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Karl Brandt

Karl Brandt (8 January 1904 – 2 June 1948) was a German physician and Schutzstaffel (SS) officer in Nazi Germany. Trained in surgery, Brandt joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and became Adolf Hitler's escort doctor in August 1934. A member of Hitler's inner circle at the Berghof, he was selected by Philipp Bouhler, the head of Hitler's Chancellery, to administer the Aktion T4 euthanasia program. Brandt was later appointed the Reich Commissioner of Health and Emergency Services (Bevollmächtigter für das Sanitäts- und Gesundheitswesen). Accused of involvement in human experimentation and other war crimes, Brandt was indicted in late 1946 and faced trial before a U.S. military tribunal along with 22 others in the Doctor's Trial. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged on 2 June 1948.

Early life
Brandt was born in Mulhouse in the then German Alsace-Lorraine territory (now in Haut-Rhin, France) into the family of a Prussian Army officer. He became a medical doctor and surgeon in 1928, specializing in head and spinal injuries. He joined the Nazi Party in January 1932, and first met Hitler in the summer of 1932. He became a member of the SA in 1933 and a member of the SS on 29 July 1934; appointed the officer rank of Untersturmführer. From the summer of 1934 forward, he was Hitler's "escort physician". Karl Brandt married Anni Rehborn, a champion swimmer, on 17 March 1934. They had one child, Karl Adolf Brandt (born 4 October 1935). Brandt was of the Protestant faith.

Career in Nazi Germany
In the context of the 1933 Nazi Germany law Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses (Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring), Brandt was one of the medical scientists who performed abortions in great numbers on women deemed genetically disordered, mentally or physically disabled or racially deficient, or whose unborn fetuses were expected to develop such genetic "defects". These abortions had been legalized, as long as no healthy Aryan fetuses were aborted. On 25 July 1939, Brandt authorized the first euthanization of the Nazi eugenics program, that of Gerhard Kretschmar, a 5-month-old disabled German infant.

On 1 September 1939, Brandt was appointed by Hitler as co-head of the Aktion T4 euthanasia program, with Philipp Bouhler. Additional power was afforded Brandt when on 28 July 1942, he was appointed Commissioner of Health and Emergency Services (Bevollmächtigter für das Sanitäts- und Gesundheitswesen) by Hitler and was thereafter only bound by the Führer's instructions. He received regular promotions in the SS; by April 1944, Brandt was a SS-Gruppenführer in the Allgemeine SS and a SS-Brigadeführer in the Waffen-SS. On 16 April 1945, he was arrested by the Gestapo for moving his family out of Berlin so they could surrender to American forces. Brandt was condemned to death by a military court and then sent to Kiel. He was released from arrest by order of Karl Dönitz on 2 May. He was placed under arrest by the British on 23 May.

Brandt's medical ethics
Brandt's medical ethics, particularly regarding euthanasia, were influenced by Alfred Hoche, whose courses he attended. Like many other German doctors of the period, Brandt came to believe that the health of society as a whole should take precedence over that of its individual members. Because society was viewed as an organism that had to be cured, its weakest, most invalid and incurable members were only parts that should be removed. Such hapless creatures should therefore be granted a "merciful death" (Gnadentod). In addition to these considerations, Brandt's explanation at his trial for his criminal actions – particularly ordering experimentation on human beings – was that "... Any personal code of ethics must give way to the total character of the war". Historian Horst Freyhofer asserts that, in the absence of at least Brandt's tacit approval, it is highly unlikely that the grotesque and cruel medical experiments for which the Nazi doctors are infamous, could have been performed. Brandt and Hitler discussed multiple killing techniques during the initial planning of the euthanasia program, during which Hitler asked Brandt, "which is the most humane way?" Brandt suggested the use of carbon monoxide gas, to which Hitler gave his approval. Hitler instructed Brandt to contact other physicians and begin to coordinate the mass killings.

Life in the inner circle
Karl Brandt and his wife Anni were members of Hitler's inner circle at Berchtesgaden where Hitler maintained his private residence known as the Berghof. This very exclusive group functioned as Hitler's de facto family circle. It included Eva Braun, Albert Speer, his wife Margarete, Theodor Morell, Martin Bormann, Hitler's photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's adjutants and his secretaries. Brandt and Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer were good friends as the two shared technocratic dispositions about their work. Brandt looked at killing "useless eaters" and the disabled as a means to an end, namely in the interest of public health. Similarly, Speer viewed the use of concentration camp slave labor for his defense and building projects in much the same way. As members of this inner circle, the Brandts had a residence near the Berghof and spent considerable time there when Hitler was present. Despite Brandt's closeness to Hitler, the dictator was furious when he learned shortly before the end of the war that the doctor had sent Anni and their son toward the American lines in hopes of evading capture by the Russians. Hitler charged him with treason and Brandt underwent a summary trial and was sentenced to death. Only the intervention of Heinrich Himmler, and Speer saved him from execution, at the time.

Trial and execution

Brandt was tried along with twenty-two others at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. The trial was officially titled United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al., but is more commonly referred to as the "Doctors' Trial"; it began on 9 December 1946. He was charged with four counts:

 * 1) Conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity as described in counts 2 and 3;
 * 2) War crimes: performing medical experiments, without the subjects' consent, on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. Also planning and performing the mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, stigmatized as aged, insane, incurably ill, deformed, and so on, by gas, lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums during the Euthanasia Program and participating in the mass murder of concentration camp inmates;
 * 3) Crimes against humanity: committing crimes described under count 2 also on German nationals;
 * 4) Membership in a criminal organization, the SS. The charges against him included special responsibility for, and participation in, Freezing, Malaria, LOST Gas, Sulfanilamide, Bone, Muscle and Nerve Regeneration and Bone Transplantation, Sea-Water, Epidemic Jaundice, Sterilization, and Typhus Experiments.

As chief of counsel for the prosecution Telford Taylor put it:"'The defendants in this case are charged with murders, tortures, and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science. The victims of these crimes are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A handful only are still alive; a few of the survivors will appear in this courtroom. But most of these miserable victims were slaughtered outright or died in the course of the tortures to which they were subjected. For the most part they are nameless dead. To their murderers, these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals.'"After a defence led by Robert Servatius, on 19 August 1947, Brandt was found guilty on counts 2-4 of the indictment. With six others, he was sentenced to death. Numerous pleas for clemency on Brandt's behalf were made by dozens of people, including representatives of the churches, such as Eugen Gerstenmaier, the chairman of the relief organization of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Amongst Brandt's advocates were numerous medical health professionals, such as surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch, renowned pathologist Robert Roesle, the pharmacologist Wolfgang Hübner, the gynaecologist Walter Stoeckel, and the historian of medicine Paul Diepgen. Other noted petitioners included various other physiologists, pathologists and surgeons. Ultimately, Lucius D. Clay, the governor of the American occupation zone in Germany, rejected all pleas for mercy. He confirmed the death sentence for Brandt, as well as those for his codefendants.

Clay stated:"'Regardless of what inner convictions Dr Brandt may have held, he was directly responsible for much of the suffering and death caused to the unfortunate concentration camp victims chosen to be used as subjects in brutal medical experiments. In justice to these persons who underwent torture and death, I am unable to grant clemency in this case.'"

Brandt and six other defendants were executed by hanging at Landsberg Prison on 2 June 1948. While on the gallows, he remarked: "It is no shame to stand upon the scaffold. This is nothing but political revenge. I have served my Fatherland as others before me." As he continued to talk, prison officials told him he'd run out of time and that he needed to stop. However, Brandt refused to end his speech. Eventually, a hood was placed over his head while he continued to talk and he was hanged.

title: Karl Brandt


text:
ACIS

The 3D ACIS Modeler (ACIS) is a geometric modeling kernel developed by Spatial Corporation (formerly Spatial Technology), part of Dassault Systemes. ACIS is used by many software developers in industries such as computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), computer-aided engineering (CAE), architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), coordinate-measuring machine (CMM), 3D animation, and shipbuilding. ACIS provides software developers and manufacturers the underlying 3D modeling functionality.

ACIS features an open, object-oriented C++ architecture that enables robust, 3D modelling capabilities. ACIS is used to construct applications with hybrid modeling features, since it integrates wireframe model, surface, and solid modeling functionality with both manifold and non-manifold topology, and a rich set of geometric operations.

History
As a geometric kernel, ACIS is a second generation system, coming after the first generation Romulus.

There are several versions about what the word ACIS actually stands for, or whether it is an acronym at all. The most popular version is that ACIS stands for Alan, Charles, Ian's System (Alan Grayer, Charles Lang and Ian Braid as part of Three-Space Ltd.), or Alan, Charles, Ian and Spatial (as the system was later on sold to Spatial Technology, now Spatial Corp). According to a close source the name actually stands for Alan, Charles, Ian, Sowar, with Sowar coming from Dick Sowar, founder of Spatial Technology. However, when asked, the creators of ACIS would simply suggest that its name was derived from Greek mythology (See also Acis).

In 1985 Alan Grayer, Charles Lang and Ian Braid (creators of Romulus and Romulus-D) formed Three-Space Ltd. (Cambridge, England) which had been retained by Dick Sowar's Spatial Technology (which had been founded by Sowar in 1986) to develop the ACIS solid modeling kernel for Spatial Technology's Strata CAM software. The first version of ACIS was released in 1989 and was quickly licensed by HP for integration into its ME CAD software.

In late 2000, around the time when Spatial was acquired by Dassault Systemes, the ACIS file format changed slightly and was no longer openly published.

Architecture
A software component is a functionally specialized unit of software—a collection of software items (functions, classes, etc.) grouped together to serve some distinct purpose. It serves as a constituent part of a whole software system or product. A product is one or more software components that are assembled together and sold as a package. Components can be arranged in different combinations to form different products.

The ACIS product line is designed using software component technology, which allows an application to use only the components it requires. In some cases, more than one component is available (either from Spatial or third party vendors) for a given purpose, so application developers can use the component that best meets their needs. For example, several rendering components are available from Spatial, and developers use the one that works best for their platform or application.

ACIS Modeler
ACIS core functionality can be subclassified into three categories, namely:

3D Modelling

 * Extrude/revolve/sweep sets of 2D curves into complex surfaces or solids.
 * Fillet and chamfer between faces and along edges in surface and solid models.
 * Fit surfaces to a closed network of curves.
 * Generate patterns of repetitive shapes.
 * Hollow solids and thicken surfaces.
 * Interactively bend, twist, stretch, and warp combinations of curves, surfaces, and solids.
 * Intersect/subtract/unite any combination of curves, surfaces, and solids.
 * Loft surfaces to fit a set of profile curves.
 * Taper/offset/move surfaces in a model.

3D Model Management

 * Attach user-defined data to any level of a model.
 * Track geometry and topology changes.
 * Calculate mass and volume.
 * Model sub-regions of a solid using cellular topology.
 * Unlimited undo/redo with independent history streams.

3D Model Visualization

 * Tessellate surface geometry into polygonal mesh representation.
 * Create advanced surfacing capabilities with the optional Deformable Modeling component.
 * Generate precise 2D projections with hidden line removal using optional PHL V5 component.
 * Develop graphical applications

ACIS Modeler Extensions

 * CGM Polyhedra: CGM Polyhedra is an add-on to the 3D ACIS Modeler combining polyhedral and B-rep modeling. Utilizing the same interfaces that 3D ACIS Modeler users are already familiar with, existing and new customers can integrate approximated polyhedral data to their 3D printing, subtractive manufacturing, analysis, and other workflows.

 * 3D Deformable Modeling: 3D Deformable Modeling is an interactive sculpting tool for shaping 3D models. Included as part of Spatial's suite of 3D modeling development technologies, 3D Deformable Modeling uses local and global editing features that allow for the easy creation and manipulation of free-form B-spline and NURBS curves and surfaces.

 * Advanced Covering: Advanced Covering is a feature of Deformable Modeling that is now available as a standalone add-on for the 3D ACIS Modeler. This single API uses sophisticated algorithms to create high-quality n-sided surfaces that meet user-specified tolerances for position and continuity on boundaries and on optional internal guiding geometry. Advanced Covering allows a surface to be fit onto circuits (collections of edges that form closed loops) in solid or wire bodies, which is useful in consumer product design. Among other uses, Advanced Covering can be used for end-capping, post-translation corrections, and surface definition from curve data.

 * Defeaturing: Defeaturing automatically identifies and removes small features that CAE analysts typically want to eliminate from the 3D model prior to meshing. Analysts frequently work from the same models that are used for design and manufacture, but these models often carry much more detail than is necessary for simulation or analysis purposes. By removing unnecessary detail, Defeaturing simplifies the model, a process that typically is done manually at significant cost.

 * CGM HLR: CGM HLR is a hidden line removal (HLR) solution from Spatial based on CATIA V6 technology. CGM HLR is an ACIS-dependent development technology - an ACIS license is required. Though 3D is now the de facto CAD standard in most engineering disciplines, 2D still has a place in industries such as technical illustration, manufacturing, and architecture. Since 3D models are the typical primary output for CAD design, users in these industries require an efficient and accurate method of generating 2D computational drawings directly from the 3D models. Hidden line removal (HLR) is an important aspect of creating an accurate 2D representation from a 3D model. Using HLR, the converted model only displays those parts visible from a given perspective; hidden (or occluded) edges normally included in a 3D model representation are removed, or drawn in a line style that indicates their obscured position.

Save File Types
ACIS supports two kinds of save files, Standard ACIS Text (SAT), and Standard ACIS Binary (SAB). The two formats store identical information, so the term SAT file is generally used to refer to either when no distinction is needed.

SAT files are ASCII text files that may be viewed with a simple text editor. A SAT file contains carriage returns, white space and other formatting that makes it readable to the human eye. A SAT file has a .sat file extension.

SAB files cannot be viewed with a simple text editor and are meant for compactness and not for human readability. A SAB file has a .sab file extension. A SAB file uses delimiters between elements and binary tags, without additional formatting.

Structure of the Save File
Specification of SAT format for version 7.0 (circa 2001) has been made publicly available. This allowed external applications, even those not based on ACIS, accessing the data stored in such files. The basic information needed to understand the SAT file format, such as the structure of the save file format, how the data is encapsulated, the types of data written, subtypes and references, is available from this document. However the newer version of ACIS use modified format of SAT files whose specification is not publicly available. Thus reading of modern SAT files requires either using native ACIS library or reverse engineering of the format.

A save file contains:
 * a three-line header
 * entity records, representing the bulk of the data
 * optionally, a begin history data marker
 * optionally, old entity records needed for history and rollback
 * optionally, an end history data marker
 * an end marker

Beginning with ACIS Release 6.3, it is required that the product ID and units be populated for the file header before you can save a SAT file.

Version Numbers and ACIS Releases
ACIS is currently being developed by Spatial. They maintain the concept of a current version (release) number in ACIS, as well as a save version number. The save version allows one to create a SAT save file that can be read by a previous version of ACIS.

Beginning with ACIS Release 4.0, the SAT save file format did not change with minor releases, only with major releases. This allowed applications that are based upon the same major version of ACIS to exchange data without being concerned about the save version. To provide this interoperability in a simple implementation, ACIS save files have contained a symbol that accurately identified the major version number, but not the minor version. This meant that applications created using the same major version of ACIS would produce compatible save files, regardless of their minor versions. This was accomplished by simply not incrementing the internal minor version number between major versions.

Beginning with Release 7.0, ACIS started again providing accurate major, minor, and point version numbers. Beginning with Release 2016 1.0 in September, 2015, Spatial updated to Semantic Versioning, and now describes versions by the model year and major, minor and point releases within that model year.

To summarize how release numbers and SAT changes are related:
 * Major release: SAT file changes may be made; significant functionality changes likely; may require significant changes to existing applications
 * Minor release: No SAT file changes are made; may provide new functionality; may require some minimal changes to existing applications
 * Point release: Minor changes only (bug fixes). (Also known as service packs).

Adoption
In 2023 the following software uses ACIS as its geometric kernel/engine: Alibre Design, BricsCAD, SpaceClaim, TurboCAD, Cimatron and Vertex.

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

title: ACIS


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Mustard gas

Mustard gas or sulfur mustard are names commonly used for the organosulfur chemical compound bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide, which has the chemical structure S(CH2CH2Cl)2, as well as other species. In the wider sense, compounds with the substituents \sSCH2CH2X or \sN(CH2CH2X)2 are known as sulfur mustards or nitrogen mustards, respectively, where X = Cl or Br. Such compounds are potent alkylating agents, which can interfere with several biological processes. Also known as mustard agents, this family of compounds comprises infamous cytotoxins and blister agents with a long history of use as chemical weapons. The name mustard gas is technically incorrect; the substances, when dispersed, are often not gases but a fine mist of liquid droplets. Sulfur mustards are viscous liquids at room temperature and have an odor resembling mustard plants, garlic, or horseradish, hence the name. When pure, they are colorless, but when used in impure forms, such as in warfare, they are usually yellow-brown. Mustard gases form blisters on exposed skin and in the lungs, often resulting in prolonged illness ending in death.

History as chemical weapons
Sulfur mustard is a type of chemical warfare agent. As a chemical weapon, mustard gas was first used in World War I, and has been used in several armed conflicts since then, including the Iran–Iraq War, resulting in more than 100,000 casualties. Today, sulfur-based and nitrogen-based mustard agents are regulated under Schedule 1 of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, as substances with few uses other than in chemical warfare (though since then, mustard gas has been found to be useful in cancer chemotherapy ). Mustard agents can be deployed by means of artillery shells, aerial bombs, rockets, or by spraying from aircraft.

Mechanism of cellular toxicity
Sulfur mustards readily eliminate chloride ions by intramolecular nucleophilic substitution to form cyclic sulfonium ions. These very reactive intermediates tend to permanently alkylate nucleotides in DNA strands, which can prevent cellular division, leading to programmed cell death. Alternatively, if cell death is not immediate, the damaged DNA can lead to the development of cancer. Oxidative stress would be another pathology involved in mustard gas toxicity.

In the wider sense, compounds with the structural element BC2H4X, where X is any leaving group and B is a Lewis base, are known as mustards. Such compounds can form cyclic "onium" ions (sulfonium, ammonium, etc.) that are good alkylating agents. Other such compounds are bis(2-haloethyl)ethers (oxygen mustards), the (2-haloethyl)amines (nitrogen mustards), and sesquimustard, which has two α-chloroethyl thioether groups (ClC2H4S−) connected by an ethylene bridge (−C2H4−). These compounds have a similar ability to alkylate DNA, but their physical properties vary.

Physiological effects

Mustard gases react with DNA, which interferes with cellular division and can lead to mutations.

Mustard gases are extremely toxic and have powerful blistering effects on victims. Their alkylating capabilities make them strongly carcinogenic and mutagenic. Furthermore, they are highly lipophilic, which accelerates their absorption into the body. Because people exposed to mustard agents rarely suffer immediate symptoms, and contaminated areas may appear completely normal, victims can unknowingly receive high doses. Within 24 hours of exposure, they experience intense itching and skin irritation. If this irritation goes untreated, blisters filled with pus can form wherever the agent contacted the skin. These are chemical burns and are very debilitating. Mustard gases easily penetrate clothing fabrics such as wool or cotton, so it is not only exposed skin that gets burned. If the victim's eyes were exposed, then they become sore, starting with conjunctivitis (also known as pink eye), after which the eyelids swell, resulting in temporary blindness. Extreme ocular exposure to mustard gas vapors may result in corneal ulceration, anterior chamber scarring, and neovascularization. In these severe and infrequent cases, corneal transplantation has been used as a treatment option. Miosis, when the pupil constricts more than usual, may also occur, which is probably the result of the cholinomimetic activity of mustard. At very high concentrations, if inhaled, mustard agents cause bleeding and blistering within the respiratory system, damaging mucous membranes and causing pulmonary edema. Depending on the level of contamination, mustard agent burns can vary between first and second degree burns, though they can also be every bit as severe, disfiguring, and dangerous as third degree burns. Burns that are severe (i.e. covering more than 50% of the victim's skin) are often fatal, with death occurring after only days or weeks. Mild or moderate exposure to mustard gases is unlikely to kill, though victims still require lengthy periods of medical treatment and convalescence before recovery is complete.

Mustard gases' carcinogenic and mutagenic effects mean that victims, even if they fully recover, have an increased risk of developing cancer later in life. In a study of patients 25 years after wartime exposure to chemical weaponry, c-DNA microarray profiling indicated that 122 genes were significantly mutated in the lungs and airways of mustard gas victims. Those genes all correspond to functions commonly affected by mustard gas exposure, including apoptosis, inflammation, and stress responses. The long-term ocular complications include burning, tearing, itching, photophobia, presbyopia, pain, and foreign-body sensations. Mustard gases' blistering effects can be neutralized by oxidation or chlorination, using household bleach (sodium hypochlorite), or by nucleophilic attack using decontamination solutions such as "DS2" (2% NaOH, 70% diethylenetriamine, 28% 2-methoxyethanol). After initial decontamination of the victim's wounds is complete, medical treatment is similar to that required by any conventional burn. The degree of pain and discomfort suffered by the victim is also comparable. Mustard agent burns do not heal quickly, and (as with other types of burns) present a risk of sepsis caused by pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The mechanisms behind mustard gas's effect on endothelial cells are still being studied, but recent studies have shown that high levels of exposure can induce high rates of both necrosis and apoptosis. In vitro tests have shown that at low concentrations of mustard gas, where apoptosis is the predominant result of exposure, pretreatment with 50 mM N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) was able to decrease the rate of apoptosis. NAC protects actin filaments from reorganization by mustard gas, demonstrating that actin filaments play a large role in the severe burns observed in victims.

A British nurse treating soldiers with mustard agent burns during World War I commented:

"They cannot be bandaged or touched. We cover them with a tent of propped-up sheets. Gas burns must be agonizing because usually the other cases do not complain, even with the worst wounds, but gas cases are invariably beyond endurance and they cannot help crying out."

Formulations
In its history, various types and mixtures of mustard gas have been employed. These include:

 * H – Also known as HS ("Hun Stuff") or Levinstein mustard. This is named after the inventor of the "quick but dirty" Levinstein Process for manufacture, reacting dry ethylene with disulfur dichloride under controlled conditions. Undistilled mustard gas contains 20–30% impurities, which means it does not store as well as HD. Also, as it decomposes, it increases in vapor pressure, making the munition it is contained in likely to split, especially along a seam, releasing the agent to the atmosphere.
 * HD – Codenamed Pyro by the British, and Distilled Mustard by the US. Distilled mustard of 95% or higher purity. The term "mustard gas" usually refers to this variety of mustard.
 * HT – Codenamed Runcol by the British, and Mustard T- mixture by the US. A mixture of 60% HD mustard and 40% O-mustard, a related vesicant with lower freezing point, lower volatility and similar vesicant characteristics.
 * HL – A blend of distilled mustard (HD) and lewisite (L), originally intended for use in winter conditions due to its lower freezing point compared to the pure substances. The lewisite component of HL was used as a form of antifreeze.
 * HQ – A blend of distilled mustard (HD) and sesquimustard (Q) (Gates and Moore 1946).
 * Yellow Cross – any of several blends containing sulfur mustard and sometimes arsine agents, along with solvents and other additives.

Development
Mustard gases were possibly developed as early as 1822 by César-Mansuète Despretz (1798–1863). Despretz described the reaction of sulfur dichloride and ethylene but never made mention of any irritating properties of the reaction product. In 1854, another French chemist, Alfred Riche (1829–1908), repeated this procedure, also without describing any adverse physiological properties. In 1860, the British scientist Frederick Guthrie synthesized and characterized the mustard agent compound and noted its irritating properties, especially in tasting. Also in 1860, chemist Albert Niemann, known as a pioneer in cocaine chemistry, repeated the reaction, and recorded blister-forming properties. In 1886, Viktor Meyer published a paper describing a synthesis that produced good yields. He combined 2-chloroethanol with aqueous potassium sulfide, and then treated the resulting thiodiglycol with phosphorus trichloride. The purity of this compound was much higher and consequently the adverse health effects upon exposure were much more severe. These symptoms presented themselves in his assistant, and in order to rule out the possibility that his assistant was suffering from a mental illness (psychosomatic symptoms), Meyer had this compound tested on laboratory rabbits, most of which died. In 1913, the English chemist Hans Thacher Clarke (known for the Eschweiler-Clarke reaction) replaced the phosphorus trichloride with hydrochloric acid in Meyer's formulation while working with Emil Fischer in Berlin. Clarke was hospitalized for two months for burns after one of his flasks broke. According to Meyer, Fischer's report on this accident to the German Chemical Society sent the German Empire on the road to chemical weapons.

Mustard gas can have the effect of turning a patient's skin different colors, including shades of red, orange, pink, and in unusual cases, blue. The German Empire during World War I relied on the Meyer-Clarke method because 2-chloroethanol was readily available from the German dye industry of that time.

Use

Mustard gas was first used in World War I by the German army against British and Canadian soldiers near Ypres, Belgium, on July 12, 1917. Later also against the French Second Army. Yperite is "a name used by the French, because the compound was first used at Ypres." The Allies did not use mustard gas until November 1917 at Cambrai, France, after the armies had captured a stockpile of German mustard shells. It took the British more than a year to develop their own mustard agent weapon, with production of the chemicals centred on Avonmouth Docks (the only option available to the British was the Despretz–Niemann–Guthrie process). This was used first in September 1918 during the breaking of the Hindenburg Line.

Mustard gas was originally assigned the name LOST, after the scientists Wilhelm Lommel and Wilhelm Steinkopf, who developed a method of large-scale production for the Imperial German Army in 1916.

Mustard gas was dispersed as an aerosol in a mixture with other chemicals, giving it a yellow-brown color. Mustard agent has also been dispersed in such munitions as aerial bombs, land mines, mortar rounds, artillery shells, and rockets. Exposure to mustard agent was lethal in about 1% of cases. Its effectiveness was as an incapacitating agent. The early countermeasures against mustard agent were relatively ineffective, since a soldier wearing a gas mask was not protected against absorbing it through his skin and being blistered. A common countermeasure was using a urine-soaked mask or facecloth to prevent or reduce injury, a readily available remedy attested by soldiers in documentaries (e.g. They Shall Not Grow Old in 2018) and others (such as forward aid nurses) interviewed between 1947 and 1981 by the British Broadcasting Corporation for various World War One history programs; however, the effectiveness of this measure is unclear.

Mustard gas can remain in the ground for weeks, and it continues to cause ill effects. If mustard agent contaminates one's clothing and equipment while cold, then other people with whom they share an enclosed space could become poisoned as contaminated items warm up enough material to become an airborne toxic agent. An example of this was depicted in a British and Canadian documentary about life in the trenches, particularly once the "sousterrain" (subways and berthing areas underground) were completed in Belgium and France. Towards the end of World War I, mustard agent was used in high concentrations as an area-denial weapon that forced troops to abandon heavily contaminated areas.

Since World War I, mustard gas has been used in several wars and other conflicts, usually against people who cannot retaliate in kind:

 * United Kingdom against the Red Army in 1919
 * Alleged British use in Mesopotamia in 1920
 * Spain against the Rifian resistance in Morocco during the Rif War of 1921–27 (see also: Spanish use of chemical weapons in the Rif War)
 * Italy in Libya in 1930
 * The Soviet Union in Xinjiang, Republic of China, during the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang against the 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) in 1934, and also in the Xinjiang War (1937) in 1936–37
 * Italy against Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1935-1936
 * The Japanese Empire against China in 1937–1945
 * The US military conducted experiments with chemical weapons like lewisite and mustard gas on Japanese American, Puerto Rican and African Americans in the US military in World War II to see how non-white races would react to being mustard gassed, with Rollin Edwards describing it as "It felt like you were on fire, Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And then some of the guys fainted. And finally they opened the door and let us out, and the guys were just, they were in bad shape." and "It took all the skin off your hands. Your hands just rotted".
 * After WWII, stockpiled mustard gas was dumped by the British in the sea near Port Elizabeth, South Africa, resulting in many cases of burns among trawler crews
 * The United States Government tested effectiveness on US Naval recruits in a laboratory setting at The Great Lakes Naval Base, June 3, 1945
 * The 2 December 1943 air raid on Bari destroyed an Allied stockpile of mustard gas on the SS John Harvey, killing 83 and hospitalizing 628.
 * Egypt against North Yemen in 1963–1967
 * Iraq against Kurds in the town of Halabja during the Halabja chemical attack in 1988
 * Iraq against Iranians in 1983–1988
 * Possibly in Sudan against insurgents in the civil war, in 1995 and 1997.
 * In the Iraq War, abandoned stockpiles of mustard gas shells were destroyed in the open air, and were used against Coalition forces in roadside bombs.
 * By ISIS forces against Kurdish forces in Iraq in August 2015.
 * By ISIS against another rebel group in the town of Mare' in 2015.
 * According to Syrian state media, by ISIS against the Syrian Army during the battle in Deir ez-Zor in 2016.

The use of toxic gases or other chemicals, including mustard gas, during warfare is known as chemical warfare, and this kind of warfare was prohibited by the Geneva Protocol of 1925, and also by the later Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. The latter agreement also prohibits the development, production, stockpiling, and sale of such weapons.

In September 2012, a US official stated that the rebel militant group ISIS was manufacturing and using mustard gas in Syria and Iraq, which was allegedly confirmed by the group's head of chemical weapons development, Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, who has since been captured.

Development of the first chemotherapy drug
As early as 1919 it was known that mustard agent was a suppressor of hematopoiesis. In addition, autopsies performed on 75 soldiers who had died of mustard agent during World War I were done by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania who reported decreased counts of white blood cells. This led the American Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) to finance the biology and chemistry departments at Yale University to conduct research on the use of chemical warfare during World War II.

As a part of this effort, the group investigated nitrogen mustard as a therapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma and other types of lymphoma and leukemia, and this compound was tried out on its first human patient in December 1942. The results of this study were not published until 1946, when they were declassified. In a parallel track, after the air raid on Bari in December 1943, the doctors of the U.S. Army noted that white blood cell counts were reduced in their patients. Some years after World War II was over, the incident in Bari and the work of the Yale University group with nitrogen mustard converged, and this prompted a search for other similar chemical compounds. Due to its use in previous studies, the nitrogen mustard called "HN2" became the first cancer chemotherapy drug, chlormethine (also known as mechlorethamine, mustine) to be used. Chlormethine and other mustard gas molecules are still used to this day as an chemotherapy agent albeit they have largely been replaced with more safe chemotherapy drugs like cisplatin and carboplatin.

Disposal
In the United States, storage and incineration of mustard gas and other chemical weapons were carried out by the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency. Disposal projects at the two remaining American chemical weapons sites were carried out near Richmond, Kentucky, and Pueblo, Colorado. Although not yet declassified, toxicology specialists who dealt with the accidental puncturing of World War I gas stockpiles add that Air Force bases in Colorado have been made available to assist veterans of the 2003 American war with Iraq in which many Marines were exposed to gas as caches of up to 25,000 lb. The United Nations definition of a weapon of mass destruction for mustard gas is 30000 lb, typically the Marines and other coalition allies discovered caches of 25,000 lb located across a road from 5,000 lb caches as multiple memoirs attest. These were discovered by the assistance of host country allies, or through leaks affecting personnel in an area with a weapon and gas cache called an ASP.

New detection techniques are being developed in order to detect the presence of mustard gas and its metabolites. The technology is portable and detects small quantities of the hazardous waste and its oxidized products, which are notorious for harming unsuspecting civilians. The immunochromatographic assay would eliminate the need for expensive, time-consuming lab tests and enable easy-to-read tests to protect civilians from sulfur-mustard dumping sites.

In 1946, 10,000 drums of mustard gas (2,800 tonnes) stored at the production facility of Stormont Chemicals in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, were loaded onto 187 boxcars for the 900 mi journey to be buried at sea on board a 400 foot long barge 40 mi south of Sable Island, southeast of Halifax, at a depth of 600 fathom. The dump location is 42 degrees, 50 minutes north by 60 degrees, 12 minutes west.

A large British stockpile of old mustard agent that had been made and stored since World War I at M. S. Factory, Valley near Rhydymwyn in Flintshire, Wales, was destroyed in 1958.

Most of the mustard gas found in Germany after World War II was dumped into the Baltic Sea. Between 1966 and 2002, fishermen have found about 700 chemical weapons in the region of Bornholm, most of which contain mustard gas. One of the more frequently dumped weapons was "Sprühbüchse 37" (SprüBü37, Spray Can 37, 1937 being the year of its fielding with the German Army). These weapons contain mustard gas mixed with a thickener, which gives it a tar-like viscosity. When the content of the SprüBü37 comes in contact with water, only the mustard gas in the outer layers of the lumps of viscous mustard hydrolyzes, leaving behind amber-colored residues that still contain most of the active mustard gas. On mechanically breaking these lumps (e.g., with the drag board of a fishing net or by the human hand) the enclosed mustard gas is still as active as it had been at the time the weapon was dumped. These lumps, when washed ashore, can be mistaken for amber, which can lead to severe health problems. Artillery shells containing mustard gas and other toxic ammunition from World War I (as well as conventional explosives) can still be found in France and Belgium. These were formerly disposed of by explosion undersea, but since the current environmental regulations prohibit this, the French government is building an automated factory to dispose of the accumulation of chemical shells.

In 1972, the U.S. Congress banned the practice of disposing of chemical weapons into the ocean by the United States. 29,000 tons of nerve and mustard agents had already been dumped into the ocean off the United States by the U.S. Army. According to a report created in 1998 by William Brankowitz, a deputy project manager in the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency, the army created at least 26 chemical weapons dumping sites in the ocean offshore from at least 11 states on both the East Coast and the West Coast (in Operation CHASE, Operation Geranium, etc.). In addition, due to poor recordkeeping, about one-half of the sites have only their rough locations known.

In June 1997, India declared its stock of chemical weapons of 1044 tonne of mustard gas. By the end of 2006, India had destroyed more than 75 percent of its chemical weapons/material stockpile and was granted extension for destroying the remaining stocks by April 2009 and was expected to achieve 100 percent destruction within that time frame. India informed the United Nations in May 2009 that it had destroyed its stockpile of chemical weapons in compliance with the international Chemical Weapons Convention. With this India has become the third country after South Korea and Albania to do so. This was cross-checked by inspectors of the United Nations.

Producing or stockpiling mustard gas is prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention. When the convention entered force in 1997, the parties declared worldwide stockpiles of 17,440 tonnes of mustard gas. As of December 2015, 86% of these stockpiles had been destroyed.

A significant portion of the United States' mustard agent stockpile was stored at the Edgewood Area of Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Approximately 1,621 tons of mustard agents were stored in one-ton containers on the base under heavy guard. A chemical neutralization plant was built on the proving ground and neutralized the last of this stockpile in February 2005. This stockpile had priority because of the potential for quick reduction of risk to the community. The nearest schools were fitted with overpressurization machinery to protect the students and faculty in the event of a catastrophic explosion and fire at the site. These projects, as well as planning, equipment, and training assistance, were provided to the surrounding community as a part of the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP), a joint program of the Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Unexploded shells containing mustard gases and other chemical agents are still present in several test ranges in proximity to schools in the Edgewood area, but the smaller amounts of poison gas (4 to 14 lb) present considerably lower risks. These remnants are being detected and excavated systematically for disposal. The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency oversaw disposal of several other chemical weapons stockpiles located across the United States in compliance with international chemical weapons treaties. These include the complete incineration of the chemical weapons stockpiled in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, and Oregon. Earlier, this agency had also completed destruction of the chemical weapons stockpile located on Johnston Atoll located south of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The largest mustard agent stockpile, at approximately 6,200 short tons, was stored at the Deseret Chemical Depot in northern Utah. The incineration of this stockpile began in 2006. In May 2011, the last of the mustard agents in the stockpile were incinerated at the Deseret Chemical Depot, and the last artillery shells containing mustard gas were incinerated in January 2012.

In 2008, many empty aerial bombs that contained mustard gas were found in an excavation at the Marrangaroo Army Base just west of Sydney, Australia. In 2009, a mining survey near Chinchilla, Queensland, uncovered 144 105-millimeter howitzer shells, some containing "Mustard H", that had been buried by the U.S. Army during World War II.

In 2014, a collection of 200 bombs was found near the Flemish villages of Passendale and Moorslede. The majority of the bombs were filled with mustard agents. The bombs were left over from the German army and were meant to be used in the Battle of Passchendaele in World War I. It was the largest collection of chemical weapons ever found in Belgium.

A large amount of chemical weapons, including mustard gas, was found in a neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The cleanup was completed in 2021.

Post-war accidental exposure
In 2002, an archaeologist at the Presidio Trust archaeology lab in San Francisco was exposed to mustard gas, which had been dug up at the Presidio of San Francisco, a former military base.

In 2010, a clamming boat pulled up some old artillery shells of World War I from the Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island, New York. Multiple fishermen suffered from blistering and respiratory irritation severe enough to require hospitalization.

WWII-era tests on men
From 1943 to 1944, mustard agent experiments were performed on Australian service volunteers in tropical Queensland, Australia, by British Army and American experimenters, resulting in some severe injuries. One test site, the Brook Islands National Park, was chosen to simulate Pacific islands held by the Imperial Japanese Army.

The United States tested sulfur mustards and other chemical agents including nitrogen mustards and lewisite on up to 60,000 servicemen during and after WWII. The experiments were classified secret and as with Agent Orange, claims for medical care and compensation were routinely denied, even after the WWII-era tests were declassified in 1993. The Department of Veterans Affairs stated that it would contact 4,000 surviving test subjects but failed to do so, eventually only contacting 600. Skin cancer, severe eczema, leukemia, and chronic breathing problems plagued the test subjects, some of whom were as young as 19 at the time of the tests, until their deaths, but even those who had previously filed claims with the VA went without compensation. African American servicemen were tested alongside white men in separate trials to determine whether their skin color would afford them a degree of immunity to the agents, and Nisei servicemen, some of whom had joined after their release from Japanese American Internment Camps were tested to determine susceptibility of Japanese military personnel to these agents. These tests also included Puerto Rican subjects.

Detection in biological fluids
Concentrations of thiodiglycol in urine have been used to confirm a diagnosis of chemical poisoning in hospitalized victims. The presence in urine of 1,1'-sulfonylbismethylthioethane (SBMTE), a conjugation product with glutathione, is considered a more specific marker, since this metabolite is not found in specimens from unexposed persons. In one case, intact mustard gas was detected in postmortem fluids and tissues of a man who died one week post-exposure.

title: Mustard gas


text:
Robert Tarjan

Robert Endre Tarjan (born April 30, 1948) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is the discoverer of several graph theory algorithms, including his strongly connected components algorithm, and co-inventor of both splay trees and Fibonacci heaps. Tarjan is currently the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University.

Personal life and education
He was born in Pomona, California. His father, George Tarjan (1912-1991), raised in Hungary, was a child psychiatrist, specializing in mental retardation, and ran a state hospital. Robert Tarjan's younger brother James became a chess grandmaster. As a child, Robert Tarjan read a lot of science fiction, and wanted to be an astronomer. He became interested in mathematics after reading Martin Gardner's mathematical games column in Scientific American. He became seriously interested in math in the eighth grade, thanks to a "very stimulating" teacher.

While he was in high school, Tarjan got a job, where he worked with IBM punch card collators. He first worked with real computers while studying astronomy at the Summer Science Program in 1964.

Tarjan obtained a Bachelor's degree in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1969. At Stanford University, he received his master's degree in computer science in 1971 and a Ph.D. in computer science (with a minor in mathematics) in 1972. At Stanford, he was supervised by Robert Floyd and Donald Knuth, both highly prominent computer scientists, and his Ph.D. dissertation was An Efficient Planarity Algorithm. Tarjan selected computer science as his area of interest because he believed that computer science was a way of doing mathematics that could have a practical impact.

Tarjan now lives in Princeton, NJ, and Silicon Valley. He is married to Nayla Rizk. He has three daughters: Alice Tarjan, Sophie Zawacki, and Maxine Tarjan.

Computer science career
Tarjan has been teaching at Princeton University since 1985. He has also held academic positions at Cornell University (1972–73), University of California, Berkeley (1973–1975), Stanford University (1974–1980), and New York University (1981–1985). He has also been a fellow of the NEC Research Institute (1989–1997). In April 2013 he joined Microsoft Research Silicon Valley in addition to the position at Princeton. In October 2014 he rejoined Intertrust Technologies as chief scientist.

Tarjan has worked at AT&T Bell Labs (1980–1989), Intertrust Technologies (1997–2001, 2014–present), Compaq (2002) and Hewlett Packard (2006–2013).

Algorithms and data structures
Tarjan is known for his pioneering work on graph theory algorithms and data structures. Some of his well-known algorithms include Tarjan's off-line least common ancestors algorithm, Tarjan's strongly connected components algorithm, and Tarjan's bridge-finding algorithm, and he was one of five co-authors of the median of medians linear-time selection algorithm. The Hopcroft–Tarjan planarity testing algorithm was the first linear-time algorithm for planarity testing.

Tarjan has also developed important data structures such as the Fibonacci heap (a heap data structure consisting of a forest of trees), and the splay tree (a self-adjusting binary search tree; co-invented by Tarjan and Daniel Sleator). Another significant contribution was the analysis of the disjoint-set data structure; he was the first to prove the optimal runtime involving the inverse Ackermann function.

Awards
Tarjan received the Turing Award jointly with John Hopcroft in 1986. The citation for the award states that it was:

"For fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures."

Tarjan was also elected an ACM Fellow in 1994. The citation for this award states:

"For seminal advances in the design and analysis of data structures and algorithms."

Some of the other awards for Tarjan include:
 * Nevanlinna Prize in Information Science (1983) – first recipient
 * Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected 1985
 * National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research (1984)
 * Member of the National Academy of Sciences, elected 1987
 * Member of the National Academy of Engineering, elected 1988
 * Member of the American Philosophical Society, elected 1990
 * Paris Kanellakis Award in Theory and Practice, ACM (1999)
 * Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award, California Institute of Technology (2010)

Selected publications
Tarjan's papers have been collectively cited over 94,000 times. Among the most cited are:

 * 1972: Depth-first search and linear graph algorithms, R Tarjan, SIAM Journal on Computing 1 (2), 146-160
 * 1987: Fibonacci heaps and their uses in improved network optimization algorithms, ML Fredman, RE Tarjan, Journal of the ACM (JACM) 34 (3), 596-615
 * 1983: Data structures and network algorithms, RE Tarjan, Society for industrial and Applied Mathematics
 * 1988: A new approach to the maximum-flow problem, V Goldberg, RE Tarjan, Journal of the ACM (JACM) 35 (4), 921-940

Patents
Tarjan holds at least 18 U.S. patents. These include:

 * J. Bentley, D. Sleator, and R. E. Tarjan, U. S. Patent 4,796,003, Data Compaction, 1989
 * N. Mishra, R. Schreiber, and R. E. Tarjan, U. S. Patent 7,818,272, Method for discovery of clusters of objects in an arbitrary undirected graph using a difference between a fraction of internal connections and maximum fraction of connections by an outside object, 2010
 * B. Pinkas, S. Haber, R. E. Tarjan, and T. Sander, U. S. Patent 8220036, Establishing a secure channel with a human user, 2012

title: Robert Tarjan


text:
ITV Digital

ITV Digital was a British digital terrestrial television broadcaster which launched a pay-TV service on the world's first digital terrestrial television network. Its main shareholders were Carlton Communications plc and Granada plc, owners of multiple licences of the ITV network. Starting as ONdigital in 1998, the service was rebranded as ITV Digital in July 2001.

Low audience figures, piracy issues and an ultimately unaffordable multi-million pound deal with the Football League led to the broadcaster suffering large losses, and it entered administration in March 2002. Pay television services ceased permanently on 1 May of that year, but carriage of the remaining free-to-air channels such as BBC One and Channel 4 continued. In October, ITV Digital’s former terrestrial multiplexes were taken over by Crown Castle and the BBC to create the Freeview free-to-air service.

History

On 31 January 1997, Carlton Television, Granada Television and satellite company British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) together created British Digital Broadcasting (BDB) as a joint venture, and applied to operate three digital terrestrial television (DTT) licences. They faced competition from a rival, Digital Television Network (DTN), a company created by cable operator CableTel (later known as NTL). On 25 June 1997, BDB won the auction and the Independent Television Commission (ITC) awarded the sole broadcast licence for DTT to the consortium. Then on 20 December 1997, the ITC awarded three pay-TV digital multiplex licences to BDB.

That same year, however, the ITC forced BSkyB out of the consortium on competition grounds; this effectively placed Sky in direct competition with the new service as Sky would also launch its digital satellite service in 1998, although Sky was still required to provide key channels such as Sky Movies and Sky Sports to BDB. With Sky as part of the consortium, British Digital Broadcasting would have paid discounted rates to carry Sky's television channels. Instead, with its positioning as a competitor, Sky charged the full market rates for the channels, at an extra cost of around £60million a year to BDB. On 28 July 1998, BDB announced the service would be called ONdigital, and claimed it would be the biggest television brand launch in history. The company would be based in Marco Polo House (since demolished) in Battersea, south London, which was previously the home of BSkyB's earlier rival, British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB).

Six multiplexes were set up, with three of them allocated to the existing analogue broadcasters. The other three multiplexes were auctioned off. ONdigital was given one year from the award of the licence to launch the first DTT service. In addition to launching audio and video services, it also led the specification of an industry-wide advanced interactive engine, based on MHEG-5. This was an open standard that was used by all broadcasters on DTT.

The launch
ONdigital was officially launched on 15 November 1998 amid a large public ceremony featuring celebrity Ulrika Jonsson and fireworks around the Crystal Palace transmitting station. Its competitor Sky Digital had already debuted on 1 October. The service launched with 12 primary channels, which included the new BBC Choice and ITV2 channels; a subscription package featuring channels such as Sky One, Cartoon Network, E4, UKTV channels and many developed in-house by Carlton and Granada such as Carlton World; premium channels including Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, Sky Premier and Sky MovieMax; and the newly launched FilmFour.

From the beginning, however, the company was quickly losing money. Supply problems with set-top boxes meant that the company missed Christmas sales and retailers had to wait several months for the customers to receive their boxes. Meanwhile, aggressive marketing by BSkyB for Sky Digital made the ONdigital offer look unattractive. The new digital satellite service provided a dish, digibox, installation and around 200 channels for £159, a lower price than ONdigital at £199. Sky had also launched earlier, meaning they had a head start over the ONdigital service. ONdigital's subscription pricing had been set to compare with the older Sky analogue service of 20 channels. In 1999, digital cable services were launched by NTL, Telewest and Cable & Wireless.

In February 1999, ITV secured the rights for UEFA Champions League football matches for four years, which would partly be broadcast through ONdigital. Two sports channels were added to the platform, Champions ON 28 and Champions ON 99 (later renamed ONsport 1 and ONsport 2 when it secured the rights to ATP tennis games), the latter of which timeshared with Carlton Cinema. Throughout 1999, channels including MTV and British Eurosport launched on the platform. The exclusive Carlton Kids and Carlton World channels closed in 2000 to make way for two Discovery channels.

ONdigital reported in April 1999 that it had 110,000 subscribers, while Sky Digital had over 350,000 by that time. By March 2000, there were 673,000 ONdigital customers.

The first interactive digital service was launched in mid-1999, called ONgames. On 7 March 2000, ONmail was launched which provided an interactive e-mail service. A deal with multiplex operator SDN led to the launch of pay-per-view service ONrequest on 1 May 2000. In June 2000, ONoffer was launched. On 18 September 2000, the internet TV service ONnet was launched.

On 17 June 2000, ONdigital agreed to a £315 million three-year deal with the Football League to broadcast 88 live Nationwide League and Worthington Cup matches from the 2001–02 season.

Setbacks
In 1999, Sky started to give away their digiboxes for free whilst the customer subscribed. This was a problem for ONdigital, as they had no choice but to sell prepaid set top boxes to win customers back from rival services. Even when they decided to sell prepaid set top boxes (under the ONprepaid brand), they could not easily compete with Sky.

ONdigital's growth slowed throughout 2000, and by the start of 2001 the number of subscribers was no longer increasing; meanwhile, its competitor Sky Digital oversaw a dramatic increase in subscribers, spearheaded by the launch of interactive services, such as Open... and Sky Gamestar, and the launch of rival cable digital services from the likes of NTL and Telewest ate into ONdigital's subscriber numbers. The ONdigital management team responded with a series of free set-top box promotions, initially at retailers such as Currys and Dixons, when ONdigital receiving equipment was purchased at the same time as a television set or similarly priced piece of equipment. These offers eventually became permanent, with the set-top box loaned to the customer at no charge for as long as they continued to subscribe to ONdigital, an offer that was matched by Sky. ONdigital's churn rate, a measure of the number of subscribers leaving the service, reached 28% during 2001.

Additional problems for ONdigital were the choice of 64QAM broadcast mode, which when coupled with far weaker than expected broadcast power, meant that the signal was weak in many areas; a complex pricing structure with many options; a poor-quality subscriber management system (adapted from Canal+); a paper magazine TV guide whereas BSkyB had an electronic programme guide (EPG); insufficient technical customer services; and much signal piracy. While there was a limited return path provided via an in-built 2400 baud modem, there was no requirement, as there was with BSkyB, to connect the set-top box's modem to a phone line.

With this combination of factors contributing to the service's lack of popularity, in 2001, executives at ONdigital management wrote a letter to the government, asking for emergency funding to finance the service in order to keep it alive due to a lack of customers and paying members.

Loaned equipment
ONdigital began to sell prepaid set-top boxes (under the name ONprepaid) from November 1999 in order to win customers, especially at the launch of other digital services from the likes of NTL and Telewest. This bundle sold in high street shops and supermarkets at a price that included the set-top box (which was technically on loan) and the first year's subscription package. These prepaid boxes amounted to 50% of sales in December 1999. Thousands of these packages were also sold at well below retail price on auction sites such as the then-popular QXL. As the call to activate the viewing card did not require any bank details, many ONdigital boxes which were supposed to be on loan were at unverifiable addresses. This was later changed so a customer could not buy a box without ONdigital verifying their address. Many customers did not activate the viewing card at all, although where the viewer's address was known, ONdigital would write informing them that they must activate before a certain deadline.

Piracy
The ONdigital pay-per-view channels were encrypted using a system – SECA MediaGuard – which had subsequently been cracked by hackers working for NDS Group, the makers of the VideoGuard system that Sky Digital used. ONdigital did not update this system, therefore it was possible to produce and sell counterfeit subscription cards which would give access to all the channels. About 100,000 pirate cards were in circulation by 2002, and these played a role in the demise of the broadcaster that year.

Rebranding
In April 2001 it was said that ONdigital would be 'relaunched' to bring it closer to the ITV network and to better compete with Sky. On 11 July 2001 Carlton and Granada rebranded ONdigital as ITV Digital.

Other services were also rebranded, such as ONnet to ITV Active. A rebranding campaign was launched, with customers being sent ITV Digital stickers to place over the ONdigital logos on their remote controls and set top boxes. The software running on the receivers was not changed, however, and continued to display 'ON' on nearly every screen. However, iDTVs made after the rebrand removed the 'ON' prefix from their software. Option 7 on the main menu on iDTVs was also renamed from "ONdigital Updates" to "Subscription Information".

The rebrand was not without controversy, as SMG plc (owner of Scottish Television and Grampian Television), UTV and Channel Television pointed out that the ITV brand did not belong solely to Carlton and Granada. SMG and UTV initially refused to carry the advertising campaign for ITV Digital and did not allow the ITV Sport Channel space on their multiplex, thus it was not available at launch in most of Scotland and Northern Ireland. The case was resolved in Scotland and the Channel Islands and later still in Northern Ireland, allowing ITV Sport to launch in the non-Carlton and Granada regions, although it was never made available in the Channel Islands, where there was no DTT or cable, and it never appeared on Sky Digital.

Later in 2001, ITV Sport Channel was announced. This would be a premium sport channel, and would broadcast English football games as per the company's deal with the Football League in 2000, as well as ATP tennis games and Champions League games previously covered by ONsport 1 and ONsport 2. The channel launched on 11 August of that year, and was also carried on cable by NTL.

Downfall
The service reached 1 million subscribers by January 2001, whereas Sky Digital had 5.7 million. Granada reported £69 million in losses in the first six months of 2001, leading some investors to urge it to close or sell ONdigital/ITV Digital. ITV Digital was unable to make a deal to put the ITV Sport Channel on Sky, which could have given the channel access to millions of Sky customers and generated income; the channel was only licensed to cable company NTL. Subscriptions for ONnet/ITV Active, its internet service, peaked at around 100,000 customers. ITV Digital had a 12% share of digital subscribers as of December 2001. ITV Digital and Granada cut jobs that month. By 2002, the company was thought to be losing up to £1 million per day.

In February 2002, Carlton and Granada said that ITV Digital needed an urgent "fundamental restructuring". The biggest cost the company faced was its three-year deal with the Football League, which had been deemed too expensive by critics when agreed, as it was inferior to the top-flight Premiership coverage from Sky Sports. It was reported on 21 March 2002 that ITV Digital had proposed paying only £50 million for the remaining two years of the Football League deal, a reduction of £129m. Chiefs from the League said that any reduction in the payment could threaten the existence of many football clubs, which had budgeted for large incomes from the television contract.

Administration
On 27 March 2002, ITV Digital was placed in administration as it was unable to pay the full amount due to the Football League. Later, as chances of its survival remained bleak, the Football League sued Carlton and Granada, claiming that the firms had breached their contract in failing to deliver the guaranteed income. On 1 August the league lost the case, with the judge ruling that it had "failed to extract sufficient written guarantees". The league then filed a negligence claim against its own lawyers for failing to press for a written guarantee at the time of the deal with ITV Digital. From this, in June 2006, it was awarded a paltry £4 in damages of the £150m it was seeking. The collapse put in doubt the government's ambition to switch off analogue terrestrial TV signals by 2010.

Despite several interested parties, the administrators were unable to find a buyer for the company and effectively put it into liquidation on 26 April 2002. Most subscription channels stopped broadcasting on ITV Digital on 1 May 2002 at 7 am, with only free-to-air services continuing. The next day, ITV chief executive Stuart Prebble quit. In all, 1,500 jobs were lost by ITV Digital's collapse. ITV Digital was eventually placed into liquidation on 18 October, with debts of £1.25 billion.

Post-collapse
By 30 April 2002, the Independent Television Commission (ITC) had revoked ITV Digital's broadcasting licence and started looking for a buyer. A consortium made up of the BBC and Crown Castle submitted an application on 13 June, later joined by BSkyB, and were awarded the licence on 4 July. They launched the Freeview service on 30 October 2002, offering 30 free-to-air TV channels and 20 free-to-air radio channels including several interactive channels such as BBC Red Button and Teletext, but no subscription or premium services. Those followed on 31 March 2004 when Top Up TV began broadcasting 11 pay TV channels in timeshared broadcast slots.

From 10 December 2002, ITV Digital's liquidators started to ask customers to return their set top boxes or pay a £39.99 fee. Had this been successful, it could have threatened to undermine the fledgling Freeview service, since at the time most digital terrestrial receivers in households were ONdigital and ITV Digital legacy hardware. In January 2003, Carlton and Granada stepped in and paid £2.8m to the liquidators to allow the boxes to stay with their customers, because at the time the ITV companies received a discount on their broadcasting licence payments based on the number of homes they had converted to digital television. It was also likely done to avoid further negativity towards the two companies.

During the time under administration, Carlton and Granada were in talks regarding a merger, which was eventually cleared in 2004.

Effect on football clubs
Following the proposed Football League merger, with the lucrative finances it proposed, ITV Digital's collapse had a large effect on many football clubs. Bradford City F.C. was one of the affected, and its debt forced it into administration in May 2002.

Barnsley F.C. also entered administration in October 2002, despite the club making a profit for the twelve years prior to the collapse of ITV Digital. Barnsley had budgeted on the basis that the money from the ITV Digital deal would be received, leaving a £2.5 million shortfall in their accounts when the broadcaster collapsed.

Clubs were forced to slash staff, and some players were forced to be sold as they were unable to pay them. Some clubs increased ticket prices for fans to offset the losses.

The rights to show Football League matches were resold to Sky Sports for £95 million for the next four years compared to £315 million over three years from ITV Digital, leading to a reduction from £2 million per season to £700,000 in broadcasting revenue for First Division clubs.

In total, fourteen Football League clubs were placed in administration within four years of the collapse of ITV Digital, compared to four in the four years before.

News Corporation hacking allegations
On 31 March 2002, French cable company Canal+ accused Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in the United States of extracting the UserROM code from its MediaGuard encryption cards and leaking it onto the internet. Canal+ brought a lawsuit against News Corporation alleging that it, through its subsidiary NDS (which provides encryption technology for Sky and other TV services from Murdoch), had been working on breaking the MediaGuard smartcards used by Canal+, ITV Digital and other non-Murdoch-owned TV companies throughout Europe. The action was later partially dropped after News Corporation agreed to buy Canal+'s struggling Italian operation Telepiu, a direct rival to a Murdoch-owned company in that country.

Other legal action by EchoStar/NagraStar was being pursued as late as August 2005, accusing NDS of the same wrongdoing. In 2008, NDS was found to have broken piracy laws by hacking EchoStar Communications' smart card system, however only $1,500 in statutory damages was awarded.

On 26 March 2012, an investigation from BBC's Panorama found evidence that one of News Corporation's subsidiaries sabotaged ITV Digital. It found that NDS hacked ONdigital/ITV Digital smartcard data and leaked them through a pirate website under Murdoch's control – actions which enabled pirated cards to flood the market. The accusations arose from emails obtained by the BBC, and an interview with Lee Gibling, the operator of a hacking website, who claimed he was paid up to £60,000 per year by Ray Adams, NDS's head of security. This would mean that Murdoch used computer hacking to directly undermine rival ITV Digital. Lawyers for News Corporation claimed that these accusations of illegal activities against a rival business are "false and libellous". In June 2013 the Metropolitan Police decided to look into these allegations following a request by Labour MP Tom Watson.

Marketing
ITV Digital ran an advertising campaign involving the comedian Johnny Vegas as Al and a knitted monkey simply called Monkey, voiced by Ben Miller. A knitted replica of Monkey could be obtained by signing up to ITV Digital. Because the monkey could not be obtained without signing up to the service, a market for second-hand monkeys developed. At one time, original ITV Digital Monkeys were fetching several hundred pounds on eBay, and knitting patterns delivered by email were sold for several pounds. The campaign was created by the advertising agency Mother. In August 2002, following ITV Digital's collapse, Vegas claimed that he was owed money for the advertisements. In early 2007, Monkey and Al reappeared in an advert for PG Tips tea, which at first included a reference to ITV Digital's downfall.

Set top boxes
The set-top boxes used for ITV Digital and ONdigital were:

 * Nokia Mediamaster 9850T
 * Pace Micro Technology DTR-730, DTR-735
 * Philips DTX 6370, DTX 6371, DTX 6372
 * Pioneer DBR-T200, DBR-T210
 * Sony VTX-D500U
 * Toshiba DTB2000

Carlton/Granada digital television channels
Carlton and Granada (later ITV Digital Channels Ltd) created a selection of channels which formed some of the core content available via the service. These were:

title: ITV Digital


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Rennes

Rennes (Roazhon ; Gallo: Resnn; Condate Redonum) is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France at the confluence of the rivers Ille and Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department. In 2017, the urban area had a population of 357,327 inhabitants, and the larger metropolitan area had 739,974 inhabitants. The inhabitants of Rennes are called Rennais (masculine) or Rennaises (feminine) in French.

Rennes's history goes back more than 2,000 years to a time when it was a small Gallic village named Condate. Together with Vannes and Nantes, it was one of the major cities of the ancient Duchy of Brittany. From the early sixteenth century until the French Revolution, Rennes was a parliamentary, administrative and garrison city of the historic province of Brittany in the Kingdom of France, as evidenced by its 17th-century Parliament's Palace. Rennes played an important role in the Stamped Paper Revolt (Revolt of the papier timbré) in 1675. After the destructive fire of 1720, the medieval wooden center of the city was partially rebuilt in stone. Remaining mostly rural until the Second World War, Rennes underwent significant development in the twentieth century.

Since the 1950s, Rennes has grown in importance through rural flight and modern industrial development, partly in the automotive sector. The city developed extensive building plans to accommodate upwards of 200,000 inhabitants. During the 1980s, Rennes became one of the main centres in telecommunication and high-tech industry. It is now a significant digital innovation centre in France. In 2002, Rennes became the smallest city in the world to have a Metro line.

Labeled a city of art and history, it has preserved an important medieval and classical heritage within its historic center, with over 90 buildings protected as historic monuments. Home to more than 66,000 students in 2016, it is also the eighth-largest university campus of France. In 2018, L'Express named Rennes as "the most liveable city in France".

Administration
Since 2015, Rennes is divided into 6 cantons (populations as of 2019):
 * Canton of Rennes-1 (40,588 inhabitants)
 * Canton of Rennes-2 (42,446 inhabitants)
 * Canton of Rennes-3 (43,683 inhabitants), which includes parts of Rennes but also the commune of Chantepie
 * Canton of Rennes-4 (36,348 inhabitants)
 * Canton of Rennes-5 (46,759 inhabitants), which includes parts of Rennes but also the commune of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande
 * Canton of Rennes-6 (46,750 inhabitants), which includes parts of Rennes but also the commune of Pacé

Rennes is divided into 12 quarters:
 * 1) Centre
 * 2) Thabor - Saint-Hélier - Alphonse Guérin
 * 3) Bourg L’Évesque - La Touche - Moulin du Comte
 * 4) Saint-Martin
 * 5) Maurepas - Bellangerais
 * 6) Jeanne d’Arc - Longs Champs - Atlante Beaulieu
 * 7) Francisco Ferrer - Landry - Poterie
 * 8) Sud Gare
 * 9) Cleunay - Arsenal - Redon - La Courrouze
 * 10) Villejean - Beauregard
 * 11) Le Blosne
 * 12) Bréquigny

Mayors
The current mayor of Rennes is Nathalie Appéré. A member of the Socialist Party, she replaced retiring Socialist incumbent Daniel Delaveau, in office from 2008 to 2014.

 * Edmond Hervé (b. 1942), Socialist mayor from 1977 to 2008;
 * Henri Fréville (1905–1987), mayor MRP from 1953 to 1977;
 * Eugène Quessot (1882–1949), interim mayor from 15 July 1947 until 26 October 1947;
 * Yves Milon (1897–1987), mayor RPF from 1944 to 1953.

Among previous well-known mayors are:
 * Jean Janvier (1859–1923), from 1908 to 1923;
 * Edgar Le Bastard (1836–1891), from 1880 to 1891;
 * Toussaint-François Rallier du Baty (1665–1734) from 1695 to 1734.

The mairie (city hall) is right in the centre of Rennes.

National representation
The French Prison Service operates the Centre pénitentiaire de Rennes, the largest women's prison in France.

Geography
The ancient centre of the town is built on a hill, with the north side being more elevated than the south side. It is at the confluence of two rivers: the Ille and the Vilaine.

Rennes is located on the European atlantic arc, 50 km from the English Channel (near Saint-Malo, Dinard, and Mont Saint-Michel).

Rennes has the distinction of having a significant Green Belt around its ring road. This Green Belt is a protected area between the city proper (rather dense) and the rest of its urban area (rather rural).

Climate
Rennes features an oceanic climate. Precipitation in Rennes is considerably less abundant than in the western parts of Brittany, reaching only half of the levels of, e.g., the city of Quimper, which makes rainfall in Rennes comparable to the levels of large parts of western Germany. Sunshine hours range between 1,700 and 1,850 annually, which is about the amount of sunshine received by the city of Lausanne.

Demographics
In 2018, the inner population of the city was 221,272. The Rennes intercommunal structure connecting Rennes with 42 nearby suburbs (named Rennes Métropole) had 450,593 inhabitants and the metropolitan area had a population of nearly 750,000.

Rennes has the second fastest-growing metropolitan area in France after Toulouse and ahead of Montpellier, Bordeaux and Nantes.

Sights
Rennes is classified as a city of art and history.

Historic centre
The historic centre is located on the former plan of the ramparts. There is a difference between the northern city centre and the southern city centre due to the 1720 fire, which destroyed most of the timber-framed houses in the northern part of the city. The rebuilding was done in stone, on a grid plan. The poorer southern part was not rebuilt.

Due to the presence of the parlement de Bretagne, many "hôtels particuliers" were built in the northern part, the richer half of Rennes in the 18th century. Most of the city's monuments historiques can be found there.

Colourful traditional half-timbered houses are situated primarily along the roads of Saint-Sauveur, Saint-Georges, de Saint-Malo, Saint-Guillaume, des Dames, du Chapitre, Vasselot, Saint-Michel, de la Psallette and around the plazas of Champ-Jacquet, des Lices, Saint-Anne and Rallier-du-Baty.

The Parlement de Bretagne and city hall area
The Parlement de Bretagne (Administrative and judicial centre of Brittany, Breujoù Breizh) is the most famous 17th century building in Rennes. It was rebuilt after a terrible fire in 1994 that may have been caused by a flare fired by a protester during a demonstration. It houses the Rennes Court of Appeal. The surrounding plaza is built in the classical style.

In the west, the Place de la Mairie (City Hall Plaza, Plasenn Ti Kêr):
 * City Hall
 * Opera

In the east, at the end of the Rue Saint-Georges with traditional half-timbered houses:
 * 1920s Saint George Municipal Pool, with mosaics
 * Saint George Palace, and its garden

In the south-east:
 * Saint-Germain square
 * Saint-Germain Church
 * Saint-Germain footbridge, 20th century wood and metal construction that links the plaza with Émile Zola Quay, across the Vilaine River.

The Place des Lices and cathedral area
The Place des Lices is lined by hôtels particuliers. Along with the Place Rallier-du-Baty, it is the location of the weekly big market, the marché des Lices.

Near the Rennes Cathedral (cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Rennes) is the Rue du Chapitre:
 * Hôtel de Blossac
 * There are 16th century polychrome wooden busts on the façade of 20, Rue du Chapitre.

Also in this area are the former St. Yves chapel, which is now the tourist office and a local historical museum, and the Basilica Saint-Sauveur.

Remains of the ramparts
Built from the 3rd to the 12th centuries, the ramparts were largely destroyed between the beginning of the 16th century and the 1860s.

Place Saint-Anne area

 * Place Saint-Anne (Plasenn Santez-Anna)
 * Saint-Aubin Church, built in the beginning of the 20th century
 * Location of a former 14th century hospital
 * Jacobite convent, the convention centre

In the south-west of the area, La Rue Saint-Michel nicknamed Rue de La Soif (Road of Thirst), is known for its many bars. Meanwhile, in the south-east, the Place du Champ-Jacquet features Renaissance buildings and a statue of mayor Jean Leperdit ripping up a conscription list.

East: Thabor park area
Area of Saint-Melaine square

 * Notre-Dame-en-Saint-Melaine basilica,
 * Tower and transept from the 11th century Benedictine abbey of Saint-Melaine
 * 14th century Gothic arcades
 * 17th century colonnade
 * Bell tower topped with a gilded Virgin Mary (19th century)
 * 17th century cloister

Jardin botanique du Thabor (formal French garden, orangerie, rose garden, aviary) a botanical garden on 10 hectares of land, built between 1860 and 1867.

17th century promenade "la Motte à Madame", and a monumental stairway overlooking the Rue de Paris entrance to the Thabor.

South city centre
The south city centre is a mix of old buildings and 19th and 20th century constructions.

South of the Vilaine
The Fine Arts Museum is situated on Quai Émile Zola, by the Vilaine River.

Les Champs Libres is a building on Esplanade Charles de Gaulle, and was designed by the architect Christian de Portzamparc. It houses the Brittany Museum (Musée de Bretagne), the regional library Bibliothèque de Rennes Métropole with six floors, and the Espace des Sciences science centre with a planetarium.

At Place Honoré Commeurec is Les Halles Centrales, a covered market from 1922, with one part converted into contemporary art gallery.

The Mercure Hotel is located in a restored building on Rue du Pré-Botté, which is the former office of Ouest-Éclair, and then of Ouest-France, France's leading daily regional newspaper.

There are large mills at Rue Duhamel, constructed on each side of the south branch of the Vilaine in 1895 and 1902.

Other sights
To the northwest of Rennes, near Rue de Saint-Malo, are the locks of the Canal d'Ille-et-Rance, opened in 1843.

Two locations for Oberthür Printing Works were built by Marthenot between 1870 and 1895 on Rue de Paris in the eastern part of the city. Oberthür Park is the second biggest garden in the city.

The 17th century manor of Haute-Chalais, a granite château, is situated to the south of the city in Blosne Quarter (Bréquigny).

Parks and gardens
Parc du Thabor contains a compact but significant botanical garden, the Jardin botanique du Thabor. The University of Rennes 1, with a campus in the city's eastern section, also contains a botanical garden and collections (the Jardin botanique de l'Université de Rennes).

Economy
The local economy is based on car manufacturing, telecommunications, the digital sector and agrifood.

The telecommunications firm Orange (ex-France Telecom) is the largest private employer in the metropolitan area of Rennes with a workforce of 4,800 people. PSA Peugeot Citroën is the second largest private employer, with 3,000 employees. PSA opened a manufacturing plant at La Janais in Chartres-de-Bretagne in 1961. Technicolor, one of the biggest TV and cinema broadcasting firms in the world, employs over 500 people.

Rennes has the second largest concentration of digital and ICT firms in France after Paris (with well-known companies and startups like Atos, Google, Neosoft, Orange S.A., Thales, Ericsson, Harmonic France, STmicroelectronics, Technicolor R&D, Ubisoft, Regionsjob, Capgemini, OVH, Dassault Systèmes, Delta Dore, Canon, Artefacto, Enensys Technologies, Exfo, Mitsubishi Electric R&D Europe, Digitaleo, Kelbillet, Klaxoon, Sopra Group, Niji, and Airbus Cybersecurity). Rennes was one of the first French cities to receive French Tech accreditation, in November 2014. Moreover, Rennes has the third highest public research potential in the digital and ICT sectors in France, after Paris and Grenoble, with 3,000 people working in 10 laboratories, including the well-known IRISA, IETR, IRMAR, DGA-MI (cyberdefense), and SATIE. It also has the third highest innovation potential in the French agrifood industry, with many firms in this field (Lactalis, Triballat Sojasun, Coralis, Panavi, Bridor, Groupe Avril, Loïc Raison, Groupe Roullier, Sanders, etc.), an agro campus (Agrocampus Ouest) and a large international and professional expo, SPACE (held every September).

Other large firms located in Rennes include the restaurant conglomerate Groupe Le Duff (owners of Brioche Dorée, Bruegger's, La Madeleine, Mimi's Cafe, Timothy's World Coffee ), Ouest-France, the most-read French-language newspaper in the world (with a circulation of 800,000 daily copies), and Samsic Service (cleanliness, industrial safety, job search, etc.).

Culture
Rennes is known as one of the most festive cities in France. It invests heavily in arts and culture and a number of its festivals such as the music festival Les Transmusicales, Les Tombées de la Nuit, Mythos, Stunfest (fighting game competition) and Travelling (a film festival) are well known throughout the country. During the 1980s, Rennes was often cited as a hub of rock and new wave music in France.

Les Champs Libres is the largest cultural institution in Brittany. They welcome more than a million visitors each year. Organized in a six-story pyramid with views over the city, the library offers 120,000 documents for loan, and there we can find as well the Museum of Brittany, Espace des Sciences and Planetarium.

Concert halls
Rennes is well-equipped with musical facilities:
 * The MusikHall, for large shows (near the airport). (7,000 seats)
 * Le Liberté, dedicated to major cultural events and touring shows. (5,300 seats)
 * La Cité, dedicated to contemporary music & local artists. (1,150 seats)
 * L'Étage (Le Liberté), dedicated to contemporary music & local artists. (900 seats)
 * Rennes Opera House (650 seats) and National Theatre of Brittany, TNB in French (Vilar room, 950 seats) for the Brittany orchestra.
 * The Ubu, an associative concert hall. (500 seats)
 * L'Antipode MJC, also an art centre. (500 seats)

Museums and exhibition places
There are also five museums in Rennes: In addition, there are art facilities such as 40mcube exhibition space or the centre for contemporary art La Criée.
 * Musée des Beaux Arts (Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes). This art museum holds many works by the sculptor Pierre Charles Lenoir
 * Musée de Bretagne Museum of Brittany at the Champs Libres, together with the 'espace de sciences' and a planetarium.
 * Museum of Farming and Rennes Countryside at Bintinais, south of Rennes.
 * Musée des Transmissions (Museum of Broadcasting) at Cesson-Sévigné, east of Rennes city centre.
 * FRAC Bretagne Fond Régional d'Art contemporain (Regional Fund for Contemporary Art).

There are also miscellaneous cultural venues, including the dance-dedicated Triange and two "Art et Essai" (arthouse) cinemas, l'Arvor and Cine TNB. Surrounding cities house many other cultural sites.

Media
Rennes was one of the first cities in France to have its own local television channel, 'TV Rennes', created in 1987.

Rennes has also local radio stations (Hit West, Radio Campus, Canal B, Radio Caroline, Radio Rennes, Radio Laser) and local newspapers and magazines (Ouest-France, Le Mensuel de Rennes, Place Publique, 20 Minutes Rennes).

Local languages
In Brittany, two regional languages are spoken: Breton and Gallo. Rennes, as part of Upper Brittany, Gallo was predominantly spoken as the local language, although Breton has always been spoken by migrants from the west of the region (Lower Brittany).

Nowadays, the Breton language is taught in two Diwan schools, some bilingual public and Catholic schools, in evening courses, and in university.

The municipality launched a linguistic plan through Ya d'ar brezhoneg on 24 January 2008.

In 2008, 2.87% of primary school children were enrolled in bilingual primary schools, and the number of pupils enrolled in these schools is steadily growing.

Local food
Specialties from Rennes include:
 * Breton galette
 * Galette-saucisse
 * Crêpe
 * Cider

Many other Breton specialties (seafood, milk, vegetables, cheese, meat) are seen at the Marché des Lices, a weekly market held every Saturday morning (one of the largest markets in France).

Education

The Rennes agglomeration has a large student population (around 63,000).

The city has two main universities; Université de Rennes 1, which offers courses in science, technology, medicine, philosophy, law, management, and economics, and Université Rennes 2, which has courses in the arts, literature, languages, communication, human and social sciences, and sport. The official website of Université Rennes 2 identifies the facility as "the largest research and higher learning institution in Arts, Literature, Languages, Social Sciences and Humanities in the West of France."

There are a few École Supérieures in Rennes, such as the École Normale Supérieure de Rennes on the Ker Lann campus just outside Rennes, the Institut d'études politiques de Rennes, and the ESC Rennes School of Business.

There are also branches of the École Supérieure d'Électricité – Supélec and Telecom Bretagne in the east of the city (Cesson-Sévigné), a campus of the École pour l'informatique et les nouvelles technologies, a campus of the École pour l'informatique et les techniques avancées, and the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, a grande école which is next to the École nationale supérieure de chimie de Rennes.

The computer science and applied mathematics research institute, IRISA, is located on the campus of the Université des Sciences, near Cesson-Sévigné. The Délégation Générale pour l'Armement (defence procurement agency) operates the CELAR research centre, dedicated to electronics and computing, in the neighbouring town of Bruz.

The Catholic University of Rennes (Institut Catholique de Rennes) is a Catholic university founded in 1989.

The city is also home to an American study abroad program for high school students, School Year Abroad, in which students are immersed in French culture through five classes in the language and a nine-month home stay.

The École Compleméntaire Japonaise de Rennes (レンヌ補習授業校 Rennu Hoshū Jugyō Kō), a part-time Japanese supplementary school, is based in the Collège Anne de Bretagne in Rennes.

Football club

 * Rennes is home to Stade Rennais F.C., who play in Ligue 1 at the Roazhon Park stadium.

Handball

 * Cesson-Sévigné is home to Cesson-Rennes-Métropole handball, who play in division 1.

Road bicycle

 * Rennes is home to Fortuneo-Vital Concept (UCI Team Code: BSE), a professional cycling team.

Rugby

 * Rennes is home to Stade Rennais Rugby, a women's rugby team who play in Championnat de France de rugby à XV féminin, the top national club competition for women's rugby union in France. Rennes is also home to REC Rugby, a men's team competing in Fédérale 1, the fourth tier of the Men's Rugby Union championship.

Transport

Rennes has well-developed national road, rail and air links.

Public transport
Local transport is based primarily on an extensive bus network (65 lines) and a light metro line that was inaugurated in March 2002 and cost €500 million to build. The driverless Rennes Metro (VAL) is 9.4 km in length and has 15 stations, including one designed by architect Norman Foster (La Poterie station). A second light metro line known as Line B was opened on 20 September 2022, after 8 years of construction.

Cycling
Rennes provides another mode of local transport: a bike sharing system with 900 bicycles (named STAR, le vélo). Rennes created the first system of modern French bike sharing in 1998.

Roads
The city is an important hub of Brittany's motorway network and is surrounded by a ring road, the Rocade (national road 136). The construction of the bypass was started in 1968 and completed in 1999. It is 31 km (18.5 mi) long, has 2 lanes each way (sometimes 3 lanes) and is toll-free. Many other expressways are connected to the Rennes ring road for local and regional service. By road, Saint-Malo can be reached in 45 minutes, Nantes in 1 hour, Brest in 2 hours and 30 minutes, Paris in 4 hours, Bordeaux in 5 hours, and Brussels in 6 hours and 30 minutes.

Railway
Rennes has a major French railway station, the Gare de Rennes, opened in 1857. Since 2 July 2017, it is now one hour and twenty-seven minutes by TGV high-speed train from Paris (after the extension of the High Speed Rail Line ). Train services are available to other major cities in France such as Lyon, Marseille, Lille, and Strasbourg.

Rennes is also an important railway station for regional transport in Brittany. The TER Bretagne provides links to Saint-Malo, Nantes, Redon, Vitré, Saint-Brieuc, Vannes, Laval, Brest and many other regional cities. It is served by Gares station on the VAL Rennes Metro.

Airport
Rennes is served by Rennes Brittany Airport (Saint-Jacques), located 7 km from the centre to the south-west in the commune Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande.

It notably operates regular or seasonal flights to Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Rome-Fiumicino, Southampton, Dublin, Exeter, Manchester, Amsterdam Schiphol, Madrid Barajas, Birmingham, London-City, London-Gatwick and daily flights to London Southend Airport with Flybe.

Notable people

 * Soazig Aaron (born 1949), writer
 * Bertrand d'Argentré (1519–1590), jurist and historian, seneschal of Rennes in 1547, and later head of the presidial court
 * Emmanuel-Marie Blain de Saint-Aubin (1833–1883), educator, songwriter, story-teller and translator
 * Georges Ernest Boulanger (1837–1891), general and politician, born in Rennes.
 * Jean-Claude Bourlès (born 1937), writer and traveler
 * Simon William Gabriel Bruté de Rémur (1779–1839), a French missionary in the US.
 * Thomas Conecte (died 1434), a Carmelite friar and preacher.
 * Nicolas Courjal (born 1973), operatic bass
 * Maxime Daniel (born 1991), professional cyclist
 * Madeleine Desroseaux (1873–1939), poet and novelist
 * Yvonne Dubel (1881–1958), soprano opera singer
 * Félix Dujardin (1801–1860), professor and dean of the University of Rennes, famous parasitologist
 * Joseph Marie Élisabeth Durocher (1817-1860), geologist.
 * Alexandre-Vincent Pineux Duval (1767-1842), dramatist, sailor, architect, actor and theatre manager.
 * Viviane Elder (1904–1960), racing driver, aviator and actress
 * Julien Louis Geoffroy (1743-1814), a literary critic.
 * René Guillou (1903–1958), composer and organist
 * Auguste Hilarion, comte de Kératry (1769–1859), poet, novelist, literary critic, historian and politician.
 * Paul Jausions (1835–1870), musicologist specialising in Gregorian chant
 * Hélène Jégado (1803–1852), executed serial poisoner
 * Louis-René de Caradeuc de La Chalotais (1701–1785), jurist, role in the so-called Brittany Affair.
 * Matthieu Lahaye (born 1984), racing driver
 * Jean Denis, comte Lanjuinais (1753–1827), politician, lawyer, jurist, journalist and historian.
 * Pierre-Emmanuel Le Goff (born 1979), film director, producer and distributor
 * Isaac René Guy le Chapelier (1754–1794), jurist and politician during the time of the French Revolution.
 * Jacques Legrand (born 1946), linguist and anthropologist, specialising in Mongolian literature, language and history
 * Malika Ménard (born 1987), Miss France 2010
 * Sylvaine Neveu (born 1968), chemist and scientific director of the Solvay group
 * Louis Pérouas (1923–2011), priest and historian
 * François-Henri Pinault (born 1962), chairman and CEO of Kering
 * René Pleven (1901–1993), twice President of the Council of Ministers
 * Joseph-Marie Quérard (1797–1865), bibliographer.
 * Pierre Robiquet (1780–1840), chemist member of the Académie des Sciences, discoverer of codein, asparagin and alizarin, among others
 * Valentina Tronel (born 2009), singer, winner of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2020 and former member of Kids United Nouvelle Génération
 * Charles Vanel (1892–1989), actor
 * Marie-Victoire de Lambilly (1767–1813), lawyer, French nobility

Twin towns – sister cities
Rennes is twinned with:

 * 🏴 Exeter, England, UK (since 1956)
 * 🇺🇸 Rochester, New York, US (since 1958)
 * 🇩🇪 Erlangen, Germany (since 1964)
 * 🇨🇿 Brno, Czech Republic (since 1965)
 * 🇯🇵 Sendai, Japan (since 1967)
 * 🇧🇪 Leuven, Belgium (since 1980)
 * Sétif, Algeria (since 1982)
 * 🇮🇪 Cork, Ireland (since 1982)
 * 🇰🇿 Almaty, Kazakhstan (since 1991)
 * 🇲🇱 Bandiagara Cercle, Mali (since 1995)
 * 🇵🇱 Poznań, Poland (since 1998)
 * 🇷🇴 Sibiu, Romania (since 1999)
 * 🇨🇳 Jinan, China (since 2002)
 * 🇪🇸 Santiago de Compostela, Spain (since 2010)

Other forms of cooperation
Friendly towns within France
 * 🇫🇷 Saint-Gilles-du-Mené, France (since 1978)
 * 🇫🇷 Rennes-les-Bains, France (since 1985)

Pacts of cooperation
 * Huế, Vietnam (since 1992)

Sponsorship
 * 🇫🇷 Vouziers, France

Rennes also has the only Institut Franco-Américain in France.

Broadcasting facilities

 * Transmitter Rennes-Thourie

title: Rennes