text:
Kensington

Kensington is an area of London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, around 4.6 km west of Central London.

The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensington Gardens, containing the Albert Memorial, the Serpentine Gallery and Speke's monument. South Kensington and Gloucester Road are home to Imperial College London, the Royal College of Music, the Royal Albert Hall, Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Science Museum. The area is also home to many embassies and consulates.

Name
The manor of Chenesitone is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086, which in the Anglo-Saxon language means "Chenesi's ton" (homestead/settlement). One early spelling is Kesyngton, as written in 1396.

History
The manor of Kensington, in the county of Middlesex, was one of several hundred granted by King William the Conqueror (1066–1089) to Geoffrey de Montbray (or Mowbray), Bishop of Coutances in Normandy, one of his inner circle of advisors and one of the wealthiest men in post-Conquest England. He granted the tenancy of Kensington to his follower Aubrey de Vere I, who was holding the manor from him as overlord in 1086, according to the Domesday Book. The bishop's heir, Robert de Mowbray, rebelled against King William II and his vast feudal barony was forfeited to the Crown. Aubrey de Vere I thus became a tenant-in-chief, holding directly from the king after 1095, which increased his status in feudal England. He granted the church and an estate within the manor to Abingdon Abbey in Oxfordshire, at the deathbed request of his eldest son Geoffrey. As the de Veres became Earls of Oxford, their principal manor at Kensington came to be known as Earl's Court, as they were not resident in the manor, and their manorial business was not conducted in the great hall of a manor house but in a courthouse. In order to differentiate it, the new sub-manor granted to Abingdon Abbey became known as Abbot's Kensington and the church St Mary Abbots.

The original Kensington Barracks, built at Kensington Gate in the late 18th century, were demolished in 1858 and new barracks were built in Kensington Church Street.

In 2022, 12.2% of Kensington residents have been granted non domicile status to avoid paying tax in the UK.

Geography
The focus of the area is Kensington High Street, a busy commercial centre with many shops, typically upmarket. The street was declared London's second best shopping street in February 2005 due to its wide range and number of shops. However, since October 2008 the street has faced competition from the Westfield shopping centre in nearby White City.

Kensington's second group of commercial buildings is at South Kensington, where several streets of small to medium-sized shops and service businesses are situated close to South Kensington tube station. This is also the southern end of Exhibition Road, the thoroughfare which serves the area's museums and educational institutions.

The boundaries of Kensington are not well-defined; in particular, the southern part of Kensington has conflicting and complex borders with Chelsea (another ancient manor) whether electoral or postal definitions are used, and has similar architecture. To the west, a border is clearly defined by the line of the Counter Creek marked by the West London railway line. To the north, the only obvious border line is Holland Park Avenue, to the north of which is the district of Notting Hill (another ancient manor), usually classed as within "North Kensington".

In the north east is situated the large public Royal Park of Kensington Gardens (contiguous with its eastern neighbour, Hyde Park). The other main green area in Kensington is Holland Park, on the north side of the eastern end of Kensington High Street. Many residential roads have small communal garden squares, for the exclusive use of the residents.

The sub districts of Kensington: South Kensington and Earl's Court also consist largely of private housing. North Kensington and West Kensington are largely devoid of features to attract the visitor.

Kensington is, in general, an extremely affluent area, a trait that it shares with Chelsea, its neighbour to the south. The area has some of London's most expensive streets and garden squares, and at about the turn of the 21st century the Holland Park neighbourhood became particularly high-status. In early 2007 houses sold in Upper Phillimore Gardens, immediately east of Holland Park, for over £20 million. Brompton is another definable area of Kensington.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea forms part of the most densely populated local government district in the United Kingdom. This high density has come about through the subdivision of large mid-rise Georgian and Victorian terraced houses (generally of four to six floors) into flats. The less-affluent northern extremity of Kensington has high-rise residential buildings, while this type of building in the southern part is only represented by the Holiday Inn's London Kensington Forum Hotel in Cromwell Road, a 27-storey building.

Notable attractions and institutions in Kensington include Kensington Palace in Kensington Gardens, the Royal Albert Hall opposite the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, the Royal College of Music, the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Heythrop College, Imperial College, the Royal College of Art, and Kensington and Chelsea College. The Olympia Exhibition Hall is just over the western border in West Kensington.

Administration
Kensington is administered within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and lies within the Kensington parliamentary constituency.

Media sector
The head office of newspaper group DMGT is located in Northcliffe House off Kensington High Street in part of the large Barkers department store building. In addition to housing the offices for the DMGT newspapers Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Metro, Northcliffe House also accommodates the offices of the newspapers owned by Evgeny Lebedev: The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, and the Evening Standard. The i newspaper, sold to Johnston Press in 2016, is still produced from offices in Northcliffe House. Most of these titles were for many decades produced and printed in Fleet Street in the City of London.

The building also houses Lebedev's TV channel London Live, with its news studio situated in part of the former department store, using St Mary Abbots church and Kensington Church Street as live backdrop.

Transport

Kensington is crossed east–west by three main roads, the most important of which is the A4 Cromwell Road which connects it to Central London on the east and to Hounslow and Heathrow Airport on the west. Parallel to the north is Kensington Road (of which Kensington High Street forms the eastern part), linking central London and Hammersmith and Hounslow to the area. To the south is Fulham Road, which connects South Kensington with Fulham to the south-west. North-south connections are not as well-developed and there is no obvious single north–south route through the area.

Kensington is well served by public transport. Most of Kensington is served by three stations in the Travelcard Zone 1: High Street Kensington, Gloucester Road and South Kensington. All three are served by the Circle line which connects them to London's railway terminals. The District line also serves all three stations, albeit on different branches; it links the latter two to Westminster and the City. The Piccadilly line also links South Kensington and Gloucester Road to the West End in about 10 minutes, and in the other direction to Chiswick, Ealing, Hounslow and Heathrow Airport in around 20–40 minutes, depending on the area of choice. In addition Kensington (Olympia) in Travelcard Zone 2 serves the western part of Kensington, with District line trains to Earl's Court and High Street Kensington. Nearby West Kensington station takes its name from the former boundaries with Hammersmith and is not in the Borough.

A number of local bus services link Kensington into the surrounding districts, and key hubs are Kensington High Street and South Kensington station. These bus services were improved in frequency and spread from 2007 until 2010 when the western extension of the London congestion charge area existed (which required drivers of cars and vans during the charging hours Monday-Friday to pay a daily fee of £8).

In 2020 a temporary cycle lane on Kensington High Street caused a nationwide media stir. The temporary cycle lane was installed by the local council in September 2020 with £700,000 in funding from central government grants, but it was removed in December 2020.

Sports
Kensington has one football team, Kensington Borough F.C., which currently plays in the Combined Counties Football League.

Notable people

 * Jeremy Bamber (born 1961), convicted mass murderer
 * Ivan Berlyn (1867–1934), film and stage actor
 * Antonia Bird (1951–2013), film director
 * Howard Blake (born 1938), composer, conductor and pianist
 * Frank Boys (1918–2003), first-class cricketer
 * Les Champelovier (1933–2023), amateur footballer
 * Frank Cadogan Cowper (1877–1958), artist
 * Daniel Day-Lewis (born 1957), retired Academy Award-winning actor
 * Dennis Wise (born 1966), footballer
 * Dido (born 1971), singer and songwriter
 * Carmen Ejogo (born 1973), actress
 * Evangeline Florence (1867–1928), soprano
 * Justine Frischmann (born 1969), musician
 * Percival Gale (1865–1940), cricketer
 * William Leach (1883–1969), first-class cricketer
 * Rotha Lintorn-Orman (1895–1935), fascist activist
 * Montague MacLean (1870–1951), cricketer
 * Freddie Mercury (1946–1991), frontman of the British rock band Queen
 * Jimmy Page (born 1944), guitarist of the British rock band Led Zeppelin
 * Una-Mary Parker (1930–2019), journalist and novelist
 * Reginald Popham (1892–1975), cricketer and footballer
 * Sir John Richard Robinson, journalist and editor
 * Christopher Stanger-Leathes (1881–1966), rugby union international
 * Jason Vale (born 1969), lifestyle coach
 * Frank Ward (1888–1952), first-class cricketer
 * Frank Westerton (1866–1923), stage and silent-film actor
 * Tom Holland (born 1996), actor

title: Kensington


text:
Letter of marque

A letter of marque and reprisal (lettre de marque; lettre de course) was a government license in the Age of Sail that authorized a private person, known as a privateer or corsair, to attack and capture vessels of a nation at war with the issuer, licensing international military operations against a specified enemy as reprisal for a previous attack or injury. Captured naval prizes were judged before the government's admiralty court for condemnation and transfer of ownership to the privateer.

A common practice among Europeans from the late Middle Ages to the 19th century, cruising for enemy prizes with a letter of marque was considered an honorable calling that combined patriotism and profit. Such legally authorized privateering contrasted with unlicensed captures of random ships, known as piracy, which was universally condemned. In practice, the differences between privateers and pirates were slight, or merely a matter of interpretation.

The terms "letter of marque" and "privateer" were sometimes used to describe the ships which typically operated under the marque-and-reprisal licences. In this context, a letter of marque was a lumbering, square-rigged cargo carrier that might pick up a prize if the opportunity arose in its normal commerce. In contrast, the term privateer generally referred to a fighting vessel, fore-and-aft rigged, fast, and weatherly.

Letters of marque allowed governments to fight their wars using mercenary private captains and sailors in place of their own navies as a measure to save time and money. Instead of building, funding, and maintaining a navy in times of peace, governments would wait until the start of a war to issue letters of marque to privateers, who financed their own ships in expectation of prize money.

Etymology and history of nomenclature
Marque derives from the Old English mearc, which is from the Germanic *mark-, which means boundary, or boundary marker. This is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *merǵ-, meaning boundary, or border. The French marque is from the Provençal language marca, which is from marcar, also Provençal, meaning to seize as a pledge.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of "letters of marque and reprisal" was in an English statute in 1354 during the reign of King Edward III. The phrase referred to "a licen[c]e granted by a sovereign to a subject, authorizing him to make reprisals on the subjects of a hostile state for injuries alleged to have been done to him by the enemy's army".

Early history

During the Middle Ages, armed private vessels enjoying their sovereign's tacit consent, if not always an explicit formal commission, regularly raided shipping of other nations, as in the case of the English Sir Francis Drake's attacks on Spanish shipping. Queen Elizabeth I (despite protestations of innocence) took a share of the prizes. Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius's 1604 seminal work on international law, De Iure Praedae (Of The Law of Prize and Booty), was an advocate's brief defending Dutch raids on Spanish and Portuguese shipping.

King Henry III of England first issued what later became known as privateering commissions in 1243. These early licences were granted to specific individuals to seize the King's enemies at sea in return for splitting the proceeds between the privateers and the Crown.

The letter of marque and reprisal was documented in 1295, 50 years after wartime privateer licenses were first issued. According to Grotius, letters of marque and reprisal were akin to a "private war", a concept alien to modern sensibilities but related to an age when the ocean was lawless and all merchant vessels sailed armed for self-defense. A reprisal involved seeking the sovereign's permission to exact private retribution against some foreign prince or subject. The earliest instance of a licensed reprisal recorded in England was in the year 1295 under the reign of King Edward I. The notion of reprisal, and behind it that just war involved avenging a wrong, was associated with the letter of marque until 1620 in England. To apply for such a letter, a shipowner had to submit to the Admiralty Court an estimate of actual losses incurred.

Licensing privateers during wartime became widespread in Europe by the 16th century, when most countries began to enact laws regulating the granting of letters of marque and reprisal. Such business could be very profitable; during the eight years of the American Revolutionary War, ships from the tiny island of Guernsey carrying letter of marque captured French and American vessels to the value of £900,000. Privateers from Guernsey continued to operate during the Napoleonic Wars.

Although privateering commissions and letters of marque were originally distinct legal concepts, such distinctions became purely technical by the 18th century. Article I of the United States Constitution, for instance, states that "The Congress shall have Power To ... grant Letters of marque and reprisal ...", without separately addressing privateer commissions.

During the American War of Independence, the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812, it was common to distinguish verbally between privateers (also known as private ships of war) on the one hand, and armed merchantmen, which were referred to as "letters of marque", on the other, though both received the same commission. The Sir John Sherbrooke (Halifax) was a privateer; the Sir John Sherbrooke (Saint John) was an armed merchantman. The East India Company arranged for letters of marque for its East Indiamen ships, such as the Lord Nelson. They did not need permission to carry cannons to fend off warships, privateers, and pirates on their voyages to India and China but, the letters of marque provided that, should they have the opportunity to take a prize, they could do so without being guilty of piracy. Similarly, the Earl of Mornington, an East India Company packet ship of only six guns, also carried a letter of marque.

Letters of marque and privateers are largely credited for the age of Elizabethan exploration, because privateers were used to explore the seas. Under the Crown, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Martin Frobisher sailed the seas as privateers; their expedition reports helped shape the age of Elizabethan exploration.

In July 1793, the East Indiamen Royal Charlotte, Triton, and Warley participated in the capture of Pondichéry by maintaining a blockade of the port. Afterwards, while sailing to China, the same three East Indiamen participated in an action in the Straits of Malacca. They came upon a French frigate, with some six or seven British prizes, with a crew replenishing her water casks ashore. The three British vessels immediately gave chase. The frigate fled towards the Sunda Strait. The Indiamen were able to catch up with a number of the prizes, and, after a few cannon shots, were able to retake them. Had they not carried letters of marque, such behaviour might well have qualified as piracy. Similarly, on 10 November 1800, the East Indiaman Phoenix captured the French privateer General Malartic, under Jean-Marie Dutertre, an action made legal by a letter of marque. Additionally, vessels with a letter of marque were exempt from having to sail in convoy, and nominally their crew members were exempt, during a voyage, from impressment.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the Dart and Kitty, British privateers, spent some months off the coast of Sierra Leone hunting slave-trading vessels.

Applying for, and legal effect of, a letter of marque
The procedure for issuing letters of marque, and the issuing authority, varied by time and circumstance. In colonial British America, for instance, colonial governors issued such letters in the name of the Crown. During the American War of Independence, authorization shifted from individual state legislatures, followed by both the states and the Continental Congress, and lastly, after ratification of the Constitution, only Congress authorized and the President signed letters of marque. A shipowner applied for such a letter of marque by stating the name, description, tonnage, and force (armaments) of the vessel, the name and residence of the owner, and the intended number of crew, and tendered a bond promising strict observance of the country's laws and treaties, and of international laws and customs. The United States granted the commission to the vessel, not to its captain, often for a limited time or specified area, and stated the enemy upon whom attacks were permitted. For example, during the Second Barbary War (1815), President James Madison authorized the brig Grand Turk (out of Salem, Massachusetts) to cruise against "Algerine vessels, public or private, goods and effects, of or belonging to the Dey of Algiers". (This particular commission was never put to use, as it was issued July 3, 1815, the same day the treaty was signed, ending the U.S. involvement in the war.)

In Britain in the 18th century, the High Court of Admiralty issued Letters of Marque. It was customary for the proposed privateer to pay a deposit or bond, possibly £1,500 as surety for good behaviour. The details of the ship, including tonnage, crew and weapons were recorded. The ownership of these ships was often split into ⅛ shares. Prizes were assessed and valued with profits split in pre-agreed proportions among the government, the owners, and the captain and crew.

A letter of marque and reprisal in effect converted a private merchant vessel into a naval auxiliary. A commissioned privateer enjoyed the protection and was subject to the obligations of the laws of war. If captured, the crew was entitled to honorable treatment as prisoners of war, while without the licence they were deemed mere pirates "at war with all the world," criminals who were properly hanged.

For this reason, enterprising maritime raiders commonly took advantage of "flag of convenience" letters of marque, shopping for cooperative governments to license and legitimize their depredations. French/Irishman Captain Luke Ryan and his lieutenants in just over two years commanded six vessels under the flags of three different nations and on opposite sides in the same war. Likewise the notorious Lafitte brothers in New Orleans cruised under letters of marque secured by bribery from corrupt officials of tenuous Central American governments, to cloak plunder with a thin veil of legality.

Adjudicating captures, invalid letters of marque, or illegal cruelty
The letter of marque by its terms required privateers to bring captured vessels and their cargoes before admiralty courts of their own or allied countries for condemnation. Applying the rules and customs of prize law, the courts decided whether the letter of marque was valid and current, and whether the captured vessel or its cargo in fact belonged to the enemy (not always easy, when flying false flags was common practice), and if so the prize and its cargo were "condemned", to be sold at auction with the proceeds divided among the privateer's owner and crew. A prize court's formal condemnation was required to transfer title; otherwise the vessel's previous owners might well reclaim her on her next voyage, and seek damages for the confiscated cargo.

Questions sometimes arose as to the legitimacy of a letter of marque, especially in cases of disputed sovereignty during civil wars or rebellions. Following the deposition of James II of England, for instance, the new Privy Council of England did not recognize the letters of marque issued by James while in exile in France, and prosecuted captured sailors operating under them as pirates.

During the American Civil War, Union authorities likewise attempted to prosecute Confederate privateers for the criminal act of piracy. When the Confederate privateer Savannah was captured in 1861, its crew was put on trial in New York. The Confederate government, however, threatened to execute captured Union soldiers in retaliation if any of the Confederate sailors were convicted and hanged, and the Union eventually agreed to treat Confederate privateers as prisoners of war.

Privateers were also required by the terms of their letters of marque to obey the laws of war, honour treaty obligations (avoid attacking neutrals), and in particular to treat captives as courteously and kindly as they safely could. If they failed to live up to their obligations, the admiralty courts could — and did — revoke the letter of marque, refuse to award prize money, forfeit bonds, or even award tort (personal injury) damages against the privateer's officers and crew.

Abolition of privateering
Nations often agreed by treaty to forgo privateering, as England and France repeatedly did starting with the diplomatic overtures of Edward III in 1324; privateering nonetheless recurred in every war between them for the next 500 years.

Benjamin Franklin had attempted to persuade the French to lead by example and stop issuing letters of marque to their corsairs, but the effort foundered when war loomed with Britain once again. The French Convention did forbid the practice, but it was reinstated after the Thermidorian Reaction, in August 1795; on 26 September 1797, the Ministry of the Navy was authorized to sell small ships to private parties for this purpose.

Finally, after the Congress of Paris at the end of the Crimean War, seven European nations signed the Paris Declaration of 1856 renouncing privateering, and 45 more eventually joined them, which in effect abolished privateering worldwide. The United States was not a signatory to that declaration.

20th century
In December 1941 and the first months of 1942, Goodyear commercial L-class blimp Resolute operating out of Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, flew anti-submarine patrols. As the civilian crew was armed with a rifle, a persistent misconception arose that this made the ship a privateer and that she and sister commercial blimps were operated under letters of marque until the Navy took over operation. Without congressional authorization, the Navy would not have been able to legally issue any letters of marque.

21st-century American reconsideration of letters of marque
Article I of the United States Constitution lists issuing letters of marque and reprisal in Section 8 as one of the enumerated powers of Congress, alongside the power to tax and to declare war. However, since the American Civil War, the United States as a matter of policy has consistently followed the terms of the 1856 Paris Declaration forbidding the practice. The United States has not legally commissioned any privateers since 1815, although the status of submarine-hunting Goodyear airships in the early days of World War II created significant confusion. Various accounts refer to airships Resolute and Volunteer as operating under a "privateer status", but Congress never authorized a commission, nor did the President sign one.

The issue of marque and reprisal was raised before Congress after the September 11 attacks and again by Congressman Ron Paul on July 21, 2007. The attacks were defined as acts of "air piracy" and the Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001 was introduced, which would have granted the president the authority to use letters of marque and reprisal against the specific terrorists, instead of warring against a foreign state. The terrorists were compared to pirates in that they are difficult to fight by traditional military means. On April 15, 2009, Paul also advocated the use of letters of marque to address the issue of Somali pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden. However, the bills Paul introduced were not enacted into law.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States Congress considered a bill to "[authorize] the President to issue letters of marque and reprisal" in order to seize yachts owned by Russian oligarchs.

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

title: Letter of marque


text:
Interpretations of quantum mechanics

An interpretation of quantum mechanics is an attempt to explain how the mathematical theory of quantum mechanics might correspond to experienced reality. Quantum mechanics has held up to rigorous and extremely precise tests in an extraordinarily broad range of experiments. However, there exist a number of contending schools of thought over their interpretation. These views on interpretation differ on such fundamental questions as whether quantum mechanics is deterministic or stochastic, local or non-local, which elements of quantum mechanics can be considered real, and what the nature of measurement is, among other matters.

While some variation of the Copenhagen interpretation is commonly presented in textbooks, many thought provoking interpretations have been developed. Despite nearly a century of debate and experiment, no consensus has been reached among physicists and philosophers of physics concerning which interpretation best "represents" reality.

History
The definition of quantum theorists' terms, such as wave function and matrix mechanics, progressed through many stages. For instance, Erwin Schrödinger originally viewed the electron's wave function as its charge density smeared across space, but Max Born reinterpreted the absolute square value of the wave function as the electron's probability density distributed across space; the Born rule, as it is now called, matched experiment, whereas Schrödinger's charge density view did not.

The views of several early pioneers of quantum mechanics, such as Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, are often grouped together as the "Copenhagen interpretation", though physicists and historians of physics have argued that this terminology obscures differences between the views so designated. Copenhagen-type ideas were never universally embraced, and challenges to a perceived Copenhagen orthodoxy gained increasing attention in the 1950s with the pilot-wave interpretation of David Bohm and the many-worlds interpretation of Hugh Everett III.

The physicist N. David Mermin once quipped, "New interpretations appear every year. None ever disappear." As a rough guide to development of the mainstream view during the 1990s and 2000s, a "snapshot" of opinions was collected in a poll by Schlosshauer et al. at the "Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality" conference of July 2011. The authors reference a similarly informal poll carried out by Max Tegmark at the "Fundamental Problems in Quantum Theory" conference in August 1997. The main conclusion of the authors is that "the Copenhagen interpretation still reigns supreme", receiving the most votes in their poll (42%), besides the rise to mainstream notability of the many-worlds interpretations: "The Copenhagen interpretation still reigns supreme here, especially if we lump it together with intellectual offsprings such as information-based interpretations and the quantum Bayesian interpretation. In Tegmark's poll, the Everett interpretation received 17% of the vote, which is similar to the number of votes (18%) in our poll."

Some concepts originating from studies of interpretations have found more practical application in quantum information science.

Nature
More or less, all interpretations of quantum mechanics share two qualities: Two qualities vary among interpretations: In the philosophy of science, the distinction between knowledge and reality is termed epistemic versus ontic. A general law can be seen as a generalisation of the regularity of outcomes (epistemic), whereas a causal mechanism may be thought of as determining or regulating outcomes (ontic). A phenomenon can be interpreted either as ontic or as epistemic. For instance, indeterminism may be attributed to limitations of human observation and perception (epistemic), or may be explained as intrinsic physical randomness (ontic). Confusing the epistemic with the ontic—if for example one were to presume that a general law actually "governs" outcomes, and that the statement of a regularity has the role of a causal mechanism—is a category mistake.
 * 1) They interpret a formalism—a set of equations and principles to generate predictions via input of initial conditions
 * 2) They interpret a phenomenology—a set of observations, including those obtained by empirical research and those obtained informally, such as humans' experience of an unequivocal world
 * 1) Epistemology—claims about the possibility, scope, and means toward relevant knowledge of the world
 * 2) Ontology—claims about what things, such as categories and entities, exist in the world

In a broad sense, scientific theory can be viewed as offering an approximately true description or explanation of the natural world (scientific realism) or as providing nothing more than an account of our knowledge of the natural world (antirealism). A realist stance sees the epistemic as giving us a window onto the ontic, whereas an antirealist stance sees the epistemic as providing only a logically consistent picture of the ontic. In the first half of the 20th Century, a key antirealist philosophy was logical positivism, which sought to exclude unobservable aspects of reality from scientific theory.

Since the 1950s antirealism has adopted a more modest approach, often in the form of instrumentalism, permitting talk of unobservables but ultimately discarding the very question of realism and positing scientific theory as a tool to help us make predictions, not to attain a deep metaphysical understanding of the world. The instrumentalist view is typified by David Mermin's famous slogan: "Shut up and calculate" (which is often misattributed to Richard Feynman).

Interpretive challenges

 * 1) Abstract, mathematical nature of quantum field theories: the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics is abstract and does not result in a single, clear interpretation of its quantities.
 * 2) Apparent indeterministic and irreversible processes: in classical field theory, a physical property at a given location in the field is readily derived. In most mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics, measurement (understood as an interaction with a given state) has a special role in the theory, as it is the sole process that can cause a nonunitary, irreversible evolution of the state.
 * 3) Role of the observer in determining outcomes. Copenhagen-type interpretations imply that the wavefunction is a calculational tool, and represents reality only immediately after a measurement performed by an observer. Everettian interpretations grant that all possible outcomes are real, and that measurement-type interactions cause a branching process in which each possibility is realised.
 * 4) Classically unexpected correlations between remote objects: entangled quantum systems, as illustrated in the EPR paradox, obey statistics that seem to violate principles of local causality by action at a distance.
 * 5) Complementarity of proffered descriptions: complementarity holds that no set of classical physical concepts can simultaneously refer to all properties of a quantum system. For instance, wave description A and particulate description B can each describe quantum system S, but not simultaneously. This implies the composition of physical properties of S does not obey the rules of classical propositional logic when using propositional connectives (see "Quantum logic"). Like contextuality, the "origin of complementarity lies in the non-commutativity of operators" that describe quantum objects.
 * 6) Rapidly rising intricacy, far exceeding humans' present calculational capacity, as a system's size increases: since the state space of a quantum system is exponential in the number of subsystems, it is difficult to derive classical approximations.
 * 7) Contextual behaviour of systems locally: Quantum contextuality demonstrates that classical intuitions, in which properties of a system hold definite values independent of the manner of their measurement, fail even for local systems. Also, physical principles such as Leibniz's Principle of the identity of indiscernibles no longer apply in the quantum domain, signaling that most classical intuitions may be incorrect about the quantum world.

Copenhagen interpretation
The Copenhagen interpretation is a collection of views about the meaning of quantum mechanics principally attributed to Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It is one of the oldest attitudes towards quantum mechanics, as features of it date to the development of quantum mechanics during 1925–1927, and it remains one of the most commonly taught. There is no definitive historical statement of what is the Copenhagen interpretation, and there were in particular fundamental disagreements between the views of Bohr and Heisenberg. For example, Heisenberg emphasized a sharp "cut" between the observer (or the instrument) and the system being observed, while Bohr offered an interpretation that is independent of a subjective observer or measurement or collapse, which relies on an "irreversible" or effectively irreversible process that imparts the classical behavior of "observation" or "measurement".

Features common to Copenhagen-type interpretations include the idea that quantum mechanics is intrinsically indeterministic, with probabilities calculated using the Born rule, and the principle of complementarity, which states certain pairs of complementary properties cannot all be observed or measured simultaneously. Moreover, properties only result from the act of "observing" or "measuring"; the theory avoids assuming definite values from unperformed experiments. Copenhagen-type interpretations hold that quantum descriptions are objective, in that they are independent of physicists' mental arbitrariness. The statistical interpretation of wavefunctions due to Max Born differs sharply from Schrödinger's original intent, which was to have a theory with continuous time evolution and in which wavefunctions directly described physical reality.

Many worlds
The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which a universal wavefunction obeys the same deterministic, reversible laws at all times; in particular there is no (indeterministic and irreversible) wavefunction collapse associated with measurement. The phenomena associated with measurement are claimed to be explained by decoherence, which occurs when states interact with the environment. More precisely, the parts of the wavefunction describing observers become increasingly entangled with the parts of the wavefunction describing their experiments. Although all possible outcomes of experiments continue to lie in the wavefunction's support, the times at which they become correlated with observers effectively "split" the universe into mutually unobservable alternate histories.

Quantum information theories
Quantum informational approaches have attracted growing support. They subdivide into two kinds. The state is not an objective property of an individual system but is that information, obtained from a knowledge of how a system was prepared, which can be used for making predictions about future measurements. ... A quantum mechanical state being a summary of the observer's information about an individual physical system changes both by dynamical laws, and whenever the observer acquires new information about the system through the process of measurement. The existence of two laws for the evolution of the state vector ... becomes problematical only if it is believed that the state vector is an objective property of the system ... The "reduction of the wavepacket" does take place in the consciousness of the observer, not because of any unique physical process which takes place there, but only because the state is a construct of the observer and not an objective property of the physical system.
 * Information ontologies, such as J. A. Wheeler's "it from bit". These approaches have been described as a revival of immaterialism.
 * Interpretations where quantum mechanics is said to describe an observer's knowledge of the world, rather than the world itself. This approach has some similarity with Bohr's thinking. Collapse (also known as reduction) is often interpreted as an observer acquiring information from a measurement, rather than as an objective event. These approaches have been appraised as similar to instrumentalism. James Hartle writes,

Relational quantum mechanics
The essential idea behind relational quantum mechanics, following the precedent of special relativity, is that different observers may give different accounts of the same series of events: for example, to one observer at a given point in time, a system may be in a single, "collapsed" eigenstate, while to another observer at the same time, it may be in a superposition of two or more states. Consequently, if quantum mechanics is to be a complete theory, relational quantum mechanics argues that the notion of "state" describes not the observed system itself, but the relationship, or correlation, between the system and its observer(s). The state vector of conventional quantum mechanics becomes a description of the correlation of some degrees of freedom in the observer, with respect to the observed system. However, it is held by relational quantum mechanics that this applies to all physical objects, whether or not they are conscious or macroscopic. Any "measurement event" is seen simply as an ordinary physical interaction, an establishment of the sort of correlation discussed above. Thus the physical content of the theory has to do not with objects themselves, but the relations between them.

QBism
QBism, which originally stood for "quantum Bayesianism", is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that takes an agent's actions and experiences as the central concerns of the theory. This interpretation is distinguished by its use of a subjective Bayesian account of probabilities to understand the quantum mechanical Born rule as a normative addition to good decision-making. QBism draws from the fields of quantum information and Bayesian probability and aims to eliminate the interpretational conundrums that have beset quantum theory.

QBism deals with common questions in the interpretation of quantum theory about the nature of wavefunction superposition, quantum measurement, and entanglement. According to QBism, many, but not all, aspects of the quantum formalism are subjective in nature. For example, in this interpretation, a quantum state is not an element of reality—instead it represents the degrees of belief an agent has about the possible outcomes of measurements. For this reason, some philosophers of science have deemed QBism a form of anti-realism. The originators of the interpretation disagree with this characterization, proposing instead that the theory more properly aligns with a kind of realism they call "participatory realism", wherein reality consists of more than can be captured by any putative third-person account of it.

Consistent histories
The consistent histories interpretation generalizes the conventional Copenhagen interpretation and attempts to provide a natural interpretation of quantum cosmology. The theory is based on a consistency criterion that allows the history of a system to be described so that the probabilities for each history obey the additive rules of classical probability. It is claimed to be consistent with the Schrödinger equation.

According to this interpretation, the purpose of a quantum-mechanical theory is to predict the relative probabilities of various alternative histories (for example, of a particle).

Ensemble interpretation
The ensemble interpretation, also called the statistical interpretation, can be viewed as a minimalist interpretation. That is, it claims to make the fewest assumptions associated with the standard mathematics. It takes the statistical interpretation of Born to the fullest extent. The interpretation states that the wave function does not apply to an individual system – for example, a single particle – but is an abstract statistical quantity that only applies to an ensemble (a vast multitude) of similarly prepared systems or particles. In the words of Einstein:

"The attempt to conceive the quantum-theoretical description as the complete description of the individual systems leads to unnatural theoretical interpretations, which become immediately unnecessary if one accepts the interpretation that the description refers to ensembles of systems and not to individual systems."

The most prominent current advocate of the ensemble interpretation is Leslie E. Ballentine, professor at Simon Fraser University, author of the text book Quantum Mechanics, A Modern Development.

De Broglie–Bohm theory
The de Broglie–Bohm theory of quantum mechanics (also known as the pilot wave theory) is a theory by Louis de Broglie and extended later by David Bohm to include measurements. Particles, which always have positions, are guided by the wavefunction. The wavefunction evolves according to the Schrödinger wave equation, and the wavefunction never collapses. The theory takes place in a single spacetime, is non-local, and is deterministic. The simultaneous determination of a particle's position and velocity is subject to the usual uncertainty principle constraint. The theory is considered to be a hidden-variable theory, and by embracing non-locality it satisfies Bell's inequality. The measurement problem is resolved, since the particles have definite positions at all times. Collapse is explained as phenomenological.

Transactional interpretation
The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics (TIQM) by John G. Cramer is an interpretation of quantum mechanics inspired by the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory. It describes the collapse of the wave function as resulting from a time-symmetric transaction between a possibility wave from the source to the receiver (the wave function) and a possibility wave from the receiver to source (the complex conjugate of the wave function). This interpretation of quantum mechanics is unique in that it not only views the wave function as a real entity, but the complex conjugate of the wave function, which appears in the Born rule for calculating the expected value for an observable, as also real.

Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation
In his treatise The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, John von Neumann deeply analyzed the so-called measurement problem. He concluded that the entire physical universe could be made subject to the Schrödinger equation (the universal wave function). He also described how measurement could cause a collapse of the wave function. This point of view was prominently expanded on by Eugene Wigner, who argued that human experimenter consciousness (or maybe even dog consciousness) was critical for the collapse, but he later abandoned this interpretation.

However, consciousness remains a mystery. The origin and place in nature of consciousness are not well understood. Some specific proposals for consciousness caused wave-function collapse have been shown to be unfalsifiable.

Quantum logic
Quantum logic can be regarded as a kind of propositional logic suitable for understanding the apparent anomalies regarding quantum measurement, most notably those concerning composition of measurement operations of complementary variables. This research area and its name originated in the 1936 paper by Garrett Birkhoff and John von Neumann, who attempted to reconcile some of the apparent inconsistencies of classical Boolean logic with the facts related to measurement and observation in quantum mechanics.

Modal interpretations of quantum theory
Modal interpretations of quantum mechanics were first conceived of in 1972 by Bas van Fraassen, in his paper "A formal approach to the philosophy of science". Van Fraassen introduced a distinction between a dynamical state, which describes what might be true about a system and which always evolves according to the Schrödinger equation, and a value state, which indicates what is actually true about a system at a given time. The term "modal interpretation" now is used to describe a larger set of models that grew out of this approach. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes several versions, including proposals by Kochen, Dieks, Clifton, Dickson, and Bub. According to Michel Bitbol, Schrödinger's views on how to interpret quantum mechanics progressed through as many as four stages, ending with a non-collapse view that in respects resembles the interpretations of Everett and van Fraassen. Because Schrödinger subscribed to a kind of post-Machian neutral monism, in which "matter" and "mind" are only different aspects or arrangements of the same common elements, treating the wavefunction as ontic and treating it as epistemic became interchangeable.

Time-symmetric theories
Time-symmetric interpretations of quantum mechanics were first suggested by Walter Schottky in 1921. Several theories have been proposed that modify the equations of quantum mechanics to be symmetric with respect to time reversal. (See Wheeler–Feynman time-symmetric theory.) This creates retrocausality: events in the future can affect ones in the past, exactly as events in the past can affect ones in the future. In these theories, a single measurement cannot fully determine the state of a system (making them a type of hidden-variables theory), but given two measurements performed at different times, it is possible to calculate the exact state of the system at all intermediate times. The collapse of the wavefunction is therefore not a physical change to the system, just a change in our knowledge of it due to the second measurement. Similarly, they explain entanglement as not being a true physical state but just an illusion created by ignoring retrocausality. The point where two particles appear to "become entangled" is simply a point where each particle is being influenced by events that occur to the other particle in the future.

Not all advocates of time-symmetric causality favour modifying the unitary dynamics of standard quantum mechanics. Thus a leading exponent of the two-state vector formalism, Lev Vaidman, states that the two-state vector formalism dovetails well with Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation.

Other interpretations
As well as the mainstream interpretations discussed above, a number of other interpretations have been proposed that have not made a significant scientific impact for whatever reason. These range from proposals by mainstream physicists to the more occult ideas of quantum mysticism.

Related concepts
Some ideas are discussed in the context of interpreting quantum mechanics but are not necessarily regarded as interpretations themselves.

Quantum Darwinism
Quantum Darwinism is a theory meant to explain the emergence of the classical world from the quantum world as due to a process of Darwinian natural selection induced by the environment interacting with the quantum system; where the many possible quantum states are selected against in favor of a stable pointer state. It was proposed in 2003 by Wojciech Zurek and a group of collaborators including Ollivier, Poulin, Paz and Blume-Kohout. The development of the theory is due to the integration of a number of Zurek's research topics pursued over the course of twenty-five years including pointer states, einselection and decoherence.

Objective-collapse theories
Objective-collapse theories differ from the Copenhagen interpretation by regarding both the wave function and the process of collapse as ontologically objective (meaning these exist and occur independent of the observer). In objective theories, collapse occurs either randomly ("spontaneous localization") or when some physical threshold is reached, with observers having no special role. Thus, objective-collapse theories are realistic, indeterministic, no-hidden-variables theories. Standard quantum mechanics does not specify any mechanism of collapse; quantum mechanics would need to be extended if objective collapse is correct. The requirement for an extension means that objective-collapse theories are alternatives to quantum mechanics rather than interpretations of it. Examples include
 * the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber theory
 * the continuous spontaneous localization model
 * the Penrose interpretation

Comparisons
The most common interpretations are summarized in the table below. The values shown in the cells of the table are not without controversy, for the precise meanings of some of the concepts involved are unclear and, in fact, are themselves at the center of the controversy surrounding the given interpretation. For another table comparing interpretations of quantum theory, see reference.

No experimental evidence exists that distinguishes among these interpretations. To that extent, the physical theory stands, and is consistent with itself and with reality; difficulties arise only when one attempts to "interpret" the theory. Nevertheless, designing experiments that would test the various interpretations is the subject of active research.

Most of these interpretations have variants. For example, it is difficult to get a precise definition of the Copenhagen interpretation as it was developed and argued by many people.

The silent approach
Although interpretational opinions are openly and widely discussed today, that was not always the case. A notable exponent of a tendency of silence was Paul Dirac who once wrote: "The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been dealt with by many authors, and I do not want to discuss it here. I want to deal with more fundamental things." This position is not uncommon among practitioners of quantum mechanics. Similarly Richard Feynman wrote many popularizations of quantum mechanics without ever publishing about interpretation issues like quantum measurement. Others, like Nico van Kampen and Willis Lamb, have openly criticized non-orthodox interpretations of quantum mechanics.

title: Interpretations of quantum mechanics


text:
User talk:Ark~enwiki

Welcome to userland Ark! Oh, and to "sign" your name in talk pages, all you have to do is type three tildas (~) in a row and hit save (typing four ~'s will yield a link to your user page and the date). If you have any other questions, then drop me a line. Welcome aboard! --maveric149

Thanks again. Ark, Sunday, June 2, 2002

A Modest Proposal Alexander the Great Alice Miller Antiparticle Benjamin Spock Black American Bohm intepretation Bohm interpretation Cannabis Carthage Child abuse Child sacrifice Child sexual abuse Chirality Chomsky and anti-semitism Christian anti-Semitism Circumcision Civil war Copenhagen interpretation Cosmology Cosmology/Inflation Counterfactual definiteness Danny Dr Spock Early infanticidal childrearing Etemenanki Female genital mutilation Grand unification theory Gravitational singularity Helen Keller History Human rights Incest Incomplete dominance Infanticide Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics Large Scale Structure of the Cosmos Lloyd deMause M-theory Maglev Matter Milky Way Munchausen syndrome Neolithic childrearing Neutrino One child policy Physics Psychohistory Quantum entanglement Radiocarbon dating Roman Colosseum Science fiction author Solar neutrino problem Spanking Standard Model String theory Superstring theory Superstrings user:CYD user:Ed Poor user:Slrubenstein WIMP War on Terrorism

FYI: the software runs together lines separated only by a RETURN character; for a new paragraph, you need two returns in a row, which displays in the edit window as a blank line. Vicki Rosenzweig

Not sure what the problem was from you message on my talk page, but I can guess that you either forgot your password or the system doesn't recognize your password. Either way, I don't have that much access to the system to reset your password. However our local wikiware guru user:Brion VIBBER would at least be able to point you in the right direction. He will probably want to know what operating system and browser you are using and their versions (for example, I run Linux Mandrake with the Konqueror web browser and sometimes have to restart KDE (my GUI) to get the wikipedia cookie to work right). I hear Netscape and Mozzila also have issues with the wikipedia cookie. --maveric149

Maybe you're being too zealous in removing links? "See Also" links are harmless, I think. Plenty of existing articles contain them. -- CYD

Every link on a page costs the user's attention, distracting them from what's important. If the links are redundant, then they should be gone. If they're relevant then they should be made into proper paragraphs so the reader who sees them can judge whether or not to follow them.

I wrote some more about this on user:SolKarma

Incorporating the links into paragraphs is, I agree, the ideal solution. But failing that, "costing the user's attention" is probably not a very great problem - I doubt the average reader is so easily distracted. I think of "See Also" links as pointers about what still needs to be added into the articles; Wikipedia is a work in progress, after all. -- CYD

It's a different matter when the "see also" list makes up half of the article.

Crime against humanity
As you added Hague to the article Crime against humanity perhapse you could answer my questions on Talk:Crime against humanity and amend the article if it needs it or remove my strike throught if the phrase is correct. PBS 12:32, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A tag has been placed on Brackish, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article appears to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think that you can assert the notability of the subject, you may contest the deletion by adding  to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm the subject's notability under Wikipedia guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. 172.131.255.238 13:20, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Ark. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Ark~enwiki that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name. If you think you might own all of the accounts with this name and this message is in error, please visit Special:MergeAccount to check and attach all of your accounts to prevent them from being renamed.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 22:11, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 10:37, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Ark~enwiki


text:
Talk:You Can't Do That on Television

CJOH fire
So... with the fire destroying the CJOH building yesterday, how much of the series was destroyed? 70.29.210.242 (talk) 08:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Kid actor table
Discussion had been brought up about the table on this page listing some of the Kid Actors. Before it was an uncategorized list, and looked messy. Now it looks clear. What do you think? Should it stay or should it go? Jrfoldes (talk) 02:48, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * As there is no response and I have the sole vote, by unanimous decision the table will be reposted.Jrfoldes (talk) 03:30, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Note
Re- this revision:

21:45, May 15, 2012 66.188.59.115 (talk). . (32,718 bytes) (-52). . (→Parody) (undo)

(cur | prev) 21:42, May 15, 2012 Gareth Griffith-Jones (talk | contribs) m. . (32,770 bytes) (-1,306). . (Reverted edits by 66.188.59.115 to last version by AnomieBOT (GLOO)) (undo)

Apology offered. Blame it on igloo. Cheers, -- Gareth Griffith-Jones (talk) 22:08, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Nick
For the intents and purposes of this article, "Nick" refers to Nickelodeon (TV channel) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brotherbosco (talk • contribs) 15:22, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

You Can't Do That on Film (2004)
What's this I'm reading on the Internet Movie Database about You Can't Do That on Film (2004). Is this an alternate title for Project 131, or is this a completely different version?

See IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1738383/

Christopher, Salem, OR (talk) 02:14, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * "You Can't Do That on Film" is a documentary about the series. It is not the same as "Project 131," which was a "final" episode of the series performed by three now-grown cast members. See www.yctdotv.com for more information than you will know what to do with. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:41, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

You can't capitalize that on Wikipedia
I don't want to see "NOT" in all-caps. WidgetsUSA (talk) 14:39, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

THE WORST OF YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON TELEVISION is missing
Hello,

THE WORST OF YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON TELEVISION is missing

look at: http://www.ycdtotv.de/woyc/ywoyc_01.htm

in the UK YCDTOTV was on TCC (The Children's Channel)

mfg ralph Rm2 (talk) 07:26, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * - The website is not working properly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.58.220.92 (talk) 20:03, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

An Opposite Sketch Worth Finding
One of the most hilarious opposite skits ever produced showed the Dad flushing the toilet in the bathroom, the door then opened and several kids came in exclaiming, "Oh, Dad! We just love the smell of the bathroom after you use it!" The Dad then closed the door on the kids and said, "The Opposites are over!" to which the kids made gasping sounds and collapsed suffocating. Does anyone know what episode thsi was from?? -O.R.Comms 21:14, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Inspiration
"You Can't Do That" was heavily inspired by Roger Price's previous UK show, "You Can't Be Serious." The use of child hosts, the bare main set, the dungeon skit set, and so on. 92Y had a panel on the history of the show. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 03:21, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

May 2023
YCDTOTV.com site

You might want to update your sources. The YCDTOTV website is not really operational and it was even down for some time. Not to mention, there were some sketchy people on the message boards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.58.220.92 (talk) 20:01, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:You Can't Do That on Television


text:
Tony Awards

The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in Manhattan. The ceremony is usually held in June.

The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances. One is also given for regional theatre. Several discretionary non-competitive awards are given as well, including a Special Tony Award, the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, and the Isabelle Stevenson Award. The awards were founded by theatre producer and director Brock Pemberton and are named after Antoinette "Tony" Perry, an actress, producer and theatre director who was co-founder and secretary of the American Theatre Wing. The trophy consists of a spinnable medallion, with faces portraying an adaptation of the comedy and tragedy masks, mounted on a black base with a pewter swivel.

The rules for the Tony Awards are set forth in the official document "Rules and Regulations of The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards", which applies for that season only. The Tony Awards are the New York theatre industry's equivalent to the Emmy Awards for television, the Grammy Awards for music, and the Academy Awards (Oscars) for film, and a person who has won all four is said to have won the EGOT. The Tony Awards are the U.S. equivalent of the United Kingdom's Laurence Olivier Awards and France's Molière Awards.

Award categories
, there were 26 categories of awards, in addition to several special awards. Starting with 11 awards in 1947, the names and number of categories have changed over the years. Some examples: the category Best Book of a Musical was originally called "Best Author (Musical)." The category of Best Costume Design was one of the original awards. For two years, in 1960 and 1961, this category was split into Best Costume Designer (Dramatic) and Best Costume Designer (Musical). It then went to a single category, but in 2005 it was divided again. For the category of Best Director of a Play, a single category was for directors of plays and musicals prior to 1960.

A newly established non-competitive award, The Isabelle Stevenson Award, was given for the first time at the awards ceremony in 2009. The award is for an individual who has made a "substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of one or more humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations."

The category of Best Special Theatrical Event was retired as of the 2009–2010 season. The categories of Best Sound Design of a Play and Best Sound Design of a Musical were retired as of the 2014–2015 season. On April 24, 2017, the Tony Awards administration committee announced that the Sound Design Award would be reintroduced for the 2017–2018 season.

Performance categories

 * Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play
 * Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play
 * Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play
 * Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play
 * Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical
 * Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical
 * Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical
 * Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical

Show and technical categories

 * Best Musical
 * Best Revival of a Musical
 * Best Direction of a Musical
 * Best Book of a Musical
 * Best Original Score
 * Best Orchestrations
 * Best Choreography
 * Best Scenic Design in a Musical
 * Best Costume Design in a Musical
 * Best Lighting Design in a Musical
 * Best Sound Design of a Musical
 * Best Play
 * Best Revival of a Play
 * Best Direction of a Play
 * Best Scenic Design in a Play
 * Best Costume Design in a Play
 * Best Lighting Design in a Play
 * Best Sound Design of a Play

Special awards

 * Regional Theatre Tony Award
 * Special Tony Award (includes Lifetime Achievement Award)
 * Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre
 * Isabelle Stevenson Award

Retired awards

 * Best Author
 * Best Conductor and Musical Director
 * Best Costume Design (split into two categories: Best Costume Design in a Musical and Best Costume Design in a Play)
 * Best Lighting Design (split into two categories: Best Lighting Design in a Musical and Best Lighting Design in a Play)
 * Best Newcomer
 * Best Revival (split into two categories: Best Revival of a Musical and Best Revival of a Play)
 * Best Scenic Design (split into two categories: Best Scenic Design in a Musical and Best Scenic Design in a Play)
 * Best Stage Technician
 * Best Special Theatrical Event
 * Best Director (split into two categories: Best Direction of a Musical and Best Direction of a Play)

History
The award was founded in 1947 by a committee of the American Theatre Wing (ATW) headed by Brock Pemberton. The award is named after Antoinette Perry, nicknamed Tony, an actress, director, producer and co-founder of the American Theatre Wing, who died in 1946. As her official biography at the Tony Awards website states, "At [ Warner Bros. story editor] Jacob Wilk's suggestion, [Pemberton] proposed an award in her honor for distinguished stage acting and technical achievement. At the initial event in 1947, as he handed out an award, he called it a Tony. The name stuck." Nevertheless, the awards were sometimes referred to as the "Perry Awards" in their early years.

The 1st Tony Awards was held on April 6, 1947, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. The first prizes were "a scroll, cigarette lighter and articles of jewelry such as 14-carat gold compacts and bracelets for the women, and money clips for the men". ATW co-founder Louise Heims Beck was responsible for over seeing the organization of the first awards. It was not until the third awards ceremony in 1949 that the first Tony medallion was given to award winners.

Since 1967, the award ceremony has been broadcast on U.S. national television and includes songs from the nominated musicals, and occasionally has included video clips of, or presentations about, nominated plays. The American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League jointly present and administer the awards. Audience size for the telecast is generally well below that of the Academy Awards shows, but the program reaches an affluent audience, which is prized by advertisers. According to a June 2003 article in The New York Times: "What the Tony broadcast does have, say CBS officials, is an all-important demographic: rich and smart. Jack Sussman, CBS's senior vice president in charge of specials, said the Tony show sold almost all its advertising slots shortly after CBS announced it would present the three hours. 'It draws upscale premium viewers who are attractive to upscale premium advertisers,' Mr. Sussman said..." The viewership has declined from the early years of its broadcast history (for example, the number of viewers in 1974 was 20 million; in 1999, 9.2 million) but has settled into between six and eight million viewers for most of the decade of the 2000s. In contrast, the 2009 Oscar telecast had 36.3 million viewers.

Medallion
The Tony Award medallion was designed by art director Herman Rosse and is a mix of mostly brass and a little bronze, with a nickel plating on the outside; a black acrylic glass base, and the nickel-plated pewter swivel. The face of the medallion portrays an adaptation of the comedy and tragedy masks. Originally, the reverse side had a relief profile of Antoinette Perry; this later was changed to contain the winner's name, award category, production and year. The medallion has been mounted on a black base since 1967.

A larger base was introduced and first presented in the 2010 award ceremony. That base is slightly taller – 5 in, up from 3+1/4 in –  and heavier –  3+1/2 lb, up from 1+1/2 lb. This change was implemented to make the award "feel more substantial" and easier to handle at the moment the award is presented to the winners, according to Howard Sherman, the executive director of the American Theatre Wing:

"We know the physical scale of the Oscars, Emmys and Grammys. While we're not attempting to keep up with the Joneses, we felt this is a significant award, and it could feel and look a bit more significant... By adding height, now someone can grip the Tony, raise it over their head in triumph and not worry about keeping their grip. Believe me, you can tell the difference."

For the specific Tony Awards presented to a Broadway production, awards are given to the author and up to two of the producers free of charge. All other members of the above-the-title producing team are eligible to purchase the physical award. Sums collected are designed to help defray the cost of the Tony Awards ceremony itself. An award cost $400 as of at least 2000, $750 as of at least 2009, and, as of 2013, had been $2,500 "for several years", according to Tony Award Productions.

Details of the Tony Awards
Source: Tony Awards Official Site, Rules

Rules for a new play or musical
For the purposes of the award, a new play or musical is one that has not previously been produced on Broadway and is not "determined… to be a 'classic' or in the historical or popular repertoire", as determined by the Administration Committee (per Section (2g) of the Rules and Regulations). The rule about "classic" productions was instituted by the Tony Award Administration Committee in 2002, and stated (in summary) "A play or musical that is determined ... to be a 'classic' or in the historical or popular repertoire shall not be eligible for an award in the Best Play or Best Musical Category but may be eligible in that appropriate Best Revival category." Shows transferred from Off-Broadway or the West End are eligible as "new", as are productions based closely on films.

This rule has been the subject of some controversy, as some shows, such as Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Violet, have been ruled ineligible for the "new" category, meaning that their authors did not have a chance to win the important awards of Best Play or Best Musical (or Best Score or Best Book for musicals). On the other hand, some people feel that allowing plays and musicals that have been frequently produced to be eligible as "new" gives them an unfair advantage because they will have benefited from additional development time as well as additional familiarity with the Tony voters.

Committees and voters
The Tony Awards Administration Committee has twenty-four members: ten designated by the American Theatre Wing, ten by The Broadway League, and one each by the Dramatists Guild, Actors' Equity Association, United Scenic Artists and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. This committee, among other duties, determines eligibility for nominations in all awards categories.

The Tony Awards Nominating Committee makes the nominations for the various categories. This rotating group of theatre professionals is selected by the Tony Awards Administration Committee. Nominators serve three-year terms and are asked to see every new Broadway production. The Nominating Committee for the 2012–13 Broadway season (named in June 2012) had 42 members; the Nominating Committee for the 2014–2015 season has 50 members and was appointed in June 2014.

There are approximately 868 eligible Tony Award voters (as of 2014), a number that changes slightly from year to year. The number was decreased in 2009 when the first-night critics were excluded as voters. That decision was changed, and members of the New York Drama Critics' Circle were invited to be Tony voters beginning in the 2010–2011 season.

The eligible Tony voters include the board of directors and designated members of the advisory committee of the American Theatre Wing, members of the governing boards of Actors' Equity Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, United Scenic Artists, and the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers, members of the Theatrical Council of the Casting Society of America and voting members of The Broadway League (in 2000, what was then The League of American Theaters and Producers changed membership eligibility and Tony voting status from a lifetime honor to all above-the-title producers, to ones who had been active in the previous 10 years. This action disenfranchised scores of Tony voters, including Gail Berman, Harve Brosten, Dick Button, Tony Lo Bianco, and Raymond Serra).

Eligibility date (Season)
To be eligible for Tony Award consideration, a production must have officially opened on Broadway by the eligibility date that the Management Committee establishes each year. For example, the cut-off date for eligibility the 2013–2014 season was April 24, 2014. The season for Tony Award eligibility is defined in the Rules and Regulations.

In 2020, the 74th Annual Tony Awards were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On August 21, 2020, it was announced that the 74th Annual Tony Awards would take place digitally later in 2020.

Broadway theatre
A Broadway theatre is defined as having 500 or more seats, among other requirements. While the rules define a Broadway theatre in terms of its size, not its geographical location, the list of Broadway theatres is determined solely by the Tony Awards Administration Committee. As of the 2016–2017 season, the list consisted solely of 41 theaters: 40 located in the vicinity of Times Square in New York City and Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater.

Criticism
While the theatre-going public may consider the Tony Awards to be the Oscars of live theatre, critics have suggested that the Tony Awards are primarily a promotional vehicle for a small number of large production companies and theatre owners in New York City. In a 2014 Playbill article, Robert Simonson wrote that "Who gets to perform on the Tony Awards broadcast, what they get to perform, and for how long, have long been politically charged questions in the Broadway theatre community..." The producers "accept the situation ... because just as much as actually winning a Tony, a performance that lands well with the viewing public can translate into big box-office sales." Producer Robyn Goodman noted that, if the presentation at the ceremony shows well and the show wins a Tony, "you're going to spike at the box office".

The awards met further criticism when they eliminated the sound design awards in 2014. In 2014, a petition calling for the return of the Sound Design categories received more than 30,000 signatures. Addressing their previous concerns over Tony voters in the category, it was announced that upon the awards' return for the 2017–2018 season, they would be decided by a subset of voters based on their expertise.

Some advocates of gender equality and non-binary people have criticized the separation of male and female acting categories in the Tony Awards, Academy Awards, and Emmy Awards. Though some commentators worry that gender discrimination would cause men to dominate unsegregated categories, other categories are unsegregated. The Grammy Awards went gender-neutral in 2012, while the Daytime Emmy Awards introduced a single Outstanding Younger Performer in a Drama Series category in 2019 to replace their two gender-specific younger actor and actress categories. In 2023, J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell became the first nonbinary actors to be nominated for Tony Awards. Both would go on to win in their respective categories. Fellow nonbinary performer Justin David Sullivan withdrew from Tony consideration due to the gendered categories.

Award milestones
Some notable records and facts about the Tony Awards include the following:

Productions

 * Nominations: The most Tony nominations ever received by a single production was the musical Hamilton (2016) with 16 nominations in 13 categories, narrowly passing the previous holders of this record, The Producers (2001; 15 nominations in 12 categories) and Billy Elliot (2009; 15 nominations in 13 categories). The most Tony nominations for a non-musical play was Stereophonic (2024; 13 nominations in 10 categories).
 * Wins: The most Tony Awards ever received by a single production was the musical The Producers (2001) with 12 awards, including Best Musical.
 * Non-musical wins: The most Tonys ever received by a non-musical play was The Coast of Utopia (2007) with 7 awards, including Best Play.
 * Most nominations with fewest wins: Musicals The Scottsboro Boys (2011) and Mean Girls (2018), as well as non-musical play Slave Play (2020) are tied: all three were nominated for 12 Tony Awards but did not win any.
 * Four musicals have won all "big six" awards for original musicals: South Pacific (1950 awards), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979 awards), Hairspray (2003 awards) and The Band's Visit (2018 awards); each won the Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, Best Performance by a Leading Actor, Best Performance by a Leading Actress, and Best Direction awards.
 * Two plays have won all "big four" awards for original plays: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963 awards) and The Real Thing (1984 awards); both won the Best Play, Best Performance by a Leading Actor, Best Performance by a Leading Actress, and Best Direction awards.
 * Acting Awards: Only one production, South Pacific (1950 awards), has won all four of the acting awards in a single year.
 * Words and Music: Only nine musicals have won the Tony Award for Best Musical when a person had (co-)written the Book (non-sung dialogue and storyline) and the Score (music and lyrics): 1958 winner The Music Man (Meredith Willson – awards for Book and Score did not exist that year), 1986 winner The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Rupert Holmes – who also won for Book and Score), 1996 winner Rent (Jonathan Larson posthumously – who also won for Book and Score), 2001 winner The Producers (Mel Brooks – also won for Book and Score), 2005 winner Spamalot (Eric Idle – the only one who failed to win for Book or Score in a year where these awards existed), 2011 winner The Book of Mormon (Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone also won for Book and Score), 2016 winner Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda also won for Book and Score), 2019 winner Hadestown (Anaïs Mitchell also won for Score), and 2022 winner A Strange Loop (Michael R. Jackson also won for Book).
 * Design Awards: Eleven shows have swept the Design Awards (original 3 of Best Scenic Design, Best Costume Design, Best Lighting Design – joined by Best Sound Design starting in 2008): Follies (1972), The Phantom of the Opera (1986), The Lion King (1998), The Producers (2001), The Light in the Piazza (2005), The Coast of Utopia (2007), the 2008 revival of South Pacific (first to sweep the expanded four awards for Creative Arts), Peter and the Starcatcher (first straight play to sweep the expanded four awards for Creative Arts) (2012), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2018), A Christmas Carol and Moulin Rouge! (both 2020).
 * Revivals: Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller in 2012 became the first show (play or musical) to win as Best Production in four different years: Best Play at the 1949 awards, Best Revival at the 1984 awards (before the Best Revival award was split into two categories for Play and Musical in 1994), and Best Revival of a Play at the 1999 and 2012 awards. La Cage aux Folles made history as the first musical to win as Best Production in three different years, Best Musical at the 1984 awards and Best Revival of a Musical at both the 2005 awards and the 2010 awards. The King and I has also garnered three Tony Awards, one for each time it has been produced on Broadway, first as Best Musical and then twice as Best Revival of a Musical. Company has also won three Tony Awards, first as Best Musical in 1971, followed by Best Revival of a Musical in 2007 and 2022.

Individuals

 * Most wins: Harold Prince won a record 21 Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for Best Direction of a Musical, eight for Best Musical, two for Best Producer of a Musical, and three special Tony Awards. Tommy Tune has ten Tony Awards including three for direction, four for choreography, two for performing, and one special Tony Award. Stephen Sondheim holds the record for most Tony wins of any composer, with five awards for Best Original Score, one each for Best Composer and Best Lyricist (for Company, before the two categories were combined as Best Original Score) and one special Tony Award. Bob Fosse won the most Tonys for Best Choreography, with eight. Oliver Smith won a record eight Tony Awards for his scenic designs. Jules Fisher has the most awards for lighting design, with nine. Audra McDonald holds the record for most Tony wins for acting, with six. Tom Stoppard has the most Tony wins for a playwright with five, followed by Terrence McNally with four. Stoppard has five for Best Play, while McNally has two for Best Play and two for Best Book of a Musical.
 * Most nominations: Julie Harris, Audra McDonald, and Chita Rivera are tied for the most nominations of any performer, with ten apiece.
 * Performers in two categories: Six performers have been nominated in two acting categories in the same year: Amanda Plummer, Dana Ivey, Kate Burton, Jan Maxwell, Mark Rylance, and Jeremy Pope. Plummer in 1982 was nominated for Best Actress in a Play for A Taste of Honey and Best Featured Actress in a Play for Agnes of God, for which she won. Ivey in 1984 was nominated as Best Featured Actress in Musical for Sunday in the Park with George and Best Featured Actress in a Play for Heartbreak House. In 2002, Burton was nominated for Best Actress in Play for Hedda Gabler and Best Featured Actress in a Play for The Elephant Man. Maxwell was nominated in 2010 for Best Actress in a Play for The Royal Family and Best Featured Actress in a Play for Lend Me a Tenor. Rylance was nominated in 2014 for Best Actor in a Play for Richard III and Best Featured Actor in a Play for Twelfth Night, for which he won. Pope was nominated in 2019 for Best Actor in a Play for Choir Boy and Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Ain't Too Proud.
 * Performers with nominations in all four acting categories: Five performers have been nominated in all four acting categories for which they are eligible.
 * Boyd Gaines was the first performer to be nominated in all four categories: Best Featured Actor in a Play for The Heidi Chronicles (1989), Best Actor in a Musical for She Loves Me (1994), Best Featured Actor in a Musical for both Contact (2000) and Gypsy (2008), and Best Actor in a Play for Journey's End (2007). He won in three of the categories (and four of the five nominations), missing only for the performance in Journey's End.
 * Raúl Esparza was the second performer to be nominated in all four categories (no wins), achieving this over a mere six seasons: Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Taboo (2004), Best Actor in a Musical for Company (2007), Best Featured Actor in a Play for The Homecoming (2008), and Best Actor in a Play for Speed-the-Plow (2009).
 * Angela Lansbury was the third performer to be nominated in all four acting categories. She won Best Actress in a Musical for Mame (1966), Dear World (1969), Gypsy (1975), and Sweeney Todd (1979). She was nominated for Best Actress in a Play for Deuce (2007) and Best Featured Actress in a Musical for A Little Night Music (2010). She won Best Featured Actress in a Play for Blithe Spirit (2009).
 * Jan Maxwell became the fourth performer to achieve this distinction with nominations (no wins) for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (2005), Best Featured Actress in a Play for Coram Boy (2007) and Lend Me a Tenor (2010), Best Actress in a Play for The Royal Family (2010), and Best Actress in a Musical for Follies (2012).
 * Audra McDonald became the fifth performer to accomplish the feat and the first to win in all four categories, winning two for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Carousel (1994) and Ragtime (1998); two for Best Featured Actress in a Play for Master Class (1996) and A Raisin in the Sun (2004); one for Best Actress in a Musical for Porgy and Bess (2012), and one for Best Actress in a Play for Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill (2014). She was also nominated for Best Actress in a Musical for Marie Christine (2000) and 110 in the Shade (2007) and for Best Actress in a Play for Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2020/21) and Ohio State Murders (2022).
 * Performers Playing Opposite Sex: While several performers have won Tonys for roles that have involved cross-dressing, only four have won for playing a character of the opposite sex: Mary Martin in the title role of Peter Pan (1955), Harvey Fierstein as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray (2003), Mark Rylance as Olivia in Twelfth Night (2014), and Lena Hall as Yitzhak in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2014). In 2000, Australian actor Barry Humphries won the Special Tony Award for a live theatrical event at the 55th Annual Tony Awards for Dame Edna: The Royal Tour.
 * Shared Performances: the three young actors who shared the duties of performing the title role in Billy Elliot the Musical (2009 awards) – David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik and Kiril Kulish –  shared a single nomination and win, for Best Actor in a Musical. Previously, the only prior joint winners were John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who shared the Best Actor in a Play award in 1975 for Sizwe Banzi is Dead and The Island, two plays they co-wrote and co-starred in. In 2003, the 10 stars of Baz Luhrmann's La Bohème won a joint Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre award, as did the four co-leads in the title role of Matilda the Musical in 2013.
 * Two genders, one role: Ben Vereen (Best Actor in a Musical, 1972) and Patina Miller (Best Actress in a Musical, 2013) both won for the role of the Leading Player in Pippin, marking the first time the same role has garnered Tony Awards for both a man and a woman in a Broadway production.
 * Writing and performing: Two people have won Tonys as both an author and as a performer. Harvey Fierstein won Best Play and Best Lead Actor in a Play for Torch Song Trilogy (1983), Best Book of a Musical for La Cage aux Folles, and Best Lead Actor in a Musical for Hairspray. Tracy Letts won Best Play for August: Osage County (2008) and Best Lead Actor in a Play for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2013).
 * Youngest and oldest winners of Best Score or Best Book: Toby Marlow is the youngest person to win Best Score; he was 27 when he won in tandem with Lucy Moss for Six. Adolph Green is the oldest person to win the award; he was 76 when he won for The Will Rogers Follies. If T. S. Eliot had been alive when he won for Cats, he would have been 94. Eliot is also one of two people to win the award posthumously, the other being Jonathan Larson, who won for Rent. He would have been 36.
 * Youngest and oldest actors to win: Frank Langella is the oldest actor to win a Tony, for his performance in The Father (at age 78), and Lois Smith holds the record for oldest actress for her performance in The Inheritance (at age 90). The youngest actor to win a Tony Award, at age 11, was Frankie Michaels, for his featured performance in Mame (1966) a record which still stands today. Twenty-five years later, at 11 and a half years old, Daisy Eagan took home a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance in The Secret Garden, cementing her place in Tony history as the youngest woman to win the award.
 * Youngest and oldest winners for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical: Liza Minnelli is the youngest to win the award, for Flora the Red Menace (at age 19). Bette Midler is the oldest actress to win the award, for Hello, Dolly! (at age 71).
 * In 2013, the four girls who alternated in the title role in Matilda the Musical (Sophia Gennusa, aged 9; Bailey Ryon, aged 10; Oona Laurence, aged 10; and Milly Shapiro, aged 10) shared an honorary Tony Award, making Gennusa the youngest to ever receive a Tony, albeit a non-competitive one.

Firsts

 * First African-American to win Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical: Juanita Hall for South Pacific in 1950.
 * First African-American to win Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical: Harry Belafonte for John Murray Anderson's Almanac in 1954.
 * First female author to win Best Play: Frances Goodrich with her partner (and husband) Albert Hackett for The Diary of Anne Frank in 1956.
 * First African-American to win Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical: Diahann Carroll for No Strings in 1962.
 * First African-American to win Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play: James Earl Jones for The Great White Hope in 1969.
 * First African-American to win Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical: Cleavon Little for Purlie in 1970.
 * First African-American author to win Best Play: Joseph A. Walker for The River Niger in 1974.
 * First African-American composer to solely win Tony Award for Best Score: Charlie Smalls for The Wiz in 1975.
 * First female to win Tony Award for Best Score: Betty Comden for On the Twentieth Century in 1978. (In 1968, she became the first female to win the previous version of the Best Score Award, the Tony Award for Best Composer And Lyricist for Hallelujah, Baby!)
 * First Asian-American author to win Best Play: David Henry Hwang for M Butterfly in 1988.
 * First Asian-American to win Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play: BD Wong for M Butterfly in 1988.
 * First female author to solely win Best Play: Wendy Wasserstein for The Heidi Chronicles in 1989.
 * First Asian to win Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical: Lea Salonga for Miss Saigon in 1991.
 * First woman to win Best Direction of a Musical: Julie Taymor for The Lion King in 1998.
 * First woman to win Best Direction of a Play: Garry Hynes for The Beauty Queen of Leenane in 1998.
 * First African-American to win Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play: Phylicia Rashad for A Raisin in the Sun in 2004.
 * First Brazilian to win Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical: Paulo Szot for South Pacific in 2008.
 * First woman to solely win Tony Award for Best Score: Cyndi Lauper for Kinky Boots in 2013.
 * First Asian-American to win Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical: Ruthie Ann Miles for The King and I in 2015.
 * First female team to win Tony Award for Best Score and Tony Award for Best Book: Jeanine Tesori & Lisa Kron for Fun Home in 2015.
 * First Lebanese-American to win Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical: Tony Shalhoub for The Band's Visit in 2018.
 * First Yemeni-American to win Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical: Ari'el Stachel for The Band's Visit in 2018.
 * First person who uses a wheelchair to be nominated for and to receive a Tony Award for acting: Ali Stroker with the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Oklahoma! in 2019.
 * First woman to be nominated for and to win Best Sound Design of a Musical: Jessica Paz for Hadestown in 2019.
 * First Latino playwright to win Tony Award for Best Play: Matthew López for The Inheritance in 2020.
 * First openly trans performer to be nominated for a Tony Award: L Morgan Lee with the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for A Strange Loop in 2022.
 * First openly non binary performers to be nominated for and win a Tony Award: J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell, for Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical and Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical, respectively, in 2023.
 * First African-American to win Tony Award for Best Costume Design in a Play: Dede Atiye, for Jaja's African Hair Braiding in 2024.
 * First woman to solely win both Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and Tony Award for Best Original Score: Shaina Taub, for Suffs in 2024.

title: Tony Awards