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Linguistic description

In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a speech community.

All academic research in linguistics is descriptive; like all other scientific disciplines, it seeks to describe reality, without the bias of preconceived ideas about how it ought to be. Modern descriptive linguistics is based on a structural approach to language, as exemplified in the work of Leonard Bloomfield and others. This type of linguistics utilizes different methods in order to describe a language such as basic data collection, and different types of elicitation methods.

Descriptive versus prescriptive linguistics
Linguistic description is often contrasted with linguistic prescription, which is found especially in education and in publishing.

As English-linguist Larry Andrews describes it, descriptive grammar is the linguistic approach which studies what a language is like, as opposed to prescriptive, which declares what a language should be like. In other words, descriptive grammarians focus analysis on how all kinds of people in all sorts of environments, usually in more casual, everyday settings, communicate, whereas prescriptive grammarians focus on the grammatical rules and structures predetermined by linguistic registers and figures of power. An example that Andrews uses in his book is fewer than vs less than. A descriptive grammarian would state that both statements are equally valid, as long as the meaning behind the statement can be understood. A prescriptive grammarian would analyze the rules and conventions behind both statements to determine which statement is correct or otherwise preferable. Andrews also believes that, although most linguists would be descriptive grammarians, most public school teachers tend to be prescriptive.

History of the discipline
The earliest known descriptive linguistic work took place in a Sanskrit community in northern India; the most well-known scholar of that linguistic tradition was Pāṇini, whose works are commonly dated to around the. Philological traditions later arose around the description of Greek, Latin, Chinese, Tamil, Hebrew, and Arabic. The description of modern European languages did not begin before the Renaissance – e.g. Spanish in 1492, French in 1532, English in 1586; the same period saw the first grammatical descriptions of Nahuatl (1547) or Quechua (1560) in the New World, followed by numerous others.

Even though more and more languages were discovered, the full diversity of language was not yet fully recognized. For centuries, language descriptions tended to use grammatical categories that existed for languages considered to be more prestigious, like Latin.

Linguistic description as a discipline really took off at the end of the 19th century, with the Structuralist revolution (from Ferdinand de Saussure to Leonard Bloomfield), and the notion that every language forms a unique symbolic system, different from other languages, worthy of being described “in its own terms”.

Methods
The first critical step of language description is to collect data. To do this, a researcher does fieldwork in a speech community of their choice, and they record samples from different speakers. The data they collect often comes from different kind of speech genres that include narratives, daily conversations, poetry, songs and many others. While speech that comes naturally is preferred, researchers use elicitation, by asking speakers for translations, grammar rules, pronunciation, or by testing sentences using substitution frames. Substitution frames are pre-made sentences put together by the researcher that are like fill in the blanks. They do this with nouns and verbs to see how the structure of the sentence might change or how the noun and verb might change in structure.

There are different types of elicitation used in the fieldwork for linguistic description. These include schedule controlled elicitation, and analysis controlled elicitation, each with their own sub branches. Schedule controlled elicitation is when the researcher has a questionnaire of material to elicit to individuals and asks the questions in a certain order according to a schedule. These types of schedules and questionnaires usually focus on language families, and are typically flexible and are able to be changed if need be. The other type of elicitation is analysis controlled elicitation which is elicitation that is not under a schedule. The analysis of the language here in fact controls the elicitation. There are many sub types of analysis controlled elicitation, such as target language interrogation elicitation, stimulus driven elicitation, and many other types of elicitation. Target language interrogation elicitation is when the researcher asks individuals questions in the target language, and the researcher records all the different answers from all the individuals and compares them. Stimulus driven elicitation is when a researcher provides pictures, objects or video clips to the language speakers and asks them to describe the items presented to them. These types of elicitation help the researcher build a vocabulary, and basic grammatical structures.

This process is long and tedious and spans over several years. This long process ends with a corpus, which is a body of reference materials, that can be used to test hypothesis regarding the language in question.

Challenges
Almost all linguistic theory has its origin in practical problems of descriptive linguistics. Phonology (and its theoretical developments, such as the phoneme) deals with the function and interpretation of sound in language. Syntax has developed to describe how words relate to each other in order to form sentences. Lexicology collects words as well as their derivations and transformations: it has not given rise to much generalized theory.

Linguistics description might aim to achieve one or more of the following goals:

 * 1) A description of the phonology of the language in question.
 * 2) A description of the morphology of words belonging to that language.
 * 3) A description of the syntax of well-formed sentences of that language.
 * 4) A description of lexical derivation.
 * 5) A documentation of the vocabulary, including at least one thousand entries.
 * 6) A reproduction of a few genuine texts.

title: Linguistic description


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Banded iron formation

Banded iron formations (BIFs; also called banded ironstone formations) are distinctive units of sedimentary rock consisting of alternating layers of iron oxides and iron-poor chert. They can be up to several hundred meters in thickness and extend laterally for several hundred kilometers. Almost all of these formations are of Precambrian age and are thought to record the oxygenation of the Earth's oceans. Some of the Earth's oldest rock formations, which formed about (Ma), are associated with banded iron formations.

Banded iron formations are thought to have formed in sea water as the result of oxygen production by photosynthetic cyanobacteria. The oxygen combined with dissolved iron in Earth's oceans to form insoluble iron oxides, which precipitated out, forming a thin layer on the ocean floor. Each band is similar to a varve, resulting from cyclic variations in oxygen production.

Banded iron formations were first discovered in northern Michigan in 1844. Banded iron formations account for more than 60% of global iron reserves and provide most of the iron ore presently mined. Most formations can be found in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine, and the United States.

Description
A typical banded iron formation consists of repeated, thin layers (a few millimeters to a few centimeters in thickness) of silver to black iron oxides, either magnetite (Fe3O4) or hematite (Fe2O3), alternating with bands of iron-poor chert, often red in color, of similar thickness. A single banded iron formation can be up to several hundred meters in thickness and extend laterally for several hundred kilometers.

Banded iron formation is more precisely defined as chemically precipitated sedimentary rock containing greater than 15% iron. However, most BIFs have a higher content of iron, typically around 30% by mass, so that roughly half the rock is iron oxides and the other half is silica. The iron in BIFs is divided roughly equally between the more oxidized ferric form, Fe(III), and the more reduced ferrous form, Fe(II), so that the ratio Fe(III)/Fe(II+III) typically varies from 0.3 to 0.6. This indicates a predominance of magnetite, in which the ratio is 0.67, over hematite, for which the ratio is 1. In addition to the iron oxides (hematite and magnetite), the iron sediment may contain the iron-rich carbonates siderite and ankerite, or the iron-rich silicates minnesotaite and greenalite. Most BIFs are chemically simple, containing little but iron oxides, silica, and minor carbonate, though some contain significant calcium and magnesium, up to 9% and 6.7% as oxides respectively.

When used in the singular, the term banded iron formation refers to the sedimentary lithology just described. The plural form, banded iron formations, is used informally to refer to stratigraphic units that consist primarily of banded iron formation.

A well-preserved banded iron formation typically consists of macrobands several meters thick that are separated by thin shale beds. The macrobands in turn are composed of characteristic alternating layers of chert and iron oxides, called mesobands, that are several millimeters to a few centimeters thick. Many of the chert mesobands contain microbands of iron oxides that are less than a millimeter thick, while the iron mesobands are relatively featureless. BIFs tend to be extremely hard, tough, and dense, making them highly resistant to erosion, and they show fine details of stratification over great distances, suggesting they were deposited in a very low-energy environment; that is, in relatively deep water, undisturbed by wave motion or currents. BIFs only rarely interfinger with other rock types, tending to form sharply bounded discrete units that never grade laterally into other rock types.

Banded iron formations of the Great Lakes region and the Frere Formation of western Australia are somewhat different in character and are sometimes described as granular iron formations or GIFs. Their iron sediments are granular to oolitic in character, forming discrete grains about a millimeter in diameter, and they lack microbanding in their chert mesobands. They also show more irregular mesobanding, with indications of ripples and other sedimentary structures, and their mesobands cannot be traced out any great distance. Though they form well-defined, discrete units, these are commonly interbedded with coarse to medium-grained epiclastic sediments (sediments formed by weathering of rock). These features suggest a higher energy depositional environment, in shallower water disturbed by wave motions. However, they otherwise resemble other banded iron formations.

The great majority of banded iron formations are Archean or Paleoproterozoic in age. However, a small number of BIFs are Neoproterozoic in age, and are frequently, if not universally, associated with glacial deposits, often containing glacial dropstones. They also tend to show a higher level of oxidation, with hematite prevailing over magnetite, and they typically contain a small amount of phosphate, about 1% by mass. Mesobanding is often poor to nonexistent and soft-sediment deformation structures are common. This suggests very rapid deposition. However, like the granular iron formations of the Great Lakes, the Neoproterozoic occurrences are widely described as banded iron formations.

Banded iron formations are distinct from most Phanerozoic ironstones. Ironstones are relatively rare and are thought to have been deposited in marine anoxic events, in which the depositional basin became depleted in free oxygen. They are composed of iron silicates and oxides without appreciable chert but with significant phosphorus content, which is lacking in BIFs.

No classification scheme for banded iron formations has gained complete acceptance. In 1954, Harold Lloyd James advocated a classification based on four lithological facies (oxide, carbonate, silicate, and sulfide) assumed to represent different depths of deposition, but this speculative model did not hold up. In 1980, Gordon A. Gross advocated a twofold division of BIFs into an Algoma type and a Lake Superior type, based on the character of the depositional basin. Algoma BIFs are found in relatively small basins in association with greywackes and other volcanic rocks and are assumed to be associated with volcanic centers. Lake Superior BIFs are found in larger basins in association with black shales, quartzites, and dolomites, with relatively minor tuffs or other volcanic rocks, and are assumed to have formed on a continental shelf. This classification has been more widely accepted, but the failure to appreciate that it is strictly based on the characteristics of the depositional basin and not the lithology of the BIF itself has led to confusion, and some geologists have advocated for its abandonment. However, the classification into Algoma versus Lake Superior types continues to be used.

Occurrence

Banded iron formations are almost exclusively Precambrian in age, with most deposits dating to the late Archean (2800–2500 Ma) with a secondary peak of deposition in the Orosirian period of the Paleoproterozoic (1850 Ma). Minor amounts were deposited in the early Archean and in the Neoproterozoic (750 Ma). The youngest known banded iron formation is an Early Cambrian formation in western China. Because the processes by which BIFs are formed appear to be restricted to early geologic time, and may reflect unique conditions of the Precambrian world, they have been intensively studied by geologists.

Banded iron formations are found worldwide, in every continental shield of every continent. The oldest BIFs are associated with greenstone belts and include the BIFs of the Isua Greenstone Belt, the oldest known, which have an estimated age of 3700 to 3800 Ma. The Temagami banded iron deposits formed over a 50-million-year period, from 2736 to 2687 Ma, and reached a thickness of 60 meters. Other examples of early Archean BIFs are found in the Abitibi greenstone belts, the greenstone belts of the Yilgarn and Pilbara cratons, the Baltic shield, and the cratons of the Amazon, north China, and south and west Africa.

The most extensive banded iron formations belong to what A.F. Trendall calls the Great Gondwana BIFs. These are late Archean in age and are not associated with greenstone belts. They are relatively undeformed and form extensive topographic plateaus, such as the Hamersley Range. The banded iron formations here were deposited from 2470 to 2450 Ma and are the thickest and most extensive in the world, with a maximum thickness in excess of 900 meters. Similar BIFs are found in the Carajás Formation of the Amazon craton, the Cauê Itabirite of the São Francisco craton, the Kuruman Iron Formation and Penge Iron Formation of South Africa, and the Mulaingiri Formation of India.

Paleoproterozoic banded iron formations are found in the Iron Range and other parts of the Canadian Shield. The Iron Range is a group of four major deposits: the Mesabi Range, the Vermilion Range, the Gunflint Range, and the Cuyuna Range. All are part of the Animikie Group and were deposited between 2500 and 1800 Ma. These BIFs are predominantly granular iron formations.

Neoproterozoic banded iron formations include the Urucum in Brazil, Rapitan in the Yukon, and the Damara Belt in southern Africa. They are relatively limited in size, with horizontal extents not more than a few tens of kilometers and thicknesses not more than about 10 meters. These are widely thought to have been deposited under unusual anoxic oceanic conditions associated with the "Snowball Earth."

Origins

Banded iron formation provided some of the first evidence for the timing of the Great Oxidation Event, 2,400 Ma. With his 1968 paper on the early atmosphere and oceans of the Earth, Preston Cloud established the general framework that has been widely, if not universally, accepted for understanding the deposition of BIFs.

Cloud postulated that banded iron formations were a consequence of anoxic, iron-rich waters from the deep ocean welling up into a photic zone inhabited by cyanobacteria that had evolved the capacity to carry out oxygen-producing photosynthesis, but which had not yet evolved enzymes (such as superoxide dismutase) for living in an oxygenated environment. Such organisms would have been protected from their own oxygen waste through its rapid removal via the reservoir of reduced ferrous iron, Fe(II), in the early ocean. The oxygen released by photosynthesis oxidized the Fe(II) to ferric iron, Fe(III), which precipitated out of the sea water as insoluble iron oxides that settled to the ocean floor.

Cloud suggested that banding resulted from fluctuations in the population of cyanobacteria due to free radical damage by oxygen. This also explained the relatively limited extent of early Archean deposits. The great peak in BIF deposition at the end of the Archean was thought to be the result of the evolution of mechanisms for living with oxygen. This ended self-poisoning and produced a population explosion in the cyanobacteria that rapidly depleted the remaining supply of reduced iron and ended most BIF deposition. Oxygen then began to accumulate in the atmosphere.

Some details of Cloud's original model were abandoned. For example, improved dating of Precambrian strata has shown that the late Archean peak of BIF deposition was spread out over tens of millions of years, rather than taking place in a very short interval of time following the evolution of oxygen-coping mechanisms. However, his general concepts continue to shape thinking about the origins of banded iron formations. In particular, the concept of the upwelling of deep ocean water, rich in reduced iron, into an oxygenated surface layer poor in iron remains a key element of most theories of deposition.

The few formations deposited after 1,800 Ma may point to intermittent low levels of free atmospheric oxygen, while the small peak at may be associated with the hypothetical Snowball Earth.

Formation processes
The microbands within chert layers are most likely varves produced by annual variations in oxygen production. Diurnal microbanding would require a very high rate of deposition of 2 meters per year or 5 km/Ma. Estimates of deposition rate based on various models of deposition and sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe (SHRIMP) estimates of the age of associated tuff beds suggest a deposition rate in typical BIFs of 19 to 270 m/Ma, which are consistent either with annual varves or rhythmites produced by tidal cycles.

Preston Cloud proposed that mesobanding was a result of self-poisoning by early cyanobacteria as the supply of reduced iron was periodically depleted. Mesobanding has also been interpreted as a secondary structure, not present in the sediments as originally laid down, but produced during compaction of the sediments. Another theory is that mesobands are primary structures resulting from pulses of activity along mid-ocean ridges that change the availability of reduced iron on time scales of decades. In the case of granular iron formations, the mesobands are attributed to winnowing of sediments in shallow water, in which wave action tended to segregate particles of different size and composition.

For banded iron formations to be deposited, several preconditions must be met.

 * 1) The deposition basin must contain waters that are ferruginous (rich in iron).
 * 2) This implies they are also anoxic, since ferrous iron oxidizes to ferric iron within hours or days in the presence of dissolved oxygen. This would prevent transport of large quantities of iron from its sources to the deposition basin.
 * 3) The waters must not be euxinic (rich in hydrogen sulfide), since this would cause the ferrous iron to precipitate out as pyrite.
 * 4) There must be an oxidation mechanism active within the depositional basin that steadily converts the reservoir of ferrous iron to ferric iron.

Source of reduced iron
There must be an ample source of reduced iron that can circulate freely into the deposition basin. Plausible sources of iron include hydrothermal vents along mid-ocean ridges, windblown dust, rivers, glacial ice, and seepage from continental margins.

The importance of various sources of reduced iron has likely changed dramatically across geologic time. This is reflected in the division of BIFs into Algoma and Lake Superior-type deposits. Algoma-type BIFs formed primarily in the Archean. These older BIFs tend to show a positive europium anomaly consistent with a hydrothermal source of iron. By contrast, Lake Superior-type banded iron formations primarily formed during the Paleoproterozoic era, and lack the europium anomalies of the older Algoma-type BIFs, suggesting a much greater input of iron weathered from continents.

Absence of oxygen or hydrogen sulfide
The absence of hydrogen sulfide in anoxic ocean water can be explained either by reduced sulfur flux into the deep ocean or a lack of dissimilatory sulfate reduction (DSR), the process by which microorganisms use sulfate in place of oxygen for respiration. The product of DSR is hydrogen sulfide, which readily precipitates iron out of solution as pyrite.

The requirement of an anoxic, but not euxinic, deep ocean for deposition of banded iron formation suggests two models to explain the end of BIF deposition 1.8 billion years ago. The "Holland ocean" model proposes that the deep ocean became sufficiently oxygenated at that time to end transport of reduced iron. Heinrich Holland argues that the absence of manganese deposits during the pause between Paleoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic BIFs is evidence that the deep ocean had become at least slightly oxygenated. The "Canfield ocean" model proposes that, to the contrary, the deep ocean became euxinic and transport of reduced iron was blocked by precipitation as pyrite.

Banded iron formations in northern Minnesota are overlain by a thick layer of ejecta from the Sudbury Basin impact. An asteroid (estimated at 10 km across) impacted into waters about 1000 m deep 1.849 billion years ago, coincident with the pause in BIF deposition. Computer models suggest that the impact would have generated a tsunami at least 1000 m high at the point of impact, and 100 m high about 3000 km away. It has been suggested that the immense waves and large underwater landslides triggered by the impact caused the mixing of a previously stratified ocean, oxygenated the deep ocean, and ended BIF deposition shortly after the impact.

Oxidation
Although Cloud argued that microbial activity was a key process in the deposition of banded iron formation, the role of oxygenic versus anoxygenic photosynthesis continues to be debated, and nonbiogenic processes have also been proposed.

Oxygenic photosynthesis
Cloud's original hypothesis was that ferrous iron was oxidized in a straightforward manner by molecular oxygen present in the water:

 * 4 Fe(2+) + O2 + 10 H2O -> 4 Fe(OH)3 + 8 H+

The oxygen comes from the photosynthetic activities of cyanobacteria. Oxidation of ferrous iron may have been hastened by aerobic iron-oxidizing bacteria, which can increase rates of oxidation by a factor of 50 under conditions of low oxygen.

Anoxygenic photosynthesis

Oxygenic photosynthesis is not the only biogenic mechanism for deposition of banded iron formations. Some geochemists have suggested that banded iron formations could form by direct oxidation of iron by microbial anoxygenic phototrophs. The concentrations of phosphorus and trace metals in BIFs are consistent with precipitation through the activities of iron-oxidizing bacteria.

Iron isotope ratios in the oldest banded iron formations (3700-3800 Ma), at Isua, Greenland, are best explained by assuming extremely low oxygen levels (<0.001% of modern O2 levels in the photic zone) and anoxygenic photosynthetic oxidation of Fe(II):

 * 4 Fe(2+) + 11 H2O + CO2 + hv → CH2O + 4 Fe(OH)3 + 8 H+

This requires that dissimilatory iron reduction, the biological process in which microorganisms substitute Fe(III) for oxygen in respiration, was not yet widespread. By contrast, Lake Superior-type banded iron formations show iron isotope ratios that suggest that dissimilatory iron reduction expanded greatly during this period.

An alternate route is oxidation by anaerobic denitrifying bacteria. This requires that nitrogen fixation by microorganisms is also active.

 * 10 Fe(2+) + 2 NO3- + 24 H2O → 10 Fe(OH)3 + N2 + 18 H+

Abiogenic mechanisms
The lack of organic carbon in banded iron formation argues against microbial control of BIF deposition. On the other hand, there is fossil evidence for abundant photosynthesizing cyanobacteria at the start of BIF deposition and of hydrocarbon markers in shales within banded iron formation of the Pilbara craton. The carbon that is present in banded iron formations is enriched in the light isotope, 12C, an indicator of a biological origin. If a substantial part of the original iron oxides was in the form of hematite, then any carbon in the sediments might have been oxidized by the decarbonization reaction:

 * 6 Fe2O3 + C <-> 4 Fe3O4 + CO2

Trendall and J.G. Blockley proposed, but later rejected, the hypothesis that banded iron formation might be a peculiar kind of Precambrian evaporite. Other proposed abiogenic processes include radiolysis by the radioactive isotope of potassium, 40K, or annual turnover of basin water combined with upwelling of iron-rich water in a stratified ocean.

Another abiogenic mechanism is photooxidation of iron by sunlight. Laboratory experiments suggest that this could produce a sufficiently high deposition rate under likely conditions of pH and sunlight. However, if the iron came from a shallow hydrothermal source, other laboratory experiments suggest that precipitation of ferrous iron as carbonates or silicates could seriously compete with photooxidation.

Diagenesis
Regardless of the precise mechanism of oxidation, the oxidation of ferrous to ferric iron likely caused the iron to precipitate out as a ferric hydroxide gel. Similarly, the silica component of the banded iron formations likely precipitated as a hydrous silica gel. The conversion of iron hydroxide and silica gels to banded iron formation is an example of diagenesis, the conversion of sediments into solid rock.

There is evidence that banded iron formations formed from sediments with nearly the same chemical composition as is found in the BIFs today. The BIFs of the Hamersley Range show great chemical homogeneity and lateral uniformity, with no indication of any precursor rock that might have been altered to the current composition. This suggests that, other than dehydration and decarbonization of the original ferric hydroxide and silica gels, diagenesis likely left the composition unaltered and consisted of crystallization of the original gels. Decarbonization may account for the lack of carbon and preponderance of magnetite in older banded iron formations. The relatively high content of hematite in Neoproterozoic BIFs suggests they were deposited very quickly and via a process that did not produce great quantities of biomass, so that little carbon was present to reduce hematite to magnetite.

However, it is possible that BIF was altered from carbonate rock or from hydrothermal mud during late stages of diagenesis. A 2018 study found no evidence that magnetite in BIF formed by decarbonization, and suggests that it formed from thermal decomposition of siderite via the reaction
 * 3 FeCO3 + H2O → Fe3O4 + 3 CO2 + H2

The iron may have originally precipitated as greenalite and other iron silicates. Macrobanding is then interpreted as a product of compaction of the original iron silicate mud. This produced siderite-rich bands that served as pathways for fluid flow and formation of magnetite.

The Great Oxidation Event
[[Image:Oxygenation-atm-2.svg|thumb|upright=2|[[Great Oxidation Event|Oxygen (O2) build-up]] in the Earth's atmosphere. Red and green lines represent the range of the estimates while time is measured in billions of years ago (Ga).

Banded formation iron deposition peaks at the beginning of Stage 2 and pauses at the beginning of Stage 3.]]

The peak of deposition of banded iron formations in the late Archean, and the end of deposition in the Orosirian, have been interpreted as markers for the Great Oxygenation Event. Prior to 2.45 billion years ago, the high degree of mass-independent fractionation of sulfur (MIF-S) indicates an extremely oxygen-poor atmosphere. The peak of banded iron formation deposition coincides with the disappearance of the MIF-S signal, which is interpreted as the permanent appearance of oxygen in the atmosphere between 2.41 and 2.35 billion years ago. This was accompanied by the development of a stratified ocean with a deep anoxic layer and a shallow oxidized layer. The end of deposition of BIF at 1.85 billion years ago is attributed to the oxidation of the deep ocean.

Snowball Earth hypothesis
Until 1992 it was assumed that the rare, later (younger) banded iron deposits represented unusual conditions where oxygen was depleted locally. Iron-rich waters would then form in isolation and subsequently come into contact with oxygenated water. The Snowball Earth hypothesis provided an alternative explanation for these younger deposits. In a Snowball Earth state the continents, and possibly seas at low latitudes, were subject to a severe ice age circa 750 to 580 Ma that nearly or totally depleted free oxygen. Dissolved iron then accumulated in the oxygen-poor oceans (possibly from seafloor hydrothermal vents). Following the thawing of the Earth, the seas became oxygenated once more causing the precipitation of the iron. Banded iron formations of this period are predominantly associated with the Sturtian glaciation.

An alternative mechanism for banded iron formations in the Snowball Earth era suggests the iron was deposited from metal-rich brines in the vicinity of hydrothermally active rift zones due to glacially-driven thermal overturn. The limited extent of these BIFs compared with the associated glacial deposits, their association with volcanic formations, and variation in thickness and facies favor this hypothesis. Such a mode of formation does not require a global anoxic ocean, but is consistent with either a Snowball Earth or Slushball Earth model.

Economic geology
Banded iron formations provide most of the iron ore presently mined. More than 60% of global iron reserves are in the form of banded iron formation, most of which can be found in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine, and the United States.

Different mining districts coined their own names for BIFs. The term "banded iron formation" was coined in the iron districts of Lake Superior, where the ore deposits of the Mesabi, Marquette, Cuyuna, Gogebic, and Menominee iron ranges were also variously known as "jasper", "jaspilite", "iron-bearing formation", or taconite. Banded iron formations were described as "itabarite" in Brazil, as "ironstone" in South Africa, and as "BHQ" (banded hematite quartzite) in India.

Banded iron formation was first discovered in northern Michigan in 1844, and mining of these deposits prompted the earliest studies of BIFs, such as those of Charles R. Van Hise and Charles Kenneth Leith. Iron mining operations on the Mesabi and Cuyuna Ranges evolved into enormous open pit mines, where steam shovels and other industrial machines could remove massive amounts of ore. Initially the mines exploited large beds of hematite and goethite weathered out of the banded iron formations, and some 2500000000 t of this "natural ore" had been extracted by 1980. By 1956, large-scale commercial production from the BIF itself began at the Peter Mitchell Mine near Babbitt, Minnesota. Production in Minnesota was 40000000 t of ore concentrate per year in 2016, which is about 75% of total U.S. production. Magnetite-rich banded iron formation, known locally as taconite, is ground to a powder, and the magnetite is separated with powerful magnets and pelletized for shipment and smelting.

Iron ore became a global commodity after the Second World War, and with the end of the embargo against exporting iron ore from Australia in 1960, the Hamersley Range became a major mining district. The banded iron formations here are the thickest and most extensive in the world, originally covering an area of 150000 km2 and containing about 300000000000 t of iron. The range contains 80 percent of all identified iron ore reserves in Australia. Over 100000000 t of iron ore is removed from the range every year.

The Itabarite banded iron formations of Brazil cover at least 80000 km2 and are up to 600 meters thick. These form the Quadrilatero Ferrifero or Iron Quadrangle, which resembles the Iron Range mines of United States in that the favored ore is hematite weathered out of the BIFs. Production from the Iron Quadrangle helps make Brazil the second largest producer of iron ore after Australia, with monthly exports averaging 139299 t from December 2007 to May 2018.

Mining of ore from banded iron formations at Anshan in north China began in 1918. When Japan occupied Northeast China in 1931, these mills were turned into a Japanese-owned monopoly, and the city became a significant strategic industrial hub during the Second World War. Total production of processed iron in Manchuria reached 1000000 t in 1931–1932. By 1942, Anshan's Shōwa Steel Works total production capacity reached 3600000 t per annum, making it one of the major iron and steel centers in the world. Production was severely disrupted during the Soviet occupation of Manchuria in 1945 and the subsequent Chinese Civil War. However, from 1948 to 2001, the steel works produced 290000000 t290 million tons of steel, 284000000 t of pig iron and 192000000 t of rolled steel. Annual production capacity is 10000000 t of pig iron, 10000000 t of steel and 9500000 t of rolled steel. A quarter of China's total iron ore reserves, about 10000000000 t, are located in Anshan.

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

title: Banded iron formation


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Silenus

In Greek mythology, Silenus (Σειληνός, ) was a companion and tutor to the wine god Dionysus. He is typically older than the satyrs of the Dionysian retinue (thiasos), and sometimes considerably older, in which case he may be referred to as a Papposilenus. Silen and its plural sileni refer to the mythological figure as a type that is sometimes thought to be differentiated from a satyr by having the attributes of a horse rather than a goat, though usage of the two words is not consistent enough to permit a sharp distinction.

Silenus presides over other daimons and is related to musical creativity, prophetic ecstasy, drunken joy, drunken dances and gestures.

In the decorative arts, a "silene" is a Silenus-like figure, often a "mask" (face) alone.

Evolution
The original Silenus resembled a folkloric man of the forest, with the ears of a horse and sometimes also the tail and legs of a horse. The later sileni were drunken followers of Dionysus, usually bald and fat with thick lips and squat noses, and having the legs of a human. Later still, the plural "sileni" went out of use and the only references were to one individual named Silenus, the teacher and faithful companion of the wine-god Dionysus.

A notorious consumer of wine, he was usually drunk and had to be supported by satyrs or carried by a donkey. Silenus was described as the oldest, wisest and most drunken of the followers of Dionysus, and was said in Orphic hymns to be the young god's tutor. This puts him in a company of phallic or half-animal tutors of the gods, a group that includes Priapus, Hermaphroditus, Cedalion and Chiron, but also includes Pallas, the tutor of Athena.

When intoxicated, Silenus was said to possess special knowledge and the power of prophecy. The Phrygian King Midas was eager to learn from Silenus and caught the old man by lacing a fountain with wine from which Silenus often drank. As Silenus fell asleep, the king's servants seized and took him to their master. An alternative story was that when lost and wandering in Phrygia, Silenus was rescued by peasants and taken to Midas, who treated him kindly. In return for Midas' hospitality Silenus told him some tales and the king, enchanted by Silenus' fictions, entertained him for five days and nights. Dionysus offered Midas a reward for his kindness toward Silenus, and Midas chose the power of turning everything he touched into gold. Another story was that Silenus had been captured by two shepherds, and regaled them with wondrous tales.

In Euripides's satyr play Cyclops, Silenus is stranded with the satyrs in Sicily, where they have been enslaved by the Cyclopes. They are the comic elements of the story, a parody of Homer's Odyssey IX. Silenus refers to the satyrs as his children during the play.

Silenus may have become a Latin term of abuse around 211 BC, when it is used in Plautus' Rudens to describe Labrax, a treacherous pimp or leno, as "...a pot-bellied old Silenus, bald head, beefy, bushy eyebrows, scowling, twister, god-forsaken criminal". In his satire The Caesars, the emperor Julian has Silenus sitting next to the gods to offer up his comments on the various rulers under examination, including Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Marcus Aurelius (whom he reveres as a fellow philosopher-king), and Constantine I.

Silenus commonly figures in Roman bas-reliefs of the train of Dionysus, a subject for sarcophagi, embodying the transcendent promises of Dionysian cult.

In Book VI of Pausanias' Description of Greece, his grave is said to be "in the land of the Hebrews".

Papposilenus
Papposilenus is a representation of Silenus that emphasizes his old age, particularly as a stock character in satyr play or comedy. In vase painting, his hair is often white, and as in statuettes, Papposilenus has a pot belly, flabby breasts and shaggy thighs. In these depictions, it is often clear that the Papposilenus is an actor playing a part. His costuming includes a body stocking tufted with hair (mallōtos chitōn) that seems to have come into use in the mid-5th century BC.

Wisdom
A theme in Greek philosophy and literature is the wisdom of Silenus, which posits an antinatalist philosophy:

You, most blessed and happiest among humans, may well consider those blessed and happiest who have departed this life before you, and thus you may consider it unlawful, indeed blasphemous, to speak anything ill or false of them, since they now have been transformed into a better and more refined nature. This thought is indeed so old that the one who first uttered it is no longer known; it has been passed down to us from eternity, and hence doubtless it is true. Moreover, you know what is so often said and passes for a trite expression. What is that, he asked? He answered: It is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live; and this is confirmed even by divine testimony. Pertinently to this they say that Midas, after hunting, asked his captive Silenus somewhat urgently, what was the most desirable thing among humankind. At first he could offer no response, and was obstinately silent. At length, when Midas would not stop plaguing him, he erupted with these words, though very unwillingly: 'you, seed of an evil genius and precarious offspring of hard fortune, whose life is but for a day, why do you compel me to tell you those things of which it is better you should remain ignorant? For he lives with the least worry who knows not his misfortune; but for humans, the best for them is not to be born at all, not to partake of nature's excellence; not to be is best, for both sexes. This should be our choice, if choice we have; and the next to this is, when we are born, to die as soon as we can.' It is plain therefore, that he declared the condition of the dead to be better than that of the living.
 * – Aristotle, Eudemus (354 BCE), surviving fragment quoted in Plutarch, Moralia. Consolatio ad Apollonium, sec. xxvii (1st century CE) (S. H. transl.)

This passage is redolent of Theognis' Elegies (425–428). Silenus' wisdom appears in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, who endorsed this famous dictum. Via Schopenhauer, Nietzsche discusses the "wisdom of Silenus" in The Birth of Tragedy.

Both Socrates and Aesop were sometimes described as having a physical appearance like that of Silenus, with broad flat faces and fat bellies.

In art
In the Renaissance, a court dwarf posed for the Silenus-like figure astride a tortoise at the entrance to the Boboli Gardens, Florence. Rubens painted The Drunken Silenus (1616–17), now conserved in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich – the subject was also treated by van Dyck and Ribera.

During the late 19th century in Germany and Vienna, symbolism from ancient Greece was reinterpreted through a new Freudian prism. Around the same time Vienna Secession artist Gustav Klimt uses the irreverent, chubby-faced Silenus as a motif in several works to represent "buried instinctual forces".

In literature
In Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais referred to Silenus as the foster father of Bacchus. In 1884 Thomas Woolner published a long narrative poem about Silenus. In Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry Wooton turns praise of folly into a philosophy which mocks "slow Silenus" for being sober. In Brian Hooker's 1923 English translation of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, Cyrano disparagingly refers to the ham actor Montfleury as "That Silenus who cannot hold his belly in his arms."

Professor Silenus is a character in Evelyn Waugh's first novel, Decline and Fall. He features as the disaffected architect of King's Thursday and provides the novel with one of its primary motifs. In the prophetic style of the traditional Greek Silenus he informs the protagonist that life is

"a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh, and you laugh too. It's great fun... Of course at the very centre there's a point completely at rest, if one could only find it.... Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again.... But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn't get on it at all.... People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they've got to join in the game, even if they don't enjoy it. It doesn't suit everyone..."

Silenus is one of the two main characters in Tony Harrison's 1990 satyr play The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, partly based on Sophocles' play Ichneutae (5th century BC).

Scientific nomenclature
Carl Linnaeus used the feminine form Silene as the name of a genus of flowering plant.

title: Silenus


text:
Sector

Sector may refer to:

Places

 * Sector, West Virginia, U.S.

Geometry

 * Circular sector, the portion of a disc enclosed by two radii and a circular arc
 * Hyperbolic sector, a region enclosed by two radii and a hyperbolic arc
 * Spherical sector, a portion of a sphere enclosed by a cone of radii from the center of the sphere

Social and economic

 * Business sector, part of the economy which involves the trading and sale of products by companies
 * Economic sector, the manufacturing, finance and production of goods for consumers
 * Private sector, business activity created by private enterprise for profit
 * Public sector, delivers social services, infrastructure and institutions administered by government
 * Voluntary sector, a non-profit and voluntary part of an economy provided by organisations
 * The sector of the sector directive in government procurement in the European Union

Computing

 * Cylinder-head-sector, an early method for giving addresses to blocks of data on a hard drive
 * Disk sector, a subdivision of a track on a disk
 * Sector, or zone, in portal rendering
 * Sector/Sphere, an open source software suite
 * Sector (instrument), a historic calculating instrument

Other uses

 * Sector (administrative division)
 * Sector clock
 * Sector light
 * Sector commander
 * United States Coast Guard Sector, a shore-based unit of the U.S. Coast Guard
 * Sector, a fictional area of space, e.g. in the Foundation series, Star Wars, StarCraft, Warhammer 40,000, Lollipop Chainsaw
 * Sector, or galactic quadrant, regions of space in Star Trek
 * Sector, and Sector No Limits, watch brands
 * Sector General, a series of science fiction novels by James White

title: Sector


text:
Schenectady, New York

Schenectady  is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-most populous city and the twenty-fifth most-populous municipality. The city is in eastern New York, near the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers. It is in the same metropolitan area as the state capital, Albany, which is about 15 mi southeast.

Schenectady was founded on the south side of the Mohawk River by Dutch colonists in the 17th century, many of whom came from the Albany area. The name "Schenectady" is derived from the Mohawk word skahnéhtati, meaning "beyond the pines" and used for the area around Albany, New York. Residents of the new village developed farms on strip plots along the river. Connected to the west by the Mohawk River and Erie Canal, Schenectady developed rapidly in the 19th century as part of the Mohawk Valley trade, manufacturing, and transportation corridor. By 1824, more people worked in manufacturing than agriculture or trade; like many New York cities, it had a cotton mill that processed cotton from the Deep South. In the 19th century, nationally influential companies and industries developed in Schenectady, including General Electric and American Locomotive Company (ALCO), which were powers into the mid-20th century. Schenectady was part of emerging technologies, with GE collaborating in the production of nuclear-powered submarines and, in the 21st century, working on other forms of renewable energy.

History
When first encountered by Europeans, the Mohawk Valley was the territory of the Mohawk nation, one of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee. They had occupied territory in the region since at least 1100 AD. Starting in the early 1600s the Mohawk moved their settlements closer to the river and by 1629, they had also taken over territories on the Hudson River's west bank that were formerly held by the Algonquian-speaking Mahican people.

In the 1640s, the Mohawk had three major villages, all on the Mohawk River's south side. The easternmost one was Ossernenon, about 9 miles west of present-day Auriesville, New York. When Dutch settlers developed Fort Orange (present-day Albany, New York) in the Hudson Valley beginning in 1614, the Mohawk called their settlement skahnéhtati,, also transiliterated to ‘’Sche-negh-ta-da”, meaning "beyond the pines", referring to a large area of pine barrens between the Mohawk settlements and the Hudson River. About 3,200 acres of this unique ecosystem are now protected as the Albany Pine Bush. Eventually, this word entered the lexicon of the Dutch settlers. The settlers in Fort Orange used skahnéhtati to refer to the new village at the Mohawk flats (see below), which became known as Schenectady (with a variety of spellings).

In 1661, Arendt van Corlaer, (later Van Curler), a Dutch immigrant, bought a large piece of land on the Mohawk River's south side. The Colonial government gave other colonists grants of land in this portion of the flat fertile river valley, as part of New Netherland. The settlers recognized the Mohawk had cultivated these bottomlands for maize for centuries. Van Curler took the largest piece of land; the remainder was divided into 50-acre plots for the other first fourteen proprietors; Alexander Lindsey Glen, Philip Hendrickse Brouwer, Simon Volkertse Veeder, Pieter Adrianne Van Wogglelum, Teunize Cornelise Swart, Bastia De Winter atty for Catalyn De Vos, Gerrit Bancker, William Teller, Pieter Jacobse Borsboom, Pieter Danielle Van Olinda, Jan Barentse Wemp(le), Jacques Cornelize Van Slyck, Marten Cornelize Van Esselstyn, and Harmen Albertse Vedder. As most early colonists were from the Fort Orange area, they may have anticipated working as fur traders, but the Beverwijck (later Albany) traders kept a monopoly of legal control. The settlers here turned to farming. Their 50-acre lots were unique for the colony, "laid out in strips along the Mohawk River", with the narrow edges fronting the river, as in French colonial style. They relied on rearing livestock and wheat. The proprietors and their descendants controlled all the land of the town for generations, essentially acting as government until after the Revolutionary War, when representative government was established.

Beginning from the first decades of European colonization, Dutch colonists formed relationships with Mohawk women, though these did not usually result in marriage. Their children were raised within Mohawk communities, as the tribe had a matrilineal kinship system, and these multiracial offspring were considered to be born into the mother's clan. During the colonial era, the fur trade formed one of the important trading relationships between Indians and colonists. In response to labor shortages among Dutch colonists, enslaved Africans were imported to work on farmsteads in Schenectady.

Some Euro-Indian descendants, such as Jacques Cornelissen Van Slyck and his sister Hilletie van Olinda, who were of Dutch, French and Mohawk ancestry, became interpreters and intermarried with Dutch colonists. They also gained land in the Schenectady settlement. They were among the few métis who seemed to move from Mohawk to Dutch society, as they were described as "former Indians", although they did not always have an easy time of it. In 1661 Jacques inherited what became known as Van Slyck's Island from his brother Marten, who had been given it by the Mohawk. Van Slyck family descendants retained ownership through the 19th century.

In 1664, an English fleet conquered the colony of New Netherland and renamed it New York. They confirmed the monopoly on the fur trade by Albany, and issued orders to prohibit Schenectady from the trade through 1670 and later. Settlers purchased additional land from the Mohawk in 1670 and 1672. (Jacques and Hilletie Van Slyck each received portions of land in the Mohawk 1672 deed for Schenectady.) Twenty years later (1684) Governor Thomas Dongan granted letters patent for Schenectady to five additional trustees.

On February 8, 1690, during King William's War, French forces and their Indian allies, mostly Ojibwe and Algonquin warriors, attacked Schenectady by surprise, leaving 62 dead, 11 of them enslaved Africans. American history notes it as the Schenectady massacre. A total of 27 persons were taken captive, including five enslaved Africans; the raiders took their captives overland about 200 miles to Montreal and its associated Mohawk mission village of Kahnawake. Typically the younger captives were adopted by Mohawk families to replace people who had died. Through the early 18th century in the raiding between Quebec and the northern British colonies, some captives were ransomed by their communities. Colonial governments got involved only for high-ranking officers or other officials. In 1748, during King George's War, the French and Indians attacked Schenectady again, killing 70 residents.

In 1765, Schenectady was incorporated as a borough. During the American Revolutionary War the local militia unit, the 2nd Albany County Militia Regiment, fought in the Battle of Saratoga and against Loyalist troops. Most of the wars in the Mohawk Valley were fought further west on the frontier in the areas of the German Palatine settlement which was west of Little Falls. Because of their close business and other relationships with the British, some settlers from the city were Loyalists and moved to Canada in the late stages of the Revolution. The Crown granted them land in what became known as Upper Canada and later Ontario.

New Republic
It was not until after the Revolutionary War that the village residents reduced the power of the descendants of the early trustees and gained representative government. The settlement was chartered as a city in 1798. Long interested in supporting higher education and morals, the members of the city's three oldest churches—the Dutch First Reformed Church, St. Georges Episcopal Church, and First Presbyterian Church—formed a "union" and founded Union College in 1795 under a charter from the state. The school had started in 1785 as Schenectady Academy. This founding was part of the expansion of higher education in upstate New York in the postwar years.

During this period, migrants poured into upstate and western New York from New England, but there were also new immigrants from England and Europe. Many traveled west along the Mohawk River, settling in the western part of the state, where they developed more agriculture on former Iroquois lands. A dairy industry developed in the central part of the state. New settlers were predominantly of English and Scotch-Irish descent. In 1819, Schenectady suffered a fire that destroyed more than 170 buildings and most of its historic, distinctive Dutch-style architecture.

New York had passed a law for gradual abolition of slavery in 1799, however in 1824 there were still a total of 102 slaves in Schenectady County with nearly half residing in the city. That year the city of Schenectady had a total population of 3939, which included 240 free blacks, 47 slaves, and 91 foreigners.

In the 19th century, after completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, Schenectady became an important transportation, manufacturing and trade center. By 1824 more of its population worked in manufacturing than agriculture or trade. Among the industries was a cotton mill, which processed cotton from the Deep South. It was one of many such mills in upstate whose products were part of the exports shipped out of New York City. The city and state had many economic ties to the South at the same time that some residents became active in the abolitionist movement.

Schenectady benefited by increased traffic connecting the Hudson River to the Mohawk Valley and the Great Lakes to the west and New York City to the south. The Albany and Schenectady Turnpike (now State Street) was constructed in 1797 to connect Albany to settlements in the Mohawk Valley. The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad started operations in 1831 as one of the first railway lines in the United States, connecting the city and Albany by a route through the pine barrens between them. Developers in Schenectady quickly founded the Utica & Schenectady Railroad, chartered in 1833; Schenectady & Susquehanna Railroad, chartered May 5, 1836; and Schenectady & Troy Railroad, chartered in 1836, making Schenectady "the rail hub of America at the time" and competing with the Erie Canal. Commodities from the Great Lakes areas and commercial products were shipped to the East and New York City through the Mohawk Valley and Schenectady.

The last slaves in New York and Schenectady gained freedom in 1827, under the state's gradual abolition law. The law first gave freedom to children born to slave mothers, but they were indentured to the mother's master for a period into their early 20s. Union College established a school for black children in 1805, but discontinued it two years later. Methodists helped educate the children for a time but public schools did not accept them.

In the 1830s, the abolitionist movement grew in Schenectady. In 1836, Rev. Isaac Groot Duryee (also recorded as Duryea) co-founded the interracial Anti-Slavery Society at Union College and the Anti-Slavery Society of Schenectady in 1837. Freedom seekers were supported via the Underground Railroad route that ran through the area, passing to the west and north to Canada, which had abolished slavery.

In 1837 Duryee, together with others who were free people of color, co-founded the First Free Church of Schenectady (now the Duryee Memorial AME Zion Church). He also started a school for students of color. The abolitionist Theodore S. Wright, an African-American minister based in New York City, spoke at the church's dedication and praised the school.

Through the late 19th century, new industries were established in the Mohawk Valley and powered by the river. Industrial jobs attracted many new immigrants, first from Ireland, and later in the century from Italy and Poland. In 1887, Thomas Edison moved his Edison Machine Works to Schenectady. In 1892, Schenectady became the headquarters of the General Electric Company. This business became a major industrial and economic force and helped establish the city and region as a national manufacturing center. GE became important nationally as a creative company, expanding into many different fields. American Locomotive Company also developed here, from a Schenectady company, and merging several smaller companies in 1901; it was second in the United States in the manufacture of steam locomotives before developing diesel technology.

20th century to present
Like other industrial cities in the Mohawk Valley, in the early 20th century, Schenectady attracted many new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, as they could fill many of the new industrial jobs. It also attracted African Americans as part of the Great Migration out of the rural South to northern cities for work. General Electric and American Locomotive Company (ALCO) were industrial powerhouses, influencing innovation in a variety of fields across the country.

Schenectady is home to WGY, the second commercial radio station in the United States, (after WBZ in Springfield, Massachusetts, named for Westinghouse). WGY was named for its owner, General Electric (the G), and the city of Schenectady (the Y). In 1928, General Electric produced the first regular television broadcasts in the United States, when the experimental station W2XB began regular broadcasts on Thursday and Friday afternoons. This television station is now WRGB; for many years it was the Capital District's NBC affiliate. It has been the area's CBS affiliate since 1981.

The city reached its peak of population in 1930, approximately 95,000. The Great Depression caused a loss of jobs and population in its wake. In the postwar period after World War II, some residents moved to newer housing in suburban locations outside the city. In addition, General Electric established some high-tech facilities in the neighboring town of Niskayuna, which contributed to continuing population growth in the county. In the latter part of the 20th century, Schenectady suffered from the massive industrial and corporate restructuring that affected much of the US, including in the railroads. It lost many jobs and population to other locations, including offshore. Since the late 20th century, it has been shaping a new economy, based in part on renewable energy. Its population increased from 2000 to 2010.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 11.0 sqmi, of which 10.9 sqmi of it is land and 0.1 sqmi of it (1.27%) is water.

It is part of the Capital District, the metropolitan area surrounding Albany, the state of New York's capital. Along with Albany and Troy, it is one of the three principal population and industrial centers in the region.

Interstate 890 runs through Schenectady, and the New York State Thruway (Interstate 90) is nearby. Amtrak has a station in Schenectady. The nearest airport is Schenectady County Airport; the nearest commercial airport is Albany International Airport.

ZIP code 12345, which is used by the GE plant in Schenectady, has attracted media attention on account of its simplicity. Thousands of letters and Christmas lists addressed to Santa Claus are mailed to the ZIP code every year.

Schenectady has a humid continental climate that is hot-summer (Dfa) bordering upon warm-summer (Dfb.) Average monthly temperatures range from 22.9 °F in January to 71.8 °F in July. These are estimates made by local amateur observers and aren't official as Schenectady does not have a weather station of its own (its "official" temperatures come from nearby Albany).

Economy
Schenectady was a manufacturing center known as "The City that Lights and Hauls the World"—a reference to two prominent businesses in the city, the Edison Electric Company (now known as General Electric), and the American Locomotive Company (ALCO).

GE retains its steam turbine manufacturing facilities in Schenectady and its Global Research facility in nearby Niskayuna. Thousands of manufacturing jobs have been relocated from Schenectady to the Sun Belt and abroad. Corporate headquarters are now in Boston.

ALCO produced steam locomotives for railroads for years. Later it became renowned for its "Superpower" line of high-pressure locomotives, such as those for the Union Pacific Railroad in the 1930s and 1940s. During World War II, it converted to support the war, making tanks for the US Army. As diesel locomotives began to be manufactured, ALCO joined with GE to develop diesel locomotives to compete with GM's EMD division. But corporate restructuring to cope with the changing locomotive procurement environment led to ALCO's slow downward spiral. Its operations fizzled as it went through acquisitions and restructuring in the late 1960s. Its Schenectady plant closed in 1969.

In the late 20th century, due to industrial restructuring, the city lost many jobs and suffered difficult financial times, as did many former manufacturing cities in upstate New York. The loss of employment caused Schenectady's population to decline by nearly one-third from 1950 into the late 20th century. The early industries had left many sites contaminated with hazardous wastes. Such environmental brownfields have needed technical approaches for redevelopment.

In the 21st century, Schenectady began revitalization. GE established a renewable energy center that brought hundreds of employees to the area. The city is part of a metropolitan area with improving economic health, and a number of buildings have been renovated for new uses. Numerous small businesses, retail stores and restaurants have developed on State Street downtown.

Price Chopper Supermarkets and the New York Lottery are based in Schenectady.

In December 2014, the state announced that the city was one of three sites selected for development of off-reservation casino gambling, under terms of a 2013 state constitutional amendment. The project would redevelop an ALCO brownfield site in the city along the waterfront, with hotels, housing and a marina in addition to the casino.

In February 2017, the Rivers Casino & Resort opened with 66 table games and 1,150 slot machines on a 50,000-square-foot gambling floor with a steakhouse and a restaurant lounge. The $480 million (~$ in ) residential-retail project on 60 acres includes a marina, two hotels, condos, apartments and retail and office space for tech firms.

Demographics
In the census of 2010, there were 66,135 people, 26,265 (2000 data) households, and 14,051 (2000 data) families residing in the city. The population density was 6,096.7 PD/sqmi. There were 30,272 (2000 data) housing units at an average density of 2,790.6 /mi2. The racial makeup of the city was 59.38% (52.31% Non-Hispanic) (7.07 White-Hispanic) White, 24.19% African American, 14.47% Hispanic or Latin of any race, 8.24% from other races, 5.74% from two or more races, 2.62% Asian American, 0.69% Native American, and 0.14% Pacific Islander. There is a growing Guyanese population in the area. The top ancestries self-identified by people on the census are Italian (13.6%), Guyanese (12.3%), Irish (12.1%), Puerto Rican (10.1%), German (8.7%), English (6.0%), Polish (5.4%), French (4.4%). These reflect historic and early 20th-century immigration, as well as that since the late 20th century.

The Schenectady City School District is very diverse; (71%- 2011)(80%–2013) of district students receive free or reduced lunch. The student population of the school district is majority minority: 35% Black (48% Graduate), 32% White (71% Graduate), 18% Hispanic (51% Graduate), 15% Asian (68% Graduate). As of 2016, the graduation rate for the high school was 56%.

Using 2010 data, there were 28,264 households, out of which 31.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 28.0% were married couples living together, 24.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.5% were non-families. 38.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.23 and the average family size was 2.98.

In the city, the year 2010 population was spread out, with 26.3% under the age of 18, 13.6% from 18 to 24, 30.7% from 25 to 44, 21.1% from 45 to 64, and 7.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32. For every 100 females, there were 92.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.4 males.

The median income for a household in the city in 2000 was $29,378 (2010–$37,436), and the median income for a family was $41,158. Males had a median income of $32,929 versus $26,856 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,076. About 20.2% of families and 25.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.5% of those under age 18 and 5.6% of those age 65 or over.

Religion
The largest religious body is the Catholic church, with 44,000 adherents, followed by Islam, with 6,000 followers. The third largest religious body is the Reformed Church in America, with 3,600 members. The fourth is the United Methodist denomination, with 2,800 members.

Notable congregations are the First Presbyterian Church (Schenectady, New York), which is affiliated with the PCA. First Reformed Church RCA is formed in the 17th century, one of the oldest churches in the town. St George's Episcopal Church dates back to 1735; it shared facilities with the Presbyterians for more than 30 years.

Transportation
Amtrak, the national passenger rail system, provides regular service to Schenectady, with Schenectady station at 322 Erie Boulevard. Trains include the Ethan Allen, Adirondack, Lake Shore Limited, Maple Leaf, and Empire Service. Schenectady also has freight rail service from Canadian Pacific Railway and Norfolk Southern Railway.

The Capital District Transportation Authority (CDTA) provides bus service throughout Schenectady along with connections to the surrounding cities of Albany, Saratoga Springs, and Troy.

In the early 20th century, Schenectady had an extensive streetcar system that provided both local and interurban passenger service. The Schenectady Railway Co. had local lines and interurban lines serving Albany, Ballston Spa, Saratoga Springs and Troy. There was also a line from Gloversville, Johnstown, Amsterdam, and Scotia into Downtown Schenectady operated by the Fonda, Johnstown, and Gloversville Railroad. The nearly 200 leather and glove companies in the Gloversville region generated considerable traffic for the line. Sales representatives carrying product sample cases began their sales campaigns throughout the rest of the country by taking the interurban to reach Schenectady's New York Central Railroad station, where they connected to trains to New York City, Chicago and points between.

The bright orange FJ&G interurbans were scheduled to meet every daylight New York Central train that stopped at Schenectady. Through the 1900s and into the early 1930s, the line was quite prosperous. In 1932 the FJ&G purchased five lightweight "bullet cars" (#125 through 129) from the J. G. Brill Company. These interurbans represented state-of-the-art design: the "bullet" description referred to the unusual front roof that was designed to slope down to the windshield in an aerodynamically sleek way. FJ&G bought the cars believing that there would be continuing strong passenger business from a prosperous glove and leather industry, as well as legacy tourism traffic to Lake Sacandaga north of Gloversville. Instead, roads were improved, automobiles became cheaper and were purchased more widely, tourists traveled greater distances by car, and the Great Depression decreased business overall.

FJ&G ridership continued to decline and in 1938 the state of New York condemned the line's bridge over the Mohawk River at Schenectady. The bridge had once carried cars, pedestrians, and the interurban, but ice flow damage in 1928 prompted the state to restrict its use to the interurban. When the state condemned the bridge for interurban use, the line abandoned passenger service, and the bullet cars were sold. Freight business had also been important to the FJ&G, and it continued over the risky bridge into Schenectady a few more years.

The Mohawk River at Schenectady is crossed by the Western Gateway Bridge, originally built in 1923-25, and replaced in 1971. From 1874 to 1925 the Mohawk River had been crossed by a bridge running from the foot of Washington Ave., Schenectady to Washington Ave., Scotia, a steel bridge built upon the seven piers of a former wooden bridge, built in 1808, called the Burr Bridge.

Places of interest

 * Proctors Theatre is an arts center. Built in 1926 as a vaudeville/movie theater, it has been refurbished in the 21st century. It is home to "Goldie", a Wurlitzer theater pipe organ. Proctor's was also the site of one of the first public demonstrations of television, projecting an image from a studio at the GE plant a mile [1.6 km] away. Its 2007 renovation added two theaters: Proctors is home to three theaters, including the historic Mainstage, the GE Theatre, and 440 Upstairs.
 * The Stockade Historic District features dozens of Dutch and English Colonial houses from the 18th and 19th centuries. It is the state of New York's first historic district, designated in 1965 by the Department of Interior and named after the historic stockade that originally surrounded the colonial settlement.
 * The Schenectady County Historical Society has a History Museum and the Grems-Doolittle research library, both at 32 Washington Avenue in the Stockade District. It has adapted a house originally built in 1895 for the Jackson family. It was used by the GE Women's Club from 1915 until 1957, when it was donated to the Historical Society. The History Museum tells of the history of Schenectady, the Yates Doll House, the Erie Canal, the Glen-Sanders Collection, etc. The research library has many collections of papers, photographs, and books. It welcomes people doing local and genealogical research.
 * The General Electric Realty Plot, near Union College, was one of the first planned residential neighborhoods in the U.S. and designed to attract GE executives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It features an eclectic collection of grand homes in a variety of architectural styles, including Tudor, Dutch Colonial, Queen Anne, and Spanish Colonial. The Plot is home to the first all-electric home in the United States. It hosts an annual House and Garden Tour.
 * Union College, adjacent to the GE Realty Plot, is the oldest planned college campus in the United States. The campus features the unique 16-sided Nott Memorial building, built in 1875, and Jackson's Garden, 8 acre of formal gardens and woodlands.
 * Central Park is the crown jewel of Schenectady's parks. It occupies the highest elevation point in the city. The Common Council voted in 1913 to purchase the land for the present site of the park. The park features an acclaimed rose garden and Iroquois Lake. Its stadium tennis court was the former home to the New York Buzz of the World Team Tennis league (as of 2008). Central Park was named after New York City's Central Park.
 * The Schenectady Museum features exhibits on the development of science and technology. It contains the Suits-Bueche Planetarium.
 * Schenectady City Hall is the focal point of city government. Designed by McKim, Mead and White, it was built in 1933 during the Great Depression.
 * Schenectady's Municipal Golf Course is an 18-hole championship facility sited among oaks and pines. Designed in 1935 by Jim Thompson under the WPA, the course was ranked by Golf Digest among "Best Places to Play in 2004" and received a three-star rating.
 * Jay Street, between Proctor's and City Hall, is a short street partially closed to motor traffic. It features a number of small, independently operated businesses and eateries and is a popular destination. Just past the pedestrian section of Jay Street is Schenectady's Little Italy on North Jay Street.
 * Schenectady Light Opera Company (SLOC) is a community theater group on Franklin Street in downtown Schenectady.
 * The Edison Tech Center exhibits and promotes the physical development of engineering and technology from Schenectady and elsewhere. It provides online and on-site displays that promote learning about electricity and its applications in technology.
 * Upper Union Street Business Improvement District, near the Niskayuna boundary, is home to almost 100 independently owned businesses, including a score of restaurants, upscale retail, specialty shops, salons and services.
 * Vale Cemetery, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, includes more than 30,000 burials of noted and ordinary residents of the city. It includes the historic African-American Burying Ground, where city residents annually celebrate anniversaries of Juneteenth and Emancipation.

Education
The city is served by the Schenectady City School District, which operates 16 elementary schools, three middle schools and the main high school Schenectady High School. Brown School is a private, nonsectarian kindergarten-through-8th grade school. Catholic schools are administered by the Diocese of Albany.

Wildwood School is a special education, all-ages school.

Schenectady's tertiary educational institutions are Union College, a private liberal arts college, and Schenectady County Community College, a public community college.

Representation in popular culture
Due to its early importance in national history and the economy, Schenectady figured in popular culture.

Fiction

 * Author Henry James gave his lead character Daisy Miller, in his 1878 novella of the same name, an origin in Schenectady.
 * Schenectady is referred to or the setting for several of Kurt Vonnegut's books, most notably Hocus Pocus and Player Piano.
 * Doctor Octopus, a Marvel Comics supervillain, was born in Schenectady.
 * Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.'s Lovecraftian serial killer novel, Nightmare's Disciple (Chaosium, 1999) is set in Schenectady.
 * Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov placed the corporate headquarters and factory of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. (fictional 21st century manufacturer of robots) in Schenectady.
 * Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison said that anytime a fan or interviewer asked him "Where do you get your ideas?", he would reply "Schenectady". Science fiction writer Barry Longyear subsequently titled a collection of his short stories It Came From Schenectady.

Film and TV

 * In Objective, Burma! (1945), Sid Jacobs (William Prince) tells Mark Williams (Henry Hull) about his house at 791 Crane Street in Schenectady. He had taught at Pleasant Valley school before the war.
 * In the 1952 Looney Tunes short Fool Coverage, Daffy Duck plays an insurance salesman from the Hotfoot Casualty Underwriters Insurance Company of Schenectady.
 * In the 1950s television series, The Honeymooners, Trixie's mother was from Schenectady.
 * The Way We Were (1973) was filmed on location at Union College, and in nearby Ballston Spa.
 * The 1980s film Heart Like a Wheel is mostly set in Schenectady.
 * The 1996 made-for-TV film Unabomber: The True Story starring Robert Hays as David Kaczynski, brother of unabomber Ted Kaczynski, refers to Schenectady, where David and his wife were living when they figured out his brother's involvement in the bombings.
 * Star Trek: Enterprise (2001), Starfleet Captain Jonathan Archer is born in Schenectady in 2112.
 * The Time Machine (2002), the remake starring Guy Pearce, features Schenectady's Central Park in the ice skating scenes, standing in for New York City's Central Park.
 * Synecdoche, New York (2008) is a film partially set in Schenectady, where some scenes were shot. It plays on the aural similarity between the city's name and the figure of speech synecdoche.
 * In the ABC-TV series Ugly Betty, Marc St. James (played by Michael Urie) is said to be from Schenectady.
 * Winter of Frozen Dreams (2009) was entirely filmed in Schenectady County, but is set in Wisconsin, where the historic events took place. It features the Schenectady, the Town of Rotterdam, and the Village of Scotia, all in New York. The film stars Thora Birch as Barbara Hoffman, the historic Wisconsin murderer, and Keith Carradine as a detective determined to catch her.
 * The Place Beyond the Pines (2013), starring Bradley Cooper and Ryan Gosling, was filmed locally in 2011 near the Schenectady Police Headquarters and other areas of Schenectady.
 * In the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, Schenectady is the hometown of character Grace Adler (played by Debra Messing).

Music

 * The music video for the song "Hero" by Mariah Carey was filmed at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady.
 * The song "Someone to Love" by Fountains of Wayne, refers to fictional character Seth Shapiro moving from Schenectady in 1993 to Brooklyn.
 * The song "Join the Circus", the last major number in Cy Coleman's musical Barnum, mentions the city in its lyric.

Notable people

 * Stephen Alexander (1806–1883), astronomer, mathematician, and educator
 * Horatio Allen (1802–1889), railroad engineer and inventor
 * Ralph Alpher (1921–2007), cosmologist, won National Medal of Science for seminal work on Big Bang Theory
 * Chester Arthur (1829–1886), U.S. president, lived in Schenectady while attending Union College
 * Kumar Barve (born 1958), Majority Leader and first Indian-American legislator in the Maryland House of Delegates
 * Suzanne Basso, murderer
 * Katharine Burr Blodgett (1898 – 1979), physicist, chemist, and first woman awarded PhD in physics from University of Cambridge
 * Andy Bloom (born 1973), Olympic shotputter
 * Jim Barbieri (born 1941), MLB outfielder who played for Schenectady's 1954 Little League World Series championship team
 * Maria Brink (born 1977), lead singer of band In This Moment, was born in Schenectady
 * Pat Cadigan (born 1953), science fiction author, was born in Schenectady
 * Greg Capullo (born 1962), comic book artist, was born in Schenectady
 * Bruce W. Carter (1950–1969), USMC, Medal of Honor Recipient, was born in Schenectady
 * Jimmy Carter (born 1924), U.S. president, studied briefly at Union College
 * Billy Connors (1941–2018), MLB pitcher, coach and executive who played for Schenectady's 1954 Little League World Series championship team
 * Jackie Craven, architectural writer
 * Dexter Curtis (1828–1898), Wisconsin State Assemblyman, was born in Schenectady
 * Mary Daly (1928–2010), feminist theologian
 * Ann B. Davis (1926–2014), actress (Schultzy on The Bob Cummings Show and Alice Nelson on The Brady Bunch), was born in Schenectady
 * Antonio Delgado (born 1977), Lieutenant Governor of New York, and former U.S. representative
 * Amir Derakh (born 1963), guitarist for rock band Orgy, was born in Schenectady
 * Paul "Legs" DiCocco (1924–1989), gambler and racketeer
 * John Owen Dominis (1832–1891), prince consort of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii
 * Jamie Dukes (born 1964), football player, born in Schenectady
 * Harry J. Flynn (1933–2019), Roman Catholic archbishop of Minneapolis and St. Paul, was born in Schenectady
 * Henry Glen (1739–1814), Continental army officer, U.S. representative
 * Harold Gould (1923–2010), actor (The Golden Girls, The Sting), was born in Schenectady
 * Harold J. Greene (1959–2014), United States Army general
 * Kevin Greene (1962–2020), football linebacker, coach
 * Joseph E. Grosberg (1883–1970), pioneer in supermarket and wholesale foods industries
 * John E. Hart (1824–1863), Union Navy officer
 * Keith Hitchins (1931–2020), American historian
 * Gilbert Hyatt (ca. 1761–1823), loyalist, founder of Sherbrooke, Quebec
 * Fred Isabella (1917–2007), dentist, businessman, and politician
 * Patricia Kalember (born 1957), actress, born in Schenectady
 * Steve Katz (born 1945), guitarist (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
 * Barry Kramer (born 1942), basketball player, jurist
 * Irving Langmuir (1881–1957), 1932 Nobel laureate in chemistry
 * Wayne LaPierre (born 1949), CEO of the National Rifle Association of America
 * Arnold Lobel (1933–1987), author and illustrator of children's books, was born in Los Angeles and raised in Schenectady
 * George R. Lunn, (1873–1948), mayor, U.S. representative, lieutenant governor
 * Ranald MacDougall (1915–1973), screenwriter and director
 * Sir Charles Mackerras (1925–2010), Australian conductor, was born in Schenectady.
 * John Van Antwerp MacMurray (1881–1960), U.S. China expert
 * Donald Martiny (born 1953), artist
 * Tom Moulton (born 1940), record producer
 * Shirley Muldowney (born 1940), auto racer in International Motorsports Hall of Fame, born and raised in Schenectady
 * Mordecai Myers (1776–1871), mayor of Schenectady
 * Ray Nelson (born 1931), science-fiction author and cartoonist, born in Schenectady
 * Sterling Newberry, inventor, worked at General Electric in Schenectady
 * Eliphalet Nott (1773–1866), president of Union College
 * David Opdyke (born 1969), visual artist
 * John Palasik (1954–2022), Vermont state legislator, born in Schenectady
 * Jean-Hervé Peron (born 1949), Germany rock musician, lived in Schenectady in 1967–1968 as exchange student
 * Jacob Van Vechten Platto (1822–1898), Wisconsin state assemblyman
 * Joseph S. Pulver (1955–2020), novelist, poet, editor, born in Schenectady
 * Pat Riley (born 1945), NBA player, executive and Hall of Fame coach, was born in Rome, NY, lived in Schenectady
 * Don Rittner, author and historian, lived in Schenectady
 * Ron Rivest (born 1947), cryptographer, co-inventor of RSA cryptography
 * Lewis K. Rockefeller (1875–1948), U.S. representative, born in Schenectady
 * Al Romano (born 1954), football player
 * Margaret Rotundo (born 1949), Maine legislator
 * Mickey Rourke (born 1952), Academy Award-nominated actor, born in Schenectady
 * R. Tom Sawyer (1901–1986), engineer, writer and inventor of the first successful gas turbine locomotive, born in Schenectady
 * John Sayles (born 1950), film director and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, born and raised in Schenectady
 * Vincent J. Schaefer (1906–1993), chemist, meteorologist
 * Amalie Schoppe (1791–1858), German writer
 * Michael H. Schill (born 1958), president of the University of Oregon
 * Ben Schwartz (born 1981), actor, (Jean-Ralphio Saperstein on Parks and Recreation), graduated from Union College in 2003
 * William H. Seward (1801–1872), Abolitionist Republican Governor of New York, U.S. Senator, U.S. Secretary of State during and after the Civil War
 * Nehemiah Shumway (1761–1843), teacher and musical composer, lived in Schenectady
 * Kenneth Schermerhorn (1929–2005), conductor of Nashville Symphony, born in Schenectady
 * Simon J. Schermerhorn (1827–1901), U.S. Representative
 * Michael W. Schwartz (born 1983), wildlife conservation researcher for the National Geographic Society
 * Lawrence W. Sherman (born 1949), experimental criminologist and police educator
 * Gerald Stano (1951–1998), serial killer
 * Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865–1923), mathematician, electrical engineer, developer of alternating current
 * Brian U. Stratton (born 1957), mayor, director of the New York State Canal Corporation
 * Samuel S. Stratton (1916–1990), mayor, U.S. representative, father of Brian Stratton
 * John Sykes (born 1955), co-founder of MTV: Music Television, Chairman of The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, raised in Schenectady
 * Frank Taberski (1889–1941), billiards champion; born in Schenectady
 * Lynne Talley (born 1954), oceanographer, born in Schenectady
 * Marybeth Tinning (born 1942), serial killer
 * John Tudor (born 1954), MLB pitcher
 * Deborah Van Valkenburgh (born 1952), actress (The Warriors), was born in Schenectady
 * Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007), author, lived in Schenectady while working for GE in the early 1950s
 * Lee Wallard (1910–1963), race car driver
 * George H. Wells (1833–1905), Confederate officer, attorney and member of the Louisiana State Senate
 * Casper Wells (born 1984), MLB outfielder
 * George Westinghouse (1846–1914), engineer and inventor, grew up in Schenectady
 * Andrew Yang (born 1975), entrepreneur, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, 2021 New York City mayor candidate
 * Charles Yates (1808–1870), Union Army brigadier general during the American Civil War; nephew of Joseph Christopher Yates
 * Joseph Christopher Yates (1768–1837), governor of New York
 * Clifton Young (1917–1951), actor

title: Schenectady, New York


text:
Schenectady County, New York

Schenectady County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 158,061. The county seat is Schenectady. The name is from a Mohawk language word meaning "on the other side of the pine lands," a term that originally applied to Albany. The county is part of the Capital District region of the state.

Schenectady County is part of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area, and is west of the confluence of the Mohawk with the Hudson River. It includes territory on the north and the south sides of the Mohawk River.

History
This area of the river valley was historically occupied by the Mohawk people, the easternmost of the Five Nations comprising the Iroquois Confederacy or Haudenosaunee. They cultivated maize fields in the flats along the Mohawk River and had villages in the hills.

European settlement started in the present-day county by Dutch colonists in the 17th century; the village of Schenectady was founded in 1661. The fur traders in Albany kept a monopoly and prohibited settlers in Schenectady from the trade; those residents mostly became farmers. Other areas of the county were also developed for farming. The English enforced the Albany monopoly on the fur trade when they took over the New Netherland colony in 1664.

The English organized counties in the Province of New York in 1683; the area of the present-day Schenectady County was included in Albany County. Albany County contained an enormous area, including the northern part of New York State as well as all of the present State of Vermont and, in theory, extending westward to the Pacific Ocean. This county was reduced in size on July 3, 1766, by the creation of Cumberland County, and further on March 16, 1770, by the creation of Gloucester County, both containing territory now within the state of Vermont.

On March 12, 1772, Albany County was divided to form two other counties. The area of Schenectady County was still within the reduced Albany.

From 1772 to 1786 Albany County included, besides the present territory of Albany County, all of the present Columbia, Rensselaer, Saratoga, and Schenectady counties, parts of the present Greene and Washington counties, and a piece of what is now southwestern Vermont.

In 1786 Albany County was reduced in size when Columbia County was organized; and again in 1791 by the splitting off of Rensselaer and Saratoga counties and the transfer of the Town of Cambridge to Washington County. It was further reduced in size in 1795 by the splitting off of a part that was combined with a portion of Otsego County to create Schoharie County. It was further reduced in size in 1800 by the splitting off of a part that was combined with a portion of Ulster County to create Greene County.

In 1809, Schenectady County was split from Albany County and has kept its current borders. The city of Schenectady was designated as the county seat and is the only city in the county. Major European immigration began in the mid-19th century, with the arrival of Irish refugees from the Great Famine. More immigrants were attracted to the city for its industrial jobs, including those from Italy and Poland. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city became an industrial powerhouse and center of innovation, the headquarters of General Electric and other national corporations.

The city of Schenectady reached its peak of population in 1930 but the county reached its peak in 1970, according to US Census data (see table below for county data.) These differences reflect different settlement patterns and the development of suburban housing outside the city limits. The city of Schenectady lost many jobs and population in the late 20th century due to industrial and railroad restructuring; some people stayed in the county working at alternative positions, including commuting to the capital of Albany.

Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 209 sqmi, of which 205 sqmi is land and 4.9 sqmi (2.3%) is water.

Schenectady County is located in east central New York State, northwest of Albany, an area usually considered "Upstate".

Adjacent counties

 * Saratoga County - northeast
 * Albany County - southeast
 * Schoharie County - southwest
 * Montgomery County - west

Demographics
As of the census of 2010, there were 154,727 people, 60,684 households, and 39,918 families residing in the county. The population density was 275 /km2. There were 68,032 housing units at an average density of 122 /km2. The racial makeup of the county was 79.77% White, 9.79% Black or African American, 0.23% Native American, 3.97% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 1.21% from other races, and 2.00% from two or more races. 6.17% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 24.3% were of Italian, 14.7% Irish, 8.7% German, 6.4% Polish, 4.0 Puerto Rican, 3.9% English ancestry according to Census 2010. 87.6% spoke English, 4.7% Spanish and 1.1% Italian as their first language.

There were 60,684 households, out of which 30.00% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.50% were married couples living together, 14.30% had a female householder with no husband present, and 36.30% were non-families. 30.60% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.60% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.58 and the average family size was 3.17.

In the county, the population was spread out, with 24.30% under the age of 18, 7.90% from 18 to 24, 28.10% from 25 to 44, 23.00% from 45 to 64, and 16.60% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females there were 92.60 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.30 males.

The median income for a household in the county was $53,399 ($41,739-2000), and the median income for a family was $57,670. Males had a median income of $41,840 versus $29,339 for females. The per capita income for the county was $24,992. About 7.80% of families and 11.90% of the population were below the poverty line, including 17.70% of those under age 18 and 5.50% of those age 65 or over.

Government and politics

 * }

Voters in Schenectady County have typically leaned Democratic since the mid-20th century. They have given small to moderate leads to Democrats since 1988 in presidential elections. The congressman Paul Tonko is a Democrat. Schenectady County is a statewide bellwether in presidential elections, as it has voted for the statewide presidential winner in every presidential election since 1980. This is the longest such streak of any county in the state. Legislative authority is vested in the County Legislature, which consists of 15 members representing 8 communities, separated into four districts. The current composition of the Legislature is as follows (10 Democrats, 2 Republicans, and 3 Conservatives who caucus with the Democrats):

District 1 - Schenectady:
 * Richard Patierne (D)
 * Richard Ruzzo (D)
 * Margaret King (D)

District 2 - Schenectady:
 * Philip Fields (D), Deputy Chair
 * Gary Hughes (D), Majority Leader
 * Jeffrey M. McDonald (D), Vice Chair

District 3 - Glenville, Niskayuna, and Scotia:
 * Thomas Constantine (D)
 * Cathy Gatta (D)
 * Grant Socha (C)
 * Sara Mae Pratt (D)
 * Michelle Ostrelich (D)

District 4 - Duanesburg, Princetown, and Rotterdam:
 * Anthony Jasenski (D), Chair
 * Brian McGarry (R), Minority Leader
 * Randy Pascarella (C)
 * Holly Vellano (C)

County government
Schenectady County was governed by an elected Board of Supervisors until 1966, after voters approved a new county charter under New York's home rule law.

On January 2, 1966, a Board of Representatives replaced the county supervisors. In 1987, a 15-member legislature replaced the Board of Representatives. The legislature hires a county manager to oversee day-to-day government operations.

County services
The county operates the Schenectady County Public Library (SCPL), which consists of a central library and eight branches. http://www.scpl.org

Larger Settlements
† - County Seat

Towns

 * Duanesburg
 * Glenville
 * Niskayuna
 * Princetown
 * Rotterdam

Hamlets

 * Alplaus
 * Aqueduct
 * Quaker Street

title: Schenectady County, New York