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Lake Van

Lake Van (Van Gölü; Վանա լիճ; Gola Wanê ) is the largest lake in Turkey. It lies in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey in the provinces of Van and Bitlis, in the Armenian highlands. It is a saline soda lake, receiving water from many small streams that descend from the surrounding mountains. It is one of the world's few endorheic lakes (a lake having no outlet) of size greater than 3,000 sqkm and has 38% of the country's surface water (including rivers). A volcanic eruption blocked its original outlet in prehistoric times. It is situated at 1640 m above sea level. Despite the high altitude and winter averages below 0 C, high salinity usually prevents it from freezing; the shallow northern section can freeze, but rarely.

Hydrology and chemistry

Lake Van is 119 km across at its widest point. It averages 171 m deep. Its greatest known depth is 451 m. The surface lies 1640 m above sea level and the shore length is 430 km. It covers 3755 km2 and contains (has a volume of) 607 km3.

The western portion of the lake is deepest, with a large basin deeper than 400 m lying northeast of Tatvan and south of Ahlat. The eastern arms of the lake are shallower. The Van-Ahtamar portion shelves gradually, with a maximum depth of about 250 m on its northwest side where it joins the rest of the lake. The Erciş arm is much shallower, mostly less than 50 m, with a maximum depth of about 150 m.

The lake water is strongly alkaline (pH 9.7–9.8) and rich in sodium carbonate and other salts. Some is extracted in salt evaporation ponds alongside, used in or as detergents.

Geology
Lake Van is primarily a tectonic lake, formed more than 600,000 years ago by the gradual subsidence of a large block of the Earth's crust due to movement on several major faults that run through this portion of Eastern Anatolia. The lake's southern margin demarcates: a metamorphic rock zone of the Bitlis Massif and volcanic strata of the Neogene and Quaternary periods. The deep, western portion of the lake is an antidome basin in a tectonic depression. This was formed by normal and strike-slip faulting and thrusting.

The lake's proximity to the Karlıova Triple Junction has led to molten fluids of the Earth's mantle accumulating in the strata beneath, still driving gradual change. Dominating the lake's northern shore is the stratovolcano Mount Süphan. The broad crater of a second, dormant volcano, Mount Nemrut, is close to the western tip of the lake. There is hydrothermal activity throughout the region.

For much of its history, until the Pleistocene, Lake Van has had an outlet towards the southwest (into the Murat River and eventually into the Euphrates river). However, the level of this threshold has varied over time, as the lake has been blocked by successive lava flows from Nemrut volcano westward towards the Muş Plain. This threshold has then been lowered at times by erosion.

Bathymetry
The first acoustic survey of Lake Van was performed in 1974.

Kempe and Degens later identified three physiographic provinces comprising the lake:
 * a lacustrine shelf (27% of the lake) from the shore to a clear gradient change
 * a steeper lacustrine slope (63%)
 * a deep, relatively flat basin province (10%) in the western center of the lake.

The deepest part of the lake is the Tatvan basin, which is almost completely bounded by faults.

Prehistoric lake levels
Land terraces (remnant dry, upper banks from previous shorelines) above the present shore have long been recognized. On a visit in 1898, geologist Felix Oswald noted three raised beaches at 15, 50 and 100 feet (5, 15 and 30 meters) above the lake then, as well as recently drowned trees. Research in the past century has identified many similar terraces, and the lake's level has fluctuated significantly during that time.

As the lake has no outlet, the level over recent millennia rests on inflow and evaporation.

The water level has vacillated greatly. Investigation by a team including Degens in the early 1980s determined that the highest lake levels (72 m above the current height) had been during the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago. Approximately 9,500 years ago there was a dramatic drop to more than 300 m below the present level. This was followed by an equally-dramatic rise around 6,500 years ago.

As a deep lake with no outlet, Lake Van has accumulated great amounts of sediment washed in from surrounding plains and valleys, and occasionally deposited as ash from eruptions of nearby volcanoes. This layer of sediment is estimated to be up to 400 m thick in places, and has attracted climatologists and vulcanologists interested in drilling cores to examine the layered sediments.

In 1989 and 1990, an international team of geologists led by Stephan Kempe from the University of Hamburg retrieved ten sediment cores from depths up to 446 m. Although these cores only penetrated the first few meters of sediment, they provided sufficient varves to give proxy climate data for up to 14,570 years BP.

A team of scientists headed by palaeontologist Professor Thomas Litt at the University of Bonn has applied for funding from the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) for an akin deeper-drilling project. This expects to find it "stores the climate history of the last 800,000 years—an incomparable treasure house of data which we want to tap for at least the last 500,000 years." A test drilling in 2004 detected evidence of 15 volcanic eruptions in the past 20,000 years.

Recent lake level change
Similar but smaller fluctuations have been seen recently. The level of the lake rose by at least 3 m during the 1990's, drowning much agricultural land, and (after a brief period of stability and then retreat) seems to be rising again. The level rose approximately 2 m in the 10 years immediately prior to 2004. But in the early 2020s it fell.

Climate
Lake Van is in the highest and largest region of Turkey, which has a Mediterranean-influenced humid continental climate. Average temperatures in July are between 22 and 25 °C, and in January between −3 °C to −12 °C. On some cold winter nights the temperature has reached −30 °C.

The lake, particularly on its urban townscape shore, tempers the climate in the city of Van, where the average temperature in July is 22.5 °C, and in January −3.5 °C. The average annual rainfall in the basin ranges from 400 to 700 mm.

Ecology
Prior to 2018, the only fish known to live in the brackish water of Lake Van was Alburnus tarichi or Pearl Mullet (inci kefali), a Cyprinid fish related to chub and dace, which is caught during the spring floods. In May and June, these fish migrate from the lake to less alkaline water, spawning either near the mouths of the rivers feeding the lake or in the rivers themselves. After spawning season it returns to the lake. In 2018, a new species of fish, which is deemed as Oxynoemacheilus ercisianus, has been discovered inside a microbialite.

103 species of phytoplankton have been recorded in the lake including cyanobacteria, flagellates, diatoms, green algae, and brown algae. 36 species of zooplankton have also been recorded including Rotatoria, Cladocera, and Copepoda in the lake.

In 1991, researchers reported the discovery of 40 m tall microbialites in the lake. These are solid towers on the lake bed formed by coccoid cyanobacteria (Pleurocapsa group), which create mats of aragonite that combine with calcite precipitating out of the lake water.

The region hosts the rare Van cat breed of cat, having – among other things – an unusual fascination with water. The lake is mainly surrounded by fruit orchards and grain fields, interspersed by some non-agricultural trees.

Monster myth
According to legend, the lake hosts the mysterious Lake Van Monster that lurks below the surface, 30 to 40 ft long with brown scaly skin, an elongated reptilian head and flippers. Apart from some inconclusive amateur photographs and videos, there has never been any evidence of it. The claimed profile resembles an extinct mosasaurus or basilosaurus.

History

Tushpa, the capital of Urartu, near the shores, on the site of what became medieval Van's castle, west of present-day Van city. The ruins of the medieval city of Van are still visible below the southern slopes of the rock on which Van Castle stands.

In 2017, archaeologists from Van Yüzüncü Yil University and a team of independent divers who were exploring Lake Van reported the discovery of a large underwater fortress spanning roughly one kilometer. The team estimates that this fortress was constructed during the Urartian period, based on their visual assessments. The archaeologists believe that the fortress, along with other parts of the ancient city that surrounded it at the time, had slowly become submerged over the millennia by the gradually rising lake.

Armenian kingdoms

The lake was the centre of the kingdom of Urartu from about 1000 BC, afterwards of the Satrapy of Armenia, Kingdom of Greater Armenia, and the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan.

Along with Lake Sevan in today's Armenia and Lake Urmia in today's Iran, Van was one of the three great lakes of the Armenian Kingdom, referred to as the seas of Armenia (in ancient Assyrian sources: "tâmtu ša mât Nairi" (Upper Sea of Nairi), the Lower Sea being Lake Urmia). Over time, the lake was known by various Armenian names, including Վանա լիճ (Lake of Van), Վանա ծով (Sea of Van), Արճեշի ծով (Sea of Arčeš), Բզնունեաց ծով (Sea of Bznunik), Ռշտունեաց ծով (Sea of Rshtunik), and Տոսպայ լիճ (Lake of Tosp).

Eastern Roman Empire
By the 11th century the lake was on the border between the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, and the Turko-Persian Seljuk Empire, with its capital at Isfahan. In the uneasy peace between the two empires, local Armenian-Byzantine landowners employed Turcoman gazis and Byzantine akritai for protection. The Greek-speaking Byzantines called the lake Thospitis limne.

In the second half of the 11th century Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes launched a campaign to re-conquer Armenia and head off growing Seljuk control. Diogenes and his large army crossed the Euphrates and confronted a much smaller Seljuk force led by Alp Arslan at the Battle of Manzikert, north of Lake Van on 26 August 1071. Despite their greater numbers, the cumbersome Byzantine force was defeated by the more mobile Turkish horsemen and Diogenes was captured.

Seljuk Empire

Alp Arslan divided the conquered eastern portions of the Byzantine empire among his Turcoman generals, with each ruled as a hereditary beylik, under overall sovereignty of the Seljuq Empire. Alp Arslan gave the region around Lake Van to his commander Sökmen el-Kutbî, who set up his capital at Ahlat on the western side of the lake. The dynasty of Shah-Armens, also known as Sökmenler, ruled this area from 1085 to 1192.

The Ahlatshahs were succeeded by the Ayyubid dynasty.

Ottoman Empire
Following the disintegration of the Seljuq-ruled Sultanate of Rum, Lake Van and its surroundings were conquered by the Ilkhanate Mongols, and later switched hands between the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran until Sultan Selim I took control for good.

Reports of the Lake Van Monster surfaced in the late 1800's and gained popularity. A news article was published by Saadet Gazetesi issue number 1323, dated 28 Shaban 1306 Hijri year, corresponding to 29 April 1889 during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

Architecture
Near the Van Fortress and the southern shore, on Akdamar Island lies the 10th century Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Aghtamar (Սուրբ Խաչ, Surb Khach), which served as a royal church to the kingdom of Vaspurakan. The ruins of Armenian monasteries also exist on the other three islands of Lake Van: Lim, Arter, and Ktuts. The area around Lake Van was also the home to a large number of Armenian monasteries, among the most prominent of these being the 10th century Narekavank and the 11th century Varagavank, the former now destroyed.

The Ahlatshahs left a large number of historic headstones in and around the town of Ahlat. Local administrators are currently trying to have the tombstones included in UNESCO's World Heritage List, where they are currently listed tentatively.

Transportation
The railway connecting Turkey and Iran was built in the 1970's, sponsored by CENTO. It uses a train ferry (ferry for decanted passengers) across between the cities Tatvan and Van, rather than building tracks around rugged terrain. This limits passenger capacity. In May 2008, talks started between Turkey and Iran to replace the ferry with a double-track electrified railway.

In December 2015, the new generation of train ferries operated by the Turkish State Railways, the largest of their kind in Turkey, entered service in Lake Van.

Ferit Melen Airport abuts Van. Turkish Airlines, AnadoluJet, Pegasus Airlines, and SunExpress are the airlines which have regular flights.

Sports
Lake Van occasionally hosts several water sports, sailing, and inshore powerboat racing events, such as the UIM World Offshore 225 Championship's IOC Van Grand Prix, and the Van Lake Festival.

Islands
The four main islands in Lake Van are Adır, Akdamar, Çarpanak, and Kuş islands. Adır Island is the biggest Island in Lake Van.

Every Island in Lake Van features armenian religious structures, like the following: Lim Monastery (Adır Island), Holy Cross Cathedral (Akdamar Island), Ktuts monastery (Çarpanak Island) and a small Monastery on Kuş Island.

Nearby Lakes
Important Lakes nearby (distance given) Lake Van are Lake Erçek (16km), Lake Turna (23km), Lake Nemrut (12km), Lake Nazik (16km), Lake Batmış (10km), Lake Aygır (5km) and Lake Süphan (18km). Lake Erçek is by far the biggest lake nearby Lake Van with an area of 106.2 square kilometres (41.0 sq mi), it is also the second biggest lake in Van Province after Lake Van itself.

title: Lake Van


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Malagasy

Malagasy may refer to:

 * Someone or something from Madagascar
 * Malagasy people
 * Malagasy language
 * Malagasy Republic
 * Related to the culture of Madagascar

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

title: Malagasy


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Fanorona

Fanorona is a strategy board game for two players. The game is indigenous to Madagascar.

Rules
Fanorona has three standard versions: Fanoron-Telo, Fanoron-Dimy, and Fanoron-Tsivy. The difference between these variants is the size of board played on. Fanoron-Telo is played on a 3×3 board and the difficulty of this game can be compared to the game of tic-tac-toe. Fanoron-Dimy is played on a 5×5 board and Fanoron-Tsivy is played on a 9×5 board—Tsivy being the most popular. The Tsivy board consists of lines and intersections that create a grid with 5 rows and 9 columns subdivided diagonally to form part of the tetrakis square tiling of the plane. A line represents the path along which a stone can move during the game. There are weak and strong intersections. At a weak intersection it is only possible to move a stone horizontally and vertically, while on a strong intersection it is also possible to move a stone diagonally. A stone can only move from one intersection to an adjacent intersection. Black and white pieces, twenty-two each, are arranged on all points but the center. The objective of the game is to capture all the opponents pieces. The game is a draw if neither player succeeds in this.

Players alternate turns, starting with White.

 * There are two kinds of moves: non-capturing and capturing. A non-capturing move is called a paika move.
 * A paika move consists of moving one stone along a line to an adjacent intersection.
 * Capturing moves are obligatory and have to be played in preference to paika moves.
 * Capturing implies removing one or more pieces of the opponent, in one of two ways:
 * Approach—moving the capturing stone to a point adjacent to an opponent's stone, which must be on the continuation of the capturing stone's movement line.
 * Withdrawal—the capturing stone moves from a point adjacent to the opponent's stone, away from the stone along the continuation of the line between them.
 * When an opponent stone is captured, all opponent pieces in line beyond that stone (as long as there is no interruption by an empty point or an own stone) are captured as well.
 * An approach capture and a withdrawal capture cannot be made at the same time – the player must choose one or the other.
 * As in checkers, the capturing piece is allowed to continue making successive captures, with these restrictions:
 * The piece is not allowed to arrive at the same position twice.
 * It is not permitted to move twice consecutively in the same direction (first to make a withdrawal capture, and then to make an approach capture) as part of a capturing sequence.
 * However, unlike in checkers, continuing the capturing sequence is optional.
 * The game ends when one player captures all stones of the opponent. If neither player can achieve this—for instance if the game reaches a state where neither player can attack the other without overly weakening their own position—then the game is a draw.

History
Fanorona is very popular in Madagascar. According to one version of a popular legend, an astrologer had advised King Ralambo to choose his successor by, while his sons were away from the capital, feigning sickness and urging their return; his kingdom would be given to the first son who returned home to him. When the king's messenger reached Ralambo's elder son Prince Andriantompokoindrindra, he was playing fanorona and trying to win a telo noho dimy (3 against 5) situation, one that is infamously difficult to resolve. As a result, his younger brother Prince Andrianjaka was the first to arrive and inherited the throne.

Fanorona inspired Christian Freeling's draughts variant Bushka, which in turn inspired the game Dameo.

Analysis
Using 10,000 games with Alpha-beta pruning players, the game-tree complexity and state-space complexity can be computed. Fanorona has a game-tree complexity of ~1046 and a state-space complexity of ~1021.

In 2007, the game of Fanorona and smaller variants were solved weakly as a draw under perfect play. Both the moves f2-e3A and d3-e3A lead to a draw.

title: Fanorona


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Human-powered transport

Human-powered transport is the transport of person(s) and/or goods (freight) using human muscle power. Unlike animal-powered transport, human-powered transport has existed since time immemorial in the form of walking, running and swimming, as well as small vehicles such as litters, rickshaws, wheelchairs and wheelbarrows. Modern technology has allowed mechanical advantage devices and machines to enhance human-power.

Although motorization has increased speed and load capacity, many forms of human-powered transport remain popular for reasons of cost, convenience, leisure, physical exercise and environmentalism. Human-powered transport is sometimes the only type available, especially in underdeveloped or inaccessible regions.

Non-vehicular

 * Crawling (human)
 * Walking (233 watts at 3 mph)
 * Walking bus
 * Running (1,150 watts at 10 mph)
 * Sprinting (1,690 watts at 15 mph)
 * Swimming
 * Climbing and mountaineering
 * Ice skating, roller skating, and inline skating
 * Cross-country skiing

Land vehicles

Skateboards have the advantage of being so small and light that users can easily carry them when not skating.

The most efficient and most popular human-powered land vehicle is the bicycle. Compared to the much more common upright bicycle, the recumbent bicycle may be faster on level ground or down hills due to better aerodynamics while having similar power transfer efficiency.

Velomobiles are increasingly popular in colder and/or wetter countries due to the protection they offer against the environment. Cargo bikes are used to transport cargo. Cycle rickshaws can be used as taxicabs.

In 2016, AeroVelo cyclist Todd Reichert achieved the human-powered speed record of 142.04 km/h with a velomobile at Battle Mountain, Nevada.

Dutch cyclist Fred Rompelberg set a 268.8 km/h speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah on October 3, 1995, while cycling in the wake of a motor dragster pace-car. The wake of the pace-car reduced the aerodynamic drag against which Rompelberg pedalled to almost zero.

Greg Kolodziejzyk set two world records recognized by both the International Human Powered Vehicle Association and Guinness (TM) World Records on July 17, 2006, on a race track in Eureka, California. The first record is for the most distance traveled in 24 hours by human power 1041 km, and the second for the world's fastest 1000 km time trial (23 hours, 2 minutes). Both records were broken on August 6, 2010, by Christian von Ascheberg who drove 1000 km in 19 hours, 27 minutes and managed to go 1219 km in 24 hours with his Milan SL Velomobile. In the same race he also raised the 12-hour record to 664.97 km, which is an average of 55.41 km/h. In 1969, artists in a small Northern California town began the Kinetic sculpture race which has grown to a 42 mi, three-day all terrain, human-powered sculpture race and county wide event. It is held every year on the last weekend in May.

The Shweeb system is a proposed transit network using recumbent bicycle technology to power pods suspended from monorails. A test built in Rotorua, New Zealand is open to the public as a leisure attraction. In September 2010 the system was chosen to receive funding from Google as part of project 10100. There are no active proposals for its implementation.

Fixed wing

The Pedaliante flew short distances fully under human power in 1936, but the distances were not significant enough to win the prize of the Italian competition for which it was built. The flights were deemed to be a result of the pilot's significant strength and endurance, and not attainable by a typical human. Additional attempts were made in 1937 and 1938 using a catapult system, launching the plane to a height of 9 m. With the catapult launch, the plane successfully traveled the 1 km distance outlined by the competition, but was declined the prize due to the takeoff method.

The first officially authenticated regularly feasible take-off and landing of a human-powered aircraft (one capable of powered takeoffs, unlike a glider) was made on 9 November 1961 by Derek Piggott in Southampton University's Man Powered Aircraft (SUMPAC).

Perhaps the best-known human-powered plane is the Gossamer Albatross, which flew across the English Channel in 1979.

The current distance and duration record recognized by the FAI, a straight distance of 115.11 km in 3 hours and 54 minutes, was achieved on 23 April 1988 from Heraklion on Crete to Santorini in a MIT Daedalus 88 piloted by Greek cyclist Kanellos Kanellopoulos.

The current speed record recognized by the FAI is held by Musculair 2, built by Günther Rochelt, which was flown at 44.32 km/h by Holger Rochelt in 1985.

Helicopters
The first officially observed human-powered helicopter to have left the ground was the Da Vinci III in 1989. It was designed and built by students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California, USA. It flew for 7.1 seconds and reached a height of 8 in. The second was the Yuri I in 1994, designed and built by students at Nihon University in Japan. It flew for 19.46 seconds and reached an altitude of 20 cm. On 13 June 2013, the AeroVelo Atlas was the first to complete a flight that lasted 64 seconds and reached an altitude of 3.3 meters, thus winning the Sikorsky Prize.

Airships and balloons
French inventors have built man-powered airships and balloons. Solar balloons and solar airships are new types of balloons and airships. Because lift is supplied through buoyancy, human power can be devoted to thrust.

Watercraft
Human-powered watercraft include prehistoric, historic and well-known traditional and sporting craft such as canoes, rowing boats and galleys. The term human-powered boat is often used for more modern craft using propellers and water wheels for propulsion. These can be more efficient than paddles or oars and especially allow the use of the leg muscles which are generally stronger than arm muscles, even for non-athletes. Competitive rowing boats use sliding seats to engage the legs for propulsion with an oar for this reason, but require considerable skill to use efficiently. In addition, there is little skill required for forward propulsion while looking forwards and craft such as pedalos are popular at resorts.

Hydrofoils
Hydrofoils have less water resistance at the highest speeds attainable by humans and are thus usually faster than displacement boats on short courses. The world speed record on water was set 27 October 1991 by MIT professor Mark Drela who pedalled a human-powered hydrofoil, "Decavitator", to 9.53 m/s over a 100-meter course in Boston, Massachusetts, US.

Submarines
In 1989, the first human-powered International Submarine Race (ISR) was held in Florida with 17 craft. Since then nine more races have been held. The races themselves have been moved from the waters of Florida to the David Taylor Model Basin at the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and are held biennially. At the 9th ISR in 2007 (in which 23 submarines participated) several new records were set: A single-person craft, Omer5 achieved a record speed of 8.035 kn breaking the Omer team's previous record of 7.19 kn set by Omer 4 in 2004. Also Omer 6 snatched up a record for non-propeller driven craft with a speed of 4.642 kn.

Air

 * Human Powered Aircraft Group - Virginia Tech
 * Human Powered Helicopters - History, technology, people
 * Human powered blimp

Land

 * Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Human Powered Vehicle Team - Videos, photos, links, and other information about human powered land vehicles

Water

 * Human Powered Boats - Events, photos, links
 * Human Powered Hydrofoils from 1953 to 2005
 * Decavitator Human-Powered Hydrofoil - videos, documentation
 * Human Powered Submarine of Virginia Tech

title: Human-powered transport


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Iolanthe

Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, first performed in 1882. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh of fourteen operatic collaborations by Gilbert and Sullivan. In the opera, the fairy Iolanthe has been banished from fairyland because she married a mortal; this is forbidden by fairy law. Her son, Strephon, is an Arcadian shepherd who wants to marry Phyllis, a Ward of Chancery. All the members of the House of Peers also want to marry Phyllis. When Phyllis sees Strephon hugging a young woman (not knowing that it is his mother – immortal fairies all appear young), she assumes the worst and sets off a climactic confrontation between the peers and the fairies. The opera satirises many aspects of British government, law and society. The confrontation between the fairies and the peers is a version of one of Gilbert's favourite themes: a tranquil civilisation of women is disrupted by a male-dominated world through the discovery of mortal love.

Iolanthe opened in London on 25 November 1882, at the Savoy Theatre to a warm reception, and ran for 398 performances, the fourth consecutive hit by Gilbert and Sullivan. It was the first work to premiere at the Savoy (although Patience had transferred to the theatre in 1881) and was the first new theatre production in the world to be illuminated entirely with electric lights, permitting some special effects that had not been possible in the era of gas lighting. The opera opened simultaneously in New York, and touring companies were sent around the UK and US to play the piece. The first Australasian touring production followed in 1885, and the opera was revived in London beginning in 1901. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company toured the opera nearly continuously in repertory from 1891 until 1982, and made several recordings of the opera over that period. Numerous other professional and amateur productions have been given of this enduring work, and various other recordings have been issued.

Background
W. S. Gilbert presented his basic idea for a new opera to Arthur Sullivan in October 1881. Gilbert's earliest ideas for the story of Iolanthe originated in his Bab Ballad, "The Fairy Curate": "Once a fairy / Light and airy / Married with a mortal." The fairy marries a "prosaic" attorney and bears him a son. After her son grows up, she visits him on Earth, but she is mistaken for his lover, since fairies perpetually appear young and beautiful. Sullivan found the premise funny, and Gilbert set to work on fleshing out the story. By December, he had written some lyrics for Sullivan to look at, but he struggled with the plot for several months, whereas he had dashed off earlier operas in a matter of weeks. During these months, Sullivan took an extended trip to Egypt, Italy and elsewhere. Upon his return to London in April 1882, he moved into a new home; in May, his beloved mother died rather suddenly. By the end of July 1882, Gilbert had supplied Sullivan with lyrics to several of the songs, and Sullivan began work setting them to music. Over the next two months, Sullivan met Gilbert to discuss the libretto as more lyrics were completed. Music rehearsals began in September, and staging began in October, scheduled around performances of Gilbert and Sullivan's previous opera, Patience, which had transferred to the Savoy Theatre a year earlier. Sullivan was still composing more numbers for the opera until 20 October, with a few modifications continuing into early November. Uncharacteristically, Sullivan composed the overture himself, instead of assigning it to an assistant. Two casts rehearsed simultaneously, as the opera was to open on the same night in London and New York City, a historic first for any play.

Gilbert had targeted the aristocracy and political officials for satiric treatment in earlier works. In this opera, the House of Lords is lampooned as a bastion of the ineffective, privileged and dim-witted, whose only qualification to govern is noble birth. The political party system, the law and other institutions also come in for a dose of satire. Throughout Iolanthe, however, both author and composer managed to couch the criticism among such bouncy, amiable absurdities and "splendid pageantry" that it is all received as good humour, with Prime Minister Gladstone complimenting the opera's good taste. In fact, Gilbert later refused to allow quotes from the piece to be used as part of the campaign to diminish the powers of the House of Lords.

Although titled Iolanthe all along in Gilbert's plot book, for a time the piece was advertised as Perola and rehearsed under that name. According to an often-repeated myth, Gilbert and Sullivan did not change the name to Iolanthe until just before the première. In fact, however, the title was advertised as Iolanthe as early as 13 November 1882 – eleven days before the opening – so the cast had at least that much time to learn the name. It is also clear that Sullivan's musical setting was written to match the cadence of the word "Iolanthe," and could only accommodate the word "Perola" by preceding it (awkwardly) with "O", "Come" or "Ah". Henry Irving had produced a W. G. Wills adaptation of King René’s Daughter in London in 1880, under the name Iolanthe, and in October 1882 Gilbert asked his producer, Richard D'Oyly Carte, to request Irving's permission to use the name. It is not known whether Irving replied.

Iolanthe premiered only three days after Patience closed at the Savoy. The Savoy Theatre, opened only a year earlier, was a state-of-the-art facility, the first theatre in the world to be lit entirely by electricity. Patience had transferred to the Savoy from the Opera Comique, upon the theatre's opening, but Iolanthe was the first show to premiere at the theatre. New lighting technologies made such special effects as sparkling fairy wands possible for the first time. The principal fairies' heads were also lit by wreaths of small illuminated stars attached to a battery. The audience that attended the opening night in London included Captain (later Captain Sir) Eyre Massey Shaw, head of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, whom the Fairy Queen apostrophises in the second act ("Oh, Captain Shaw / Type of true love kept under / Could thy brigade with cold cascade / Quench my great love, I wonder?"). On the first night Alice Barnett, as the Queen of the Fairies, sang the verses directly to Captain Shaw, who was sitting in the centre of the stalls.

The opera's premiere was received by an enthusiastic audience and earned critical praise, although there was general agreement that the second act needed some trimming. Iolanthe became the fourth consecutive major success for Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer, Richard D'Oyly Carte, following H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879) and Patience (1881). Increasingly viewing his work with Gilbert as frivolous, beneath his skills and repetitious, Sullivan had intended to resign from the partnership with Gilbert and Carte after Iolanthe, but on the day of its premiere, he received a letter from his broker, Edward Hall, notifying him that Hall had lost all his money, including £7,000 of Sullivan's investments, the bulk of his fortune. Sullivan's lifestyle was not inexpensive, and he was helping to support his late brother's large family, as well as his mistress, Fanny Ronalds, and her family. He soon concluded that the only certain way to restore his financial security was to continue writing Savoy operas. On 8 February 1883, he signed a new five-year creative partnership agreement with Gilbert and Carte; Gilbert was already at work on their next piece, Princess Ida. On 22 May 1883, Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria for his "services ... rendered to the promotion of the art of music" in Britain.

Roles

 * The Lord Chancellor (comic baritone)
 * George, Earl of Mountararat (baritone)
 * Thomas, Earl Tolloller (tenor)
 * Private Willis, of the Grenadier Guards (bass)
 * Strephon, an Arcadian Shepherd (baritone)
 * Queen of the Fairies (contralto)
 * Iolanthe, a Fairy, Strephon's mother (mezzo-soprano)
 * Celia, a Fairy (soprano)
 * Leila, a Fairy (mezzo-soprano)
 * Fleta, a Fairy (speaking role/chorus)
 * Phyllis, an Arcadian Shepherdess and Ward in Chancery (soprano)
 * Chorus of Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Viscounts, Barons, and Fairies

Synopsis
Act I

The beloved fairy Iolanthe, who arranged the fairies' songs and dances, committed the capital crime (under fairy law) of marrying a mortal man. The Queen of the fairies commuted Iolanthe's sentence of death to banishment for life on the condition that she left her husband and never communicated with him again. After the passage of 25 years, the fairies, still missing Iolanthe deeply, plead with their Queen to pardon Iolanthe and to restore her place in fairyland ("Tripping hither, tripping thither").

Summoned by the Fairy Queen ("Iolanthe! From thy dark exile thou art summoned"), Iolanthe rises from the frog-infested stream that has been her home in exile. The Queen, unable to bear punishing her any longer, pardons Iolanthe, who is warmly greeted by the other fairies. Iolanthe tells her sisters that she has a son, Strephon, noting that he's a fairy down to the waist, but his legs are mortal. The fairies laugh that Iolanthe appears too young to have a grown son, as one of the advantages of a fairy's immortality is that they never grow old. Strephon, a handsome Arcadian shepherd, arrives and meets his aunts ("Good-morrow, good mother"). He tells Iolanthe of his love for the Lord Chancellor's ward of court, the beautiful Phyllis, who does not know of Strephon's mixed origin. Strephon is despondent, however, as the Lord Chancellor has forbidden them to marry, partly because he feels that a shepherd is unsuitable for Phyllis, but partly because the Lord Chancellor wishes to marry Phyllis himself. In fact, so do half the members of Britain's House of Lords. The Fairy Queen promises her assistance ("Fare thee well, attractive stranger"). Soon Phyllis arrives, and she and Strephon share a moment of tenderness as they plan their future and possible elopement ("Good-morrow, good lover"; "None shall part us from each other").

A cadre of the peers of the realm arrive in noisy splendour ("Loudly let the trumpet bray") with the Lord Chancellor ("The law is the true embodiment"). They are all smitten with Phyllis, and they have appealed to the Lord Chancellor to decide who will have her hand. The Lord Chancellor hesitates to act upon his own regard for Phyllis due to his position as her guardian. The Lords send for Phyllis to choose one of their number, but she will not marry any of them, as virtue is found only in a "lowly" cottage ("My well-loved Lord" and "Nay, tempt me not"). The peers beg her not to scorn them simply because of their "blue blood" ("Spurn not the nobly born" and "My lords, it may not be"). Strephon approaches the Lord Chancellor, pleading that Nature bids him marry Phyllis. But the Lord Chancellor wryly notes that Strephon has not presented sufficient evidence that Nature has interested herself in the matter. He refuses his consent to the marriage between Strephon and Phyllis ("When I went to the Bar").

Disappointed, Strephon calls on Iolanthe for help. She appears and promises to support her son. Spying on the two, the peers – led by the brainless and stuffy Earls Tolloller and Mountararat – together with Phyllis, see Iolanthe and Strephon in a warm embrace. All three jump to the obvious conclusion, since the centuries-old Iolanthe appears to be a girl of seventeen ("When darkly looms the day"). The peers scoff at the seemingly absurd claim that Iolanthe is Strephon's mother as Strephon pleads: "She is, has been, my mother from my birth!" Phyllis angrily rejects Strephon for his supposed infidelity and declares that she will marry either Lord Tolloller or Lord Mountararat ("...and I don't care which!"). Strephon then calls for help from the fairies, who appear but are mistaken by the peers for a girls' school on an outing. Offended, the Fairy Queen pronounces a magical "sentence" upon the peers: Strephon shall not only become a Member of Parliament, but will also have the power to pass any bill he proposes ("With Strephon for your foe, no doubt").

Act II

Private Willis, on night guard duty, paces outside the Palace of Westminster and muses on political life ("When all night long a chap remains"). The fairies arrive and tease the peers about the success of MP Strephon, who is advancing a bill to open the peerage to competitive examination ("Strephon's a member of Parliament"). The peers ask the fairies to stop Strephon's mischief, stating that the House of Peers is not susceptible of any improvement ("When Britain really ruled the waves"). Although the fairies say that they cannot stop Strephon, they have become strongly attracted to the peers ("In vain to us you plead"). The fairy Queen is dismayed by this. Pointing to Private Willis of the First Grenadier Guards, who is still on duty, the Queen claims that she is able to subdue her response to the effects of his manly beauty ("Oh, foolish fay").

Phyllis cannot decide whether she ought to marry Tolloller or Mountararat, and so she leaves the choice up to them. Tolloller tells Mountararat that his family's tradition would require the two Earls to duel to the death if the latter were to claim Phyllis. The two decide that their friendship is more important than love and renounce their claims to her ("Though p'r'aps I may incur thy blame"). The Lord Chancellor arrives dressed for bed and describes a nightmare caused by his unrequited love for Phyllis ("Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest"). The two peers try to cheer him up and urge him to make another effort to persuade himself to award Phyllis to ... himself ("If you go in you're sure to win").

Strephon now leads both parties in Parliament, but he is miserable at losing Phyllis. He sees Phyllis and reveals to her that his mother is a fairy, which accounts for her apparent youth ("If we're weak enough to tarry"). Phyllis and Strephon ask Iolanthe to plead with the Lord Chancellor to allow their marriage, for "none can resist your fairy eloquence." This is impossible, she replies, for the Lord Chancellor is her husband. He believes Iolanthe to have died childless, and she is bound not to "undeceive" him, under penalty of death. However, to save Strephon from losing his love, Iolanthe resolves to present his case to the Lord Chancellor while veiled ("My lord, a suppliant at your feet").

Although the Lord Chancellor is moved by her appeal, which evokes the memory of his wife, he declares that he himself will marry Phyllis. Desperate, Iolanthe unveils, ignoring the warnings of the unseen Fairies, revealing that she is his long-lost wife, and Strephon is his son. The Lord Chancellor is amazed to see her alive, but Iolanthe has again broken fairy law, and the Fairy Queen is now left with no choice but to punish Iolanthe with death ("It may not be ... Once again thy vow is broken"). As she prepares to execute Iolanthe, the Queen learns that the rest of the fairies have chosen husbands from among the peers, thus also incurring death sentences – but the Queen blanches at the prospect of slaughtering all of them. The Lord Chancellor suggests a solution: change the law by inserting a single word: "every fairy shall die who doesn't marry a mortal." The Fairy Queen cheerfully agrees and, to save her life, the dutiful soldier, Private Willis, agrees to marry her. Seeing no reason to stay in the mortal realm if peers are to be recruited "from persons of intelligence", the peers join the fairy ranks and "away [they] go to fairyland" ("Soon as we may, off and away").

Musical numbers

 * Overture

Act I
 * 1. "Tripping hither, tripping thither" (Celia, Leila, and Chorus of Fairies)
 * 2. "Iolanthe! From thy dark exile thou art summoned" (Queen, Iolanthe, Celia, Leila, and Chorus of Fairies)
 * 3. "Good-morrow, good mother" (Strephon and Chorus of Fairies)
 * 4. "Fare thee well, attractive stranger" (Queen and Chorus of Fairies)
 * 4a. "Good-morrow, good lover" (Phyllis and Strephon)
 * 5. "None shall part us from each other" (Phyllis and Strephon)
 * 6. "Loudly let the trumpet bray" (Chorus of Peers)
 * 7. "The law is the true embodiment" (Lord Chancellor and Chorus of Peers)
 * 8. "My well-loved Lord" and Barcarole, "Of all the young ladies I know" (Phyllis, Lord Tolloller, and Lord Mountararat)
 * 9. "Nay, tempt me not" (Phyllis)
 * 10. "Spurn not the nobly born" (Lord Tolloller and Chorus of Peers)
 * 11. "My lords, it may not be" (Phyllis, Lord Tolloller, Lord Mountararat, Strephon, Lord Chancellor, and Chorus of Peers)
 * 12. "When I went to the Bar" (Lord Chancellor)
 * 13. Finale Act I (Ensemble)
 * "When darkly looms the day"
 * "The lady of my love has caught me talking to another"
 * "Go away, madam"
 * "Henceforth Strephon, cast away"
 * "With Strephon for your foe, no doubt / Young Strephon is the kind of lout"

Act II
 * 14. "When all night long a chap remains" (Private Willis)
 * 15. "Strephon's a member of Parliament" (Chorus of Fairies and Peers)
 * 16. "When Britain really ruled the waves" (Lord Mountararat and Chorus)
 * 17. "In vain to us you plead" (Leila, Celia, Chorus of Fairies, Mountararat, Tolloller, and Chorus of Peers)
 * 18. "Oh, foolish fay" (Queen with Chorus of Fairies)
 * 19. "Though p'r'aps I may incur thy blame" (Phyllis, Lord Mountararat, Lord Tolloller, and Private Willis)
 * 20. "Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest" ... "When you're lying awake" (Lord Chancellor)
 * 21. "If you go in you're sure to win" (Lord Tolloller, Lord Mountararat, and Lord Chancellor)
 * 22. "If we're weak enough to tarry" (Phyllis and Strephon)
 * 23. "My lord, a suppliant at your feet" (Iolanthe)
 * 24. "It may not be" (Lord Chancellor, Iolanthe, and Chorus of Fairies)
 * 25. "Soon as we may, off and away" (Ensemble)

Deleted songs

 * 18a. "De Belville was regarded as the Crichton of his age" (Mountararat) was cut soon after the opening night of Iolanthe. The number appeared soon after Mountararat's Act II entrance, after Phyllis's comment about Strephon going about "with a mother considerably younger than himself".  After a short dialogue (which would also be cut) about how people become peers, Mountararat sings a long song about De Belville, a polymath whose talents ranged from painting to literature to inventions.  Government was at a loss as to how to reward him – until he inherited millions and obtained a seat in Parliament and "a taste for making inconvenient speeches in the House (of Commons)".  He was promptly rewarded by being removed from that House by being given a peerage.  According to Reginald Allen's The First Night Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as contemporaneous reviews, it was recited on the first night, rather than sung, and the middle stanza omitted.  The music has been lost, except for a leader violin part found in a private collection of band parts in 1999.
 * 21a. "Fold your flapping wings" (Strephon) was sung on the first night and cut soon afterwards. The song, preceded by a recitative for Strephon ("My bill has now been read a second time") appeared shortly after #21, following the exit of the two Earls and the Lord Chancellor and the entrance of Strephon.  The tone of the song is dark and angry, in marked contrast with the generally genial tone of Iolanthe, and the lyrics make the case that bad behaviour by the underclasses is caused by their unfortunate circumstances: "I might be as bad – as unlucky, rather – if I only had Fagin for a father."   The music to this song survives, and although most productions continue to omit it, the song has been used in some modern productions and as a separate concert piece.

Musical and textual analysis
At the time they wrote Iolanthe, both Gilbert and Sullivan were in their peak creative years, and Iolanthe, their seventh work together, drew the best from both composer and author. Sullivan's biographer, Arthur Jacobs, wrote: "[Sullivan] had composed a brilliant new score (his most subtle yet) to a scintillating libretto. ... Iolanthe is the work in which Sullivan's operetta style takes a definite step forward, and metamorphosis of musical themes is its characteristic new feature. ... By recurrence and metamorphosis of themes Sullivan made the score more fluid". Sullivan's overture was superior in structure and orchestration to those that his assistants had constructed for the earlier operas. Much of his "fairy" music pays deliberate homage to the incidental music written by Felix Mendelssohn for an 1842 production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Richard Wagner's Ring cycle premiered in London earlier in 1882. The music for the fairies reflects Wagner's style, and the score uses leitmotifs, including a distinctive four-note theme associated with the character of Iolanthe. The Fairy Queen's music parodies that of Wagnerian heroines such as Brünnhilde. The score is wider in range of emotion and style, with innovative use of pizzicato strings, clever and varied underscoring of patter, the tender, sentimental eleventh-hour number for the title character, apt matching of the music to the absurd comedy of the lyrics, and a sustained first act finale with a series of dramatic situations that ends with the confrontation between the fairies and peers.

Gilbert, too, was influenced by earlier works, including The Mountain Sylph by John Barnett. Two characters in Iolanthe, Strephon and Phyllis, are described as Arcadian shepherds. Arcadia was a legendary site of rural perfection, first described by the Ancient Greeks, that was a popular setting for writers of the 19th century. Gilbert had written an earlier work called Happy Arcadia. He had also created several "fairy comedies" at the Haymarket Theatre in the early 1870s. These plays, influenced by the fairy work of James Planché, are founded upon the idea of self-revelation by characters under the influence of some magic or some supernatural interference. Several of Iolanthe's themes are continued from Patience, including the battle between the sexes and the satire on legal and political themes. Iolanthe is one of several of Gilbert's works, including among others The Wicked World, Broken Hearts, Fallen Fairies and Princess Ida, where the introduction of males into a tranquil world of women brings "mortal love" that wreaks havoc with the status quo.

Gilbert's absurdist style is on full display in Iolanthe. For example, all the members of the House of Lords are in love with Phyllis, a ward of the Lord Chancellor. Gilbert satirically sets up the fantastical fairies as the agents of common sense in contrast with the nonsensical peers, who should be sober parliamentarians, while the most poetically romantic of the fairies, the "Arcadian" shepherd, Strephon, is chosen to lead both houses of Parliament. One of Gilbert's biographers, Andrew Crowther wrote: "The things that make [the opera] memorable as a work of art [include] the peers entering in the full pomp of their formal robes, magnificent and ridiculous." Among many pot-shots that Gilbert takes at lawyers in this opera, the Lord Chancellor sings that, as a young lawyer, he decided to "work on a new and original plan" similar to the practice in other professions, that diligence, honesty, honour and merit should lead to promotion. Gilbert uses the "fairy law" as a proxy for mortal law, in which an "equity draughtsman" can, with "the insertion of a single word", change the entire meaning of the law. Crowther notes: "All kinds of tone ... mingle in this opera: whimsy, fantasy, romance, wit and political satire."

Productions
Iolanthe had a successful initial run in London of 398 performances, spanning the holiday seasons of both 1882 and 1883. Gilbert designed the costumes himself, and sets were by the Drury Lane designer Henry Emden. In an unprecedented first for any play, the New York premiere was given on the same date – 25 November 1882, with the composer's assistant, Alfred Cellier, conducting there. In Australia, Iolanthe was first seen on 9 May 1885 at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, produced by J. C. Williamson.

In the British provinces, Iolanthe played – either by itself, or in repertory – continuously from February 1882 through 1885, then not again until late 1891. From then on, it was always present in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company's touring repertory, being included in some part of every season until the company's closure in 1982. Most of the costumes were redesigned by Percy Anderson in 1915 and by George Sheringham in 1932, and Peter Goffin designed new sets in 1957 and some new costumes in 1960. After its original production, Iolanthe was not revived in London until 1901, making it the first of the operas to be revived after the composer's death the year before. It was also included in two Savoy repertory seasons, in 1907 and 1908–09.

Iolanthe was the first Gilbert and Sullivan opera performed professionally in Britain by a non-D'Oyly Carte company. It was produced by the Sadler's Wells Opera (now English National Opera) in January 1962, immediately after the Gilbert copyrights expired. It was well received and was successfully revived for many seasons by Sadler's Wells until 1978. Michael Heyland restaged Iolanthe for D'Oyly Carte in 1977, the year of Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee, with silver-themed designs. Iolanthe has remained one of the most popular of the Gilbert and Sullivan works. Thousands of professional and amateur productions of the opera have been given throughout the English-speaking world, and the opera continues to be performed regularly today. The Internet Broadway Database lists 20 productions of the opera on Broadway alone.

The following table shows the history of the D'Oyly Carte productions in Gilbert's lifetime (not including touring companies):

Historical casting
The following tables show the casts of the principal original productions and D'Oyly Carte Opera Company touring repertory at various times through to the company's 1982 closure:

Selected recordings
Of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company recordings of this opera, the 1930 and 1960 recordings have been the best received, and the latter includes the dialogue. The revived D'Oyly Carte's 1991 recording contains Strephon's cut number "Fold Your Flapping Wings" as a bonus track.

On video are the 1982 Brent Walker production and more recent performances from the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival.

 * 1930 D'Oyly Carte – Conductor: Malcolm Sargent
 * 1951 D'Oyly Carte – Conductor: Isidore Godfrey
 * 1960 D'Oyly Carte (with dialogue) – New Symphony Orchestra of London, Band of the Grenadier Guards, Conductor: Isidore Godfrey
 * 1982 Brent Walker Productions (video) – Ambrosian Opera Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra, Conductor: Alexander Faris; Stage Director: David Pountney
 * 1991 D'Oyly Carte – Conductor: John Pryce-Jones
 * 2013 Lamplighters Music Theatre (with dialogue) – Conductor: Baker Peeples

Cultural influence
When Margaret Thatcher was elected as Prime Minister, the press joked about the line from the opera, "This comes of women interfering in politics!" Lord Falconer, who served as Tony Blair's second Lord Chancellor, was reportedly influenced by Iolanthe in his moves to reform or disband the office.
 * British politics

William H. Rehnquist, former Chief Justice of the United States, was an avid Gilbert and Sullivan fan and was inspired by the costume of the Lord Chancellor, in a production of Iolanthe, to add four golden stripes to the sleeves of his judicial robes. The next Chief Justice, John G. Roberts Jr., did not retain the ornamentation. In 1980, while an Associate Justice, Rehnquist, in his dissenting opinion in the case of Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, compares these words of the Lord Chancellor to the "flavor from the various opinions supporting the judgment in this case": The Law is the true embodiment/Of everything that's excellent,/It has no kind of fault or flaw,/And I, My Lords, embody the Law.
 * Effect upon Chief Justice Rehnquist

The Ratepayers' Iolanthe was a 1984 musical adapted by Ned Sherrin and Alistair Beaton. Sherrin directed and won a Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Musical for the musical's "conception".
 * Adaptations

The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was a Gilbert and Sullivan fan. His Foundation Trilogy was conceived after his reading Iolanthe started a train of thought about military empires. Also, in "Runaround", a story in Asimov's I, Robot, a robot, while in a state similar to drunkenness, sings snippets of Gilbert and Sullivan songs, including "The Nightmare Song" from Iolanthe. In Michael Chabon's 2004 novel The Final Solution, Bruno the parrot sings bits from Iolanthe. The eponymous hero of David Nobbs' The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin has "Iolanthe" as a middle name, allegedly due to his being born during a performance of the opera. An illustrated booklet, A Parody on Iolanthe, was written and published by D. Dalziel in 1883 and concerns the Chicago & Alton Railway.
 * Literature and music

In his 1974 album Todd, Todd Rundgren performs the "Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song" ("When you're lying awake...").

title: Iolanthe


text:
User:Little guru

My name is G.M.C. Carbonaro. I work as a computer tech in the "Enrico Fermi" Scientific Lyceum in Ragusa, South Italy and live there... Europe.

I'm also interested in physics (particularly in quantum physics), astronomy, theoretical computer science, copyright and privacy breaching issues, philosophy, and strategy games like chess.

I have contributed to and taken an active interest in the following Wikipedia articles. I made contributions on the following subjects:

My latest contributions

All my contributions

My first contribution @ 13:12 the 8th of December 2001 under the nickname "Little guru"

/Talk

title: User:Little guru


text:
Daniel Bernoulli

Daniel Bernoulli (, ; 8 February 1700 – 27 March 1782 ) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family from Basel. He is particularly remembered for his applications of mathematics to mechanics, especially fluid mechanics, and for his pioneering work in probability and statistics. His name is commemorated in the Bernoulli's principle, a particular example of the conservation of energy, which describes the mathematics of the mechanism underlying the operation of two important technologies of the 20th century: the carburetor and the aeroplane wing.

Early life
Daniel Bernoulli was born in Groningen, in the Netherlands, into a family of distinguished mathematicians. The Bernoulli family came originally from Antwerp, at that time in the Spanish Netherlands, but emigrated to escape the Spanish persecution of the Protestants. After a brief period in Frankfurt the family moved to Basel, in Switzerland.

Daniel was the son of Johann Bernoulli (one of the early developers of calculus) and a nephew of Jacob Bernoulli (an early researcher in probability theory and the discoverer of the mathematical constant e). He had two brothers, Niklaus and Johann II. Daniel Bernoulli was described by W. W. Rouse Ball as "by far the ablest of the younger Bernoullis".

He is said to have had a bad relationship with his father. Both of them entered and tied for first place in a scientific contest at the University of Paris. Johann banned Daniel from his house allegedly for being unable to bear the "shame" of being compared Daniel's equal. Johann allegedly plagiarized key ideas from Daniel's book Hydrodynamica in his book Hydraulica and backdated them to before Hydrodynamica.. Daniel's attempts" at reconciliation with his father were unsuccessful.

When he was in school, Johann encouraged Daniel to study business citing poor financial compensation for mathematicians. Daniel initially refused but later relented and studied both business and medicine at his father's behest under the condition that his father would teach him mathematics privately. Daniel studied medicine at Basel, Heidelberg, and Strasbourg, and earned a PhD in anatomy and botany in 1721.

He was a contemporary and close friend of Leonhard Euler. He went to St. Petersburg in 1724 as professor of mathematics, but was very unhappy there. A temporary illness together with the censorship by the Russian Orthodox Church and disagreements over his salary gave him an excuse for leaving St. Petersburg in 1733. He returned to the University of Basel, where he successively held the chairs of medicine, metaphysics, and natural philosophy until his death.

In May 1750 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Mathematical work
His earliest mathematical work was the Exercitationes (Mathematical Exercises), published in 1724 with the help of Goldbach. Two years later he pointed out for the first time the frequent desirability of resolving a compound motion into motions of translation and motion of rotation. His chief work is Hydrodynamica, published in 1738. It resembles Joseph Louis Lagrange's Mécanique Analytique in being arranged so that all the results are consequences of a single principle, namely, conservation of energy. This was followed by a memoir on the theory of the tides, to which, conjointly with the memoirs by Euler and Colin Maclaurin, a prize was awarded by the French Academy: these three memoirs contain all that was done on this subject between the publication of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica and the investigations of Pierre-Simon Laplace. Bernoulli also wrote a large number of papers on various mechanical questions, especially on problems connected with vibrating strings, and the solutions given by Brook Taylor and by Jean le Rond d'Alembert.

Economics and statistics
In his 1738 book Specimen theoriae novae de mensura sortis (Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk), Bernoulli offered a solution to the St. Petersburg paradox as the basis of the economic theory of risk aversion, risk premium, and utility. Bernoulli often noticed that when making decisions that involved some uncertainty, people did not always try to maximize their possible monetary gain, but rather tried to maximize "utility", an economic term encompassing their personal satisfaction and benefit. Bernoulli realized that for humans, there is a direct relationship between money gained and utility, but that it diminishes as the money gained increases. For example, to a person whose income is $10,000 per year, an additional $100 in income will provide more utility than it would to a person whose income is $50,000 per year.

One of the earliest attempts to analyze a statistical problem involving censored data was Bernoulli's 1766 analysis of smallpox morbidity and mortality data to demonstrate the efficacy of inoculation.

Physics
In Hydrodynamica (1738) he laid the basis for the kinetic theory of gases, and applied the idea to explain Boyle's law.

He worked with Euler on elasticity and the development of the Euler–Bernoulli beam equation. Bernoulli's principle is of critical use in aerodynamics.

According to Léon Brillouin, the principle of superposition was first stated by Daniel Bernoulli in 1753: "The general motion of a vibrating system is given by a superposition of its proper vibrations."

Works

Legacy
In 2002, Bernoulli was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

title: Daniel Bernoulli


text:
User talk:Little guru

Ok, sorry, ;)
 * no problem. just wanted to explain why an evil admin had deleted the page ;-) -- Tarquin 21:12 Jan 11, 2003 (UTC)

-- hey!

---

Hi there. Welcome to Wikipedia. :-) Regarding Immortality -- it's not a good idea to create an article before there's any content. Readers come to the site all the time, and we want them to find good content. I'll delete the page. You can recreate it when you're ready to make a start on it. (You can make yourself a "to do" list on your user page, for articles you mean to work on one day. -- Tarquin 21:00 Jan 11, 2003 (UTC)

User categorisation
You were listed on the Wikipedians/Italy page as living in or being associated with Italy. As part of the User categorisation project, these lists are being replaced with user categories. If you would like to add yourself to the category that is replacing the page, please visit Category:Wikipedians in Italy for instructions. --Army1987 21:04, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Klan, Einstein
Hi -- Thanks for supplying the updated link on Einstein! The place to discuss the Klan article is on its talk page, which you can get to by clicking on the "discuss this page" link. Please don't send me e-mail about Wikipedia stuff. The etymology is already discussed in the article.--Bcrowell 15:29, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Red link
I assume you will be filling in the red link in Feynman's article "for the development of the space-time view of quantum electrodynamics". There is already a quantum electrodynamics article, so I am curious what you have in mind. If you do not have an article for the red link, then perhaps you might remove the markup for the link. --Ancheta Wis 08:12, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

3G phone
Write your article before posting it. Wikipedia is a live encyclopdia and any postings are considered publications. You would never see "man writing" in Compton's Encyclopedia. To maintain our standards the article was marked for Speedy Deletion.

Hopefully your article will be up in no time =)

Please stop removing speedy deletion notices from articles that you have created yourself. You may place hangon on the page and make your case on the article's talk page if you oppose an article's speedy deletion. Thanks. " do not remove this notice from pages that you have created yourself. If you created this page and you disagree with this page's proposed speedy deletion, please explain why on its talk page, after adding the text "hangon" with two brace brackets into the article, following the db-reason tag at the top of the article:

hangon"

Thank You. '''WHO IS THIS?? A Bot? This is < > by drmsppedy2, is that a man or a computer program?'''

--Sorry, thought history would reveal my identity

Ok No probs. Thanks undercover wikipedia cop... :O)

Wikilinking
Thank you for adding some much needed wikilinks. However, I would suggest that you may be going a bit overboard, such as adding wikilinks for Noam Chomsky's parents or the men who Sacco and Vanzetti were found guilty of murdering. Remember, every entry on Wikipedia must still meet notability requirements, and those people mentioned really aren't notable enough to warrant their own entries. Therefore, links to those articles will soon be removed. You can read more about what should not be linked right here. Wyatt Riot 11:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Asshole
I have nominated Asshole, an article you created, for deletion. I do not feel that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Articles for deletion/Asshole (2nd nomination). Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Colonel Warden (talk) 11:56, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Your user page
I found your old user page while checking out some old deleted contributions. I have history merged it, so that all edits are in one place. Hope you don't mind. Graham 87 14:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs
Hello Little guru! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 1 of the articles that you created  is tagged as an Unreferenced Biography of a Living Person. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to insure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. if you were to bring this article up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current Category:All_unreferenced_BLPs article backlog. Once the article is adequately referenced, please remove the unreferencedBLP tag. Here is the article:

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 19:24, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Gustavo Zagrebelsky -

Your user talk page
I have just retrieved your old user talk page from the Nostalgia Wikipedia, a copy of the Wikipedia database from 20 December 2001. It can now be found at User talk:Little guru/Old, with all the available page history. Hope you don't mind. Graham 87 13:04, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:51, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Your userspace (reduxe)
Hello, I have imported one more edit onto your user page from the Nostalgia Wikipedia and also imported an old user page of yours, User:Little guru/contributions. Hope you don't mind. Graham 87 11:33, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

title: User talk:Little guru


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Jean-Baptiste Say

Jean-Baptiste Say (5 January 1767 – 15 November 1832) was a liberal French economist and businessman who argued in favor of competition, free trade and lifting restraints on business. He is best known for Say's law—also known as the law of markets—which he popularized. Scholars disagree on the surprisingly subtle question of whether it was Say who first stated what is now called Say's law. Moreover, he was one of the first economists to study entrepreneurship and conceptualized entrepreneurs as organizers and leaders of the economy. He was also closely involved in the development of the École spéciale de commerce et d'industrie, historically the first business school to be established.

Early life
Say was born in Lyon. His father Jean-Etienne Say was born to a Protestant family which had moved from Nîmes to Geneva for some time in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Say was intended to follow a commercial career and in 1785 was sent with his brother Horace to complete his education in England. He lodged for a time in Croydon and afterwards (following a return visit to France) in Fulham. During the latter period, he was employed successively by two London-based firms of sugar merchants, James Baillie & Co and Samuel and William Hibbert. At the end of 1786, he accompanied Samuel Hibbert on a voyage to France which ended in December with Hibbert's death in Nantes. Say returned to Paris, where he found employment in the office of a life assurance company directed by Étienne Clavière. His brother Louis Auguste (1774–1840) also became an economist.

Writings, teaching and entrepreneurship
Say's first literary attempt was a pamphlet on the liberty of the press, published in 1789. He later worked under Mirabeau on the Courrier de Provence. In 1792, he took part as a volunteer in the campaign of Champagne. In 1793, he assumed in keeping with French Revolutionary fashion the pseudonym Atticus and became secretary to Étienne Clavière, the then finance minister.

From 1794 to 1800, he edited a periodical, entitled La Decade philosophique, litteraire, et politique, in which he expounded the doctrines of Adam Smith. He had by this time established his reputation as a publicist and when the consular government was established in 1799 he was selected as one of the 100 members of the Tribunat, resigning the editorship of the Decade. In 1800, Say published Olbie, ou essai sur les moyens de réformer les mœurs d'une nation. In 1803, he published his principal work, the Traité d'économie politique ou simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent et se composent les richesses. Having proved unwilling to compromise his convictions in the interests of Napoleon, Say was removed from the office of tribune in 1804. He turned to industrial activities and after having familiarised himself with the processes of cotton manufacture he established a spinning-mill at Auchy-lès-Hesdin in the Pas de Calais which employed some 400–500 people, mainly women and children. He devoted his leisure time to revising his economic treatise which had been out of print for some time, but the system of state censorship in place prevented him from republishing it.

In 1814, Say availed himself (to use his own words) of the relative liberty arising from the entrance of the allied powers into France to bring out a second edition of the work dedicated to the emperor Alexander I of Russia, who had professed himself his pupil. In the same year, the French government sent him to study the economic condition of the United Kingdom. The results of his observations appeared in a tract, De l'Angleterre et des Anglais. A third edition of the Traité appeared in 1817.

A chair of industrial economy was established for him in 1819 at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. In 1825, he became a member of the improvement council of the École spéciale de commerce et d'industrie, later renamed École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris, now ESCP Business School, one of the first business schools in the world. In 1831, he was made professor of political economy at the Collège de France. In 1828–1830, he published his Cours complet d'économie politique pratique.

Say's law
Say is well known for Say's law, or the law of markets, often controversially summarised as:
 * "Aggregate supply creates its own aggregate demand"
 * "Supply creates its own demand"

Say's law is instead uncontroversially summarized as:
 * "Supply constitutes its own demand"
 * "Inherent in supply is the wherewithal for its own consumption" (direct translation from French Traité d'économie politique)

The exact phrase "supply creates its own demand" was coined by John Maynard Keynes, who criticized it as in the former two, equating all four of these statements to mean the same thing. Some economists, including some advocates of Say's law who dispute this characterization as a misrepresentation, have disputed his interpretation, claiming that Say's law can actually be summarized more accurately as "production precedes consumption" and that Say was claiming that in order to consume one must produce something of value so that one can trade this (either in the form of money or barter) in order to consume later.

Similar sentiments through different wordings appear in the work of John Stuart Mill (1848) and his father James Mill (1808). The Scottish classical economist James Mill restates Say's law in 1808, writing that "production of commodities creates, and is the one and universal cause which creates a market for the commodities produced".

In Say's language, "products are paid for with products" (1803, p. 153) or "a glut can take place only when there are too many means of production applied to one kind of product and not enough to another" (1803, pp. 178–179). Explaining his point at length, he wrote the following: "It is worthwhile to remark that a product is no sooner created than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value. When the producer has put the finishing hand to his product, he is most anxious to sell it immediately, lest its value should diminish in his hands. Nor is he less anxious to dispose of the money he may get for it; for the value of money is also perishable. But the only way of getting rid of money is in the purchase of some product or other. Thus the mere circumstance of creation of one product immediately opens a vent for other products."

Say also wrote that it is not the abundance of money, but the abundance of other products in general that facilitates sales: "Money performs but a momentary function in this double exchange; and when the transaction is finally closed, it will always be found, that one kind of commodity has been exchanged for another."

Say's law may also have been culled from Ecclesiastes 5:11 – "When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?" (KJV). Say's law has been considered by John Kenneth Galbraith as "the most distinguished example of the stability of economic ideas, including when they are wrong".

Say's law emerged during the early period of the Industrial Revolution, at a time when the economic phenomena of increased output merged with England's cyclical inability to maintain both sales and unemployment. This led many to believe that there was a limit to the growth of production, and there may come a point when there is no means of purchasing all output generated. Say's Law of Markets deals with the fact that production of commodities causes income to be paid to suppliers of the components of capital, labor, and land used in producing these goods and services. The sale price of these commodities is the sum of the payments of wages, rents, and profit. Income generated during production of a commodity equals the value of that commodity. Therefore, an increase in the supply of output will result in an increase in the income necessary to generate demand for those products.

Theory of entrepreneurship
In the Treatise, his main economic work, Say stated that any production process required effort, knowledge and the "application" of the entrepreneur. According to him, entrepreneurs are intermediaries in the production process who combine productive agents such as land, capital and labor in order to meet the demand of consumers. As a result, they play a central role in the economy and fulfil a coordinating role.

Besides studying large-scale entrepreneurs, Say looked at people working for themselves: "When a workman carries on an enterprise on his own account, as the knife grinder in the streets, he is both workman and entrepreneur."

Say also thought about which qualities are essential for successful entrepreneurs and highlighted the quality of judgement. To his mind, entrepreneurs have to continuously assess market needs and the means which could meet them, which requires an "unerring market sense".

As he emphasized the coordinating function of entrepreneurs, Say viewed entrepreneurial income primarily as high wages that are paid in compensation for the skills and expert knowledge of entrepreneurs. He did so by making a distinction between the enterprise function and the supply-of-capital-function which allowed him to look at the earnings of the entrepreneur on the one hand and the remuneration of capital on the other hand. This clearly differentiates his theory from that of Joseph Schumpeter, who described entrepreneurial rent as short-term profits that compensate for high risk (Schumpeterian rent). Say also touched upon risk and uncertainty as well as innovation when discussing entrepreneurship, although he never deeply investigated their relationships. However, Say stated: "[In any enterprise activity] there is an abundance of obstacles to be surmounted, of anxieties to be repressed, of misfortunes to be repaired, and of expedients to be devised [...] [and] there is always a degree of risk attending such undertakings." "Sometimes a manufacturer discovers a process, calculated either to introduce a new product, to increase the beauty of an old one, or to produce with greater economy."

Personal life
In 1793, Say married Mlle Deloche, daughter of a former lawyer.

Honours
In 1826, Say was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Later years and death
In his later years, Say became subject to attacks of nervous apoplexy. He lost his wife in January 1830 and from that time his health declined. When the revolution of that year broke out, Say was named a member of the council-general of the department of the Seine, but he found it necessary to resign.

Say died in Paris on 15 November 1832 and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

title: Jean-Baptiste Say


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Desert varnish

Desert varnish or rock varnish is an orange-yellow to black coating found on exposed rock surfaces in arid environments. Desert varnish is approximately one micrometer thick and exhibits nanometer-scale layering. Rock rust and desert patina are other terms which are also used for the condition, but less often.

Formation
Desert varnish forms only on physically stable rock surfaces that are no longer subject to frequent precipitation, fracturing or wind abrasion. The varnish is primarily composed of particles of clay along with oxides of iron and manganese. There is also a host of trace elements and almost always some organic matter. The color of the varnish varies from shades of brown to black.

It has been suggested that desert varnish should be investigated as a potential candidate for a "shadow biosphere". However, a 2008 microscopy study posited that desert varnish has already been reproduced with chemistry not involving life in the lab, and that the main component is actually silica and not clay as previously thought. The study notes that desert varnish is an excellent fossilizer for microbes and indicator of water. Desert varnish appears to have been observed by rovers on Mars, and if examined may contain fossilized life from Mars's wet period.

Composition
Originally scientists thought that the varnish was made from substances drawn out of the rocks it coats. Microscopic and microchemical observations, however, show that a major part of varnish is clay, which could only arrive by wind. Clay, then, acts as a substrate to catch additional substances that chemically react together when the rock reaches high temperatures in the desert sun. Wetting by dew is also important in the process.

An important characteristic of black desert varnish is that it has an unusually high concentration of manganese. Manganese is relatively rare in the Earth's crust, making up only 0.12% of its weight. In black desert varnish, however, manganese is 50 to 60 times more abundant. One proposal for a mechanism of desert varnish formation is that it is caused by manganese-oxidizing microbes (mixotrophs) which are common in environments poor in organic nutrients. A micro-environment pH above 7.5 is inhospitable for manganese-concentrating microbes. In such conditions, orange varnishes develop, poor in manganese (Mn) but rich in iron (Fe). An alternative hypothesis for Mn/Fe fluctuation has been proposed that considers Mn-rich and Fe-rich varnishes to be related to humid and arid climates, respectively.

Even though it contains high concentrations of iron and manganese, there are no significant modern uses of desert varnish. However, some Native American peoples created petroglyphs by scraping or chipping away the dark varnish to expose the lighter rock beneath.

Desert varnish often obscures the identity of the underlying rock, and different rocks have varying abilities to accept and retain varnish. Limestones, for example, typically do not have varnish because they are too water-soluble and therefore do not provide a stable surface for varnish to form. Shiny, dense and black varnishes form on basalt, fine quartzites and metamorphosed shales due to these rocks' relatively high resistance to weathering.

Its presence has been cited as a key factor in the preservation of a large number of petroglyphs dating back to the Iron Age and earlier in areas such as the Wadi Saham in the United Arab Emirates.

title: Desert varnish