemployment rate would be predicted to drop by 1.77		* 1 points, other things held constant. The model could then be tested for statistical significance as to whether an increase in GDP growth is associated with a decrease in the unemployment, as hypothesized. If the estimate of $$ \beta_1 $$ were not significantly different from 0, the test would fail to find evidence that changes in the growth rate and unemployment rate were related. The variance in a prediction of the dependent variable (unemployment) as a function of the independent variable (GDP growth) is given in polynomial least squares.

Theory
Econometric theory uses statistical theory and mathematical statistics to evaluate and develop econometric methods. Econometricians try to find estimators that have desirable statistical properties including unbiasedness, efficiency, and consistency. An estimator is unbiased if its expected value is the true value of the parameter; it is consistent if it converges to the true value as the sample size gets larger, and it is efficient if the estimator has lower standard error than other unbiased estimators for a given sample size. Ordinary least squares (OLS) is often used for estimation since it provides the BLUE or "best linear unbiased estimator" (where "best" means most efficient, unbiased estimator) given the Gauss-Markov assumptions. When these assumptions are violated or other statistical properties are desired, other estimation techniques such as maximum likelihood estimation, generalized method of moments, or generalized least squares are used. Estimators that incorporate prior beliefs are advocated by those who favour Bayesian statistics over traditional, classical or "frequentist" approaches.

Methods
Applied econometrics uses theoretical econometrics and real-world data for assessing economic theories, developing econometric models, analysing economic history, and forecasting.

Econometrics may use standard statistical models to study economic questions, but most often they are with observational data, rather than in controlled experiments. In this, the design of observational studies in econometrics is similar to the design of studies in other observational disciplines, such as astronomy, epidemiology, sociology and political science. Analysis of data from an observational study is guided by the study protocol, although exploratory data analysis may be useful for generating new hypotheses. Economics often analyses systems of equations and inequalities, such as supply and demand hypothesized to be in equilibrium. Consequently, the field of econometrics has developed methods for identification and estimation of simultaneous equations models. These methods are analogous to methods used in other areas of science, such as the field of system identification in systems analysis and control theory. Such methods may allow researchers to estimate models and investigate their empirical consequences, without directly manipulating the system.

One of the fundamental statistical methods used by econometricians is regression analysis. Regression methods are important in econometrics because economists typically cannot use controlled experiments. Typically, the most readily available data is retrospective. However, retrospective analysis of observational data may be subject to omitted-variable bias, reverse causality, or other limitations that cast doubt on causal interpretation of the correlations.

In the absence of evidence from controlled experiments, econometricians often seek illuminating natural experiments or apply quasi-experimental methods to draw credible causal inference. The methods include regression discontinuity design, instrumental variables, and difference-in-differences.

Example
A simple example of a relationship in econometrics from the field of labour economics is:

 * $$ \ln(\text{wage}) = \beta_0 + \beta_1 (\text{years of education}) + \varepsilon. $$

This example assumes that the natural logarithm of a person's wage is a linear function of the number of years of education that person has acquired. The parameter $$\beta_1$$ measures the increase in the natural log of the wage attributable to one more year of education. The term $$\varepsilon$$ is a random variable representing all other factors that may have direct influence on wage. The econometric goal is to estimate the parameters, $$\beta_0 \mbox{ and } \beta_1 $$ under specific assumptions about the random variable $$\varepsilon$$. For example, if $$\varepsilon$$ is uncorrelated with years of education, then the equation can be estimated with ordinary least squares.

If the researcher could randomly assign people to different levels of education, the data set thus generated would allow estimation of the effect of changes in years of education on wages. In reality, those experiments cannot be conducted. Instead, the econometrician observes the years of education of and the wages paid to people who differ along many dimensions. Given this kind of data, the estimated coefficient on years of education in the equation above reflects both the effect of education on wages and the effect of other variables on wages, if those other variables were correlated with education. For example, people born in certain places may have higher wages and higher levels of education. Unless the econometrician controls for place of birth in the above equation, the effect of birthplace on wages may be falsely attributed to the effect of education on wages.

The most obvious way to control for birthplace is to include a measure of the effect of birthplace in the equation above. Exclusion of birthplace, together with the assumption that $$\epsilon$$ is uncorrelated with education produces a misspecified model. Another technique is to include in the equation additional set of measured covariates which are not instrumental variables, yet render $$\beta_1$$ identifiable. An overview of econometric methods used to study this problem were provided by Card (1999).

Journals
The main journals that publish work in econometrics are:

 * Econometrica, which is published by Econometric Society.
 * The Review of Economics and Statistics, which is over 100 years old.
 * The Econometrics Journal, which was established by the Royal Economic Society.
 * The Journal of Econometrics, which also publishes the supplement Annals of Econometrics.
 * Econometric Theory, which is a theoretical journal.
 * The Journal of Applied Econometrics, which applies econometrics to a wide various problems.
 * Econometric Reviews, which includes reviews on econometric books and software as well.
 * The Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, which is published by the American Statistical Associaion.

Limitations and criticisms
Like other forms of statistical analysis, badly specified econometric models may show a spurious relationship where two variables are correlated but causally unrelated. In a study of the use of econometrics in major economics journals, McCloskey concluded that some economists report p-values (following the Fisherian tradition of tests of significance of point null-hypotheses) and neglect concerns of type II errors; some economists fail to report estimates of the size of effects (apart from statistical significance) and to discuss their economic importance. She also argues that some economists also fail to use economic reasoning for model selection, especially for deciding which variables to include in a regression.

In some cases, economic variables cannot be experimentally manipulated as treatments randomly assigned to subjects. In such cases, economists rely on observational studies, often using data sets with many strongly associated covariates, resulting in enormous numbers of models with similar explanatory ability but different covariates and regression estimates. Regarding the plurality of models compatible with observational data-sets, Edward Leamer urged that "professionals ... properly withhold belief until an inference can be shown to be adequately insensitive to the choice of assumptions".

title: Econometrics


text:
Ellen van Langen

Ellen Gezina Maria van Langen (born 9 February 1966) is a Dutch former middle distance runner, who specialised in the 800 metres. A talented but injury-ridden athlete, she was the 1992 Olympic Champion for the women's 800 meters. She is now the director of the FBK Games (the Hengelo meeting).

Career
Van Langen was born in Oldenzaal, Overijssel. Before she started running she played football. She only started to run seriously at 20. In 1989, she won her first of four national championships in the 800 meters and went on to win a silver medal behind Ana Quirot (Cuba) at the World Student Games (Universiade), running 1:59.82. In 1990, she finished fourth in the final of the European Championships in Split, with a Dutch national record of 1:57.57, behind the East German athletes Sigrun Wodars (gold), Christine Wachtel (silver) and Liliya Nurutdinova (bronze) from the Soviet Union.

During the year 1991, she was troubled by an Achilles tendon injury. At the Tokyo World Championships she was eliminated in the heats. The next year, leading up to the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, she defeated Tokyo gold medallist Liliya Nurutdinova at the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games in Hengelo on 28 June in 1:56.66, the fastest time of the season prior to the Games. Just two weeks before the Olympics, she ran another fast time of 1:56.92 at Hechtel.

At the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Van Langen won the Olympic title in the 800 metres in a time of 1:55.54, a time which is still the Dutch national record. Fearing her final sprint, her competitors including favorites Nurutdinova, Quirot, Ella Kovacs (Romania) and Maria Mutola (Mozambique) set a rapid pace, running the first lap in a very fast time of 55.73, with Van Langen only in 6th position. Entering the final stretch Nurutdinova, who had led the final from the start, had a slight lead but Van Langen moved through on the inside in the last 50m to win a surprise victory, beating Nurutdinova (silver) and Quirot (bronze).

The year 1992 remained her top year, when she won 10 of her 11 800m races. After her Olympic triumph, she was plagued by various injuries. Her best result after 1992 was a 6th-place finish at the 1995 World Championships at Gothenburg. The ongoing injuries prevented her from defending her Olympic title in 1996. She retired from the sport in 1998.

Van Langen later explained the secret of her success. "I think what I could do well is I could die very well in a race and still continue,” she said. “That is very hard, because it hurts running the 800 meters. You have to overcome some boundaries in yourself to continue when it hurts like hell. I was good at it. If the Olympic race would have been run by each athlete individual and the fastest time was the winner I would not have won." She added: "I was also good in tactics, looking around me and taking the right decisions."

After her gold medal win in 1992 the Amsterdam unemployment benefits office terminated her dole on grounds that she might earn money from her victory in the future. She has a degree in economics from the University of Amsterdam, and currently works as an event manager for Global Sports Communication.

Van Langen is the director of the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games in Hengelo.

Personal bests
Information from World Athletics profile unless otherwise noted.

title: Ellen van Langen


text:
Emacs Lisp

Emacs Lisp is a Lisp dialect made for Emacs. It is used for implementing most of the editing functionality built into Emacs, the remainder being written in C, as is the Lisp interpreter.

Emacs Lisp code is used to modify, extend and customize Emacs. Those not wanting to write the code themselves the Customize function can be used. It provides a set of preferences pages allowing the user to set options and preview their effect in the running Emacs session. When the user saves their changes, Customize simply writes the necessary Emacs Lisp code to the user's config file, which can be set to a special file that only Customize uses, to avoid the possibility of altering the user's own file.

Besides being a programming language that can be compiled to bytecode and transcompiled to native code, Emacs Lisp can also function as an interpreted scripting language, much like the Unix Bourne shell or Perl, by calling Emacs in batch mode. In this way it may be called from the command line or via an executable file, and its editing functions, such as buffers and movement commands are available to the program just as in the normal mode. No user interface is presented when Emacs is started in batch mode; it simply executes the passed-in script and exits, displaying any output from the script.

Emacs Lisp is also termed Elisp, although there are also older, unrelated Lisp dialects with that name.

Compared to other Lisp dialects
Emacs Lisp is most closely related to Maclisp, with some later influence from Common Lisp. It supports imperative and functional programming methods. Lisp was the default extension language for Emacs derivatives such as EINE and ZWEI. When Richard Stallman forked Gosling Emacs into GNU Emacs, he also chose Lisp as the extension language, because of its powerful features, including the ability to treat functions as data. Although the Common Lisp standard had yet to be formulated, Scheme existed at the time but Stallman chose not to use it because of its comparatively poor performance on workstations (as opposed to the minicomputers that were Emacs' traditional home), and he wanted to develop a dialect which he thought would be more easily optimized.

The Lisp dialect used in Emacs differs substantially from the more modern Common Lisp and Scheme dialects used for applications programming. A prominent characteristic of Emacs Lisp is in its use of dynamic rather than lexical scope by default. That is, a function may reference local variables in the scope it is called from, but not in the scope where it was defined. Recently, there has been an ongoing effort to update code to use lexical scoping, for reasons outlined below.

Example
The development of Emacs Lisp was guided by the goal of providing data structures and features specific to making a versatile text editor over implementing a general-purpose programming language. For example, Emacs Lisp cannot easily read a file a line at a time—the entire file must be read into an Emacs buffer. However, Emacs Lisp provides many features for navigating and modifying buffer text at a sentence, paragraph, or higher syntactic level as defined by modes.

Here follows a simple example of an Emacs extension written in Emacs Lisp. In Emacs, the editing area can be split into separate areas called windows, each displaying a different buffer. A buffer is a region of text loaded into Emacs' memory (possibly from a file) which can be saved into a text document.

Users can press the default C-x 2 key binding to open a new window. This runs the Emacs Lisp function. Normally, when the new window appears, it displays the same buffer as the previous one. Suppose we wish to make it display the next available buffer. In order to do this, the user writes the following Emacs Lisp code, in either an existing Emacs Lisp source file or an empty Emacs buffer:

The first statement,, defines a new function,  , which calls   (the old window-splitting function), then tells the new window to display another (new) buffer. The second statement,  re-binds the key sequence "C-x 2" to the new function.

This can also be written using the feature called advice, which allows the user to create wrappers around existing functions instead of defining their own. This has the advantage of not requiring keybindings to be changed and working wherever the original function is called, as well as being simpler to write but the disadvantage of making debugging more complicated. For this reason, advice is not allowed in the source code of GNU Emacs, but if a user wishes, the advice feature can be used in their code to reimplement the above code as follows:

This instructs  to execute the user-supplied code whenever it is called, after executing the rest of the function. Advice can also be specified to execute before the original function, around it (literally wrapping the original), or to conditionally execute the original function based on the results of the advice.

Emacs 24.4 replaces this  mechanism with , which is claimed to be more flexible and simpler. The advice above could be reimplemented using the new system as:

These changes take effect as soon as the code is evaluated. It is not necessary to recompile, restart Emacs, or even rehash a configuration file. If the code is saved into an Emacs init file, then Emacs will load the extension the next time it starts. Otherwise, the changes must be reevaluated manually when Emacs is restarted.

Source code
Emacs Lisp code is stored in filesystems as plain text files, by convention with the filename suffix " ". The user's init file is an exception, often appearing as " " despite being evaluated as any Emacs Lisp code. Since the mid-1990s, Emacs also loads  and. Additionally, users may specify any file to load as a config file on the command line, or explicitly state that no config file is to be loaded. When the files are loaded, an interpreter component of the Emacs program reads and parses the functions and variables, storing them in memory. They are then available to other editing functions, and to user commands. Functions and variables can be freely modified and redefined without restarting the editor or reloading the config file.

In order to save time and memory space, much of the functionality of Emacs loads only when required. Each set of optional features shipped with Emacs is implemented by a collection of Emacs code called a package or library. For example, there is a library for highlighting keywords in program source code, and a library for playing the game of Tetris. Each library is implemented using one or more Emacs Lisp source files. Libraries can define one or more major modes to activate and control their function.

Emacs developers write certain functions in C. These are primitives, also termed built-in functions or subrs. Although primitives can be called from Lisp code, they can only be modified by editing the C source files and recompiling. In GNU Emacs, primitives are not available as external libraries; they are part of the Emacs executable. In XEmacs, runtime loading of such primitives is possible, using the operating system's support for dynamic linking. Functions may be written as primitives because they need access to external data and libraries not otherwise available from Emacs Lisp, or because they are called often enough that the comparative speed of C versus Emacs Lisp makes a worthwhile difference.

However, because errors in C code can easily lead to segmentation violations or to more subtle bugs, which crash the editor, and because writing C code that interacts correctly with the Emacs Lisp garbage collector is error-prone, the number of functions implemented as primitives is kept to a necessary minimum.

Byte code
Byte-compiling can make Emacs Lisp code execute faster. Emacs contains a compiler which can translate Emacs Lisp source files into a special representation termed bytecode. Emacs Lisp bytecode files have the filename suffix " ". Compared to source files, bytecode files load and run faster, occupy less disk space, and use less memory when loaded.

Bytecode still runs more slowly than primitives, but functions loaded as bytecode can be easily modified and re-loaded. In addition, bytecode files are platform-independent. The standard Emacs Lisp code distributed with Emacs is loaded as bytecode, although the matching source files are usually provided for the user's reference as well. User-supplied extensions are typically not byte-compiled, as they are neither as large nor as computationally intensive.

Language features
Notably, the "cl-lib" package implements a fairly large subset of Common Lisp. This package replaces an earlier "cl" package, which would overwrite existing Emacs Lisp function definitions with ones more similar to those found in Common Lisp. The "cl-lib" package, on the other hand, follows Emacs Lisp style guidelines more closely and prefixes each function and macro it defines with "cl-" (e.g.,, which doesn't conflict with the name of the built-in  ), avoiding the unexpected changes in behavior that could occur whenever the "cl" package was loaded.

Emacs Lisp (unlike some other Lisp implementations) does not do tail-call optimization. Without this, tail recursions can eventually lead to stack overflow.

The apel library aids in writing portable Emacs Lisp code, with the help of the polysylabi platform bridge.

Emacs Lisp is a Lisp-2 like Common Lisp, meaning that it has a function namespace which is separate from the namespace it uses for other variables.

From dynamic to lexical scoping
Like MacLisp, Emacs Lisp uses dynamic scope, offering static (or lexical) as an option starting from version 24. It can be activated by setting the file local variable. Before this option was added, one could use the  macro from the (now deprecated) "cl" package to provide effective lexical scope.

In dynamic scoping, if a programmer declares a variable within the scope of a function, it is available to subroutines called from within that function. Originally, this was intended as an optimization; lexical scoping was still uncommon and of uncertain performance. In computer scientist Olin Shivers’s recollection, "I asked RMS when he was implementing emacs lisp why it was dynamically scoped and his exact reply was that lexical scope was too inefficient." Dynamic scoping was also meant to provide greater flexibility for user customizations. However, dynamic scoping has several disadvantages. Firstly, it can easily lead to bugs in large programs, due to unintended interactions between variables in different functions. Secondly, accessing variables under dynamic scoping is generally slower than under lexical scoping.

title: Emacs Lisp


text:
Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, PC (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873) was an English writer and politician. He served as a Whig member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative from 1851 to 1866. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1858 to June 1859, choosing Richard Clement Moody as founder of British Columbia. A noted philhellene, Bulwer-Lytton was offered the Crown of Greece in 1862 after King Otto abdicated, but he declined. He was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866.

Bulwer-Lytton's works were well known in his time. He coined famous phrases like "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", "dweller on the threshold", "the great unwashed", and the opening phrase "It was a dark and stormy night." The sardonic Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, held annually since 1982, claims to seek the "opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels".

Life
Bulwer was born on 25 May 1803 to General William Earle Bulwer of Heydon Hall and Wood Dalling, Norfolk and Elizabeth Barbara Lytton, daughter of Richard Warburton Lytton of Knebworth House, Hertfordshire. He had two older brothers, William Earle Lytton Bulwer (1799–1877) and Henry (1801–1872), later Lord Dalling and Bulwer.

His father died and his mother moved to London when he was four years old. When he was 15, a tutor named Wallington, who tutored him at Ealing, encouraged him to publish an immature work: Ishmael and Other Poems. Around this time, Bulwer fell in love, but the woman's father induced her to marry another man. She died about the time that Bulwer went to Cambridge and he stated that her loss affected all his subsequent life.

In 1822 Bulwer-Lytton entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met John Auldjo, but soon moved to Trinity Hall. In 1825 he won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for English verse. In the following year he took his BA degree and printed for private circulation a small volume of poems, Weeds and Wild Flowers. He purchased an army commission in 1826, but sold it in 1829 without serving.

In August 1827, he married Rosina Doyle Wheeler (1802–1882), a noted Irish beauty, but against the wishes of his mother, who withdrew his allowance, forcing him to work for a living. They had two children, Emily Elizabeth Bulwer-Lytton (1828–1848), and (Edward) Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831–1891) who became Governor-General and Viceroy of British India (1876–1880). His writing and political work strained their marriage and his infidelity embittered Rosina.

In 1833, they separated acrimoniously and in 1836 the separation became legal. Three years later, Rosina published Cheveley, or the Man of Honour (1839), a near-libellous fiction satirising her husband's alleged hypocrisy.

In June 1858, when her husband was standing as parliamentary candidate for Hertfordshire, she denounced him at the hustings. He retaliated by threatening her publishers, withholding her allowance and denying her access to their children. Finally he had her committed to a mental asylum, but she was released a few weeks later after a public outcry. This she chronicled in a memoir, A Blighted Life (1880). She continued attacking her husband's character for several years. The death of Bulwer's mother in 1843 meant his "exhaustion of toil and study had been completed by great anxiety and grief," and by "about the January of 1844, I was thoroughly shattered."

In his mother's room at Knebworth House, which he inherited, he "had inscribed above the mantelpiece a request that future generations preserve the room as his beloved mother had used it." It remains hardly changed to this day.

On 20 February 1844, in accordance with his mother's will, he changed his surname from Bulwer to Bulwer-Lytton and assumed the arms of Lytton by royal licence. His widowed mother had done the same in 1811. His brothers remained plain "Bulwer".

By chance, Bulwer-Lytton encountered a copy of "Captain Claridge's work on the "Water Cure", as practised by Priessnitz, at Graefenberg" and, "making allowances for certain exaggerations therein", pondered the option of travelling to Graefenberg, but preferred to find something closer to home, with access to his own doctors in case of failure: "I who scarcely lived through a day without leech or potion!". After reading a pamphlet by Doctor James Wilson, who operated a hydropathic establishment with James Manby Gully at Malvern, he stayed there for "some nine or ten weeks", after which he "continued the system some seven weeks longer under Doctor Weiss, at Petersham", then again at "Doctor Schmidt's magnificent hydropathic establishment at Boppart" (at the former Marienberg Convent at Boppard), after developing a cold and fever upon his return home.

When Otto, King of Greece abdicated in 1862, Bulwer-Lytton was offered the Greek Crown, but declined.

The English Rosicrucian society, founded in 1867 by Robert Wentworth Little, claimed Bulwer-Lytton as their "Grand Patron", but he wrote to the society complaining that he was "extremely surprised" by their use of the title, as he had "never sanctioned such." Nevertheless, a number of esoteric groups have continued to claim Bulwer-Lytton as their own, chiefly because some of his writings – such as the 1842 book Zanoni – have included Rosicrucian and other esoteric notions. According to the Fulham Football Club, he once resided in the original Craven Cottage, today the site of their stadium.

Bulwer-Lytton had long suffered from a disease of the ear, and for the last two or three years of his life lived in Torquay nursing his health. After an operation to cure deafness, an abscess formed in the ear and burst; he endured intense pain for a week and died at 2 am on 18 January 1873, just short of his 70th birthday. The cause of death was unclear but it was thought the infection had affected his brain and caused a fit. Rosina outlived him by nine years. Against his wishes, Bulwer-Lytton was honoured with a burial in Westminster Abbey. His unfinished history Athens: Its Rise and Fall was published posthumously.

Political career
Bulwer began his political career as a follower of Jeremy Bentham. In 1831 he was elected member for St Ives, Cornwall, after which he was returned for Lincoln in 1832, and sat in Parliament for that city for nine years. He spoke in favour of the Reform Bill and took the lead in securing the reduction, after he had vainly supported the repeal, of the newspaper stamp duties. His influence was perhaps most keenly felt after the British Whig Party's dismissal from office in 1834, when he issued a pamphlet entitled A Letter to a Late Cabinet Minister on the Crisis. Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, offered him a lordship of the Admiralty, which he declined as likely to interfere with his activity as an author.

Bulwer was created a baronet, of Knebworth House in the County of Hertford, in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom, in 1838. In 1841, he left Parliament and spent much of his time in travel. He did not return to politics until 1852, when, having differed from Lord John Russell over the Corn Laws, he stood for Hertfordshire as a Conservative. Bulwer-Lytton held that seat until 1866, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lytton of Knebworth in the County of Hertford. In 1858, he entered Lord Derby's government as Secretary of State for the Colonies, thus serving alongside his old friend Benjamin Disraeli. He was comparatively inactive in the House of Lords.

"Just prior to his government's defeat in 1859 the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, notified Sir George Ferguson Bowen of his appointment as Governor of the new colony to be known as 'Queen's Land'." The draft letter was ranked #4 in the 'Top 150: Documenting Queensland' exhibition when it toured to venues around Queensland from February 2009 to April 2010. The exhibition was part of Queensland State Archives' events and exhibition program which contributed to the state's Q150 celebrations, marking the 150th anniversary of the separation of Queensland from New South Wales.

British Columbia
When news of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush reached London, Bulwer-Lytton, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, requested that the War Office recommend a field officer, "a man of good judgement possessing a knowledge of mankind", to lead a Corps of 150 (later increased to 172) Royal Engineers, who had been selected for their "superior discipline and intelligence". The War Office chose Richard Clement Moody, and Lord Lytton, who described Moody as his "distinguished friend", accepted the nomination in view of Moody's military record, his success as Governor of the Falkland Islands, and the distinguished record of his father, Colonel Thomas Moody, Knight at the Colonial Office. Moody was charged to establish British order and transform the newly-established Colony of British Columbia into the British Empire's "bulwark in the farthest west" and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific". Lytton desired to send to the colony "representatives of the best of British culture, not just a police force", sought men who possessed "courtesy, high breeding and urbane knowledge of the world", and decided to send Moody, whom the Government considered to be the archetypal "English gentleman and British Officer" at the head of the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment to whom he wrote an impassioned letter.

The former HBC Fort Dallas at Camchin, the confluence of the Thompson and the Fraser Rivers, was renamed in his honour by Governor Sir James Douglas in 1858 as Lytton, British Columbia.

Literary works
Bulwer-Lytton's literary career began in 1820 with the publication of a book of poems and spanned much of the 19th century. He wrote in a variety of genres, including historical fiction, mystery, romance, the occult and science fiction. He financed his extravagant way of life with a varied and prolific literary output, sometimes publishing anonymously.

Bulwer-Lytton published Falkland in 1827, a novel which was only a moderate success. But Pelham brought him public acclaim in 1828 and established his reputation as a wit and dandy. Its intricate plot and humorous, intimate portrayal of pre-Victorian dandyism kept gossips busy trying to associate public figures with characters in the book. Pelham resembled Benjamin Disraeli's first novel Vivian Grey (1827). The character of the villainous Richard Crawford in The Disowned, also published in 1828, borrowed much from that of banker and forger Henry Fauntleroy, who was hanged in London in 1824 before a crowd of some 100,000.

Bulwer-Lytton admired Disraeli's father Isaac D'Israeli, himself a noted author. They began corresponding in the late 1820s and met for the first time in March 1830, when Isaac D'Israeli dined at Bulwer-Lytton's house. Also present that evening were Charles Pelham Villiers and Alexander Cockburn. The young Villiers had a long parliamentary career, while Cockburn became Lord Chief Justice of England in 1859.

Bulwer-Lytton reached his height of popularity with the publication of England and the English, and Godolphin (1833). This was followed by The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834), The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes about Cola di Rienzo (1835), Ernest Maltravers; or, The Eleusinia (1837), Alice; or, The Mysteries (1838), Leila; or, The Siege of Granada (1838), and Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848). The Last Days of Pompeii was inspired by Karl Briullov's painting The Last Day of Pompeii, which Bulwer-Lytton saw in Milan.

His New Timon lampooned Tennyson, who responded in kind. Bulwer-Lytton also wrote the horror story The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain (1859). Another novel with a supernatural theme was A Strange Story (1862), which was an influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Bulwer-Lytton wrote many other works, including Vril: The Power of the Coming Race (1871) which drew heavily on his interest in the occult and contributed to the early growth of the science fiction genre. Its story of a subterranean race waiting to reclaim the surface of the Earth is an early science fiction theme. The book popularised the Hollow Earth theory and may have inspired Nazi mysticism. His term "vril" lent its name to Bovril meat extract. The book was also the theme of a fundraising event held at the Royal Albert Hall in 1891, the Vril-Ya Bazaar and Fete. "Vril" has been adopted by theosophists and occultists since the 1870s and became closely associated with the ideas of an esoteric neo-Nazism after 1945.

His play Money (1840) was first produced at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London, on 8 December 1840. The first American production was at the Old Park Theater in New York on 1 February 1841. Subsequent productions include the Prince of Wales's Theatre's in 1872 and as the inaugural play at the new California Theatre (San Francisco) in 1869.

Among Bulwer-Lytton's lesser-known contributions to literature was that he convinced Charles Dickens to revise the ending of Great Expectations to make it more palatable to the reading public, as in the original version of the novel, Pip and Estella do not get together.

Legacy
Bulwer-Lytton's works had an influence in a number of fields.

Quotations
Bulwer-Lytton's most famous quotation is "The pen is mightier than the sword" from his play Richelieu:

"beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword"

He popularized the phrase "pursuit of the almighty dollar" from his novel The Coming Race, and he is credited with "the great unwashed", using this disparaging term in his 1830 novel Paul Clifford:

"He is certainly a man who bathes and 'lives cleanly', (two especial charges preferred against him by Messrs. the Great Unwashed)."

Theosophy
The writers of theosophy were among those influenced by Bulwer-Lytton's work. Annie Besant and especially Helena Blavatsky incorporated his thoughts and ideas, particularly from The Last Days of Pompeii, Vril, the Power of the Coming Race and Zanoni in her own books.

Contest
Bulwer-Lytton's name lives on in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which contestants think up terrible openings for imaginary novels, inspired by the first line of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

Entrants in the contest seek to capture the rapid changes in point of view, the florid language, and the atmosphere of the full sentence. The opening was popularized by the Peanuts comic strip, in which Snoopy's sessions on the typewriter usually began with "It was a dark and stormy night". The same words also form the first sentence of Madeleine L'Engle's Newbery Medal–winning novel A Wrinkle in Time. Similar wording appears in Edgar Allan Poe's 1831 short story "The Bargain Lost", although not at the very beginning. It reads:

"It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in cataracts; and drowsy citizens started, from dreams of the deluge, to gaze upon the boisterous sea, which foamed and bellowed for admittance into the proud towers and marble palaces. Who would have thought of passions so fierce in that calm water that slumbers all day long? At a slight alabaster stand, trembling beneath the ponderous tomes which it supported, sat the hero of our story."

Operas
Several of Bulwer-Lytton's novels were made into operas. One of them, Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (1842) by Richard Wagner, eventually became more famous than the novel. Leonora (1846) by William Henry Fry, the first European-styled "grand" opera composed in the United States, is based on Bulwer-Lytton's play The Lady of Lyons, as is Frederic Cowen's first opera Pauline (1876). Verdi rival Errico Petrella's most successful opera, Jone (1858), was based on Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii, and was performed all over the world until the 1880s, and in Italy until 1910. Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848) provided character names (but little else) for Verdi's opera Aroldo (1857).

Theatrical adaptations
Shortly after their first publication, The Last Days of Pompeii, Rienzi, and Ernest Maltravers all received successful stage performances in New York. The plays were written by Louisa Medina, one of the most successful playwrights of the 19th century. The Last Days of Pompeii had the longest continuous stage run in New York at the time with 29 straight performances.

Magazines
In addition to his political and literary work, Bulwer-Lytton became the editor of the New Monthly in 1831, but he resigned the following year. In 1841, he started the Monthly Chronicle, a semi-scientific magazine. During his career he wrote poetry, prose, and stage plays; his last novel was Kenelm Chillingly, which was in course of publication in Blackwood's Magazine at the time of his death in 1873.

Translations
Bulwer-Lytton's works of fiction and non-fiction were translated in his day and since then into many languages, including Serbian (by Laza Kostic), German, Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, French, Finnish, and Spanish. In 1879, his Ernest Maltravers was the first complete novel from the West to be translated into Japanese.

Place names
In Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, the suburb of Lytton, the town of Bulwer on Moreton Island (Moorgumpin) and the neighbourhood (former island) of  Bulwer Island are named after him. The township of Lytton, Quebec (today part of Montcerf-Lytton) was named after him as was Lytton, British Columbia, and Lytton, Iowa. Lytton Road in Gisborne, New Zealand was named after the novelist. Later a state secondary school, Lytton High School, was founded in the road. Also in New Zealand, Bulwer is a small locality in Waihinau Bay in the outer Pelorus Sound, New Zealand. It can be reached by 77 km of winding, mostly unsealed, road from Rai Valley. A weekly mail boat service delivers mail and also offers passenger services. In London, Lytton Road in the suburb of Pinner, where the novelist lived, is named after him.

Portrayal on television
Bulwer-Lytton was portrayed by the actor Brett Usher in the 1978 television serial Disraeli.

Novels

 * Falkland (1827) Available online
 * Pelham (1828) Available online
 * The Disowned (1829) Available online
 * Devereux (1829) Available online
 * Paul Clifford (1830) Available online
 * Eugene Aram (1832) Available online
 * Godolphin (1833) Available online
 * Asmodeus at Large (1833)
 * The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) Available online
 * The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834) Available online
 * Rienzi, the last of the Roman tribunes (1835) Available online
 * The Student (1835)
 * Ernest Maltravers; or The Eleusinia (1837) Available online
 * Alice, or The Mysteries (1838), a sequel to Ernest Maltravers Available online
 * Calderon, the Courtier (1838) Available online
 * Leila; or, The Siege of Granada (1838) Available online
 * Zicci: a Tale (1838) Available online
 * Night and Morning (1841) Available online
 * Zanoni (1842) Available online
 * The Last of the Barons (1843) Available online
 * Lucretia; or, The Children of Night (1846) Available online
 * Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848) Available online
 * The Caxtons: A Family Picture (1849) Available online
 * My Novel, or Varieties in English Life (1853) Available online
 * The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain (novelette, 1859) Available online
 * What Will He Do With It? (1858) Available online
 * A Strange Story (1861–1862) Available online
 * The Coming Race (1871), republished as Vril: The Power of the Coming Race – Available online
 * Kenelm Chillingly (1873) Available online
 * The Parisians (1873) Available online
 * Pausanias, the Spartan – Unfinished (1873)

Verse

 * Ismael (1820)
 * The Poems and Ballads of Schiller, translator (1844), published by Bernard Tauchnitz, Leipzig
 * The New Timon (1846), an attack on Tennyson published anonymously
 * King Arthur (1848–1849)

Plays

 * The Duchess de la Vallière (1837)
 * The Lady of Lyons (1838)
 * Richelieu (1839), adapted for the 1935 film Cardinal Richelieu
 * Money (1840)
 * Not So Bad as We Seem, or, Many Sides to a Character: A Comedy in Five Acts (1851)
 * The Rightful Heir (1868), based on The Sea Captain, an earlier play of Lytton's
 * Walpole, or Every Man Has His Price
 * Darnley (unfinished)

Other links

 * Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803–73)
 * John S. Moore's essay on Bulwer-Lytton
 * Edward Bulwer-Lytton biography and works
 * Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Delphi Classics)
 * Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Delphi Classics)

title: Edward Bulwer-Lytton


text:
History of Esperanto

L. L. Zamenhof developed Esperanto in the 1870s and '80s. Unua Libro, the first print discussion of the language, appeared in 1887. The number of Esperanto speakers have increased gradually since then, without much support from governments and international organizations. Its use has, in some instances, been outlawed or otherwise suppressed.

Standardized Yiddish
Around 1880, while in Moscow and approximately simultaneously with working on Esperanto, Zamenhof made an aborted attempt to standardize Yiddish, based on his native Bialystok (Northeastern) dialect, as a unifying language for the Jews of the Russian Empire. He even used a Latin alphabet, with the letters ć, h́, ś, ź (the same as in early drafts of Esperanto, later ĉ, ĥ, ŝ, ĵ) and ě for schwa. However, he concluded there was no future for such a project, and abandoned it, dedicating himself to Esperanto as a unifying language for all humankind. Paul Wexler proposed that Esperanto was not an arbitrary pastiche of major European languages but a Latinate relexification of Yiddish, a native language of its founder. This model is generally unsupported by mainstream linguists.

Development of the language before publication
Zamenhof would later say that he had dreamed of a world language since he was a child. At first he considered a revival of Latin, but after learning it in school he decided it was too complicated to be a common means of international communication. When he learned English, he realised that verb conjugations were unnecessary, and that grammatical systems could be much simpler than he had expected. He still had the problem of memorising a large vocabulary, until he noticed two Russian signs labelled Швейцарская (švejtsarskaja, a porter's lodge – from швейцар švejtsar, a porter) and Кондитерская (konditerskaja, a confectioner's shop – from кондитер konditer, a confectioner). He then realised that a judicious use of affixes could greatly decrease the number of root words needed for communication. He chose to take his vocabulary from Romance and Germanic, the languages that were most widely taught in schools around the world and would therefore be recognisable to the largest number of people.

Zamenhof taught an early version of the language to his high-school classmates. Then, for several years, he worked on translations and poetry to refine his creation. In 1895 he wrote, "I worked for six years perfecting and testing the language, even though it had seemed to me in 1878 that it was already completely ready." When he was ready to publish, the Czarist censors would not allow it. Stymied, he spent his time in translating works such as the Bible and Shakespeare. This enforced delay led to continued improvement. In July 1887 he published his Unua Libro (First Book), a basic introduction to the language. This was essentially the language spoken today.

Unua Libro to Declaration of Boulogne (1887–1905)
Unua Libro was published in 1887. At first the movement grew most in the Russian empire and eastern Europe, but soon spread to western Europe and beyond: to Argentina in 1889; to Canada in 1901; to Algeria, Chile, Japan, Mexico, and Peru in 1903; to Tunisia in 1904; and to Australia, the United States, Guinea, Indochina, New Zealand, Tonkin, and Uruguay in 1905.

In its first years Esperanto was used mainly in publications by Zamenhof and early adopters like Antoni Grabowski, in extensive correspondence (mostly now lost), in the magazine La Esperantisto, published from 1889 to 1895 and only occasionally in personal encounters.

In 1894, under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, the publisher of the magazine La Esperantisto, and some other leading users, Zamenhof reluctantly put forward a radical reform to be voted on by readers. He proposed the reduction of the alphabet to 22 letters (by eliminating the accented letters and most of their sounds), the change of the plural to -i, the use of a positional accusative instead of the ending -n, the removal of the distinction between adjectives and adverbs, the reduction of the number of participles from six to two, and the replacement of the table of correlatives with more Latinate words or phrases. These reforms were overwhelmingly rejected, but some were picked up in subsequent reforms (such as Ido) and criticisms of the language. In the following decade Esperanto spread into western Europe, especially France. By 1905 there were already 27 magazines being published (Auld 1988).

A small international conference was held in 1904, leading to the first world congress in August 1905 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. There were 688 Esperanto speakers present from 20 nationalities. At this congress, Zamenhof officially resigned his leadership of the Esperanto movement, as he did not want personal prejudice against himself (or anti-Semitism) to hinder the progress of the language. He proposed a declaration on founding principles of the Esperanto movement, which the attendees of the congress endorsed.

Declaration of Boulogne to present (1905–present)
World congresses have been held every year since 1905, except during the two World Wars.

The autonomous territory of Neutral Moresnet, between Belgium and Germany, had a sizable proportion of Esperanto-speakers among its small and multiethnic population. There was a proposal to make Esperanto its official language. In 1908, it was eventually accepted alongside Dutch, German, and French. There was also a large Esperanto group led by Anna Tuschinski in the Free City of Danzig.

In the early 1920s, a great opportunity seemed to arise for Esperanto when the Iranian delegation to the League of Nations proposed that it be adopted for use in international relations, following a report by Nitobe Inazō, an official delegate of League of Nations during the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in Prague. Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux, who employed France's Council veto privilege to squash all League attempts at the recognition of Esperanto, starting on the first vote on 18 December 1920 and continuing through the next three years. Hanotaux did not like how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat. However, two years later the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula. The French retaliated by banning all instruction in Esperanto in French schools and universities. The French Ministry of Instruction said that acceptance of Esperanto would mean that "French and English would perish and that the literary standard of the world would be debased". Nonetheless, many people see the 1920s as the heyday of the Esperanto movement.

In 1941, the Soviet Union started performing mass arrests, deportations, and killings of many Esperantists and their relatives for fear of an anti-nationalistic movement, but it was interrupted by the Nazi invasion.

Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that Esperanto was created as a universal language to unite the Jewish diaspora.

The creation of a Jew-free National German Esperanto League was not enough to placate the Nazis. The teaching of Esperanto was not allowed in German prisoner-of-war camps during World War II. Esperantists sometimes were able to get around the ban by convincing guards that they were teaching Italian, the language of Germany's closest ally.

In the early years of the Soviet Union, Esperanto was given a measure of government support, and an officially recognized Soviet Esperanto Association came into being. However, in 1937, Stalin reversed this policy and the use of Esperanto was effectively banned until 1956. While Esperanto itself was not enough cause for execution, its use was extended among Jews or trade unionists and encouraged contacts with foreigners.

Fascist Italy, on the other hand, made some efforts of promoting tourism in Italy through Esperanto leaflets and appreciated the similarities of Italian and Esperanto.

Portugal's right-wing governments cracked down on the language from 1936 until the Carnation Revolution of 1974. After the Spanish Civil War, Francoist Spain cracked down on the Anarchists and Catalan nationalists among whom the speaking of Esperanto had been quite widespread; but in the 1950s, the Esperanto movement was tolerated again, with Francisco Franco accepting the honorary patronage of the Madrid World Esperanto Congress.

The Cold War, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, put a damper on the Esperanto movement as well, as there were fears on both sides that Esperanto could be used for enemy propaganda. However, the language experienced something of a renaissance in the 1970s and spread to new parts of the world, such as its veritable explosion in popularity in Iran in 1975. By 1991 there were enough African Esperantists to warrant a pan-African congress. The language continues to spread, although it is not officially recognised by any country, and is part of the state educational curriculum of only a few.

In 2022 an Esperanto club was founded on the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station making Antarctica the last continent with organized Esperantists.

Evolution of the language
The Declaration of Boulogne (1905) limited changes to Esperanto. That declaration stated, among other things, that the basis of the language should remain the Fundamento de Esperanto ("Foundation of Esperanto", a group of early works by Zamenhof), which is to be binding forever: nobody has the right to make changes to it. The declaration also permits new concepts to be expressed as the speaker sees fit, but it recommends doing so in accordance with the original style.

Many Esperantists believe this declaration stabilising the language is a major reason why the Esperanto speaker community grew beyond the levels attained by other constructed languages and has developed a flourishing culture. Other constructed languages have been hindered from developing a stable speaking community by continual tinkering. Also, many developers of constructed languages have been possessive of their creation and have worked to prevent others from contributing to the language. One such ultimately disastrous case was Schleyer's Volapük. In contrast, Zamenhof declared that "Esperanto belongs to the Esperantists", and moved to the background once the language was published, allowing others to share in the early development of the language.

The grammatical description in the earliest books was somewhat vague, so a consensus on usage (influenced by Zamenhof's answers to some questions) developed over time within boundaries set by the initial outline (Auld 1988). Even before the Declaration of Boulogne, the language was remarkably stable; only one set of lexical changes were made in the first year after publication, namely changing "when", "then", "never", "sometimes", "always" from kian, tian, nenian, ian, ĉian to kiam, tiam, neniam etc., to avoid confusion with the accusative forms of kia "what sort of", tia "that sort of", etc. Thus Esperanto achieved a stability of structure and grammar similar to that which natural languages enjoy by virtue of their native speakers and established bodies of literature. One could learn Esperanto without having it move from underfoot. Changes could and did occur in the language, but only by acquiring widespread popular support; there was no central authority making arbitrary changes, as happened with Volapük and some other languages.

Modern Esperanto usage may in fact depart from that originally described in the Fundamento, though the differences are largely semantic (involving changed meaning of words) rather than grammatical or phonological. The translation given for "I like this one", in the sample phrases in the main Esperanto article, offers a significant example. According to the Fundamento, Mi ŝatas ĉi tiun would in fact have meant "I esteem this one". The traditional usage is Tiu ĉi plaĉas al mi (literally, "this one is pleasing to me"), which reflects the phrasing of most European languages (French celui-ci me plaît, Spanish éste me gusta, Russian это мне нравится [eto mnye nravitsya], German Das gefällt mir, Italian mi piace). However, the original Ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi continues to be commonly used.

For later changes to the language, see Modern evolution of Esperanto.

Dialects, reform projects and derived languages
Esperanto has not fragmented into regional dialects through natural language use. This may be because it is the language of daily communication for only a small minority of its speakers. However at least three other factors work against dialects, namely the centripetal force of the Fundamento, the unifying influence of the Plena Vortaro and its successors, which exemplified usage from the works of Zamenhof and leading writers, and the transnational ambitions of the speech community itself. Slang and jargon have developed to some extent, but such features interfere with universal communication – the whole point of Esperanto – and so have generally been avoided.

However, in the early twentieth century numerous reform projects were proposed. Almost all of these Esperantidos were stillborn, but the very first, Ido ("offspring"), had significant success for several years. Ido was proposed by the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language in Paris in October 1907. Its main reforms were in bringing the alphabet, semantics, and some grammatical features into closer alignment with the Romance languages, as well as removal of adjectival agreement and the accusative case except when necessary. At first, a number of leading Esperantists put their support behind the Ido project, but the movement stagnated and declined, first with the accidental death of one of its main proponents and later as people proposed further changes, and the number of current speakers is estimated at between 250 and 5,000. However, Ido has proven to be a rich source of Esperanto vocabulary.

Some more focused reform projects, affecting only a particular feature of the language, have gained a few adherents. One of these is riism, which modifies the language to incorporate non-sexist language and gender-neutral pronouns. However, most of these projects are specific to individual nationalities (riism from English speakers, for example), and the only changes that have gained acceptance in the Esperanto community have been the minor and gradual bottom-up reforms discussed in the last section.

Esperanto is credited with influencing or inspiring several later competing language projects, such as Occidental (1922) and Novial (1928). These always lagged far behind Esperanto in their popularity. By contrast, Interlingua (1951) has greatly surpassed Ido in terms of popularity. It shows little or no Esperanto influence, however.

Timeline of Esperanto

 * 1859: L. L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, is born in Białystok, Russia (now Poland).
 * 1873: The Zamenhof family moves to Warsaw.
 * 1878: Zamenhof celebrates the completion of his universal language project, Lingwe Uniwersala, with high school friends.
 * 1879: Zamenhof attends medical school in Moscow. His father burns his language project while he's away. Meanwhile Schleyer publishes a sketch of Volapük, the first constructed international auxiliary language to acquire a number of speakers. Many Volapük clubs will later switch to Esperanto.
 * 1881: Zamenhof returns to Warsaw to continue medical school, and starts to recreate his project.
 * 1887: Zamenhof marries. In July, with his wife's financial help, he publishes Unua Libro, the first publication introducing Esperanto, in Russian. Polish, German, and French translations are published later that year.
 * 1888: Leo Tolstoy becomes an early supporter. Zamenhof publishes Dua Libro, as well as the first English-language edition of Unua Libro, which proved to be filled with errors.
 * 1889: The second English-language edition of Unua Libro is published in January, translated by Richard H. Geoghegan, and becomes the standard English translation. Henry Phillips, Jr., of the American Philosophical Society, also translates Unua Libro into English. The first volume of La Esperantisto is published in September. The language begins to be called Esperanto.
 * 1894: Zamenhof, reacting to pressure, puts a radical reform to a vote, but it is overwhelmingly rejected. That version of Esperanto is often referred to as Esperanto 1894.
 * 1895: La Esperantisto ceases publication. Lingvo Internacia begins publication in December.
 * 1901: Zamenhof publishes his ideas on a universal religion, based on the philosophy of Hillel the Elder.
 * 1905: Fundamento de Esperanto is published in the spring. The first World Esperanto Congress is held in Boulogne-sur-Mer, with 688 participants and conducted entirely in Esperanto. The Declaration of Boulogne is drafted and ratified at the congress.
 * 1906: The second World Esperanto Congress is held in Geneva, Switzerland, drawing 1200 participants. La Revuo begins publication.
 * 1907: Twelve members of the British parliament nominate Zamenhof for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Ĉekbanko Esperantista (Esperantist Checking Bank) is founded in London, using the spesmilo, an auxiliary Esperanto currency based on the gold standard. A committee organised by Louis Couturat in Paris proposes the Ido reform project, which provides significant competition for Esperanto until the First World War.
 * 1908: The Universal Esperanto Association is founded by Hector Hodler, a 19-year-old Swiss Esperantist.
 * 1909: The International Association of Esperantist Railway Workers is founded in Barcelona.
 * 1910s: Esperanto is taught in state schools in the Republic of China, Samos, and Macedonia.
 * 1910: 42 members of the French parliament nominate Zamenhof for the Nobel Peace Prize.
 * 1914: Lingvo Internacia and La Revuo cease publication.
 * 1917: Zamenhof dies during World War I.
 * 1920: The first Esperanto magazine for the blind, Aŭroro, begins publishing in then-Czechoslovakia. It's still in print today.
 * 1921: The French Academy of the Sciences recommends using Esperanto for international scientific communication.
 * 1922: Esperanto is banned from French schools.
 * 1924: The League of Nations recommends that member states implement Esperanto as an auxiliary language.
 * 1920s: Offices of the Brazilian Ministry of Education use Esperanto for their international correspondence. Lu Xun, the founder of modern Chinese literature, becomes a supporter of Esperanto. Montagu C. Butler is the first to raise Esperanto-speaking children.
 * 1933/34: Reorganisation of the international (neutral) Esperanto movement, under the name UEA.
 * 1934: Encyclopedia of Esperanto first published in Budapest.
 * 1935: Kalocsay and Waringhien publish the influential Plena Gramatiko de Esperanto (Complete Grammar of Esperanto). Esperanto and other planned languages de facto prohibited in Nazi Germany in May.
 * 1936: All Esperanto organisations in Nazi Germany prohibited in June through the prohibition of the UEA and SAT in June by Heinrich Himmler.
 * 1937: Leaders of the Esperanto organisation in the Soviet Union arrested; Esperanto activities made impossible.
 * 1938: The World Esperanto Youth Organisation TEJO is founded.
 * 1939–1945: In World War II many countries are occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union, where Esperanto organisations often were prohibited or Esperanto activities were limited in other ways.
 * 1948: The railway workers' association is refounded as IFEF, the Internacia Fervojista Esperanto-Federacio (International Railway Workers' Esperanto Federation) to foster the use of Esperanto in the administration of the railroads of the world (so far, of Eurasia).
 * 1954: UNESCO establishes consultative relations with the Universal Esperanto Association.
 * 1966: The precursor to Pasporta Servo is launched in Argentina. Pasporta Servo is a global network of Esperanto speakers who host Esperantists traveling through their countries.
 * 1967: István Nemere founds the Renkontiĝo de Esperanto-Familioj, the first organisation for Esperanto-speaking families.
 * 1975: The Esperanto movement spreads to Iran, with three thousand learning the language in Tehran.
 * 1980: The Internacia Junulara Kongreso (International Youth Congress) in Rauma, Finland ratify the Manifesto of Rauma, articulating the view of many in the Esperanto movement that Esperanto is a goal in itself.
 * 1985: UNESCO encourages UN member states to add Esperanto to their school curricula.
 * 1987: 6000 Esperantists attend the 72nd World Esperanto Congress in Warsaw, marking Esperanto's centennial.
 * 1991: The first pan-African Esperanto Conference is held in Lomé, Togo.
 * 1992: PEN International accepts an Esperanto section.
 * 1999: The Esperanto poet William Auld is nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
 * 2001: The Vikipedio project (Esperanto Wikipedia) is launched, resulting in the first general encyclopedia written in a constructed language. It is now one of the most popular websites in Esperanto.
 * 2004: The Europe–Democracy–Esperanto party (E°D°E°) contests the European Parliament elections in France, on a platform of making Esperanto the second language of all EU member states, taking 0.15% of the vote.
 * 2007: Israel issues a stamp to commemorate 120 years of Esperanto (1887–2007). An image of Zamenhof is designed in a text describing his life, reproduced from the Wikipedia article on Esperanto. The corner of the tab shows the flag of the Esperanto movement.
 * 2009: The Senate of Brazil passed a bill which would make Esperanto an optional part of the curriculum in its state schools. As of 2010 the bill has not yet been passed by the Chamber of Deputies.
 * 2015: The 100th World Esperanto Congress is held in Lille, France. Duolingo launches its Esperanto program.
 * 2017: Amikumu is launched, an app connecting Esperantists with other local Esperantists throughout the world.

title: History of Esperanto


text:
Talk:History of Esperanto

Not a language for the Jewish diaspora
Removed the following because Zamenhof only considered Latin to be the international language and after learning it realized it was obsolete and too difficult for the task:

 * Zamenhof's intention had been creating a world language to linguistically unite the Jewish diaspora. To him the Yiddish language, as an old German dialect, didn't seem appropriate for this task, while old Hebrew and Latin were too difficult for a new world language.

''More to the point, there doesn't appear to be any support for the above statement re: the Jewish diaspora, at least that I have come across. The usual story is that he always intended a language for the whole world, not just for one specific people, as described in eg Esperanto: A Language for the Global Village. --Brion Vibber''

Quote:

IV. Zamenhof.

Segun chekoslovakian esperanto-revue un letre fro Dr. Zamenhof, datat 1889, kontena konfesione kel jeta non-expektat lume sur li historie de lon lingue. Li autore dar dikte ke lo ha krea li lingue unesmim e prinsipalim por sen nonfelisi popule, li judes, diviset inter multi landes e lingues - un popule kel pove bli ri unifika per li lingue. Ti popule pove deveni apostole del internationali lingue pro sen kosmopoliti role e pro sen historial traditiones. Kun li lingue vud veni li nov religione "Homaranismo," kel finalim sal deveni li religione del toti monde. Dunke li amo a sen popule, li nationalisme, ha es li unesmi motive por Zamenhof, kel adi in li sami letre: si me non vud fermim kreda ke li nov religione sal triumfa, me nulitem vud ha publikisa li lingue, kel es solim moyene, non eme.

End quote. (My bolding)

Source: An International Language (1928). Otto Jespersen. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5037/AILtexts.html#textIV

If you want an accurate, rather than propogandist article, you might consider such reports which present-day Esperantists may wish to bury. Nov ialiste 18:20, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I don't think there is a "wish to bury" anything here, but something like this needs a better citation than a Novial anecdote. A member of our Esp. society in New York mentioned an article in the magazine "Israela Esperantisto" which quoted Zamenhof saying that he hoped Esperanto would unite the Jewish people linguistically. But I didn't get the impression from his talk that this was Z's main intention in creating Esperanto. Nevertheless if it turns out he said something like this and someone turns up a good cite, go for it. --Cam 02:28, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes, I agree the quote I made is insufficient evidence in itself. However, it claims to be quoting from an Esperanto journal. It would be interesting if somebody could find the original source. That Esperanto source itself may not be incontrovertible evidence but the whole question is worth investigating. If there are publications claiming so it could be said that "some sources claim...." and give references.

Note on cited works
Incidentally, La Danĝera Lingvo is also available in an abridged German edition as Die Gefärliche Sprache (same publisher). To my chagrin, my university's library has a copy in German, which I can't read, but not the Esperanto version. --Brion 02:31 Apr 30, 2003 (UTC)

Questions on focus

 * Why the link to Taiwan Esperanto Association? Why is it relevant?
 * Why the "focus on youth" in the timeline?

--Jim Henry 21:29, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Terribly incomplete
This needs a lot more detail. It chatters about comparatively unimportant things while leaving out any discussion of the periodicals (La Esperantisto etc.) that united the early movement before the first congresses, the first or any subsequent world congresses, the Ido crisis, or other important milestones. --Jim Henry 18:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Timeline position
Why was the timeline moved up to the beginning of the article? It makes more sense to me to have it at the end. Is there a Wikipedia standard on this? --Jim Henry | Talk 14:40, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I moved it up to the beginning when it was shorter. It made more sense to me to have it there at the time, especially with the article as incomplete as it was, but I've since expanded the timeline a fair amount. It would be great if you could expand the whole article per your comments above (I don't have the knowledge to do so); and if you're doing most of the work, I think you should decide what goes where! kwami 19:30, 2005 August 15 (UTC)

 * Much of what I mentioned in my above comment from February has already been added by now, either by me or other people. The Ido crisis is only briefly mentioned, though.  I'll need to do some research to refresh my memory on that before writing more.  It would also be good to say something about the Manifesto of Raŭma in 1980, and its consequences, too; other than that I can't think of any topics that desperately need to be added. --Jim Henry | Talk 20:14, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Well, I still think you should format the article as you see fit. You've probably done the most work on it. kwami 22:16, 2005 August 15 (UTC)

Ŝvejcarskaja, konditorskaja
It seemed inappropriate to use these Esperanto transliterations in an English-language article, so I changed them to the more "English"-looking shveytsarskaya, konditerskaya (corrected from "konditor-", see Kolker ). Also added the Cyrillic. --Cam 07:43, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Ido/Interlingua
I changed "the movement descended into fragmentation and decline" to "the movement stagnated and declined", 'cos, first, I'm not aware that Ido has ever fragmented (i.e., split into competing dialects), and, second, while Courturat's death was obviously a blow, Ido seems to have gained ground for several years after. At least, activity seems to have peaked in the early 1920s (C. died 1914).

To call Eo the "foundation or inspiration" for Interlingua is definitely a stretch, except in the sense that it stimulated (but certainly didn't create) a widespread interest in international languages. Concretely, Pirro's Universalglot and Peano's Latino sine Flexione were stronger influences. Occidental certainly has Esperanto traits, in superficial and substructural -- so you could almost call Interlingua "Occidental with all the Esperanto bits removed". Anyway since this isn't an article on Interlingua, I hope my edit isn't too intrusive.

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on History of Esperanto. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101201024512/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/EBook/chap07.html to http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/EBook/chap07.html
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/9061/bulonja.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 17:04, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

League of Nations
"The French delegate to the League of Nations vetoes the use of Esperanto as its working language, leaving English and French."
 * That never happened, and a lot of the rest is inaccurate too. You should not rely on anonymous blogs, which in any case are against the sourcing rules. If you want to write the history of Esperanto and the League, it will take some work but here are some good sources:
 * League of Nations, Esperanto as an International Auxiliary Language, 1922.
 * Forster, The Esperanto Movement, 1992.
 * Panchasi, Future Tense, 2009.
 * Zerotalk 11:07, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Standardized Yiddish citation
So the Spolsky citation doesn't show that the relexification hypothesis isn't generally supported by linguists. It shows Wexler's other theory about the origin of Yiddish is unsupported. 24.85.234.134 (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:History of Esperanto